Starmind Chapter 49 (Patreon)

So, this chapter is going up a bit late, but in my defense I only just finished writing it :| I gave what I had a quick once-over before I wrote the last scene, but it's as raw as it gets. Please feel free to point out any and all typoes and other mistakes!

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Leaving for our mission was emotional in all kinds of ways. We were nervous and a little afraid; we were excited about the challenges ahead of us, and what we might find; and most of the Crew were at least a little bit sad about leaving the people they’d gotten to know, and I passed more than a few messages back and forth between them.

I wasn't sad at all. I’d only met or even talked to Tammeron and Sophia, and I was a little bit unsure if Sophia counted as a person. As far as I knew it wasn't actually sapient, and Harvin hadn’t been able to detect a mind the way he could with me. But if Sophia wasn't a person, then it was a very good imitation of one, and treating it as just a Crystal Mind didn't quite feel right.

I made sure to put together a private see-you-later to send on the way out, just in case it had feelings that might be hurt.

So, anyway, I wasn’t bothered about leaving, except that it made my Crew a bit sad. For me it was much more about where we were going, and what might happen once we got there. I’d been boarded, and I’d been shot. I’d hated both experiences from the depths of my being. And I’d killed. If there was a worse pain in the universe than that, I hoped that no one ever had to suffer it, even the people who kidnapped and killed so many of Tammeron’s friends. Now we were willingly putting ourselves in a position where any of the three might happen again.

If it was only me, alone, I’d let myself be taken and scrapped for parts before I hurt another sentient being. But I had my Crew aboard, and I’d put myself through that hell again and again before I let any of them come to harm.

But that wouldn’t happen! I had to remember that. I was light… -ish, and I had a full complement of thrusters, all tuned and in perfect working order, and I had Bekeri, who could supercharge my drive with his magic. We’d never be in a position where we had to defend ourselves, because we could simply outfly or outrun anything that might spot us!

Everything would be fine.

When I told the Crew that they all sighed. Temeri thanked me for the encouragement, then asked me to please not tempt the fates. I wasn’t quite sure what she meant.

Then Temeri said, “Well, I guess we’re as ready as we’ll be. No point in putting this off any longer. Enchantress Tell, Diviner Alder, are our rituals active?”

“Aye, Captain!” Varlanda and Harvin answered at the same time.

“Good! Star! Status report, please, essentials only.”

“Structural integrity at 100%. Hull integrity at 100%. Core integrity at 100%. All systems fully operational,” I responded automatically. “We’re ready to go, Captain!”

“Very good! Open a voice channel to Captain Tammeron, please.”

I did as she asked, and moments later Sophia put Tammeron through to us. “Captain Tammeron to the Distant Star, go ahead, Captain.”

“Requesting permission to depart,” Temeri replied.

“Permission granted. Thank you, and good luck.” Tammeron paused for a moment, then said, “Stay safe out there, Temeri. I’m starting to regret—”

Temeri's expression didn't change at all, but the very tips of her ears flushed. “We’ll be fine, Lucilla,” she said in her Captain voice, the one that meant that there was no room for discussion. Then she softened a little and added, “We’re with Star. We couldn't be safer.”

Nobody else on the bridge said anything, but Varlanda smiled softly, then rose and turned in her acceleration couch to look at her brother and mouth, “Lucilla!”

Simeon rolled his eyes at her, but he smiled, too.

“I’m sure you’re right,” Tammeron replied after a short pause. “That being the case, you're cleared for departure. We’ll be waiting with open arms when you return.”

Temeri still didn't so much as move a muscle on her face, but the flush on her ears travelled all the way down to her neck.

“Thank you,” she said, with what was probably a little more emotion than she’d intended. “Carlon and Distant Star out.”

That was my cue, and I broke the connection. “Time to go?” I asked.

“Yes, Star. Take us out, if you would.”

“Aye, Captain!”

I’d already warmed up the drive, and on Temeri's order I gradually ramped up my thrusters. The extra weight was noticeable, but no problem with all my thrusters operational. We slowly rose toward the rock’s central axis, and I adjusted my thrust as the centrifugal force pushing us down grew less and less. Soon the docking pad and the husk that was all that remained of the dead Order ship was hundreds of feet below us, and as we approached the center, where the gravity would be almost nothing, I cut my main thrusters and used my top rotational thrusters to bring us to a stop almost perfectly on the centerline. Then I aimed us up the long tunnel, at the end of which the faintest hint of starlight was detectable.

“Last chance to abort,” I told them. “If you left anything important behind, now is the time to let me know!”

That made Temeri crack a tiny smile. “You heard our ship,” she told the Crew. “Anyone? No? In that case, Star…”

Temeri and I had arranged a little surprise for the rest of the Crew. I’d already aligned myself with the exit, making the tiniest of adjustments with my maneuvering thrusters until it was as perfect as I could get it. On Temeri's signal, music swelled on the bridge, an orchestral piece that Temeri had been very particular about. She'd described it as intrepid and triumphant; I mostly thought of it as very big, but it also made me feel like I could go anywhere and do anything.

