Family
an excerpt

Prologue:

Halen adjusted his trajectory incrementally, imagining he could feel the tiny bursts of momentum from the engine flares. Bobbing his head to the music coming over the speakers, he checked his instruments again, reassured that he was once again on track. Navigating between the gravity wells of the planet in the Sho system could be tricky, especially this close to Kench. However he had been doing this run for fifteen years now, and if there was one thing he knew, it was the peculiarities of the various gravity wells.
Looking out over his instrument panel, he checked his position against the stars. It wasn’t really necessary, but he had been trained to read navigation by the stars and the old habits died hard. Same old stars, same old planets.
He blinked, looking again, realizing there was something out of place. A flare of light blinked in his vision again, the telltale sign of a jump. He checked his readings, sure that he wasn’t mistaken. The instrument panel blinked back at him silently, indicating all was normal.
“There aren’t any official jump gates here… who do they think they are?” He had developed the habit of talking to himself on these long voyages, but seldom deigned to reply. Squinting at the star-studded view, he realized that he hadn’t been mistaken. There was definitely something out there. Something with jump engines, something big.
“Now who could you be?” Halan murmured half to himself, his fingers flying across the instrument panels as he pinged the strange ships. He knew there weren’t any star liner paths in this section of space, one of the reasons he was there in the first place. That could only mean that there was someone else out there who had no business being in this area either.
In response to his quick-fingered queries, part of his view screen magnified the view. There were two of them, flying in close orbit and along an elliptical that only reinforced his suspicion that they weren’t just a pleasure liner off course.
“What the fuck?” He squinted through his goggles, unsure of what he was seeing. Another flash and a third ship joined the other two, presumably after the first two had made sure the area was safe.
On a hunch, he dimmed his systems, going to basic life support and tracking functions and flipping a special switch his employers had insisted on. He even turned down the music. The engines of his small survey ship powered down with an audible whine. Now if the strange ships scanned him, he’d look like a sole lonely buoy, off course and uselessly pinging the aether. He’d lose his heading, but the fuel expenditure to get back on course would be more than worth it if they turned out to be hostiles.
“Like those fucking IA snoops…” Past experience had left him less than amenable to IA intrusion on the no-man’s-land of the Sho system and if the ships did turn out to be an IA foray, it would only serve his interests if they passed him by.
He watched in silence as the ships came closer. It became rapidly apparent as they accelerated into the system that they were no IA ships. Or at least, nothing like the blocky chunks of metal the IA used.
Seeming at the same time incredibly out of place and at the same time perfectly suited to the environment of space, these ships resembled nothing if not creations of nature itself. The two which had emerged first were reminiscent of seed pods, their surfaces bristling with what Halan assumed were armaments, their formations flowing smoothly down to the curved surface of the ship itself.
“Looks like they’ve grown the damn things.” He whispered to himself, despite the fact that there was no way the ships could hear him. The third one looked like a drop of water on a piece of bark. The top half of the ship was a hemisphere of clear material that flowed seamlessly down to the scraggly bottom that seemed to be there solely for the maintenance of the bubble itself. He looked closer and saw that something inside the bubble swirled with a color of motion, the whole thing a revelry of color and life against the dark void of space.
He continued to watch until the strange formation had passed, sailing further into the Sho system and away from his own heading. After he was sure they were far enough away, he powered up his engines again. Disregarding his original heading, he turned in-system as well.
As he headed back to the Market, tapped his fingers against the edge of the instrument panel. “I wonder just how much the Boss Boss’d pay to see all that.”
Turning up the music, he prepared himself for the long ride home.