Rigidity In Space

I woke before the rest of the crew just like I always did. The ion engines of the Deicide rumbled softly beneath my feet as I padded from the shuttle’s small kitchen, a boiling cup of coffee in hand, to the cockpit. Sitting in the left seat I didn’t bother strapping in, we wouldn’t be experiencing any high g maneuvers today, just the same old two g burn the Deicide had been cruising at for over a month now.

My body had taken time to get used to the constant strain of living under the equivalent of two Earth gravities, though the ship’s own artificial gravity had helped counteract the constant pull. Sipping my coffee I admired my bicep and forearm, over the last few months I’d gotten jacked living under two g's, and to think they used to worry about muscle mass degradation during interstellar flight.

Putting on a body builder’s display of poses for nobody, I stared out the cockpit’s viewport. Without the shuttle lay the everblack of the abyss, speckled white with snowflakes of burning stars and in the left of the viewport a glittering green nebula melted into indigo, violets and crimsons. The great gaseous thing was gorgeous, I’d never been much of a romantic, but there was something about the inherent beauty of the fuligin expanse and the harsh colors of the cosmos that warmed my heart.

I opened up the ship’s terminal to run my routine status report and found myself locked out.

Password expired, please reset your password. The terminal read in an archaic emerald typewriter font.

I grumbled at the unnecessary pain in the ass, who the hell worries about terminal security on an outbound flight shuttle? Who's going to sneak into my account and steal my information? Space pirates? What a load.

I typed in my old password and then tried a new one, it made me type my new password twice for redundancy.

New password must be different from previous passwords.

“Dammit.” I tried again.

Passwords do not match.

“Son of a bitch!” I retyped it again, twice.

New password does not meet security criteria, password must include at least fifteen characters, a capital letter, a lowercase letter, a number, and a special character.

“Fifteen letters?!” Unbelievable. I tried another password.

New password must be different from previous passwords.

“It is different!” I screamed at my terminal, not caring if I woke the other crew members, security be damned. I tried a new password I knew for a fact would be different from all my previous passwords.

Red warning LEDs flashed, bathing the cockpit in bloody light, proximity alarms blared and the ship’s emergency klaxon shrieked.

“Oh what the hell now?” I yelled over the din, without terminal access none of my controls worked. I had no way of knowing what was going on and what the proximity alarm was trying to alert me to. I was essentially flying with my thumb up my ass. I desperately typed my new password again as my head began to ache at the screeching alarms.

Passwords do not match.

“Why!” I saw the other vessel outside the cockpit’s viewport then. A massive shuttle outfitted with forward, side and rear cannons. The thing had way more firepower than our ship's single measly turret that I didn’t have access to because of the stupid security system.

“What the hell's going on up here?” Mara-the ship’s engineer-burst into the cockpit. “Evasive action captain! What are you waiting for?”

“My password expired, I have no controls and there’s another ship out there." I said through gritted teeth. "Quick, login for me.”

“Good lord.” Mara shoved me aside and started typing.

Password expired, please reset your password.

“Damn.” We stared at the screen for longer than we should have. Mara began typing in a new password when a gruff male voice came over the radio.

“Shuttle Deicide, this is the Queen Anne's Revenge. Prepare to be boarded.”

Holy shit.

“Space pirates?” Mara asked, clearly as flabbergasted as I.

“Space pirates."

Maybe whoever had built the ship had actually been on to something about its security measures, I thought to myself as the Deicide was boarded.