“How much further is this colony?”

“Are you gonna ask me that every few minutes?”

“Few minutes? We’ve been out here for two months! It’s probably been at least an hour since I’ve asked.”

“Relax, you’re starting to go stir crazy. The pay is way better than we’d get for just carting shuttles or junk cargo around. Since we’re already in the Alcyoneus Arm we’re on the last part of the trip.”

“I still don’t like it. You mean to tell me you’re not just the least bit creeped out by what’s back there?”

Alyarus looked back over her shoulder to the closed cabin door and then back at her navigator.

“Not in the least. There are twenty fully equipped Delta model MV1 Security Units on this ship, along with seven elite Zenith Corp Security Officers. They know what they’re doing.”

Bradlus frowned and turned towards the view screen. There was nothing ahead of them save for empty space and the twinkling of countless millions of stars in the distance for vast AUs in every direction.

“Are you wanting to say more?” Alyarus asked.

“No.”

“Yes you do. I’ve been working with you for three years now Bradlus, and I know when you’re being passive-aggressive.”

“I’m not being passive-aggressive, I’m trying to be agreeable.” Bradlus folded his arms across his chest and leaned back in the navigator captain chair.

“Look, yes we have a whole mess of dangerous criminals on board, and I understand your concerns there but have faith in the security team. This isn’t their first go-round. We’ll be coming up to DC-444 in less than an hour now, we’ll perform the slingshot and from there it’ll be less than a week ‘till we get to the colony where they’re building the new trans-warp gate.”

“And we’ll get to offload these Titans for good. After this I don’t want to take on any more prisoner shuttles. I keep having nightmares every night-cycle of these Titans doing horrible things to me.”

“You’re so neurotic. If you’ve finished the calibrations, do me a favor and go tell Serge about the malfunctioning fabricator in the lounge.”

Bradlus stood up from his chair and stretched. “Will do.”

As he turned to leave, Captain Alyarus snapped around in her chair to get his attention before the cabin doors closed.

“One more thing!”

The young Rodentia turned in the doorway and held it from closing. “Yes?”

“Tell Dally he owes me a sandwich.”

“A sandwich?” Bradlus raised an eye. “What kind of sandwich?”

“He’ll understand the reference.”

Bradlus shrugged and turned to leave, the door slid closed behind him. He walked the short length of the corridor that led from the flight deck bridge until he came to a large circular opening that housed the elevator shaft in the center. All the running lights were dimmed to night cycle, and he was beginning to feel the call of his bunk. He swung around the elevator and turned to the wing branching off to his right.

This wing of the ship was where crew quarters one through seven were located, along with the rec-room that he headed towards. He waved his hand in front of the motion sensor plate to the right-hand side of the door, and the hatch sucked away like magic. Inside the room was a pot-bellied Beaver Rodentia snoozing with his hands folded on his belly on one of the many comfortable couches lining the room. In front of his closed eyes, a holo-vid continued to play, though no one was watching it. It was an old vid, called Gunshots, one that Bradlus recognized that his own father had enjoyed as a child. In the center of the room were several table games, and behind those on the far wall were a line of Holo-Game cabinets blinking their hypnotic lights.

Bradlus crept over to the chair, stifling a chuckle and looked down at the sleeping Titan.

“Dally!” He screamed.

“Whozit!” The portly Beaver screamed back, his glassy eyes flying open as he scanned the room in a panic.

Bradlus began laughing hysterically as the older Rodentia came to his senses and scoffed at the young Titan.

“By the stars, ye about gave me a ‘eart palpitation ye rapscallion!” His chubby face scrunched up in disapproval and he swatted the young Titan away from his favorite chair.

“Go sleep in your bed old male. It’s nearly twenty-five hundred hours, way past time for geezers to be down for the night.”

Dally huffed with indignation. “Geezer? I’ll ‘ave you know whippersnatcher, that I can still run circles around the likes of a pup like you.”

“You’d have to get out of your chair first.” Bradlus smiled.

“Aye, that I would my good boy! That I would.” Dally chuckled as his belly rolled. He made no attempt to get up.

“Captain says you owe her a sandwich.”

The old Rodentia frowned and looked down at his feet, as if trying to recall something out of the past.

“A sandwich? Why on Titan wouldn’t she just get ‘er own then? I’m an essential maintenance engineer, not a bloody chef!”

