Free Empire of Bones by Terry Mixon

innocence. “I had no idea what that button did. I did fail to mention that Dennis is something of a practical joker, though. And you did tell him to treat you just like everyone else.”
    The Princess crossed her arms over her chest and glared at them both for a moment before she smiled a little. “Okay. That was pretty good.”
    “I couldn’t help myself,” Baxter said. “All you did was lock the console. In any case, we were running a diagnostic routine so it’s offline. There was never any danger.”
    “You’re still going to pay for that. Now, let’s get a real tour.”
    Jared followed them as Baxter led her deeper into the bowels of engineering. She was a lot different than he’d imagined. Their interaction had always been uncomfortable and stiff. To see her with a sense of humor and such a natural ability to bond with total strangers had him reevaluating everything he thought he knew. Perhaps she was more suited to the role of diplomat than he’d realized.
    Baxter took her deeper into engineering. “These are the flip drives. More precisely, the Osborne-Levinson Bridge initiators. No one calls them that. When we dump the capacitors into them, they trigger the gravitational fault in the flip point in such a way that it reverses polarity and takes us to the other side. It’s all over before we can even measure the event.”
    She looked at the massive machine and shook her head. “Just the concept of going light years in the blink of an eye boggles my mind. How do you get your head around something like that?”
    He shrugged. “I’m an engineer. I can understand the practical results without knowing all the theory behind it. That’s for the scientists over on Best Deal . When they start droning on, I flip myself to the other side of the room.”
    Kelsey laughed. “Have you talked with them about it? I think that would be a fascinating conversation.”
    “I have. They wanted to change the parameters of what our probes look for so they had to explain it to me. I immediately went for alcohol once they were gone.”
    She laughed again. “I’m looking forward to meeting them.”
    Jared inserted himself there. “We’ll have a few combined meetings to plan out things once we reach the kickoff system. I know they love to find someone willing to listen to them explain things, so you’ll have plenty to hear.”
    He turned to Baxter. “What kind of changes did they make to the scanning parameters?”
    “They wanted me to increase the sensitivity threshold. There are apparently some competing theories about how weak a flip point can be and they wanted to be sure that they didn’t miss something. I warned them they’d probably get false positives, but they thought that would be acceptable. In any case, I can always change the settings back.”
    The next stop on the tour was at the grav drives. Baxter rested his hand against one. “These are just like the gravs on every car you’ve ridden in, just a lot more powerful. Since we use more power and make them very large, they provide much more thrust. Enough to make the trip between flip points in a matter of days.”
    “I’ve heard that and we’re making good time, but what about that acceleration? Shouldn’t it mash us into jelly?”
    “Absolutely not. I’d look terrible in a sandwich. Grav drives work by altering the gravitational gradient of the space-time around a ship. Think of it like falling. You don’t feel acceleration as you fall. A failed drive would leave you going exactly the same speed you were already going.”
    The communicator on Jared’s belt beeped. It reminded him that he should issue the diplomatic team some of their own. That would’ve made tracking Kelsey down significantly simpler. He brought it to his lips. “Mertz.”
    “Lieutenant Anderson, Captain. We need you up on the bridge right away.”
    He felt his gut tighten. “Is something wrong?”
    “ Best Deal just signaled their test probes located a flip point.”
    He