Hours later, once he was clear of Perdya system, Van put the Joyau into jump immediately. The first jump from Perdya system brought him to an uninhabited system in the nebulous area bordered by Coalition, Argenti, and former Revenant systems.
There Van rechecked his equipment—and his calculations—then walked around the ship and stretched before settling back into the command couch.
The second jump brought the Joyau out into normspace close to the Taran system ecliptic, and well beyond the cometary belt—which was not at all where Van wanted to be. He scanned the EDIs and the farscreens, but he was so far out that only a handful of RSF ships—those out beyond the gas giant Yeats—were showing.
Van calculated, then decided on a short jump—as short as he could make it—which would place the Joyau at an equal distance from Solis—Tara’s sun—but at right angles and directly “below” it.
He initiated jump.
What was black turned white, and white turned black, and every color was its opposite, and yet itself. Time stretched endlessly, and yet the jump was over instantly.
Van winced as the Joyau dropped back into normspace. For whatever reason, shorter jumps seemed to leave him more disoriented than longer ones. He’d heard the same thing from other pilots over the years, but the technical types had always dismissed what the pilots felt. Van supposed that had been true back in the dark ages, when the only piloting had been atmospheric.
He immediately began deceleration, since the lower the velocity of the Joyau—and the escape pod—the more accurate he could make the pod’s in-system jump. Then he studied the screens and EDIs, but nothing had changed, except that the jump had left the Joyau both in better position and farther away from the RSF ships patrolling the system.
Van scanned the in-system fleet—three dreadnoughts, six battle cruisers, eight frigates, and twelve corvettes—enough for an invasion force of a smaller system, and a clear sign that the Republic was at least slightly worried about either the Argentis or the Coalition. Next, he checked the system comparator, and nodded. It was twoday, as it should have been, and that meant that the Parliament would be in session, working on Prime Minister Eamon’s agenda.
It took more than an hour of deceleration for him to bring the Joyau’s relative velocity down within the limits he had earlier calculated, but finally he was satisfied. Less difficult was the last-minute wrestling with himself.
The questions and counterquestions echoed and reechoed through his thoughts.
If you don’t do anything, who will? But do you really think that destroying New Oisin will change matters? How can you possibly justify such an action? After all that the Republic has done in the past year, and the way it’s treated the Keltyr systems, how can you not stop them from becoming another Revenant empire? Besides you, who will do anything? Didn’t the Argentis and the Coalition surrender the Keltyr worlds to barbarism rather than take a stand and risk any of their ships and personnel? But does one set of barbaric actions justify another such act? Aren’t you taking too much on yourself?
Van shook his head.
Except that…no one else was doing anything, and if millions had already died on Sulyn, how could there not be millions more dead in the years ahead? There wasn’t any good answer. That much was clear. What was also clear to Van was that no one else was going to do anything, not anytime soon. The protectorate and the abandonment of the Keltyr systems to the Republic confirmed that.
Finally, he pushed away the questions and checked the farscreens and EDIs one last time. None of the RSF ships had made any course changes.
Van finally left the command couch and walked aft to the lockers next to the cargo hold. There, he donned the space armor and made his way into the cargo space. After sealing the helmet, he closed the lock doors. Then he loosened the quick-releases on the escape pod. If he had used the quick release bolts in their emergency mode, the pod could have come out tumbling, and that would have made the final adjustments and settings close to impossible.
When the pod was loose, he attached his own tether to one of the cargo restraint loops near the outer lock door. Then he attached the second and third tethers to the pod and then to a restraint loop on each side of the cargo lock. Only when he was satisfied that the tethers were secured did he send the command to the shipnet to reduce internal grav to nil.
Then he depressurized the hold, and opened the lock doors.
As he had hoped, the rush of air broke loose the pod from the deck, at least enough that Van could lever it out of the lock doors. He used as little force as possible, not wanting to put too much strain on the tethers or the restraint loops.
The pod reached the end of the tethers, stretching them slightly, but the one-way nature of the tethers stopped the rebound, and the pod came to rest ten meters outside the cargo lock door.
Before proceeding, Van linked with the shipnet once more, calling up the EDIs and farscreens. A single corvette had begun to accelerate outward toward the Joyau, but Van’s quick calculations showed that the corvette would not even near torp range for nearly three hours. He ran another calculation, and found himself frowning inside the shipsuit. If the corvette wanted to risk a high-dust-density jump, it was likely that the RSF ship could make a short jump in an hour. The jump accuracy for that short a jump was problematical, which was why Van hadn’t tried another jump to get closer in-system, but he couldn’t assume that the corvette would jump wide.
That meant, in the
