I’m fine,” Ivan replied. “I was expecting gravity for some reason.”
“We did some tricks to optimize it—only having runes every two decks and none in the cargo layers,” his friend told him. “Sonia tied them off when she left, made sure they were safe without charging—which, of course, means they don’t create gravity right now.”
“The ship is built for thrust, though, right?” Ivan asked.
“She is,” Charpentier confirmed. He gestured around the utilitarian space they were in. “These are the engineering decks. Two five-meter decks at the base of the ship, containing engines, the fusion reactor, et cetera, et cetera. There’s a ten-meter ‘deck’ above here that holds our fuel, then two ten-meter decks of storage space.”
“Simulacrum chamber is at the center of the ship?” Ivan asked. It always was, so it sounded like it was in the middle of the cargo container.
“Yep,” Charpentier said. “At the center of the ship, we have three three-meter working and living decks wrapped around the chamber itself. That has the workshops for the Mages, the support infrastructure for managing cargo, and the quarters for the Mage contingent.
“Four more cargo decks above that to get us to our twenty-thousand-cubic-meter storage capacity, and then three three-meter decks that cover the rest of the crew spaces.” The Captain smiled in quiet pride. “It’s a standard fast packet courier, designed more to carry data than cargo, but we’ve got the space for high-value goods and the speed to leave everything else in the dust.
“I upgraded the engines a while back, too. They’re still fusion, not the antimatter the Navy uses, but they’re rated for twenty-five gees at full load. Thirty if we’re running without cargo.”
“What’s the point?” Ivan asked, considering the ship as Charpentier led him toward what looked like an elevator. “Even with civilian magical gravity, that only gives you, what, ten gravities?”
“Ten gravities fully compensated,” his friend corrected. “Most people can reasonably operate in up to three gravities—not for extended periods, but it can be done. So, thirteen is all anyone would expect from us. Restoya has a few other tricks I’ll introduce you to as we go, but suffice to say…”
Karl Charpentier grinned.
“No one in the races I took part in was expecting a courier to pull sixteen gees,” he told Ivan. “That’s the best we can pull without renewing the gravity runes, but with the runes, we should be able to pull thirty.”
“Thirty,” Ivan repeated. The number didn’t quite process. Thirty gravities of acceleration? The Navy used the most efficient magical gravity-rune matrices known and kept them well charged. That let them easily handle fifteen gravities without blinking.
The Navy never pushed past the acceleration their runes could handle, though. He’d read the studies that said that the lost crew efficiency was almost never worth it.
“I guess that makes sense for a courier,” he slowly allowed.
“Everybody in the courier business has six Mages aboard if they possibly can,” Charpentier told him. “Which means that if I’m competing with a peer, we’re jumping at the same rate. Being able to cut six hours off the beginning and end of the trip isn’t much, but it’s an advantage I had over those peers.”
“And how much thrust are we going to need for this Black Pulsar Race?” Ivan asked. He could recharge the runes, though getting all of the runes on even a small ship would take him hours.
“All of it, if we can get it,” his friend said. “We’re not just racing other ships. We’re racing a pulsar and its radiation beams. Timing is everything, and the extra acceleration gives us a window nobody else will have.”
“All right,” Ivan said. “Show me these tricks of yours, Karl. I want to know what I’m getting into before I start working magic on this ship.”
The chair was unlike anything Ivan had ever seen in a simulacrum chamber before. On a Royal Martian Navy ship, the bridge and the simulacrum chamber were the same space, buried at the armored center of the warship.
The Captain’s seat was directly behind the simulacrum, set up to allow the Mage commanding the starship to reach the silver model without rising. That was the only thing this chair had in common with the bridge of an RMN warship.
Most civilian ships had mobile platforms positioned near the simulacrum that swung to keep the Mage’s feet aligned with thrust or maneuvers. They existed to give a Mage an anchor in zero gravity as they hung on to the model that couldn’t move from its spot at the