“Hey, guess what?” Alex elbowed Carbon, who was just leaning against him reading in bed, and held his tablet up for her to look at, the ship headed their way finally close enough for the passive sensors to get a good picture. “They think we’re trash.”
She’d gone back to her usual method of dress after her experiment with his t-shirt the other day, sticking to jumpsuits as they’d done deep sweeps of engineering to clean up the area after all the repairs were finished. Loose objects and high speed did not go well together. She blinked at his tablet, head tilted slightly. “That is the Eohm ship?”
Right, she didn’t have the ship recognition training he did. “It is, and it’s a garbage scow. The massive keel with gravity plates to catch crap is a dead giveaway. No chance it’ll have FTL, and probably only defense weapons for debris. As far as threats go, it’s as benign as possible.”
“Ah, I see. This is good. What is the estimated time of arrival?”
He backed out of the still image and checked the data that had been skimmed from a few minutes of video. “Looks like about six hours.”
“And when will the waveride finish being computed?”
Alex tapped through a few apps and blanched. “About six hours.”
They both sat there processing this information. Carbon was the first to speak up, “I believe we should continue with our plan as it is. A calculated waveride has a fairly large entry to account for drift, correct?”
“Yeah. Given our situation, I made sure to keep the uptake phase very loosely defined. Should be a 150 kilometer window in any direction, based on our trajectory when it was initially planned. Worst case, the sublight engines are mostly undamaged and we can come back around if we get pushed.”
“Which way do you think they intend to send us?” Carbon drummed her fingers on her tablet, the screen covered in flowing Tsla text.
“I want it to be out of system, but the fact they’re not coming directly at us makes me think they will overshoot, then come around and push us into the star.”
She shook her head, “I do not like that.”
“Can’t say I’m a fan either. I agree with your assessment, we will stick to the plan. It’ll be cutting it close, but they aren’t leaving us a lot of options.” Alex checked the time and thought about trying to grab a nap for about a second before giving up on the idea. There’s no way he’d be able to sleep right now. “I’m going to double check the control console in engineering, you want to hang out?”
“If you do not need me, I will remain here.” She held up the book she was working on. “But do get me if you desire company.”
“I will.” He smiled and waved as he departed her room, stopping in the mess for a coffee and to break the unfinished computer core off the wall so he could keep an eye on it. It didn’t need to be anywhere near him for that, but he wanted it around so he could glance at the blinking red light instead of watching the progress bar on a tablet.
Coffee in hand and computer tucked under his arm, Alex headed back to engineering. Through the airlock and past the one good engine - now put back together as best they could get it, one side panel too warped to bolt back into place - estimated to be working at 70% capacity. A joke compared to what the ship had been capable of, but enough to get them underway.
His destination was the workshop between main engineering and the starboard engine, an area that also had a spare control console - it was primarily used when in dock, so the maintenance teams could move the ship without needing someone who had a brain implant. He set the computer core and bottle of coffee to the side and undid the fist-sized latches holding the console to the wall, unfolding it and latching it to the floor in its open configuration.
It was little more than an acceleration chair with a pair of control sticks rising out of the armrest and a stack of holographic projectors for instruments and a forward looking screen. Knowing that it could be pushed into use to actually control the ship in an emergency, the whole thing was lined with kinetic buffers and there was a neural wreath tucked away as well. It didn’t allow a proper interface like his now-defunct Amp would, but some Pilots preferred neuro instrumentation.
Alex slipped into the chair and hit the power switch for the console, the holo projectors warming up as the thick gel padding in the chair conformed to his body and offered customized support from his head to his knees. The instruments showed their current speed and angle of the ship in relation to the local ecliptic plane, and that was about it. With the active sensors off, it didn’t have much to process. He was a little surprised to see the little lights on the display that indicated his near field comm arrays were connected to the console. They were mounted in his back, which hadn’t seen nearly as much damage as the rest of him. Useless without the brain-side connection, but it was nice to know he wouldn’t need them replaced.
Everything seemed to be in order as he ran down the scant portion of the pre-flight checklist that he could at this point, leaving the console powered up as he moved on to double-check the workshop for anything that seemed loose or unsecure, bringing the computer core and his coffee with as he moved on to main engineering.
Yes, he and Carbon had already done this several times in the last day. There was nothing left to find and store or quickweld to the wall. No portion of the engine that hadn’t been triple checked. Even the encrypted SOS was still prepped and waiting in the buffer, queued to automatically send as soon as the drive was spun up. They were as ready to go as they were getting, save for the waveride computation.
Which is how Alex found himself back in Carbon’s room, sitting on the bed having a staring contest with the computer core’s little blinking red light. It was the watched pot that would not boil.
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“This is not healthy. Come along.” She said as she pulled him off the bed and dragged him into the mess.
Alex knew she was right, he’d probably been doing that for a few hours now, switching between that and rechecking the progress bar on his tablet, which is why he didn’t even protest. It was working, there was nothing he could do to speed it up, and staring at it sure wasn’t helping.
