Free Archaea 3: Red by Dain White Page A

surface below roll away out of sight.
    “Gene, that was serious. I thought we had good drives before – but that... that's a whole new level.”
    “It sure is sir. Hopefully you won't melt these down like the last ones.”
    “They were melted?”
    “Yep, pretty much through. I was amazed they were still functional, in fact.”
    “They sure don't build them like they used to...” I said, wistfully.
    “Sir, I should hope not. Our new nozzles are only about a million times better than those old slagged hunks of carbon we used to have.”
    “I like the sound of that. So I can go a million times faster? HANG ON EVERYONE!” I screamed, mashing the General Quarters alarm... but just briefly. Yak and Pauli almost fell out of their couches laughing.
    “Good grief sir. One of these days I am just going to up and die of fear back here.” Gene chided good-naturedly.
    “I’m just keeping you on your toes, mister. Seriously though, what sort of improvement are we talking about with the new engines?”
    “I was just looking over the simulations that Janis has been working on, and they’re pretty impressive. It’s looking like at least a 500% increase, and maybe more if we overload the screens using spare current from the tokamak.”
    “Woof. That is nice, Gene … we can't actually survive that amount of acceleration, of course.”
    “Dak, you don't know how glad I am to hear you say that.” Gene sounded like a shipwreck survivor being handed a warm blanket.
    “Well, sure man – I know a little bit about this stuff. We almost didn't survive our run from the Mantis when we scuttled it, though I guess that could have been more from the pseudomass generators being used to hurl us around rocks at maximum thrust, more than straight up grav-loading.”
    I thought for a moment.
    “Janis, giv en our new thrust capabilities, can we generate enough pseudomass to compensate for maximum acceleration?”
    “Sir, I am afraid that would result in significant negative impact to crew viability. Given our maximum simulated thrust, with maximum compensation, the crew would be under 93 gravities, terran-equivalent.”
    I whistled appreciatively. Yak and Pauli turned around with matching terror faces set to maximum.
    “Wow.” Gene said quietly on comms.
    “Okay Janis, let me pose another question, if you are able to simulate this, of course. Given what you know of the specs for the slipspace gear we're hoping to get from Talus Federation, would we have sufficient compensation for a maximum flank burn?”
    “ Yes, in fact, if it is needed we could go beyond compensation, up to maximum safe limits for negative gravities.”
    We all sat in stunned silence for a moment, considering just how incredibly fast that would be.
    “Well now, I think that is a good goal to work towards, don't you Gene?”
    More silence. Maybe he fainted.
    “Gene?” I asked.
    “Dak, that... yes , sir... we need that gear. Could you imagine what that would look like from another ship? We could probably outrun anything.” Gene was the type of gearhead that lived for speed, as much as he pretended otherwise.
    “Gene, we could probably outrun kinetics.” Just saying that out loud made me slightly woozy, like I needed to grab something for support. I reached out for the rock solid stability of my coffee cup, just in case. A quick sip set my brain back on track, and I was ready to roll.
    “We're going to have to daydream later, in any case. We are coming up on our out-system burn and it's time to get to work. Yak, please send our course track to Lunar Control, and let me know if they complain.”
    “ Sending now, aye”, he replied.
    I did a quick bit of math, and keyed the 1MC. “All hands stand by for a 3g compensated burn in 30 seconds. Once I get us up to speed, I will drop to null-g and we'll secure from condition Zebra.”
    “Sir, Lunar Control has acked the request; we're good-to-go”, Yak called back.
    “Very well, Yak. Stand by.”
    I settled my