“Okay,” said Nate, thinking, Well, shit just got real. “Can’t happen. So why is this one here?”
Karkoski frowned. “Maybe I’m being too strong. They have been known to fail. Some fool fiddles with them. Messes up the timing. Asteroids. There has been — and I checked — exactly one instance of systems failure. Solar collector burned out, not the transmitter itself.” She sighed. “Doesn’t matter. What matters is that the one at Absalom Delta’s Bridge has done dark. It’s not sending to us, not schedule. The Gate at our side opens, but nothing comes through. That is a situation that makes us nervous. It makes us nervous because of what happened on Arlington.”
“Huh,” said Nate, because his brain was saying what the hell does what happened on Arlington have to do with Absalom Delta?
“I’d bet you’re wondering,” said Karkoski, “what Arlington and the Absalom system have in common.”
“Thought crossed my mind,” agreed Nate.
“Nothing,” said Karkoski, “yet.” She looked at Nate like she was waiting for him to say something clever.
“Normally I’d have something to offer here like, ’This sounds a lot like the usual sorts of military intelligence,’ but I’m expecting you to shower me with fine Republic wisdom,” said Nate. “I am here, waiting for my shower.”
She sniffed, wrinkled her nose. “Yes, I can see why.”
“Hey—”
“There was an esper on Arlington,” she said.
That stopped Nate. Espers. It was the fucking Emperor’s Intelligencers that had cost him a good left hand and an equally good left foot. He wondered for a hot second about Grace Gushiken, then pushed that thought aside. Espers were evil, and Grace might have been many things — liar chief among them — but she didn’t carry the Intelligencer reek. Their arrogance was hard to miss. “Those assholes,” he said, with some feeling. He clenched his metal hand.
She noticed the motion. “Something personal, Captain?”
“Could be,” he said.
The silence stretched, and when she realized he would’t fill it with the story behind his metal hand, she turned away. Karkoski spoke to the cargo bay like it was a person, not looking at him. “You can understand why we’re interested in any ship leaving Arlington.”
“Well, shit,” he said. “You could have just opened with that. I’d have laid on a welcome party. A few beers. We could have looked around together.” He felt the ache in his missing arm, rubbed at the metal like it would make the pain stop. “People who can read minds are a cancer, Lieutenant.”
“Yes,” she said. “But if we’d warned you, and there was an esper on your ship, they might have rabbited. Or cored out your minds and left you drooling in your chairs. Hell,” and here she sighed, “they could have jumped ships, got on the Torrington.”
“They can’t core out minds,” said Nate, thinking, a fucking esper.
“Sure,” said Karkoski. “Sure.”
“Well,” said Nate. “I appreciate the heads-up. But what about Absalom Delta?”
“When a world goes dark,” said Karkoski, “it’s usually pirates. If it’s not pirates, it’s an uprising. We still have a Navy, despite there not being a war on, because of those two things. But an uprising would be worse. An uprising led by an esper? That would be disaster. So. Be careful. Report back. I hope it’s a faulty solar collector. I really do. But if it’s pirates, we’ll send in the cavalry. If it’s an uprising, we’ll send all the cavalry.” She considered him a moment longer, then turned towards the airlock. Hand on the sill, she paused. “Captain.”
“Yes, Lieutenant.”
“It’s a hard life out here in the black. Be sure you fly straight. An uprising? That can benefit the casual trader. Turn privateer, maybe pirate, and you can make real coin. But you’ll never win. The Empire didn’t.” And with that, she was gone, the airlock thunking closed behind her.
Nate considered the sealed lock, waiting for the clanks from the hull as the Torrington disengaged. He rubbed his chin, fingers rasping on day-old stubble. Nate thought about being on the losing side. He’d been there once before.
He wouldn’t be again.
• • •
Nate watched the bulk of the Torrington pull away. She was huge, no mistake. Ten decks, 5,000,000 tonnes depending on configuration, almost two klicks long, railguns, lasers, particle cannons, torpedoes, drop ships, oh my. Multiple reactors. PDCs and sensor arrays studding her entire length. The Republic had sent that to talk to the little Tyche. Because they were afraid of an esper on board.
He tugged on the straps holding him into the acceleration couch, a habit he’d picked up about the time he’d been tossed from one and lost an arm and a leg. “You always hear about them being sleek,” he said.
“What?” said El, from the Helm’s chair. Her voice was distracted as she worked her console, getting the computer ready for the Endless jump they were about to make.
The flight deck was cozy, enough room to stand up, move around the holo of the Enia system spinning in the air between them. Enough room to walk to the windows, look out at the Torrington, take in the view of the blue-green paradise of Arlington. He sometimes liked to call it the bridge, because it made him feel like the Tyche was big, important, wonderful. A dream made metal and ceramic, diamond hull to protect the soft souls inside from the harsh reality of space. But she was a heavy lifter, atmosphere-capable. She was also their home.
The holo of the Enia system showed Enia Alpha — Arlington’s world — orbiting a star. Alpha was the first planet from its sun, another three colder worlds stretching out behind it. The holo showed all the usual space junk around a world, satellites and rocks and whatever else hadn’t tumbled back down Enia Alpha’s gravity well. A dot marked out the Tyche, floating above Enia Alpha — he wouldn’t call that an orbit, more like a temporary abeyance of the natural order of things. A dot for the Torrington, markers showing the ship’s class, velocity, direction. Nothing unusual. Except there was an esper too damn close, and that wouldn’t show up on the system view.
He shook his head. All this talk about espers had got him unfocused. “The Torrington. Looks like a barge.”
El laughed. “She does. Gets the job done, though.”
Nate picked up something a little defensive in that. El had flown ships like that, before. Not now. Probably never again. “I didn’t … well. You’ve got to admit. Bit of a sow.”
She looked at him, the glow from the holo tinging her face with orange. “We’re all good, Captain. Navy, they make their ships to get a job done. The Tyche, she’s got a little more class. Like a dancer.”
Maybe when El was Helm that was true. She could fly the Tyche through a storm and come out without a drop on the hull. Real talent, and he was pleased to have her at the controls. Hell, when he was on the stick, the Tyche would move, but she wouldn’t dance. She only danced for one person. “How we doing with those jump calculations?”
“I figure us at seven to be safe,” she said. She tapped on the console, and the holo shifted in the air, cleared, then became a star chart. Six systems lit up between Enia and Absalom, seven jumps to take them there. Strictly speaking, you could jump the whole way in a single shot, but that was risky because you weren’t always operating with the latest data. You didn’t know if a star had shifted, or an asteroid had popped up somewhere. So you jumped a little at a time, scanned the stars, picked up the view from a new point in the sky. And, strictly speaking, you didn’t need to jump to a planet — but that was just good thinking. If something went wrong, it was helpful if it went wrong in common, agreed locations. There was a lot of space to get lost in, and sticking to systems increased — if only marginally — being picked up if you were in distress.