The Tyche didn’t want to die.
“Got a plan,” said Nate, panting the words out.
“Does it involve dying?” she said. Because the Tyche doesn’t want us to die, Nate. She wants us to live.
“No,” he said, and released the next set of coordinates to her.
She almost cried out in relief. The coordinates took them along the surface of the ocean. Almost cried out, because it took them back towards the fallen city where this had all started. El thought about arguing, thought about saying fuck this, you crazy asshole, but there wasn’t time.
Also, she didn’t have a better plan. She was all action, or all reaction.
El grabbed the Tyche and wrestled her into a curve. We won’t die, she promised the ship in her mind. We’ll make it through. She hoped it was true.
The ship’s bucking and shuddering increased as El pulled the Tyche out of a nosedive and into a curve. Someone behind them groaned, either Kohl or Grace, it was impossible to tell. At the kinds of G forces they were under, there was a no gender, no differentiation, just shared pain, feeling like their bones were grating against the acceleration couches. Too much of this and they’d stroke out. If there were old people on the Tyche they’d have passed out already. El wondered what Hope was thinking, alone in Engineering, watching the readouts on the reactor, seeing the stress readings in the hull. All alone. She’d know if they would fall apart before El did. Hope could see it coming.
There was another groan, and El realized she was making it herself. She was having trouble breathing as the ship pulled out flat, and El closed her eyes. Just for a second, just to let the blackness at the edges of her vision go away.
“El,” said Nate. Her eyes snapped back open. She couldn’t turn to look at him, but knew what his face would say. Something like stay with me or I can’t fly her like you can. El’s hands were still on the controls, but the blackness was fading, the steady rumble of thrust at their backs pushing them through the atmosphere.
“Piece,” she gasped, “of cake.”
“Not quite,” he said. “Lower.”
“The fuck,” she said. “We’re hypersonic.”
“Need the air,” he said. What he meant, she realized, was that they needed as much air between them and the rocks as possible. To slow them down, make it possible to alter their course. And, with a little luck, get the atmosphere to burn the rocks up, get rid of some of the smaller ones.
“You’re. The. Boss,” she said, tipping the Tyche lower.
“On the deck,” he said.
“No,” she said.
“Are you,” he said, “saying you can’t do it?”
“Fuck you,” she said. Gasped it out, really, her body still feeling the relief of not being under crazy G forces. El knew when she was being played, but let herself get played anyway. Fifteen meters above the ocean she took them, their hypersonic velocity carving a trench in the ocean they passed over, a funnel of water rising in their wake. She worked her console, bringing up a topographical chart of the planet’s surface. The ocean was easy, a flat piece of glass rushing past underneath them. When they hit land, things would get more interesting. That city would need a piece of clever flying at this speed. The mountains beyond it would put them back in a steep climb. The holo on the flight deck continued to chart the path of rocks as they came in thick and fast, the air leaving trails of fire in their wake. El could see some of it out the window, orange burning in the night sky as they sped along just above the ocean’s surface.
That’s odd. Riding the deck was hard; it needed her focus and attention. But her focus and attention included the things they were flying towards. The air around them was full of falling rocks. El could weave the Tyche to avoid them, some by a significant margin, some falling in their wake but big enough to throw up huge gouts of water and steam. The Tyche was telling her that ahead was clean air.
Over the fallen city. The Ezeroc weren’t dropping rocks on the city.
Was Nate’s plan to hide them in the city? It made sense from a rocks-crushing-the-life-from-you perspective, but it wasn’t a long term plan. That city was full of Ezeroc, and their PDCs were almost dry. A couple dedicated bugs on the outside of the hull, a little bit of time, and the inside of the Tyche would be bug central. She didn’t look at Nate — she was focusing on flying too much — but she said, “Nate, please tell me we won’t land in that city.”
“Hey,” he said. “No peeking at the flight plan.” El wanted to look, because his voice sounded like he was smiling.
“Are you … are you having a good time?” she said.
“Hell no,” he said. “I’m having a great time. You know how I love to watch you work.” The city was approaching fast, the Tyche saying it would be on the horizon in moments. At their speed, visible would turn to in the past all too quickly. “Oh, hey, it’s time. Here you go.”
New coordinates filled her display. Charting a course from the middle of the city straight up. He was using the city as a kind of rock-free funnel into space again. Clever enough, except for the massive asteroid that would be waiting for them. “You know they’ll be up there when we get into the hard black, right?”
“You do your job, I’ll do mine,” he said. She spared him a glance then, because he sounded like he was having a good time. That one quick glimpse showed him craning to see out the window, like a kid having their first flight. That damn sword of his, still clasped in one hand. And yeah, he was smiling.
If the acceleration couches had allowed it, she might have shrugged. She’d always figured Nate for an idealist, a dreamer, and an overgrown child. It was nice to be shown she was right, before they all died in a fiery explosion.
El talked the Tyche into another climb, a ride back up the gravity well. The ship was tireless, nosing towards the stars like a hungry hound. Whether it was the Ravana’s heart beating in the Tyche’s chest, or the refit courtesy of the Gladiator, she was eager, keen in a way she hadn’t felt in all the years El had been the Tyche’s Helm. It’s possible that the ship was just happy to not be a thin smear of metal and carbon against the planet’s surface. Whatever it was, there was joy in the ship’s flight. That might have been what she’d seen on Nate’s face — his ship, his Tyche, riding the sky like she never had before.
“Don’t forget,” said Nate. “No gravity.” He meant the negative space generator that made Endless Jumps possible; it’s what gave them gravity when in space. The Endless Drive was fried, and wasn’t coming back online anytime soon. El checked the straps on her harness, more a habit than need, nodding to herself. All strapped in.
Ahead of them, the Ezeroc ship loomed at the edge of space. It was closing on an intercept course, and all the flight plan Nate had disclosed put the Tyche on an intersecting trajectory. “Nate,” she said.
“I see it,” he said.
“Nate,” she said. “It’s a massive rock.”
“I see it,” he said. “Be cool.”
“Did you … do not tell me to be cool,” she said. “This is hard. All of this is hard. You are getting me to fly without knowing my destination. Without knowing the next point in the destination!”