by Nick Webb
The atmosphere turned out to be even thinner than she’d expected. She glanced at Kennedy. “Will the pulse detonation engine operate in this weak of an atmosphere? I mean it should, right?”
Kennedy scrutinized the HUD screen displaying the gas percentages and cringed. “Uh… probably?”
“Good enough.” She pointed the nose of the ship down and dove. When the atmosphere began to fight her she reached over and activated the transition from impulse power to the pulse detonation engine. They held their breath.
The ship jerked as the engine struggled for a minute… then began humming quietly.
The meager cloud cover dissipated to reveal a mountainous terrain. Perfect.
She leveled off a kilometer above the surface. “You’ll want to strap in to the jump seat.”
Kennedy’s eyes widened. “Should I get a drink, too?”
“After.”
Her face contorted into a grimace as she retreated to the main cabin.
Alex guided the Siyane toward the mountains, seeking out a path through the crests and valleys.
Kyril’s ship was faster than hers in space; she had to assume it was faster in-atmo as well. But she could fly circles around him in her sleep using nothing but her left pinky. It wasn’t arrogance; it was fact.
Perhaps a smidge of arrogance.
She cracked her neck and dipped until she cruised thirty meters from the sloping incline and tilted the belly of the ship toward it. No trees softened the scenery, and boulders rushed past in a blur.
Ahead, a ridge split into a deep fissure, more gorge than valley. She plunged into it, staying close to the ground.
Kyril emerged from the bluffs behind her. He’d drawn far closer, which represented a problem. He must think she was zeroing in on a find.
This gorge was doing nothing for her. She spotted a narrow cleft to the right. Too narrow? Nah.
She increased her speed, flipped the ship sideways and slipped into the gap.
“Alex, the hell!”
She gritted her teeth and tried to concentrate on flying. The gap hadn’t widened yet. “I did tell you to strap in.”
Reluctantly she spared a brief motion to activate the comm channel. “Bob, get down here and head to… 33.2° N, 114.1° W.” The coordinates lay a hundred kilometers northwest of her current location. It should work.
“I’m not finished yet.”
“Bob.”
“Right. Heading there now.”
Finally the terrain opened up, though the mountains grew far steeper. Jagged spikes jutting up from a dead landscape.
She swerved to the left to dart between two peaks then dropped down as low as she dared.
Kyril’s blip followed. Motherfucker.
But it stayed more distant now. He was flying safely. “Coward.”
Emboldened, she sped onward, dipping and weaving through the range. When another fissure came into view, she pivoted hard and raced through it, a mite too snugly for comfort. She was glad Kennedy wasn’t up here to see how near to the cliff walls they flew.
On the scanner, Kyril slowed almost to a stop, handing her the break she needed. She found a basin on the topography map six kilometers to the northeast.
“Bob, shift to 33.8° N, 113.9° W and get ready.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
One last corkscrew turn… and… .
She decelerated hard and plummeted toward the ground; when ten meters remained she killed the engine. “Now, Bob—17.8° N heading, then get back to space ASAP.”
The ship shuddered roughly as it slammed to the ground. A couple of yellow warnings flashed across the HUD, but nothing critical.
“You are one crazy woman, Solovy.”
“Thank you. I’m flattered.”
Kennedy’s voice sounded shaky behind her. “Um, did we crash?”
“Not technically. It’s not crashing if it’s on purpose.”
Kyril had begun moving again and closed in on her location. Alex peered up as he passed overhead, but the paltry light didn’t allow her to make out his ship. Keep going. Keep going.
He kept going, following Bob’s blip into the darkness.
Bob did a surprisingly decent job of picking up where she left off. She was moderately impressed, not as if she’d tell him so.
But if she reengaged the engine too soon, Kyril’s scanner might pick up the energy flare.
She breathed in. Out. Waited.
Slowly, cautiously, she lifted off the surface, spun and climbed through the atmosphere in the opposite direction from where Bob had flown.
