Chapter 10

“In reality, everything you told us is just conjecture,” Erika said out of nowhere. Her voice carried that sound only siblings can have toward one another. It had the same ring as, “I know you took my toy, but I’m going to keep that fact from mom and dad until it will bring me the greatest advantage.”

We were hovering over the Protectorate base in Tesserae as the Senator gave his speech to the base staff and the academic student body. Hovering in a shuttle is not nearly as easy as it is in a fighter. In a fighter, you flick a switch and the computer locks you in position, basically putting you into a geosynchronous orbit at any altitude. We used the same system in shuttles, freighters, and any other larger ship to create artificial gravity. Since a fighter didn’t have artificial gravity the only time the system was in use was to facilitate an anti-inertia effect to keep the stresses on the pilot’s body within acceptable limits. The system use was called a Dark Matter Field Emitter or DaMFE for short. The same system was used in drones for propulsion. I had no idea how it worked or why, even though it is taught in early level physics courses. I always copied off my sister in all of our physics courses, so I never needed to learn it. The only thing I could remember about it was its uses.

Since the ship I was currently flying used the DaMFE as artificial gravity, it couldn’t be used for hovering. So I had to concentrate on what I was doing and exactly where I was and make subtle adjustments constantly. Furthermore, for a ship like this one, I couldn’t do it by myself, and Erika was right in there helping me every step of the way. Her normal jobs, except gunnery, were being taken over by the computer. It always bothered me that we could enter information into the computer and fly between two planets without further input but we couldn’t press a button and hover.

Erika’s point wasn’t lost on me; knowing that I had to use all my focus on keeping us in one place, Erika could just speak her mind without having to worry about me responding. And that’s exactly what she was doing.

“So what happened, exactly, while I was getting shot at and saving Jim’s life?” she asked rhetorically. “Let me tell you. You decided to question a prisoner against orders and get Jim’s granddaughter involved. Then when the prisoner spouted a bunch of nonsensical poetry you and some political gretter put meaning to it all that is as equally nonsensical.” She paused and made a few adjustments I had apparently missed. “What exactly did you expect Jim to do when you brought all of this to his attention?” She paused again to make adjustments, obviously not waiting for me to reply. “You knew exactly what he was going to do, which is exactly what he did. He secured two fighters for us and is sending us off to Mercury on some wild gronnen chase. Meanwhile, he is leaving himself completely unprotected. But here’s something I bet you didn’t know, one of the fighters is a Jackal.”

I took less than a second to glance over at her. That really took me off guard. A Jackal class fighter was designed for recon. It was fast, really fast in the world of fighters, and was equipped with a full assortment of sensors. Its major drawback was that it had very limited firepower and could barely hold off an impact from a micrometeoroid much less a plasma blast. It required two people under the canopy, one to fly the ship and the other to run all the sensor equipment. Who did he expect to run the equipment on board? Erika could do it, but wasn’t that great at it. I wasn’t even as good as she was, so it had to be her, but then who was flying the other fighter?

“I can answer the question I’m sure you’re asking yourself right now,” Erika said. “Celina.”

I gapped at her and both of us had to ignore everything including breathing while we got Kappa-One back under control. My sister mumbled, “We’re going to get chewed out for that one.”

As soon as everything was where it was supposed to be, I took the second to spit out, “You can’t be serious.”

“Port thruster,” she reprimanded and I corrected. Then she replied. “That’s word for word what I said to Jim. But he is dead set on it. He knows neither one of us can handle the sensors well enough to even use the fighter. So she’ll be flying with you and I’ll be your wingman in a Razor.” She paused for a moment, and then mumbled, “I guess Jim could always use one of those poor cadets you drug along as a meat shield.”

I was stunned. It was hard enough to think about anything else at that moment other than keeping the ship in place. Celina reading and holding a conversation at the same time flashed through my thoughts and I wished I had that ability. But I didn’t. We had to stay here for another half hour at least before I could land. That meant I had to sit here and stew over everything Erika had said until we were moving again. I couldn’t believe Erika would do something like this to me. Leaving me to boil in my own thoughts while I couldn’t talk to anyone about it and to have full knowledge of how long I would be at it. It was the kind of thing I would do to her, so her doing it to me was just… dirty!

So my stewing began.

