THE KEEPERS RISE

Chapter 17 - Crack of Dawn - Part 3

*Remember to click the play button to listen to the soundtrack as you read!*

"What'd you see?"

Whatever nerves Velda had felt when she first saw the Red Wolf armada doubled with Reuben's simple question. She swallowed and tried to stay calm as she glanced around the gathered group. "There's no tarrephaene nearby," she wavered, "and about 500 Red Wolf ships are set to meet us at Myusaria in three hours."

Jessie's eyes grew wide. "Are you sure you counted that right?"

"The computer counted, not me. Will'ym wants to bet on speed and try to rescue everyone before the armada shows up. Is that doable?"

The two Dark mages grinned at each other, and Reuben said, "If anyone can do it, it's me. Speed isn't the only thing we have to worry about, though. We need to get this ship cloaked as soon as possible, or we're asking to get attacked." He tapped around on a control panel, then frowned and slipped a digital notepad out of his pocket, jotting down a few calculations. "We don't have enough fuel to keep ourselves cloaked all the way from here to Myusaria, even at 100 astroknots, and I'm not willing to get up close and personal with a planet any faster than that."

Will'ym narrowed his eyes. "That's already way too fast. Are you trying to crash right into Myusaria?" he said accusingly.

Reuben smirked and put a hand on his hip while he checked some relevant coordinates. "This ship has a few more tricks up its sleeve than your tarrephaene cruisers."

"It's missing the wormhole generator," Will'ym said bluntly.

"Those are limited by range," Reuben explained, a patronizing tone slipping into his voice. "You can't go making wormholes millions of light centuries away on a whim, and you definitely can't put one right next to a planet. This ship can go thousands of astroknots if it has to, no wormhole required, and it's very precise."

"So why not do that all the time?" Will'ym asked, put off by his attitude.

"It uses up energy much faster." He tapped a few buttons. "As is, we'd nearly run the fuel tank dry by doing it. That means we'd have to land instead of staying in orbit, but I suppose that was a given anyway, if we're trying to be stealthy."

"And what if you miscalculate something?" Will'ym glowered. "We could crash straight into Myusaria!"

"I'm not that stupid," Reuben spat back at him. "Dameon has our course perfectly set to be just above the planet. That's where he would have wanted us to go, after all. I won't have to change our course at all."

Will'ym groaned. "Great, you're trusting Dameon. You may as well jump ship now."

"Arguing," Velda cut in, "is not going to get us anywhere. We need to think about this logically. Reuben, have you ever done something like this before?"

"Yes, often. Never this close to planets, though," he admitted after a moment. "I know I'm accurate, but I'll have to account for Myusaria's gravity, and I'm not as practiced in that."

Will'ym was about to object again, but Velda shot him a silencing look. "What's the worst that could happen if he gets this wrong?" Velda asked him.

Will'ym tried to calm down, but his mind was still foggy. He spoke with a slight slur. "If he's off by enough, the ship might go right past Myusaria. That means we'll have to turn around and head back with little to no fuel. We'll just be caught. If we don't have enough fuel left to land, it's over. And that's assuming that we aren't pointed straight at Myusaria." He took a long breath and leaned against the wall tiredly. "That won't end well."