JUMP
28 Apr 2018Gosht
Blinking, she squinted tired eyes at the console’s flashing symbols. Lightly touching the control panel’s smooth surface, she checked the feed. It was going to take more than a fancy ship to get close to Ardathia without imploding. “Gravity down .5G”.
:Gravity shield .5g, Fex:
The decreased gravity made her stomach churn in anticipation of warp.
“Last feed”.
She grunted back and tightened the crash-web. Undocking procedures had begun. She ran another check in case they’d missed something. Fleet-style. Everything checked out.
"INFILTRATOR-1, you have departure authorization. Please follow standard automatic undocking procedures", said the white suited scancom over the tower's vid channel.
“Affirmative tower, warp ready”.
“A safe warp, Captain. Undocking procedures have begun”.
“Thanks tower, see you on the way back”, she changed to internal on the pickup.
"Take care of the undock, Asci, you have control until we're clear. Nothing fancy”.
:Thank you Fex, I have control. I assure you that I will undock using standard procedures:
She nodded; the A.I. was verbose enough for all of them. Dir monitored his board and remained silent.
“Commence undock. Mark”, intoned Starbuoy's bass voice in parting,
There - she felt it. A slight hull vibration before the console confirmed that automatic uncoupling procedures had begun. The ship's retracting umbilicals were nearly soundless. On the Drak they'd been a cacophony of rasps and shrieks that had fragged everyone’s nerves.
:Uncoupling and retraction of umbilicals is complete, Fex:
She nodded at the pickup. The couch massaged her between her shoulder blades. The crash-web was as comfortable as it got. The console winked blue. No need for the gaze-tracker.
“Tractor deployed”, reported the tower.
A distant jolt as the dock's mobile tractor engaged them, pushing them slowly out of the Orbital's spacedock. She followed its progress on the aft scanner, noting that the blue tractor had a large white Synchlone emblem branded on it. There was another soft nudge.
“Tractor disengaged”, said the tower.
She moved her hand over the console in a practiced sweep, checked to see if Asci had lit the auxiliaries.
“Thanks for the push tower, we’re OK on auxiliaries. Running silent from here, back soon enough”.
“No problem, Captain. Good luck”
She froze further transmission, coded com for input only.
“I’ll take over now, Asci”.
:Manual control initiated, Fex:
She swiped the auto requests from the tower channel into a background window of the console. Blue graphs showing vectors of direction migrated across her console. Primary display showed various external views. They were powered up, free of the station and pointing in the right direction for jump. She energized the auxiliary propulsion from standby status to ten percent power.
:Auxiliary boosters engaged: confirmed Asci, then began calling stats.
:Velocity 100 klicks:
:Distance to STARBUOY 2000 metons:
:Distance to Jump 999,0394520 metons:
:Velocity 1280 Klicks:
:Distance to STARBUOY 6700 metons:
:Distance to Jump 998,7367520 metons:
She checked the astrogator’s pulse. The lines were steady. Ten thousand metons was far enough.
“Hold the call, Asci”.
:Affirmative Fex:
She moved her gloved hand over the nav-console and energized primary sub-light propulsion. The turbines initialised with twin energy spikes that registered flickering console lights, smoothing out once the drives began to feed.
"Primary boosters engaged, Fex. May I suggest we shut down the auxiliaries?:
“OK to shut down the auxiliaries. Zero-g environment. Fatal override”. For Dir’s benefit she added;
”We’ll do this without the gravity shield, just like we’re going to have to when we jump. Don’t want to be scanned while we’re exiting half dead from warp. We’re going in hard and coming out the same way. Fleet-style;
“Asci, confirm stealth mode”.
:Stealth mode confirmed, Fex. Passive shielding. No gravity fields or transmissions of any kind. Commander Bollah, please confirm:
“Confirmed. Combat ready”. She could hear his smile.
“On arrival we’ll be kicked hard by G because we'll be accelerating fast in case we’re unlucky to cross traffic. Hope you enjoyed what you last ate”.
“Understood Captain. You punch it right and I’ll look forward to feeling bad”.
He sounded worried. That was the score. The console glowed in anticipation. She let the turbines go, the sudden weight on her chest pinning her to the couch, the ship shuddering as they accelerated rapidly away from Starbuoy into deep space.
:Sub-light Velocity 000111:
The turbines were still well short of maximum output. She increased their speed. After low gravity on Starbuoy, the extra G's were hard going but the dirty look Dir had given her at the lock made it worth it. She wondered if he knew how risky and painful the jump was going to be. It wasn’t only the ship that was an unknown quantity.
The Orbital receded to an invisible pinprick on aft scanner. Another distance flag. At a sub-light velocity of .0010, they were faster than a battle cruiser. She grinned into the acceleration. Red haze close, she cut back to fifty percent power and weight came off her chest. Nothing could catch them now.
She slid her hand into the glove. The astrogator immediately projected a holo that surrounded her with a 3D universal map of infinite translations to warp. Asci’s plot overlaid with her own path. A final nav-fix from Starbuoy. Core training guided her inside the star filled hologram. All else forgotten, she concentrated on the atoms ionised by the astrogator's liquid memory core until they formed the patterns she needed. Deviation showed no change. Console read blue. Inside the space time co-ordinator glove, her fingers intuitively overrode Asci’s course and reset the astrogator to jump two points closer to the trinary. Real time location - Desired real time location. The A.I.’s proposed course winked red then disappeared as her settings initiated. Vectoring the jump just short of flux and then some hard acceleration from the turbines. It was going to be torture warping into heavy G but if they survived that close to a trinary it would be worth it.
An unknown future waited.
She tried not to think any last thoughts.
:Distance to jump 10,000 metons:
She vectored the plot a point closer to Dara then punched it.
JUMP
(adapted from "Return of the White Lady" - © Michael Kawitzky A.K.A. Schwann - Cmndr Gosht - 1994-2018)