Prophets

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Test of Faith

Sometimes you get a miracle. Don’t expect another one.

—The Cynic’s Book of Wisdom

It is not necessary to hope in order to undertake, nor to succeed in order to persevere.

—CHARLES the BOLD (1433-1477)

Date: 2526.6.3 (Standard) 750,000 km from Salmagundi-HD 101534

For the first time in her life, Parvi physically felt when a ship fired its tach-drive. A very slight physical jerk as all the indicators on the console in front of her soared toward the red. None showed dangerous levels, but the drive came out of the jump hotter than it should have. The one damping coil that they’d gotten back up to 75 percent capacity was much too narrow an aperture to cool off the drives. The indicators were still edging upward.

Parvi held her breath until, one by one, very slowly, the readouts started going back down.

“Isn’t that a beautiful sight?” Wahid said, and Parvi silently agreed.

Then she realized that he wasn’t talking about the fact that the Eclipse’s engines weren’t going to melt. She looked up and saw a blue-green planet filling most of the holo above the bridge console.

“I have radio traffic all over the place,” Tsoravitch announced. “Video, audio, data traffic. Our sensors are completely saturated. I have commsats, and at least half a dozen major population centers on the coast of the main continent.”

Parvi saw Mosasa smiling out of the corner of her eye.

“We made it,” Wahid said over the PA system. “We fucking made it!”

Parvi looked at the planet hanging in the holo as she asked, “How close are we?”

Wahid was grinning, “A fucking bull’s-eye. Point-seven-five million klicks out.”

“Shit,” Parvi stared at the meters on the console in front of her.

“What’s the matter?” Wahid said.

“We’re too close,” Mosasa said, the smile leaving his face. He turned toward Parvi. “How long before the drives cool to safe levels?”

Parvi shook her head. “I don’t know. At the current rate, twelve hours, but we only have one damaged coil working. Venting continuously that long, it may start to degrade or fail entirely.”

“How much of a problem are we talking about?”

Parvi leaned back.“Worst case, if the coil fails completely, the drives will still go cold in about forty-eight hours all by themselves. Being hot that long increases the chance of an eventual failure. We’re also vulnerable if someone operates a tach-drive too close to us. That will cause the drives to heat up again.”

“Damn.”

Mosasa turned to Tsoravitch. “Our first priority, make contact with the surface. We can at least warn away outgoing tach-ships and request them to send someone up for repairs. Bill? Are you on-line here?”

“Yes.”

“Can you do anything to help cool the drives?” Parvi asked Bill.

“We unfortunately lack the equipment. We did everything possible before the jump.”

“What kind of danger are we in?” she asked. “What if someone does tach in on top of us?”

“A high-efficiency twenty light-year jump arriving within a two-million-kilometer radius will severely damage the drives. The effect drops off exponentially as the jump distance and drive efficiency decreases.”

“I just wish there was an AU or two between us and the planet,” Parvi said. “How the hell did we get that kind of navigational error?”

“Most probably a significant concentration of dark matter directly between here and the former location of Xi Virginis which caused an unexpected space-time curvature. I will be able to give a more thorough analysis once I’ve been able to review the telemetry data from the jump.”

“At this point,” Mosasa said, “Our main concern is contact. And once the drives are cold, I want preparations for landing.”