Silent Awakenings

I suddenly opened my eyes, my slumber cut short by the humming noise of a power generator nearby. I grumpily realised what woke me up, and deciding it would be near-impossible to carry on with my much-desired sleeping session now that I'd opened my eyes, I checked my wristwatch.

Hrmf. Near-noon.

I wasn't going to let another day go by wasted, so I scrambled to my feet, checked for flashing lights in the engine bay and went towards the cockpit.

"I really need to stop falling asleep in the hangar like this", I muttered to myself.

Yesterday was another all-day prep session for the ship. All good and dandy to gather the cash to buy this new ship, but -following my principles- I wouldn't be caught dead flying a vessel I wasn't absolutely familiar with every inch of every dark little maintenance bay of it. Either that, or I could be caught dead later, literally. Simple as they come. Rules are there to be broken, except the rules we set unto ourselves by ourselves. So the entirety of the day before had been spent reading blueprints, running system-wide checks and trying to figure new innovative ways to get access to the innermost parts of the new ship without stripping it out completely. Needless to say, this right about came to an end in the wee hours...

But I'm happy. I'd dusted off my flight school knowledge on the cruiser class ships, double-checked all systems and even installed all the new software patches.

I dragged myself outside, trying to determine whether I had time to grab a cup of coffee before I set this bird loose of the gravity jacks of the hangar and got on with business. Deciding I shouldn't really waste any more time procrastinating, I changed to my podwear and immersed myself in the claustrophobic interior of the pod. The tiny hatch sealed and the small space quickly filled with too-familiar viscous perfluorocarbon liquid. Though I couldn't see it, I could hear one of the huge robotic arms of the hangar place the pod inside the newly-acquired ship.

>> System start....

>> Running system-wide check....

A long list of systems and their subsystems wized past my eyes. All readings were green.

>> System status: Optimal
>> Cap Charge is at 100%
>> System ready

I mentally sent the command to initiate undocking sequence. The system sprung to action, clearing the steps needed and getting directions towards the outer shell of the station.

The last -triple- bay doors opened, and my view was filled with the familiar view of the three frozen moons of the nearest planet. The fourth was out of view.

I set thrusters to 5% forward and slowly drifted into space. The ship cleared the undocking bay and the doors slammed shut behind. This is it. The first ship I'd earned by myself. My first non-fifth-hand lowly frigate. My first real ship.

I paused for a second, mentally going through each jump of the entire journey that was planned ahead. The route was already keyed in autopilot, but autopilot is not for pilots. I checked the overview window, picked up the only available gate out of this dead-end system and set course. The ship sprung to action, and the warp drive indications quickly showed alignment and finally...

>> Warp Initiated

I smiled.

The void smiled back.