They exited on the opposite side of the satellite from the gas giant, at which point she had no choice but to run the impulse engine for a minute or so.
“You can unstrap now.”
Kennedy stumbled into the cockpit. “Okay, that sucked. What’s next?”
Alex didn’t answer. Better for her friend not to know until it was already done.
No time to reconsider. She activated the sLume drive and executed a pinpoint superluminal traversal to barely outside the not-a-white-dwarf-not-a-planet’s orbit.
The warp bubble had hardly formed around the Siyane when it evaporated. Only then did the surge of adrenaline hit her.
A 2.7 AU superluminal trip was not a maneuver one did every day, mostly due to the fact it was dangerous as all hell. If she’d delayed another second—three-quarters of a second—before disengaging the sLume drive, they would’ve found themselves inside the pulsar. And dead.
“Did you… oh my God, you did. I think I’m… yeah, I’m going to go back to the couch and faint.”
Alex grinned a bit wildly. “What? It worked, didn’t it?”
“And if it hadn’t?”
“We’d never be the wiser.”
“Because we’d be vaporized.”
“Yes. Now I don’t have a lot of time, so hush.”
Kennedy nodded weakly and wandered off. “Couch. Fainting. This is the worst vacation ever.”
Alex blinked and worked to focus the adrenaline rush on productive endeavors such as catching up to the object, whatever it was, and matching its orbit. Something else guaranteed to be fun, since it was moving fast.
At such close proximity the pulsar taxed the radiation shield, but it would hold. She hoped. If this panned out, Astral-owned industrial vessels equipped with far stronger shielding would be able to hang out here for weeks at a stretch, but she couldn’t risk staying more than… she checked the diagnostics… twenty-four minutes.
She had a solid bead on the orbital path of the object now, and she accelerated into a parallel trajectory. It gained on her from behind; she continued increasing her speed until she’d matched its velocity and it whisked along a sliver under four megameters off her port.
Trajectory stabilized, she blocked the massive X-ray radiation of the pulsar from the viewport and looked over.
She’d seen many interesting things in her three years of freelance scouting. Beautiful things, terrifying things. She needed a little sleep and a lot of drinks to process what she saw now, but she suspected this topped them all.
“Ken, get up here.”
“But I’m still fainting.”
“Whatever. Get your ass up here.”
The planet-sized body—a quick measurement suggested a 40-50K kilometer diameter—appeared to be composed of a crystalline mineral so clear it was nearly transparent. The sole reason she was unable to see all the way through to the other side was that eventually, thousands of meters below the surface, the inner core darkened into an extremely dense form of carbon. Beyond the brilliance of the outer material, the body retained no more than a trace of natural luminosity. Plainly no longer a white dwarf; not for millennia.
The result of it being stripped of its outer layers then its stellar nature was a surface and outer core which looked a great deal like diamond but was likely something far more precious.
“What… ohhhh.” Kennedy brought a hand to her mouth. “T
his is the most exquisite thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Pretty much.”
“You upgraded your radiation shield, right? Because I can get you a next-gen kit for cost.”
“Let’s do that. Soon as we get back.”
Many white dwarfs had carbon-oxygen cores, but humanity thus far lacked the technology to harvest stars. Cold planetoids, on the other hand?
A dozen so-called carbon planets had been stripped bare to minimal riches for companies long forgotten, but only one other true ‘diamond planet’ had ever been discovered, orbiting the Fyren pulsar. A hundred twenty years ago the Magellan Aeronautics founder had made a fortune and funded an entire generation of interstellar private spacecraft by being the first to reach it and mine it.
Alex jerked out of the reverie. “Crap, the beacon!”
She’d been mooning over the splendor of the singular object speeding alongside them to the point of forgetting her mission. She hurriedly programmed in the details she hadn’t known until now and launched it directly at the body.
The beacon plummeted to six kilometers above the ground, then decelerated and adopted a low-altitude orbit and began transmitting to everyone in the galaxy who mattered. Alex sank in her chair with an exuberant cackle.
