Archaea 3: Red (39 page)

“Very well, Yak. Gene, you remembered to pressure-test the bridge, I trust?”

“You should”, he sounded hurt. “I’ve x-rayed, sonographed, and pressure mapped the shear and tensile stress limits of the work we did.”

“You did all these things?”

“Well… I asked Janis for help…”

“Even better, Gene”, the captain laughed. “All
hands make ready for launch. We are at condition zebra in 3, 2, 1… mark. Take a breath folks; I am venting the dock now.”

I took a deep breath. He’s the captain, and that sounded like an order.

As luck would have it, we didn’t die.

*****

Thankfully, the boards stayed green. Gene had Engineering warmed up, and Shorty had flashed greens on her systems as well. I took a deep breath while I watched atmo. Our pressure was constant, so I took another deep breath to make sure.

“Opening doors, prepare for launch”
, I called out, and watched the door panels accordion out of the way to either side. With the doors open, I turned off the dock lights, and took a moment to let my eyes adjust to the darkness ahead.

I called across the bridge, “How does it look out there Yak…
am I clear to take us out?”

“There’s nothing on scope, sir.”

“Very well”, I said, and engaged the docking sled, cycling us through the opening on clamps. The Archaea slid onward into the darkness, extending into the starry void to the limits of the ram. The green light clicked.

I took one final look at the screens. “Talus
Control, Archaea, requesting out-system lane to 225 actual, 50 degrees azimuth.”

“Archaea, Talus Control, hold please
.”

I waited a few moments and ran through what we knew, where we were going, and what we needed to do.

“Archaea, Talus Control, we have a course to that lane for you. Please hold to course and speed.”

“Talus Control, Archaea, copy, out.”

The lifters were energized, and the familiar controls beckoned. I fed power to the lifters and disengaged the clamps. Janis had perfectly compensated for the microgravity of Talus, we held on the dot while the clamps retracted.

“All hands, launch in 3, 2, 1…” I called out, and moved us out on lifters. The helm responded perfectly, as if nothing had happened. Oh my sweet Archaea, lovely as ever. My hands sang with delight on the first transit, and my spirit soared as we fluidly accelerated into the pipe
they had set up for us.

Yak called across the bridge,
“She’s smooth, sir?”

“You bet, Yak…
as if nothing ever happened. I can’t wait to see what she can do now. You boys ready for a bit of flying?”

They traded a look across the aisle and made sounds that I suppose could vaguely be considered enthusiastic, if you squinted really hard and tried to hear it
just right. That’s fine; I am enthusiastic enough for all of us.

With multi-homing,
I don’t have to try to just compensate our burn, I can also backload the compensation, to cushion and protect us throughout a wide range of acceleration, and to amounts I frankly had a hard time comprehending. This was going to be fun.

“All
hands stand by for acceleration. We’re coming up on our lane, and after a short ramp up, I’ll be running us out on an 8g compensated burn. If we don’t explode, I’ll really open her up and see what she can do.”

Pauli made a slight gagging sound, which I hoped was
fear… and not him wasting coffee by sending it down the wrong pipe.

*****

I could tell Yak was terrified, by the way he held his head back into the crash couch. His eyes were almost shut, and his feet were beneath him.

I followed suit, and ran through all of the important memories of my short life.
The nice thing about acceleration is that unless you’re the captain, with a superhuman ability to withstand it, you’d be sound asleep by the time it runs out of control and pulps you into bits.

“Talus Control, Archaea.
We are in position.”

“Archaea, Talus Control, you
r lane is clear, proceed on 225 at 50.”

“Copy Talus Control, Archaea out”, he replied, then called on comms. “We’re clear to launch in 3, 2, 1…”

I consciously tried to relax, and keep from tensing up as the engines behind us roared into life. So far it wasn’t bad, just a solid shove, and the feeling like my face was heavy. It was a little hard to breathe, but the compression of the crash bars might have been to blame for most of it.

“Three gravities, everything is green.”

“Tracks are clear, Captain”, Yak confirmed.

“Right… I’m going to feed her a little more juice, then”, he replied, and the shove began to feel more like a solid sustained kick, pushing me back hard. My throat felt like it was closing, and it was getting harder and harder to make my lungs work. I was relegated to shallow
breaths as the bottom started to fall out behind me.

“Six gravities, anyone awake?” Captain Smith sounded like he was asking for someone to pass the salt. My eyes were starting to cross involuntarily as I tried to keep them focused, and I realized they were being crushed.

“Ooh… rah… sir…” Yak hissed, remarkably well, considering. My vision was becoming tunneled, grey spiders starting to eat the corners of my sight, threatening to flood in and take me away.

“Outstanding, Yak
... now let’s see what she can really do.”

My last memory was of feeling the ribbing of the back of the crash couches, as the cushions deformed completely, then the world went dark and I skipped off happily into
a dream.

*****

Oh, she could move, alright. This was incredible.

I
pushed her hard, the roar of the engines astern climbing, a thunderous blast that crushed me flat.

A
s we approached maximum thrust, I continued to build pseudomass, pulling us faster and faster into an ever deepening gravity well, riding the wave of acceleration as I continued the push to flank speed.

With the drives at maximum, it was time to open her up.

I dropped the hammer on the new emitters, punched a hole in front of us, and hurled us into it. We immediately went from 12 gravities of positive acceleration, through null-g, and slid head-first into 12 gravities of negative acceleration  as the compensation started to pull us faster than our drives could push… but I wanted more.

