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Back Ark Royal Save as PDF
Chapters (42)
  1. Cover Blurb
  2. Contents
  3. Chapter One
  4. Chapter Two
  5. Chapter Three
  6. Chapter Four
  7. Chapter Five
  8. Chapter Six
  9. Chapter Seven
  10. Chapter Eight
  11. Chapter Nine
  12. Chapter Ten
  13. Chapter Eleven
  14. Chapter Twelve
  15. Chapter Thirteen
  16. Chapter Fourteen
  17. Chapter Fifteen
  18. Chapter Sixteen
  19. Chapter Seventeen
  20. Chapter Eighteen
  21. Chapter Nineteen
  22. Chapter Twenty
  23. Chapter Twenty-One
  24. Chapter Twenty-Two
  25. Chapter Twenty-Three
  26. Chapter Twenty-Four
  27. Chapter Twenty-Five
  28. Chapter Twenty-Six
  29. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  30. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  31. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  32. Chapter Thirty
  33. Chapter Thirty-One
  34. Chapter Thirty-Two
  35. Chapter Thirty-Three
  36. Chapter Thirty-Four
  37. Chapter Thirty-Five
  38. Chapter Thirty-Six
  39. Chapter Thirty-Seven
  40. Chapter Thirty-Eight
  41. Chapter Thirty-Nine
  42. Chapter Forty

And thank god for that, Ted thought.  The Puller Drive had never seemed very important, not compared to all the other systems that had to be kept operational for Ark Royal to remain on the books.  And it couldn't really be replaced without chopping open the hull, which would take months.  He keyed his console, checking the power curves for himself.  For something that was surprisingly simple, the Puller Drive was a colossal power hog.

“Good,” Ted said.  He looked around the bridge, feeling a hint of pride in his crew.  They’d practiced endlessly over the last two weeks, but this was real.  “Jump!”

The Puller Drive wasn’t – technically – a drive at all.  Over a century ago, Professor Wang had discovered the existence of gravitational tramlines running between stars and planets – and then worked out a system for exploiting them.  If the Puller Drive was triggered at the right place along the tramline, the ship would jump instantly from one star system to the next ... providing the tramline was strong enough to allow it.  There were stars it was possible to jump to, but not possible to jump back along the same tramline.  A black hole, Wang had warned, might be impossible to escape.  Its sheer mass would bend the tramlines out of shape.  Fortunately, there were none within human space.

For a long moment, the universe seemed to darken ... and then snap back to normal.  Ted let out a breath he hadn't realised he was holding, then glanced down at his console.  The Puller Drive was cycling down, all power curves still nominal.  Ted allowed himself a tight smile.  His ship might be old, but she was still fully functional and ready for action.

“Jump completed, sir,” Lightbridge reported.  “No problems detected.”

“Take us to the next tramline,” Ted ordered.

Jumping along a tramline was instantaneous – or close enough to instant to make it impossible to provide a precise estimate of how long it took.  Moving from tramline to tramline, on the other hand, could take hours.  Ted wasn't blind to the implications of the aliens having a Puller Drive that allowed longer jumps; they might easily outflank humanity’s defenders and then attack Earth, just as the First Space Lord had predicted.  They might need to spend a few years mopping up afterwards, but the loss of Earth would cost humanity the war.

“Picking up a signal from Terra Nova,” Annie said.  “They’re requesting our IFF.  And they sound a little jumpy.”

“I’m not surprised,” Ted said.  Ark Royal looked different enough from a modern carrier to be alarmingly unfamiliar to long-range sensors.  They might well mistake her for an alien ship.  “Shoot them a copy of our IFF, then inform them that we are proceeding to the next tramline.”