bandombigbang 10: Part II
Part I - Part III
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They drop out of hyperspace a full planet’s distance from Coreas an hour later. There isn’t anyone behind them, and before there ends up being anyone in front of them, Matt pulls up the coordinates to Omorja, Andy corrects them, and they jump again.
Once they are orbiting on the far side of an unnamed planet three planets over from the mining planet, Matt calls for a meeting down in the mess. Pete looks vaguely queasy after both jumps, which is a fair reaction to two jumps in quick succession, but hyperspace travel always leaves Matt starving.
“What type of damage did we take?” Matt asks as soon as he has a full plate of food in front of him.
“Minor glances along the port side along Three and Four, no direct hits,” Ryan says. “Andy did a damn good job.”
“Andy always does a damn good job, thank you,” Andy says. There’s a fizzing-pop, and he appears at Matt’s elbow. “Only minor amounts of credit goes to Mixon.”
Matt flips him off. “That wasn’t what you were saying a few hours ago.”
“You keep telling yourself that, Mixon.”
Joe leans across the table to where Stu is just sitting down with a tray of drinks. “Are they always like this?” He sounds like he might be trying at whispering.
Patrick groans. “Joe, you suck at whispering.” Joe just smiles at him.
“You mean the flirting? Yeah, that’s totally normal,” Stu says. He takes a can of pop from the tray before he passes the tray to Joe. The can hisses as Stu opens it. “We’ve managed to keep Andy from thinking about a cyberkenetic body on the off chance we’d have to see them screwing around - listening to the verbal equivalent is bad enough.”
Matt rolls his eyes so hard it makes him a little dizzy. “Look, Rossman, just because you haven’t managed to date anyone in over a year doesn’t mean you should be broadcasting your sick fantasies about. It’s rude.”
“Uh-huh. And the flirting is not dinner time conversation,” Stu says.
“Where’d you get pop?” Pete asks. He reaches over Joe for a can. “Most people won’t go near this stuff.” He pops the tab and takes a long drink before he leans against Patrick, who just sighs and shifts to better support him.
“We’re not most people,” Kyle says. He’s leaning his chair back on two legs like normal. Matt’s hoping that he falls over like he did the time the Selvienian delegation was aboard; Matt had laughed so hard he hadn’t been able to breath comfortably for days. “Also, Stu’s addicted to the stuff. He’d live on it if Andy would let him keep enough on board.”
“We do have to have room for regular cargo,” Andy says.
“Whatever,” Stu says. “Was there a reason you called this meeting, Matt, or did you just want some company for dinner?”
“I figured we should clear the air, explain a few things and have a few things explained to us before we get back under way,” Matt says. He finishes the last of the potato-like things from the third moon of Flavin and pushes his tray away from himself. “Okay, I’ll start with the introductions.”
He points at Andy, who has crossed his arms over his chest and is about three seconds from rolling his eyes at Matt. “This is Andy. Andy is also known as Fuck City, also known as the Ship you are currently a passenger of. He’s the only known Living Ship in existence, and he takes it personally when people try to sell him to the Republic.”
“He also takes exception to people talking about him like he isn’t standing right here, Mixon,” Andy snaps.
“Hey, just giving a basic summary here, dude. Chill.” Matt smiles up at him. “Anyway, right. I’m Matt Mixon, pilot and all around awesome dude. That right there is Kyle Johnson, mechanic extraordinaire and super awesome cook - he’s the one you’ll want to thank when you’ve gained ten pounds before you leave.”
Kyle gives everyone a little wave as he picks up the tray Matt so careless pushed aside. As he walks back to the kitchen, Kyle smacks the back of Matt’s head. Matt tries to duck, so mostly all Kyle manages to do is mess Matt’s hair up a little.
“Next on the list is Ryan Morgan, all around Jack of Trades. If you need something oddly specific done, talk to him, but mostly he makes sure that we look reputable in front of the straights,” Matt continues, pointing at Ryan. Ryan smiles at everyone else, but flips Matt off. Matt gives him a cheeky smile and moves on to Stu. “Then there is Stu Ross, our weapons expert and resident pop fanatic. Words of warning: do not take any of his pop without his prior permission, he gets cranky.”
“Matt learned that the hard way,” Kyle says. He sits back down next to Ryan.
“Yep, Matt was blue for a whole three months,” Ryan agrees. “It was absolutely awesome.”
“Especially when Trillium tried to take him home with her,” Stu laughs. “How is dear Trillium doing, Matt? We haven’t heard from her in so long.”