“Bob, you and I are going to be rich—well, I’m going to be rich. You’re going to be slightly more affluent.”
Kennedy’s face lit up in excitement. “If you’re truly earning that much money from this find, I have got so many ideas—”
“Assuming you survive the next few minutes. Kyril just turned tail and made a beeline for the pulsar. Or for you. I’m guessing for you.”
Couldn’t she spend five seconds enjoying her success in peace? Apparently not.
She straightened up in the chair and began to retreat from the planet. Her shield only had eight minutes worth of full functionality remaining before it started failing. She needed to move to a safe distance, and soon.
“Solovy, you bitch! You think you can get away with such a bullshit scam right in front of me?”
“Nice to talk to you, too, Kyril. Oh, wait. No, it’s not. So sorry your plan to ghost then leapfrog me didn’t pan out. Better luck next time. Or preferably, worse luck.”
“Is that a bloody diamond planet? No. No way are you stealing millions from me. Not this time.”
“He wouldn’t dare try to shoot you down, would he?”
“Strap back in.” She killed the heat and lights in the cabin and diverted the extra power to the defensive shield and increased the distance between her and the pulsar. Another couple of megameters and she’d be distant enough to engage the sLume drive and disappear—
—the Siyane shuddered as the laser hit it full-on broadside.
Kennedy’s shocked gasp echoed behind her. “That bastard shot at you!”
“Not so cute now, is he?”
The shield held, but it had depleted to thirty-eight percent from the single hit. Kyril had top of the line everything it seemed, including weaponry.
Alex hit the comm. “Goddammit, Kyril, if you shoot at me again you will regret it.”
“It would be such a shame if you accidentally got too close to the pulsar and met an unfortunate demise. Astral Materials will mourn your death while they pay me for the contract.”
Fuck, no. Not going to happen.
She frantically pulled power from everywhere she could find it to recharge the defensive shield faster, located Kyril on the scanner and locked on.
She returned fire. The laser skimmed off his hull.
Nose down. Fired.
Hard port. Fired again.
She arced above him in a high-g maneuver, firing the whole way.
His shield had to be getting low. Hers had climbed to seventy percent, which was a good thing as he finally managed to track her and return fire. In a flash she was down to nine percent shields… .
“Hit him again. I got your back.”
Bob arrived out of nowhere above Kyril’s ship, bless his drunken soul. She fired once more.
So did Bob.
Hers hit first, but it was Bob’s shot that broke through the shield and caught the port rear of the ship. Hard.
The force of the strike sent Kyril’s ship hurtling toward Shanshuo in an uncontrolled spin.
No blip on the scanner appeared to indicate the launch of an escape pod or chute as the ship was swallowed up by the pulsar.
Alex threw her arms on the dash and dropped her head onto them.
“Okay, Bob, twenty percent… and two drinks. You earned it.”
“I didn’t actually mean to kill him.”
He sounded almost remorseful; she got that. “He intended to kill us. If you try to show mercy to someone like him, they will twist it back on you and use it to destroy you.”
“When you put it that way… frankly, in your sultry voice it’s kind of hot. Drinks—when and where?”
She sighed in weary amusement. “I’ll be in touch. Promise.”
When she lifted her head from the dash, Kennedy was standing beside her staring out the viewport. Her hands trembled at her sides. “Is it always like this?”
“Scouting? Nah. Sometimes it’s dangerous.”
Q&A with G. S. Jennsen
I loved the atmosphere you created in Venatoris. We got the “feel” of it right away... the frontier vibe and the scent of unbridled competition. How do you go about envisioning an unknown world in an imaginary galaxy?
All my writing is grounded in the core concept that no matter how much our technology advances, so long as keep these bodies of ours (however heavily augmented) we’ll remain fundamentally human. This means whatever we find out there in the stars, we’ll see it and experience it through the same human perspective we have now. This allows me to present what are often mind-blowing, nearly incomprehensible sights and experiences in a familiar, relatable way. The reader can put themselves in the world and imagine being there, because their perspective isn’t so different from that of the character.
