Cascade

10 - Insurgency

10 - Insurgency

Claire’s eyes peeled open slowly as the ship’s alarm pinged the approach of apoapsis. She hadn’t meant to doze off, but she supposed it wasn’t much of a surprise. Her last nap on a ship was almost 48 hours ago.

Claire looked behind her and saw Melissa dozing as well. She was lightly strapped to a seat. She had actually fallen asleep while drifting about the cabin, and would still be floating around the place if Jordan hadn’t unhooked himself and carefully strapped her in. Jordan himself was now strapped beside her, coming into consciousness as well, as he heard the alarm chime.

“What’s that?” He asked.

“We’re approaching our transfer burn point.” Claire said. “From here we make a small change in trajectory which will bring us to a Slip Array. After settling nicely in the middle, we can make a slip to Profearen orbit.”

“I thought we were already on our way to Profearen.” He said.

“To fly there under the ships power would take days. We don’t have that long.”

“It took you days to get from Vertex.” Melissa said, coming awake also. “How come you didn’t slip in?”

“Because there were no arrays to slip from.” Claire said. “The only array system was the one in place to receive the planet. The ship-sized slip array systems were left behind at Vertex’s old orbit.”

Claire spun the ship about and throttled up the engines. The deceleration pressed everyone gently into their seats. Claire watched a meter of her calculated speed drop until it reached the designated point. She cut off the engines, turned to a new heading, and slowly throttled up again. Far in the distance, an orb shaped network of lights lit up as the slip array detected the presence of a new ship. Claire counted down the seconds of her burn then cut the power. She slowly spun the ship to face the opposite direction and burned slow.

Jordan unhooked himself and drifted forward. Claire pulled up the rear view. The holo-screen showed the floating orb-like structure approaching. Like a strange Christmas ornament, dozens of conical metallic objects floated in perfect increments from one another as though pressed into the skin of an invisible sphere. Each device had pulsing blue lights flashing in the direction to move to reach the center of the array.

As Claire approached, the lights flashed faster and faster, becoming solid as the ship came to a halt within the center.

“Nice flying.” Jordan said.

“Thanks, but I didn’t get us in the exact center.” She said.

“What does that matter?”

“The array won’t slip us until our combined center of mass is in the exact center. It can’t even be off by a few micrometers.”

“And you missed?” Melissa asked. “Sheesh, Claire. You’re off your game.”

Claire smirked.

“Everyone hold perfectly still, ok? The array is going to set up a gravity well causing us to drift to the precise geometric center. Then, after .089 seconds, we will be in orbit around Profearen. So sit down and shut up.”

“Are we there yet?” Melissa asked. Jordan gave her a look of annoyance.

“Yes we are.” Claire replied.

“What?!” Jordan blurted.

“Slip drive is a quantum tunneling event. What did you expect? Big loud sounds of winding up machinery and a swirly wormhole?” Melissa shot back.