The day to test the Main Propulsion system is finally here. Again.

“Alright Mercer, CO is ordering Helm to begin with 1/3 and proceed to 2/3 at 30% A-M inventory remaining.” ET1 Gelnick says as the current Propulsion lead.

“Sensible, I’ll check the plasma programming and see if the transition can cover change appropriately.” I key in a small change to pre-ramp the plasma buffer before the surge of antimatter due to the bell change.

Starting at 1/3 was smart as it didn’t just flood the aft end with antimatter with a huge pop like the last time. We inserted a lot of sound mitigation in the room and in between the double hulls, but my baby still roared like a T-rex.

The maneuver was successful with some notable high temperatures in the new thrust cones, but nothing catastrophic under these loads. A full chem burn or a warp burn would likely put them out of commission. I recommend an inspection of the cone cooling system to Gelnick and he says . . . “Noted.” As soon as he says that I make sure to enter the readings in the logs and my concerns for higher thermal and pressure stress maneuvers.

Boy do I get a talking to from Gelnick. Something about logging it at the end of the watch after he’d reported it to engineering. You dismissed me, what was I to think? I don’t say that out loud, but it probably showed on my face.

“Hunsaker, keep the accelerator on Standby and the fields on HOLD while I,” he puts a lot of emphasis on “I” while leering at me, “Go talk to Senior Baiul,” then storming off and stumbling when the gravity decking ends.

Melissa, sitting next to me whispers, “What did you to that guy?”

“They called me into a meeting that he was briefing to engineering because he couldn’t answer all their questions. He blames that on me. Like fuck me for being a subject matter expert on Annihilation Propulsion right?”

“No offense babe, but it kind of sucks to know that we’re stuck fighting for one chief spot. When some MM1 that knows everything there is to know about the engineering parts of the ship and has people’s respect? That’s a hard act to follow. It doesn’t help that he’s a bit of a misogynist, but try not to antagonize your team mates please.”

I may have been humbled a little with my punishment, but my Penny knows best mentality hasn’t gone anywhere. Ugh, I’m glad Melissa doesn’t seem offended.

If it helps, I think that you’ve acted for the right reasons. You don’t have a very good eye for consequences.

Pfft, ain’t that the truth. Maybe help a little? Wait that makes no sense, you’re learning mostly from me, and you’ve only been observing humans for about a year.

You are surprisingly conflicted creatures that seem to have advanced via brute force and clever application of such force.

Yep, bunch of hammers looking for things to hit.

***

The heat distribution in the thrusters was caused by construction debris impeding the flow of our cooling measures. A flush and a blow and she’s fixed in two days. Now we’re back in our “Battle Stations” ready for a warp maneuver targeting the outskirts of the system identified by the Helper Sentry (or whatever it was called).

/Mercer, DE EA, CO’s wants you to look at the thruster angles again, they seem severe and dangerous/

/Copy, reviewing/

“Propulsion, head’s up. EA’s asking me to review the thruster angles.” ET1 Gelnick acknowledges with a ping.

I know that the thruster angles are angled closely due to the low 45% A-M burn we’re doing. Can’t risk scattering the antimatter or the warp won’t form. The data helm sends me is a thresholded chart in 5% increments. I mean, it won’t kill anyone, but I figure I can get them some leeway. I pull up the charts for A-M% power outputs based on bell order and the relative effectiveness of warp formation verses A-M% applied to the warp verses A-M released from my research notes. I have my HUD and Tessa scan these and then add in the concentration effect of thrust angle changes and ask her to crunch the newly-formed database for projected warp distance. Then we make a sweet curve based on A-M savings and ship’s safety . . . ew. It is not pretty at all.

Just because it’s not a continuous function, doesn’t mean that this data isn’t a work of art.

Did you just use a double negative? Proof that we are integrating: abusing the native language. She scoffs in my brain.

/EA, sorry for the wait. I . . . have a chart and a database for some corrections, but it’s not exactly easy to look at. FC1 should be able to make it HUD pretty in 10-15. If that’s too much for now, I made a separate table for A-M inventory range from 40-50% and 2/3 or FULL bell orders/

/The table will do. I’ll keep the dissertation in mind for the next maneuver/

From there, we smoothly progress through the checklist and land on conditions green for warp. Even warming up the cones went well with the cooling flush so with a warp order from the CO, Helm orders all ahead FULL and engineering pressurizes our suits. Two pops from some early reactions let us hear the point of no return before a loud bang and a shuddering slurp consumes the ship.

