Event Horizon (Hellgate) by Keegan Mel

Author:Keegan, Mel [Keegan, Mel]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: DreamCraft
Published: 2013-12-11T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

Lai’a, transspace

It could have been a mountain range before and beneath the driftship, but Marin recognized the illusion. Pure energy was sculpted by immense gravities, pulled and twisted into the form of mountains. What one took to be tendrils of cloud whipping and foaming over their shoulders, driven by a fierce wind, was the visual representation of the slow-time currents. Overhead and deep below were the brilliant jetstreams of the fast-time currents. The trick was to find a viable course between them.

It was a little like contour-riding over a terrestrial landscape, and the pilot in him rose to the challenge. He had done similar flying, and memories of the Santorini skyline flittered through his mind – weaving and darting between comm relay towers and the crowns of sky-high buildings, with an armed Rand Stratos on his tail. Death had been a hair’s breadth away then, too.

They were in the Kronos Tide, the gravity stream racing between the Orion Gate and the Tasman 288 comm beacon; and both Marin and Travers had forgotten this was a simulation. The experience was too overwhelming, and the level of commitment essential to survival was so profound, reality dropped away from them like an old, outworn glove.

“You’re a little fast,” Travers was warning.

The AI had remained silent since they acquired the Kronos Tide. Its handholding dialog was less frequent each time they flew the simulator, and now the tone of Neil’s voice was level, composed. Marin heard no edge of panic there, and though he drew a deep breath to slow his own pulse, he was calm. This was the twentieth time he and Travers had flown the driftship, and they were on the homeward leg now. The Kronos Tide returned to the Orpheus Gate via a different route from the Odyssey Tide, but it would get them there – through a chicane, a bottleneck between the gravity wells of two supergiant stars. The cleft between the walls of two towering mountains of unspeakable energy was just wide enough to pass the ship through, so long as Marin could keep it out of the slow-time currents.

“You’re still too fast,” Travers judged, though Marin had shed speed twice. “Brake … and again.”

The energy penalty for overenthusiastic braking was dire, and Marin was watching the instruments every moment now, waiting for the AI to whisper its customary warning, that the generators were overheating and would underrun to compensate. In five flights through the chicane they had made it through three times, and on each flight Marin was keenly aware of the goddess of sheer lucky flying copilot for him.

“I’m going to try something,” he said softly. “Let’s see if dropping us just a whisker closer to the slow-time stream bleeds off some of this speed without overstressing the generators.”

“Risky.” Travers was busy with his own work, and Marin’s eyes scanned his data constantly. “It’ll be close.”

“But doable,” Marin argued, “and it’d get us through this chokepoint without killing those generators – and us.”

Twice, they had crashed the simulation right here.

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