“It is not long now. We should be prepared to move as soon as it is possible.” She pressed a water bottle into his hand and gave him some straightforward orders with a thin, sad smile. “Hydrate yourself, use the bathroom, then meet me in the workshop.”
Alex thought that was actually pretty sound advice as he watched her depart, headed back to engineering. If things went to plan, they’d be in the Thackery’s Globule in less than an hour. He stretched his neck, chugged the water and hit the head.
It was finally time to get things done.
There was another plain acceleration couch in the aft wall of the workshop, set up exactly in line with the spare control console, an imitation of the old style two seat cockpits. It was fully installed, intended for the engineer to use whenever they might be experiencing some G’s and that might be about to happen. So it was no surprise that he found Carbon was already sunk down into it, the couch looking like a throne around her slender frame.
She gave him a little wave, that sad little smile still there. Things were about to change. They both knew it. Alex tried to smile back like he always did, and he might have. It didn’t quite feel like he made it.
Carbon had her personal AI clipped to her shoulders for the first time in weeks, in preparation for keeping an eye on the various systems that were under her purview, nearly all of which had been cold for months now. This was her domain and Alex was allowed to use the toys she maintained.
He got back into the console and pulled the harness down tight around his hips and shoulders, crammed into the gel padding, and pulling the neural wreath down over his head, the holo emitters shutting down in favor of the hud coming to life directly in the visual processing center of his brain. A few taps on the tablet got the waveride processing bar added to it, the tablet then crammed down between his hip and the arm of the couch.
The garbage scow finally showed up on the radar display at the base of his vision, a yellow triangle pointing up to denote where it was in relation to them and the local star, yellow for potential threat. Alex switched to a visual of the ship and sucked in a breath. “Fuck, they put real guns on those things.”
A quarter million kilometers closer and it was clear the Eohm had sent an older ship - the portions of organic matter visible between armor plates were grey, possibly sick. The perfect thing to send to deal with filthy xeno trash.
“What are they?” Carbon inquired from her seat across the workshop.
“I dunno for sure, but they’re configured like pulse lasers, medium wattage based on the size.” If the Kshlav’o was in perfect shape, it wouldn’t be an issue. He had danced around a vastly more dangerous threat from the Eohm and almost made it. But with just control sticks, two holes patched primarily with ablative foam, and a shield network that would just barely cover said holes, things were looking a lot more dicey.
“I trust your skills, Pilot.”
He wasn’t going to lie to himself and pretend she didn’t sound nervous. “And I trust yours, Lan.”
The last segment of the waveride finished, a quiet ding in his head through the wreath. The program began to stitch the three segments together as the Eohm ship slid past them in the darkness of space and began a deceleration burn. Slowing nearly to a stop before using maneuvering thrusters to come around to give them a push into the star. The fact it was old and likely dying was the only saving grace here. It simply couldn’t tolerate a hard turn.
The program dinged in his head again, the waveride compiled. He slid a finger across the console to feed it into the navigation subsystem so it would be ready to launch the moment everything else came on.
A great big red warning light came up in his field of vision.
Alex pulled his tablet out and drilled down into the navigation system with a staccato series of taps that were much harder than necessary. He read the machine’s statement, at first uncomprehending and then simply enraged.
> Error: Waveride path is outside safety parameters for single drive operation.
> Recalculate path with wider margin around local star or override and execute manually.
If he could have, Alex would have snapped the tablet in half. Tablets were more durable than he was, so he opted for a long and creative string of expletives instead.
“What is wrong?” Carbon didn’t sound worried yet, but there was a definite ring of concern in her voice.
“Waveride’s bad. We-” Alarms started going off in his head, passive sensors showing the Eohm ship in red now. Alex ripped the wreath off and his fingers danced across the console, silencing the alarm. Had he screwed up? He would have been able to make that waveride with his Amp, he knew that. Knowing that he didn't have it, he had specifically loosened the tolerances so that even a quarter of the normal power one engine provides would have been enough. “We were going to go too close to the star. Can’t force the ride without my Amp.”
“There is a way to bypass...” She trailed off, lost in thought for a moment before making a quiet, helpless noise.
It pained him to hear that, but Alex knew what she meant by it. There were ways that the AI could be fooled into thinking someone with an Amp was making the decision, but it would be hours of work with the primary AI on at full power. No time for that now, the Eohm ship had overshot them as it accelerated towards them, lining up to give them a shove towards the cleansing fire of the local star.
No, Alex corrected himself. It wasn’t the Amp that mattered. That was just the physical bridge between the meat and the machine. It was the index module that let the computer understand how to work with a specific individual's brain and acted as a sort of unforgeable key. Carbon didn’t have one because she didn’t have an Amp.
But she did have a neural interface.
“Your personal AI? Does it have a physical port we could connect to the ship AI?” Alex unbuckled himself and turned to look at her. She hadn’t been using the slick, shoulder mounted device much lately, but she was right now.
“Yes. I have installed a Human standard R33, why?” The ship rocked gently, the kinetic buffers flaring to life and arresting most of the sudden change of direction onboard.
Alex leveled his gaze on her antenna, currently plastered down against her head with worry. “What do you suppose the throughput on those are?”