Matt frowns. “I’m pretty sure she married her second father’s first wife’s third cousin from Omorja.”
“Trillium? As in the High Princess Priestess of Kartas?” Patrick asks.
“Yeah, Trill has this whole blue fetish thing that I’m so not getting into,” Matt says. He waves his hand in their passenger’s direction. “So, introduce yourselves.”
“Well, that was eloquent,” Andy says.
“Stu’s getting anxious.” Matt shrugs. “It’s clearly a result of drinking far too many pops, but would you really like to take the chance of the weapons expert getting a little slap-happy? I mean, do we really want a repeat of Lutetia?”
Stu calmly flips Matt off. Then takes another sip of his pop.
“Right,” Patrick says. He’s looking at all of them like they’re crazy, which is a fairly normal thing for first time passengers. “I’m Patrick Vaughn Stump, scientist. These are my associates, Peter Wentz and Joseph Trohman.”
“Associates? Like your assistants?”
Patrick shakes his head. “No. While they are extremely intelligent, neither of their talents lies in scientific study.”
“Meaning Pete is your bodyguard,” Matt says, thinking of the way Pete had fought on the station. Definitely a bodyguard. “And Joe is what, exactly?”
“Here for the doughnuts, mostly,” Joe says with a smile. “Or, you know, public relations.”
“You’re PR? Patrick needs PR?”
Joe shrugs. “More Pete honestly - I keep them out of various planet’s government’s hands, they feed me doughnuts.”
“That’s an interesting dynamic.”
“We’re interesting people.”
“And just what do you interesting people need me and my crew for?” Andy interrupts. He’s crossed his arms over his chest, and he’s glaring at the three of them. Stu really needs to stop watching Space Pirate vids.
“We were told this is the fastest ship available for transport outside of Republic control,” Patrick says. “I have materials I need to acquire from a specific location that is a good deal away from, well, anything, and I required a ship with the capabilities to get me there.” Patrick shrugs, causing Pete to frown and shift away slightly. “I assure you, you would be in no danger and the materials I will gather are miniscule in number.”
“You can’t get them anywhere else, or through more traditional means?”
Patrick smiles. “These materials are not… accessible anywhere else in the Universe, I assure you.”
Matt and Andy look at each other. Matt knows that the rest of the crew is more than willing to go along with this - what Patrick has said is pretty much verbatim from his initial communiqué, if they had any issues, they never would have picked him up. Matt is mostly just curious. The difficult person is going to Andy.
Who huffs a put upon sigh and disappears when Matt raises an eyebrow at him.
“Right,” Matt says when he turns back to the table. “We’re in. Where do we need to go?”
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It takes Patrick three days to give them the series of coordinates he wants them to use. Those three days he spends pestering Andy and Matt about Fuck City’s hyperspace capabilities and limitations.
“Dude, Patrick, your problem isn’t going to be with Andy,” Matt tells him when Patrick corners him in the mess the second day in. Matt’s just in there to grab a quick bite before Kyle locks him in the shuttle bay playing button pusher for Kyle’s experimental adjustments on the Nirvana. “It’s going to be with me.”
“What? Why?”
“I’m human. Andy has near unlimited energy to draw from, and I don’t,” Matt says. “The longest I’ve ever done a jump has been six straight hours. Knocked me on my ass for a week.”
“Mind you, he was also sick with the Aleran Flu,” Ryan breaks in. He shoves his empty tray aside so that he can pat Matt sympathetically on the shoulder. “Does terrible things to the mind, Aleran Flu. Terrible things.”
Patrick raises an eyebrow. “Really. Like what, exactly?”
“Nothing important,” Matt says. He shoves Ryan out the nearby service hatch and neatly out of the conversation. The last thing Matt needs is for Pete to find out about how Matt had gone nutty after. Well. Stupid fucking flu. “Moving on.”
Patrick’s grinning at him, and Matt swears he hears Ryan’s cackle echoing back through the walls. Matt takes a seat at Ryan’s now abandoned table.
“Shut up, Stump. I can still refuse to pilot for this fucked up little expedition of yours,” Matt says. He really can’t, but there isn’t anyone around to correct him. Matt has learned to be very adept at taking advantage of openings when they appear.
“I’m not actually sure how far Andy can jump on his own - we’ve never really discussed it - but I’m good for about six to seven straight hours of jumping before I’ll need a rest.”
“How long to rest?”
