The room stretched to the exterior of the hull on all sides, and on the far edges of the room Damien saw the graceful looping patterns of the runes of the Jump Matrix.
“What brings you to engineering Mr. Montgomery?” Kellers asked.
“Looking in awe, right now,” Damien admitted. “I did my jump tests on a much smaller ship, and they had the life support and other equipment separate from the engines.”
Kellers nodded. “Probably ex-military,” he admitted. “The Navy likes to space important bits out through the keel, minimizes the point failure sources. Concentrating all of the important gear in one place allows three of us keep everything functioning, though.”
Damien took a deep breath, inhaling the faint scent of burnt plastic and fused hydrogen. “Is it safe for me to move around in here?” he asked. “I need to review the runes and make sure nothing was damaged when we got banged up.”
“The Ship-Wrights had a pair of Mages in here day before yesterday checking all of the runes,” Kellers told him, scratching the stubble on his chin. “But if you’re careful, you should be fine. My boys are not normally quite that dumb,” he finished loudly, glaring at the assistant who’d nearly flattened Damien.
With a nod to Damien, the Engineer kicked off towards one of the many strange machines in the cavernous space. Damien took a moment to orient himself against the map he’d put together on his PC, and then kicked off himself.
The runes he was looking for weren’t on the exterior hull, but as he approached the strange device they were carved on, he saw that they were close. A massive block extended in from the ‘bottom’ of engineering, with grills and strange conduits all over it. The runes ran in from the sub-matrices that connected the matrix to the rear of the ship, and Damien looked at them, tracking their energy.
The links that flowed out to the matrix on the massive metal block were barely even connected to the main spell, tying directly back to the other strange matrices throughout the ship. Whatever the other runes were doing, it focused here.
The runes on the center of the block were different from the other six weird matrices. Those had all been roughly the same, criteria triggered redirects. This just took all of the energy that flowed into it and cast a simple… fire spell?
“Kellers?” Damien called. After a moment, the engineer rejoined him, a worried look on his dark face.
“Something broken in the runes?” he asked quickly.
“I don’t think so…” Damien said quietly, eyeing the matrix. “What’s this block?”
“Block…?” the engineer said slowly, blinking at the massive piece of technology in front of him before smiling brightly. “Oh, that – sorry, I’ve never heard anyone not know what it is. That’s our primary heat exchanger – takes the excess heat from the reactor and life support and dumps it into space. Without it, we’d eventually cook ourselves just with our body heat, let alone the engines!”
The Mage eyed the runes. A spell to create heat in something that had the purpose of getting rid of heat still made no sense.
“How much extra capacity does it have?” he wondered aloud. If this was something wrong, at least it probably wouldn’t cause too much damage.
“A lot,” the engineer told him. “The only thing on the ship more over-engineered than the heat exchanger is the main reactor core. You could fire one of the main engines at this baby and it would dump the heat to space. Whatever you’re thinking, this gear can take it.”
Damien nodded, eyeing the runes again. Whatever they did, it clearly wasn’t new – the runes had the permanently rubbed-in layer of dirt over them that came from being as old as the ship itself. The jump matrix was a standard set of runes, no one ever changed it. Whatever these runes were, they made sense to experts with a lot more experience than Damien.
But the pattern of energy to them… didn’t fit.
#
The strange matrices didn’t quite leave Damien’s mind over the next few days, but they weren’t the focus of his attention as the Blue Jay loaded its cargo for its journey to the Corinthian System. He’d helped arrange the loading of supplies onto the freighter for the crew, while keeping one eye on the overall loading process, and spending his spare time checking the rune matrix for any damage.
The last day before they left the station, he and Captain Rice spent three hours going over the calculations for the fifteen jumps it would take them to travel to the other system. They’d worked out a relatively sedate three jumps a day path that would deliver their massive cargo in just less than five days without straining Damien much on his first ever voyage. Including the two and a half days of maneuvering clear of the gravity wells at the beginning and end of the trip, it would be a ten day voyage to cross fifteen light years.
Finally, after three days of chaos, he waited in the simulacrum chamber as the Blue Jay began to slowly accelerate out of Sherwood Prime. The chamber had a small platform just ‘beneath’ the simulacrum in the acceleration-driven gravity, allowing him to keep a hand on the magical token, sensing the gentle rush of power as the freighter accelerated at one-twentieth of a gravity.
Around him, he watched the station rotate around the ship as they spun to face open space. On a part of the bubble of screens that surrounded him he had a video link open to the bridge. Jenna sat at the navigation console, her face composed as she fed the computer the series of maneuvers that would get them clear of the station.
On the screen of the PC strapped to his wrist, Damien reviewed the calculations for the jump. He kept one eye on the world around the ship though, and saw when they were finally clear, the last gantries falling behind them.
A few more minutes passed in silence, and then Rice spoke on the bridge link.
“Link to Sherwood Prime,” he ordered. A moment later, a triple click announced an open channel.
“Sherwood Prime to Blue Jay, our screens show you clear of the station safety zone,” a space controller’s voice informed them. “Please confirm.”
