Debatable Space

Flanagan

“Watch her go.”

“Rimming the sun.”

“Yobaby, lickety, lickety.”

“She’s ours.”

“Fire a plasma pulse,” I say.

“Too far.”

“Oh go on,” says Jamie. “Take out a rock. Light the sky, man.”

“Okay. Take out a rock,” I order.

“I got it. Baboom.” That’s Harry.

The black void shines, as the asteroid blows. I steer the ship straight through the flames, pure sleight of flight. I come through the other side and the stellar yacht is still tacking gently, curving its way through iridescent sunrocks.

“She’s not running?”

“She’s not running,” says Brandon.

“Then, let’s play it safe. Stealth,” I say.

“We got no stealth capacity, Cap’n.”

“I know, I know, just… look, just try to be discreet. Don’t talk so loud.”

“Aye aye Cap’n.”

“Don’t blow up any more rocks.”

“The rock was blown up on your order, Cap’n.”

My eyes are fixed firmly on the star monitor, I know my crew from their voices. Brandon, baritone, fast-syllabled, Rob with his East Galaxy patois, Alliea with a hint of a Celtic lilt, Jamie with his childlike babble. Kalen in the engine room, communicating by voicelink. And Alby.

“She’ssss daydreaming Cap’n,” says Alby.

“I know,” I say.

“If we get closssse…”

“Incoming missiles!”

She’s shooting at us. Baboom, baboom. Hands fly on joysticks, antimissile photon pulses strike, the missiles flare around us as we kink and weave out of the way. Pish, pish, pish, pish, pish, pish, pish, each light marks the explosive demise of a death bomb. She can’t beat us in a straight fight, she’s a sleek yacht, with enough firepower to take out a battleship, but we’re bigger than a battleship. We’re a Mark IV megawarship, we’re a bulldozer, she’s a rapier, no contest. We keep dodging and throwing out chaff and her bombs keep exploding harmlessly. But the space yacht keeps hurling missiles at us, my guess is we’re fighting against an autopilot. And autopilots can’t fight.

“Why don’t she flee?”

We might just catch her, maybe, if our fuel holds out and if we throw out fusion bombs to augment our space drive. But that yacht is state of the art. Its sails are as vast as a small planet but virtually weightless, no more than a few nanometres thick. It has an ion-drive engine, it’s bound to have a computer navigator brain that dwarfs ours, all it needs is a human being to give the order: “Flee!” But it doesn’t. Fleeing does not occur.

“Maybe she’s died. Maybe it’s a ghost ship,” I say.

“I like that idea,” says Brandon.

“Doomed to sail the empyrean, forevermore.”

“What’s an empyrean?” asks Rob.

“You in one, mf,” says Jamie.

“Space. Space is the empyrean,” I explain.

“Say space then,” snaps Rob. “Don’t waste brain cells, using words you don’t fucking need!”

The yacht slowly arcs, it is turning into the stellar wind. Finally, it’s fleeing. Jets flare, its sails shimmer. Photons from the star are caught up in the fine mesh of the sail, each one gives a little push. Particles of light shove like infinitesimal gusts of wind. But at the same time the particles are trapped by the sail’s dark-state technology, compressed into one of the sail’s curled-up dimensions. Then, as the sail buckles and wobbles under the pressure, the particles are spat out again into our familiar three uncurled dimensions with a pinpoint ejaculation of energy that hurls the ship even faster, to. 99 of light speed for a few brief seconds. And, of course, because of quantum uncertainty effects, there is a moment when the yacht is moving at two speeds – slower and faster – both at the same time.

Under the intense pressure of two simultaneous speeds, the solar yacht starts to hop. To the naked eye, it seems to dematerialise, then rematerialise, covering kilometres of space in what is only marginally more than no time at all.

“Firing chaff, one two three.”

“Four five six.”

“Seven eight nine.”

“Ten eleven twelve.”

We shower the space ahead of her with cluster bombs, all with a finely calibrated time-delay explosion. The yacht shimmers, hops, rematerialises. Then a bomb explodes ahead of it, rocking its sails, jostling the fine balance of its nanotechnology.

Shimmer, vanish, hop, boom.

Shimmer, vanish, hop, BABOOM.

And again.

And again.

We throw hundreds of missiles into space. The yacht is like a firefly that’s taken mind-altering drugs, hopping through the gaps in reality, buffeted by the recoil from our endless bombs.

Then we watch, in wonder, as the sail is shredded and vanishes. The ship is trapped.

A photon stream which has been spat out from the curled-up dimensions, rich in unused energy, rushes from the stranded yacht. It swirls like a host of angry bees, and is sucked into the gravitational pull of the yellow-ringed star. The swarm hops and skips, and enters the star, and the star swells.

We are engulfed in flame as the star flares. Pillars of red and yellow light balloon into space. The star’s asteroidal ring sizzles and fries. Rock burn up with a rapid hiss. Our force fields throb under the heat of the raging sun. Alby sighs contentedly.

“Remindsss me of home,” he murmurs, his flame-essence flickering with pleasure.