"The thing is," Naina said as she was sitting in the captain's chair on the bridge, which was quite different from the time when Mizuni sat on the same chair and run the Donut Drive for the first time. Consoles and displays had been brought closer to the middle, and various makeshift controllers with long wires coming out of them were scattered around the captain's chair, and on the chair. And there were only three people inside, instead of the dozen or so back in the day.
"The thing is," she repeated. "That this will be the first time I'm piloting this ship. That's the problem. I trust my piloting skill enough, but usually only after I've had some time to get to know a new ship. But now, literally, the first thing I need to do, is to fly through that sub-space bubble with our sensor arrays wide open," she said.
"I trust you," Mizuni said, as she was sitting on the floor next to the chair, her lap filled with several datapads, and her hands near several controllers. "You flew here with your old ship that wasn't designed to do this at all. You got this."
"Thanks," Naina said and smiled at Mizuni. She took a deep breath. "Okay, let's try slowly at first, and see if she even moves." She said and put her hands into controllers that looked eerily similar to those from the Travelstar. If you looked close enough, they even shared the same serial numbers. Weird.
"Okay, Quera. Give us one percent of power, and be ready on the choke if this is too much," Naina said. The ship sprung to life with a hum, and Naina twisted her wrist slightly. Infinity rose gently from the landing bay floor and hovered in the air steadily.
"Your stabilizers are out of this world!" Naina said as she turned to Mizuni. "It's like I don't have to try!"
Mizuni smiled at her. "They aren't that special, really. They don't even stabilize this much. You just think too little of your skill, Naina," she said and grinned.
"So, what's the plan here?" Perez asked. He was sitting in a chair slightly to the side and watching the two women with a grin on his face.
"We have one chance," Naina said. "After we cut power to Sunstar and are on our own, we don't have much time."
Mizuni nodded. "Yeah. The plan is to align the ship while still connected to the energy stream from Sunstar, cut the cables, close up the ship, and blast through the spbub."
"And once there, we immediately head to the star and start using the Polarizers as scoops. If that works, we're out of the deep water," Naina said.
"Yes, everything is counting on us being able to fill our fuel reserves before we run out of power. After we separate, we're on leased time, and the lease won't be long." Mizuni said solemnly.
"How long?" Perez asked.
Mizuni looked at Naina, who nodded. "Two hours. Maybe three on full power. Every second counts once we're free." Mizuni said.
"It'll take us an hour to go through the spbub, ah, sub-space bubble," Naina said, and Mizuni grinned widely. "Maybe an hour to get close enough to the star. It's going to be close. Maybe down to minutes. If the scoops don't work on the first try, we're floating debris." She continued.
"Lu, you know how the bridge works. You used to be part of a flight crew before," Mizuni said. "Can you handle the power management? That would help us immensely."
"Si, capitanas," Perez said with a grin, and walked to a console on the wall and sat down in front of it.
"Quera, I need to see," Naina said.
The large screen was wiped empty of all the numbers and charts that populated it, and it was replaced by a view from outside the ship, looking forward. The smaller screens around the chair blinked and replicated the data from the larger screen.
"Thanks, Quera," Mizuni said. "Easy, Naina. I trust you."
Naina took a deep breath, tensed her arms and fingers, and made tiny movements with them as she watched the numbers ran on the screens.
"This might get tight," she said. "The proper alignment overlaps ever so slightly with the hangar frame. I can't go just straight out, we'd clip the walls."
"What you want to do?" Mizuni asked.
"I'm going to do something very stupid," Naina said and took a deep breath.
"Here we go again," Quera said flatly.
"Silence, you," Naina said. "I'm going to fly straight out of the hangar, take a note of the angle we need, and then rotate the ship when we're out, and then punch it."
"We ... don't have impulse engines to speak of," Mizuni said with a shaky voice. "You'd need to do that with FTL enabled ..."
"I know," Naina said and grinned widely at Mizuni.
"Oh no," Quera said.
"Disconnect us. Let's go home," Naina said.
Perez nodded and tapped the console in front of him a few times. Mizuni pulled a few levers, poked a couple of buttons, and kept her eyes intently on one of the screens.
"We're free. Doors closing in 30 ... 29 ... 28 ..." Perez said.
"Hold on to something, this might get rocky," Naina said and drew a deep breath and tried to loosen her tightening muscles.
"I trust you, Naina," Mizuni said. "You can do this. You've done this before," she smiled at her.
"15 ... 14 ... 13 ..." Perez counted down.
"37.12 degrees left, 12.05 degrees down," Mizuni said. Naina nodded silently.
"Quera, on my mark," Naina said. "Run the FTL at the lowest setting you can and prepare the coils. Go." The hum was sort of familiar to Mizuni, but it differed enough from before that she noticed it.
"As we did in the Travelstar, point six for fluctuations, give me all the power you can for the coils. And for our lives' sake, keep the polarity on the bubble." Naina said.
"5 ... 4 ... 3 ... 2 ... 1 ... Closed!" Perez yelled, and Naina kicked a switch with her foot.
Infinity shot out of Sunstar's hangar like a bullet, rotated slightly while still moving in the other direction. Then the entire ship groaned as Mizuni's and Naina's magic worked together, and an opening formed in the wavering colors.
"Punch it, Quera," Naina said, and the ship disappeared from view in a bright flash that made pulsars jealous.
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