There was one thing that Jutka Naratya loved about space. It was so quiet. In any direction that you looked there was nothing but vast expanses of black, punctuated here are there by the light of distant starts and other celestial bodies. And not one of them made a sound. Not one that she could hear, anyway. She could lose hours at a time simply sitting in her cabin, the wall display set to show the universe outside of the confines of the scout ship. There were no windows, naturally. Such structural weaknesses were unnecessary now that they had sensors that could produce an image, any image, as clear as day. It might look like there was a window in the cabin, but there wasn’t.



Some people preferred to set the display to show images of back home. Their favorite views from their home, or a forest, maybe a beach, all readily accessible to comfort them in these long space voyages. One of the other pilots had his display set to the front porch of his house, with him able to look in and see his family inside. It would have been a sweet gesture, if Jutka didn’t know he was sleeping with one of the women that worked in engineering.



But for her? No, watching space was just fine. All she had to do was turn on the noise dampeners so that she would be in absolute silence, fall into a chair, and get lost in the endless space before her eyes…



Unfortunately, it was time for her to find herself again. He shift on the bridge was coming up, and it would do to be late. Not that it mattered. They wouldn’t be leaving jump space for at least a few more hours. Traveling the cosmic strings that linked star systems made exploration much faster, but it didn’t change the fact that distances almost too great for a human mind to grasp had to be crossed. And that, even while going at speeds faster than that of light, it could still take days or even weeks to reach the next system. With a sigh she got up and pulled on her uniform. As relaxed as the captain ran his ship, she simply couldn’t go without it. As much as she disliked authority figures lording over her, hated it even, she still needed some small bit of discipline in her life. So she would wear the uniform, but it wouldn’t be perfectly ironed and straight-edged. The jacket would be left open, exposing the black tank top she wore underneath, and her pants might not be tucked into her boots. Leaving her cabin in such a state would have had her cited on any other vessel…But no other vessel was commanded by Guner Wutcher.



To say that her captain was an odd man would be an understatement. There was something off in his head, something almost wrong, like at any moment he might snap and shoot someone for giving him bad news. Or that he might be about to burst into song and dance on the bridge, as if he thought he was one of those ancient entertainers of the 21st century. He was mad, eccentric. There was no doubt about that at all. How he had gotten command of a ship, Jutka would never know. But there was brilliance underneath the madness as well. He had a way of reading people, of seeing straight to their very core, and knowing what they would be like. And his intuition was uncanny. It was like Lady Luck sat on his should and spent her nights with him. They were scouting out new systems for the various corporations that the emperor had contracted to head the colonization effort. And the past three they had found were all perfect. A terran, ocean, and jungle world, all in those last three systems. And he found them simply by picking out random strings to follow.



The man was brilliant. He was also mad, and ran too loose of a ship for even her tastes. But by the stars, he was brilliant. Perhaps that was why he was still in command of this small scouting flotilla. Whatever his methods, the CEOs liked the results.



Now if only he didn’t have such an obvious desire for her…Ignoring the rules between officers and their subordinates, the man just wasn’t her type.



But Guner wasn’t on the bridge when she walked in, much to her relief. In fact, very few people were on the bridge. A skeleton crew stood at their stations, going over various readings and reports on their displays. One of the three stations designated for the pilots and navigators were empty, and she made her way over to the middle one to take a seat. Pilots were really unnecessary if one stopped to think about it. The ship’s computers handled most of the work. Human eyes were just needed to relay reports to the captain and to enter his commands into the computer. Jutka was one of the few people emerge from the Imperial Corporate/Military Academy as a pilot who could make a ship dance. The numbers and displays in front of her spoke to her in a way that most others just couldn’t hear, and she used what she heard to make a living for herself. Combat simulations had been her bane in the Academy—she couldn’t fight to save her life. But, by the stars, she could take anyone who wanted her ships on one hell of a chase. Maneuvers at the last moment to throw off enemy targeting, banking and pulling turns that the computer said shouldn’t have been possible, at her fingertips a ship could do just about anything. Those skills had landed her quite the lucrative contract with one of the corporations heading the colonization effort as well. And she would have still had it, too, if she had just watched her mouth and kept it off of her supervisor’s daughter. Instead, she had been dumped on a deep space exploration flotilla, well far away from any piece of civilization.

