Restless Lightning by Richard Baker

Author:Richard Baker [Baker, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2018-10-23T00:00:00+00:00

14

CSS Vendaval, Tamabuqq System

“All stations manned and ready, Captain,” said Vendaval’s operations officer. He hardly needed to make the report—the corvette’s bridge had only eight control positions, and a crewhand was seated at each one. Sikander himself had to make do with a folding jump seat at the back of the bridge compartment that offered nothing more than the ability to sit down somewhere out of the way and watch Vendaval’s warp-transit timer slowly count down to 0:00:00 on the main tactical display.

“Very well,” Magda Juarez acknowledged. She keyed the comm panel on her battle couch to activate the ship’s general-announcement circuit. “All hands, this is the captain. Make ready for system arrival.”

Sikander suppressed the urge to offer any advice or commentary. Magda didn’t need any insight of his to run her ship, and she had enough on her mind for the moment. Vendaval was coming in hot, having spent hours of additional acceleration in Kahnar-Sag to build up a transit-initiation velocity of almost twelve percent of light speed before activating her warp ring. That slashed more than a day off the warp transit between Kahnar-Sag and Tamabuqq, but it also meant that the instant Vendaval cut her warp bubble she’d return to the normal universe with every kilometer per second of that velocity. If Magda’s navigation team missed their mark by even a tiny fraction of a percent, Vendaval might find herself in all kinds of trouble with very little time to do something about it.

“God, these high-speed arrivals make me nervous,” Magda murmured, as if reading Sikander’s thoughts. “I know the math says it’s not all that much more dangerous than a ten-percent transit, but it just feels risky. And every Tzoru in Tamabuqq is going to see our light show when we kill the bubble.”

“I’m not too proud to admit that I’ve been praying with great sincerity for the last few minutes,” Sikander replied. Magda smiled at that; faith was something else they shared, in addition to a love of fishing and the comradeship of being a Hector survivor. Sikander was a New Sikh and she was a Nicosian Catholic, but Aquilan culture generally ranged from firmly secular to militantly atheist. More than a few officers in Sikander’s experience regarded religious beliefs as a sign of mental deficiency.

The countdown timer in the display hit zero, and disappeared. The displays flickered for a moment, and then reset as Vendaval’s sensors came on-line. Sometimes the jolt between the ship’s best guess at conditions outside the warp bubble and the actuality of arrival could be quite jarring, but this time the displays hardly moved at all. Sikander breathed a sigh of relief and thanked God: that was a good sign for the accuracy of Vendaval’s navigation.

“Clear arrival, ma’am,” the sensor operator reported. “Nothing within thirty light-seconds.”

“Very well,” said Magda. “Depower and retract the warp ring.”

“I’m reading multiple large contacts near Tamabuqq Prime, Captain,” the sensor officer said. “Tzoru military profiles.”

“That would be the Golden Banner and Monarch Sword fleets,” Sikander said.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.