“Umm, at least twelve hours,” Matt says. Enough time to eat and crash hard is what he’s looking for, honestly. “Anything less and I might lose focus at the wrong time and, yeah. You ever see a ship that has dropped out of hyperspace without the correct trajectory? It ain’t pretty.”
Matt seen it once, a couple of years before he’d joined up with Fuck City. He’d been flying out with a commercial hauler that sort of existed below Republic awareness, and on his second tour round the Michigan quadrant one of the older crew members had pulled him aside to point out the wreckage as they’d passed it. It had been a smaller, experimental design for the Republic. Too small for the pieces Matt had seen scattered across two solar systems.
Matt shudders at the memory.
“Okay,” Patrick says. He frowns as he types on his datapad. “How does the hyperspace travel work?”
“Um. We enter hyperspace, stay for a bit, and jump off when we hit our exit?” Matt says. He shrugs when Patrick glares at him. “What do you mean, man?”
“Is it a form of quasar bending? Or something completely different?” Patrick asks.
Matt blinks. Then shrugs again. “I have no idea. That’s definitely something you’ll have to talk to Andy about.”
“Mixon,” Kyle’s voice blares over the shipwide comm. “I need you down in the shuttle bay. Nirvana’s ready for those tests you promised us. No excuses, and hurry the fuck up!”
Matt climbs to his feet. “Sorry, Patrick. I gotta jet. You’re better off asking Andy about all those specifics anyway - he knows the science. I just follow the lines.”
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That leads to Patrick demanding an audience with Andy. Andy isn’t much in the mood for talking, what with being busy pointing out all the ways Kyle isn’t fixing the shuttle correctly, helping Ryan and the cleaning droids locate the access panels that needed the most maintenance and prioritizing them, and keeping an eye on Pete and Joe touring the ship with Stu, especially when they are in Weaponry. Andy is also double, triple, and quadruple checking all of his scanners to a) make sure they are all working properly and b) making sure nothing and no one is sneaking up on them, he is running deep background checks on all three of their passengers, and he is fixing the damage to Three and Four from the incident at 7-2-5.
Andy simply doesn’t need to add the questions of a grumpy, curious scientist who liked to hum under his breath to that list.
However. After the third chewing out by Ryan because Patrick kept interrupting him to try to better figure out the cleaning droids (Matt had wanted to call them MachRoombas but that had, thankfully, been shot down ruthlessly by the crew), Andy finds himself talking to Patrick in the passenger lounge with his holographic image sitting across from Patrick.
“How do you hyperjump?” is Patrick’s first question. “Is it quasar bending? Or is it more like Techlor’s wormhole theory?”
“You mean, are there secret passageways in space?” Andy snorts. “That Techlor is a crackpot now as much as he was sixty years ago. Only now people are actually listening.”
“I’ll take that as a ‘no’,” Patrick says. “No ‘secret passageways’, right.”
He fiddles with his datapad, which has about as many security programs as Fuck City does. The thing can connect to the ‘Net via the shipwide connection, like any other portable, but Andy can’t exactly connect back. Usually Andy has no problems if he wants to take a quick look-see around his passenger’s portables - and seriously, Mixon can fuck off about it as it’s just another layer of security. It isn’t like Andy ever uses that information against their passengers, except in cases where the lives of his crew are concerned.
Still, the souped up security on a personal portable makes Andy suspicious.
“So, the hyperjumping is more of a time-shock then?” Patrick asks. “Judging by the wear on Mixon.”
Andy frowns. Then he shrugs. “It’s actually a combination of the two. More the second than the first.”
Patrick stares at him when he doesn’t continue. The silence grows awkward quickly.
“And…?” Patrick finally asks.
“No ‘and’,” Andy says. “I answered your question, and I’m not going into details. You should have information enough to do your calculations. Just remember: Mixon can pilot for only so long before he needs to rest. The longer he pilots, the longer the rest.”
“Yes, yes. He already told me. Six to twelve,” Patrick says. He huffs and tugs at the brim of his hat. Andy’s honestly never seen a person wear the old fashioned trucker hats outside of vids. Patrick the Scientist is more of an odd duck than any of the crew is willing to admit. “You are extremely unhelpful.”
“It’s true,” Andy says. He leans his hologram back against the couch, crossing his arms over his chest. He’s been told the studied nonchalance of the pose is particularly infuriating. “Just how many jumps are you looking to have?”
“You jumped three quadrants in an hour, yes?” Patrick asks. He’s pointedly staring at his datapad again.
