In the Black, стр. 6

“Why are we sure this is the Xre and not, I don’t know, commerce raiders, or claim jumpers?”

“Because…” It was Warner’s turn, apparently. “… they know attacking our drones would be suicide. Corsairs are like cockroaches. They’ll prey on the odd civilian transport, but they scatter at the sight of even a five-kiloton orbital defense cutter. The Ansari draws a quarter million tons. The dead-last thing any corsair operation wants to do is start poking us in the eye.”

“I agree,” Miguel said. “Someone is making a statement. They’re demonstrating this new capability in a way we can’t overlook or ignore. That someone believes they can match or beat a system defense cruiser in a stand-up fight, or they wouldn’t be poking the bear.”

“But how do we know it’s a Xre incursion and not, I don’t know, a CCDF ship?”

“A rogue crew?” Susan held an exasperated hand to her chest. “With the stalwart defender of the interests of fleet’s stakeholders on the bridge to thwart them? Impossible.”

Nesbit frowned. “There’s no need to be disrespectful, Captain. We both have a job to do.”

“You’re right, of course, Mr. Nesbit. In short, no, I don’t think it’s a mutinous CCDF warship. We keep pretty good track of our inventory, and they’d have the same problems as a corsair, which they would effectively be the moment they stole fleet property. Why risk drawing our attention?”

“Okay, so it’s a Xre incursion. What do they want?”

“Probe our defenses, gauge our new capabilities, observe our responses. It’s been almost seventy years since the treaty, and almost thirty since the last skirmish. They’re as intelligence-starved as we are. This is probably just a fishing expedition.”

“So what do we do?”

Susan smirked. “Grab the rod and yank the fisherman out of their boat. Mr. Azevedo…”

“Mum?”

“Sound general quarters. Warm up our rings and make calculations to pop our bubble one thousand klicks sunward from the platform’s debris field.”

“Yes’m.” The XO keyed the 1MC to bring his voice to the entire crew. A whistle chime sounded throughout the ship. “All hands, general quarters. General quarters. Prepare for Alcubierre transition. This is not a drill. Repeat, this is not a drill.” He cut the circuit. “Helm, what’s the status of our rings?”

“Alpha and gamma rings are in the rotation for our next jump, sir,” Ensign Broadchurch answered. “Engineering board’s green.”

“Bring them online and make calculations to pop the bubble at one thousand kilometers sunward and zero velocity relative to plot marker six-two-seven-dash-three-eight.”

“Zero relative velocity one kiloklick sunward of marker six-two-seven-dash-three-eight, roger, sir.”

Susan casually removed a piece of lint from her trouser leg. “Manual calculations, Charts.”

“Mum?” Broadchurch said, sounding quite a bit less confident.

“Make your calculations without the flight computer. You do remember your astrogation certifications, yes?”

“Yes’m. Just, um, haven’t used them since the Academy. I might be a little rusty.”

“A warship is no place for rust, wouldn’t you agree, XO?”

“Absolutely, mum,” Miguel agreed.

Broadchurch swallowed. “Of course, mum. I’ll just … um.” They turned back to their station and started digging through menus.

Miguel leaned in close and whispered in Susan’s ear. “That’s a pretty tight window to calculate by hand. What’s that have to be accurate to—nine decimals?”

“Eleven,” Susan said. “Don’t worry, the closest planet is more than twenty light-minutes away. We’re not going to pop our bubble in a molten core. I just want to see what Broadchurch’s got.”

“Your ship, mum.”

“Captain, I recommend we bring CiWS and our active targeting array on line. If there’s an armed drone out there, we should be ready to deal with it in case it takes a shot at us,” Warner added.

Susan nodded. “Do it.”

A few tense minutes of frenzied math equations later, Broadchurch looked up from their station. “Okay, I think that’s got it.”

“You think, Ensign?” Miguel inquired sternly. “I’d rather not go into Alcubierre on a hunch.”

“No, sir. I mean, I have it sorted.”

Susan smiled. She sympathized with Broadchurch, she did. But she also needed to know her helmsperson wasn’t going to beach them on a proverbial sandbar if the ship started taking damage and had to get gone in a hurry. The ship’s mainframe was at least thirty years out of the state-of-the-art compared to consumer electronics, but for good reason. It was a time-tested and dead-stable system. Still, every computer, no matter how many built-in redundancies, could malfunction. And when that happened, if you couldn’t break out an abacus and do the maths, you were dead in the water.

She knew from experience.

“Okay, Charts, lock it in. Scopes, do we have a clear sky for transition?”

Mattu pulled up a display of the local airspace around the Ansari. “We have a weather satellite inside the gooey zone moving away at seventeen kps relative. It will reach minimum safe distance in … twenty-seven seconds.”

“Charge rings. Bring us to one-two-six-point-eight-seven-one by zero-zero-one-point-three.”

“Charge rings. Bring us to one-two-six-point-eight-seven-one by zero-zero-one-point-three,” Miguel repeated.

“Come about to one-two-six-point-eight-seven-one by zero-zero-one-point-three, aye sir. Charging rings,” Broadchurch echoed back.

A slight tremor ran through the deck plating as reaction control thrusters at the bow and stern lit off and gently aligned the grand ship with its destination, then counterburned to cancel their momentum.

“On trajectory, mum,” Broadchurch said.

“Sat has cleared the gooey zone. Sky is clear,” Mattu reported. “We’re green to blow the bubble.”

“Thank you, Scopes. XO, at your pleasure.”

Miguel nodded. “Helm, blow the bubble.”

“Blowing the bubble, aye sir.” Broadchurch reached up a finger to their holographic display, touched a floating icon and, with very little fanfare, bent the known laws of physics to within a micrometer of their breaking point.

Behind the Ansari’s forward hull, where all the perishable organisms resided much of the time, lay the engineering hull. Inside it were most of the ship’s mechanicals, long-term stores, drone launch tubes, and of course, negative matter condensers. Mounted to the outside of the engineering hull were three enormous rings stacked one after the other like hula hoops. These were the Alcubierre rings, the innovation that had made FTL travel possible. Like poles on a magnet, a ship needed two rings to create the stressed