Stowaways: Star Gate Leeches

The enormous energy requirements of a star gate mean that it should stay open for the least amount of time possible. (Plus, the less time you spend bending the universe to make these hyperspace bypasses, the better.)

That energy comes at a cost; most spaceliners time their trips together so that they can split the cost of using the gate. This complicates the coordination process, but it's much more economical.

(I imagine you might also have some connections to less popular destinations available only at high cost, or as part of a whip-back connection. Imagine the gate is scrunching space between Miami and Seattle, for instance. As the gate "closes", the space un-scrunches, and the destination end of the wormhole zips back to Miami. But if you want, you can stop it short in, say Denver, or even whip it around to Boston. You get a discount because the gate was already opened all the way across the country, and you're only paying for the redirection and pause in your destination of choice.)

Now comes the interesting part, however: leeches. Ships that don't want to pay to travel, or can't afford to, or need to fly incognito, or whatever. They wait for a ship (or group of ships) travelling to their desired destination, then try to fly in sync through the gate.

Neat trick, if it can be done, but it's made difficult by the fact that they're not part of the coordination effort, and don't know the planned rate of acceleration of the ships, or if the gate issues emergency commands, etc. It's all on secured channels between the ship (or ships) and the gate.

And remember, if you're a hair early or late in getting to the gate, your ship gets destroyed, or at the very least very damaged.

The legitimate ships, therefore, hate to discover an incoming leech. It basically means a close-proximity supernuclear bomb -- if the leech screws up, half it's engine core could end up in the destination with the legitimate ship.

The military won't tolerate leeches -- if they're headed for a star gate, you don't want to attempt a leech, because if they discover you, they'll blow you out of the sky. Plenty of emissary ships are armed for that purpose as well.

To better your odds of going unnoticed as a leech, you start farther back with greater acceleration. This also means a much, much more difficult timing effort. It's easier to time your gate-approach with another ship when you're just flying beside them. When you're 100 miles behind them, however, trying to choose your acceleration such that you'll pass through the gate at the exact moment they do -- well, it's trickier.

Of course, our hero doesn't have the money for proper gating. But his leeching is even more difficult, because he's flying manually.

Crazy little punk.