Andy narrows his eyes. “Yes. That was at half-speed. Full speed would have taken half an hour. However, Mixon would have been too drained for the second jump.”
“Hmmm.” Patrick types something into his datapad. “And the distance didn’t bother you?”
“I’m a quantum-drive starliner,” Andy says. “Nothing short of a prolonged, full-scale battle or jumping to the Edge of the Universe drains me.”
“You’ve jumped to the Edge of the Universe?” Patrick’s head comes up, his eyes wide with surprise.
Andy rolls his eyes. “No. That was hypothetical. Why would I jump to the Edge of the Universe?” Andy’s not particularly sure the place even exists outside of the myths and legends.
Patrick shrugs. “Some would do it to say they had. Others because they could. The reasons would be your own, and I was just wondering if you had.”
Andy narrows his eyes. He has the feeling that there’s something else to it but he doesn’t have a way of calling Patrick on it. Stupid fucking courtesy protocols. “I haven’t.”
“Then your hypothetical jump to the Edge was based on what, exactly?”
Andy resists the temptation to reprogram the environmental controls in Patrick’s quarters and in the lab space he’d requested. Andy refuses to stoop to that level against a passenger he could more easily space. Also, the crew would be pissed if he did anything to jeopardize their pay.
Plus that whole courtesy protocol shit.
“I’m a Living Ship, Stump. I’m more than capable of calculating the numbers.”
“Right,” Patrick says. It’s obviously an offhanded remark - because why would anyone want to listen to the Ship they’re currently inhabiting? - as Patrick focuses once again on his datapad.
There has to be a way of bypassing Patrick’s security protocols. There’s no way a kid scientist is going to outsmart a Living Ship.
“Seven seven hour jumps,” Patrick says.
Andy blinks. “What?”
“It’ll take seven seven hour jumps,” Patrick repeats. “If we take, say, sixteen hour breaks in between each jump, we should make the full distance in around a week.”
“That’s.” Andy blinks again. Runs the numbers. “You’re trying to reach the Edge.”
Patrick smiles at him. “What? Did you honestly expect something different? It isn’t like the Uncharted Territories are unreachable by any normal ship.” Patrick stands up waving his datapad absently at Andy. “I should have the coordinates for you by morning. Thanks for your input.” Then he leaves.
Andy stares at the spot where Patrick had been sitting long enough for the internal room sensors to automatically power down the lights. Their passengers are one hundred percent completely fucking nuts.
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The known Universe is really fucking huge. First, there’s the fifty Core Quadrants - mini-Empires in their own rights - that had been named for an obsession that the Republic Founders had had with an Ancient Earth country.
Then there’s the Band that surrounds them. The Band is a wide scope of empty, uninhabitable space the respectable citizens of the Republic believe is the cause of all evil in the Universe and is also cursed. No true Republic citizen would dare cross the Band.
Andy has made that trip an uncountable number (somewhere around three million, but he’d gotten bored with counting the trips around twenty years ago) of times. It isn’t nearly as bad as the rumors. The gap between galaxies is quiet and empty, but hardly the creator of space vampires or whatever idiot story is flying around this decade.
(Andy’s personal favorite theory had floated around during his thirtieth year of service and had involved gigantic space blobs that were mostly corrosive acid and ate through anything they came into contact with. Twenty years later a scientist from the New Mexico quadrant captured and studied what he called the Space Jellyfish that were more squid-like than anything.
Space Jellyfish are extremely intelligent, but they have a taste for metal. Andy is sure that the space blob rumors had been caused because some collective of Space Jellyfish had eaten the vast majority of an inter-galactic caravan.)
On the other side of the Band is the Uncharted Territories. The Uncharted are about five times the size of the Core Quadrants but have about the same population. Technically, the Republic has no official jurisdiction in the Uncharted, but anyone with a brain knows that’s just a line of complete bullshit. Half of the Uncharted is made up of law abiding peoples looking to make it into the Republic, and the other half is split between criminals and those who hate the Republic with the force of a thousand suns. More often than not, those in the latter group were one and the same.
(Stu and Kyle were both from the Uncharted Territories, Matt and Ryan were both from the Core Quadrants, and no one really knows exactly where Fuck City came from, not even Andy. The first several years of his consciousness are extremely fuzzy - like all the files were corrupted. Andy’s pretty sure that explains everything there is to know about his crew. This time around, anyway.)
