Snippet – Boys Own Starship

Hi, everyone

This is a novella (planned 30K) aimed at young teenagers (think Starman Jones or The Rolling Stones). It’s also something of an experiment, so comments (etc, etc) are warmly welcomed.

Chris

Chapter One

“I’m telling you,” Eric said, “we can do this!”

“And I’m telling you we don’t have the money,” John said. His brother had always been the careful one of the duo. He’d gone into engineering, while Eric had studied interstellar piloting and navigating. “Even if we combine both of our trust fund payments for the next decade, we won’t have enough money to purchase an interstellar freighter.”

Eric smirked. “I’ve got a plan,” he said. “We purchase two scrap freighters.”

John gave him a sharp look. “Scrap freighters?”

“Yes,” Eric said. He held out a datapad. “There are two Century Hawk­­-class light freighters at the scrapyard, on sale for a song. Neither one can fly on her own, but we can cannibalise the first ship to make the second fly and add a few other components to improve her. A stardrive, for example …”

“I see.” John scanned the datapad thoughtfully. “They do seem to match up. We could use one to make the other fly. But why didn’t the scrapyard operator do it himself?”

Eric shrugged. “The design is very old,” he said. “Anyone who has the money would prefer a modern ship, complete with modern systems. These ships are over fifty years old.”

John nodded, thoughtfully. “And they’d need a proper stardrive to be competitive,” he said. “If we could install one.”

“We could do it,” Eric said. “This is our chance!”

They exchanged long looks. They’d been trust-fund children for a long time, ever since their parents had vanished in interstellar space and left them – and their older sister – alone. They were hardly poor or starving, but they couldn’t take control of the family corporation until all three had turned twenty-five and that was over thirteen years in the future. They’d spent the last five years living in the mansion, studying desperately, and hoping – against all odds – that their parents would miraculously return. But they’d grown tired of waiting, and they didn’t want to grow up like so many others they’d met over the last few years. They wanted to emulate their parents and do something with their lives.

“Maryam will have to sign off on the expense,” John pointed out, finally. “How do you intend to convince her?”

“She signed a permission slip,” Eric reminded him. “Is it my fault she doesn’t have time to authorise every expense separately?”

John stood. “Let’s go then, shall we?”

Eric nodded and led the way to the aircar pad on the roof of the mansion. They both had flying permits, but they weren’t allowed to fly personally without a qualified adult beside them … one of the many rules and regulations on Old Earth their parents had chafed against, when they’d been young and intent on building up an interstellar shipping corporation of their own. Eric wondered, sometimes, quite why their parents had never moved to the colonies, where men could breathe free and laws were dictated by common sense rather than bureaucratic inertia. Earth had better schools and industries, but anyone could take the schooling modules and learn at home rather than attending class with hundreds of other students. Eric had gone to school with the super-rich – or, more accurately, the children of the super-rich – for a year and he had no intention of going back. He’d never met quite so many spoilt brats in his entire life. Even the ones who were eighteen were going on eight.

The aircar hummed into the air and flew north, the autopilot taking them away from the mansion and straight towards the giant scrapyard hundreds of miles away. It was meant to be a repair and renovation centre, he’d been told, but most starships landed in the scrapyard were left to die. He’d checked, out of curiosity, and discovered that anything capable of being useful – still – was never scrapped, merely passed down to a new set of owners. He frowned inwardly, wondering – despite himself – if there was something wrong with the scrapped freighters. They might have fallen through the cracks – too small to be useful – but it was still odd. The asteroid miners tended to be unconcerned about the exact state of the starship as long as it could hold an atmosphere and power a drive.

John leaned forward as the scrapyard came into view, miles upon miles of grounded starships from the last hundred years of interstellar exploration and settlement. There were ships so old they predated faster-than-light travel and ships so new they were younger than John, although they were visibly banged up so badly it was clear they would never fly again. The distant refineries were working hard, breaking down the scrapped ships and recycling as much as possible for transfer to the orbital industrial nodes. What little was left would, eventually, be thrown into the sun. He sucked in his breath as the aircar landed neatly, the two boys scrambling out to be met by the manager. The man looked unsure of himself …

Eric smiled. So much the better.

