“Intercom to Lipinski,” she called without taking her attention off the screens. “Can you tap a signal from the port? We could stand to know who else is making a run for it.”
“On it.” His voice was strained. Yerusha clamped down on her curiosity. Her job was not to interrogate Lipinski, it was to get them out of here.
Which left the question of how.
Schyler seemed to be having the same thought. “What’s your plan, Pilot?”
Yerusha sucked in a breath between her teeth and checked the fuel burn rate. “Watch, we have two options.” She called up the fuel reserves and the amount they needed to get them through the Vicarage system safely. The difference between the two was not enormous. She forged ahead anyway. “We can either go very slowly and carefully and take an extra ten, maybe fifteen hours to get to the jump point, or we can burn the reserves through, take the extra gee for about five hours and be out of here in twelve.”
She shot her calculations across to his boards and risked a glance up at him. His square face looked ten years older than it had when they put into the port.
“Burn it,” he said.
A mix of reckless excitement and trepidation hit Yerusha with his words. “On it.” She bent back over the boards and started her calculations. “Intercom to Lipinski. Have we got that line yet?”
“Intercom to Pasadena,” said Schyler beside her. “We’re going to double gee for five hours. Observe all precautions. Keep strapped in unless absolutely necessary…”
The central view screen lit up with a map of the system. It was criss-crossed with red, green and white lines representing flight paths. Satellites hung as gold dots and asteroids burned blue. Even as she drank it in, the pattern changed.
Nice going, Lipinski, Yerusha thought, writing her preparatory orders down. It wouldn’t be a straight path. There wasn’t one. But at least she could do a little navigation…
Schyler was still talking. “Acceleration in…” he tapped the counter so Yerusha looked across at him. She processed the unspoken question and held up five fingers. “Five minutes.” Schyler finished. “Repeating…”
Yerusha tuned out the message and barely noticed when he fell silent. Her mind was full of voices plotting paths and thrust and angles and attempting to measure fuel and reaction mass down to the cubic centimeter.
Can do. Just barely, but can do.
A silver blur shot past on the port screen. Its white line dragged itself across the view screen. “Fractured burn brain,” Yerusha muttered and changed her projected path by a hundred clicks. The lines held still for a moment. She called up the activation menu and fed the flight plan to the system. Nerves made her check the OVERRIDE key, and the clock. Fifteen point six-five clicks at twelve forty-five.
She reached across to one of the sideboards and opened up a broadcast channel. “This is the mail packet Pasadena. We are heading at 42, 15, mark 4 towards the jump point at two gee acceleration. All ships advised to clear route.” She set the message on a loop, muted the internal broadcast and set it playing.
“Twenty seconds and counting until acceleration,” Schyler said loudly, and Yerusha fastened her gaze back on the screens.
The orders are in. Pay attention. The ship’s on auto. Don’t blink, you don’t know when some idiot’s going to come too close. It’s crowded out there and nobody knows where anybody else is. At this speed you’re going to need…
“Four…three…two…one.”
The torch burn doubled and gravity pressed down. Yerusha sank into her chair and labored to keep her head tilted forward so she had a clear view of the boards. Without her noticing, her hands pressed flat against the boards. Her feet tried to dig into the deck.
She took several deep breaths with her lungs sagging inside her suddenly restrictive chest, and lifted her hands with exaggerated care. Moving too fast in free fall gave you a good chance of injuring your surroundings. Moving too fast in extra gees gave you a good chance of injuring yourself. She picked up her heavy pen with clumsy fingers and wrote the order for a status update.
Green, green, and green. According to the ship’s system, everything was working fine. The silence on the intercom confirmed it. No new lines appeared on the view screen. The navigation display altered as they shot through space, but it didn’t show any new ships in their way. The view from the window and the cameras remained clear. Yerusha let her sense of urgency relax a little. It might just be that things were under control back at the port. Maybe the panic was over and they were really out of here.
Her shoulders sagged into the chair’s padding. She flicked her eyes up and checked the clock. There were four hours and fifty-six minutes of heavy acceleration left. She shifted heavily and tried to get comfortable. She had to keep her eyes on the screens for twice that long, just in case.
She was suddenly keenly aware of Cheney’s empty chair.
You said this ship’s runs were uneventful, she thought. Didn’t your mother teach you about lying?
On her main view screen, Al Shei watched the silver refraction bubble enclose the ship. Even though Ianiai was sitting right next to her, she allowed herself a long, relieved sigh. She lifted the coffee bulb off the board in front of her, stared for a moment into the stone cold dregs and put it back down.
She unfastened her straps and climbed stiffly to her feet. She’d gotten up three times in the past twelve hours to use the head, but other than that, she’d remained fastened to her station, watching the readings and hoping the intercom would stay quiet. Twice Chandra had come around with food and coffee, reporting that Baldassare and the steward Dalziel were making the rounds on the other decks.
If I had any money you’d all get a raise, she thought towards the coffee as she stood up and stretched her arms back. “Relief!”
As Ianiai took her seat, she glanced at the clock. “Javerri will be relieving you in ten. Stay sharp.”
Al Shei left engineering and climbed towards the berthing deck. The brief feeling of accomplishment that had come when the fast-time jump went off without a hitch faded away. She was left with the memory of everything she had learned on the Farther Kingdom.
She closed the cabin door and sat at the desk. “Intercom to Lipinski,” she said.
“Here, Engine.”
“I need you to tap into the bank lines,” she said. “I’ll transfer the credit for it. We’ve got to get the latest…developments to Asil so he can file a fraud charge against Amory Dane.”
“On it,” he said. “I’ll call you when we’ve got an opening.”
“Intercom to close.” She pulled her hijab off and ruffled her hair. She glanced towards the door and prayed it would stay shut long enough for her to rest just these few minutes. “System, open Asil Day Book, day ten.” Only ten days. It feels like it’s been a year.
“Hello, Beloved,” Asil’s voice was warm, but tried. “Storms are brewing on the horizon today. Uncle Ahmet says that we’ve taken on a questionable credit source, and he’s being very vocal about it. I am double checking his information, but it does not look good. We’ve got enough to cover it, but it’s going to cut into the liquid funds by about five percent.” She could see him giving his wan smile and an easy shrug. “I’ll have the numbers run tomorrow, if it comes to that.” Al Shei twisted her hijab in her hands. She’d forgotten this would be coming up. They had taken a bad source. They had lost the money. Asil had been very upset with himself about it, even when she got home months later. They had been hoping to make some of it up this run.