by M. D. Cooper
“Is it something I’m wearing?” Sera called after him, laughing.
Sera ran a hand down the tight leather skin-suit covering her body. She spent a moment enjoying the tactile sensation before beginning her routine. The first order of business was finalizing the freight manifests and trade route they would take after the drop-off for Kade.
When Cheeky came on duty at 0700, she took in her captain with a long hungry look, unable to keep a hand from straying toward her captain’s well-defined chest. Sera slapped it away.
“There’ll be none of that.”
“You are such a tease, Captain.” Cheeky grinned as she sat at the pilot’s console.
Sera laughed. Cheeky was one to talk; she was wearing her customary departure uniform, little more than the day before and a pair of ‘sensible’ heels. Sera used Cheeky’s arrival and coverage of the bridge to make a quick visit to the galley, followed by a final visual inspection of the ship. She returned an hour later to go through final checklists with the station.
Departure tug charges were billed and their accounts were closed. Station umbilicus retracted and station personnel confirmed inner seal on the dockside airlocks. At 0830, Sabrina broke hard connection with the station and floated in her berth, with only the station’s security tethers still in place.
The tug showed up on time and made a solid grapple to their bow anchors, pulling them gently away from Coburn Station. Sera felt a mild flutter in her stomach as they left station gravity and their internal systems took over.
“Coburn Tug 19 confirming successful undock,” the tug pilot’s voice announced over the comm.
“Free and clear Tug 19,” Cheeky confirmed as the ship drifted away from the station.
The tug maneuvered Sabrina out into their designated departure lane. For a relative backwater, Trio was a busy system. They took plotted courses and space traffic lanes very seriously.
“Oh, sweet mother!” Cheeky exclaimed. “Is he ever going to turn on his grav drive? If he uses thrusters to pull us all the way out, you should register a complaint.”
Sera had dozed off. She stretched and checked the holo on her console. “He’s still on thrusters? We’re a thousand klicks from the station; he could have turned on his grav drive at the five hundred mark.”
“Trio System law states that all outbound ships must use thrusters only until fifteen hundred kilometers from stations,” Sabrina provided via the bridge’s audible systems. “It’s a recent change they made after some accidents.”
“I guess that explains the size of that tug bill; must take a pile of fuel to pull a ship that far on thrusters only.”
At the proscribed distance, the tug’s gravity engines unfolded from its main body and activated. Because the graviton waves would disrupt the ship behind it, the engines extended far to either side of Sabrina before activating.
“We could have been on a fusion burn by now.” Cheeky complained, yawning with boredom over the long departure.
“You may be a good pilot, Cheeks, but I don’t relish the thought of being on a station where half those moron captains can turn on their fusion engines near me. I like my skin actually attached to my body.”
Cheeky made a dismissive sniff. “You can always get new skin, but lost time is gone forever.”
Sera laughed. “I’m still wearing my original birthday suit, thank you very much.”
“Like I’d know, you never let anyone see it. Always with the leather.”
“I could say you have the opposite problem.”
“You could, but would I care?” Cheeky sat up and looked at her console intently. “Damn tug’s got the vector wrong. We want a parabolic around that inner planet, not a collision.”
That was what Sera liked about Cheeky; fun to chat with, but able to switch to business in an instant, when it was called for.
“Tug 19, this is Sabrina. Come in,” Cheeky called over the comm.
“Tug 19 here.”
“Check your vector 19, you’re moving off course.”
There was a moment of silence and then the tug pilot’s response came over the comm. “Sorry about that, my primary nav was reading sensors wrong. I’m on backup now and correcting. Tug 19 out.”
“Roger, Sabrina out,” Cheeky said, switching off the open comm.
“I think that Tug’s AI is senile,” Sabrina said over the ship’s speakers. “It told me that my humans and their advice are not welcome.”
“Yay for tugs,” Cheeky’s voice dripped with sarcasm.
“I suddenly feel somewhat less than safe.” Sera finished her cup of coffee and double-checked scan. “At least he corrected properly. How long till we can ditch this dude?”
“Seventeen minutes,” Sabrina replied. “And it won’t be a moment too soon.”
Sera chuckled in response.
Sabrina was an unusual AI. Usually ship’s AI were officious and only spoke when directly addressed—and then only over the Link. However, Sabrina had a habit of simply speaking her mind whenever she chose. On their first voyage, when it was just Sera and Flaherty, having Helen and the garrulous Sabrina was comforting—especially since the AI were much better at casual banter than Flaherty.
Finally, the tug reached its departure point and released its grapple.
“Tug 19 signing off. Have a good trip.”
“You too,” Cheeky said and closed the channel. “Dork.”
“We’re not on our proper course,” Sabrina observed.
“I know,” Cheeky sighed. “I just didn’t feel like mentioning it again. I can fix us up in a minute.”
