“Yes, sir,” came the reply, after a moment. “On it. Starting emergency engine protocol. Five minutes to full power. Uh, it’s probably going to mess up the engines pretty badly, sir. And ma’am.”
“If they get us back to the Flow we’ll figure it out then,” Gineos said. “Ping me the second they’re ready to go.” She flipped off the communication link. “You picked a very bad time to have a mutiny,” she said to Inverr.
“We have a position,” Dunn said. “We’re about twenty-three light-years out from End, sixty-one out from Shirak.”
“Any local gravity wells?”
“No, ma’am. Closest star is a red dwarf about three light-years away. Nothing else significant in the neighborhood.”
“So how did we come out if there’s no gravity well?” Inverr asked.
“Eva Fanochi probably could have answered that for you,” Gineos said. “If you hadn’t murdered her, that is.”
“Now’s not a great time for that discussion, Captain.”
“Found it!” Bernus said. “Entrance shoal, a hundred thousand klicks from us! Except…”
“Except what?” Gineos asked.
“It’s moving away from us,” Bernus said. “And it’s shrinking.”
Gineos and Inverr looked at each other. As far as either of them knew, entrance and exit shoals for the Flow were static in size and location. That’s why they could be used for everyday mercantile traffic at all. For a shoal to move and shrink was literally a new thing in their experience.
Figure it out later, Gineos thought to herself. “How fast is it moving relative to us, and how quickly is it shrinking?”
“It’s heading away from us at about ten thousand klicks an hour, and it looks like it’s shrinking about ten meters a second,” Bernus said, after a minute. “I can’t tell you if those are constant rates, either for the velocity or the shrinkage. It’s just what I’m seeing now.”
“Send me the data on the shoal,” Inverr said to Bernus.
“Would you mind telling your lackeys to wait outside?” Gineos said to Inverr, motioning to the armed crew. “I’m finding it difficult to concentrate with bolt throwers aimed at my head.”
Inverr glanced up at the armed crewmen and nodded. They headed over to the hole in the bulkhead and stepped through. “Stay close,” Inverr said, as they exited.
“So can you plot a course to it?” Gineos asked. “Before it closes on us?”
“Give me a minute,” Inverr said. There was silence on the bridge while he worked. Then, “Yes. If Hybern gives us the engines in the next couple of minutes, we’ll make it with margin to spare.”
Gineos nodded and flipped open communication to Engineering. “Hybern, where are my engines?”
“Another thirty seconds, ma’am.”
“How are we for the push fields? We’re going to be moving fast.”
“It depends on how much you force the engines, ma’am. If you draw everything to drive the ship, it’s got to take that last bit of energy from somewhere. It’ll take it from everywhere else first, but eventually it’ll take from the fields.”
“I’d rather die fast than slow, wouldn’t you, Hybern?”
“Uhhhh,” came the reply.
“Engines are online,” Inverr said.
“I see it.” Gineos punched at her screen. “You’ve got navigation,” she said to Inverr. “Get us out of here, Ollie.”
“We have a problem,” Bernus said.
“Of course we do,” Gineos said. “What is this one?”
“The shoal is picking up speed and is shrinking faster.”
“On it,” Inverr said.
“Are we still going to make it?” Gineos asked.
“Probably. Some of the ship, anyway.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that depending how big the shoal is, part of the ship might get left behind. We’ve got the stalk and we’ve got the ring. The stalk is a long needle. The ring is a klick across. The stalk might make it through. The ring might not.”
“That’ll destroy the ship,” Dunn said.
Gineos shook her head. “It’s not like we’re hitting a physical barrier. Anything not inside the shoal circumference will just get left behind. Sliced off like with a razor. We seal the bulkheads to the ring spokes and we survive.” She turned her attention back to Inverr. “That is, if we can shape the bubble.” The bubble was the small envelope of local space-time, surrounded by an energy field generated by Tell Me, that accompanied the ship into the Flow. Technically there was no there inside the Flow. Any ship that didn’t bring a pocket of space-time with it into the Flow would cease to exist in any meaningful sense.
“We can shape the bubble,” Inverr said.
“Are you sure?”
“If I’m not, it won’t matter anyway.”
Gineos grunted at this and turned to Dunn. “Put a ship-wide alert to get everyone out of the ring and into the stalk.” She turned back to Inverr. “How long do we have until we reach the shoal?”
“Nine minutes.”
“A little longer than that,” Bernus said. “The shoal is still speeding up.”
“Tell them they have five minutes,” Gineos said, to Dunn. “After that we seal off the ring. If they’re on the wrong side of the seal, they might get left behind.” Dunn nodded and made the announcement. “I assume you’ll let out some of the people you sealed into their quarters,” she said to Inverr.
“We welded Piter into his,” Inverr said, of the security chief. He was looking at his monitor and making tiny adjustments to the path of the Tell Me. “Not much time to fix that one.”
“Lovely.”
“It’s going to be a close thing, you know.”
“Making the shoal?”
“Yes. But I meant if we leave the ring behind. There are two hundred of us on the ship. Nearly all the food and supplies are in the ring. We’re still a month out from End. Even in the best of circumstances, we aren’t all going to make it.”
“Well,” Gineos said. “I assume you’re already planning to eat my body first.”
“It will be a noble sacrifice you’ll be making, Captain.”
“I can’t tell whether you’re joking or not, Ollie.”
“At the moment, Captain, neither can I.”
“I suppose this is as good a time as any to tell you I never really liked you.”
Inverr smiled at this, but still didn’t turn his attention away from his monitor. “I know that, Captain. It’s one reason I was okay with a mutiny.”
“That and the money.”
“That and the money, yes,” Inverr agreed. “Now let me work.”
The next several minutes were Inverr showing that, whatever his deficiencies as an XO, he was possibly the best navigator that Gineos had ever seen. The entrance shoal was not retreating linearly from the Tell Me; it appeared to dodge and skip, jumping back and forth, an invisible dancer traceable by the barest of radio frequency hums where the Flow pressed up against time-space. Bernus would track the shoal and call out the latest data; Inverr would make the adjustments and bring the Tell Me inexorably closer to the shoal. It was one of the great acts of space travel, possibly in the history of humanity. Despite everything Gineos felt privileged to be there for it.
“Uuuuuhhh, we have a problem,” Interim Chief Engineer Hybern said, over the communication lines. “We’re at the point where the engines have to start taking energy from other systems.”