Into the Void

Chapter 33

Nate sat holding the control stick, knuckles white, waiting for the final impact. It never came. He breathed out a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding. “Did we die?” he asked.

Rowan patted himself down, making sure all his limbs were still attached. “I don’t think so” he said. “Izzy, what happened?”

“I towed the Dauntless to FTL.” she said with a smirk.

Nate turned in his seat, frowning. “What?” he said. “How?”

Izzy shrugged. “It wasn’t that hard really. I just had the FTL engineer tweak the shape of the mass bubble to cover the dropship, then I gave the Dauntless a push.”

Rowan floated out of his seat, turning and shaking his head. “You lost me. How did we move the Dauntless?”

Izzy sighed. “Okay, so you remember how we’re in space right?” she said, speaking as if she was explaining the concept to a small child. “There’s no gravity, or friction. The dropship can push the Dauntless given enough thrust. Now I don’t follow all the math behind the grav gens, but when they’re projecting the FTL bubble the Dauntless can only move faster than light. So any thrust pushes us past lightspeed. High Priest Whatever The Fuck His Name Was wasn’t wrong when he told us to tow the Dauntless.”

“Wow, so where are we jumping to?” asked Nate.

Izzy shrugged. “Somewhere kind of close to home?” she said. “There wasn’t enough time to plot it properly, we’ll drop out in deep space somewhere and yell for help.”

***

The Dauntless dropped out of FTL hours later. The damage to the ship was incredible, the engineering deck and the crew quarters were open to space, all the armour was destroyed, the electron barrier field battery had failed catastrophically, exploding and fusing to the hull, and the main engines were simply gone. Despite all the damage, the gravity generator still ran, communications arrays were running and by some miracle the live deck had survived. Makeshift airlocks were welded into place, sealing the intact rooms off from the airless sections and the entire crew was sleeping on cots set up in the gym and firing range. Nate sat alone in the observation lounge, staring in amazement at the infinite emptiness studded with a billion pinpoints of light, each one a new journey, a new adventure, a new home. They had done the impossible and made first contact with real, intelligent, alien life and lived to tell about it. Somewhere out there a rescue ship was burning towards them. It would be months before they arrived, leaving him plenty of time to stargaze. He sat staring off into the void with a small smile, he could live with that.