Welcome to the Journal of Now and Forever. This Journal is a collection of my Star Control and Star Control 2 fiction. Note: Some of this material is, by necessity, extrapolation from the slim information provided by canon sources.

New fiction is posted first at My Livejournal before it appears here. This story is in response to 15 Minute Ficlets' Challenge #47.

Time to patrol. He's the only one who actually says patrol. Most of the other spacers say hunt. Otto doesn't much care for Earthlings, but he doesn't actively want to see them cut into tiny bits, either.

He's not sure how he feels about their recent conquest. That is, the conquest of the Androsynth by the Ur-Quan and their Hierarchy of Battle Thralls. He supposes it's better than being under a slave shield, because he can still go into hyperspace as a pilot, if the Androsynth are Battle Thralls. But it's not as good as not being enslaved at all.

He's noticed that most of the spacer Androsynth are, well, odd. They all love what they do, it's just what they choose to do. He suspects he's the most normal of them, even with his bliss on spending days in hyperspace. The rest of them think he's the odd one, but – at least he gets pleasure from something natural, something non-harmful, yes?

By now the spacers are battle-hardened, those that survived the conquest and rallied to the side of the Hierarchy. It was foregone: the Created Men against those who Created them. And some of them have gotten a little loose in the head over the years, Otto thinks.

Himself, he's had thirty-some wonderful years as a pilot, without any diminishment of happiness in his job, and maybe – Otto likes to think this – his attunement with hyperspace is what's kept him alive and such a good pilot. He can fly as one of the best; so what if he sleeps in his Guardian craft rather than assigned living quarters? He gets along with his crewmates; no one can complain of that. A Guardian takes four flying crew: pilot, gunner, navigator, mission leader: and eleven other crew, depending on mission. Over the years, the crew gets the "spacer's tan" from the radiation, and Otto himself feels that he can detect the gravity wells and fluctuations almost by feel, by listening to the wails and groans from outside the ship, the portals back into truespace.

Of course, such a thing can't be done. Androsynth are just GM Earthlings. And speaking of Earthlings, the copilot calls that he's found a ship in the area, and it's time to force it to truespace and find out if it's Hierarchy or Alliance. The rest of the crew is eager, hungry, hoping it's an Earthling ship they can prey on, although they'll shoot up Alliance ships almost as quickly. Otto's just resigned; he wants to stay in hyperspace. But orders are orders, and he's only a pilot, not the mission leader. They already think he's strange – they've seen that hyperspace does something to him, no matter how much he tries to hide it – and there's no profit in making enemies within his own crew.

If he is derelict in duty, he'll be grounded. So he listens to the yawing, and the hungry silence of his crewmates, and closes on the other ship, the large blackish dot, the Guardian's gravity distortion forcing both ships down into truespace.

The Guardian's crew named this ship the Revanche.

Comments? Email me: laridian at aol dot com