Read Moron's Guide to Surviving the Space Race Page 11
“You learning a lot?” I asked Martha, who at this point I had accepted as constantly watching everything going on onboard.
“Mostly.” She remarked, and I had the distinct impression of someone contemplating something.
“What’s on your mind?” I asked her.
“Matter Anti-matter reactors.”
“Not happening on this tub. Even the lowest end plant is in the neighborhood of millions of credits. I’m lucky that this thing had a fusion reactor core. Fusion isn’t normally found on vessels this old.” I’d been doing a lot of shopping around lately.
“Too bad. That would solve the other problem we have.” Martha stated.
“What other problem?” I asked her, my eyebrows shooting up.
“We don’t have enough power to have the shields running and the weapon systems able to fire.” Martha informed me.
“That’s the same with every ship. They can’t make shields that only work one way, so you have to drop to fire. Ships are designed with that in mind for efficiency.” I explained to her.
Martha remained quiet after I told her this. I figured that was the end of the conversation, until she brought it back up when the others had finished helping me make the last of the repairs and left.
“This ship is terribly inefficient.” Martha told me as I was making my way toward the bridge. The last of the basic supplies had just arrived and were loaded.
“Hold on just a minute. I have to say goodbye to Dave.” I told her, then flipped open my cellphone and called him up.
“Hey Johnny, you’re all set up and ready for take-off.” Dave told me immediately after picking up.
“Thanks for everything, Dave. You guys are life savers and I owe you big time.”
“Don’t stress it Johnny. Everyone really enjoyed having you around, even though you did like completely card shark them.” Dave chuckled.
I smiled. “It wasn’t that bad, I didn’t take any money from any of you guys!”
“No, just highly advanced tech that some of them had spent years building.” Sarcasm wasn’t hard for guys like Dave.
“Anyway, it was good seeing you Dave. Take care and keep in touch!”
“Remember your promise! When I graduate, I’ll probably be looking you up.”
“You have a place here, Dave, no doubt about it.” I hung up the phone and sat down in front of the navigation terminal. “Ready Martha?”
“Of course.”
“Take us up.” I had planned out the take-off with her so she had a solid idea of the process. I tried my best to settle my fears with the situation. I settled myself into the navigation chair, keeping an eagle eye on the display screens just in case. Better to be over prepared then underprepared.
“Are you online with the traffic control towers?” I asked her.
“No, I’m flying blind through air and space. It’s much more fun!” Martha commented, sounding bored.
“Cute. Real cute.” I shook my head and watched the massive amount of data flying across the screen. “What is all that?” I asked.
I heard Martha sigh. “It is my way of placating you. I have provided you exacting detail on all of the specific information concerning our take off and my conversations with the controllers.”
“Basically, you are flooding me with data in hopes of driving me away from watching every move you make?” I chuckled and shook my head.
“Yes. Can’t blame a girl for trying.”
I took the hint and stopped watching the panel. It was rough at first, settling all of my fears and worries about controlling the situation but all in all I was getting over it.
“Chill out, Jarvis. It isn’t like I didn’t run through five thousand separate scenarios before performing this operation. Maybe listen to some music?” Relax by Frankie Goes to Hollywood started blaring over the speakers.
“I get the point, Martha. I got it, received, loud and clear.” I smiled and settled back in the comfortable navigation chair. I reached down and pulled up the display of the outer hull cameras.
I watched in awe as the ship rose through the atmosphere, and soon I could see the curve of the earth. The brilliant azure sky was soon replaced with a star speckled blackness that took my breath away. Blue oceans and green forested wilderness crept away as the globe became smaller and smaller. We cleared the moon in the next couple of hours then headed toward the Jump gate out of the solar system.
“Where are we going?” Martha asked me.
“First stop is the warehouse. I need to pull some navigation info off of the Nautilus.”
I spent the next week alternating between piloting and talking to Martha. It was nice actually having someone to talk to even if it was a computer program. The conversations were fairly dry since they were oriented solely toward strategies that we could implement to take down Mark. Some ideas came out of it, but overall, I was nowhere closer to an idea than I was when I first decided to actually go after the crime boss.