Fuck City is currently orbiting an unnamed planet three planets over from Omorja, which is located at the outer edge of the Nebraska quadrant, pretty much smack dab in the middle of the Core Quadrants. It would only take two seven hour jumps for them to reach the inner edge of the Uncharted Territories. Then three, possibly four, jumps of the same length for them to cross the span of the Uncharted Territories to the Outer Rim.
Andy hasn’t been that far out in almost a century, and he’d only done that then because he’d been under contract with the Republic. There’s a nothingness beyond the Uncharted that is everything the citizens of the Republic are supposed to believe the Band is but isn’t. Andy isn’t exactly sure what Patrick expects to find a full seven hour jump or two out from the Outer Rim.
He isn’t exactly sure he wants to find out.
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Patrick hands Matt a list of coordinates when Matt passes him on his way to the bridge. It’s been three days since the meeting in the mess and, honestly, everyone is starting to go a little stir-crazy. Even Andy is twitchy - it used to be that Matt found it hilarious when the lights and environmental settings started fluxing all over the place, at least, once he figured out that it was Andy and not some super virus or whatever.
Granted, Andy being twitchy could also be because Patrick has been asking him questions every time one pops into his head. Matt’s found it extremely annoying, and he doesn’t have ears in every accessible portion of the ship like Andy does.
Matt looks over the list. There are seven sets of coordinates. The first would take them to the edge of the Core Quadrants just outside of the planetary reach of Orleans, the second through the Band, four through the Uncharted to the Outer Rim, and one more from the Outer Rim to some place to absolutely nowhere.
Matt raises an eyebrow at Patrick. “Um, Stump. Are you sure about these? ‘Cause this last one here, right? It doesn’t actually exist.”
Patrick crosses his arms over his chest and glares. “Who’s the scientist here, Mixon? Me or you?”
Matt holds his hands up at chest level. “Whoa, hey! Chill out, man. I just wanted to point out…”
“The coordinates are correct.”
“Right.” Matt nods and gestures towards the transporter with the list. “I’ll just show these to Andy then.”
“You do that.” Patrick nods.
Matt nods again as he walks way. He gives a little wave before he jumps in the transporter and only gives in to the urge to shiver once the doors are closed between him and Patrick. “Holy crap. That guy is insane.”
“Talking to yourself again, Mixon?”
Mixon turns his head to the side. Andy’s leaning against the side of the transporter and grinning at Matt. The shifting lights that indicate the level casting shadows over the pale skin on Andy’s arms.
“Please,” Matt scoffs. “I knew you were listening.”
Andy raises an eyebrow. “Really.”
Matt leans forward to leer in Andy’s face. “Baby, you always listen to me.”
The transporter comes to a stop with a cheerful little ding. Andy gestures Matt through the door.
“Aside from your delusions of grandeur, Mixon,” Andy says. “Just what the fuck were you talking about? Pete’s down in the secondary maintenance bay with Joe, Kyle and Stu.”
“Wasn’t talking about Pete. I was talking about Patrick.” Matt waves the coordinate list above his head. “We have our coordinates. Now with an extra set of issues attached.” He spins on his heel to roll his eyes at Andy. “Buckets of issues.”
“Talking about yourself again, Matt?” Ryan asks from his station. He doesn’t look up from the computer card game on his screen. “We’ve told you this before: Andy is not your therapist.”
“Ha ha ha,” Matt says. He plops down in his chair and scans the list in. “The first six make sense, sort of. I mean there’s nothing out by the Outer Rim, which is why it’s the Outer Rim. But the seventh? Weird, dude. Weird.”
There’s a fizzing pop, and Andy reappears on the main bridge screen. “Stump is trying to reach the Edge.”
Matt and Ryan both blink at him. “What?”
Andy shrugs. “The Edge. The end and the beginning of everything. I realize that you never finished that second degree, Mixon, but surely you remember hearing about that.”
“It doesn’t exist,” Ryan says. “The Edge is a figment of one person’s crazy-ass imagination downloaded into society’s collective subconscious - like space vampires. We can’t go someplace that doesn’t exist.”
Andy lets the list of coordinates scroll past him on the screen. “Actually, if Stump’s coordinates are right, we can.”
Ryan crosses his arms over his chest. “Right. And now you’re going to tell us that space vampires actually exist.”
A series of photos and paintings flashes over Andy’s face of a very pale, very cranky looking alien race. “The space vampire rumors, like Space Jellyfish, are founded very much in fact. The Fligs are a very old, very private race from a planet on the very outer edge of the Uncharted Territories. They’re primarily herbivores, but they have a few ancient bloodletting rituals that some moronic anthropologists six or seven centuries ago took the wrong way.”