Your shields are much improved from the days of your incarceration.

I hear her voice as the dizziness fades and I take a look at my suit’s pressure readings. I pop Mellissa and My face shields before unstrapping and doing it for my extremely woozy team-mates. One even manages to thank me before they vomited.

How bad is the poisoning this time?

Yours and Melissa’s are negligible. The rest of the crew should be able to clear such a small jump in several weeks.

Nice, but that was only a . . . 10.1 ly jump. Compared to the 500 ly jumps they’ll have to start making. They’ll have to be lucky to live through it all without a swarm to assist them.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

Or at least time to process their mutations before they start piling up. Mutation runaway is nearly always lethal.

That’s . . . okay, that’s frightening. Especially considering Andromeda almost pushed one on me before correcting it. I shudder at the thought of the powers involved in that token cash in.

/Remain at your stations. We are executing an emergency reversal maneuver/

I look over to Gelnick, he’s still staring at the deck stabilizing himself. Ah shit. Oh well.

/EA, DE Mercer, recommend using port side aft thrusters as starboard side might flash from Plasma transfer piping/

He pings his receipt, probably recovering also.

“Alright, Hunsaker, let’s re-align main thrusters to chem and spin up the port side thrusters.”

She too looks over at Gelnick and mouth’s a silent thank you. “How bad is it that we have to do this emergency reversal?”

“We went a little too far, and with the distance covered by the initial testing, we’re on course to collide with a gas giant that if it doesn’t kill us, getting flung into those close-orbiting binary stars would totally do it. Oh, what? Tessa, what’s the composition of the planet on the far side of the star, the one with the blue-green atmosphere.”

“I hope that Tessa is your AI and not some other woman you’re seeing.” She raises an eyebrow at me.”

I get a flash in my HUD telling me to initiate rotation burn. I hit the appropriate buttons as they come up. Mini-games for alertness, yeay!

It’s a rocky planet with a somewhat compatible air-like atmosphere, with high atmospheric sulfur content.

“Holy shit. Yes Mel, Tessa is my AI, and she just told me that there’s a rocky planet with only slightly toxic, breathable air!!!”

“But there’s a gas giant inside that orbit? Isn’t it too far out to be habitable.”

“It’s a hot binary star system Mel, the habitable zone starts further out. Oh, Universe, there are so many papers speculating what I’m seeing right now!”

“Calm down, nerd. We have to survive this first.” I punch Melissa in the shoulder, but I can’t stop grinning.

SPACE IS SO COOL!

“Yeah, yeah, let’s start increasing cooling to the field generators to get the starboard thrusters cooled down. This rotation is going much faster than the cooling is. And we’ll be headed into a A-M burn after this I think.” I start tapping the fluid systems diagrams, “Can you spin up the collider and begin generating plasma?”

Melissa pings affirmative.

“Propulsion, we could use your extra eyeballs.”

“Ugh, Mercer, would you stop talking for five minutes?” Gelnick replies.

/Sure, Gelnick, but if someone doesn’t start checking if the collider is aligned properly I’ll have to get someone in Aft Machinery to do it./

He grumbles into his mike. “I can’t believe you didn’t check this before you turned it back on.”

/ET1, we need A-M to make it out of our current trajectory and a massive gravity well. We’ll die if we don’t. But if there are minor field imbalances or transfer alignment issues we can work around, we need to know. Unless you want to take over managing thrust and coolant so I can do it?/

/Fuck you Mercer/

I chuckle at that. Should be a fun log to read.

“Propulsion, do whatever you have to start loading antimatter, NOW.”

/EA, Mercer, request permission . . ./

/Granted. Don’t mess it up/

“Engineering, need eyes on Collider monitor station, check in. Fire team in propulsion standby aft valve station and prepare to move aft in steam kit.”

/Collider Monitor checking in, field strength yellow/

/Engineering, we’ll need another TG on the collider/

/Copy Mercer, transfer conditions in progress/

“This is the XO, unload non-essential busses in forward compartment and the HAB and transfer to battery.”

