Chapter Eighty-Eight - Ready to Go

"We're ready to go, captain!" Twenty-Six said. Her face was displayed on a little screen currently capturing the inside of the engineering room at the back of the Sappho. She grinned and gave them a wave before falling back onto a seat and buckling herself in.

The bridge was pretty quiet at the moment. Ivil was in the captain's seat, legs crossed while she ignored the little flashing light that was reminding her to put on her seat belt--such things were for mortals. She surveyed the room.

Aurora had found her place behind the communication's console again, though she had one of her many little tablets with her so that she could do work while they were in-flight. Ivil wanted to be a little exasperated, but Aurora was a very career-minded woman and she wouldn't get in the way of that.

Pixie was in the pilot's seat, being by far the best suited to the task. Her little fighter craft was currently docked onto the Sappho's side via an ingenious temporary docking station. It would be a nightmare for her ship to retether itself if she disconnected it, but until then, she could get in and ride her fighter out whenever she wanted.

The only other person on the bridge was Sonic Spectre, who was manning the gunnery station, with the ship's sensors linked in, while at the back of the bridge, sitting on a seat mounted to the wall and designed to fold into itself to be tucked out of the way, was Pepper the MINT operative whom Ivil suspected wanted to be elsewhere.

"Well then," Ivil said. "Detach from Driftwood station, it's time to head out towards Ganymede."

"Space traffic control wants us to wait another three minutes," Aurora said. She had a pair of rather large and cumbersome-seeming headphones on, but only over one ear. She was paying more attention to her tablet's screen than to what the STC was telling her.

Ivil leaned in a little and glimpsed at the screen. A chat log? She noticed that several of the names in it had tags for different moons, and she even recognized a name or two. Ah, so a chat channel for the League of Free Moons, then?

She frowned and typed away a comment until something came in over her headphones and she jumped. "We just got permission. Pixie, enter route... Two-Five-Nine-Nine, planetbound with..." Ivil tuned her out as she repeated some instructions from traffic control.

Pixie just nodded, seeming to understand them all as she turned on some of the ship's manoeuvring thrusters and gently pulled them away from their berth.

The Held Together was sitting there, in the same place it had come in, looking like the old hunk of junk that it was. There was a good chance that she'd never see that ship again, and it made her feel strangely melancholic. "Pepper," she said.

"Yes, ma'am?" Pepper asked.

Ivil made sure her voice was pitched low, not to interrupt the others. "Make sure that MINT knows that the Held Together is a ship of interest. Maybe make sure its next few jobs are safe and... lucrative?"

Twenty-Six would be upset if she learned that her home for so many years was lost to some freak accident. Or lost because the ship no longer had such a talented mechanic onboard.

"I can do that, ma'am," Pepper said. "I'll have a note added to my next report."

"Good good," Ivil said.

They slid out of the rather busy orbit of Driftwood station, and Ivil noticed that while the Sappho's movement away from the station didn't change much, they weren't the only ship leaving. The large Tech Maid of Mars cruiser undocking itself at the moment was causing a bit of a stir, forcing flight plans to change because of its sheer bulk alone.

"Alright," Pixie said. "We're about a quarter way around from Callisto to Ganymede, which means we've got options. Either I cut in with a light, long burn, rely on the ship's ion thrust and get us to Ganymede tomorrow, ship-time, or I give us a hard, speedy little burn with everything this baby's got, we see how hot we can run these engines and we do a hard flip and burn halfway to slow down."

"The former sounds far more reasonable," Aurora said.

"But the latter sounds more expedient. And speed is of the essence."

"We'll be catching a lot of attention if we move so drastically," Aurora warned.

"Good. They'll see us coming, then," Ivil said. She smiled smugly as Aurora gave her a look, but it was a fair statement. If MINT were quick on their feet, then they'd warn the Emperor of their arrival. He... or at least his staff, would likely be watching them coming.

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At that point, being slow about it wasn't going to help anyone, least of all themselves.

Besides, Ivil was in a hurry to put the other Emperor in his place, and it seemed like Pixie wanted to give the Sappho a proper test. "Hit it, Pixie."

"With pleasure!" Pixie said. And then she proceeded to... do very little, actually. "What?" she asked, almost as if she could sense Ivil's eyes on her.

"I was expecting a sudden burst of speed, to be honest."

"We're still close to the station, you know? I have an impeccable pilot's record and this area is very busy, I'm not going to risk anything just to shave off a few seconds to our flight time. Let me get to a safe distance first."

It took another fifteen minutes of slow coasting, with only a slight bit of additional thrust from Pixie, before they were out of the immediate surroundings of the station. Once they were free, however, Pixie started to grin and her hands skimmed over the controls.

"Alright everyone, welcome aboard the Sappho, I'll be your pilot tonight. Our goal? Callisto to Ganymede at a speed that will have the average bulk freighter quaking in their boots. Engineering, check in."

"Uh, yes?" Twenty-Six asked over the comms.

"We're going to be pushing this baby hard. Is she all warmed up and finished with her stretches?" Pixie asked.

"Oh! Yeah! Engine's running at 100% pilot, our fuel's topped up, oil pressure is reading green, I gave her a proper check up and everything is shiny and new back here. Ah, we haven't done a full-calibration test on the engine running as hard as it could go, though."

"Will that be a problem?" Pixie asked.

"Shouldn't be! I'll be nosing in on the stats while we move, I'll let you know if I think anything looks strange," Twenty-Six replied.

Pixie's grin, impossibly, widened. "You're the best, love," she said, which had Twenty-Six flustered right up. "Okay, everyone, belts on, seats in the upright position--" An ironic statement from someone who needed Twenty-Six to tie blocks to the pedals to reach them, Ivil thought--"And... we're off."

Ivil allowed the sudden momentum shift of the ship to push her back into the captain's seat. She also distractedly grabbed Aurora's tablet out of the air as it shot by, heading in the general direction of Pepper's face at the kind of speed that would definitely result in at least a split lip.

Aurora turned and probably tried to look contrite and upset, but her face was currently being squeezed in a rather unattractive way and that made it somewhat difficult to read her expression.

"Watch out," Ivil warned as she stood up and walked over to place the tablet in a small drawer next to Aurora. "I'll leave this here for you," she said before returning to the captain's seat.

Pixie kept them going, pushing into the territory of a hard burn, then a little bit beyond that. Ivil kept an eye on the readouts, noting that they'd crossed the nine gravities mark a bit ago and were still climbing.

Those were dangerous levels if sustained for a long period.

Fortunately, Pixie let off on the throttle and the mood in the room, as well as the pressure, lightened. "Woo!" she cheered.

"Twenty-Six," Ivil said as she opened the comms to the engineering bay. "How are things back there?"

"Good good," Twenty-Six said. Her enthusiasm was somewhat contradicted by the several alarms going off in the background.

"Are you certain?"

"Yeah? Why wouldn't I be? Nothing is on fire and the emergency systems kicked in when they were meant to."

"I am not an expert on spacecraft, but I don't recall those being meant to go off at all unless there was an emergency," Ivil said.

"Well, we wanted to test things, right?" Twenty-Six asked. "So I opened a few things back here, to give her some more gas. Probably not great for fuel efficiency, or, uh, the life of our drives, but we got really fast there in no time at all!"

Ivil blinked, then decided not to push it. "Let me know how much the repairs will cost once we reach Ganymede," she said.

"Nah, I can fix all of this with a few hours and some duct tape, no problem!"

***