Chapter 185: Chapter 185

"What happened, what did you do?!" Nyssa gasped as soon as I was back on board the Artemis.

I left the airlock cycling shut as I raced forward into the cockpit. My tail was still wagging though, while my sister trailed in after me.

"Sit down and buckle up!" I told her as I dropped into the pilot seat and strapped myself in. "We're getting out of here!"

Sure enough the docking clamps released a moment later, sending a little shudder through the ship. Then the gangway lost its seal, and the venting atmosphere pushed the Artemis sideways resulting in another little bang as she struck the loose clamp on the other side of the ship.

The bay doors were already opening, so I took manual control of the manoeuvring thrusters and began backing us out even before the doors had fully cleared our path. Partially to maintain the 'act' of a spirited escape, but also because it wasn't really an act and I desperately wanted to get us away before that AI realized just how much I'd been bluffing.

My sister finally got herself securely buckled up in the copilot seat, so I risked a couple more little bumps and dings to the ship's exterior by squeezing us out through the still-opening bay doors.

"What about the tractor beam?" Nyssa demanded. "Amanda what's going on? What happened in there?!"

I shook my head, "No time to talk! Just keep an eye on the sensors ok? I don't know if we're still being jammed, but I'll fill you in on the details after we're clear!"

My heart was pounding again as we both felt an unpleasant scraping noise vibrate through the ship, and I mentally cursed myself for not giving those big doors an extra ten seconds. There were no depressurization warnings though, so I figured it was probably just some cosmetic damage to the ship's hull. And by that point our bow was finally clear of the doors, so I started swinging the ship around while I added a little more power to the thrusters.

"Hold tight," I warned Nyssa as I fired up the main drive.

Another warning alarm sounded from the engineering compartment, but I ignored that as I pushed the engine up to full power. Then for good measure I began doing some evasive manoeuvres, to try and make us harder to hit. And finally, with one hand on the flight controls and the other hand on the nav console I pulled up the sector chart and started looking at possible jump targets.

"Don't you think we should do something about that alarm?" my sister asked. "It might be serious."

I nodded, "It might be. But right now I think our priority is getting out of here. Whatever that is, it can't be too bad since we're still moving."

"What the hell kind of logic is that?!" she demanded, and under normal circumstances I'd definitely be agreeing with her.

The situation was anything but normal though. So I continued flying while I also tried to plot a short jump. At the same time told my sister, "We can argue later Nyssa. Right now I need to focus on flying, ok? And you should be watching those sensors. Let me know if anything important happens."

"Uh sis?" she responded immediately. "Something important's happening. I think their fire control sensors are targeting us."

My gut lurched and my ears folded back as I swore, "Shit!" Googlᴇ search novᴇlfire.net

As much as I wanted to believe it was the AI play-acting that he was trying to stop us, I couldn't take that chance. It was just as possible, maybe even likely that he'd finally figured out I'd been lying to him the whole time I was there. Which meant he needed to stop us from getting away, especially after spilling so much information about his current status.

I started flying even more erratically as I raced through my jump plot, then reached out and flipped up the protective cover to reveal the drive activation toggle.

"Are you crazy?!" Nyssa demanded. "There's no way you've done all the safety checks that fast! You're going to bounce us into the middle of a star or something!"

I probably didn't sound all that sure of myself as I tried to convince the both of us, "It'll be fine. It's only a tiny jump, I'm just aiming for some empty space that'll be out of range of that asteroid base."

"Amanda wait!" my sister shouted as she gave me another frightened look. "I left the jump drive configured for level two!"

My eyes widened, but that information reached my brain about the same time I turned the jump toggle. I felt the control click active just as I asked, "You did what?"

For about a heartbeat Nyssa and I just stared at each other. Her eyes were filled with fear, while I probably just looked surprised. My sister was right, I'd skipped the most basic safety checks. In my rush to plot the jump I hadn't bothered to verify any of the other drive settings. And now the Artemis was engaging a level two jump with my level zero plot.

I didn't even have a chance to feel scared before the stars outside the window all blinked out at once and the ship rocked with another huge jolt. The next thing I knew it felt like we were tumbling end over end while the view outside the ship was nothing but deep dark swirling purple.

