Theft of Fire by Devon Eriksen

Author:Devon Eriksen [Eriksen, Devon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
Published: 2023-11-08T00:00:00+00:00

“Okay, repeat it again.”

Miranda glares at me across the observation deck, stars whirling behind her. She's cross-legged in the air, dangling by one hand from the top of the squat rack. She's discovered that, in one-fifth gravity, she can do one-arm pullups, and the novelty hasn't worn off yet.

I raise one eyebrow and wait. At first I think she's going to refuse, but she sighs and starts again.

“Forward takes you out. Out takes you back. Back takes you, um…”

“Yes? Back takes you where?”

“Hold on,” She starts again. “Forward takes you out, out takes you back, back takes you… in?”

“Okay, keep going, where does in take you?”

“Come on, Marcus, what's the point of all this? We've been at this for weeks now, six hours a day. I can do malfunction checks, I can orient myself, and I've worked thrust pack controls until I'm seeing them in my sleep. We've come a long way since I was just learning how to put the thing on.”

She's right, and thank fuck for that, 'cause she doesn't have to undress in front of me anymore. Not that every detail of her naked body isn't burned into my brain. So it can haunt me late at night. When I'm in my bunk.

“But what I don't understand,” she continues, “is the point of all this physics lecture stuff. I'm not going to—”

“Where does in take you, Miranda?”

“In takes you forward, and port and starboard bring you back again, okay? See? I can memorize stuff. But what's the point?”

“The point is you need to learn it.”

“Yes, but why? I've been doing all the stuff. I even lifted your damn weights. But I don't need to learn orbital dynamics. I'm just going to fly from point A to point B. That's all. I'm not going to orbit anything.”

“Don't you get it, Princess? You're going to be working on, in, and around things that are. This alien mothership of yours isn't sitting in a parking lot, for fuck's sake. It's moving at over two thousand kilometers an hour, and to intercept it, I have to find a matching orbit that holds the Cat in a stable relative position.”

“Yes, but that's your job, not mi—”

“And then you have to leave the Cat, and move from our orbit to its orbit. And if you try to fly straight at it, things ain't gonna go well.”

She lets go of the bar, and descends slowly, alighting on the ball of one foot like some faerie creature pausing in flight to alight upon the earth. Then she folds her arms into a solid and disgruntled barrier.

“Now he tells me.”

“I was getting there. As soon as you understood the principles. Look, Princess, this is your scheme. You're here in my classroom—”

“Your observation deck. And your gym.”

“Yeah, well space is tight. You're in my classroom because you chose to enter my world. So if I tell you something, it's gonna be important. It shouldn't take a brain surgeon to understand that.”

“That's not the point, you simpleton! The

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