Jack Rackham's face was drenched in sweat, despite the chill of the bridge's cooler temperatures to protect the control systems, and the proximity to the void between gravity wells. He had done well up to this point, but the inner edge of the Kuiper belt, on the path that the captain had given him, was filled with spinning rocks the size of moons, whose constant collisions and gravitational wars tossed about the orbits beyond plotting. His eyes were going red with stress and exhaustion, unable to focus as clearly after a double shift of flying, he was only a little behind the schedule Thatch had laid for the young man. A little, in terms of the age of the galaxy, at least.
The training regime of Thatch called for him to let the trainee get as far as he could before taking over. And he had been surprised to find the boy was as much a natural pilot as his father had been. The touches on his controls were soft and easy, no sudden accelerations, only a few yaw maneuvers to avoid some asteroid or planetlet. And only one full emergency stop. Eduard had only had his hands close to the controls when the stop occurred, not even reaching them before the boy managed to react, in the right way, stop before making a rash decision.
Normally the transit of the Braided Belt was near impossible here at the collision point of the gravity wells of the three large dwarf planets that ruled the Kuiper region, moving in a strangely synchronized dance of orbits to contain the Braid. Eduard was sure the boy had reached the point of giving in, ready to let the captain take the helm. Then fate took its own hand in the training of the new pilot. Alarms sounded in the bridge and the rest of the Slick Willy. Approach vector alarms, radar alarms.
Missile lock alarms.
Jack was moving fast, hitting the chaff pods, firing two decoys, and hitting the sudden motions alarms. Then his hands began the dance across the controls, overriding the computer responses. All this before the captain could touch a single control. To Thatch's mind, it was as if the boy's father were on the board, where he had long piloted this ship before. But more aggressive. The acceleration hit him, with yaw and pitch motions in there from the thrusters as best he could to dance the vessel's bulk out of harms way. Until it became obvious that nothing was working. Thatch only hoped the guardian would save them.
Young Rackham had no such patience. His left hand danced across a part of the controls long unused, and he slammed the Pulse Alert with his right hand. Eduard's eyes bulged as he at last recognized those controls. The boy was taking a hell of a gamble, trusting to systems not used in over a decade or more of Terran time.
But the mighty Orion Engines responded. The systems all shut down to protect against the blast, the ultra-hardened ones came online, and the hum of the magnetic bubble field rattled loose objects in their containers, as the grav fields dropped off in preparation for the kick to come. Behind the ship, the thrust shield spread open for the first time since Tobias Rackham sat at the board. Primers fired hydrogen into the expanded bubble, as the charge unit ejected, ready to set off the plutonium as the spark of the incredible piston.
With a strange double touch not seen since the Fallback War on the bridge, the bottle became a sail, the nuclear charge burst behind the ship, driving the compressing wave of the lightest element into the magnetic field to thrust the ship. Thatch knew that maneuver of old, the EMP tap, a single shot to pulse the enemy's systems, giving them time to flee. But the taps continued on the console even as the first jolt rocked the Slick Willy. The ancient drives dated back to the earliest days of man crossing the voids between stars, but still functioned. Both as weapon and propulsion. The wave of hydrogen becoming helium in spots as the shock wave of the blast through the gas cloud created a series small active areas of temporary fusion. Which spun out of control away from the drive sail nearly as often as they struck it.
The vessel shuddered as the portions of the first uncontrolled detonation touched the magnetic version of ancient canvas, and gave the vessel some acceleration. Then the sail was shifted to the drive bottle again, aiming the force of a second, third and fourth blast towards the gap as they entered the Braided Belt seemingly blind. Still the Ion thrusters were firing, and the captain winced at the cost of the propellant being ejected, but realized the lives of himself and his crew were more expensive.
He lost count at ten, when the blasts were no longer needed, as the injectors gave a steady flow of mass for the sustained fusion in the bottle, and the thrust became steadier, not as jumpy. He only hoped they could count on a run through a cloud of hydrogen later to scoop up for resupply. Amazingly, while the forward armor plates took several strikes, none were more than bouncers, as the vessel found a hole in the mess of ice and rock that formed the outer mass of the system.