“We spoke earlier,” he said, before the man could say a word. Adults tended to get rather pedantic, when dealing with children … never mind that Eric was a teenager and John on the cusp of joining him. “Please show us to the Century Hawks.”

The manager nodded and led them through the gate and into the yard itself, passing dozens of scrapped vessels. There was little security, nothing to keep the locals from sneaking in and night and taking whatever they wanted. Eric suspected the scrapyard’s owners simply didn’t care. If the locals could make use of something from the yard, they might as well have it. Anything truly valuable would have been removed long ago. They walked past a giant freighter that had been modified so many times, before being finally scrapped, that it was impossible to tell which class she’d originally been, then paused as the Century Hawks came into view. They were ugly as sin …

… And yet, they were also the most beautiful ships in the known universe.

He stared. The ships looked like crude arrowheads, antigravity nodes clearly visible on their hulls and a mighty sublight thruster to their rear. Their hulls looked scarred and pitted, but his visual inspection suggested there were no cracks or obvious weak points in the hull. He’d looked it up, when he’d realised the opportunity in front of him, and noted that the design was surprisingly tough. There were records of a Century Hawk coming down hard, practically crash-landing, and being put back into service within a week. Eric was fairly sure the crew had gotten very lucky – his instructors had drilled him mercilessly, before giving him his licence, and pointed out that a single mistake could easily get the entire crew killed – but they had survived. Any landing was a good one, as long as you could walk away from it.

“Your ships,” the manager said. “Let us know if you want to purchase them.”

He turned and walked away. Eric grinned to himself as he led the way towards the hatch. He’d been to a dozen used starship dealers, over the last couple of years, and all of them had tried to talk up the ship as much as possible, glossing over precise details that might have cost them the sale. Eric had tried to purchase a crippled starship once and had only been stopped, thankfully, by the rules governing his trust fund. It had been irritating, but he had learnt a useful lesson. Perversely, the manager’s lack of concern was surprisingly reassuring. The man had nothing to gain – or lose – if they purchased the ships or not.

“The interior is a little rank,” John commented. He dug his engineering toolkit out of his belt and deployed the scanning microbugs. The tiny machines would survey the ship from bow to stern, then relay their findings to John’s wristcom. “Other than that …”

Eric barely heard him as they made their way through the ship. The internal lighting was online, revealing small cargo holds and cabins and a bridge that was barely large enough to be called a bridge. He was mildly disappointed to note there was no command chair, merely three control stations … but then, the freighter was hardly a giant interstellar warship. The systems were powered down, the consoles dark and silent … he reached for a switch, thoughtfully, then stopped himself. They might have been told the ship was effectively powerless, save for the lighting, but his instructors had cautioned him to take nothing for granted. It was unlikely the scrapyard’s engineers had been particularly careful when the ships had been moved to their final resting place.

John knelt on the deck and studied the live feed from his microbugs. Eric left him to it and walked through the remainder of the ship, feeling as if he were standing in the midst of a ghost vessel … although one with massive potential. The cabins had been stripped bare – he opened a pair of drawers, just to be sure, and found nothing – and the holds were completely empty. He hadn’t expected to find anything, not after the ship had been searched multiple times, but it was still a little disappointing. There were all sorts of stories about people discovering hidden treasures in their new homes, or starships; indeed, some of the stories were actually real.

“I’ll have to inspect the other ship, then draw up a work plan,” John said, as Eric returned to the bridge. “It should be doable.”

Eric grinned. “I told you so.”

“We haven’t made it happen yet,” John cautioned him. “And we’ll need to find a stardrive.”

“There’s bound to be one around here somewhere,” Eric said. A new-model stardrive would be expensive, but an older design would come cheaply … if they could find one. “Or we can find one in another yard.”

“If,” John said. He glanced at the holograms projected by his wristcom. “The internal datanet needs replaced, or modernised. The life support system is in good condition, but I’d be happier with a couple of back-ups. The navicomputer really does need replaced, if we want to take the ship out of the system. It was never designed to work with a stardrive.”

He paused. “We’ll have to buy that one new.”