As for coming up with those sights and experiences, I’ve loved astronomy and space my entire life. I’m always researching, looking for wilder, more amazing creations I can bring to life, then throw characters into the middle of them.
What authors, past or present, got you jazzed about writing SF?
Goodness, I’ve been reading science fiction since I was a kid. In the old days, Isaac Asimov for the sweeping space exploration and fantastical future, Frank Herbert for the deep world- and culture-building. Later, Catherine Asaro for daring to mix serious, hard science fiction with romance and Lois McMaster Bujold for daring to have fun with science fiction. William Gibson for painting masterful imagery with mere words and Peter F. Hamilton for telling vast, grand stories.
Any Works in Progress?
Absolutely. Dissonance: Aurora Renegades Book Two (Aurora Rhapsody #5), will be released April 2, 2016—so pretty much now. By the time it comes out, I’ll already be working on the next book in the series, Abysm. If anyone wants to know more about Aurora Rhapsody, they can visit gsjennsen.com, or go directly to gsjennsen.com/aurora-rhapsody.
How can fans find you or follow you?
I love hearing from my readers. Seriously. They can email me at [email protected]; I’m active on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, but I’m also on all the other social media networks (I’m easy to find—just try “GS Jennsen”). If someone wants to guarantee they’ll find out about new releases, though, the best way is to subscribe to my mailing list..
Hope 91
by Nick Webb
Day 715
MY NAME IS Alex White. I am nine years old, and I live on a spaceship called Hope 91.
Gertie told me I have to start keeping a journal, so here goes, I guess. She’s mostly ok, but sometimes annoying. I told her she can’t tell me what to do because she’s a droid. But she tuts and laughs and makes me do the chores anyway. I hate it. But she’s all right.
Let’s
see. I have to fill three whole pages, so I guess I should start typing. I’ve been on Hope 91 for almost two whole years now. But I just woke up a month ago. It’s very small. There’s just room enough for me, Gertie, Max, Philae, and the other droids but they don’t count because the rest of them only have one job, like the autopilot. I didn’t name him, because he doesn’t even talk. And Sally the chef. All she does is cook. But she doesn’t even have a head. Just a bunch of robot arms in the galley.
Gertie’s the nicest. Max is the funnest. And Philae is the weirdest. That’s good because otherwise I’d be REALLY bored.
You see, I used to live in Baltimore, but, well, mom died. I still miss her a lot, but Gertie’s been so nice to me. For a robot. Anyway, it’s good that I’m up here. They say that I’ll be one of the first people to live on Sephardia.
Who are they, you ask? They are everyone back on Earth. They are the ones who don’t get to live on Sephardia. And the funniest thing of all is, they are all DEAD. Ha ha, I know, that’s not funny. It’s not like they all died in a big volcano or something. They all died two hundred years ago. There’s new people living there now. People I’ll never know.
They explained it to me once. You see, I was asleep for two years. And while I was asleep they fired the engines so the ship could speed up REALLY fast. I had to be asleep or else it would hurt me, or something. And now I’m going so fast that I’m TIME TRAVELING!!!! THAT IS SO COOL!
Anyway, I should get to Sephardia in about sixteen more years. But I’ll have to sleep for two more whole years while we slow down. Eighteen years on a tiny spaceship. Yay. I can’t wait. Gertie also says that I’m too sarcastic.
Anyway, Gertie’s saying it’s time for cleanup, then dinner, then more lessons with Philae, then a game with Max, then bed. I guess brave space explorers still have to do their chores.
Until next time!
Day 730
Gertie kept telling me to write in this thing, but I kept putting it off. Now I don’t even know what to write about. I guess I’ll describe the ship. It’s called Hope 91. It’s not big. I remember living in Baltimore. We had this house that was so big, I had my own bathroom, and the kitchen was big enough for mom and me to both sit down in, and there was a living room, and room to walk around. And a yard I could play in.