"Shit!" I cursed again while that warning sound from engineering got a lot louder and more urgent.

My sister let out a yelp and clenched her eyes shut as she held onto her seat, while I tried to engage the manoeuvring thrusters to stabilize the ship. That led to even more alarm noises and some minor shudders as a few more things broke, but at least I was able to slow our tumble. It took another ten or fifteen seconds of very gentle manoeuvring to get us out of the spin.

Then I warned Nyssa, "Hold tight sis. I have to abort this jump, and I have no idea what that's going to be like."

Her eyes were still shut tight as she insisted, "You can't manually abort a level two jump! There's no way of knowing where we'll end up!"

"We don't know where we're going either way Nyssa," I replied softly. "My plot was for fifteen minutes at Jump-0. We've been in Jump-2 for almost ninety seconds now, which means we've probably gone about a thousand times farther than I'd intended. The longer we put this off, the more lost we're going to be."

My little sister gulped, "So either we die right now, or we die in fifteen minutes?"

I sighed, "We don't know what'll happen either way sis. All we know for sure is the longer we put this off, the further we're going to be from our last known position."

"Try and look on the bright side," I added. "If things do go drastically wrong, it'll be over so fast we won't even know it."

"That's not even a little reassuring Amanda," she grumped quietly.

I couldn't argue with that so I just told her, "Hold on tight. I'm aborting the jump on a count of three."

Nyssa kept her eyes closed as she grumbled to herself, "You. Are. In. Sane."

Instead of replying I just went ahead with the countdown. By that point we'd been in Jump-2 almost two minutes, and while I didn't know offhand what that translated to in terms of actual distance I knew we'd gone a lot further than I planned. Jump-2 was an order of magnitude faster than Jump-1, and Jump-1 was another order of magnitude faster than Jump-0. So we'd still be in the Gorath sector, but beyond that I had no idea where we were going to end up.

Like Nyssa my eyes were closed tight when I hit the abort control. The Artemis protested loudly as one more strong jolt rattled the ship. That was followed by yet another emergency alarm from engineering, but the fact that I could hear and feel all that meant we were still alive.

"Check sensors!" I ordered as my eyes snapped back open and I grabbed the manual flight controls. "I need to know if there's anything dangerous around us!"

"Checking," my little sister replied as she finally opened her eyes and reached for the sensor controls in front of her.

Meanwhile I was fighting to stabilize the ship again while I tried to cross-reference the navigational data to get a fix on our position. There were still asteroids visible in the distance outside the windows though, which suggested we maybe hadn't gone as far as I'd thought.

Over the next minute or two both my sister and I were able to slowly calm down, as we figured out that the ship was more or less in one piece and there wasn't anything immediately dangerous or threatening around us. I managed to get a fix on our current location, which sure enough was still inside the Gorath asteroid field. We'd basically crossed to the far side of it though, we were a lot closer to Rolandan-2 than the Fuminja Cluster where we originally entered the field.

Once we were confident there weren't any immediate external threats to our existence we were finally able to focus on the Artemis' damage control reports. That proved to be a bit of a mixed bag. On the plus side there weren't any immediate hazards there either. On the other hand our shiny new ship wasn't in such great shape anymore.

The biggest problem was our jump drive. It was still functional, but the best it could manage was Jump-0. Our main drive wasn't doing so great either, it was down to about sixty-percent after that first jolt from the tractor beam. Third on the list, about half our manoeuvring thrusters had blown. And finally there were some damaged hull plates at the aft end of the ship, from when I forced our way out of that hangar before the doors were fully open.

"Alright," I sighed once I'd finished reviewing all the damage. "I'd say that wasn't so bad, considering it was my very first level two jump."

My sister's eyes widened as she made some exasperated noises, "Not so bad... You really are crazy, you know that sis?! You could have killed us!"

"You're the one who left the ship configured for Jump-2 Nyssa," I reminded her.

"And you're the one who initiated a jump without doing any safety checks. Amanda!" she half-shouted back.

I had to admit she had a point there. So I let it go and instead pointed out, "It looks like you're going to get your wish for shore leave after all. We'll be heading to Rolandan-2 for repairs, but first I need to send an FTL to the Demeter and let them know what happened. And that we're not going to make it back there today like they asked."