“Joy,” Eric muttered. They might be wealthy, even by Earthly standards, but there were limits. “What else?”

“They tore out the onboard fabbers and food recyclers,” John said. “We’ll need to replace those too.”

“We could just stockpile regular food,” Eric reminded him. “And …

His brother interrupted him. “And what happens if we get stranded in interstellar space?”

Eric nodded, curtly. “Add it to the list.”

John stuck out his tongue. “Add it to the list? I thought you were keeping the list.”

“I am,” Eric said. “But you need to keep a list too.”

He sighed, inwardly, as they headed to the second starship. The interior looked a great deal more cracked and broken, to the point he honestly wondered if the starship had been boarded by pirates, but enough systems remained intact to allow the ship to be cannibalised.  He followed his brother through the hull, trying to breathe through his mouth, as they checked each and every component before retreating back to the fresh air. Something was clearly rotting away, inside the second starship. Rats, perhaps. They had a nasty habit of sneaking onto starships and riding into interstellar space. The hull should have been fumigated, he reflected as they made their way back to the office, but if the vessel was being scrapped it was possible no one had bothered.

The manager nodded politely. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

“We’d like to buy both hulls,” Eric said, flatly. “And hire a crew to transfer them to the local spaceport, once we have made arrangements for the refit.”

“Of course,” the manager said. If he had any doubts about selling two hulls to a pair of teenagers, he kept them to himself. He’d have checked Eric’s piloting licence and John’s engineering licence when they made contact the first time. “I’ll see to it personally.”

Eric nodded as he withdraw a credit chip from his pocket and placed it against the reader, bracing himself. The expense should have been pre-authorised, if he’d done everything properly, but it was just possible the bank might balk. The trust fund wasn’t unlimited … he gritted his teeth in annoyance, remembering the spoilt brats who had unlimited access to the family’s bank account despite being underage. If he had that sort of money, he could buy a modern freighter and outfit it out of pocket change. He breathed a sigh of relief when the money was transferred, without a hitch.

“We’ll be in touch,” he said. “Thank you.”

His wristcom vibrated the moment he stepped outside. He glanced at the message and swallowed. GET BACK HERE NOW!!!

“Three exclamation marks,” John said. “Who was it who said that three exclamation marks was the sign of a deranged mind?”

“I can’t recall,” Eric said, as they hurried to the aircar. Maryam normally minded her own business, and kept her head firmly buried in her studies. If she was calling them home so urgently … he felt his heart sink. Maryam was their legal guardian, to all intents and purposes, and if she wanted to say they couldn’t go … he closed his eyes as the aircar took off, mentally rehearsing his arguments as they flew back home. “We have to convince her.”

John giggled. “You could always tell her we’ll be out of her hair for good,” he said. “She hasn’t forgiven us for chasing Hank away, remember?”

The aircar landed nearly on the rooftop landing pad, and the two boys made their way down to their sister’s office. She was sitting behind her desk, reviewing expense records … Eric wondered, suddenly, if she’d left a flag in the family banking accounts, a computer program designed to alert her if a large sum was withdrawn in a single transaction. It wasn’t impossible. She might not have absolute power over the family business, not yet, but she did have a great deal of influence.

He composed himself as his sister scowled at him. “You called?”

Maryam didn’t smile. “And what, exactly, are you thinking? Spending most of your trust fund on a pair of clapped-out starships?”

“Which can be combined into a single working starship, with a little sweat and blood,” Eric said, easily. It was hard to keep his voice steady. He wanted to yell at her, to demand to know why she thought it was any of her business. “We can install a stardrive and take her out on an interstellar cruise …”

“And then what?” Maryam met his eyes. “How do you intend to make enough money to keep the ship running?”

“Most interstellar freighters are huge, and their prices are correspondingly huge,” Eric pointed out. He’d spent years digging into the economics of interstellar travel. “It can be very expensive to ship goods from star to star, even if you only hire a tiny hold on a giant starship. Our ship is smaller, with smaller running costs, and we won’t need to charge through the nose to keep the ship running.”

“And we also have the remainder of our trust fund for the year,” John put in.

