The Legacy of the Iron Dragon: An Alternate History Viking Epic by Kroese Robert

Author:Kroese, Robert [Kroese, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Culain Press
Published: 2020-11-11T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirty

A thorough review of all the available evidence—the positions of the planets and stars, as well as the complete lack of any radio transmissions—confirmed Olson’s conclusion. Jason called a meeting with Creed, Olson, Schwartz and Gleeson to get their input, but none of them could come up with a better explanation. As far as any of them could tell, it was May 16, 134 A.D.

Jason had been prepared for the possibility that Freedom would travel for a thousand years to reach a planet suitable for colonization. He had not been expecting to travel two thousand years in an instant. Andrea Luhman traveling back in time had never been more than a theoretical possibility, and he’d never really believed Freedom would outrun the Cho-ta’an and make it through the Chrylis gate unscathed. Faced with this new reality, he was unsure how to proceed. All he knew is that they needed to get to Earth.

Freedom shot past the sun just over two hours after their arrival in the Sol system, as Mr. Olson had predicted. Jason made a general announcement that all passengers and crew should remain seated with restraints in place in case things got bumpy, but other than a brief increase in temperature, there was little indication inside the ship that they were flying within a few thousand kilometers of a gigantic ball of nuclear fusion. Olson kept the engines firing at near-maximum, decelerating at one point six gees all the way in. As they neared the sun, he changed Freedom ’s orientation so that its thrusters would help keep her inside the sun’s gravity well as long as possible. The idea was to bend Freedom ’s trajectory by a degree or two and use the pull of the sun’s powerful gravitational field to slow them as they headed back out toward the outskirts of the solar system. Olson had determined that with a little luck, they could then attempt a similar trick with Jupiter, flying just behind her as she moved toward the perihelion of her orbit. Jupiter would lend a little of her momentum to Freedom , reducing the ship’s outward velocity.

Gravity assists—or “slingshot maneuvers,” as they were often called—were complex operations that generally took days or even weeks to calculate. Because of Freedom ’s insane velocity, Olson had to calculate their trajectory on the fly, changing their orientation or thrust slightly every few minutes to keep them from passing too close to the sun or arcing at an angle that would cause them to miss Jupiter by a million kilometers.

After two hours of pulling out what was left of his wispy blond hair, Olson breathed a sigh of relief as Freedom began to pull away from the sun. “Five hours, twenty-one minutes until Jupiter gravity assist,” he said. “I’ll have to re-run the calculations, but I think I can get us close to Neptune. If I don’t have to use too much of our delta-v getting us aligned with Neptune’s orbit, I think we can slow enough to make use of Neptune’s gravity too.

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