“Yes, Lieutenant.”
“It’s a hard life out here in the black. Be sure you fly straight. An uprising? That can benefit the casual trader. Turn privateer, maybe pirate, and you can make real coin. But you’ll never win. The Empire didn’t.” And with that, she was gone, the airlock thunking closed behind her.
Nate considered the sealed lock, waiting for the clanks from the hull as the Torrington disengaged. He rubbed his chin, fingers rasping on day-old stubble. Nate thought about being on the losing side. He’d been there once before.
He wouldn’t be again.
• • •
Nate watched the bulk of the Torrington pull away. She was huge, no mistake. Ten decks, 5,000,000 tonnes depending on configuration, almost two klicks long, railguns, lasers, particle cannons, torpedoes, drop ships, oh my. Multiple reactors. PDCs and sensor arrays studding her entire length. The Republic had sent that to talk to the little Tyche. Because they were afraid of an esper on board.
He tugged on the straps holding him into the acceleration couch, a habit he’d picked up about the time he’d been tossed from one and lost an arm and a leg. “You always hear about them being sleek,” he said.
“What?” said El, from the Helm’s chair. Her voice was distracted as she worked her console, getting the computer ready for the Endless jump they were about to make.
The flight deck was cozy, enough room to stand up, move around the holo of the Enia system spinning in the air between them. Enough room to walk to the windows, look out at the Torrington, take in the view of the blue-green paradise of Arlington. He sometimes liked to call it the bridge, because it made him feel like the Tyche was big, important, wonderful. A dream made metal and ceramic, diamond hull to protect the soft souls inside from the harsh reality of space. But she was a heavy lifter, atmosphere-capable. She was also their home.
The holo of the Enia system showed Enia Alpha — Arlington’s world — orbiting a star. Alpha was the first planet from its sun, another three colder worlds stretching out behind it. The holo showed all the usual space junk around a world, satellites and rocks and whatever else hadn’t tumbled back down Enia Alpha’s gravity well. A dot marked out the Tyche, floating above Enia Alpha — he wouldn’t call that an orbit, more like a temporary abeyance of the natural order of things. A dot for the Torrington, markers showing the ship’s class, velocity, direction. Nothing unusual. Except there was an esper too damn close, and that wouldn’t show up on the system view.
He shook his head. All this talk about espers had got him unfocused. “The Torrington. Looks like a barge.”
El laughed. “She does. Gets the job done, though.”
Nate picked up something a little defensive in that. El had flown ships like that, before. Not now. Probably never again. “I didn’t … well. You’ve got to admit. Bit of a sow.”
She looked at him, the glow from the holo tinging her face with orange. “We’re all good, Captain. Navy, they make their ships to get a job done. The Tyche, she’s got a little more class. Like a dancer.”
Maybe when El was Helm that was true. She could fly the Tyche through a storm and come out without a drop on the hull. Real talent, and he was pleased to have her at the controls. Hell, when he was on the stick, the Tyche would move, but she wouldn’t dance. She only danced for one person. “How we doing with those jump calculations?”
“I figure us at seven to be safe,” she said. She tapped on the console, and the holo shifted in the air, cleared, then became a star chart. Six systems lit up between Enia and Absalom, seven jumps to take them there. Strictly speaking, you could jump the whole way in a single shot, but that was risky because you weren’t always operating with the latest data. You didn’t know if a star had shifted, or an asteroid had popped up somewhere. So you jumped a little at a time, scanned the stars, picked up the view from a new point in the sky. And, strictly speaking, you didn’t need to jump to a planet — but that was just good thinking. If something went wrong, it was helpful if it went wrong in common, agreed locations. There was a lot of space to get lost in, and sticking to systems increased — if only marginally — being picked up if you were in distress.
It also increased — more than marginally — your chances of being eaten by pirates. Gobbled up, left as a few trace elements floating next to the burned-out husk of your ship. Those fuckers waited for ships to jump in. Sometimes by a Bridge, if the pirates were well-prepared, sometimes farther out if they were a lone skiff. Preyed on the few smaller ships still using Endless Drives.