“And we can ship goods quite some distance,” Eric added. “Foodstuffs, colony gear, modern computer systems … all worth very little here, but worth their weight in gold on the other side of explored space.”

Their sister looked unconvinced. “And how exactly did you get me to agree to pay for all this?”

Eric kept himself from smiling. Somehow. “You pre-authorised trust fund expenditures,” he said. “There was no need to consult with you, as long as we didn’t overdraw the account.”

Maryam gave him an icy look. “You are aware, of course, that your licences are dependent on you having a qualified adult accompanying you,” she said. “How do you intend to address that problem?”

“No one is going to inspect a single light freighter,” Eric said. “And once we’re away from Sol, no one is going to care …”

“I wouldn’t put money on that,” Maryam said, coldly. “And if you do get inspected, what then?”

Eric hesitated, unsure what to say. If they did get inspected …

“You come with us,” John said. “You are an adult, are you not?”

“That doesn’t mean I want to come with you,” Maryam pointed out. “Who else can you ask?”

Eric thought fast. There wasn’t anyone else. The handful of household servants hadn’t signed up for interstellar voyagers, and he didn’t want to ask them in any case. They didn’t have any close adult relatives, or they’d have been living with them, and asking a stranger was asking for trouble. Maryam was the best choice, if they had to have an adult, and yet … she was their older sister. And she could be a real stick-in-the-mud at times.

“You’re studying to become a doctor, right?” Eric spoke fast, before either of the other two could come up with a response. They weren’t the only ones who wanted to be more than just trust fund babies, waiting for full control of the family fortune. Maryam had decided she was going to be a doctor long ago, perhaps even before their parents had vanished. “You need interstellar experience, if you want to get ahead in the field. Right?”

Maryam nodded, shortly.

“So come with us,” Eric said. “I do the flying, John does the engineering, you do the medical stuff. You’ll be listed as ship’s doctor. You can carry on with your studies while we do our thing, and when we get home you can say you’ve been an interstellar doctor.”

“It might work,” Maryam said, slowly.

“And you wouldn’t have to deal with all those boys who come crawling round,” John put in. “Wouldn’t that be great?”

Maryam had to laugh. “Let me check the paperwork first,” she said, firmly. “And read through the requirements for interstellar medical experience. And if that works …”

Eric grinned. They were going to space!

Chapter Two

“Everything appears to be in order,” the inspector said. “When do you intend to fly?”

“As soon as the cargo is loaded,” Eric said. The inspector had gone over the ship with a fine-toothed comb, checking and rechecking everything so carefully Eric had feared he was looking for a reason to decline their licence. It had taken three weeks to strip down one of the ships, transfer everything to the other ship, then purchase and install everything they couldn’t cannibalise or find in the scrapyard. “We should be ready to leave in a couple of days.”

The inspector nodded, slowly. “I ran through all the basic tests,” he informed them. “I advise you to carry out your first jump within the system, just in case you have a drive failure, but otherwise you are good to go. Make sure you have all your certifications filed, before you depart.”

He pressed his thumb against a datapad, transferring the licence file to the starship’s datacore, then turned and made his way back to the airlock. Eric let out a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding. The refit had been more complex than he’d anticipated, and a number of components that had seemed to be in working order had needed to be replaced, and it had been quite possible that the inspection would turn up errors the shipyard staff had missed or simply decided could be safely overlooked. The man had certainly asked a great many questions, most of which hadn’t had anything to do with him. It had been incredibly frustrating, not least because they hadn’t been sure what he was trying to do.

“I’ve filed the licence,” John said. “And the updated flight roster.”

Eric smiled, although he couldn’t help feeling a pit in his stomach. The ship – they’d promised themselves they wouldn’t name her until after she was ready to fly – didn’t need a big crew, but they were pushing their luck by only having three people onboard. It didn’t help that Maryam had almost no spacer training at all, beyond the basics, and wouldn’t be able to do much if they ran into trouble. Eric and John had crawled over the ship, going through every emergency procedure in the manual, but they’d been cautioned that the manual was no substitute for real experience. Emergency drills tended to leave out the actual emergency. A disaster plan might work perfectly, on paper, but fail drastically in the real world.