Cheeky laid in her course corrections and activated Sabrina’s gravity drive. They were accelerating toward the center of the system, the drive throwing negative gravitons in front of the ship, essentially sucking them forward.
Their flight path took them past the innermost planet, a rocky world spinning below them at over sixteen thousand kilometers per hour. Sera watched the world’s surface as the daylight termination line race across the craggy landscape, casting long, dancing shadows over the world.
“Hate to be working a mining rig on that thing,” she said with a shake of her head.
“Can you say ‘hourly earthquakes’?” Cheeky asked.
Sabrina skimmed close to the surface of the world in a parabolic arc, Cheeky applying a hard burn of the fusion engines at the periapsis of their passage. The ship’s velocity picked up considerably during the maneuver, lining them up for a close pass-by of the local star.
“Gravity assist one completed at one-hundred percent efficiency,” Cheeky said with a grin. “Now to beard the star.”
Gravity assists were one of the wonders of physics. The faster you flew, the more kinetic energy a burn gave. When a burn was made at the closest point of an arch around a heavenly body, the more relative velocity was imparted.
Cheeky referred to it as planet slalom.
“We at the scoop deployment point yet, Cheeks?” Sera asked, feeling too lethargic to use her Link. Maybe she was still feeling the after effects of yesterday’s binge.
“Just about. When we hit 0.113c we’ll have the right v to do it smoothly.”
“You on it with Sabrina?”
Cheeky turned and looked at her captain. “I have done this before.”
Sera laughed and raised her hands. “Sorry, I apologize for my backseat piloting.”
Several minutes later, a slight vibration ran through the hull as the scoop deployed. It wasn’t large, only a kilometer wide, but its electro-static field funneled the stellar wind through a system that stripped out the heavy hydrogen and helium, storing the gasses in the fuel tanks for later consumption.
Sabrina acknowledged.
Despite the terms used, Cheeky w
asn’t sitting at a board with green lights, and Sabrina most certainly was not. Piloting a ship like Sabrina involved manipulating controls in a three dimensional holo projection. At any time, the pilot had to monitor dozens of visual indicators, as well as the data feed her Link to the nav computer provided.
“Initiating fusion burn,” Cheeky said as she activated the fusion engine’s super-lasers and started the flow of helium and heavy hydrogen into the engine.
Although she had just initiated an atomic fusion reaction only one-hundred meters aft, there was no noticeable change on the ship. Powerful inertial dampeners in the form of gravity fields protected the rest of the vessel from the engines. Without them, the thrust from the fusion burners would cause Sabrina to do a large-scale impression of a crushed can.
“All dampeners and stabilizers read normal, radiation shielding is showing green, as well.”
“You know, Cheeks,” Sera said. “It’s just me up here; you don’t really need to do the whole status announcing thing.”
Cheeky cast her captain a sour look. “I don’t do it for you; I assume you’re checking everything on the Link. You know I’ve always dreamed of being a military pilot, you know, flying one of those big cruisers. Well, I saw some Silstrand military holos recently where they announce everything. I’m trying it on for size.”
“Don’t let me stop you, then,” Sera smiled.
“I wasn’t going to. You may dress like a dominatrix, but you don’t frighten me.”
Sera sighed and sat back in her chair.
The course Cheeky followed took them over the star’s north pole. Sabrina was on a course to pass within a hundred thousand kilometers of the star, putting them on the right outsystem vector while picking up at least thirty percent of the total velocity they would need before hitting their jump point.
Sera carefully examined the ship’s scan readout to make sure there was no potential flare activity. System scan said the star’s northern hemisphere was quiet, but she liked to check for herself.
She was comparing the two scans when she noticed several ships enter the system through a seldom-used jump point stellar south of Trio and Coburn Station. Scan showed them traveling at over seventy percent the speed of light; far too fast for a busy system like Trio. Sera imagined they could expect a hefty fine when they docked.
Sabrina lost its Link to the system’s dataflow as the ship approached the star; radiation played havoc with any signal. The ship’s shields showed nominal fluctuations—they were rated to hold against far worse, including having a fusion warhead detonate against them.
As the ship passed over the star, Cheeky applied full burn to the fusion engines, the effect multiplying their acceleration by a factor of five. At that rate, it took less than a minute to complete their arc around the star and they exited the gravity assist maneuver at just over a quarter the speed of light.
Sera examined the data from the passage over Trio Prime, impressed to see the precision with which Cheeky performed the maneuver. Even the switching of the grav drive from negative to positive was done at the optimal time—the gravitons it threw now pushing them off the star’s mass.
Ship’s Link reconnected to a nearby beacon and Sera turned her attention back to the ships she had spotted earlier. System scan showed the vessels remained on a direct course for the world of Trio, though they weren’t slowing down much, if at all.
At Sabrina’s current distance from Trio, scan lag was an issue. The beacon they were stripping data from was ten light minutes away from their current position; Trio was another seven light minutes past that. Considering the speed those ships were traveling, they could already be at the station, or past it.
