Second Seat
STARDRIFT – Episode 1: Dead Reckoning (Scene 8)
She was shivering where she sat in the second seat of the cockpit. It looked like shock. Or maybe it was still after-effects from waking up from stasis.
“So,” said Vizier. “Who are you?”
Her eyes avoided his and flickered back and forth across the control panels. “Not… not the Dilradasi.”
Vizier looked around the small cockpit. It smelled of vomit and oily metal. “Dilradasi?” The name sounded like a more luxurious ship, with a proper bridge. “That is the ship you were on. The Arogym ship?”
She nodded and then looked as if she should not have. “I don’t know you.”
“My name is Vizier Streak. I’m the captain, nah, the temporary pilot of this rattling barrel.”
Her breathing became shorter and she pushed herself up from the seat and struggled around towards the corridor behind the cockpit. “Don’t… can’t talk to you.”
She was moving down the corridor, her voice growing fainter. “I have to find an elder.”
He stood up and followed her. She stopped at the end of the corridor, just where the gangway split to circle around the cargo hold. She stood there as if she could not choose which direction to go around.
“Where are these elders of yours?” he asked.
She did not look at him as she pushed him away with an elbow. “I can’t trust you.”
Vizier sighed as he watched her go down the ladder to the cargo below. The pile of cargo must be all that was familiar to her. “You could be enemy,” she shouted. “A Karadag.”
Vizier leaned over and called after her. “I promise you, I’m not one of them.” He sighed. “You can only trust me. It’s just us.”
He did not want to go down there now. He had other things that needed his attention so he called down. “I really must have a look at the transponder.”
She paused at the bottom of the ladder, looking up at him. “What is the state of the war on Arogym?”
“It’s over.”
“So soon?”
She had asked the question but then wandered off as if she immediately had forgotten that she had. She would need more time to adjust. He was running out of time.
Vizier went back the cockpit where he had to move the pilot seat forward. The transponder was underneath that. It was also underneath a puddle of vomit. He got another shirt from Jel Darm’s cabin to mop it up. As he managed to open the hatch she appeared back in the cockpit.
“Can this ship take us back to Arogym?” she asked.
His answer came as a grunt, bent double to lean into the small space and get direct access to the transponder. “Maybe, but you don’t want to be going there.”
“You said the war was over.”
Vizier uncoupled the feed from the transponder into the ship’s navigation system and looped it back on itself for a diagnostic. He stared at the unit while it recalibrated. It had been taken apart and put together again before.
“I did.”
“If you don’t want to go to Arogym then where are you going?”
“I honestly have no idea. I haven’t had time to figure that out yet. And the longer I dither around the longer somebody would have to track our location.”
“Why are people tracking you? You are a criminal?”
“They could be tracking you, dear.”
“They must be agents of the Karadag.”
“Let’s say they are—”
Her knees gave way under her and she had to grab hold of Vizier’s shoulder not to collapse to the floor. He had to grab hold of her because she did not have enough strength to hold on by herself.
“You need to eat something,” he said. “Let’s go see what there is.”
She looked past him at the open panel and exposed wires around the transponder. “Don’t you have to fix the ship?”
“It will take a couple of minutes for the diagnostic to run and the results to be compiled.”
The small galley was one level below the cabins. It was stocked with the basics Vizier would have expected. None of it seemed familiar to the girl. It probably wouldn’t. Her being a couple of systems and two centuries out of place. He opened a tin of spraul—innocuous and filling—and poured it in a bowl and heated it up for her.
Once she had ravenously eaten half the bowl colour began to return to her face.
“Do you have a name then?”
“Haneth Dyma.”
She stopped with the spoon halfway to her mouth, the orange spraul dripping from it onto the front of Jel’s ill-fitting shirt. “No, why would I say that? My name is Haneth Beyli.”
Haneth looked down at the stain. “I need other clothing,” she said with such innocence that Vizier nearly burst out laughing. But her current situation was no laughing matter.
“Right Haneth, I think it is time we talk about the war and where you happen to find yourself.”
Haneth kept eating, slower now and watched Vizier.
“What is the last thing you remember about Arogym and the war?”
“The war had been raging for more than a year. The Karadag should have been crushed but somebody supplied them with weapons. Bombs. They attacked us, at the Precinct of Sicadro, where I am from. But you said the war was over. Was the Karadag defeated?”
Vizier folded his arms. This was not good news and if the full weight of it hit Haneth it is going to be a shock. How much can she bear in such a short time? “Not quite. What you need to know now is that the war had been over for two hundred years. That is how long you have been in stasis.”
Haneth stopped eating. The last spoonful forgotten in the bowl. “The stasis pods were only to keep the Dyma safe and then return them when the war was done. What happened? Why were they not recalled?”
“I can only guess that they were not recalled because there was nobody to do so.”
“But when the war was won…?”
“The war wasn’t won by anybody. The planet was bombarded with devices that poisoned the atmosphere.”
“Poisoned. Who survived?”
“A few refugees that got away before, as far as I know. I’m not very knowledgeable about Arogym history.”
Her voice rose sharply in pitch. “Who survived? Who from Arogym is still alive?”
“Technically you, and the other six in the stasis pods below. Everybody else has gone. If any of the other refugees had children they would hardly be considered to be from Arogym.”
There was a moment that she did not move. Vizier could not even tell if she was breathing. Then she carefully placed the bowl on the galley counter and walked out. “I need to see them.”
