“What was that?” Hope’s voice came from behind and below, where the Engineer was working on something below the deck grating. There was a shower of sparks, the crack of electricity, and the Tyche’s console went dark.
“What,” said El, “did you do?”
“I thought you said something.” Hope’s head came up from where she was crouched, the rig strapped to her making her look like an insect. Articulator arms reached out from behind her back, smoke still trailing from the end a plasma torch. Her face was hidden behind the blank metal of the rig’s faceplate before it flipped up, revealing a face El had always thought far too young to be the Engineer of a ship, even like their little Tyche. Still, you couldn’t argue with results, and Hope got those results, pink hair and youthful looks aside. The captain seemed to have a way with picking up strays that were useful. It was hard to admit: strays like El herself.
“I thought you were fixing the ship,” said El.
“I am fixing the ship,” said Hope. “It is literally what I am doing down in this cramped compartment.”
“Hope, Captain says we need to be in the air. Will she fly?” She patted the console again. “Will my baby fly?”
“She’ll fly,” said Hope. “You worry about the cargo. I’ll worry about getting the magic smoke back inside these components.” The rig’s faceplate slid shut, and Hope vanished back below the deck. The crackle of arc welding started back up.
“Copy that,” said El, feeling herself smile. She wasn’t worried about Hope getting the Tyche back online; the Engineer knew the ship better than she knew her own damn self. El was more worried about where their cargo was, and where their deck hand was, because the captain didn’t pay El to lift heavy things. He paid her to fly the ship. She turned back to the console, lights already coming back on. She tapped in Dock Control, flicked the comm switch on, and said, “Dock Control, this is Tyche. Seeking confirmation of cargo delivery and launch clearance. Please advise, over.”
The communicator sat silent for a second before a man’s voice spoke. “Tyche, we have you on lockdown. No ships, in or out. Over.”
El sighed. One of those assholes. “Dock Control, this is Tyche. Please repeat your last. I thought I heard you say we were on lockdown. We have Republic clearance to launch. Repeat, Republic clearance. Over.”
“Tyche, I don’t care if you’ve got clearance from the Senate themselves. Your ship is on lockdown.” Then, after a pause, “Over.”
El drummed her fingers against the comm for a second. “Dock Control, let’s park that for a moment. Do you have a status on our cargo? Over.”
“Tyche, your cargo is waiting lifting of the lockdown. Over.”
“Dock Control, I’d like to understand what the relationship between lawful cargo being loaded onto my ship and your unlawful lockdown is. Please advise. Over.” El looked at the comm, waiting.
She didn’t have to wait long. “We feel you might try and escape lockdown, Tyche. Over.”
El laughed, keeping the comm on. “Dock Control, your feelings don’t come into it. We have lawful, I repeat lawful Navy cargo to come on board our vessel. Do not bring us into your family counseling session with the Navy.”
“Tyche—”
“Did I fucking say ’over,’ Dock Control? No, I didn’t. What I said was, give us our fucking cargo, or by God the heavens will open up and shell you and your miserable tower with the unholy vengeance of the Navy’s best and brightest lawyers.” She tapped the comm again, then said, “Over.”
There was a long pause. “Copy that, Tyche. Cargo has been released for your receipt. Over.”
“Thank you, Dock Control. Over and out.” El flicked off the comm, feeling the warm rose glow that could only come from putting a minor bureaucrat in their place. The Tyche seemed to share her feelings, the console coming alive under her hands. “My good girl,” she said, again.
• • •
El was waiting at the open doors of the cargo bay as the Dock’s automated loader brought the Navy’s cargo towards them. It wasn’t moving very fast, which felt a lot like Dock Control was still fucking with her. But it was okay: she felt the wind on her face, closing her eyes for a second. God, she loved flying, but she also loved fresh air and the sound of birds. Hard to get the latter with the former these days. Too much time inside a hull out in the hard black, not enough time with her boots on the ground. The captain — Nate — had promised shore leave. Two days did not shore leave make. She’d seen the inside of the dock, got wind on her face, and that’s it. Not that the dock wasn’t nice as far as concrete jungles went. The Tyche sat on a pad, open sky above her. The painted logo under her wings — a woman’s face, winking at you like she knew the secrets of the void — made El smile just like it always did. The Tyche herself? Older than her looks allowed, the sweep of her A-frame still elegant, the twin drives at her rear looking like they could still pound out nuclear fire as good as the day she rolled out of the shipyards.
A silver tube connected the Tyche’s docking area with the spaceport proper a couple klicks away. The tube was part of a network of walkways like any other spaceport, filled with confused, meandering passengers and ship’s crew in a constant hurry. Perhaps missing the inside of that wasn’t such a bad thing. Tyche’s pad was like a hundred others on Arlington, a collection of bays of different sizes for different ships. There were a lot of ships here, but that wasn’t too surprising. Despite Enia Alpha being close to the end of the Republic’s reach, it was a successful mining world. That attracted business, and interest, and even tourists.
El turned to look out across the docks, the ships clustered there, many with noses pointed at the sky. Tyche didn’t need to point; unlike those other ships she had more than fusion rockets at her rear to get her going. The Endless Drive could tease reality into looking the other way, sure, but it had to do that through physics El would never understand. Hope might, but she might not as well, because being a good Engineer wasn’t about theory, it was about practice. El would take Hope’s practical knowledge every day of the week, even Sundays, because she kept the Tyche flying right.
It’s just that not knowing how it worked itched, in a way El couldn’t scratch. She’d read the literature, talk about configurable energy density fields being able to … create, if that was the right word … negative space. Anti-matter to interact with matter. Throw in a little dark matter for gravitational lensing, and it’d suck a ship through space like water syphoned through a hose. Manipulate all that for traversing the universe? Sure. The same tricks could be used for lifting the Tyche, or giving the ship artificial gravity. It worked, which was important, but she’d like to know why. Or maybe understand how.
Why or how aside, the artificial gravity was nice. Freighters often packed some of the tech in an Endless Drive. Enough to get some gravitational lensing belowdecks for artificial gravity. Not enough for jumps, because most captains were happy to pay the Guild their extortionate rates to use their Bridges. The Navy still used Endless Drives in their frigates, but there were fewer of those to go around as the prevalence of Guild Bridges made travel between the stars faster and safer. Faster and safer was fine as far as El was concerned, but it took some of the fun out of things.