"Wonders of Modern Tech"
The Kronen Kraken, a light gunboat of the minor piratical nation of South Barnard's Star's tiny army, shivered in the nothingness of the void. It was between a rock and a whole field of rocks, pressed against the belly of an asteroid. Nearby, wolves hunted the wild dogs.
Six military ships, top of the line, equipped the best of the best of sensors. They had exited hyperspace a while off, surprising the little pirate ship, and proceeded to pound the living daylights out of it. The Kraken's hyperspace machinery were smashed, its weapons had all been spent or incapacitated. Aboard, the first mate punched a viewscreen.
"Callaye!" hissed the skipper. "They'll 'tect us!"
The other man rolled his one eye.
Their ship was on the underside of a large asteroid twice its size. They had shut down all power save for life systems. It was probably all in vain- after all, the military sensors on the ships outside were capable of detecting the tiniest heat signatures from the twenty-plus crew members of the gunboat.
The ship's engines necessitated minutes to power before being able to fly. The pirates could neither run, nor hide, nor fight.
Abruptly, the military ships went into hyperspace, mysteriously disappearing. The first mate blinked, feeling relieved, when
…the pirate-fighter Shore of Tripoli exited hyperspace, at the edge of the wide asteroid field. The crew sighed. This PK-er was not the most successful of all, but he at the very least had weapons and a flying ship.
In the cockpit of the Shore, Decatur cursed as he struggled to recalibrate. The hyperspace jump was off. He had arrived too early, far from the local spaceport. He was only fortunate enough to avoid manifesting inside a black hole.
An alert beeped. There was an incoming message from several hundred kilometers away. The computer said that it was from a tellbox- a cheap transmitter dropped by ships that lasted about a Terran day or so. Decatur opened up the message. A young, overserious, stiff-looking stoogie appeared on a screen. "This is Midshipman Brighton Noah to any ships passing by field Phi Omicron. A hostile pirate craft has been pursued here, but not yet captured as of 22:10:24, Military Standard Time. Please be advised until a full protection force has been deployed into this area. Thank you for your cooperation."
Decatur scoffed at the regimentation. The military types always spoke in redundancies with information any pilot- or schoolkid, for that matter- knew already. And if he wasn't a trained (ha, ha) spacefighter, he would be pretty much shaftered.
He decided to hunt down the presumed pirates. He flew into the field while actively scanning with IR, radar, and darktime image enhancements. Nothing. The Aural Simulation Mechanism was eerily quiet, as for once the asteroids weren't jumping all over the place to smash his ship into pieces. Decatur did this for about twenty minutes, blasting at larger asteroids randomly, but making sure they wouldn't fly into his ship afterwards. The rechargeable laser cannon was steady.
Eventually, he got tired of it all. Flipping a scope, a panel in the cockpit's roof slid open, and Decatur took out a pair of goggles. They were pitch black, as dark as space, if the spaceship-standard bright lights were turned off. He entered a command onto the flight computer, and the new ASSIST device he had bought just a day ago switched on.
The goggles lit up the field. It was the dark space of cinms- the background was black, but everything lit up and shone without the ship having to illuminate it. The textures of the rocks were better pronounced, and space actually looked bright. The Shore of Tripoli could fly freely without the pilot having to worry about the low performance of the ASM.
After a pause, he turned on the ASSIST-boosted sound system. A burst of sound followed. Unlike ASM, all of space pulsed with an awesome hum, almost like the cosmic "om" of the Buddhists. Each rock had its own voice, singing. The discordant yet harmonious movement somehow brought together a common call- that of a ringing ping, which Decatur took to mean the detection of something out of the ordinary- another ship?
Aboard the Kronen Kraken, the first mate started choking as the fully-armed, larger-than-light interceptor flew directly at the asteroid the Kraken was huddling against. It was no mere anti-asteroid fighter, but a ship designed for a pilot who would have to fight crewed ships two to ten times its size. The Shore of Tripoli was not the best of the bunch, but its belly had a full complement of engine-seeking missiles, unguided torpedoes, several varieties of particle- and ray- guns, and lodes of sensors.
But then it stopped. No one breathed as the interceptor stopped right in front of the pirates. The parrot who sat upon the skipper's shoulder screamed, leapt off, and flew to the back of the ship. The captain spun, pulled out his pistol, and shot the bird, silencing it. The shot rang across the boards. The skipper's expression was priceless.
Unbeknownst to Decatur, the Audio Seeker System Integrated for Space Technology was heavily based on pseudoscience, opportunism, and false promises. It claimed to use the stateart-est of ASM science to not only translate signals into sound, but to detect sound in space itself- an utterly impossible feat. While such waves could not transverse without a medium, the ASSIST system promised to detect such minute movements as an astroman walking atop a rock or whispering within a ship, translate them with the standard ASM system, and then retranslate it into visual form. In reality, the ASSIST scheme was attempted by the military, failed, and had been repackaged by corporate techies to be sold as silicon snake oil. All it did was alter the preexisting sensors of the ship it was inserted into to create a dreamlike wonderworld of sensory.
Unfortunately, the pirates' ship was sufficiently cold to escape infrared detection. The shot aboard Kronen Kraken was insufficient to rock the ship enough to affect the ASM. However, due to the already buggy nature of the system, ASSIST went haywire.
The pirates were agog as their second death sentence turned and flew off, at a trajectory completely opposite from where they hid. The ship sped off, discharging all of its weapons, laserfire shattering rocks and missiles exploding. It flew wildly, spinning here and there and twisting and turning like a Brahma Bull. It turned in circles, firing.
Decatur knew the deficiencies of new technology, but the goggleview was so real, he simply had to respond to the three or four Super Saucers that had suddenly appeared and were billowing out plasma bolts. The sound quality was magnificent. His first instinct was to run, far, far, away, but he felt that he had a clear view, he could engage the afbs with all that he had. He vaporized one after repeated blaster shots, and then caused another to hit an asteroid. Decatur whooped a cry of excitement as he realized his ship was barely getting hit at all.
Barely getting hit…
He realized that all of his armor and shielding were intact, miraculously. Not a single plasma shot had hit his ship. That was impossible. Improbable. Inconceivable and incomprehensible. Decatur frantically tore off the goggles and reactivated standard ASM, just in time to be greeted with the whoosh! of a ship entering hyperspace.
And there, in the silence of the vacuum of the void, he swore that he could hear laughter.