Tales from the Drift: Old Lessons, Hard Futures

Chapter 14 - Debts Are for Collecting

Well, empty of anything he could see, he reminded himself. It was said that Five-Eye, Amarillion, and several other non-idaltus aboard the Sovereign, whose visible spectrums were not so limited, saw a great deal more when they looked out across the drift. That for them, it was never empty. Romain envied them that.

With a huff he returned to his station beside the rigging controls. He wanted his mind to empty and wander so that idleness would overtake him as Hurkel sailed them out to wherever it was that he was sailing them out to, but his mind wouldn't cooperate. As if in rebellion to his desire for lethargy, it kept thinking about the star map, and the zigzagging course that would take them to Port Tridium.

Nine rotations? Why should the voyage take so long? Romain considered the distance, the Soveriegn's fuel and power reserves, as well the available supplies. With a crew of thirty-six, accounting for stellar drift, traveling in as straight a line as possible.... He worked the calculations out in his head, checking his sums on his fingers twice just to be sure. Four rotations. No. That couldn't possibly be right. That was five whole rotations shorter!

He thought through the numbers yet again, this time using the pocket abacus he carried in a pouch on his belt. Four rotations. Same as before. His arithmetic was sound.

The cutter began to slow, banking into a broad and gradual starboard-leaning curve.

Romain sat up, stuffing the abacus back into its pouch. Hurkel was still sort of smirking, like always, as he eased the tiller over. With his chin, he pointed toward the sails.

Romain waited for an explanation, but none appeared to be forthcoming. Frowning, but nodding in acknowledgment, he turned his attention to the controls. He adjusted the trim of the sails, shortening them somewhat based on the new speed, and rotated the array a quarter turn below the cutter's keel.

Hurkel locked the tiller in place, then stood and moved to the bow, brushing past Romain without a word. At the very edge, and just between the chasers, he sat down and stared out into the drift. As far as Romain could tell, he carried no instrumentation with him whatsoever.

What were they doing way out here? He opened his mouth to speak, but Hurkel raised his hand in anticipation of Romain's question. He shook his head and tapped his ears. Then he laid his arms in his lap, the robotic one elevated a finger's width above the organic.

Romain closed his mouth, his eyebrows pressing in on the bridge of his nose. He crossed his arms over his chest, his unused breath pushed out through flared nostrils. Tapping his fingers against his arm he did the only thing he could and examined his surroundings.

The cutter was traveling in what appeared to be a large circle, but they orbited nothing. He flopped his arms to his sides and moved back over to the navigational console to examine the map once more.

He was right. They were making a large circle around an expanse of nothing. Even after he applied several sensory filters to the map of the immediate area, he still found nothing. The ambient radiation was so minimal as to barely register on the sensors. They weren't even sailing through a cosmic haze or fog to gather more power with the sails. So, his question remained. What were they doing here?

Oppressed by the silence and the unknown, Romain was unsure of what to do with himself, and when nothing presented itself as the obvious thing to do, he resigned himself to sitting down an arm's length from Hurkel. He recreated the navigator's pose and posture as best he could.

Apparently, they were waiting.

After the cutter completed its third revolution, Hurkel turned to face Romain. The navigator flashed him a toothy grin, stretching as if waking from a long slumber.