Well, that’s a depressing-as-fuck line of thinking. “You happy with that, Helm?”
“I’m happy with that, Captain,” she said. “Clear for jump?”
“Clear for jump,” he said. Nate felt the thrill. He’d jumped a hundred, a thousand times before, but it never got old. He’d been on a rollercoaster on some frontier world, an attraction with mag sleds and high G. It couldn’t touch the feeling of a jump, and he’d once wondered for a hot second whether he should get in the business of taking people on pleasure trips for the rush. Then discarded the idea, because that meant passengers, and passengers meant people, and hell was other people.
El clicked the comm controls on the dash. “Helm to Tyche. Jump in thirty seconds.” She checked the display, then said, “Hope, get your ass in a crash couch.”
The comm clicked back. “They’re gone?” Hope’s voice sounded hollow, because she was hiding under the cowling of one of the fusion drives.
“They’re gone, kid,” said El. “Get out of that damn engine.”
Nate caught her smile, felt it on his own face. He pressed his own comm controls. “You best say a nice thank-you to Grace,” he said. “Also, talk to the Tyche about why the reactor’s warm.”
“Will do, Cap,” said Hope, and then a click as she signed off. No doubt scrambling for her acceleration couch.
“Captain to Tyche. Captain to Tyche. Helm is clear for jump. Confirm readiness.” He drummed his fingers on the console.
Grace’s voice came first. “Ready, Tyche.”
Hope: “Good to go, Cap.”
Kohl’s voice came last. “Fuck’s sake. Fly, already.”
Nate smiled, clicked the comm off. Looked at El. “Helm, you are clear for Jump.”
“Aye, Captain,” said El. Nate watched her hands reach for the sticks, felt the grumble of the Tyche’s engines through his chair. The soft hand of acceleration pressed against his back, became a firm hand as the holo display shifted again, delta-v from Enia Alpha sidling next to absolute velocity. The hand turned into a strong arm, his head pressing against the back of his couch. “Burn is good, 3Gs, locked in.” El’s voice was strained now, because 3Gs wasn’t like a walk in the park. It was a lot more than the flimsy 0.9G of Enia Alpha, and Nate felt his joints complain. Goddamn. We should have stayed for two weeks. While the Endless Drive didn’t need velocity as a push start, the distance between them and the gravity well of Enia Alpha would stop the Endless Drive from exploding. After a moment, the holo stage cleared, then words filled the space: CLEAR FOR JUMP.
“Negative space bow wave forming,” said El. “All hands, bow wave is stable. Route is green. In three.” Accompanying her words, the big number 3 lit the air between them. “Two.” The number shifted to a big 2, this time flashing.
Kohl’s voice, from the comm, half a holler, half a cheer. All whoop, all adrenaline. Because this was a jump, and jumps were … jumps.
“One,” said El. “Jumping.”
Space in front of the window stretched, pulled, and Nate felt—
His hair, every fiber of it. The skin of his body, a soft glove for all his essence. His arm and leg, whole again, no longer metal. No pain. The pure thrill of acceleration, impossible, unbelievable acceleration. He couldn’t feel it. He was it. He was everything. He was the universe.
Stars stretched, made points of light that streaked past the Tyche’s cockpit.
They jumped.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The a
ir felt hot, charged, like a storm was coming. Nate told himself it was just the after-effects of the jumps. Three down. Four to go. Jumps in quick succession played hell with your view of life. He’d been briefed a long time ago — a long, long time, when he still had two flesh and blood hands that served the Emperor — that it was something to do with human consciousness. About how time was intrinsic to the human condition and that faster than light travel broke all the perceptions of time. The problem, a sergeant with too much attitude and too little love for his squad had explained, was this: going between two points instantaneously was easy. Having sane people on the other side of that jump? Impossible.
The sergeant had gone on to yell at other people, while Nate had gone on to the Emperor’s Black. But the sergeant wasn’t wrong, he was just an asshole. Humans spent all their time breaking the laws of the universe, but they couldn’t break the rules that governed themselves.
“Jump was clean,” said El. She looked at him sideways, hands still on the controls. “Air feel hot to you?”
