The Lost Ship of the Tucker Rebellion - Marie Sexton Page 0,79
although under secured watch.” She brushed a stray strand of dark hair off her forehead. “We set a new course in his Jumper and let it go on autopilot. With any luck, the armada will keep following it instead of us.”
Marit shook her head. “That’d be nice, but I don’t think we can count on them being fooled that easily.”
“Agreed. What about on your end? Is his sister going to be a problem?”
“No,” Laramie said. “Ginn can’t do any more damage than she already has.”
“Good.”
But the tenseness around Dusty’s eyes made Denver suspect she had more to say. “Is the militia’s ultimatum causing problems?” he asked, settling into the seat next to Marit.
Dusty sighed, looking frustrated. “A lot more than I anticipated. The people on my ship are doing fine, but I’ve had reports of fistfights breaking out on other ships. Tensions are running high, to say the least. Some of the captains are considering letting the defectors leave in shuttles, except that we might end up needing those shuttles later.”
“Fair-weather friends?” Marit inquired, her eyebrows raised.
“Afraid. Just afraid. Most of us are station brats born and raised, but we have some Martians on board too. They have a better sense of the consequences of working against the government, and what might happen to us if we’re caught. From the sound of things, it wouldn’t be pleasant.”
“Isn’t this what you’ve been waiting for, though?” Marit asked, incredulous. “I thought you’d all been dreaming of this your whole lives.”
“Many of us, yes. But some are just folks who sort of got sucked in by friends or family members. They aren’t as committed as the rest of us.” Dusty’s shoulders fell. “The truth is, planning a hypothetical colony while sitting in the relative safety of Titan X is one thing. Receiving death threats from a military destroyer is something else entirely.” She shook her head. “It might be different if we had certainty. If we knew for sure we’d find the Legacy and make it to the planet, people would have more resolve. But knowing we might get there and find nothing, or get there but not be able to operate it…”
“I understand,” Denver said. “Unfortunately, I can’t guarantee anything. I’m relying on luck as much as the rest of you.”
“But you seem so sure.”
Denver instinctively felt for Laramie in his head and found only the soft, fuzzy warmth that told him his brother was sleeping. “I’m not sure at all. Just desperate enough to gamble it all.”
She winced and ducked her head, tugging thoughtfully on her braid. She looked overwhelmed, and Denver felt for her.
He wished he had something he could offer. And then it occurred to him, he did. He couldn’t give her any promises, but he did something else of value to escapists.
“I have other entries from Tucker’s log.”
Her head came up, her eyes bright with curiosity. “There are more?”
“Roughly thirty hours of them. I’ve been through about half of them.” He’d skipped through a lot of the ones tagged as “passengers,” having learned they were mostly lists of names and credentials. But he’d watched most of the others. “There’s not a lot there. He didn’t even know how long the journey would take. It seems he couldn’t get a straight answer out of his Li’Vin friend. There are a couple of times when the Li’Vin said something that made him think maybe it was even wormhole technology, but—”
“Not possible,” she said. “That would have been his twenty-third-century optimism, largely based on old TV shows more than anything. I think it’ll be an Alcubierre Drive.”
“A what now?” Marit asked.
Dusty grinned, back to being the confident woman they’d first met now that she was talking about something she knew. “It was first hypothesized by the man who named it. It’s meant to use a negative-energy-dense fuel to create a wave in space around the ship, that the ship itself would ride within the warp ring. Essentially, it bends spacetime to allow for faster-than-light travel.”
“Wow. And what kind of fuel would it use?” Denver asked.
She laughed. “That’s the billion-credit question. More important is whether they found a way to handle the tachyonic motion problem and the radiation. And the issue of tides.”
“Tides?” Marit asked.
“Yes. Theoretically strong enough to smear your body’s molecules from one end of the ship to the other.”
“A wormhole sounds more fun,” Denver said.
She laughed. “Yes, it does.” She leaned back in her seat. “So when can I see the rest of Tucker’s log?”