Vizier caught up with Haneth in the hold. She stood next to the pile of cargo, staring at the six crates holding stasis units.
“You know we can’t wake them. You getting woken up and being able to function is very unusual. It should be done under controlled conditions. Two hundred years is a very long time.”
“I know that. Stop saying it.”
“You will have to get used to the idea.”
“Not now!”
Vizier stepped back. She needed time to process all this information. Haneth turned around.
“Where is the Nedrilsten?”
“The what?”
“This cargo. What you have here is not the whole cargo. There were so much more loaded onto the Dilradasi.”
“How much more?”
“Four, five times as much.”
Vizier shrugged. “Either the salvage crew did not get everything, or they split it in lots and sold it or something.”
“This salvage crew, who are they?”
“I have no idea.”
She walked around the cargo and touched one crate after the other, as if she was making a tally. “How did you get the treasures then? Are you a criminal? A smuggler?”
“Not quite. It is a bit of a complicated story. And difficult to tell because it is not finished yet.”
“Why is that?”
“Because if it is finished you know what is important and what not. At the moment it is all a bit muddled.”
Haneth placed a hand on one of the crates with a stasis unit and ran it along the edge. “We can see if they are alive?”
“We could, I guess.”
She tried the catches on the crate but did not have the strength in her hands to loosen them. Vizier stepped forward and took over, released the catches and lifted the crate lid. Inside the stasis pod’s display glowed a soft amber.
“As long as the unit is working we could assume that whoever is inside is alive.”
“It is a Dyma, one of the seven… one of the six elders.”
She gripped onto the edge of the crate and bit her lip. Tears were forming in her eyes.
“You called yourself a Dyma. Are you an elder?”
“That was a mistake.”
Vizier looked at the rest of the cargo. What there was would be a fortune. To think it was only a part of the whole meant that there was an immense treasure out there somewhere. That could buy a passenger liner. Damn no, it could buy a whole fleet.
“What is this Nedrilsten?”
“I cannot speak of it.”
“I cannot help you if you don’t tell me something.”
“It is one of the most valuable items of the Guzmul Order. It is something I must protect above all else.”
“And it is not here. You are sure?”
She pointed at the cargo. “It is too big to be in any of these. It is missing.”
Her legs gave way again but this time she controlled herself and managed to get herself to kneel on the floor where she twisted her hands in the hem of the shirt. “It will be found. It must be found. Lyschus Dyma gave me the responsibility and I have to take care of it. Unless the elders decide otherwise.”
“We can’t wake them to ask them.”
“I need proper clothes.”
“That might not be so easy.”
Vizier took Haneth back to Jel’s cabin. “You’ll have to see what you can find. And you could wash and clean up if you want. I need to check on my diagnostic.”
Vizier had had enough time to review the data from the diagnostic. He compared these to the Unit Breaker’s navigation manual. The results were not good. He was still pondering his options when Haneth returned to the cockpit.
She had cleaned herself up and managed to find clean pants and shirt amongst Jel’s clothing. She had to loop a belt twice around her middle to keep the pants from falling down. She sat down in the second seat, quietly waiting as if she was there for a lesson.
Vizier tapped his fingers on the transponder casing. “This thing has been bastardised beyond… It is not doing what it should be doing.”
“What should it do?”
“Relay coordinates between Ripple gates to maintain the channel link in underspace. But it was triggered to override the destination, making the entry gate and exit gate the same one. That caused the rebound effect that brought us right back to Fest Stop.”
“What is Fest Stop?”
Vizier shook his head. Haneth still had no idea where she was. She was completely lost and the feeling of disorientation must be overwhelming. Yet, she sat there, calmly asking questions. He had to admire her resilience.
“I think that turnaround in underspace, it placed stress on the hull and the Grill drives. That caused the shudder that knocked your crate over.”
Haneth nodded.
“What I can’t tell is if it was set like that from the start, or activated after we left the port but before the jump. If that is the case then somebody can have remote control of it. And remote control obviously means tracking as well.”
“Agents of the Karadag?”
“I don’t think Jel Darm or Cira Warten are with the Karadag. But they are behind this. There is a well planned plot here. Question is, what are they really after?”
“What now?”
Vizier sat back on his heels and played with a spanner, drumming it on the arm rest of the pilot’s seat. “If I can’t deactivate all these settings then we must get rid of it.”
“Yet you are doing nothing.”
“I can’t do it. I don’t have the technical knowledge or skill.”
He took the spanner and loosened the bolts that held the transponder in place. It took a twist and a jerk to get it out. He stood up and held it in his hands, turning it over. Then he headed out of the cockpit.
Haneth followed him down the access ladder to the bottom of the ship. In front of the Grill drive was the garbage disposal and incinerator. Vizier opened a hatch and placed the transponder inside. Then he chose to bypass the incinerator and set the disposal to eject directly into space.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting rid of it, and then changing direction.”
Vizier waited. There was the plop sound the garbage disposal made as it ejected the defective transponder. He dusted his hands and headed back up to the cockpit.
Vizier took his seat and activated the holo-map unit. It was as old as the rest of the ship, flickering to life and the image remained fuzzy at the edges.
Haneth was out of breath when she joined him in the second seat. “Where to?”
Vizier looked over his shoulder. “Still don’t know. But wherever that is, I—”
Haneth had perched up, eyes wide open, waiting expectantly.
“We’ll have to get there by dead reckoning.”
© 2025 Gerhi Janse van Vuuren