I’ve never gone this fast
outside of slipspace, and to be honest, I was a little afraid of what we were doing.

If we held this acceleration for a while longer we’d be slip
ping. To do that without a stasis field, would classify nicely as a Very Bad Thing.

I’m a firm believer in avoiding those.

Thankfully we were rapidly approaching our slip point out of this system.

My
vision started to red out, and it took every bit of effort to stay awake, to push on, and to force us all the way to the limit, to maximum flank speed…

And then…
we got there...

It was beautiful.

*****

I came to, and immediately wished I hadn’t. My tired joints felt like they were packed full of broken glass. Somehow, despite my agony, I was checking gauges, trying to focus my eyes through screens.

“Gene, report”, the captain called back.

“Ah… all green here, skipper”, I choked back in response through a tongue that felt thick and coppery. I either bit it, or it pushed into my teeth hard enough to bleed, either way it hurt. “Though I couldn’t tell you what was specifically green at the moment, I don’t see any other blurs of orange or red, Dak.”

“Very well, that’s good to hear. I kept an eye on the power band all the way to
reactive flank; do you want to take a look at the report?”

“I’d like to try to see it”, I replied after a moment, “but I am not sure my eyes are working yet.”

“
You’ll be fine. It should be on your screen, Gene.” He chuckled on for a moment, obviously captivated by the turn of phrase.

It took a minute to find it, even though Janis helpfully flashed it for me. My eyes felt like they didn’t want to work right, like they had been
pulled out of their sockets. I knew it would go away, but that didn’t make it any better. I took a sip of water, and held my eyes shut for a moment, letting the headache fade a bit before I tried again.

“
Reactive flank, Dak?” I asked hoarsely. I might have done a little bit of screaming at some point, my throat felt raw.

“And how, Gene… even so, we were barely moving compared to what I want to try next.”

My jaw wagged a bit as I read the report. “From what I see here, we hit point eight, Dak.” I had a hard time comprehending the velocity he had reached. It was so far beyond what humans had ever attempted, I almost had nothing to compare it with.

“That’s right, Gene. Hauling right along… you should have seen it.
It damn near tore my eyebrows off.”

I tried to put it in perspective, but it was hard.

Compared to us, an in-system Unet drone burning hot on an established route between slips would look stationary.

It’d become an obstacle.

The thought was astounding, but I knew I only had a while to get it together. We weren’t off shift just yet; we were just getting started.

I checked through my screens again as best as I could, but I knew we were good to go from the soothing murmur of the tokamak, lit wide open.

“Weapons, report?”

“On deck and loaded, sir.” Shorty replied immediately. She was probably bloody, but she wasn’t going to let that affect her. Sho
rty was the kind of person that was either incredibly, almost irritatingly perfect, or she acted that way no matter what – either way, I knew she was probably trying to pull her eyes back into their sockets like I was.

She was a damn first rate engineer too.
Regardless of how she may have sounded, I had no doubt her gun was ready to fire.

“Very well, all hands stand by to slip.”

I gave a fleeting thought to rampant scenes of imminent annihilation, as I always do, then realized I’ve done the best that I can with what I’ve been given. If it ends, it ends.

As always, the actual slip event was uneventful, so long as we didn’t vaporize on something lumbering along in deep spac
e. I guess even if it was eventful, it’d be over so quickly that for us, it wouldn’t matter.

As the thought ran through my head, I realized that s
omething didn’t seem quite right. The thought drew me up short. Something was out of place, but nothing on my screens called for attention.

“Janis, I am showing greens across the board. Do you concur?” I asked the air.

“Yes Gene. Why do you ask?”

“Just a strange feeling I’m having.”

“What does it feel like?”

“Like something is missi
ng... are we in slipspace?”

“Yes, Gene.”

Power levels looked normal, or close to it. There may have been a tiny drop in current from what we normally have, but nothing really out of place. I realized I was grasping at straws.

Then it hit me.

“Janis, are we still accelerating?”

“Oh yes, Gene. Please stand by.”

I reached up and adjusted my crash bars, giving the shoulder pads an extra crank. This was taking forever. Either Dak was taking his time running it up to flank... or flank speed was a lot faster. Knowing Dak as I do, he was probably running it up as fast as he could, and was probably giddy as a school kid about it as well.

I only had to wait a few more moments, but each one felt as long as a lifetime.

“All hands, we are in slipspace. Gene, how are we looking back there?”

I squinted at my levels again.
“We’re doing just fine, if I wasn’t looking closely, I wouldn’t really notice the draw on our available current.”

“Well, that’s mighty good to hear Gene. So we have plenty of wiggle room?”

I snorted. “Captain, we’re hardly pulling a load. We could still energize the hull and fire a continual nova beam at maximum, if Shorty could keep us from melting.”

“Outstanding.”

“How fast are we going?” I asked out of politeness because I knew that’s what he wanted to talk about – I didn’t want to know the answer.

“Well, Gene…
that’s a bit of a loaded question. We’re really only scratching the surface of what we can do… but at this point we’re approaching a thousand times the speed of light. We’ll be on station in a matter of hours.”

I choked and coughed a bit.
“Isn’t this a week long hop?”

“
Well, before our refit, we could have made it in a few days… now, however… it’s a whole new ball game, a completely different sport. We will make this run in a few hours.” He paused to let it sink in. “It’s all a matter of perspective, you know. Speed is relative.”