First, I tried to figure out exactly what the schedule would be. When we set down, Erika and I would suit up in our fighter flight suits, then we’d head off to preflight, which was horrible on a fighter. Not only was it incredibly tedious, it was also stupidly time-consuming. Meanwhile, Celina would be off trying to find a flight suit that fit her. If either Erika or I went with her to help, it would be a lot faster; unfortunately, since we had to preflight two birds it meant we couldn’t take the extra time to help her. But in reality, it didn’t matter because it would probably take us longer. Especially considering Erika wouldn’t even be willing to lift off until she had her little trick with the coms finished. All of this meant that we probably wouldn’t be lifting off until well after dinner time.

If we slipped, we could probably be to Mercury in a few minutes. If there was enough Earthbound traffic to require us to fly out away from Venus a long way first, then it would take the better part of the rest of the day. The long flight sitting in one place with nothing to do is murder. Erika and I had come up with some zero fuel games we could play between us, some of them involving language study that kept us up on almost a dozen of them. I knew that Celina knew a lot of languages, but the game wasn’t really designed around someone not knowing all the same languages. The point was: she was more than likely going to be bored silly. We’d have to do something to try to keep her involved.

Once we finally arrived, Erika and I would have to keep in perfect formation and keep our eyes on the sensors. That close to the sun, visual sight is worthless no matter how much you darken your windows. Darken them enough so you can see what’s coming from the sun side and you are totally blind everywhere the sun isn’t. Darken just the part where the sun is and there is so much glare between the two you might as well not be darkening anything. Obviously, not darkening at all makes you blind everywhere except when you are facing away from the sun.

That delegated us to only using the visor system. The visor system created a virtual reality around you that exactly duplicated the surrounding environment. It would put a colored line around all objects, put names, call signs, or other important information over ships and other constructs, and finally removed the ship from around you. Because it made you feel like you were in space with no ship to protect you, it was very disorienting and was very hard for some people to get used to. Granted, my sister and I had trained heavily in it over the last few years in an attempt to integrate it while flying the shuttle, but we had never even tried using it in real life, much less trained at it in a fighter simulator. As far as I knew, Celina had never even put one on.

And then I thought of another thing we would have to worry about. Erika was going to have to keep her eyes locked on the magnetics sensor so we didn’t get disabled without a rescue. Sol had an unbelievably powerful magnetic field and it was constantly in flux, not just throwing matter from time to time but also throwing its magnetic field out into the system. When Erika and I had been kids we had been hit by one of those solar storms on a cruise ship. I still had nightmares.

The more I thought about it and the more dangers I remembered existed, the more I realized what a horrible idea it was. “Erika and I shouldn’t be going without creating a serious plan,” I thought, “made days if not weeks in advance. We need to be perfectly familiar with both ships we’ll be taking, how the visors work with them, and should even be taking training runs with them on Aeneas. Then we might have the vaguest clue about what we’re facing. And that doesn’t even begin to consider all of the things Celina should be doing before she even sets foot in a cockpit with me.”

I shook my head and looked up at the chrono on the dash. I had been deep in thought while simultaneously keeping the ship in one place for almost the entire speech already. I needed to talk to the Senator about this as soon as we landed. I felt a wave of embarrassment run over my face when I glanced over at my sister. She knew exactly what she was going to accomplish by telling me what was on her mind and she accomplished her intent to perfection.

The com clicked on and the Senator’s voice said, “Okay, Red. Let’s get going.”

I gently nudged the ship laterally port until we were moving, then I spun the shuttle that way. Erika’s hands flew over the keys and Kappa-One was on approach.

“Actually,” the Senator corrected, “I’m sending one of these fine cadets up to you with a different heading. If you could go there instead of landing, I would appreciate it. Protectorate Command has already been notified.”

Erika and I glanced at each other. Her eyebrows were cocked and I’m sure my face showed the same interest and confusion. When the door to the cockpit opened and Gekido entered, we both looked back at her. She handed a PD, or Personal Display, to Erika, saluted at attention, then made a perfect turn and exited.

Erika activated the PD and coordinates popped up. I entered them into the NavCom and I had to adjust myself in my seat. I was suddenly very uncomfortable. “Aeneas,” I told her.

I looked over at Erika as she started to speak. “Why is he having us go to the moon?”

Next Chapter: Chapter 11