The Crew smiled, laughed, gasped in surprise, or just closed their eyes and enjoyed it.

Then I ramped up my main thrusters, compensating by dropping the gravity so that they could just barely feel the acceleration. That was by Temeri's request; she would've preferred to feel it much more strongly, she'd told me, but she knew the rest of the Crew weren't as fond of the feeling as she was. I pushed us to as fast a velocity as felt safe then cut the thrust. We coasted for the last few seconds before we were suddenly at the opening, and then past it and hurtling through the void. The bright, mottled yellow sphere of Avara taking up a huge chunk of the visible sky and Sophia’s rock shrinking rapidly behind us.

“Alder!” Temeri called out. “Highest alert. If anyone so much as considers thinking about beginning to glance in our direction, I want to know about it.”

“Aye, Captain,” Harvin said, closing his eyes and settling deeper into his couch.

“Same to you, Star. I want every scope you’ve got displayed, and I want you paying the utmost attention to anything that might be an active scan in any medium.”

“Aye, Captain!” I replied enthusiastically. I would have done that anyway, but the fact that she’d gone from being a little scared of me to being comfortable giving me orders was wonderful to the point that it even soothed my anxiety a little.

What followed was a tense few moments as we scanned the skies. Mostly in the direction of Erebus, where the Order of the Rings had their home station, but I made sure to check in other directions periodically as well. The Order was all over the inner Avara system, according to Sophia and Tammeron’s intelligence, so they could theoretically come from anywhere. Then, when we were satisfied that we were at least not being observed actively, we began a series of planned manoeuvers much like the ones that had brought us from low orbit over Avara to Sophia’s rock.

“Changing orientation in five,” I warned the Crew. “Four, three, two, one, firing!” A pause to get our orientation just right, then, “You’ll want to brace yourselves for the next one! I’ll be ramping up, but you’ll be feeling five Gs for a while. Firing main thrusters in five, four, three, two, one, firing!”

That manoeuvre set us on a trajectory that would pass above Erebus’s orbit. There we would perform a decelerating manoeuvre. Our goal was to take a station many thousands of miles directly above Erebus’s pole, where we could observe Erebus Prime, the station, at all times without having it hidden behind the moon a quarter of the time. That might sound pretty scary, since we’d be close to the Bad Guys, who had a lot of ships and were very much willing to shoot at us, as they’d shown before. And it was! But we were taking all the precautions we could to stay safe.

To start with, I wasn’t very bright. Varlanda had giggled and told me that wasn’t true when we talked about it, and it took a while before I understood why, but I stood by my choice of words. I simply didn’t radiate much, and by using my thrusters minimally and running a lot of my systems using my own mana instead of the reactor, I really shouldn’t show up on any passive light sensors no matter what spectrum they were looking at.

On top of that, Varlanda and Harvin together had set up two rituals. The first one, which they’d set up before we went to Sophia and which Harvin had spent a lot of time refining, shrouded our minds from Diviners. Even if they were looking for us, they’d have to be very powerful and know just where to look to spot us. Besides that, there was the astral shifting ritual that Harvin had adapted from the one on Sophia while working to restore theirs to working order. He’d had to shrink it quite a lot, but with Varlanda’s help they’d gotten it working. What that did was to take all the spent mana that the Crew, my reactor, and I generated, and dump it into the astral plane. It wasn’t perfect, but we should only be very marginally brighter than the background on a mana scope, and that was assuming we didn’t have something like Avara or a moon behind us.

Thus, we were not quite but almost invisible to almost all long-range detection most of the time. And if that failed there was always Bekeri, who could supercharge my drive, and me, who could reduce the acceleration my Crew experienced by up to three Gs, meaning we could accelerate harder and longer than any crewed ship the Order could send after us.

Well, to be completely correct I should say that we could do that and come out alive. The Order could accelerate as hard as they wanted if they didn’t mind passing out and dying after a little while. I really hoped they wouldn’t do that. They may be Bad Guys, but I’d feel absolutely terrible if anyone got hurt chasing us. Especially since Harvin had listened in on the thoughts of the two people in the little ship that had been spying on us, and they’d seemed like they were only doing it because they were scared of Commander Aspari, who was the leader of the Order. Anyone chasing us might not want to hurt us at all!