“Sherwood Prime, this is Blue Jay Actual,” Rice replied. “We show five kilometer separation, requesting permission to fire main engines at seven hundred thirty eight Olympus Mons time.”
“We confirm five kilometer separation and authorize main engine firing,” the controller informed him. “Cair vie, Blue Jay.”
“Na h-uile la gu math duit, Sherwood Prime,” Rice replied, the old Gaelic flowing smoothly off his tongue. The channel shut down and his next words were for the crew.
“All hands, hear this, all hands, hear this,” he said into the PA. “All ribs are secured, all cargo is secured, prepare for one gravity burn in two minutes.”
At seven thirty eight A.M. on the far-away clock of the mountain the Protectorate was ruled from, the Blue Jay’s main engines burned to life, the tiny stars sending a surge of entirely non-magical power through the simulacrum under Damien’s hands.
Standing on the acceleration platform, Damien breathed deeply, standing against the firm acceleration and reviewing the calculations on the datapad again. There was no computer assistance for the final jump – he had to know the vectors and energy levels in his mind, and move the ship entirely with his magic.
#
The Blue Jay accelerated for twenty-four hours, building velocity, and then coasted for another day, drawing clear of the gravity well of the planet behind them. Damien calculated and re-calculated his first jump. Rice reviewed it once more, the morning of the third day.
It finally came down to it late that afternoon. Damien checked the sensor readouts, and they were clear enough of gravity wells for the spell to function.
“Captain, we’re ready to jump,” he said quietly into the bridge link, and Rice nodded.
“Note for the log,” Rice ordered. “It is seventeen forty Olympus Mons Time, and I am authorizing the jump.”
“Noted for the log,” Jenna replied, though Damien knew the computer would be recording after the phrase ‘note for the log.’
Rice looked throug
h the link directly at Damien, holding his gaze. “You may jump when ready, Ship’s Mage,” he said firmly.
Damien nodded, and turned his attention from the link screen to the simulacrum floating at the heart of the Blue Jay. The tiniest of kicks launched him away from the acceleration platform, leaving him floating in zero-gravity, held in place only by his hands on the silver icon of the Blue Jay’s essence.
With a deep breath, he slipped the runes on his bare palms into the exact places carved for them on the simulacrum, and let his power become part of the rune matrix of the ship. The screens around him allowed him to see as the ship saw, and now he felt the ship.
He reached out with his mind, confirming through the simulacrum what the sensors had already told him – that the space-time here was sufficiently unbent by gravity to allow for a jump.
He touched the reservoir of power in his core, mustering energy up into his hands and through the connection into the ship. The rune matrix greedily sucked up his power, reflecting it around the ship in an ever-building net that was almost blinding to someone who saw the magic in the rune matrix.
Without conscious thought, Damien knew the calculations were perfect, and he held them in the center of his mind.
Then, he released his breath and his power and moved. He touched a blip in the probability of reality, and all of his energy fled his body in a single exhalation.
The Blue Jay jumped.
#
“How are we looking?” Rice asked Jenna as soon as the indescribable sensation of being transported trillions of kilometers through space in an instant faded.
“Checking position now,” she replied, running a series of programs on her console before looking back up at him. “We are bang on target, dead center in jump zone one of the Sherwood-Corinthian sequence.”
Rice turned to the monitor showing him the simulacrum chamber, taking in the utterly drained expression on his new Ship’s Mage.
“Well done Mr. Montgomery,” he told the youth. “Shall we schedule the next jump for oh-three hundred Olympus Mons time?”
That would give the young man over nine hours to rest – nine hours it looked like the Mage desperately needed. He and Damien had scheduled to jump every eight hours, but after the new Ship’s Mage’s first jump, he figured they could spare the time.
“I’ll be ready,” Damien promised; his voice soft with fatigue.
“Get some sleep, Damien,” Rice ordered. “We’ll talk before the next jump.”
With a nod, the young Mage turned off the video link, and Rice turned to Jenna.
“Scopes clear?” he asked quietly.
“All clear so far as our sensors can read,” she replied, equally quiet. “No one has come through here in a week at least.”
Rice considered the screen showing the thermal signatures around them. The thermal scope was the most reliable method of detecting ships, seeing as how any vessel under power blazed like a tiny sun against the backdrop of empty space.
“Three degrees Kelvin as far as our eyes can see,” he muttered to himself. “Why does that not make me feel better?”
“Because you’re rightfully paranoid, sir,” Jenna replied.
“Which is why I want you to send the maintenance ‘bots out to check over both of our new turrets,” Rice told her.
#
For ninety quiet minutes, Rice slowly relaxed as no sign of pirates or technical difficulties materialized. Both of the new Rapid Fire Laser Anti-Missile turrets checked out as fully functional, and he took some comfort in the fact that he’d paid to upgrade them heavily from the previous weapons. Each of these turrets was rated to take down a four missile salvo like the last one they’d faced on its own.
