As the timer clicked toward zero, even Tor's ebullience couldn't relieve Jirik's tension. He pried Bran from his ever-present bookchip, and had the crew run emergence drills until he was satisfied that every possible contingency had been anticipated, and counteractions devised.
When the moment arrived, all hands had already been at their stations for some time. As the timer counted off the final seconds, Jirik turned on the sensors, and hovered nervously over their displays. There was an audible click from the Comm station as Tor activated the fake beacon identifying them as a robot ore hauler. A nervous cough from the intercom told Jirik that Bran was on station in engineering, preparing to cut the supralight drive if the automatic system failed. Via sat still as a stone statue, her clawed hands hovering over the nav computer's keyboard. Suddenly, Jirik's screens flickered, and the sensors shuddered to life. His shout of "Blip!" and Tor's "Traffic!" were simultaneous. Via jumped as though shot, and nearly activated the microjump accidently. Then Jirik shouted "we're in the nebula!"
Chapter 9
As Via snatched her finger from the microjump button, Jirik shouted, "We're too close to the edge!" A high whine announced that the inertial drive generators were online, and Via's fingers flew as she keyed in coordinates to take them farther inside the nebula. As soon as her fingers slowed, Jirik activated the inertial drive, and the Lass began a ponderous turn deeper into the interstellar dust cloud.
Bran, blind in engineering, could stand it no longer. "Pirates?" he asked over the intercom.
"Don't know yet!" Jirik shouted in reply, "Shut up! Tor! What beacons?"
"Robot ore hauler!" came the reply. "Would you believe it?"
"Not yet!" Jirik shouted. "Blip size fits, though."
"Is it changing course?" Came Bran's voice over the intercom, "Is it headed for us?"
"Negative," Jirik replied, unconsciously returning to Navy terminology, "She's bearing past us, from low-right to high-left. No other blips."
"No other beacons!" came from Tor.
A tense silence fell over the ship as the Lass lumbered deeper into the safety of the nebula. Only the faint whisper of dust motes against the hull could be heard as the silence dragged on.
Both Jirik and Tor jumped at Via's satisfied "Good! Cut drive!" Jirik cut the drives, and killed their forward motion with the steering jets, then slouched back in his chair. The relaxation of the tension aboard the Lass was almost tangible. They were comparatively safe here. Unenhanced sensors would be unable to detect them in the swirling dust and gases, but their own enhanced sensors were easily able to gather the readings and bearings required for recalibration. If a suspicious ship did emerge near the nebula, they could simply retreat even farther into the cloudy nebula to avoid its presumably enhanced sensors.
The relaxation was palpable, but far from complete. Via's fingers flew on her computer Keyboard, computing the jump point and the length and direction of their next jump. Jirik maintained a close watch on the passive sensors for the emergence of any traffic, and Tor was equally attentive to his 'comm scanners.
Bran, unemployed for the moment, carefully refrained from breaking the concentration of the bridge crew. Once Via computed the next jump and the next jump point, which would presumably be outside the nebula, Bran's chance would come. They would need every centimeter of acceleration that the old bitch could muster for the dash out of the nebula to the jump point. That, after all, would be when they would be most vulnerable to interception.
It was more than three hours later that Via pronounced herself satisfied with her calculations, and Jirik, monitoring her course calculations at the command terminal, agreed. The jump point, unfortunately, was nearly half a million Kilometers outside the nebula. Even at max acceleration, the old bitch would need over half an hour to cover that distance. If a pirate emerged from supralight while they were running for the jump point, they were in deep trouble. They debated the wisdom of retreating even farther into the interstellar cloud to get a "running start." Bran and Via favored the idea, but Jirik wasn't so sure.
"If we retreat any farther, we lose our sensors. We won't know what's out there until it's too late to stop before we leave the nebula." he protested. "Besides, the dust in the cloud will be a drag on the ship. We won't get max acceleration from the old bitch!"
"But skipper," Via replied, "Even with the increased drag, we might be able to build up to almost .01C. If we came blasting out of the nebula at that speed and accelerating, even a pirate would have a hard time catching us before we reached the jump point, especially if we caught him by surprise."
Jirik grunted. "He wouldn't need to catch us. We couldn't outrun a laser or a missile."
Via shrugged. "Either way we run that risk. If a pirate emerges while we're driving for the jump point, the same risk exists. I really think that our best chance is to blast out of the nebula as fast as possible, at max acceleration."
Bran's voice on the intercom seconded Via's opinion. "Captain, the faster we come out of the nebula, the shorter the risk period. The only advantage that our sensors give us is the chance to sit in here and wait until a pirate goes away. If he does."
Jirik was still not enthused, but he assented gracelessly. Via and Bran began computing the Lass' maximum acceleration against the friction of the cloud, and the distance that they would have to retreat to reach .01C by the time they exited the nebula. With their sensors' range reduced to mere kilometers, they felt their way deeper into the swirling gas and dust. Finally, they reached the point which Bran and Via had agreed would let them exit the nebula at .01C. They swung the Lass ponderously around to a reverse course, and Jirik slammed the inertial drive controls wide open. The whispering of the dust on the hull slowly grew louder as they picked up speed. By the time Jirik's sensors again registered clear space ahead, the whisper had become a roar, and Jirik had become concerned about hull damage. As his sensor screens cleared, he shrugged off his worry, staring intently at the screens. No blips announced the presence of other vessels, and Tor's silence confirmed that the system was empty. Jirik relaxed slightly as the roar of the dust subsided, then disappeared, but the intensity of his gaze on his screens never wavered.
Via had estimated 20 minutes from exit of the nebula to jump point. Exactly fourteen had passed when a flare on one of Jirik's screens announced the emergence of another ship. Tor's nearly simultaneous snout confirmed that they were no longer alone.
"Beacon Ident!" Jirik snapped.
"Alliance Trader, Epsilon Class" Tor replied crisply. "Fake beacon running."
Jirik shook his head. "Won't work. We're six minutes from jump. Unless their Captain's an idiot, he's going to realize that our blip is too big for a robot ore carrier a lot sooner than that!"
Via was hovering over Jirik's shoulder, staring at the blip. The pressure of one soft breast on his shoulder was a momentary distraction before Jirik firmly refocused his attention on his displays.
"That blip looks too big to be Epsilon Class" She muttered.
"It is," Jirik replied. "She's Delta Class, at least. And that means she's a pirate. We're not the only ones who can play games with our beacon, you know!"
Sudden excitement flared in Via's face . "Skipper, that gives me an idea! He already knows we're showing a false beacon. Suppose we convinced him that we're another pirate?"
Jirik jerked upright. "Of course! We might be able to string him along for a few minutes, at least. We might get to the jump point!" He swung around to Tor. "Kid, Hail that ship. Route the circuit to my console!" Tor made no reply, but Jirik's comm screen flared to life, revealing a fat, unshaven man, evidently the other ship's captain. The man's mouth opened to speak, but Jirik shouted first.