As Sera was pondering what those ships could be up to, Sabrina alerted them to a call on the local emergency band.
“This is a system-wide alert. Three ships of unknown origin have attacked a Trio defense emplacement and are on a vector for Coburn Station. Their intentions are unknown. All ships are advised to stay within the protective range of a system station or fleet patrol until further notice.” The alert paused and then restarted the same message.
Sabrina muted the alert.
“Thanks, that’s not terribly auspicious—Silstrand really needs to deal with these pirates, it’s getting worse all the time,” Sera said with a shake of her head.
“Uh, you realize that we smuggle for those pirates,” Cheeky said with a smirk.
“Well,” Sera smiled back, “I said they should; I didn’t say I thought they actually would.”
Cheeky chuckled and Sera reviewed their current vector. There were no planets or stations anywhere near their outsystem route. They would just have to keep pushing forward. Chances were slim those ships would even come within fifteen million kilometers of Sabrina, though Sera wasn’t about to bet her ship on it.
“Crank our burners up all the way, Cheeky. I want to put more distance between us and that mess,” Sera said, before calling the crew to their stations, updating them on what was happening on the other side of the star.
Cargo stepped onto the bridge a few minutes later with coffee for himself and the two women. He made a show of only looking them in their eyes as he passed out the brew, then sat at his console, looking over the scan and their course.
“That’s a lot of velocity those buggers have on them,” he commented
“They’re going to get a speeding ticket,” Sera agreed.
“What about a blowing-up-a-defensive-emplacement ticket?” Cheeky asked. “I hear systems are sticklers about that sort of thing.”
“Alert said three ships, right?” Cargo asked.
“Yeah.”
“Scan just updated from a relay south of the star. It shows five jumped in. Where are the other two?”
“That’s disconcerting,” Sera said. “I don’t see them anywhere on system scan.”
“Why does that statement insert small circus animals into my stomach?” Cheeky asked.
Cargo leaned forward and looked at Cheeky’s flat stomach. “I don’t see how even a couple of dancing mice would fit in there.”
“Maybe it’s a flea circus,” Sera commented.
“Ewwww!” Cheeky shivered convulsively. “There’s a mental image I just didn’t need.”
Another relay a few million kilometers south of the star updated scan data and they got their answer on the missing ships.
The feed showed the two vessels veering off from the other three and plotting a course around the star’s south pole. They were running fast, thrusting on antimatter pion engines, from the look of the gamma rays trailing behind their ships.
“Does Trio allow AP engines in their inner system?” Cheeky asked.
“They blew up an emplacement. I don’ think they care about AP regulations.” Cargo said.
Sera sent her AI a mental shrug, but didn’t comment further.
“Cheeky, what’s the chance those two bogies will get within a million klicks of us?” she asked, though it looked like Cheeky was already on it.
“Based on their current course, they’re going to get closer than your tight leather outfit, Captain. I’m guessing they plan to pay us a visit.”
As though on cue, a signal came in from one of the ships and Sabrina patched it through the bridge speakers. A harsh voice called for them to cease burn and divert to a position that Sera would bet local stellar scan couldn’t monitor.
“Like hell we will,” Sera muttered. “Sabrina, are we ready to do an AP burn?”
Sera chuckled,
Sera could hear the ship’s secondary reactor spin up and she watched readings show power flowing to the gamma shields. The AP drive smashed Hydrogen and Anti-Hydrogen, annihilating them and producing pions that were focused out the AP engine’s nozzle. The pions quickly broke down into gamma rays and accelerated out the nozzle at just under the speed of light. The longer the nozzle was extruded, the more thrust Sabrina would get from the burn. Sera saw that Cheeky and Sabrina were spinning it out all the way.
“Good thing we declared our antimatter and allowed the containment inspection before we docked,” Cargo said. “Blood suckers at Trio would fine us if they caught us using undeclared antimatter, pirate attack or no.”
“You’re thinking pirate, too, then?” Sera asked.
“It’s way too small a force to actually attack a Silstrand Alliance member. They’re here for something that they think a small, fast force can snag.”
Sera’s thoughts immediately went to the small crate she had taken on the night before. She couldn’t imagine anything in that crate being worth an outright attack on an Alliance member system, but it was the only thing she carried that could possibly have that kind of value.
The AP drive began to add to the ship’s velocity and the holo display showed their kph relative to Trio Prime increasing so quickly that the lower digits were a blur.
“Not concerned who we’re running from?” Cargo asked the ship’s AI.
“What are the chances that these guys are just checking all the outbound ships?” Cheeky asked.
“Then they’d split up. Both of them are on a vector to meet up with us well before we get to our jump point. I’d say we’re the ones they’re looking for.”
Cheeky looked perplexed. “What could we have that pirates would want?”