Captain Lena Fang floated onto the flying bridge. She wore her dress uniform, complete with black patent leather boots, despite their inappropriateness in freefall. She was grateful for the freefall as it prevented the trembling that her muscles would have otherwise shown under gravity. It had never seemed fair to her that muscles so assiduously trained could also betray so easily. The start of a trip always made her nervous, and that worried her for it sometimes seemed a false responsibility; Papa ran the Karamojo like a well-fed nanoforge. Out of tradition she orchestrated the launch, but the whole ritual bordered on the superfluous. It wasn't what it had meant to be the captain of a ship when she had broken into the corporate fleets.



Yet she still shook with excitement, and would not let it show. Every assignment held the potential to test her mettle. Maybe this was the one.



She had to believe it was the one, in case it was.



There was no telling what could go wrong that might require her to make an immediate decision, or perform some rapid action. If it had been anticipated, there was already a failsafe in place. Her job was to be there in case of the unanticipated.

She made her way to her fighting chair situated in the aft center of the room, rooted to what would soon become the floor. She pressed her fingers into the yielding, vermilion hide, releasing its comforting aroma. The custom chairbeast moaned softly. Finally she let the chair's arms envelop her.

Everyone else was already there. Directly in front of her sat the ship's Jack, Stearn, in front of the wormdrive console that displayed the status of the interior rail superconductors, the Higgs generators, and the e-m-g field everywhere on board. Stearn turned, gave her a lopsided grin, and flapped his ear wings. To her left, Henderson sat before a pulsing bank of display membranes that monitored the ship biosystems, including the organic parts of Papa. To her right, on a couchbeast were Devereaux and Fisher -- Sam, looking sleepy -- she released a cool smile. Projected on the opposite wall (her brain had already oriented itself with the familiar act of sitting in the fighting chair), etched in silver vectors, shimmered several views of the Karamojo. Everything appeared nominal.



Sweating, her hand worked the fighting chair's hide. "Are we ready to go, Papa?"



"We're raring to go!" Papa said, loud enough that everyone could hear. Papa was the Karamojo. They were ready.

"Confirm the flight plan with the LEO controller." Low Earth orbit was more crowded than ever, but no accidents for the last seventy-three years local time.

"Done," Papa announced.



"Point us at the Swan." The constellation of Cygnus the Swan, the direction of SS Cygni. The bridge shifted as fly wheels around the ship varied their rotation rates, reorienting the Karamojo.



"Done," Papa announced.



"Initialize singularity biseed," Fang ordered.



Around the silver schematic of the Karamojo, a scarlet grid materialized, representing the Reimann curvature of local space-time. The grid tilted down in the direction of Earth's deep potential well, but was otherwise flat. "Done!"



"Power up the superconductors, launch configuration."



"Done."



Fang took a deep breath and rubbed her hands onto her white pants, leaving marks. "Power up the Higgs generators."



"Done."



"Fire and stabilize inflation beams."



The ship's display grid expanded to show detail. Four equidistant beams of scintillating green precisely a hundred and nine point five degrees apart intersected in the maw of the Karamojo.

"Break symmetries."

The green lines shimmered as they shifted positions at high frequency. The scarlet grid began to dimple as the technology teased a bi-singularity from the quantum foam, growing exponentially from the Planck length. The grid now resembled an elliptical funnel, but even as Fang watched the opposite electric charges responded to the fields generated in the rail's superconductors, stretching the funnel into a double-dimpled wedge. Electromagnetic forces overpowered gravity, allowing the white hole to be separated from the black hole and preventing recollapse. The singularities' fields deepened as the holes moved apart. The Karamojo jerked as the hole pair accelerated toward the Swan, dragging the ship along with rapidly smoothing oscillations.

The wormdrive was not only named for the type-2 wormhole created, but early versions operated almost entirely under freefall conditions with a toroidal ship oscillating around the singularities, first pulled out in front then pulled back, moving like an inch worm. Electromagnetic control not only resulted in more stability, it permitted a semblance of gravity on-board by damping the oscillations at the right frequencies.

On her first few trips, nearly three hundred years earlier, gravity under wormdrives had still been jerky and unpleasant. Without the correct drugs or glands, most became sick and stayed sick. No more. Only smooth sailing at the dawn of the fourth millennium.

While Fang sank into her fighting chair with a familiar one gee as the rail pushed against the instantaneous freefall vector, the ship's acceleration asymptotically approached the singularity pair's ten gees from both sides. The effective gravity inside, generated by the modulated electromagnetic friction, approached one gee. Several air fish scavengers fell to what was now the floor, with a quick patter.

"Wormdrive engaged. All systems nominal."

Nothing had gone wrong, nothing had challenged her. As usual. Now they just had to go, and go, and go. And stay in fighting trim, just in case. "Thank you, Papa."

"Thank you, daughter."

Fang looked around the bridge, at her crew. She met Fisher's eyes. He stared back with an intensity that surprised her. He didn't seem sleepy now. What was he thinking?

Stearn popped up from his seat, released a ridiculously loud whoop, stumbled in the gravity, and sat back down. "Where's the champagne?"

