The Tyche was speaking to him. She was trying to warn him. He’d brought them too close to the planet. Far, far too close. They had moments before the rock swatted them out of the sky.
Gravitational anomaly.
“That’s right girl,” said Nate. “Gravitational anomaly is right. You bet your socks.”
Significant mass detected.
Back in spaceship school or whatever El had attended, they probably gave a whole semester on why using Endless technology next to a gravity well was a bad idea. Nate hadn’t been to those classes. Never even went to that school. All he knew was that using the negative space field of the Tyche this close to the gravity well would — best case — burn it out. Worst case? It’d peel the hull from the ship faster than a monkey with an orange.
Do not engage Endless Drive.
She was saying that because peeling the hull would be bad. But the gamble was worth it. First, because the Ezeroc weren’t here. The sky was full of planet, but it wasn’t full of the Ezeroc ship. When he’d asked El about sunbathing, she’d assumed — like he’d hoped — that he would take them to Absalom’s star. They could get pretty close before they melted to slag. She probably thought he had some crazy plan to take them on a run around the star, confuse the bugs with radiation or whatever. Nah.
His plan was far worse than that.
Do not—
They jumped.
• • •
Absalom Delta was outside their window again. The Tyche’s red warning lights were gone. The hull had not been peeled from them.
That was a plus.
“Captain!” said Hope, over the comm. “What have you done?”
“I don’t know, Hope, you’re the Engineer,” said Nate.
“You’ve … the Drive’s down,” she said. “We can’t jump.”
“How long until we can?” said Nate.
“Never,” she said.
“Never never?” he said.
“Never as in, not today,” she said. “There’s nothing there responding to hails. There’s … no … fuck,” she finished. The comm clicked off.
“Now I know we are all going die,” said El. “I know we will die, because Hope never swears.”
“She’s learning,” said Nate. “This is all going according to plan.” He fed a flight plan — more of a rough guide, if he was fair on the quality of his work — into the comm, ready to send to El. He keyed the comm again. “Grace.”
There was a long delay. Her voice, when it came back, was strained, her words clipped short. “Nate.”
“What’s going on in the cargo bay?” he said.
“Kohl and I,” she said. There was a pause. “We were talking. Working things out.”
“Okay,” said Nate. “I’m going to prep for burn. Are you strapped in?”
“Give me thirty seconds,” she said.
“You’ve got ten,” said Nate, as the Ezeroc ship snapped into view outside the window. The asteroid was charred, pieces of it still glowing hot from its trip to the star.
“I need thirty seconds,” said Grace, “or one of us will die.”
“Cap,” said El, “they’re coming towards us. Some kind of conventional movement this time. No jumping.”
“Ha! Take that, fuckers!” said Nate. Sending them close to the sun might have popped their version of an Endless Drive. Now that would be good news. Conventional thrust all the way. “El?”
“Cap.”
“Slow burn,” he said. “Nice and smooth. Suave.”
“How do you even fly suave? That’s not…” She trailed off, hands on the sticks. The rumble of the Tyche’s fusion drives kicked in, the ship jerking forward with a start. She spun the ship in space, the motion smooth and controlled, to run them away from the Ezeroc.
“Twenty seconds,” said Nate to the comm. He could hear his voice echoed over Grace’s comm as she made the ready room behind him. Clamps snapping as either she or Kohl was belted in. “Ten seconds,” he said.
More snapping. “God dammit!” she yelled.
“Grace?” He craned his neck, but couldn’t see them.
“Go!” she said. “We’re in. We’re safe.”
Nate keyed the comm to El, and gave her the flight path.
Her eyes widened, but she said nothing. She kicked the throttles to the stops and held on.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
El didn’t know whether to believe the whole alien-insects-that-can-read-your-mind thing. The idea was preposterous, like being told that Santa Claus was fake when you were three years old, at your own birthday party, with your face covered in cake and happiness. In this particular instance, her face wasn’t covered in anything like cake or happiness — happiness had taken the last exit, and was on its way to the casino with a pocket full of coins.
She shook her head. Exhaustion. Too much stick time, not enough rack time. The flight path Nate had given her was coming through in drips, one set of coordinates after another. El couldn’t plan. She couldn’t make the most of the Tyche, bringing the ship in soaring swoops and arcs through space. It was all hard motions, the sticks clattering against their rests as she jerked them left, right, up, or down.
In this case, down.
The Ezeroc ship was big, huge in their window. The Tyche was pitching a fit, alarms all over the holo, COLLISION WARNING this or IMPACT IMMINENT that. Rocks were sprouting from the surface of the asteroid like pollen rising on the breeze, ten, a hundred, a thousand. Nate’s path took them down, down to the surface. Down to where they’d already been. Down to where El had pulled them out from before.
The way she saw it, this was the third time she’d taken the Tyche through Absalom Delta’s sky with rocks burning around her. The first time, it had been a rush, something she could brag about. No pilots she knew were crazy enough to do it. Few had the skill. Second time, they were running, the Tyche straining for deep space and the clutch of an Endless Jump. This third time felt like it could be the last time. El had the tiger by the tail, and that tiger was angry as fuck.
The flight deck rattled around them, the deck underneath her acceleration couch shuddering. They were breaking atmosphere, going straight towards the planet’s crust. Not entirely straight — that ocean looks softer than it is. Nate’s flight plan had her pointing the Tyche at the ocean. Just the ocean, no mountains, no convenient hills to weave in. Just water, and at the speed they were going, it’d be like impacting against ceramicrete. A big shock, an expansion of fire and gas and water vapor, and that would be the last memento of the good ship Tyche, her luck spent trying to outrun an angry-ass bunch of aliens.
“Nate,” she said.
“Yo,” he said. It didn’t come out that clean, because they were pushing hard Gs. Throttles still at the stops, the fusion engines roaring out into atmosphere, a contrail of fire and radiation in their wake. Rocks, unable to keep up, slowed by the atmosphere. The sound he’d made was more like yer, his head pressed back against the couch’s rest.
“Tell me you’ve got a plan,” said El. Her own teeth were gritted against the acceleration, the Tyche shuddering and bucking under her. It’s okay, girl. The ship didn’t like this; she wasn’t made for it. The Tyche hadn’t been built to go nose-first into the ocean at seven times the speed of sound. The sticks under her hands felt alive, and for the first time ever El felt the Tyche fight her, bucking against her will.