Chapter 238
Baby StepsOther than the sounds of the crew shifting, working away at their tasks, the bridge was silent. Even Davis and Petra had stopped bickering.
Alexander stood beside the captain’s chair, one hand resting on the railing. Droney hovered at his shoulder. Augustus, Annie, and Talia had taken their usual positions around the bridge.
Vikram’s fingers moved across his console. Numbers populated faster than Alexander could read them, trajectories and gravitational models building in layers on the nav display. The man hadn’t spoken in several minutes.
“Final calculations are in, Captain,” Vikram said. “Exit point is plotted on Jupiter’s far side from the target, roughly one hundred thousand kilometers above the orbital plane of its inner moons. That should put the planet’s mass between us and the target.”
“Should?” Carmen asked.
Vikram hesitated. “The margin of error on a gravity dive is wider than a standard jump. We could exit anywhere within a sixty-thousand-kilometer sphere of the target coordinates.” He paused. “Assuming my calculations are correct.”
“Worst case?”
“We exit closer to Jupiter than intended and have to fight our way out of a steeper gravity gradient while blind on sensors until they recalibrate.”
Carmen nodded. “Yuki, the moment we drop out, I need you ready for immediate manual control. Trust your eyes. If you see anything, don’t wait for the instruments to catch up.”
“Aye, Captain.” Yuki’s fingers clenched, then unclenched, but her voice was steady.
“Petra, sensors to active the instant we exit. I want a picture of what’s around us before we finish blinking.”
“Ready, Captain.”
Carmen looked over her shoulder at Alexander. “Anything from your end?”
“I’ll reinforce the ship.” He spread his powers through the Sleipnir, settling into every system simultaneously. Reactor. Engines. Life support. Hull plating. The ship may not have awakened yet, but it was still an ensouled machine. It belonged to him. It was an extension of his Will.
Carmen turned back to the viewscreen. “Vikram, initiate the jump on my mark.”
“Standing by.”
She let the silence hold for a beat. “Mark.”
“Jumping.”
The viewscreen went white. The lurch hit Alexander’s stomach as reality twisted around them. A heartbeat of nothing. Two.
The viewscreen cleared.
Jupiter filled it. Not in the distance where it should be.
The gas giant dominated the entire forward view, bands of ochre and rust swirling across its surface. They were close. Far closer than one hundred thousand kilometers.
“Sensors recalibrating,” Petra said. A few seconds passed. “Clear space. No contacts. No active signals.”
“Yuki, get us into a stable orbital track,” Carmen said. “Now.”
“On it.” Yuki began firing the thrusters in rapid sequence, angling the ship’s nose away from the gas giant. “Correcting altitude. Adjusting vector.”
The ship shuddered. A deep, structural vibration that Alexander felt through his boots and through every sensor he’d threaded into the hull. Jupiter’s gravity had them. The pull was enormous, orders of magnitude beyond anything they’d experienced near Earth or Mars. The reactor whined as the engines fought to stabilize their trajectory.
Then the lights on the port console bank flickered and died.
“Navigational array just dropped offline,” Vikram said. His voice was calm, but his fingers stopped moving. Without navigation, he was blind.
The Chief’s voice crackled over the comms immediately. “Bridge, I’ve got a power surge in junction fourteen. Nav array breaker tripped.”
Carmen didn’t hesitate. “Can you reset it?”
“Need to pull the panel and manually bypass. Twenty seconds if you authorize me to cut the safety interlock.”
“Do it.”
Alexander was already reaching into the junction with Technopathy. He could feel the tripped breaker, the interrupted circuit, the backup pathway sitting dormant beside it. He nudged the backup online—
The nav console lit up.
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“Backup nav is up,” Vikram reported. “We’re sixty-three thousand kilometers below the target coordinates. Much deeper into Jupiter’s gravity well than planned.”
The comms crackled again. “I don’t know what happened, but the backup just turned on. I’ll work on the primary.”
“Understood, Chief,” Carmen said. “Vikram, find me that asteroid.”
Yuki’s hands danced across the controls. The shuddering smoothed as she adjusted thrust vectors, balancing the ship against the planet’s grip. “Stable,” she said. “Mostly. She’s pulling starboard, but I can hold it.”
Carmen leaned back. “Petra, any sign we’ve been detected?”
Petra shook her head. “Nothing on passive sensors. No active pings. If Santiago has sensor coverage out here, they didn’t catch our arrival.”
“Good. Vikram, update?”
Vikram was quiet for several seconds, studying the data as it scrolled. “I found it, Captain. But...” He pulled something up, leaning closer to his display. “There’s a much closer alternative. A catalogued moonlet, roughly four hundred meters along its longest axis. Mixed composition. Silicate, mostly, but the survey data shows significant iron-nickel veins throughout.”
Ryan stepped forward. “How close?”
“Close. That’s why I ruled it out originally, because it orbits much deeper into Jupiter’s gravity well than we planned to operate.” Vikram glanced at Carmen. “But given where we ended up, it’s actually within reach.”
“Can Mr. Rooke eject it from its orbit this close to the planet?” Ryan asked.
Vikram’s fingers moved. “Running calculations. Hold.” A pause. Numbers shifted on his display. “Yes. Its orbit is eccentric and already being perturbed by the inner moons. And it’s currently approaching the highest point in its arc. Orbital velocity is at its lowest.” He looked up. “If there’s a time to knock it loose, this is it. The slingshot trajectory will also be tighter from this depth. Faster transit to the target.”
“Then that’s our ride,” Alexander said. “How close can you get me, Yuki?”
Yuki glanced over her shoulder with a grin. “Close enough for Sleipnir to kiss it if you want. Long as the Captain doesn’t mind.”