“Wait,” Matt says. “The Fligs are the original Space Pirates?”
Andy scowls. “No. Don’t you listen, Mixon? The Fligs are the source material for the space vampire rumors.”
“Seriously, man, where do you come up with this shit?” Ryan asks.
“Andy said they were from a planet on the very outer edge of the Uncharted Territories. The Space Pirate home world is on the very outer edge of the Uncharted Territories,” Matt says. “And that ain’t no rumor.”
Ryan opens his mouth, then shuts it with a shake of his head. “There is something seriously wrong with you, Mixon. I just want you to know that we’ve all realized it.”
Matt flips him off. “So you’re saying that, just because you can trace back the existence of space vampires, that means the Edge must also be true? Andy, dude, that’s a little insane.”
“You’re talking to a Living Ship, Mixon,” Andy says.
“Yeah,” Ryan agrees. “Insane is sort of the point, isn’t it.”
Matt rubs his hand over his face. “All right. You’ve swayed me with your crazy-ass logic. To the Edge we will go!”
Andy snorts. “Orleans, first, dumbass.”
“Not to interrupt what will probably turn out to be yet another titillating argument between the two of you, but shouldn’t you, oh, I don’t know. Warn the rest of the crew and passengers that we’re about to jump into hyperspace?” Ryan asks. “I’d really rather not have to deal with fixing broken arms and concussions and all that shit. Again.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Matt snaps. “One time that happened! One time!”
“And I’ll never let you forget it,” Ryan agrees easily. “I still haven’t gotten the slime stains out of the Infirmary beds.”
Matt rolls his eyes. “Fine, fine. Do your job and open the comms, would you?”
Ryan continues glaring but turns on shipwide comms before he straps in.
“Attention passengers and crew of Fuck City. The lovely Mr. Stump, our dear, dear scientist, has given us our coordinates,” Matt says. He pulls his flight straps on as he talks.
“Finally,” Andy adds.
“Quiet, you,” Matt says. “Anyway! We’re going to jump to the first set in just a moment, so everyone find yourself a place to strap in.”
“Mixon, I’m in the middle of some very delicate work here…” Kyle starts.
“Johnson, you’re in the secondary maintenance lab,” Andy says. “The only delicate work you’re doing to screwing our passengers out of whatever cash and valuables they happen to have on them while Stu watches.”
“Like I said, I’m in the middle of some very delicate work,” Kyle repeats.
“You can go back to swindling them once we’re in hyperspace, dude,” Matt says. He has their flight path registered and waiting. “We’ll be in hyperspace for about seven hours, followed by a period of rest…”
“About sixteen hours,” Andy supplies. “We need to make sure Mixon gets his beauty sleep, after all.”
“Yes, thank you, Andy,” Matt says. “Seven hours of hyperspace, followed by sixteen hours of rest, rinse and repeat six times. For this first jump, we’ll be just outside the planetary reach of Orleans in the Louisiana Quadrant. For varying reasons, we will not be making a visit to Orleans, and I do request that everyone keep the noise to a minimum. Our neighbors will not be pleased to find us visiting, so let’s not wake them.”
“Who did you piss off, Mixon?” Pete asks.
“That was none of my fault, thank you,” Matt tells him.
“Actually, most of that was mine,” Kyle admits. “And Andy totally has to take some of the blame.”
“No, I don’t. Why would you say that, Johnson?”
“Well, if you weren’t a Living Ship, then it wouldn’t have mattered what I had told them,” Kyle says.
“Right. So it’s my fault for existing,” Andy snaps.
“Only partially.”
“Kill him after we jump, dude,” Matt interrupts. Andy glares at him but shuts up. “All right, I’m making the jump. Everyone settled?”
“We’re ready to go here,” Stu says.
“So am I,” Patrick says.
“You’re good to go,” Ryan tells him.
“Hold on tight, boys,” Matt says. He lets the Trance take over. You all set, dude?
As I’ll ever be, Andy tells him. I’ve adjusted the coordinates to take us out on the blindside of one of Orleans’ neighboring planets. We should be fine for the full sixteen hours.
Our energy trail? Matt locates the steel blue trail and swings the ship around to meet up with it.
Shouldn’t be noticed until after we make the next jump. They’re having problems with solar flares this decade.
Huh. Guess that explains why they’ve been so touchy lately. Matt reaches out for the bright spot, and feels Andy right beside him.
Between one breath and another, they’re gone.
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Part I - Part III