The final few hours until the flotilla exited jump space passed without incident. The bridge started to fill up as the crew arrived to do their jobs as they entered normal space. The last to arrive was Guner himself, grinning to himself as he looked over the bridge.



“Any reports I should know about? Naratya, how’s the ship looking?” he asked as he dropped himself into the captain’s chair, pressing a few buttons on the arm rest to bring up his own displays.



“Nothing, sir. We’ll be exiting jump space in a matter of minutes, however.” Jutka answered. A chill ran down her spine as she felt his eyes on the back of her head.



“Boring, boring…Hopefully we’ll find something fun in this system.” the captain muttered to himself. Once those few minutes passed, and the ship’s sensors had time to analyze what was in the system, everyone’s eyes were glued to the display. Or, more accurately, what wasn’t on the display.



“Is that a…?” was all Jutka could say. The Academy had, off course, given lessons on all types of space anomalies to the recruits. But they stressed that the odds of running into any of them were slim.



“My, my, my…This certainly isn’t boring. Anyone up for a trip into a black hole?” Guner said, grinning wildly as he looked at the display. Jutka turned in her chair, looking back at the captain in disbelief, but he waved her off before she could say anything, “Oh, shut up. Even I’m not that mad. Find the event horizon. Make sure we stay well away from it.”



“Aye aye.” That was more like it. She put in the orders, and looked back at the display. She couldn’t find the words to describe what she was seeing. Or, not seeing. Or…Hell, she just had no idea. But it was beautiful, the accretion disk, and all the different things that became visible as the sensors switched from normal sight, to reading x-rays, infrared, and so on. “Well, captain, you discovered the system. You get to name it.” she said, pulling up the navigational charts to update them.



“Oh my, mankind’s first black hole…Hmm…It has to be something grand, exceptional. Something with some class…” Guner started mumbling to himself. Rubbing his chin, he leaned back in his chair, before jumping up, “Aha! I got it! Lucy! I name this black hole Lucy.”



The bridge went silent again, as the bridge crew just stared at their captain in disbelief. Before anyone could enter an override, though, the computer updated and saved the navigational charts. Guner just looked around at his crew, grinning to himself, before sitting down in his chair again with a laugh. A few new markers were put on the system map as the sensors continued scanning, objects orbiting the black hole.



“What can I say, I love Lucy. Now, set a course for, oh…let start with this one, it looks fun.” he said, highlighting one of the detected objects on the display and sending it to Jutka. Sighing, she just nodded, and plotted the course. One of the other crew had to speak up, though.



“Sir, should we really get closer to that…thing?”



“Hey! That is no way to talk about Lucy!” Guner snapped at the poor ensign, before grinning again, speaking in much calmer tones. “And we’ll be fine. Just don’t cross the event horizon, and we’ll be fine. Relay that to the Corsair and Bandit, along with instructions to investigate…this object, and…that one.”



“Aye aye, sir…” the ensign said, obviously unnerved by the object their now shared a system with. But Jutka just kept her eyes on the display. Something told her that this would be an exciting system. Whether it would be the good excitement or not, though, she wasn’t sure.



The Lucy System…Somehow it figured that Guner Wutcher would be the first human to visit a black hole.





FIN...for now.

Soooo...did you come up with the joke after deciding to name the black hole or name it that way for the joke? I love the obviously bi-polar captain. Good stuff!

Well, here goes my showing my ignorance, but what joke? The only one I planned was (in my opinion) the ridiculous act of naming a black hole, and star system in general, Lucy.



And thanks. I'm sure that's not quite what the devs had in mind when they wrote Guner's Hero bio, but, I figured I'd have some fun with it. :P I think I'm just about out of UE Heroes now, though...Gotta work something up for Forsythe, and the other female Hero who's bio I haven't gotten yet.

Awesome Story. The mad commander is great. I'm really looking forward to more.

I should have more coming soon.. I'm currently stuck on continuing my Craver Saga, so I may turn back and continue this one to give the muse time to figure out what it wants to do.