CHAPTER 48.
“We are on course, General.” Jackie said. “Ready for Oberth maneuver in…ten minutes.”
General Hohenheim chuckled.
“What is it, General?”
Hohenheim glanced towards Anthony LaPointe, who was sitting to Jackie’s right. “Recollection, Dr. Secord. Those precise words were spoken to me once before…by Dr. LaPointe, as I recall…and the maneuver did not turn out to be quite as routine as we thought.”
There were laughs around the engineering room which was now Mjölnir’s bridge. “Well,” A.J. said, “this time there’s just one ship making the turn, so we’re not going to get into an argument with each other.”
“Indeed. And we are no longer encumbered by Mr. Fitzgerald’s presence.” He looked at Madeline, who was strapped in nearby. “Speaking of the quite unlamented Mr. Fitzgerald, are we prepared for our approach in-system and an encounter with his presumed superiors?”
“I believe so, General. A.J., Mia, Horst, and Brett, with some added input from myself, have gone over every system of significance very carefully.” She nodded to Horst.
“Your codes were invaluable, sir,” Horst said. “There were a lot of backdoors into the code placed there by whoever set up the system in the first place, and it was very adaptable code; all Fitzgerald had to do was download something sent to him from back home and it would be accepted into the system with top priority. But A.J. and I, we are quite sure we have…neutered, I think would be the right word…all of this code.”
“Right,” said A.J. “It will seem to act, and we can send back dummy signals that will make it appear to whoever’s doing it that Thor is responding—thank Brett for that, he’ll be able to simulate the response just fine. We can even see what they expect and decide if we want to go along with it for a while.”
He felt a grim warmth. All is prepared. “Very good. I will of course remain invisible until the…denouement, yes?”
“That is indeed the plan,” Maddie said cheerfully. “Either they’ll act or they won’t; if they don’t, your appearance will still be the nail in their coffins. If they do act, you’ll have something new as well as something old to talk about.”
Hohenheim nodded. “And when, exactly, do you think they will make their attempt?”
“Honestly? I don’t think they really will. No matter how they do it, having Mjolnir crash at the end of the trip will look suspicious, and they can’t be a hundred percent certain that we haven’t sent sufficient evidence somewhere they can’t reach. If they do attempt it…Whenever we’re near the inner system and in the midst of some delicate maneuver. Their intent, remember, will have to be to cause a fatal, preferably utterly catastrophic, accident which wipes out any trace of the whole debacle. Earth orbital insertion would be my guess.”
“Yes,” Anthony concurred. “There it will be easy to make the orbit go wrong, send us into re-entry. A landing through Earth’s atmosphere, that will not be so survivable.”
“And they could get a lot more people killed,” Joe said darkly.
A.J. shrugged. “They could, but if they do it at all they’ll be controlling that part of the show, or they would if we didn’t cut them off at the pass. They’re stupid in some ways, but they have no reason to kill anyone they don’t have to. Calculate the way you want the orbit to go wrong and you can determine our crash-landing spot pretty easily.”
“One minute, General,” Jackie said. “Everyone strapped in?”
“All locked down,” Larry said. Everyone was gathered in Mjölnir’s control room to watch.
Once more, Jupiter loomed up in all his incomprehensible vastness, no longer a rounded giant moon-shape but a cream and brown wall that seemed to rise from the infinite depths and recede above back into unbounded space. They were nearly as low down as Nebula Storm had been on her pass, as low as they dared fly the cobbled-together vessel, and this time they were calculating the maneuver to increase their speed in a particular vector, one that would take them in-system with tremendous velocity. The Nebula Drive would be kept to a minimum for some time, then re-deployed to guide and slow them in their final approach in-system.
“Twenty seconds. Main nuclear drive reports all ready.” Mia gave her own smile. “And this time it will work, General.”
“I certainly hope so.”
Madeline took up the final count. “And…five. Four. Three. Two. One. Z—”
The deep-thunder roar of the nuclear rocket vibrated the control room with absolute power, erasing Madeline’s voice, sending bone-deep vibration through Hohenheim’s bones like the drone of a billion giant bees. We are practically on top of the rocket here; I had forgotten what it sounded like.
Mjölnir lunged forward, dumping mass at high speed, exchanging it for even more velocity, screaming around the largest of the planets at a speed so great that even mighty Jove could not stop it. The thunder went on and on, water ejected in hundred-ton lots behind the combined IRI-EU vessel and giving Mjölnir the greatest speed of any human-crewed vessel ever constructed.
And then the rocket cut off, and the stillness rather than the rocket was silently deafening.
“Anthony, report. How is our course?”
There was a pause, and then the French astronomer grinned. “It is perfect. We are precisely on course, to the limit of what I can measure.” He turned his chair to face the others. “My friends, we are truly on our way home!”
When the brief but heartfelt cheers subsided, Hohenheim nodded. “And our E.T.A. at Earth?”
“As we calculated—one hundred eighty-two days, almost exactly six months. Which, I must assure you, is incredibly fast.”
“Fast?” A.J. said, wrinkling his brow. “We went from a zero standing start at Ceres and caught you in less than half of that.”
“Ha! Yes, very fast. Ceres was much closer, in the asteroid belt, and you could accelerate all the way, as could we. In this case, we cannot accelerate any more, all we can do is coast, and then use your Nebula Drive to slow us down at the end, with Mjölnir using the last of its main drive to do the final matching burn.”
“Still,” Madeline said, “don’t be too impatient. We have plenty of supplies to last, and with the delays in construction, we may still get home before the ship that was supposed to rescue us gets out of drydock!”
A.J. seemed satisfied with the reply, and Hohenheim nodded slowly. “Yes. I would like that very much. We have saved ourselves,and to get home this way…it is a fitting tribute, in a way, to those who could not finish the mission. We have joined together, and we return what we can…home.”