The ship’s alchemical drive was located in a large room which took up the width of the ship on the lower two decks of the rear tower. While the furnace-like device covered most of the back wall with its serpentine pipes of varying widths, the central focal point of it was the array of ten hexagonal gold bars which powered it.
The bars were, as Dick had said, almost completely drained. One look at them was all that was needed to tell they were way more lead than gold… an alloy impossible to chemistry, but not to alchemy. When the bars were fresh and pure, the drive could draw power from them with the greatest efficiency, allowing for greater acceleration and a much higher top speed before the reality-warping field that allowed faster-than-light travel would destabilize.
The bars should have lasted out the voyage to Rylea, but a series of misadventures had forced them to draw more deeply on the drive’s power.
“We’ll need to move quickly,” Leo noted. “The field’ll go wobbly as soon as we start yanking bars. It’d be best if we had a way of removing them all at once.”
With ease that was impressive considering the length of the blade compared to that of her arms, Regan drew her massive sword. The width of the blade gleamed… its edges, which tapered down to single molecular thinness, positively glowed.
“Ya get our little yellow duckies in a row, like,” she said. She looked over her shoulder, to where Galatea worked her magic on the touch-sensitive image of a keyboard projected at elbow height from a wall monitor. “Hey, the Slut… how’s it comin’, then?”
“I hope you know, I intend to defend my honor quite fiercely,” she said. “It may require considerable violence to subdue me. You may even need to enlist a number of the more muscular cargo handlers to aid you.”
“Right,” Leo said. “But is the module offline?”
“I’ve disabled the safety checks that would otherwise come into play, but I’m going to have to physically sever its connection,” Galatea said. She blanked the computer console and moved towards the big, table-like computer bank in the center of the floor. She reached into the left sleeve of her utilitarian jump suit and pulled out a wire-thin pen laser, then opened a panel and went to work. “I was not speaking lightly when I said the safety module’s not designed for this. It’s fortunate I find the subject of triple-redundant safety systems so… engrossing… or else I likely wouldn’t know how to do this at all. Hmm… if I must be ravished by a pair of genetically dysfunctional misfits, is there any chance I could persuade you to do it to me right here, on top of the exposed module?”
“Whatever floats your boat,” Leo said, rolling his eyes. “Just get it done.”
“There,” Galatea said, straightening up and stowing the laser back in the seam. “Let’s get this mad scheme under way.”
“Right,” Regan said, hefting her sword, which was much lighter than it looked. “Time for the grand slam…”
“We’ve lost all feedback from the engine room,” Dick said. “Either Adams has taken the safety module down, or we’re all about to die.”
“Or both,” Lilliana noted.
“Or both,” Dick agreed.
A few seconds later, the intercom lit up. Lilliana activated it with a hand-wave over the screen.
“We have full bars,” Leo said. “Go!”
Dick pressed a finger down gently on the acceleration pad. The view from behind seemed to lurch as the Rebellion shot away from the pursuing ship… which then likewise increased its speed.
“They can’t match us for long,” Dick said. “If they had the power to spare, they’d have used it before.”
The big black ship continued to gain on them.
“They’ll fall behind… any second now,” Dick insisted.
“Is this the most acceleration we can manage?” Lilliana asked anxiously. “We usually don’t have any reason to test the upper limits with full bars.”
“Right,” Dick said, pressing down more firmly on the pad. “Full steam ahead, and damn the torpedoes.”
The speed indicator shot up from eight hundred to nine hundred in record time, climbing past a thousand and continuing rapidly. The other ship’s acceleration continued to increase, but slower… little by little, the distance between the two both in relative speed and in position began to increase.
The intercom came on. Lilliana waved it on again.
“Er, you may recall me saying something to the effect that the safety module’s not designed to be taken offline,” Galatea’s voice said. “I therefore hasten to point out that…”
“Galatea Adams, your objections have already been noted and ignored,” Lilliana said. “It’s done. We got away.”
“But…”
“Leo, will you do us all a huge favor and fill up her bloody mouth?”
“Why not me?” Regan asked plaintively through the intercom.
“We want to shut her up, not choke her to death,” Lilliana said with a grin. “But take your fun where you can find it, Bard.” She turned off the intercom. “How long to Rylea?”
“If I level off at 2.5, about eleven hours,” Dick said. “Though we’ll be safely within their patrolled space inside of two.”
“Any reason we couldn’t push it to 3?” Lilliana asked. “At least until we hit their perimeter.”
“None that I can think of,” Dick said. “We lose fuel efficiency at that speed, but a few hours of suboptimal burn won’t make much difference in the long run.”
“Good,” Lilliana said. “Stay with it until then, and then get somebody to relieve you. I’m going to my quarters to alternately laugh, cry, and then pass out from exhaustion.”
“Aye.”
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