Leap of Faith (Tall Tales)

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Because I seem to be obsessed with this stuff
=Story By JA Baker=
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There's this old trick, and by old, I mean it's something that the Pathfinders used to pull in an emergency, where, if you know exactly what you're doing, and have your ship set up just right, you can jump through a gravity well. On paper, it's impossible: everything Kearney and Fuchida tell us about hyperspace says that a stable jump-point can't form outside of a null-gravity area. Space is just too... I guess compacted is probably as good a term as any. Whatever you want to call it, it forms an impenetrable wall between our reality and hyperspace, and trying to make a jump is just like running headfirst into a brick wall.
Actually, running headfirst into a brick wall would probably hurt less.
But, there are exceptions to every rule, and that's where the trick lies, because if you know the wall well enough, you can find a way to slip through the cracks. Now, it's suicide to try, but when you have nothing left to lose, well, what have you got to lose? I've seen it done exactly once, and it's not something I'd want to attempt myself, and preferably never have to go through again.
See, there's a price to pay when you cheat the system, and the universe doesn't take I.O.U.'s.
3070, the Siege of Tharkad was in its third year, and everyone was trying to find a back-door into the system, some way to avoid running into the Blakist warships keeping watch over all traffic in system. To that end, the Lone Rose, a decrepit old Invader Class JumpShip I was pulling Com Officer duty on was assigned the task of trying to jump in from, well, I'm still not allowed any say where exactly. Let's just say that we suspected that the Blakists were watching all the usual points of departure, so we had to think outside the box, and try and find a back-door to the back-door, trying systems that weren't on the normal maps.
So, we were pretty far off the beaten track, using uninhabited systems, often stars that gave off the 'wrong' wavelengths of light. See, you have to remember that jump sails are calibrated to take in light from stars that people might want to live in orbit of. The further you get from that part of the spectrum, the less effective they become, and the longer it takes to build up a charge. Now, we were fortunate enough that someone had decided that retrofitting our old tub with extra Lithium-Fusion batteries was worth the time and money, and we made sure we always had that extra charge on hand, just in case.
Turned out to be a smart move.
Our navigator was this cantankerous old bastard named Joe, who was always right and never wrong, least in his own head. Nobody actually liked him, but he owned part of the ship, so there wasn't much we could do about him. And he was a qualified navigator, and he did know his trade, just not how to be a people person. He had us jumping all over the place, mapping systems to try and find the quickest way around the blockade. Captain put up with it because, well, that's where the big payday was, but the rest of us were starting to get sick of going nowhere, fast. Three months out of port, and only half way to Tharkad? Not fun, especially when half the crew were used to spending so long in space. Now, I'm no Rockjack, but I've spent enough time in the black that I'm better adapted than most, but even I was starting to miss fresh air and un-recycled water.
Joe comes up with a new set of coordinates, convinced that this time he'd cracked it, when Holly, his young and somewhat reluctant assistant spoke up.
"It's a bad idea." her voice caring all the confidence she could muster, "That star's borderline passable as it is..."
"Charts say she's safe to jump!" Joe snapped back, "I'm the navigator, and I say we jump!"
The captain, who by this point looked to be contemplating giving her pistol a blow-job, waved her hand and gave the order for all hands to jump stations.
I can't say I blamed her: like Joe, she owned part of the ship, and had some serious debts to pay. If we didn't find a way around the blockade, she'd be in serious trouble when we got back to port. At the very least, her creditor's would but a lien on her share, and that'd see her beached, possibly permanently.
So we jumped, and, well, you need to remember that even light travels at a set speed, and a lot can happen in a couple of hundred years.
Just about every alarm on the bridge went nuts at once, while the Lone Rose shock and bucked like a whore in heat. We all worked our controls like the devil himself was on our backs, trying to work out just what the hell had happened.
"The star's collapsing!" Holly shouted, working to silence the alarms even as the main display switched to show the feed from the external cameras, which showed utterly terrifying sight of a star going about the business of becoming a black hole.
