beams weren’t making too much hash of the region yet, but Ivan could tell that Restoya’s sensors were having trouble. The courier ship was upgraded in many ways, but her sensors clearly weren’t one of them.
They could still pick out the ship fifteen thousand kilometers ahead of them. The racer didn’t have that much of an edge yet.
“I make it a seventeen-degree course shift,” Ivan noted. “He won his gamble.”
“Indeed. I’m adjusting our course and flipping us,” the pilot replied. “We’ll pick up velocity as we head toward the beacon, though we can’t make up what he’s got on us unless we increase the acceleration.”
“And?”
“Not yet,” Charpentier said with a smile. “The next three or four beacons are going to be quiet,” he told Ivan. “Probably at least two hours before things get exciting.”
“How are you defining exciting?” Ivan asked. “I mean, my read says I could sleep until the last beacon.”
“That’s true enough, I suppose,” his friend admitted. “Assuming you can sleep through the maneuvers and fifteen subjective gees when things get crazy. I’m expecting at least one attempt to play chicken before we’re done.”
“I’m going to take that nap,” Ivan replied, yawning against his fatigue. “Wake me up before things get crazy, will you?”
So far, he hadn’t seen any sign that any of the racers were Aquila’s planned boarding team. That meant there was someone else out there—potentially the supposed rescue ship, in fact—who was going to intercept them at some point.
And Ivan, much as he hated himself for it, was going to hand them his old friend’s ship.
He’d need to be awake for that.
10
It was a struggle for Ivan to wake up, even as a chirpy happy alarm chimed at him from somewhere. Even once he was mostly awake, it took him half a minute of wondering what the hell he was sleeping in before his mind caught up with where he was.
The acceleration chair was supremely adjustable and surprisingly comfortable. He’d managed to stay awake as long as he’d meant to—and the moment he’d lowered it into a sleeping position, he’d been out.
Years of military service had given him the ability to sleep wherever he wanted and wake up easily. The sleep had been deeper than he’d been used to, though, and waking up wasn’t normally this hard for him.
It was amazing what a few months outside the Navy could do to his instant wake-up.
Ivan blinked away the last of the sleepiness from his eyes and silenced the alarms.
“Good, you’re awake,” Charpentier told him. “It’s been three hours. We’re on beacon six and this is a fucking hell zone. Take a look, Ivan.”
Ivan did.
Whoever had put together the beacons for the Black Pulsar Race clearly hadn’t heard about the “an hour for a ship making ten gees” rule. Each of the beacons had been almost a million kilometers apart and Restoya was now twenty light-seconds closer to the two pulsars. The zigzagging course was clear and terrifying, as they were now well into the zone where the beams swept on their regular cycle.
“Please tell me you have those cycles programmed in,” Ivan said aloud.
“You better believe it,” Charpentier agreed. “I had the full astro files on the system plugged in, and I’ve been validating the actual sweeps against them as we move. My course is clear and I’m triple-checking every time I switch the drives.”
“Good to hear,” Ivan said faintly. His attention turned to the ships that were still with them. It was a smaller collection than he’d expected. Some of the ships making fourteen-plus gees had clearly gambled wrong on when they’d need to turn.
Four of them were still with Restoya. Close enough to be seen. The racer shuttle was still out in the lead, the ship’s slightly lower acceleration clearly offset by a damned fine pilot.
Between the racer and Restoya was the second-biggest racer, a heavily overengined courier ship whose crew was probably taking multiple subjective gees as they ran at the same sixteen gees as Restoya herself.
Ivan and Charpentier were in third, with two midsized ships trailing a few thousand kilometers behind them. The entire lead cluster was in a sphere maybe fifteen thousand kilometers across.
“Are you expecting things to get messy soon?” Ivan asked.
“Not sure, but the hair on the back of my neck is standing up,” Charpentier said. “Something isn’t right here. Smells like my back is being measured for a knife.”
Ivan managed not to twitch uncomfortably.
“What are you expecting?” he asked instead.
“I’m not sure, but I think it’s— What the?”
Ivan