Fic: Altered Trajectory (cont.)

[jeriendhal]

She glanced into the mirrors set around the front of the cockpit, trying to look into his face. “How are you doing back there anyway?”

“Just fine. So long as we don’t do anything wild and crazy like accelerate, decelerate, land or take off, I should be all right.” In truth he’d resorted to a heavy duty anti-nausea patch behind one ear and a very light pre-takeoff meal. So far it was working, but he was doing his best not to look out the cockpit window at the stars while they subtly moved their positions while they traveled through space at FTL speeds.

“This is weird,” she said after a moment. “I mean, flying alone out in the Black, no wingman beside me or a carrier keeping watch over us.”

“I often flew like this, between jobs when I wasn’t escorting freighters.” Or smuggling drugs from station to station, but he didn’t choose to mention that.

“Lonely work. What’s the longest you were ever out here by yourself?”

He thought about that for a moment, then decided there would be no shame in telling her. He’d learned the value of not keeping secrets to oneself. “Bit over a fortnight, sixteen days or so.”

“Sixteen days? You could travel halfway across the GSA in that time. What were you doing?

“Nothing.” At her incredulous glance looked back at him in the mirror, he added, “This was when I was at, um, a rather low point in my life.” Just after his mother had cut off from the family accounts actually. “I just flew out, accelerated to just under lightspeed and sat, er…”

“Shooting up?” she asked.

“Yes. By the time I’d decelerated, over six months had passed in the outside universe. Ended up sending a note to my sister to let her know I wasn’t Missing, Presumed Dead. Got fairly mangy inside my spacesuit as well, I could tell you.”

“Yech, I can imagine.”

That pretty much killed conversation for the next couple of hours. Hazel turned the autopilot on and zoned out to an earbud of music, while Rufus checked and re-checked the White Knight’s systems, looking for any modifications that had been added since he’d last seen her. There didn’t seem to be anything there, though it was hard to shake the itch in his palms that there was something wrong.

Fruit, he knew the solution to that feeling, but he couldn’t ask Hazel to switch seats. Aside from the danger he would pose to both of them if he tried any maneuvers, the White Knight wasn’t his ship anymore. He had sold her, with regret perhaps but sold her just the same. You’re a Farmer Lord now, not a mercenary. This situation isn’t going to be solved with a quick blast from your fighter’s chin guns and a snappy remark as you do a barrel roll through the debris cloud.

Comments

[badasher.livejournal.com]

I had wondered about relativity and FTL in this universe. You cleared up the question nicely. :-)

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

Danced around it really. In that one incident Rufus was describing he was deliberately not using his FTL drive, just regular engines.

[mjkj.livejournal.com]

Aww...

It is nice how their trust to each other developed and how well they know each other to read in-between the lines :)

Poor Rufus though, space sickness and not being able to fly himself...

Well, hmm, FTL ... no idea how it could work in Peta's universe ... but wasn't there mentioned something when they blew the dusk-jacket generator?

mjkj