/Oh hell yeah, Collider Monitor, keep us updated. Shifting Collider to A-M generation/

“Mercer, the ship is going to fall apart, isn’t it?” Melissa hooks her foot around mine, pulling our legs together.

“Not before we pull this off, I won’t let it.” Yellow’s break out across the board and we’re already at increased flow and field current.

/Increasing collider field strength, let me know when the magnet temp readings start toeing red./

/EA, DE Mercer, 5 min to sustained 1/3 Main Propulsion./

/How long can you hold it?/

/Oof. 15-20? Depends on how much of the collider we want to repair after/

Collider checks in maintaining high-yellow on mag and cooling systems. It gets hot in Propulsion Control, but not hazard bad, and after 5 minutes, the CO orders the Helm to all ahead 1/3. We shudder in a rhythm. After about 10 of my proposed 20 minutes, new navigation projections come in. They’re not great.

The big brains in Navigation come up with a hair-brained trajectory that shoots us between the binary stars, but it flicks us away from the gas giant and toward the rocky planet with an atmosphere, and most importantly, gives us more time to slow down. So with A-M thrust cut, and maneuvering thrusters on full blast, we sling shot around the stars going backward.

We’re a little close to the larger star, so the whole ship heats up and I have to start slapping ice runes in people spaces. Can’t do that across the whole ship though. After some indeterminate amount of time, I hear a squawk on the ship’s main com circuit “MERCER! Get those damned thrusters back online.”

Fuck, I’m not on station. I float quicky through engineering and aft machinery and sprint through propulsion to see Gelnick and Melissa tapping their consoles with panic on their faces—a lot of sweat too.

He’s in my seat, so I pick up his tablet and key it into my HUD and get back to work. Port side is fucked. At least the thrusters and the main thrust bottom left. Main thrust top may have some extremity damage, but by as angry as the captain sounded, I should risk it.

“Propulsion, strap in. pressure suits on. Both firefighting teams move aft with hoses, engineering, prepare relief team.”

I tell Gelnick and Melissa to isolate 7 o’clock thrust cone and when they finish the re-alignment I order the fireteams hoses on.

“Captain, we’ve got 5ish minutes until I have to vent propulsion, then 10-15 before we’ll have to abandon the space for air concerns. Helm, we’re thrusting off balance. Ready to answer up to AA-2/3”

The ship holds together, miraculously, but we really need to get some shields on this space whale. With propulsion vented and our air running low, I tell engineering that I’m transferring propulsion control to maneuvering and reactor control. I stuff Gelnick in the hyperbaric chamber after he looks horrified when I teleport Melissa to Aft Machinery. I find my other non-air pack team-mates and take them there too.

My Aether Walking control was sloppy at the end and I ended up slamming me and my last travel mate into some equipment. I make sure everyone’s masks are up before hooking in and just floating for a minute to recover.

I help maneuvering with propulsion control until my timer for the fire teams starts flashing. I stop venting the space and teleport the two groups out. This time, I vomit from the massive headache I’m suffering.

You are suffering from Will fatigue without the normal tiredness associated with it. The dissonance and flood of adrenalin is what’s causing the pain and the sickness.

With our fireteams out, and my not being able to get the fire team relief in the space in a short time, I vent propulsion one more time, and start shifting the collider back to standby.

/EA, I have to shut down the transfer system, that gives us 15% A-M and enough plasma not to blow up the ship with the Annihilator, but she can’t take anymore, Sir./

/Copy, Mercer, concur. Re-align for chem thrust/

/Sir, that is not recommended, but . . ./

/Noted. Do it./

I wait to re-align the melty part of the ship last, basically until the thrust maneuver is ordered. Ordered it is, AA FULL chem thrust. The aligned thrusters spark immediately and then I align the third while getting yelled at for not doing it earlier. It sparks up fine, but heat is quickly a problem and then a boom sounds against the hull with a small shudder when that thruster goes down. With 20% chem inventory, Helm is ordered to stop all thrusters.

I look at the navigation data and see we are in a Geo-sync orbit with the rocky planet with a blue green atmosphere. By Andromeda, we did it. The crazy asshole on the bridge actually did a Captain thing! Half the crew has heat injuries, but we effing made it!!

I squirm in a zero grav shimmy “Imma put my feet on that planet, Imma put my boots on that beautiful beastie.”