My sister frowned, "Wait that's what was in the FTL message? Why'd they want us to call off the search, did something else go wrong?"

I grimaced, "You could say that."

Her eyebrows crept up as I finally filled her in on the details of that FTL I got from Sarah.

"I really hope Rebecca's not going to be too upset that I can't be there," I sighed. "Anyways I need to record a message for them so they know what's going on out here. Then we'll get ourselves and this ship sorted out."

Nyssa pointed out, "You still haven't told me what happened back there. How the hell did you get us out of that mess?"

"You walked into some sort of secret pirate base completely unarmed Amanda!" she stated in an incredulous tone. "Hell you were barely even dressed, all you had on was that nightshirt! Then next thing I know their power's fluctuating and the tractor beam's offline! Then the docking clamps let go and the doors opened so we could just fly back out again? What the hell did you do in there?!"

I found myself fighting a smile as I tried to act nonchalant, "It's like Sarah keeps saying. As long as I don't have any pants on, I'm practically unstoppable."

"You mean crazy," she scoffed. "Seriously Amanda, who does that? I'll bet your girlfriends won't be happy when they hear about this."

"Yeah," I sighed as my ears and tail all drooped down. "You're right sis. Short answer is I bluffed and we got lucky. You'll hear the long version in a minute when I record a message for the Demeter. So just sit tight."

She frowned but kept quiet as I went to grab my datapad. Then once I was back in my seat I positioned the pad on the console and activated the camera.

"Hi gang. First off, disregard that emergency transmission I sent earlier. We were in a tight spot but we got out of it, we're ok now. Mostly. More on that later. For now, do not go to those coordinates! It's dangerous."

I went on to give them a brief overview of what happened. I told them about the asteroid base and that the Kára was there, and how we were pulled in with a tractor beam. Nyssa's eyes widened when I explained what happened when I was inside the base, and what I learned about it being an old military base run by an AI.

"This is all stuff I know Jenny's going to be very interested in," I added at that point. "The AI recognized me. He addressed me as Major Ruud, and from his comments I was able to determine that the major in question was assigned to that base at some point, before she was transferred to the Kára..."

I went on to describe what the AI looked like, then recited everything I could remember from the conversation I had with him. I also made sure to mention that he was limited by incomplete repairs and lack of supplies, especially fuel. I also explained that the AI said the base's Re/Gen unit was offline but might be repairable, and that I didn't know if the Kára's computer core was intact or not since the AI didn't mention it.

Finally I wrapped up my message by saying, "I managed to bluff our way out of there, but it was a bumpy ride. The Artemis took some damage, mostly to her jump drive. Best we can manage is Jump-0, and at that speed we're about two and a half days away from Rolandan-2. So that's where we're heading. Rebecca, Sarah, I'm really sorry we couldn't get back to you immediately. I miss you both. Sending you all my love. Cam, Jenny, Jenna, I miss you all too. MV Artemis signing off."

Once it was saved I transferred the recording to the Artemis' computer, then bundled it up with our sensor log files and the comm recordings. After I had everything encoded I sent it all off on our usual encrypted FTL channel.

"So what now?" my sister asked. "I guess it's two more days of boredom, then maybe some shore leave?"

I nodded as I started carefully plotting a nice safe normal level zero jump, "Pretty much. I can't do anything about the boredom right now, but after we get there we can probably expect to be planet-side for a couple days. Maybe more, but honestly I hope it won't take too long to get the ship patched up."

This time I made sure to triple-check the jump plot to ensure it was safe. When I engaged the drive the Artemis got moving, and without too many complaints. The diagnostic systems weren't exactly happy, but it looked like we'd manage ok for now.

With the ship en-route to Rolandan-2 I activated the standard proximity alerts, so we'd be notified if anything came within a pre-set distance. I also toggled a similar thing on the communications system, so there'd be a ship-wide alert if there was any comm traffic.

Then I got up out of my seat and headed aft for the little galley with a sigh, "I don't know about you sis, but after the day we've had I think I could use a drink."

"Oh hell yes," she agreed as she followed right behind me.