Alex carefully crept the GX8 along the flightline, right up to what he assumed was the launch marker on the ground, and brought it to a stop. Hovering there on the gravitics while waiting for the very impenetrable capital-ship class shielding that currently obstructed the shuttlebay exit to be lowered.
“That is correct, we will be taking the Masamune. No, send my shuttle along as well, better to have it should we wish to depart at different times.” Eleya had figured out the comms quickly, holding a headset up to her face with the earcup tucked partway into the fluffy triangle of her own ear, and was now getting them clearance to depart. “Keep the security detail on there as well. I have my guard, but this will be a good practice. We will take advantage of that.”
He had slightly jumped the gun. Set off a lot of alarms when he lifted off, which as it turns out was something you were supposed to ask to do first. Which he knew. It was a stupid mistake driven by excitement that he should have managed better, particularly while in command of a ship, particularly with the fucking Empress sitting behind him. Lesson learned, no harm this time.
Based on what he’d heard so far, their escort wasn’t ready, so he went ahead and landed again while they waited. Used low-ready on the landing gear since it didn’t sound like they’d be disembarking. It was a neat feature that was largely not found on modern ships, which just put the exterior doors in more convenient locations so the struts didn’t need multiple settings.
Gave him time to actually dial in the destination, too. Not like he had a line of sight on McFadden. It wasn’t even a speck, a hundred and ten million kilometers away, and he was facing the wrong direction. Navicomp said they could do it in two hours, if they pushed the envelope of the inertial dampers. It didn’t even have kinetic buffers, which now that he was sitting in the cockpit of a real GX8 that could theoretically turn him into a very fine paste if not for a host of safeties, felt like a big issue. That seemed like something Carbon would have a fix for, or at least an idea on how to improve.
“Excellent. Would you verify the speed limits on the diplomatic lanes? Yes, very good. It is quite the distance, that will make it much more tenable. This channel will be open, let me know when we have clearance to depart.” She clicked the mic off and set the headset down, brushing the fluff in her ear out.
He had a pretty pertinent question waiting for her. “Hey, uh... how many g’s are Tsla’o capable of handling?”
There was a long pause. “That translation comes through as a question about how many of the seventh letter of your alphabet we can manage. Given it is a single letter, I imagine it is quite a few.”
Got him pretty literally there. Suppose it could have been worded better. “How many gravity of acceleration?”
“Gravity, as in the gravitational constant?”
“No, a ‘gee’ is the gravity of Earth. Denoted as a lowercase ‘g’ in physics, while the constant is a capital of the same letter.”
“Of Earth. The planet I am not from and have never visited?” Eleya had gotten a little snippy about the alarms. “I would just happen to know the mass of it and thus be able to calculate the local gravity so I could compare it to the gravity of a planet I am more familiar with?”
He waved her off. “Alright, jeeze. I get it.”
She rolled her eyes as loudly as possible, a huff punctuating her annoyance. “Tell me you have some other metric to calculate acceleration rather than, what is that, a multiple of how fast something falls on your planet?”
“How about meters per second squared? Translator like that one more?”
“Is that a Human second or a Tsla’o second?” She asked, absolutely deadpan before a hint of humor curled into her words. “Those are more standard, I should be able to calculate the difference without much trouble.”
He listened to her unlock her comm and start tapping away at it. Even if they didn’t push the engines past what the dampers could manage they’d be there in plenty of time. Alex locked the controls and slid the pilot’s seat back from the ready, twisting around to look at Eleya.
She glanced up at him for a moment then returned to tapping away at a conversion calculator.
He’d been going back and forth on the idea of the intrusion package for the last few days in the few moments of free time he had. Not so much about the legality of it, as something like this was likely just as illegal as the monitoring software that the ONI had planted in his head. Just the morality of it.
Alex turned away, sitting back in the seat as he pulled his own comm out and sent her a message.
Eleya didn’t react to his message but the reply came quickly.
She cleared her throat, “it seems to be about fifty meters per second squared, before you get into requiring special equipment or dampening.”
“Oh, that’s well within the envelope.” That was right around five g’s, so they could squeeze a little bit of fun in.
Eleya locked her comm unit and slipped it back into her daman, idly poking through the computer at the navigation station.
How the fuck was she doing that? Did she get a comm link implanted too? He checked who he was sending messages to, and yes, it was Eleya.
He had been heated about this, sitting there with all those interface needles laced into his head, ready to fight about who got to keep what until somebody put a gun to his head. It still rankled him, absolutely, and thinking about it rekindled the flame easily.
She laughed and continued exploring the local system map on the navicomp.