“We’d better get the cargo loaded onboard,” he said. “And then we can get going.”

He sucked in his breath as he made his way through the ship. Maryam had claimed the largest compartment for herself, and refitted a second to serve as a makeshift sickbay, complete with autodoc and stasis chamber. She’d teased them both with suggestions she might invite one of her suitors along to see if he could tolerate her bothers in close quarters for weeks, but – thankfully – she’d refrained from actually doing it. Eric and John had claimed the next set of cabins, both so small there was barely any room to swing a cat, and turned the remaining cabins into passenger spaces. He didn’t intend to take passengers, at least on the first cruise, but having the space might be helpful. There were plenty of people who wanted to travel and didn’t have the time, or the money, to buy space on a big colonist-carrier …

Maryam stuck her head out of her sickbay. “Did you pick a good cargo?”

Eric nodded, curtly. It wasn’t easy to get advanced computer systems on colonial worlds. The big interstellar shipping and colonisation firms preferred to transport colonists, farming gear and equipment that was easy to repair, if it broke down. They’d purchased a hundred modern datacores, their operating systems sold separately, that could – at least in theory – be sold for a reasonable mark-up. If they were wrong … he reminded himself, sharply, that they had enough food and fuel to keep going for quite some time, even if it was better not to think about quite where their ration bars were coming from. At worst, they could go back to Earth …

He shook his head. Their parents had started from nothing – well, practically nothing – and built an interstellar shipping empire. They had never given up, despite setbacks that would have destroyed lesser men, and they’d been rewarded for it. Eric had no intention of giving up either. He was going to prove himself worthy of the family inheritance or die trying. John – and Maryam too, he suspected – felt the same way.

“Good luck,” Maryam said. “You got all your educational modules too?”

“Yes,” Eric said, as if she hadn’t watched closely while they’d purchased and downloaded enough modules to keep them busy for the next decade. They were lucky they’d done most of their studies at home, although they’d still had to attend online examinations to actually get their qualifications. They’d need to do that again, after they finished their next set of modules … if they had time. “Our education won’t suffer.”

“Hah.” Maryam looked unconvinced. “If this demented scheme doesn’t work …”

“It must,” Eric said. “Or do you want us to grow up into spoilt little brats.”

Maryam made a rude gesture, then returned to her work. Eric smiled and hurried on to the airlock. The trade goods were already waiting in the nearby warehouse, ready to be transferred to the ship. He keyed the hatch, gave the orders, then returned to the bridge. John was still there, making sure all the computer nodes were working in harmony. He looked up as Eric entered.

“We should be clear to fly at any moment,” he said. “You want to book a slot? Or should we hold a party?”

Eric shook his head. One downside of living in the mansion and studying at home, after their parents died, was that they had few friends worthy of the name. Too many of their acquaintances were more interested in making friends with the family fortune, rather than the family itself, and he had little interest in inviting them to a party. The remainder … none of their acquaintances really had much in common with them. Most were from very old money indeed and could trace their ancestors back to the primordial ooze, or very new and insecure in their wealth. Eric and John had never quite fitted in. Their family was wealthy, but most of that wealth was locked away until John turned twenty-five.

“Which leads to the all-important question,” John said. “What do we name our ship?”

“Can’t stick with Century Hawk,” Eric said. The class might have been out of production for years, but there were still hundreds of working models plying the spacelanes. “Max Jones?”

They shared a look. They’d both enjoyed the novel – and the updated reissues, and the three different movie versions – and, truth be told, they’d found it inspiring. Max Jones had wanted to make something of himself, and he’d succeeded. If they went with Max Jones  …

“Good idea,” John said. “Max Jones she is.”

Eric smiled, silently relieved. They had purchased the ship together and spilt the ownership rights fifty-fifty, something that would cause problems if they disagreed. Maryam had flatly refused to purchase a five percent share from each of them, ensuring she’d cast the deciding vote if Eric and John couldn’t agree on something … Eric hoped, as he keyed the terminal to register the name, that it didn’t come back to bite them one day. They were close, true, but they didn’t always agree on everything.

