“Well, let’s get these plates replaced,” Eric told the fighter as he grabbed a cutting torch and got ready to pop the welds that held the armor in place. “Then we’ll see what kind of mess you’re in under all those scrapes and dings.”

“Talking to your machine, boss. Not a good sign.”

Eric snorted, not even bothering to look around. “You’re supposed to be on the bridge.”

“Write me up,” Steph said as he walked around. “The ship is tracking true, all systems green. Figured the lieutenant could use a few more hours on her book.”

“Kindness of your heart, is it?” Eric asked as he used the laser torch to zap a weld.

“You know me, boss. I’m a giver.”

“Of course you are.” Eric rolled his eyes. “Put on a pair of goggles, would you? Last thing we need to do is blind our chief pilot.”

Steph chuckled and grabbed a pair of laser-filtering glasses. “Nice to see you again too.”

Eric shook his head slightly, but went back to cutting out the battle-scarred panel, talking with his friend as he worked.

It had been too long since either of them had had the opportunity to do just that.

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 3

► Transitioning to Ranquil from Sol was just as disturbing as one might imagine having one’s atoms split apart and tossed across space-time would be.

Oh, that wasn’t really what the drive did, thankfully—just what it felt like.

The transition was actually more akin to being boiled than being disintegrated, which, as Eric thought about it, sounded so much worse. The transition drive stimulated a direct phase shift from solid matter to a tachyon state, a form of matter so unstable as to be virtually nonexistent in the universe. The change lasted only an infinitesimal period of time, by the end of which the phase shift reversed and the ship and contents returned to their normal state, dozens of light-years away from where they had started.

The process was, in a very real sense, true teleportation without any of the moral ambiguities of trying to construct an energy-conversion system. Unfortunately, transitioning didn’t work reliably near significant gravity wells.

The system would charge and initiate a phase change, but as Eric had himself proven during a series of trials of the new Heroic Class, gravity wells could scatter the tachyons and prevent reformation.

Eric had given himself many a nightmare by winning that series of mock combat exercises, and probably taken a few years off the lives of some politicians who had thought the transition technology made Earth’s forces effectively invincible. Since gravity could scatter tachyons, and thus prevent proper reintegration, putting too much trust in transition technology when you were dealing with ships literally powered by gravity fields . . . well, it wasn’t the smartest thing in the world. The things a singularity drive could do to an emerging transition would not be possible in any fair universe.