“I thought it was just post-jump blues,” said Nate.
“No, air’s hot,” she said. Tapped at the console, the holo between them changing. Systems reports cascaded across the display. Life support, green. Hull, green. Fusion drives, green. Minor systems like the auto galley, green. Endless Drive, green and mean, chafing at the stars for another bite at them. Reactor, not green.
Reactor: yellow.
“Hope,” said El. “Hope, we’re reading yellow on the reactor. What’s the situation where you are?”
The comm burst with static — a thing in itself inherently bad — and then Hope’s voice game back to them, worry clear even with the noise on the channel. “Reactor’s not happy. Reactor is unhappy. Also, it’s really hot in here.”
“We get the temperature shift too,” said El. “I’ve got green across the board everywhere else, but that doesn’t mean shit if we can’t muster the juice to make another jump.”
“I got you,” said Hope. “Give me five.”
“You got five. Take all the time you need,” said El, clicking the comm off.
Nate clicked on his own console. Time to find out where in the universe they were. Three jumps in put them in a shitty backwater system, nothing here but hunks of rock floating around a binary star. It had been tagged and bagged, dismissed as useless except to miners, and low value to them, the rocks holding junk iron and some silicates. Hell, the system was near valueless, no high value metals like platinum or fissionables on record. The rocks weren’t even that big. Nothing you could call a planet, nothing with an atmosphere. Terraforming was good business, they’d turned the toxic sludge of Earth’s oceans back to a brilliant blue, but you needed something to work with. Air, for one. You could make your own air, but that took more time than was profitable for the quick-wins corp mindset. None of these rocks were big enough to hold their own air. Sure, they were big enough to hammer the Tyche flat like a bent nail, just not big enough to set up a mining rig on. It’d be ships out here, mining lasers, inflatable sails to catch the debris. And that was low value work, for low value crews. Hell, it’d be great if no one was here at all.
Which is what it looked like. Not a soul.
Except … Tyche chattered to herself for, then the holo cleared, replaced with a system view. There, all those rocks orbiting their binary star. And drifting in the chunky soup, a transponder code. Tyche made the necessary inquiries, came back with some details.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” said Nate. “There’s another ship here.”
Helium-class ship. A lot bigger than Tyche, more of a boxy cargo freighter. Something the size of that could resupply a colony. Not atmosphere capable, kind of like a big brick floating through space. The transponder said her name was Ravana, which was a curious name to give a ship that hauled other people’s luggage for a living. You might be able to park the Tyche inside, but unless they’d done exactly that there wouldn’t be a bunch of spare parts inside. The Ravana was big enough she’d have a crew, some supplies they could barter or beg for, and — with any luck — send a message for help. Hope’d know what parts they needed, the Tyche had plenty of supplies, and things would be just fine.
The comm clicked. “Cap,” said Hope. “Cap, we’ve got a problem.”
Nate sighed, rubbed his face with a hand. Why can’t anything just go smooth? “What’s up, Engineer?”
“Reactor’s more unhappy than I’d like.”
“What do you mean by, ’unhappy?’”
“Well, the laser’s not firing right. It’s distorting the yields from the fuel pellets. We want a nice clean compressed pellet in there, and we’re not getting that. We’re getting a … well, hell. How much do you know about ICF reactors, Cap?”
Nate sighed. “Hope? Hope, we’ve talked about this. I know nothing about reactors. That’s why you’re here. What I need to know is whether we’re at the ’Oh God, we’re all going to die,’ phase, or whether we’re at the, ’This is inconvenient but we can shore up for repairs at the next spaceport.’”
“You want a summary?”
“I want a summary,” agreed Nate.
“We’re all going to die,” said Hope, “in about three days.”
“Shit,” said Kohl, voice behind Nate. “Three days? I guess I’ve got some whisky.”
Nate turned, saw the big man at the door to the flight deck, hand on the sill, frown on his face. “Kohl, we’re not going to die.”
“We’re all going to die,” said Kohl, “eventually. For us? Three days, she said. Although I guess if she could fuck up her life so bad she has to fly with us, she could get this wrong too.”
