Gavin’s remote greeted Kella as she entered the bridge. He was once again in charge of the hovering fisheye, and it floated, rather impatiently it seemed, near the starboard windows. Kella saw why as she got closer. It was her first time seeing the strange delta-winged craft, and she didn’t like the look of it one bit. It looked smaller, faster, and a lot meaner than the Praeotorian, which was saying something considering the Praetorian looked like a giant bird-of-prey.
“Console 6, panel F, port-side,” Gavin said after she’d gotten a good look at the enemy.
“What?” Kella asked, not following.
“Over here,” Gavin sighed as the remote floated over to the long bank of control consoles lining the port wall under view port.
“Ah, got it,” she said, quickly finding panel F. “What do you want me to do?”
“Tap Start. Programs,” Gavin instructed. “Ok, Controls. Right. Then Access Protocols. Automated Security and Access Privileges. Right,” he continued, guiding her through the series of holo-screens. Finally, a large blue-box appeared on the screen asking for a password.
“I hope you have this,” Kella asked, her fingers poised over the light-based keyboard.
“No, I thought you did?” Gavin asked turning the fish-eye towards her.
“No!” Kella said, panicking.
“Just kidding,” Gavin said suddenly, chuckling. Kella was not amused.
“That’s not funny, you hair-brained…” she started.
“Ok, just type this in one letter at a tiem,” Gavin said, cutting off her colorful epithet before it had time to get going. “Capital ‘U’, capital ‘R’, lower case ‘a’, lower case ‘n’, capital ‘I’, followed by a capital ‘D’, number one, zero, and a lower case ‘t’. That should do ‘er.”
Kella finished typing in the password, and she pressed ‘Confirm’. Suddenly a box popped up on the screen that blinked in green light: ‘Access Confirmed, OK!’. As she watched, that same message suddenly appeared on every holo-display on the bridge. Green light lit the room as the message made its way around, and then finally, they all disappeared as one.
“Ah,” Gavin sighed. “That’s better. I am now, once again, in full control. Of the plane, anyway,” Gavin finished hastily as Kella turned a frown on him. Her frown disappeared as she walked over to the commander’s chair and sat down.
“So what’s the status, Tin Can?”
“Tin-?“ Gavin started, unsure of what to make of his new nickname. Kella said nothing, but merely leveled a look at the camera.
“I’m not made of tin, but whatever,” he said, deciding to brush it off and concentrate on the task at hand. “That out there is most probably the Gladius. That’s not a good thing.”
“Let me guess,” Kella said with a sigh. “A superior ship designed to counter another certain superior ship.”
“Unfortunately,” Gavin said, confirming her guess. “I only learned of it after taking over the Praetorian project, but I never got any details on it. It was designed by a second team in parallel, but with opposite design goals. It was to be fast, agile, small; made for quick hit-and-run missions, not extended ones like the Praetorian. That’s about all they told me. Everything else was highly classified.”
“Well that’s just fekkin’ fantastic,” Kella said. “How do you propose we lose ‘em?”
“You know, I’m glad you asked,” Gavin said in a chipper voice, the remote bobbing a little. “I just so happen to know a way.”
“Really,” Kella said, more of a statement than a question.
“Yes, really,” Gavin defended. “Look, in about three minutes, they’re going to get suspicious and probably try to blow us to hell and gone. Since I’m only lukewarm on the idea of visiting hell, I’m going to call over there as our friend ‘Major Evan Hughes of Military Special Operations’,” Gavin said in an exact imitation of Hughes.
“Hey, that’s pretty good,” Kella said, impressed, a grin touching the corners of her mouth.
“I thought so,” Gavin said, returning to his normal voice.
“So, what exactly are you going to say?” Kella prompted when Gavin didn’t continue. She was expecting a bit more to the plan.
“Uh,” Gavin hedged.
“You have no idea, do you?” she asked, her grin fading.
“Not really, no,” he admitted. “I can’t think of any reason Hughes would use to ditch his escort.”
“Screw it then,” Kella said, full of bluster. “Let’s just cut loose and run.”
“They can keep up easily,” Gavin reminded her.
“There’s gotta be something,” Kella said frustrated, tapping the command console before her and pulling up the local sector of space. She noted they were only twenty hours out from Dulabar, nearly back to where the whole ordeal had started.
