“Hey Tad,” said Galen.
Karen and Tad turned to face him. Tad jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward the window. “Not much longer.”
“Right. You two can head on out.”
Polar turned toward Galen. “Me too. I can monitor the manifest from my drop boat.”
“All right.” Galen peered out of the control tower windows and saw the long line of drop boats along the tarmac, canted an eighth of a turn, or eight hundred mils, their assault ramps lowered to make it possible for the vehicles to drive on and tie down inside. He heard the door of the control room close and looked back. Polar, Tad and Karen were gone. The immenseness of the unit was impressive. To transport the unit for this contract required seventy eight drop boats in all, each nearly a hundred and twenty meters long. They made a line that began at the gate of the marshalling yard and faded into the distance, the furthest drop boat barely perceptible as a spec. The drop boats, their retractable wings showing silver at the joints, the area not exposed to supersonic flight, the rest of their exteriors burnished to a dull grey with long black streaks caused by numerous high-velocity atmospheric re-entries on dozens of worlds. The tail sections, the high rudders, the twin engines mounted either side right at the back of the fuselage, the tail flaps protruding from the engine nacelles.
Galen took the lift down and stepped out of the base of the tower and turned left and walked a hundred meters to reach the command drop ship. He entered through the cargo ramp, gave the loadmaster a thumbs up and watched as the cargo ramp lifted to close against the overhead, made his way around the skid-loaded command tank, opened the door to his cabin to peek inside, saw that his gear was secure, closed the cabin door and climbed the ladder up to the second level and moved down the gangway that ran across the length of the jump engine to the cockpit. He entered and took the seat behind the pilot and fastened his seat belt. Karen was already in the seat to his right.
“Ready, Smaj?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be.”
Karen said, “I heard you were a sleeper.”
“I am.” Galen patted the left breast pocket of his combat coveralls. “I got injectors.”
The pilot said, “I’ve heard about sleepers, but I never met one before. What’s it like?”
The loadmaster entered and sat in the co-pilot seat and fastened his seat belt. “All secure down there.”
Galen spoke. “You don’t want to know.”
The loadmaster-turned-co-pilot said, “Don’t want to know what?”
Karen said, “What it’s like to be a sleeper.”
“Oh,” said the co-pilot. “I’ve heard of that. Some sort of jump space syndrome where you spend an eternity in complete darkness and wake up crazy.”
“Not quite crazy,” said Galen. “I’ve done it once, that’s enough. I knock myself out with an auto-injector for the jump so it doesn’t affect me.”
The pilot looked over his shoulder at Galen, peered into his face and studied his eyes.
Galen said, “It was five years ago.”
Karen said, “This will be my first jump. Is there a test or something to see if I’m a sleeper?”
Galen looked at her, studied her eyes. “No. Now look directly into my eyes and believe what I tell you. This is real. If you find yourself stuck in an eternity of darkness, remember this. It will end. You will come back. Do not forget, this is real.”
The pilot called the tower and got clearance to taxi to the end of the tarmac, moving slowly past the long line of drop boats. At the end of the tarmac he turned the ship and took his position at the end of a longer runway and waited. After the tower gave him clearance, he trundled down the runway, slow at first, but picked up immense speed, just barely below the speed of sound. When the landing gear left the ground he retracted it, then angled the nose of the dropship straight up and slammed the throttle to full. The dropship pushed with three Gs of force, the wings retracting incrementally after the dropship pushed through one sound barrier after another. Finally the dropship tore free of the atmosphere and continued to accelerate as it left he gravity well of Mandarin. The pilot then let the dropship coast as he extended the ionic propulsion nacelles from the belly of the craft, tilted it so that the jump point would be directly above, and then set the propulsion nacelles to give a thrust of one G.
The pilot then said, “Feel free to move about the cabin. We’ll reach the turnaround point in forty six minutes, and then I’ll flip the ship around and decelerate at one G to the jump point. Any questions?”
Galen said, “Just give us a buzz before the zero-G of the turnaround so we can hold on to something.”
“Not a problem,” said the pilot.
Galen undid his seatbelt and said, “Hey, where’s my tank crew?”
The pilot said, “They stay in their cabin, usually.” He checked a status screen. “They’re in there now.”
Galen went back down to the cabin area and knocked on the door directly across the hall from his. “Hello?”
The door opened. Corporal Slaughter, the short but stocky command tank gunner said, “Problem, Smaj?”
“I just want to see how you guys are doing.”
“Come on in.”
Galen entered and sat on Park’s bunk. Trooper Parks could have been Slaughter’s twin, but with brown hair instead of black. He sat at the desk, paused his video game and swiveled the chair to face Galen.
“So, you guys have been on a few contracts before. This is how you handle space travel?”
“Yes, Sergeant Major,” Trooper Parks said.
“And you’ve been in this job for three years, and Corporal Slaughter has been at it for four years, correct?”
Parks said, “Yes, Sergeant Major.”
“Well, keep up the good work.” Galen stood. “One more thing…”
Slaughter said, “What’s that?”
“Have you thought about doing something else? After this contract, when we get back to Mandarin, I mean.”
Parks said, “Not really. I could do a whole twenty years of this. It’s a sweet job.”
Galen said, “You know, there’re three more seats in the cockpit. You can ride up there if you want.”
Slaughter shrugged. “I used to, but this is okay.”
“All right. Enjoy the ride.” Galen went to his cabin a stretched out on his bunk. He heard Karen’s door open and then close, and heard her footfalls as she paced in her own cabin. Galen got up and knocked on her door.
After a moment she opened the door. “Hello, Smaj.”
“Hello yourself. Is something bothering you?”
“I’m just worried about the jump.” She stepped closer to Galen.
He took a half step back. “Let’s go talk it over with the pilots; they can explain the whole process. I’d like to hear about it from an expert myself, I hardly understand it.”
“Okay.”
She followed him to the cockpit and took the seat behind the co-pilot. Galen sat behind the pilot and said, “Hey, how does this jump drive work?”
The co-pilot swiveled his chair to face Galen. “Well, it’s not really a drive so much as a generator.”
Karen said, “Well I’m more interested in the jump travel concept more than the engine or whatever it is.”
The co-pilot thought for a moment. “It’s like a fold in space. We generate a direct connection with another point, from a know point here. Then we pass through, ceasing to exist here as we pass through the plane of the connection, and beginning to exist on the other side of that plane, at the destination.”