Chapter Eighteen - Pain Engine

Space travel didn't open up until some crack-head two-cored madman decided that year-long trips to even the nearest planet were too damned long.

His name was Robert Pain, and he died in agony.

Robert was a Navy Seal of the former United States, turned NASA astronaut, then ISA astronaut. He had four moon missions under his belt, and one Mars-Earth mission delivering supplies to the first Martian colony. He was, by all accounts, a genius engineer.

Smart as a tack. Not someone you'd want to step on.

Robert got his first core because he earned it.

He got his second by ripping it out of the body of a crewmate in the early months of his second trip to Mars.

Some say the radiation got to him. Some say it was his core fucking with his head. Others suspect that it was the other guy's love of country music.

In any case, being stuck in a small late 2000s shuttle with a corpse didn't do Robert any favours. He went a little batshit.

And then he made it to Mars six months early, his body wired into the ion-thrust mechanism of his ship. He was a gibbering madman by then.

But hey, the engine he tinkered up worked, and that's all that mattered.

He'd used up the colony's entire spare part supply, so a few sacrifices had to be made, but those few people who starved, or who ran out of oxygen were swept out of the history books along with Mister Pain's more eccentric ideas and actions. The system remembered him as the guy who invented the Pain drive.

The modern thing was nothing like what Robert had dreamed up, but some of the early principles still applied.

"Alright, so, you've gone hard G before, right?" Twenty-Six asked. She was quickly passing a washcloth over one of the two crash seats, supposedly the one that Ivil would be using. The seat looked older than Twenty-Six, with cracked faux-leather and mismatched straps. Not that it really mattered to her, but she was used to people generally pushing a certain level of luxury towards her.

The crash seat she was assigned on the Star Dreadnought had heating, cooling, massage therapy, its own AI sub-system, and a full entertainment suite. It would be able to keep an egg intact in full 10G emergency combat manoeuvres without shaking up the yolk.

Ivil didn't use it, because she didn't particularly care about momentum and inertia, but she'd nonetheless grown used to the luxury.

"I've been through some, yes," Ivil said.

"Ah, but not on a beaut like the Held Together," Twenty-Six said with a grin. "The average transport will use a slow 1G burn over a longer period so that no one's uncomfortable. I hear that cruise ships will only go up to .9Gs, even. This old thing will be hitting four and a half! The captain likes quick, short burns like that."

"Any reason why?" Ivil asked.

"It's a bit cheaper with these engines. You don't want to have them working for too long or they overheat, so it's a balancing act. And it helps with pirates."

"Pirates?" Ivil repeated. "They're an issue?"

"Not if you're big, heavy, look like you're not worth the trouble, and are burning fast and hard," Twenty-Six said with a grin. "Don't worry about them. We hardly ever get any issues with pirates. Besides, big Martian fleet, right? They won't try anything so close to that."

Ivil nodded. She wasn't as confident in the intelligence of the average pirate as Twenty-Six was. Opportunists would often see things that others missed. And often see things that others knew were dumb fucking ideas, then they'd do that anyway.

The reason so few people were opportunists was because most of them silently removed themselves from the gene pool.

"I see. I think I can manage four and a half Gs."

"It'll only be for two hours or so," Twenty-Six said. "We're lucky, Ceres is in a good spot for travelling to Jupiter. We're not as close as they get, but we're not far either, and we can slingshot around Ceres for a final little boost."

"Do you do astro navigation?" Ivil asked.

Twenty-Six shook her head with a blush. "No. Ah, I was just listening to Missy earlier. She's really good with that kind of thing."

"Sounds like you look up to her," Ivil said.

"Yeah! She's like a hot older sister."

"Hot?" Ivil asked.

Twenty-Six's blush deepened. "Uh. You... misheard."

"I see," Ivil said. She held back a bit of a smile. Twenty-Six's lack of self-control wasn't something Ivil would ever accept in herself, or in a subordinate, but it was still... strangely endearing.