Slick Willy cleared the belt in record time, hours rather than the normal days. But at a cost that they would tally slowly over the next few days. Behind them, before the hole closed with the movements of time, the sensor probe fired to the side earlier relayed the expanding debris of not one, but five star ships, four had the metal signatures of the Arcturian yards, which meant another group of pirates. One was their shadow, it seemed.
It was only when another vessel appeared from another vector hailing them, that Thatch realized they had been bait. Bait that had spoiled a planned attack. The new ship, also from the Frankenstiens, took up a position in drag, but much farther out, as they had a new respect for the vessel from Dubhe.
"Continue onward to delivery. We are sorry about the inconvenience of the attack, but we had to know of the opposition here." The voice was metallic, for nearly as many of those of the Castor planets and moons were cyborgs as were engineered biotics. "There will be a bonus, and we did not anticipate your use of those engines in this encounter."
With that the radio fell to what silence could still come in a double star system littered with heavy metal asteroids and echoes of the still fusing elements in their drive trail, filling it with random crackles, pops and hisses of varying volume.
The new pilot turned to his ship's master, and saw an evil grin on the face of Thatch. One that at first he thought meant a blown chance.
Eduard let the grin soften to a gentle smile, as he spoke for this one time in their shared native dialect. "Oy, mates, youse passes. Now's settys ups youse vecty's insy-bounds, t'ens grabs shoe-wares an'z somes sleepys. Minds youse trims as youse do'z, RSP Trey."
RSP. Rackham's heart nearly stopped. He had just been field tested, and now was a Rated Star Pilot. Level 3, command track. Jack sighed in relief, turned to his board, and set up the course in to Mizar Aleph Prime station. Miserable Alley was calling, with its bars, lights, and guildhouse to confirm his new status.
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/Thatch's Log/23499-2301TCT
Damned if Jack didn't exceed expectations. A record run of the Braid, even for a wartime run. And I should know, as it was his father and my record he broke. There are days I wonder about his skills, then he does something like this. He is more of a natural spacer than any other, save perhaps Gow. Only Chastity comes close to him at helm. Those two will make a good team, so I am pairing them up. That they were the ones who masterminded the stowing away that got me half this crew does not bother me any longer. They work well together, so I see no problems, and no attachments either.
Gow has understood something, when he took second shift from me, moments ago, he commented again on the cargo, noting it was not true "Conformity" tanks. They were tampered with, he said, from designed intent. Something must have tickled his fancy, for he was humming, and contacted our shadow, telling them that the cargo was still good to go, but he was not sure it would sell in the Empire's territory, not being able to pass full inspection.
They got the joke, and laughed back at him, asking for him to be careful.
Despite all my hatred of the Frankenstiens, and their system of beliefs over there at Castor, they still are members of the Association. And the Association requires freedom of choice for all. The bastards were sabotaging the Confomists, with the very gear they wanted to use. It would work just well enough to pass initial tests, Gow told me, but could be stopped and reversed by the occupant or the Castor crowd at will.
I won't tell Jack this, but I am off to have a long talk with Annie. She needs to know these things. For her own safety, as well as her beau's.
/end log/
Chastity Vane sat at the command seat, letting Jack do the hard stuff. She had proven good enough to rate her fifth flight under the captain's eye. But Jack made her look like a recreational only flier. He had already gotten a relaxed attitude after only three shifts at the helm. He was leaning away from the controls not in fear, but comfort, able to herd the ship's mass with far more gentle touches.
She remembered the boy she had met at the spaceport, with four other kids looking to him as their hero, after pirates had killed all their kith and kin, and their consort crushing hers in its landing to pillage the town. Even then he had that calm over his anger, to keep the others sure that somehow they would survive it all and stay together. When they had stowed away on the shuttle, Thatch had known somehow. And when he saw six orphans from his own home-world, he called the authorities and adopted them.