They had taken the first step of their very long journey. SS Cygni, and all its secrets, awaited. Maybe she would get the chance to be a real captain in the course of discovering those secrets, get the chance to show that she was a cut above other people and deserved her position of authority.

Lena Fang desperately hoped so.

Chapter 3

Love is a kind of warfare. –Ovid

Two days later, Fisher sat before his workstation in his quarters on an ossified chairbeast (he didn't desire distracting massages while he worked). He hardly needed it, but the Prospector movie played in miniature in the station's picture tank, now expanded to three dimensions using some creative mapping algorithms. He was working on reverse engineering the star dragon's electromagnetic field given the observed motions and a model of the disk field Devereaux had provided. That knowledge could potentially allow them to safely trap a dragon for study.

The door chimed, a sweet tone designed to attract attention without being too unsettling. He thought he might change it if he could find a spare minute. "Come in," he said absently, wondering how fast the dragon might be able to vary its field. Maybe he could put an upper limit on that from the --

Someone cleared her throat.



Losing the thought, Fisher sighed and turned.



Fang stood in the doorway dressed in gray sweats, wearing some kind of blue padded helmet, and toying with what appeared to be a pair of small, connected blue pillows draped over her shoulder. "You need a break, Sam."



It didn't sound like a question, but neither did it sound like an order. Not that he would necessarily follow gratuitous orders per se in any event -- he wasn't precisely ship 'crew'. He was more like a consultant. But he liked her, and didn't want to alienate his most powerful ally, so he didn't respond to her as he would have to an ill-timed visit from a post-doc. Smiling, he said, "Actually, I'm in the middle of something. Perhaps later."



Fang leaned against the inside wall, tilted her head back, and smirked as if he were a comedian. Was something funny?



She said, "Papa, how long has Dr. Fisher been working at his desk?"



"Six and three-quarter hours, continuously, and he has been damn serious about it."



Serious? Why shouldn't he be serious? He turned to straddle the hardened chair and faced her fully. He wasn't accustomed to having his work interrupted. She should understand that. Work hard, play hard, a timeless statement he never understood. Good work was play, and why not take play as seriously as someone takes work? Play was work for one's own true self. "And I'll work seven hours or seventy if it pleases me."



Fang frowned. He realized that upset him. He'd ruined her play, and even if he didn't need the break, her he did need.



Don't forget the people this time, wasn't that what Atsuko had said? "What sort of break did you have in mind?"



She held up the blue pillows. "You said you would box with me."



Box? She had been serious after all. Well, he had uploaded a number of tutorials into his biochip just in case she had been serious, so he was prepared. Loading them into active memory, he stood up. "Fine. Let's box."



"I don't want to force you into anything."



"No problem. You're right. I need the break. Let's do it."



"You'll take it seriously?"



"I do little in half measures."



"Good."



"I need to change?"



"You need to change."



Fisher looked around his room. Did he have workout clothes somewhere? He was sure he had brought some. Maybe not. Easy enough to grow, and cheap enough as well. Why bring sweats across the galaxy?



"Try your closet."



Fisher found everything in his closet, including his own funny blue pillows: boxing gloves, of course. While he knew intellectually what they were thanks to the tutorials, he realized he'd never seen any, and the reality of them was suddenly strange. He felt Fang's eyes on him. "What are you waiting for, another strip show?"



"Yes," Fang said. He wished she'd smiled when she had said this, but he didn't dislike the fact that she hadn't.



This was not of much importance, but he suddenly felt self-conscious with her watching. It was odd that he should care. He didn't have anything unusual like gills, or done anything ostentatious or embarrassing to his genitalia. He kicked off his streakers, paused, then started deseaming his shirt.



"The default cabin." Fang sniffed. "Not even smells. Papa has a whole library of quarters available. We don't expect anyone to keep the default."



Happy to accept the change of focus while he changed his clothes, Fisher said, "I hadn't really thought about it. Do I need smells?"



"Oh yes! Cabin decorating is a fine art among deep spacers, and smells can be vital to establishing a compelling atmosphere. In my time, I have seen jungles, throne rooms ranging from the court of the Sun King to a mock-up of the Oval office of the old American president. One cabin was rigged out to match the heights of the twenty-fourth century sensualists, with every item in the room and every movement he made triggering a sound, smell, or sensation -- urination usually left the cabin-owner quivering on the floor for hours. That guy, he had issues. Most popular for balanced spacers seems to be nature scenes from home planets. Makes you feel less disconnected."

"I'll keep it in mind," Fisher said, snapping his shorts in place. "Say, been meaning to ask you about the ship's name. I would have looked it up myself, but --"

"But you've been busy. The name is no great mystery. Once upon a time there was an African district named Karamojo, and more importantly, a so-called great white hunter from the late colonial period who adopted the name. Walter D. M. 'Karamojo' Bell hunted elephants, killed hundreds of them, each with a single shot on most occasions. He was a good hunter, from Papa's era, and the name seemed to fit. Done?"

"Done," he said, slinging his gloves over his shoulder like Fang carried hers. "Thanks for telling me about the name. And I'll think about the decor when I get the chance. What does your cabin look like?"



"If you box well enough," Fang said, walking out of his room, "maybe you'll find out for yourself."