"Get us the hell out of here!" the captain ordered, gripping the arms of her chair so hard her knuckles turned white, "Use the emergency charge!"
"It's too late!" Joe snapped, "We're already out of the jump-point."
"Emergency thrusters to full!" the captain ordered the helmsman as the alarms were finally silenced, "Get us back into position."
The ship groaned and trembled as the emergency thrusters fired, trying desperately to pull us out of the gravity well. But it was a hopeless task: they were never intended to fight even a fraction of that kind of force, and they did little but slow our decent, at least while they lasted.
"Options?" the captain asked, looking around the cabin at the rest of us.
"Options?" Joe hissed backed, "We. Are. All. Going. To. DIE!"
"Jump the Well!" Holly cut him off, "We need to stop fighting the gravity and use it."
All eyes turned to look at her with a combination of confusion and at least a little hope.
"Look, my grandfather was Spacers Guild, a Master Navigator in House Shadowkeeper, before he left to marry my grandmother. When it became clear that I wasn't going to be happy spending my life in just one system, he arranged to have me apprenticed to one of his own former students." she explained quickly, "I may not be a member of the Guild, but I am Guild Certified, and my Grandfather... he told me a few things he shouldn't have. Things that the Guild likes to keep to themselves. One is an old Pathfinder Corps trick called 'Jumping the Well'."
"Go on." the captain nodded, silencing a complaint from Joe.
"Pathfinders would often find themselves in... difficult situations. Sometimes they'd jump too close to a star and get caught by the gravity well and get pulled in. Most died, but a few took a chance and found..." Holly paused, trying to find the right words, "There's a point where gravity starts to bend space-time, not too dissimilar to how a jump-drive works. If you can find it, and you time it just right, sometimes, you can trick the universe into letting you jump. It isn't easy: I've never even seen it done, and grandfather only told me the basics..."
"I ain't hearing anyone coming up with anything better." the captain pointed to the navigators station, "Ship's yours."
"Are you out of your gorram mind?" Joe asked, refusing to give up his seat, "You're going to let some wet-behind-the-ears kid take control of the ship?"
"I don't exactly see you doin anything but pissing your pants." the captain snapped back, "What's it matter to you, anyway? We're all gonna die, ain't we?"
Begrudgingly, Joe unbuckled his restraints and drifted clear, taking an empty spot at the back of the bridge. Holly grabbed her helmet from under her old chair and connected it to the color of her suit before taking his station.
"You might want to tell everyone to button-up." she warned, "Things are liable to get bumpy."
"All hands, prepare for possible decompression and a rough jump." the captain announced over the ships PA.
Holly cut the emergency thrusters, then realigned the ship so we were pointed directly towards the collapsing star. It didn't take long for us to start to feel her reaching out for us, like some kind of monster seeking out its next victim. The ship shimmied and shuddered like nothing I've ever seen as we slowly started to accelerate far faster than any JumpShip was ever intended.
"Care to explain just how this little act of insanity is supposed to work?" Joe asked, bitterly, as he secured his own helmet, "I only ask because I'd like to know just how I'm going to die."
"We need to be deeper into the gravity well, down to the point where it's starting to distort spacetime." Holly explained, working the controls like a woman possessed, seemingly ignoring his attitude, "Only problem is, that means that it's also more than capable of distorting us as well. But, if it was easy, everyone would be doing it, not just poor, unfortunate sons of britches who found themselves relying on out-of-date charts, from a time when ComStar was actively trying to ******-over the rest of humanity."
And so we rushed headlong into hell, trying to reach this mythical sweet spot before we were ripped apart. The main view-screen showed the star: in an affront to all logic, the counter shell had expanded, even as the core began compress, already on the way to forming a singularity. Not that we'd be around to see it, one way or another. But it filled the view-screen, and with nothing better to do, my mind as well.