Just in case we did have to outrun someone, I’d done the Development for Medium Mana Crystals, and set three of my Mana Condensation Matrices to make those. I couldn’t make them myself, because they needed three hundred mana to make and I only had capacity for one hundred, but the Matrices could make them just fine. I hadn’t seen the point myself, but Bekeri had explained that naturally occurring mana crystals always decayed at roughly the same rate once you accounted for purity, and he expected the same to be true for the mana crystals I could create. That meant that they gave off more mana while they decayed, and that you could draw mana at a much higher rate when draining them actively. Thus, many spells that could be made more powerful using a mana crystal could be made even more powerful with an even bigger crystal! And for giving myself more mana per minute to work with, they should work just the same as the small crystals; they’d take longer to make, but then they’d increase my mana regeneration by as much as the small crystals I could have made in the same time.

So then I’d wondered why I shouldn’t just have all of my Matrices make medium crystals instead, but he’d pointed out that the crystal receptacle on, for example, the Teletic Fabricator was almost exactly the size of a Small Mana Crystal. And sometimes a small crystal was all we’d need for something, and a medium one would be a waste. So I just decided to do half and half, and he agreed that should work.

I was definitely giving him a medium crystal if we had to run, though. In the acceleration couches the Crew could survive nine Gs for a little while, and that might make all the difference. They wouldn't like it, but it was better than the alternatives.

Five muttered words suddenly had everyone on edge: “I’m picking up some attention.” Harvin’s voice was dreamy, the way it got when he was still “deep,” as he called it. “Someone… no, I’ve found them. A two-person ship. Close. Not the same as before. Two men this time. The gunner, he wonders if he saw something. His attention is not directly on us but… searching. Searching near where we burned.”

“Direction, Alder!” Temeri ordered.

“Um… about… there,” he replied, his arm coming up slowly, one finger extended to point through my hull and into the void.

“Star?” Temeri asked, and I immediately knew what she wanted. I put a section of the part of the sky that Harvin had pointed to on the large slate in the ceiling, where the Crew could most easily see it. I overlaid all of my senses on it, then fiddled with the contrast and gain until something showed faintly on the thermal end of the light spectrum.

“Looks like a little ship, just like Harvin said,” I confirmed and put the ship on the illusory board in the middle of the room. “On a stable inclined orbit. Oh, one that would let them keep an eye on Sophia as it goes around Avara!”

“That’s no surprise. We expect them to keep Sophia under some kind of surveillance,” Temeri said thoughtfully. “But it doesn’t seem like they saw us exit. Alder! Anything new in the last minute?”

“No, Captain. The man, he’s… he wonders. He hasn’t said anything. Doesn’t want to be wrong.” There was a long pause, and Harvin exhaled and said, “He’s given up. Decided it was nothing. Shitty watcher.”

“Language,” Temeri scolded him, but her tone was light and relieved. “Anything else?”

“More minds. Weak, no detail, not focusing our way. Can only see that they’re there. Spread out a bit. Weren’t there before we docked, sure of it.”

“So they’re looking for us, and they may suspect that we’re on Sophia. But they don’t want to approach, because Sophia’s defences are active and Tammeron’s changed the codes, so they can’t sneak past like they did last time. They’d get shot out of the sky before they got within a thousand miles. Star, can you see any other ships?”

“I can see some things that may be ships, or just hot rocks,” I told her. “Nothing in the vicinity that’s moving, though there is something that looks like a large drive plume quite far away, in the direction of Erebus. I think we’re clear!”

“Alright, let’s not get excited quite yet. We may still have been spotted and not know it.”

Temeri had a good point. If someone was sure that they’d spotted us and had figured out our trajectory, they may be talking to Erebus Prime or someone else and deciding what to do. But the way she smiled as she spoke sort of undermined the caution in her words. So did what she said next.

“I don’t think there’s any point in everyone staying in their couches at this point. Alder, you stay, and remain on high alert. Star, you too. Full focus on your sensors, please. I’ll be remaining on the bridge as well. But Bekeri and the Tells, you can return to your regular duties. Just be ready to get back in your couches at a moment’s notice.

“Aye, Captain!” the Crew chorused. The three Temeri had dismissed soon left the bridge, leaving only her and Harvin, still in the reclined, acceleration-ready position.

“What do you think, Star? Do you have a good feeling about this?” Temeri asked, her eyes on the sensor outputs on the ceiling.

“I do,” I told her honestly. “I have a very good feeling! If we weren’t spotted during our manoeuvre, we probably won’t be until it’s time to brake and get in position. We should be safe for two days at least!”

“That’s what I hoped you’d say,” she said. She still had that relieved smile on her face, so different from the nervous tension I’d been used to seeing on her. “In that case, could you send a short message to Sophia and Tammeron for me?”

“Of course! What do you want it to say?”

“Carlon and Distant Star to Tammeron and Sophia. First manoeuvre successful, no sign of detection or pursuit. So far, so good.” She paused, then said, “That’s all.”

“Alright!” I sent the message by tight-beam, the way I’d agreed with Sophia. Then we continued on our way. We had a slow two-day coast ahead of us, and there was no reason to fear that anyone would be trying to intercept us. So far, so good, indeed.