“I’ll finish up here,” John said. “Book a departure slot for tonight?”

“Check with Maryam, then do it,” Eric said. He’d told the inspector they should be ready to leave in a couple of days, but once the cargo was loaded they could go at any moment. “If she’s happy to leave now …”

He smiled, then made his way down to the holds. The hatches were open, the loading crews carefully transferring the sealed pallets to the hold and making certain they were secured against sudden violent motions. The compensators were top-of-the-range – only a fool would risk compensator failure when the ship was in flight – but it was better to be careful. Eric walked through the gaps, checking to make sure the seals were still in place. There was no shortage of horror stories about crewmen skimping on the survey and discovering, too late, that the crates had been opened, the goods stolen or replaced by stowaways or hijackers. He’d checked the crates before, but it was well to be careful. Anything could have happened in the warehouses.

“All good,” he said, to the foreman. He slipped the man a hefty tip. Cash was preferable to electronic money, not least because the managers insisted on getting a share of the latter. “See you next time.”

He did one last sweep of the cargo bay, once the hatches were closed and sealed, then made his way back up to the bridge. John would have to check too, a safety regulation that – for once – was rooted in harsh common sense rather than bureaucratic incompetence. It was very easy to miss something, something that might be noticed by a pair of fresh eyes. He made a mental note to ensure Maryam knew how to cross-check too, then stepped out of the hold and sealed it behind him. The internal airlock was tougher than it needed to be, but it was better to be safe than sorry. If they had to ditch the cargo in a hurry, they’d be glad of the extra protection.

“So … Max Jones,” Maryam said. “Nice name.”

“Thanks,” Eric said. He felt a thrill as he sat on his chair and keyed his console, then looked at his elder sister. “This is your last chance to jump ship and swear blind we left you behind, if you like.”

“I don’t think the household staff will be very pleased if I did,” Maryam said, dryly. “And besides, leaving you two alone is asking for trouble.”

Eric smiled. “John? Do we have a departure slot?”

“The first slot opens in twenty minutes,” John said. “The next one hour afterwards, unless someone else pulls out.”

“Book us for twenty minutes,” Eric ordered. He returned his attention to his console and ran through the pre-flight sequence, a low hum echoing through the ship as the antigravity generators came online. A brief sensation of lightness swept over him – a shiver ran down his spine – as the gravity fields balanced and rebalanced, priming the ship for flight. “Check the spaceport pad is clear.”

John worked his console. “Everyone is clear.”

Eric allowed himself a moment of relief. The spaceport staff were supposed to vacate the landing pad the moment they finished loading the ship, but if someone had chosen not to leave – for whatever reason – it would end very badly. They’d have to be insane to get too close to a lifting ship, but people had been known to get close to older starships and sometimes it had ended in disaster. He kept a wary eye on the near-space display as he kept running through the checks, ensuring they had a clear run from ground to high orbit. They’d have more freedom to manoeuvre once they passed Earth’s territorial limits.

The console bleeped. “Our slot is opening,” John said. “Are you ready?”

“Yeah.” Eric braced himself. “Take off in five … four … three … two … one …”

He keyed his console. The ship vibrated unsteadily, the gravity fields shimmering again, and rose into the air. His display lit up with dozens of contacts – aircraft and aircars keeping their distance from the spaceport, starships making their way in and out of the atmosphere – and produced a series of trajectories, making sure to give other starships a wide berth. Eric kept his hands on the controls, trying to get a feel for flying the ship in real life – no simulator came close – as they climbed higher. The ship didn’t feel like an aircar, or even the family’s private aircraft; it felt like a flying brick, an object that moved in a manner that didn’t quite make sense. He didn’t want to think about what would happen if the drives failed now, while they were still in the planet’s gravity field. They’d plunge to their deaths, if the orbital defences didn’t vaporise them first. It had happened before …

“All drives functioning within acceptable parameters,” John reported. “Green across the board.”