Alex didn’t react to that. He really wanted to, but he kept himself nice and orderly, save for an annoyed sigh.
He could see her scrolling through nearby systems on the HUD, none of which they could reach without a ferry if they wanted to be there in a reasonable amount of time.
“Who in the hells are you talking to?” Eleya inquired, probably covering for his sudden burst of emphatic thumbstrokes.
This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.
He tried to dial himself back a little bit, reel the emphatic typing in to ‘disagreeing with a friend’ levels. He tapped out an addendum quickly.
“I enjoyed it. The twist was expected, but it came together well at the end. Kanas’ falsetto was legendary, may she rest.” She clicked her way out of the navicomp and adjusted the straps on her harness. The radio chirped and her hands returned to the controls, lifting the headset to her ear again. “This is the Masamune. Cleared, third in line? Excellent, thank you.”
She set the headset down. “Did you hear that?”
“Third in line, yeah.” Alex watched the outer shielding dissolve, leaving only the ship-permeable forcefield keeping the atmosphere in.
“Good. There are no speed limits on the way there, by the way. The only limitation is that no FTL may be used.” She set the headset down and checked her harness again. A real vote of confidence.
The first shuttle launched from the other bay, proceeding out at a lackadaisical pace. Alex slid the pilot’s seat back up to the ready position and fired up the gravitics, retracted the landing struts, popped the shields on and waited patiently as he tapped out one last reply.
He clicked the screen off and slipped it into a cargo pocket as the second shuttle rose from behind the GX8 and glided over them, turning down to slide under the belly of the carrier. He minded his manners and waited until it was 500 meters away before nudging the throttle forward and easing it out into space, following the same path they took... though he did get a bit fancy with it.
Alex let the ship glide out straight for a hundred meters, well past the Sword’s shields, and rotated it using just the maneuvering thrusters. Pointed the nose down 90 degrees and spun it a full 180 at the same time so the cockpit would be pointing ‘up’ in relation to the carrier when he turned under. The safeties were on, of course. Alex couldn’t actually turn them off without disabling the ship, so they never experienced more than three g’s of force. Eleya still grunted behind him as she was slid around in her chair.
This was a high performance ship and by god he was going to have a little fun with it.
He goosed the throttle for real this time, jetting away before switching the flight assist on and burning around the underside of the Sword like he was flying in atmosphere. Nothing too wild yet, he was playing nice with Tsla’o airspace.
They slipped away quickly, a kilometer and then two clicking by as he aimed it into the diplomatic lanes that would take them to McFadden, dismissing warnings that this was only for diplomatic craft and they could be fined or arrested for using them without proper authorization. Despite the desire to just crank the throttle all the way open, he stayed the course.
The Tsla’o shuttles were technologically five generations ahead of the GX8, if not more. They’d have no trouble matching his speed in space, or exceeding it. A bit of a letdown, yes, but blowing past the escorts was a stupid idea, and he wasn’t really in a position to do stupid stuff anymore. Selected the second shuttle and set the navicomp to follow it at safe distance, locked at a mere one g felt acceleration, then closed the cockpit armor. Nothing much to look at right now.
He slid the chair back and plucked the pilot’s eyes from the little storage nook in the seat and slipped them on. A slightly macabre name for what was just a wearable hud. Classic tech that looked like a pair of glasses, giving him a handy way to keep an eye on things without having to actually be in the chair the whole time. Maybe it was just a trip to the head, maybe you wanted to go mingle a little during the multi-hour jaunt.
Theoretically, this ship could be piloted by a single person and sent sailing across the solar system if you wanted. Be a long trip, though.
“Is that projecting into your eyes?” Eleya inquired as he turned around and stood up, leaning against the acceleration.
He shrugged. “Yeah, basically. Told you, this thing is a classic.”
“Turn the ship around, I will take my shuttle.” She unbuckled and followed him into the main cabin. “More seriously, I understand that there is a bar in here, allegedly stocked with Human made alcohol. I must admit, I am curious as to what Humanity produces.”
“Let’s find out what they left on board.” The wet bar was quite obviously straight at the back of the cabin. Eleya’s guards were sitting in the first two seats, cloak off as they were buckled in. The juxtaposition of those luxuriously plush, white leather seats and the military hardware sitting in them was funny. “Hey guys.”
It was pretty much what he expected for powered armor. Gray armor plating over a black undersuit, full helmets that echoed the shape of their heads. Thin slits for the eyes, green glass surrounded by a network of sensors. They did not seem particularly bothered by him, at least.
Alex crouched down in front of the cabinet and popped the doors open. “Well, I’ll be.”