Bradlus laughed at the old Titan and patted his shoulder gently.

“She said you’d understand the reference. Maybe an inside joke or something?”

“An inside joke about a bloody sandwich? That doesn’t sound at all like something I would be engaged in. No, I don’t suppose I would be engaged in that sort ‘o thing at all.”

“Well she said you would.” Bradlus called back over his shoulder as he was walking out of the room.

“Wait! By Jove, a sandwich!” Dally exclaimed as Bradlus walked through the doors and just before they shut behind him. “Quite right, a sandwich! I get it now.” The old Beaver began chuckling and rumbling in his chair.

Bradlus then came back into the circular room and took the corridor down further. This area housed many compartment trunks and lockers streamlined into the wall, and he paused to close one that was not latched properly. When he then reached the end of this corridor, he stopped in front of the hatch marked “Engineering” and rapped on the metal.

A few moments later and the door slid open. As Bradlus walked inside the dimly lit chamber with a reddish hue, he saw the shadow of a Canid ahead with his back turned. The Canid spoke without looking back in a gruff voice.

“What is it now?”

“Captain wants you to look into the fabricator in the lounge. It’s been malfunctioning all day. I tried to fabricate a sandwich and it tasted fishy. My soda tasted like mustard or something.”

“Oh, does she?” Serge’s voice sounded angry, though Bradlus had been part of the crew of the ZCAV Triumph for long enough to know that was just the salty Canid’s way about things. “Did she tell you how to get a new compactor motor and tele-lens on the edge of civilized space?”

Bradlus went to open his mouth and stopped, dropping his hands to his sides. The Canid glanced over his shoulder for a brief second and the young Rodentia caught his fierce ice-blue eyes as he did. The Canid Non-Essential Systems Chief seemed amused.

“No, I don’t suppose she did. Well, like everything else I’ll have to improvise something from the other fabricator. Now that you’re here, maybe you can give me a hand and run down there and program in some of these replicator diagrams into the system. It’ll take a while for the fabricator downstairs to assimilate the new patterns into its database…” Serge stopped to fully turn towards the visibly hesitant Rodentia. “What?”

“No way, I’m not going down there. This is your job, I’m just the navigator. I’m second class at that, no way.”

A creeping smile came across the wide maw of the Non-Essential Systems Chief and a knowing look to his frosty eyes.

“You’re afraid of the prisoners.” The Canid remarked knowingly.

“I’m not afraid, just no use in poking the Tigral after all.”

“Well Tigrals aren’t dangerous when they’re in a cage.” Serge said pointedly. “Have ya never been to a zoo?”

“As long as you don’t go into their cage, true enough.” Bradlus returned with quick wit. Serge sighed and made a placating motion as if he were patting the air.

“Fine, run along little coward, I’ll handle it. Tell her it’ll be fixed by the time she wakes up.”

“Fine I’ll do it.” Bradlus said with the enthusiasm of an impetuous kit on the brink of a temper-tantrum. “Give me the diagrams.”

Serge’s canine maw curled into a half-smile and he handed over a datapad that he had been plunking on.

“It’s already open to the tele-lens diagram. Program that in, it’s gonna take time for me to configure a diagram for a new compactor motor. They’re pretty complicated.”

“Fine.” Bradlus repeated and walked out of the room without further conversation. He walked back up the corridor and stopped at the elevator, taking a steadying breath before pushing the call button.

The door slid open, and he stepped on, the lights came on inside as he did.

“Cargo hold.” He spoke into the voice activator and the elevator began its descent immediately.

The ZCAV Triumph was only a medium sized ship so the elevator took merely a few seconds. When the doors opened again, he stepped out into the cargo hold, and the dimmed night-cycle lights came on ahead of him. He made his way down the corridor towards the rear of the ship until it opened into the massive hold.

Before him, Bradlus saw the prisoners all in their makeshift cages with several armed Zenith robots standing watch. The robots did not need to eat, did not get tired and their concentration did not wander. It was rather comforting in a way to see them.

“You need something pup?” Came a voice to his side.

Bradlus turned to see a Zenith Corp security officer seated on a bench. He wore the standard black body armor of a Zenith soldier, a light variant, and though his posture was casual, he was armed with a large E-Rifle.