“You’re making noises again,” said Nate, “and those noises don’t sound good. Why don’t you go check on your cabin? See if the Navy took anything.”
“Already checked,” said Kohl. “I think I scared the skinny one. He was looking under my bunk.”
“Check again,” said Nate. “Keep checking until your mouth stops making noises.”
Kohl gave him a glare. “One day, she’ll bring the hellfire of the Republic down on all of us.”
“One day, she might,” said Nate. “Until then, she’s on my crew. Just like you.”
Kohl grunted, shrugged, and walked away.
“I don’t know why you keep him on the ship,” said El, her voice quiet, but hard.
“He serves a useful purpose,” said Nate. “That purpose might get exercised soon. Hope, you still with us?”
There was a pause from the comm, then, “Yeah, Cap. Look, about what he said—”
“Three days, Hope. Until then, how we looking?”
“Worse and worse as the time rolls on. You’ve got power for a bit of maneuvering, life support will keep us alive until we explode, we can still make coffee. Don’t use the Endless Drive, because nothing good will happen. Bad things are almost certain to happen. Like exploding.” The comm clicked off.
“Want me to fly us there?” El pointed at the Ravana’s icon on the holo. Her hands were already moving on the controls, the gentle hand of thrust pushing Nate back in his chair. The Tyche shifted in space, the usual rumble of her sounding regular, ordinary. Not like she would explode in three days.
“Yeah,” said Nate. “At least she’s not moving. We’ll cosy on alongside, try and beg some help.” Three days. That wasn’t a lot of time. He could offload the crew to the Ravana, ask for a ride, but the thought of the Tyche drifting out here, just waiting for someone to claim salvage rights didn’t sit well with him. So he’d stay, ask them to get help. It’d work. He toggled the comm. “Ravana, this is the Tyche. We are en route to your location, seeking assistance. Please respond.”
Nothing.
He tried again. “Ravana, this is the Tyche. We are facing main reactor failure, seeking assistance. Please respond.”
“That sounds like a lot of dead air,” said El.
It made little sense. Ravana’s transponder was operating fine, ship’s computers were online
, nothing in the automated comm negotiation from the Tyche suggested anything was wrong. And while pirates might be out here, there was no place for them to hide and this wasn’t a popular route — it wasn’t likely to be a trap.
“I’ve got nothing on scans,” said El. “There’s nothing else out there.”
“It’s not pirates,” said Nate.
“Didn’t say it was,” she said. “I said it was nothing.” After a moment she said, “But why would it be pirates?”
“It’s not pirates,” said Nate, again. He clicked the comm again. “Ravana, this is the Tyche. We are approaching and will dock with your vessel in,” and here, he checked the display, “about thirteen minutes. Please do not shoot us all when we come through your airlock. Please respond.”
Nothing. Not even the courtesy of static.
He tapped on the console, coaxing the Tyche’s imaging systems into life. High-detail cameras gave a visual shadow, but it was so damn dark out here that they got nothing but a silhouette, the backwash of light near worthless. But the Tyche, she had military in her family tree, sass right to the core, and she saw with more than human eyes. LIDAR reached out across the void, painting the Ravana in detail. “C’mon girl, show me what’s in front of us.” The lasers painted the Ravana’s location, building up a picture up in the holo. The outline of the Ravana took shape, details filled in fast and smooth as the Tyche touched the other ship with light as gentle as a lover’s hand.
Yep: Helium-class freighter. No obvious damage. Floating there, like a leaf on a pond. Slight spin, nothing that would make docking difficult. Hell, even Nate could do that; he could give El the night off. Under better circumstances, he might have.
“She’s just … floating,” said El. “What kind of Helm lets their ship drift like that?”
“One that’s dead,” said Grace, her voice behind them. Nate and El turned to face her.
Like Kohl before her, she was at the door to the flight deck, hand on the sill. She had none of Kohl’s attitude; if Nate was any judge, he reckoned her to be concerned. “Uh,” said Nate. “That’s a little fatalistic.”
Tyche's Flight (Tyche's Journey Book 1) Page 7