“I am unfamiliar with that saying.” Eleya leaned over his shoulder, looking in at the rows of neatly restrained bottles.
“It’s an exclamation of surprise. Looks like they stocked this thing up before it was put into your custody. All of these bottles are new. Well, unopened at least.” Several of them had been aged decades, and the oldest bottling date he could see so far was within the last ten years. “Good selection, too. All the famous spirits... Someone sent along the most expensive sampler I’ve ever seen.”
“Ah, delightful. What should I try first?” Eleya sounded quite interested in this.
“Let’s see... How fast would you say those drop ships you flew were?” Every group of pilots had a stereotypical go-to liquor. It was split along the military and civilian divide, as well as fast and slow categories of ship - generally broken down by the amount of acceleration the ship’s frame can handle. Fast military tended towards bourbon, while slower ships went whiskey. Fast civilian was tequila, slow vodka. There were a thousand variations of course - the Scoutship program preferred rum for reasons unclear, and apparently every Trailblazer had its own moonshine setup, if not a more proper distillery.
Eleya mulled that over. “Not particularly fast, they were not intended for anything more extensive than troop deployment. Seven hundred kilometers per hour, in atmosphere.”
Slow, then. He patted himself on the back for not saying that out loud. “Whiskey it is.” He pulled the bottle of Jameson and stood, rummaging through the drawer for a corkscrew. A few moments of messing around with that and he had a half-full lowball held out to Eleya.
She took it and sipped away. “Hm. That is unexpected.”
Alex crammed the cork back in it and set the bottle back in the rack, closing the doors. Everybody else on board was doing a job right now, no point in asking around. “How so?”
“It feels remarkably familiar. I have not had this, but it is not alien at all.” She took another sip and swirled it in her mouth, ruminating on that.
“It’s distilled grain aged in a cask.” That was most amber liquors, to his understanding. “Whatever that stuff you gave me at the restaurant was reminded me of this.”
She nodded. “Grain water, yes. I can see the similarity of the two.”
Alex blanched at that probably very literal translation, and then shrugged it off. Wasn’t like he did a lot of drinking nowadays. “Well, if you want anything else, feel free to explore. I’m gonna go bask in the warm glow of those antique monochrome holos.” He said, sliding past her and heading to the cockpit again. There wasn’t anything to do, aside from monitor things on a much bigger display, but his mind was wandering back to his earlier dilemma.
Was this moral. Was it right, was it even the threat he imagined it could be?
He slipped into the pilot’s chair and put the glasses back in their nook. Nearly an hour and 45 minutes to their destination, and they were still accelerating. Alex laughed. The shuttles were probably having to go easy on the power so they didn’t leave him in the dust. Sure, it could do a ton of stuff they couldn’t in atmo, and looked cooler even standing still, but the advance of technology had left the GX8 behind.
He still loved it. It was fantastic, and the little bit of playing around with it he had done felt just like he had expected. That he’d been gifted a ship that he had always wanted, that cost more than his parents house, the day he was supposed to deliver a intrusion package to his own government itched at the back of his mind.
Yes, she said it was supposed to be for Winter’s Nadir, their Christmas-like holiday. Just given early. Which, fine. Eleya has been acting differently since she got her implant, and probably at least her hearing fixed. Who knows what else she had been hiding. Whatever the extent of her healing, she was legitimately more pleasant to be around.
She behaved more like how Alex thought a family member should. The brief snippets of his family she had seen wouldn’t have been enough to inform her of that. Could it have been a front? Certainly. He thought Eleya had the control to do that. But what would it gain her?
Alex knew Eleya wanted to go back to being the aunt that doted on her niece. He believed her, and knew that she couldn’t. Nothing would turn back what had happened between them. Perhaps the trust could be rebuilt.
Perhaps she would settle for doting on her nephew for a while. He would be enthused by those easy things like ships.
That felt reasonable to Alex. It’s not like this gift was free from strings, either. He was still the backup plan if the Empire fell. If the GX8 had kinetic buffers and modern inertia dampers, it would be a proper beast in space. Outrun just about anything.
All of this felt like enough evidence that Alex was willing to believe the ship was not actually some sort of bribe to encourage him to keep the upload where he might have reconsidered.
Carbon hadn’t spoken much about what they were giving away, or the intrusion. She was annoyed that they had built an AI for something like this, but that hadn’t made her say anything about not going through with the upload. His wife clearly didn’t like that they had uploaded so much unwittingly, and she very much did want to know who was behind it.
So did he.
When they arrived on McFadden station, the ONI would get everything they wanted and more.