Free Ringship Discretion by Sean League Page A

current rate of acceleration and they maintained theirs, no. But we have to slow down to make the rendezvous.  We will have to start braking in..." She ran some numbers "in 9 days at the latest, or we will overshoot. We do have a three day head start, so that will buy us some time."
    The captain thought for a second. "Hmmm, won't they have to start braking as well or over shoot us?"
    Ben scratched his head. "Well, they could take some shots as us while they screamed by. Who knows how accurate their lasers are or what kind of range those things have."
    Amelia's intensity of concentration grew. "Captain, I had the computer analyze this and if the BB ship starts to decelerate with us, the Big Sis ships will catch up with him.  So I figure he has to play a fine line between getting us and them not getting him.  I asked the computer to predict the optimum situation for the BB ship." 
    The captain and Ben listened intently. "Go on..."
    She continued. "If we slam on our brakes in 9 days, they should hit theirs in 13.  If that is the scenario, then they will catch us in 18, but they will blow by Io station with so much momentum that it would take them more than a week to turn around and get back.  If however, they didn't bother slowing down at all, they would catch us in 14 days." 
    Ben asked "So, if the BB ship were to brake with us and try to meet us at  Io station, when would the Big Sis ships catch up to her?"
    She ran some more numbers "Hmm..if the Big Sis ships didn't bother decelerating and the BB ship did, they would catch up to her in about 15 days.  Therefore, the BB ship has to keep her acceleration up for as long as she can.
    The captain sat down in the co-pilots seat and thought for a while. "Hmmm..what if we altered course to the other side of Jupiter and did some aerobraking? We could keep accelerating for longer before having to brake."
    Amelia balked. "Aerobraking in this piece of crap?  I don't know.  Maybe we could do some, but I don't think she can take much more punishment; plus, we would have to turn the drive plates away from the atmosphere or they would just rip off, especially with the jury rigging we've got going on. And that would defeat the point.  If we could add the aerobraking and the grav deceleration, that would help, but substituting one for the other wouldn't."
    The captain with frustration in his voice, "Crap. Any ideas Ben?"
    Ben shrugged. "You guys are the geniuses at this kind of thing, I just fix the ship.  You're the ones who figure out new and exciting ways to break it!"  The captain looked down at the deck with a smile while Amelia watched him with a big grin of her own.
    Amelia straightened up. "Wait, we can't use the atmosphere, but there is something else of Jupiter's that we can use."
    The captain looked up at her waiting for her to tell them...."Well?!"
    She put her hand up and said "Hold on...Thinking." She brought up displays of Jupiter's and Io's magnetic field.  Atticus leaned over her shoulder trying to figure out what she was doing. After a minute, she turned excitedly, almost banging heads with him. She recoiled slightly, pushed him back, and spoke. "OK, so Jupiter has a huge magnetic field and we now have two MFGs on board, but, why did we bring a second one in the first place?"
    Ben spoke up. "To protect us from the ion stream around Io."
    She nodded her head. "Yes! Well, that ion stream leads all the way around Io's orbit, so if we inject into Io's orbit on the other side of Jupiter and come around, we could use it to give us extra "magnetic field brakes".  The intensity is huge too, so it should really make a difference.  We were just going to head right at Io and use our brakes, but now that we are going around the planet and using the magnetic field, I bet we could get an extra couple of days acceleration before we have to turn and decelerate."
    The captain looked at Amelia stunned. "Damn. I love you! You're bloody brilliant. Do you have the exact