“Not yet. But we hardly ever push fifteen plus. Everything running at near max, it cranks up the chance of system failure.” Tess put her head back against the headrest of the gravity couch and closed her eyes.
“Outer marker coming up in sixteen minutes,” Maya said. “Our exhaust plume is something else. They can probably spot us on infrared all the way from Acheron.”
“Aden, contact Pallas Center and knock on the door,” Captain Decker said.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Aden brought up the comms screen on his control pad, grateful for something to do. His previous communications experience had been limited to the military protocol in basic training, and he hadn’t touched a comms console in half a decade before he joined the Zephyr crew, but modern comms gear interfaces were almost as easy to figure out as comtabs. Henry had trained him on the comms station for two weeks until the first officer had been satisfied that Aden had learned the ins and outs of the gear. He selected the approach channel for Pallas Station and sent a handshake sequence, then went through the voice protocol.
“Pallas Center, OMV-2022 at sixteen to the outer marker, requesting approach vector for Pallas One dock.”
“OMV-2022, proceed direct middle marker via route Delta.”
“Proceed direct middle marker via route Delta, OMV-2022,” Aden read back. The voice comms were mostly a courteous formality because the data link between the ship and the control center showed the same information on the navigation console before the voice exchange was even finished, but old rituals died hard even in the age of instant system-wide data traffic.
“We’re in the queue for Pallas One,” Aden reported to the command deck.
“Thank you. Now get Lady Mina on comms so we can gloat a little.”
“Yes, ma’am. Private or general?”
“Use tight-beam, our ears only. Nobody else needs to know about our little wager.”
“Affirmative.” Aden opened a tight-beam connection to the other ship. Instead of broadcasting their conversation on the general channel or using voice-to-data over the Mnemosyne, Zephyr’s comms computer directed a laser emitter at Lady Mina’s hull so they could talk via direct private connection. There were ways to eavesdrop on a tight-beam link, but it was much harder to do than intercepting the data stream on the Mnemosyne or simply running an encrypted radio broadcast through a decryption algorithm. It took the computer a few seconds to align the emitter and take aim at Lady Mina, which was still accelerating toward their turnaround burn marker somewhere on the track ahead of Zephyr.
“Lady Mina, this is Zephyr. I have the captain on the link for you.”
“Go ahead, Zephyr.”
“We’re doing our deceleration burn right now,” Captain Decker said. “I think at this point it’s pretty safe to say we’ll be docking before you do.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m still holding out hope. If your containment field shits the bed, you’ll overshoot and miss your approach by half a day at your speed.”
“That’s not likely to happen,” Decker replied.
“Not likely. Not impossible either. We’ll transfer the pot when we see your docking link popping up on the ’Syne. And gods. I knew you were faster, but I had no idea how much.”
“Yeah, she can work up a fair sprint,” Decker replied. “We’ll see you all at Trader Khan’s in a few. And remember to pay up the minute we dock. Zephyr out.”
“Trader Khan’s,” Tristan said, in a tone that sounded like reverence and dread in equal measure. “Haven’t been there in, what, six months?”
He looked at Aden and grinned.
“You’ve never been to Trader Khan’s.”
“Never been to Pallas,” Aden confirmed.
“They serve some fierce chow. Hottest food this side of Acheron. Last time I had their spicy goat tarkari, I was feeling the burn for two days, if you know what I mean.”
“They make you pick a hotness grade when you order,” Tess added. “Scale of one to ten. Only pick a number above five if you are used to Acheroni or Palladian food. And only go all the way up to ten if you don’t mind chemical burns on your esophagus.”
“If nothing falls off the ship in the next hour and a half, we even stand to make a bit of money on the bet,” Decker said from above.
The command deck had only two gravity couches on it, one for the pilot and one for the captain, so Decker and Maya were always three meters above everyone else when the ship was at maneuvering stations. Aden still wasn’t fully used to the difference in orientation between a building on flat ground in normal g and a starship under acceleration. The top of the ship was the front while they were in motion, but when the drive and the gravmag rotor were off, there was no front or back, up or down. Aden was used to living his life in the horizontal plane, but on spaceships, everything was oriented vertically, small decks stacked on top of each other like the floors in a tall and narrow high-rise building.
“How are we doing with thermal management?” Decker asked.
Tess consulted her screen.
“Heat sinks are good. Not quite up to eighty percent of passive thermal limits yet. We have some breathing room.”
“Good to know. All hands, prep for arrival and hard dock. I want something strong and cold in front of me without delay. Let’s make sure we’re all buttoned up so the dockmaster doesn’t have cause to give us any shit.”
The crew spent the remaining hour running through system checklists and bantering. Aden did the required approach check-ins when they passed the outer, then the middle marker. They received their final approach direction once they were at the inner marker, and he shunted the data over to Maya’s station and confirmed it verbally at the same time.
“Cleared for final and hard dock at Alpha Five-Three, OMV-2022,” he read back to Pallas One’s docking control.
“Inbound for Alpha Five-Three,” Maya confirmed. “ETA eleven minutes.”
Zephyr finished her counterburn the moment they passed the inner marker. They had scrubbed