“Whatever it is, we better find it quick,” Gavin said apprehensively, the remote glancing out the window, “or our decision will be made for us.”
“Here,” Kella said while scanning the star chart. Gavin’s remote zoomed to hover over her shoulder, while the fisheye rotated to magnify the chart. “Falldown,” she said, pointing.
“Falling down hurts,” Gavin said flatly. “I disapprove of the plan.”
“No, you idiot, the planet,” she said tapping the display in annoyance. “It’s named Falldown. Not an original name, but when has the Military ever bothered to do that?” She flicked the holo with her thumb and index fingers and the screen zoomed in on the small planet. Falldown was a large, ocean heavy planet that was just on the inside of the sun’s ‘Goldilocks’ zone, making the world a tropical nightmare, equal parts of hot and humid in large volumes.
“Oh that looks peachy,” Gavin sniffed. “What about it?”
“This,” Kella said, indicating the thick asteroid belt surrounding Falldown and its three moons like a barrier. The theory was that the large planet had originally possessed four moons, but an unwelcome extra-solar ‘capture’ a few million years back had collided with one of those moons in a spectacular crash that created the tightly woven asteroid belt. “Tell them that we managed to break something on the plane, and you need to head in for emergency repairs. We ditch ‘em in the asteroid belt.”
“Ah,” Gavin said, seeing the plan. Kella had an inkling he’d known her idea as soon as she’d brought up the chart, but for some reason had decided to play dumb. “Sounds like a plan. Ok, standby,” he said.
Kella heard Gavin clear his throat, which she realized was entirely for her benefit as he wasn’t technically using a throat. Kella heard the vox channel ping open, and then a large amount of static. “Come in, this is Hughes,” Gavin called in his perfect imitation.
“Major? Is that you? I can barely hear you, can you clean up your signal?” a young voice replied over the channel, professional, yet still concerned.
“Unable to clear static. Taken damage from internal weapons fire. Need to put down. Changing course. Safer not to follow,” Gavin/Hughes replied.
“Sir, we won’t leave you,” the voice said.
“Unable to maintain link, Hughes out,” Gavin said, cutting the channel. The fisheye dashed to the helm’s chair and landed expertly on the seat. “You might want to hold on,” Gavin said over Kella’s earpiece. She immediately slapped the restraint button which extended the ‘bumpers’ on the chair, providing restraints and support.
Just as she did so, the main engine bank on the Praetorian ignited. Even while in the force-cancelling effect of slipspace, the massive amount of thrust pouring from the main bank of engines was enough to shove Kella into the very back of her chair. The acceleration bumpers did their job, and she wasn’t rendered unconscious, but it required every bit of strength she possessed to simply move a finger. She was held down by forces equaling nearly four times normal gravity.
Gavin watched as the dumbstruck Gladius was left behind. As he’d expected, they weren’t ready for a sudden acceleration. His VI gestalt reported the timing, and as it reached zero, Gavin opened up all of the port PDE’s and throttled back the starboard. Mixed with RCS thrusters in the nose firing in succession, the Praetorian entered into a gut-wrenching starboard bank that the plane’s inertia dampers had problems containing. The plane groaned, and Kella grunted.
The VIs reported successful course correction, and Gavin eased up on the power. He’d also been keeping an eye on their location in ‘reality’. Slipspace was, in essence, a pseudo-reality pocket dimension that existed ‘below’ normal space. Like in a turn, the inside track required less distance traveled, and that same principle applied here, just magnified to an nth degree. Travelling forty lightyears could take perhaps four days in slipspace.
However, the amount of time required to travel a set distance varied depending on galactic conditions. Suns, planets, other gravitational bodies have an effect on travel time. To make up for this, habited planets, and uninhabited planets on known slipways hosted slipspace beacons that mark locations of reality in slipspace. Navigational VIs would track the markers to navigate through the void of slipspace which contains no indigenous matter.
Gavin’s little maneuver had completely altered the time table to Dulabar from twenty hours remaining to seven days, at present location. Gavin was not at all concerned with that, and continued on towards Falldown. Forty minutes later, the Praetorian exited slipspace to come face to face with the Falldown asteroid belt, and the sleek Gladius holding position just off of their nose.
“No fekkin’ way,” Kella said in horror as she saw the triangular ship maneuver to close in on the Praetorian.
“Fast fish…” Gavin commented darkly.
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