“Just need to use the fabricator for a minute.” He replied while walking over to the box on the wall. The LED screen was dimmed and turned brighter when he touched it. He navigated the touch screen console until he came to the screen where he could input diagrams. He then programmed the datapad to transmit the information wirelessly and set it down on top of the fabricator box waiting for it to download.

“Aren’t you a little young to be a part of a ship’s crew?” The soldier was now walking his direction.

“Not when you graduate top of your class at the Gray Union Navy College.”

“Ah, I’ve heard of that. That’s in the Federated Territories, isn’t it?”

“Yep. That’s where me and the captain both came from, before I got hired on with Zenith.”

“Top of your class, huh? Well good on you. It’s good to see today’s youths doing something other than wasting away playing that damned VR game.”

Bradlus knew what the soldier was referring to, it had been a major craze back in the Federated Territories. Sojurn was a massively multiplayer game that Titans from all over the world played together. In fact there were some servers even open for other players elsewhere in the solar system as well, the ones that were close enough to a stable Titannet connection at least. Many of the poor and disenfranchised used it not just as a game to retreat to once and awhile, but a full-fledged alternate reality to escape the harsh realities of the real world.

“I play games some every now and again, but I stay away from Sojurn like a plague. I had a few friends back home that got into it. I haven’t talked to them since.”

“Cheers then. You’ll be alright.” The soldier patted his shoulder.

“So.” Bradlus looked over the other Titan’s shoulder at the cages lined up in the hold, and the dozens of clustered Titans within. “Who’s the most dangerous of the lot, and should I be worried?”

The soldier smiled and chuckled at the younger Titan. He turned around to follow Bradlus’ gaze and pointed a finger at what looked like a metal shipping crate in the corner of the hold. It was thick and double locked and plated and looked to be nearly impenetrable. It looked like the type of container designed to withstand a bomb blast, not house a prisoner.

“There’s someone in there?”

“Yep.” The soldier nodded knowingly. “That there’s the infamous Lupis. A bad sort of character you’ll be glad to never meet. Once we get to Oshia and the outer colonies, he’ll be put to work safely away from the rest of civilized society forever.”

Bradlus stared at the container, wondering what kind of Titan could be so dangerous that would warrant such methods of transport, especially with so many armed guards.

“Don’t worry mate, he can’t get out.” The soldier smiled again.

“Isn’t that the Titan that mass murdered an entire colony once?”

“All you’ve heard is true and worse mate. But again, he can’t get out.”

The fabricator beeped, indicating that it had finished downloading the new diagrams and Bradlus reached up to pluck the datapad. The soldier nodded and walked back to his bench, while Bradlus slipped him a curt nod and left the cargo hold. The prisoners certainly did look well-handled and appeared to be no real threat. He felt a little safer after finally after all this time aboard with them, seeing it with his own eyes.

Bradlus took the elevator back to the top floor and returned the datapad back to Serge. The gruff Canid barely acknowledged him and took the datapad with a dismissive grunt. He seemed deeply engaged in programming the diagram for the motor. The young Titan left him to it and made his way back to his dorm.

The doors slid open and Bradlus strolled inside his little piece of sanctuary out among the stars. He flipped on his Titannet telecaster and began changing into his pajamas while the beam played a program in the middle of the room. The signal this far out on the edge of Titan space was extremely choppy, he figured they were probably about a week from the last Titannet relay station satellite by now. It was amazing that he was still able to pick anything up at all.

When Bradlus was finally ready for sleep, he flipped off the stuttering holo-program.

“Night scene.” He voice-activated his room.

The telecaster began playing gentle sounds of a bubbling stream and the sounds of birds and wildlife from back home. At the same time the walls and ceiling changed to display a remarkably life-like image of a nighttime forest. The young Titan sighed in complete comfort and closed his eyes after laying down on his bunk.

Suddenly the world around him rocked violently, and he was thrown from his bed. The holo-images of the forest flickered a few times around him. Then a loud klaxon began ringing.

“Warning. Hull breach.” A computerized voice announced.

Bradlus’ heart began pumping furiously as he tried to rise to his feet. He was thrown across the room once more and realized with terror growing in his heart that the ship must be tilting sideways.

“Hang on to something!” Came the Captain’s frantic voice from the bridge over the intercom units.

The world continued to tumble and shift until Bradlus hit his head and blacked out