“Abby, are you plotting an escape jump?” Nathan asked.
“Yes, sir. But we’ll have to get some distance from this planet before we can safely jump. Its gravity well is enormous.”
“Cam, plot an intercept course to meet with the shuttle halfway, in case we all have to clear out in a hurry. Abby, you can plot your escape jump from anywhere along her intercept course.”
“Yes, sir,” Abby answered.
“It looks like it will take them at least a couple of hours to get there,” Cameron informed him, “even at a full burn.”
“I guess all we can do is wait.”
The climb out of the gas-giant’s gravity well had been long and difficult. The noise of the shuttle’s main engines fighting to break free of the planet’s hold on them had been deafening. Even closing and sealing their helmets had done little to reduce the ear-splitting whine.
Finally, after what seemed an eternity, the shuttle finally broke free of the planet’s gravity and reached its cruising speed. The whine of the engines suddenly ceased as Josh ended the long, torturous burn. But instead of a much welcomed silence, there was the steady, grating sound of Marcus, the former harvesting crew foreman now turned shuttle crew chief, snoring away.
“For all that’s holy,” Josh chuckled. “The man is like a plasma drill,” he declared as he climbed out of his seat and moved back into the main compartment. When he reached Marcus, he carefully plugged in the life support umbilical from the ship to his suit, and gently closed and sealed his helmet. Finally, the snoring was reduced to a tolerable level.
“That’s better,” Josh decided, taking a seat next to Marcus and across the compartment from Jessica. “The man can sleep through just about anything,” he joked.
“You’ve known him for a while?” Jessica asked. Part of her was curious, and part of her was just making small talk.
“Since I was little. My mom was a worker on his team. She died. Marcus took me in, took care of me as best he could. He’s been sort of like a father to me.” Josh looked at Marcus as he continued to snore away. “A loud, obnoxious, drunken, bastard of a father,” he laughed. “Took good care of me though.”
“How did you end up flying?”
“Used to steal his credits when he wasn’t looking. Spent them down at the VR game arcades. Nothing but flight games. Didn’t care much for the other ones. Got damn good at them too. Finally, Marcus here decided it was cheaper to pay for flight school than to keep losing his money to my thieving hands. Been flying ever since.”
“But you’re only what, sixteen?”
Josh appeared shocked. “I’ll be twenty next month, I will.”
“How old were you when you went to flight school?”
“Graduated right after me sixteenth, I did.”
“Four years? That’s it? Hell, it takes us that long just to get through the Fleet Academy back on Earth.”
“I’ve racked up nearly fifteen thousand hours since then, love.”
“Whattaya live in the cockpit?”
“Ten, twelve hours a day, nearly every day.”
“You ever get bored?”
“Nope, flying is the best thing around, far as I can tell.”
“What about your pal there?” Jessica asked, pointing toward Loki who was manning the controls while Josh took a break. “How did you two end up flying together?”
Josh removed his helmet, setting it on the bench next to him. “Well, to be honest, I had a hard time keeping copilots. Seems most folk don’t care much for my stick style, if you get my meaning,” he said, scratching his scraggly mound of dirty blond hair.
“They think you’re too reckless, or something?”
“No, nothing like that. They just kept getting sick, tossin’ up all over the place. The inertial dampeners in the harvester ain’t worth a damn. Jeez, I was spending an hour after every flight just cleaning up the cockpit.”
Jessica shook her head. “You’re just a bit off, aren’t you?”
“That’s what Loki keeps telling me.”
“How long have you been flying with him?”
“Don’t rightly know, maybe six months, maybe more. What about you, then?” Josh asked, trying to change the subject. “Did they train you to be so tough in that Academy of yours?”
“Sort of. I was hoping to be a covert operative.”
“What’s a covert operative do?”
“They drop you on some alien world, where you try to blend in, gather intelligence on the enemy, maybe even conduct raids and such.”
“Sounds dangerous.”
“Apparently, no more dangerous than flying with you. At least according to Vlad.”
Josh nodded. “Ah, the chief. He seems a good bloke.”
“Yeah, he’s all right. Pretty dependable in a firefight. That’s for sure.”
“Told us a lot about Earth and all the other night. Interesting stuff.” Josh looked over at Tug and Jalea, who were sitting at the far aft end of the compartment, talking amongst themselves in their own language. “What about those two?” Josh asked, his voice a bit more subdued. “He’s not exactly what I expected, for a terrorist that is. She is, but he’s not.”
“What makes you think they’re terrorists? Aren’t the Ta’Akar worse?”
“Don’t get me wrong. I’m no fan of the Ta’Akar, not by a long shot. That Caius fella, he’s got a few loose ones upstairs, you know. But some of the stuff you hear about, the things the Karuzari have done. Well, it don’t seem much different, really. Just on a smaller scale is all.”
“So you don’t think they’re in the right?”
“Oh, they’re in the right. Gettin’ rid of the Ta’Akar would be the best thing to ever happen to this part of the galaxy. Just don’t know that they’re goin’ about it in the best way. That’s all.”
“How so?”
“It’s like they’re on the outside, trying to get in by beating at the wall with hammers and chisels and the like. They need to find an easy way in, and then clean house all at once. Get it over and done with. Everyone knows you can’t fight a guerrilla war forever. Sooner or later, you’re gonna run out of guerrillas.”
“Ten minutes out, Josh,” Loki called over his shoulder from the cockpit.
“Enough philosophizing,” Josh said with a grin. He reached for his helmet, donning it on his way forward.
“Hell, this ain’t nothing,” Josh proclaimed as he took his seat in the cockpit. “You could fly a planet between these rocks.”
“It’s an asteroid belt, Josh, not a ring system,” Loki teased.
“You find our rock yet?” Josh asked, ignoring his remark.
“If we come starboard about thirty and down a bit, she should be dead ahead. Gonna have to brake pretty hard to keep from smacking into her, though.”
“I believe that’s how we always do it,” Josh bragged.
“What, the braking hard or the smacking into her?”
“Always with the negativity, Loki.” Josh fired the maneuvering thrusters as he applied power to the main propulsion system, changing their vector as he brought the ship onto its new heading.
“Standard braking maneuver, I assume?”
“Yup,” Josh said as he prepared his ship for the next maneuver. He looked up and saw that the asteroid was fast filling the windows. “Pitching up.” He pulled the nose of the ship up and fired the main landing thrusters. Second only to the main drive in raw thrust, it was the fastest way he knew to slow a ship down in a hurry. He could’ve approached at a lower velocity, but then that would just leave him visible to any ships nearby even longer.
“You know, you didn’t have to come in this fast,” Jessica commented.
“Just trying to be covert,” he responded.
A few minutes later, the shuttle matched the asteroids velocity on its orbital path around its parent star, leaving the shuttle holding a position only a few hundred meters away. Josh pitched the nose back down to take a look.
“Aw,” he exclaimed with disappointment, “we’ve gotta be at least a hundred meters away.” He turned to look at Loki. “Did you pad the reading again?”