Captain Absen stared at the holotank, just as he’d gazed at it every day for the last twenty as each pulse brought them closer to Earth. The icons of the sixteen Destroyers, updated each time, flew serenely onward, now 0.9 light-year ahead.
Over the last two boat weeks, Conquest had also accelerated in normal space to 0.1 c, only slightly off a path directly toward the enemy fleet. During that time, Commander Ekara and his team had worked around the clock to install a duplicate set of inertial dampening field emitters, along with all of the hardware and software to handle reversing its polarity. He’d tested it as much as possible, but they had yet to try a pulse in the sternward direction.
“Commander Ekara, are we ready to test our reverse TacDrive?” Absen asked on the comm. Everyone was suited up again, this time with the new snap-closed helmet rings that Timmons had ordered designed and manufactured. They looked like thickened neck ruffs, but when they sensed any danger such as hard acceleration or a drop in air pressure, they would slam shut in a fraction of a second.
“Yes, sir,” came the answer from Engineering. “I’d like to initiate this first one manually, though.”
Okuda shrugged, and Absen replied, “Very well. Sound general quarters, action stations, non-hostile.” Once all the crew was in place, he went on, “Commander, you are cleared to proceed. Give us warning.”
Though he wasn’t really sure what good that would do. If something went wrong, it was unlikely a verbal heads-up would matter much.
“Roger. Initiating in three...two...one...”
Absen expected the vertigo, but he did not expect it to be so severe. “Abort!” he yelled, and a moment later they dropped out of pulse to the sound of one young watchstander retching on the deck. Klis at the backup Engineering station yowled like a cat in distress and hunched over in her suit.
“What the hell just happened?” he asked.
“I believe the reverse TacDrive does not like forward kinetic energy,” Ekara said. “We had a huge power spike that I was only barely able to contain. The inertial dampening field cannibalized some of our forward momentum.”
“Well, that answers one question,” Absen said. “Okuda, slow us down. We need to get the reverse TacDrive to work more than we need the delta-vee.”
“Pointing our fusion drive straight forward to decelerate will show them exactly where we are,” Okuda reminded him.
“Doesn’t matter,” the captain said. “I have a plan. I just need to know what this boat can do.”
“Aye aye, sir,” Okuda said, and then, “reversing course. Fusion drive powering up.”
The rumbling vibration of the boat’s six huge fusion rockets filled the bridge, and then subsided somewhat as the bridge’s dampers and filters reduced it to background noise. Down in Engineering, Absen knew, the crew would have donned sound-cancelling ear protection, but just like the tenders of engines from the dawn of the age of steam, they probably welcomed the subsonics as familiar, even homelike.
The next day, Absen was ready to try again. They had bled off speed to below 0.05 c. “Commander,” he said to Ekara, “set the reverse TacDrive up for the shortest pulse you can, and be ready for that power spike.”
“Roger that, sir. We’ve actually created a method of capturing the excess power and putting it into capacitors.”
“Excellent. That may come in handy if we need to recharge fast.”
“Yes, sir.” Ekara’s voice took on a slight tone of extra patience.
Absen realized the chief engineer was likely way ahead of him. “Good work, Commander. Now let’s see how much of a headache it gives us.”
The countdown came again, and the vertigo, but it was much lessened. “Let’s try a bit longer pulse, right away,” Absen ordered. “Set it up now.”
“Thirty seconds, sir...” A moment later it came again, for a perceptible time, perhaps a full second. The discomfort was bearable.
“Take the time to recharge, and this time I want to pulse forward 0.1 light-year. Give Okuda control when you are ready.”
“Aye aye, sir. Ekara out.”
A long twenty minutes passed, with Absen musing on the image of the fleet displayed in the holotank. Eventually Okuda signaled, and then he initiated a forward pulse. No problems resulted, no klaxons wailed, and at the end of it they dropped out of TacDrive at a little over 0.8 light-year from the enemy fleet.
“All right everyone, secure from general quarters and go to normal routine. We’ll stay here for a couple of days while Engineering works things out.”
Just under eight light-years from home, Absen thought. Seems so close now, though according to all the readings, the year is 2153, seventy-eight years after we left, and forty-four years after the Meme conquest of Earth. By the time we arrive, the solar system will have suffered under enemy rule for fifty years.