Ninety-one minutes after arrived at the jump zone, all of his quiet hopes for a peaceful trip shattered as the distinctive heat and radiation flare of an incoming jump appeared on their screens.
“Jump flare!” he barked, grabbing Jenna’s attention from her focus on the maintenance ‘bots. “Get me something Jenna,” he ordered as she pulled up the rest of the sensor suite. Heat would only tell them so much.
“Single ship, three million kilometers,” she reported, then double checked her figures. “Damn, their Mage must have blown his numbers – I bet they were planning on coming out right on top of us.”
As if to prove her comment, the heat signature on the new contact flared with a sudden, massive, brightness.
“Boss, if I’m reading this right, she just lit off a fusion rocket at six gees,” Jenna said quietly, and David winced.
“Time to missile range?” he asked steadily.
“If they’re using the same birds as last time, about an hour,” she admitted. “If the turrets hold up, it’ll take them just over five hours to match speeds and rendezvous with us to board – that’s if we start burning now.”
Five hours. That would make it over six hours since Damien had jumped, which meant that, if they could make it, the young Mage would be able to jump them before the pirate ship boarded them.
“Sound the emergency acceleration alert,” Rice ordered, “and lets burn directly away from them. Let’s buy as much time as we can.”
A klaxon began ringing through the ship and the bars on his screen showing the rotational speeds of the ribs rapidly shrank.
“All ribs at full stop,” Jenna reported. “Initiating emergency burn… now.”
The four massive fusion torches at the rear of the ship lit up, and a large man sat down on Rice’s chest as his ship began to accelerate at two full gravities.
#
It seemed like Damien had barely closed his eyes when the klaxon woke him up. He certainly didn’t have time to wake up or prepare at all before the rib stopped rotating and the motion of his waking up sent him drifting away from the bed beneath him.
Then the engines engaged, and two gravities of force slammed him into the back wall of his cabin, crushing the breath from his body. He struggled against the gravity to regain some measure of breath, and then wove magic around his body to reduce the force to something he could move in.
“Captain, this is Damien,” he said as he opened a link to the bridge. “What’s happening?”
“We’ve been ambushed,” Rice said shortly, his breath strained. “They missed their jump, though, and we should be able to stand off the missiles until you can jump us again. How long?”
Damien focused for a moment, testing the reserve of energy buried deep inside of him. It had recovered somewhat during his hour-long nap. The gravity spell wasn’t a major strain, and from the feel, he could handle anything that wasn’t major.
Of course, a teleport spell was the definition of major.
“At least a few more hours,” he admitted. “I’m still shot to hell.”
There was a long pause, during which Damien pulled on a shirt and grabbed a folded up emergency pressure helmet.
“We’re running,” Rice said finally. “But he’s got four gravities on us, and he’ll be in missile range in under an hour. Anything you can do?”
“I can knock down some missiles from the simulacrum chamber,” the Mage told him. “Not sure what else…”
“Any little bit helps,” the Captain told him.
“Then I’ll be in the simulacrum chamber,” Damien promised.
#
Blue Jay was not a small ship, and there was no direct route from Damien’s quarters in the middle of Rib Four to the simulacrum chamber at the center of the vessel. The two gravity acceleration didn’t help, though at least the ship had fold-out stairs and other tools to function with acceleration-driven gravity.
By the time Damien made it to the chamber, struggling up a ladder to the small platform beneath the simulacrum, the pirate ship was just drawing into missile range. He opened a video link to the bridge, as well as several windows that showed him sensor data on the area and the ship.
“There he was,” Jenna said suddenly, as a spike showed up in the sensors. “Bastard was sitting a full light-h
our out of the jump zone with his drives dead – not even the Martian boys would have picked him up at that distance – but he’d have seen everyone jump in. He IDed our signature as soon as it reached him, took half an hour to be ready, and then jumped us. If their Mage hadn’t overshot, we’d have been dead or boarded before we even knew they were there.”
Damien replayed the sudden burst of energy and saw her point. Up to that moment, now a full hour ago, there had been no sign of a ship in that bit of space. Then the jump flare appeared, marking the pirate’s disappearance.
“Missiles,” Jenna reported calmly as four more signatures lit up on the thermal scope. “They look the same as last time – two thousand gravities acceleration, seven and a half minute flight time. I’m taking evasive maneuvers – hold on!”
The missiles were anemic compared to the antimatter driven weapons the Protectorate Navy would use, but they were still a thousand times faster than the Blue Jay. Damien focused the sensor screen on them, using it to focus in and zoom on the missiles.
Through the simulacrum, Damien could affect the space around them with his magic, but all it did was let him see as the ship saw. His power and range for his normal spells was almost the same, unlike using the jump spell.
One of the spells he knew, however, was explicitly intended for just this situation. It was draining, but it had a range of forty or so thousand kilometers. Normally, that was utterly useless, but here and now, he could take down a missile in its last six seconds or so of flight.
“Sixty seconds to impact,” Jenna announced. “RFLAMs engaging.”
Starship's Mage: Episode 1 Page 6