Vane still was somewhat in love with this boy, not the kind that led to bed, but the one born of family. He had rough edges now, as he no longer had to be in control, edges with a sharpness she had not seen. But the bout of love with Annie had honed those edges, and left them with ugly nicks and jagged edges. Chastity worried about her new partner, more like the big sister she had become. Not to say she had no interest in his rugged looks or sometimes surprising charms. The day she found him doodling on real paper had stunned her that he had the touch on his pen he was learning on the helm. The small drawings were of things he had left behind, trees on a shore, mountains reflecting in ponds, farms and things from a ranching background.
They rarely talked, able to work as a team after the past few years, even if those years had led them down different ways. The girl had become a hard bitten woman, driven by the need to take back control in her life to take charge of everything around her. The shy dreamer Vane had been was gone, but now her dreams were of commands to achieve. Someday, she had already decided, she wanted her own ship, under her rules, and no one else's.
Last off shift she had seen Annie down in the tanks, naked, activating the systems. The living hoses and suction cups making her body their plaything, as her body was changed, and her mind. She only took orders now, never challenged them as she had before. And by the moans and look on her face above the mask, it was obvious the tank had taken the place of the lover she left jilted on the bridge.
There was no way Chastity thought, she would ever give in to such degradation, even if they made her into the beauty that Annie was becoming. A cold and heartless one, interested only in of having her flesh invaded by metal snakes that would make her pliable to the imprints of the program of the Conformists' creeds and rituals. Ones of submission to the uniformity. All were the same, no differences at all. All with the same two bodies, women with hourglass made for sex looks, and men like those who only lived inside a gymnasium, with no job other than repetitive motions on machines and with free weights in gravity.
Jack at last finished the jobs of the evening , and turned to his new boss. There was a lost look in his eyes when the job was done, and she knew without his asking that they would need to fill the hours to come with something, if not instruction, which he had already probably finished in his off hours, then anything but talk. Or at least not talk about what was bothering him.
"Crib?" A single word, and she knew then that it was not the invite to bed so many thought the term meant, but that ancient game of cards, pegs and a board that had followed the pliers of seas to space. She nodded assent, and he gathered them from the storage drawer, setting out only two sets of pegs tonight, no longer three.
Chas sighed, and wished she could ease his sorrow, but Thatch had lectured her hard on the rules of command when he laid the boy in her hands to finish schooling. There was to be no more tosses in the hay for her anymore as she was part of the structure of the ship's command.
She shuffled the cards for the first hand, dealing the requisite six cards to each of them, and setting the cards on the clamps built into the board to hold things tighter. Such a design was a requirement for space, where the failure of the graviton plates would set every loose thing floating about as a danger to things around them. The pegs were made of metals that small short range magnets at the bottom of the holes held down. The roll out mats each had small magnet strips in them, to keep the foil backed cards on them. There was a physical lock that grasped the whole to the table.
Chastity looked over her hand, and grimaced. Two broken double runs, neither bearring a single 15 or connectable by the cut card yet to come. Unlucky at love and cards, she sighed, and set two cards face down.
"Jack, you ever need to talk.."
"Oy, Cassie, you not sweats it. I will do the job. And not falls for youse.. sorry you." His face was pained as he set his own crib cards down. "Trust me, missy prissy, these cards is more garbage than me...sorry, my, love life."
Vane smiled as she laid out a nine of hearts, realizing Jack was healing, not healed, but on the mend, already. The smile lasted two hands, when the jack-five she tossed into his crib yielded the perfect twenty-nine hand. Which by ship rules got young Rackham out of servicing the sanitary tanks for a month. And as it was a crib, and she had fed him the cards, she had to take all the duty hours, not spread them over the rest of the crew.
Her cussing in cant had brought the captain from his cabin. His laughter at the reason, and chiding at using unapproved language at the helm were like salt in her wounds. She now understood the lure of the tanks, at least they never laughed at you. Then again, one could never tell.
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