Eric barely heard him. Max Jones was climbing faster now, heading right out of the planet’s atmosphere. Earth lay below them, a blue-green orb seemingly untouched by human hands; the planet’s orbitals were crammed with space stations, orbital habitats, industrial nodes, and hundreds upon hundreds of starships and spacecraft making their way into interplanetary space. The display tightened as they moved past a giant orbital structure, so close it felt as if they could reach out and touch the station even though he knew it was an illusion and there were hundreds of miles between the station and the starship. They kept moving, heading into interplanetary space. The first jump point wasn’t that far away.

He relaxed, slightly, as they cleared the high orbitals. “I’m bringing the navicomputer online now,” he said. The navicomputer was largely isolated from the remainder of the datanet, a precaution that seemed designed to slow them down, but might save their lives if the main datanet was compromised. “John, check my coordinates.”

“Got it.”

Eric leaned forward, running through the equations one by one. In theory, a starship could jump right across the galaxy in a single bound. In practice, any starship that tried would wind up somewhere completely random, if she didn’t run straight into a gravity well and vanish without trace. It had taken decades to work out how to make interstellar travel relatively safe and even then, it wasn’t easy to calculate a jump that would take a starship more than a light year or two without travelling far – far – off course. He’d gone through the maths time and time again, when he’d been studying for his licence. It was never the jump that took so much time, when it came to moving between the stars, but getting into position to jump. The closer the ship was to a gravity well, the higher the chance of arriving a long way from your destination.

“Checked and confirmed,” John said. “No mistakes, to five decimal points.”

“That could put us millions of miles from our target,” Eric reminded him. Space was big, unimaginably big. They could run the sublight drive flat out and it would take weeks to reach Pluto, and years to reach the nearest star. “But as long as we’re light-years from anywhere important …”

“How very reassuring,” Maryam said, dryly. “What are the odds of us hitting a planet?”

“Very low,” Eric said. It was theoretically possible for one starship to materialise on top of another, but starships were so tiny and interstellar space so huge that it was extremely unlikely to happen even if the crews wanted a collision. A starship that flew into a planet’s gravity well vanished without a trace. “We’ll be jumping in thirty minutes.”

He ran through the maths again, just to be sure. They’d certainly hop in the right direction, to be sure, but it was important to be as precise as possible. Military ships were supposed to be able to microjump, from what he’d heard, yet … unless their computers were light-years ahead of anything on the civilian market, it was unlikely they could get really close to their target. They’d have to adjust their calculations when they completed the first jump, then jump again and again … perhaps even alter course to ensure an easier jump. Perhaps …

John looked up. “No red or amber alerts,” he said. “We made a pretty good investment.”

Maryam snorted. “That remains to be seen.”

Eric said nothing as the timer ticked down to zero. They were alone, alone in a way they hadn’t been even when they’d been in the mansion. The nearest humans were thousands of miles away, perhaps further, and if they ran into trouble it would take a long time for any help to reach them … if ever, once they made their first jump. Starships didn’t vanish that often, thankfully, but … his heart clenched. Their parents had jumped out on an experimental ship and vanished without trace. He wanted to believe they’d find their parents somewhere out amongst the stars, but he knew better. They’d been declared dead a very long time ago.

The console bleeped, again. “We’re ready to jump,” Eric said. “Shall we?”

“Yeah,” John said.

“Do it,” Maryam added.

Eric reached out and pressed the button. The universe seemed to darken around him, just for a second, as if it were going to sneeze. He felt a dull pain in his chest, his head swimming lightly, then everything snapped back to normal. Maryam grunted in pain, behind him; John seemed unaffected. Eric told himself he’d get used to the sensation, one day, although he feared otherwise. Everyone reacted to the jump differently, he’d been told, and the effects never quite went away.

“Jump completed,” John said. “All systems remain nominal.”

“And we are within our planned arrival zone,” Eric said. A good result, for a first jump. He’d feared they’d be thousands of miles from the target coordinates. That would have forced them to redo the calculations from scratch. “We only missed by a few hundred kilometres.”

Maryam stood. “I’m going to bed,” she said. “Tomorrow, while we’re on our way, you two can get back to your studies.”

Eric and John groaned in unison.

“I mean it,” Maryam said. “If this doesn’t work out, and this whole crazy voyage becomes a failure, you’ll need something to fall back on.”

Eric snorted. They weren’t going to fail.