Holly never so much as looked up: her entire universe consisted of the Nav board and the readings from the gravity sensors as they steadily claimed. Her fingers were almost a blur as she made constant, microscopic adjustments to her calculations, trusting her instincts and training over the computer, which had always called it quits and dreamed the situation unsalvageable. I heard somebody praying, but I couldn't tell who it was at first, then realized that it was me.
The captain had silenced all the alarms, so the first indication that shit had gotten real was when the entire ship lurched violently to one side as one of the hydroponics bays was ripped free of its mounting and sent hurtling into the inferno below. Holly worked to stabilize the suddenly unbalanced ship, even as the second hydroponics bay was ripped free and followed the first into oblivion. Soon, other parts of the hull followed, from minor patches and access panels on upwards. Every piece lost seemed to only make the situation worse, as the entire ships sounded ready to come apart at the seems.
"Hull breach!" someone shouted, "We're losing pressure in the forward cargo hold."
"Order everyone to abandon the entire deck if necessary." the captain sounded almost serene given the circumstances, "I don't want to lose anyone today."
I watched the screen, the blazing surface of the dying star seeming to reach out for us even as the reading on the gravity sensor went into the red.
"Hold onto your butt's." Holly warned as she reached for the jump initiator, "Shit's about to get crazy!"
We had no time to ask her exactly what she meant by that, as she pulled back on the controls, and everything stopped making sense.
Firstly, all the shaking and rumbling stopped, so suddenly that, if not for my harness, I would have been thrown out of my seat. As it was, I felt a stab of pain in my chest that informed me that at least two of my ribs were fractured, if not broken. Then the entire ship seemed to expose around us, leaving us hanging in open space. I watched the bulkhead fly out until it was a good twenty meters away, the entire structure of the ship seeming to maintain formation, just separated by a vast distance in all directions. And, directly above us, the churning, writhing surface of the star filled the sky.
I should have been blinded. Hell, we should have all been fried to a crisp, that close to a red giant, but somehow we were surrounded by a pocket of perfect calm.
Then I saw it: a spark of pure blackness against the searing red of the star. It grew quickly, like a billowing cloud of absolute nothingness, directly in front of us. And we were still falling towards it.
I wanted to scream, to find a way out, but my body wasn't taking orders from my brain. Hell, I wasn't even able to piss myself, something I've never wanted to do intentionally before, but felt the sudden and all consuming need to then and there. All I could do was watch, transfixed, as we fell into oblivion.
Looking back, all these years later, I'm not sure I ever expected to wake up again. And, when I did, I was convinced at first that I'd dreamt it all, that it had been nothing more than a particularly vivid nightmare. But when I opened my eyes, I found myself in a strange room, with a woman in medical scrubs looking over me.
Somehow, and I still don't know how, we'd jumped all the way to Windsor, far beyond the 30-light year limit, appearing at the Zenith jump-point, the Lone Rose a twisted, burnt wreck, but with the crew alive, and even the DropShips we'd been hauling intact. At first they'd assumed that we'd suffered a catastrophic miss-jump, and the rescue teams expected to find nothing but bodies. Instead they found us all at our stations, completely catatonic and unresponsive. They'd taken us off and had us sent planet-side while they tried to piece together what had happened from the remains of the ships computer.
Well, all of us except Holly.
Seems that there had been a Spacers Guild ship in system, and they'd laid claim to her. Her family had all died at Alarion, victims of the bio-weapon that the Blakists had unleashed upon the system. She'd only been sixteen at the time, still completing her certification as a navigator. As such, the Guild was able to claim legal next-of-kin status, due to her grandfather having been a member. They'd sent a shuttle for her, and had taken here away, theirJumpShip leaving without posting a destination.
We were debrief, of cause: ships don't just do what the Lone Rose did without people wanting to know how, but with the computers melted scrap, the only one who knew anything was Holly, and the Guild wasn't saying anything. And nobody was willing to risk getting on their bad side, even for something like that.
So, like I said, there's always a price to pay when you try and cheat the system.
The End
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