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"All clean!" Twenty-Six said as she stepped back.

Ivil wasn't sure if she'd claim the same. The seat was still cracked and covered with old stains, but it would do.

A tone sounded across the ship, and Twenty-Six jumped. "Gotta stow the last of my stuff, one sec! Get yourself sat down in the meantime, I'll help with the straps."

"That's fine, I can figure it out," Ivil said as she took the seat. It was mounted on a rotating pillar jammed into the floor, with two axis of motion and a pair of adjustable supports for her legs. The limited degrees of motion would mean that at certain angles, the seats wouldn't be able to be in the optimal position to negate Gs, but beggars and choosers.

Another tone came over the ship's PA, then the captain's voice. "Everyone better be in a seat. Twenty-Six, are you good?"

Twenty-Six ran over to a wall-mounted PA and pressed her thumb against it. "Will be in a minute, Captain!" she said.

"Can you check on our passenger? We've got an empty seat up here," the captain said. "Miss Ville is delaying us."

"Ah, no, Captain, she's here, in my extra seat. We're all good! Gimme two to check on her and get into my crash couch and we'll be ready!"

"Received," the captain said. "We're unhooking in five."

Twenty-Six raced around the room, tossing the last few loose items into crates, then locking those up. Finally, she tugged down a pair of screens from the ceiling and fixed them into place above her seat.

"Alright," Twenty-Six said as she buckled herself with one hand. The other was reaching out towards the screen which was at arm's length for her, and tapped a few prompts. One of them lit up with a camera feed of the ship's exterior, with more feeds along the bottom. The other opened to a diagnostics page, several small boxes with scrolling information that Twenty-Six scanned with ease.

She slipped on a microphone, one with a thin tiara that locked it in place around her head so that it wouldn't fly off the moment they moved. "Captain, engine three's being itself again, don't let Missy throttle her too much."

If there was a reply, Ivil didn't pick it up as the Held Together shifted.

Being stuck in an inclined seat like this reminded Ivil of being at a dentist in all the worse ways. She tilted her head to the side and watched as the Held Together was slowly pushed out of its berth by a long, telescoping arm.

Once the ship was out of the inner section of the hangar, the large clamps holding it in place came loose. At the same time, the Held Together's manoeuvring thrusters kicked in with a rumble that Ivil felt through the seat.

She watched as the ship slowly turned to face away from the Crevice. There wouldn't be a big boost, not just yet. They were both too close to the station and too close to the traffic around Ceres, which was still busy, even with the Martian fleet hanging out nearby.

The fleet was a large, obvious blip on the Held Together's IFF-scans, but then, so were some hundred odd-other ships all within a few thousand kilometres.

"Here we go," Twenty-Six said.

The Held Together's engine came online fully, and the ship lurched forwards. Not too quickly, but definitely in a jarring, uncomfortable way.

Ivil kept an eye on their relative speed. They were accelerating at a balmy 3.2 m/s2. Barely enough to inconvenience.

"Huh, that's new," Twenty-Six said.

Something crunched, then clanged. The sound travelled down the ship like something poking a stick into a metal fence while running by.

"I'm assuming that's not supposed to happen?" Ivil asked.

"Uh," Twenty-Six said. "Well... I can't tell what broke, so I'm sure it's fine?"

"Thank you. I appreciate the reassurance. Are there spacesuits in this ship? Emergency ones?"

Twenty-Six looked a little squeamish. "Not in here?"

"Fantastic."

"Don't worry! She's going to live up to her name. Trust me!"

Ivil looked at the young mechanic, then nodded. "I think I will."

It wasn't like she'd suffer much if things went catastrophically wrong. Probably. Though she wondered if she should go through all the trouble of saving the entire crew if a disaster did happen. One of them was her soulmate, after all.

"Almost far enough to light up the thrusters, and I'm reading... greenish-orange across the board. Fire her up, Captain!" Twenty-Six said. "And Miss Ville, hang on!"

***