Free Sliding Void by Stephen Hunt Page B

ship had the air of a metropolis emptied in the face of a horde’s approach. Waiting to be possessed by the first band of raiders approaching to brave its gates.
    Ahead of the transport capsule, Calder could see the plate-like circumference of the blast shield approaching, a massive one-mile wide dish protecting the rest of the ship from the brute reactions that occurred at the business end of the vessel. The princely part of Calder marvelled that there was enough iron in the world to cast such an artificial bulwark. The fleet ensign from Zeno’s sim merely looked at the dark cratered mass, pitted by age and countless engine boosts, and couldn’t believe that a ship yard had actually granted a flight worthiness certificate to this ageing iron-carbon composite – barely able to take half the thrust of a modern carrier’s engine shielding. Approaching the shield, Calder’s capsule tilted down and rode the monorail into the ship’s interior, passing through the middle of the shield and out along one of five connecting struts – each the size of an oilrig’s legs – that joined the ship’s engines to the rest of the craft. Like the Eiffel Tower turned horizontal, girder after girder shot past Calder, the armoured disc behind him now, along with the command, cargo, crew and passenger quarters. Half way along the connecting struts were a rotating set of vanes, seven of them circling about, lazily, as if someone had taken it into their mind to build a windmill capable of harnessing solar winds for their foundry. And in a manner of speaking, it was a foundry – a mill capable of distorting space-time through an artificial singularity and initiating a translation of the whole vessel into hyperspace. Sensitive enough to field interference they had to be well clear of the solar system’s mass to jump into hyperspace. They were still heading out of Hesperus system, rising straight on a vertical trajectory, the quickest way to break free of the tyranny of the local gravity well. Calder couldn’t see the frosty orb of his home now, it was no longer visible to the naked eye. With nearly a subjective year of sim living under his belt, it seemed an age ago he had been stumbling through the lethal snowfields, his heart thumping in fear as he fled for his life with loyal old Noak by his side. In reality, he had been gone less than a week, the Gravity Rose boosting up towards light speed, distant stars crawling past. No wonder Calder was confused. Half the time it felt as though he didn’t know where he was, who he was or when he was.
    It only took a second for him to pass through the rotating shadow of the vanes and then he was sliding towards the engines. At the far end of the connecting struts lay the ship’s drive section. A hexagonal power plant dotted with great spherical structures like mushrooms infesting the trunk of a tree. Enough room for a sizeable fusion plant to power the ship’s internal systems when the vessel’s many solar panels were too far away from a sun to operate comfortably, more acres and cathedral-like vaults to house the hyperspace engines and in-system antimatter pion reaction drive.
    Slowing on the connector strut, the capsule decelerated for the first in a series of vault-thick doors to swing open along the tube into the engine block. It was as if Calder’s capsule were packed full of valuables and being gently stored in a safety deposit box. In reality, the width of the walls was as much to protect the universe outside from the contents of the drive chamber as to keep the engines safe from asteroid strikes and pirate assaults. There wasn’t much point piloting a starship unless you could enter a solar system at the end of your journey, and the inhabitants of worlds rightly got very nervous about vessels coming in leaking radiation and other exotic particles. Even with missile silos, fighter bays full of hardships, rail cannons, lasers and the associated panoply of combat, the main difference