Chapter 19 - Faster Than Light

"There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart."

—Jane Austen

Twenty days of system checks and jury-rigged repairs and FTL calibrations that made Luca's eyes cross, and somehow they were still alive. The Triumph drifted through the void like it had all the time in the world, which it didn't, because Zoe was about to do something insane with it.

Her voice came through ship-wide. "Captain to the bridge. All pre-flight FTL diagnostics are green. We are five minutes from the optimal Oort Cloud Passage alignment. Ready to kick off the FTL jump sequence."

Luca grinned the whole way to the bridge. "Acknowledged, Zoe. All hands to the bridge. On the double."

Everyone was already there when he walked in, which meant they'd all been waiting and pretending they hadn't been. Emily sat closest to him, buckling her harness, and he caught himself tracking the way her fingers moved over the straps before he forced his eyes somewhere else. Ryan was weirdly still for once, locked on his engineering readouts like they owed him money. Danny triple-checked his sensor alignments because Danny triple-checked everything. Chris sat at tactical with his hands already on the controls, ready to shoot at whatever was on the other side of the jump, which was fair.

"Well," Luca said, dropping into the captain's chair, "this is it. Everything we've worked for." He looked around at their faces. "Anyone having second thoughts? Because now would be the time to speak up."

"Are you kidding?" Ryan said, grinning like an idiot. "We've got an alien FTL drive that we barely understand, heading into uncharted space with no backup plan. This is the best day I've had in years."

Danny laughed. "When you put it like that, it sounds absolutely terrifying."

"It is terrifying," Emily said, and her eyes found his. Luca held them and forgot what his face was doing. She looked at him like he'd done something worth looking at, and he had zero idea what that thing was. "And incredible. How many people get to do what we're about to do?"

"Probably not many," Chris said. "Most people have better survival instincts."

Zoe called over from the pilot's station, already grinning. "Speak for yourself. I've been dreaming about this moment since we first saw those schematics." She turned in her chair to flash a grin at Danny. "We're about to become the fastest humans in history, genius boy. Your calculations are going to make this possible."

Danny's cheeks went pink. His whole nervous energy shifted, like someone had flipped a switch. "The first humans to travel between star systems," he managed, stumbling over the words. "That's... that's actually insane when you think about it. If my math is right—"

"Your math is always right," Zoe said.

Danny stopped fidgeting. Luca watched the kid's shoulders drop and his jaw unclench. Zoe did that to him. One sentence and Danny went from a trembling mess to a guy who believed he could bend spacetime. Luca filed that away under things he would absolutely give Danny shit about later.

Some of the tension in his own chest loosened. Zoe's quiet confidence in Danny and the way Emily kept finding his eyes across the bridge were the reasons they'd made it this far, not the ship or the alien tech, but these idiots.

"You know what? Ryan's right. This is definitely the best day any of us has ever had." He caught Emily's eye again. "Besides, it's not like we have anything back on Earth holding us back."

Emily smiled. "No, we don't," she said quietly.

His pulse kicked hard enough that he looked away before anyone noticed.

"Damn right," Ryan said, completely oblivious. "Besides, if this thing decides to turn us into exotic particles, at least we'll make a pretty light show."

"Ryan!" Emily laughed, and Luca felt the moment shift but not break. "That's not helping with the nerves."

"What nerves?" Zoe called out. "I'm ready to punch a hole through space-time. Let's make history, people."

Luca gripped the armrests. His palms were slick against them. The dread from earlier had burned off into something else, something buzzing and stupid and alive. He looked around at their faces, at Ryan's goofy grin, Danny's quiet focus, Chris's calm, Zoe's hunger, and Emily's eyes on his.

They were going to be okay. Yeah, they were.

"Alright then. Let's see what's waiting for us out there." He met Emily's eyes one more time, and this time he held them a beat longer than he should have.

Well, if we die, at least we'd all die together.

The Oort Cloud Passage was the only reason they could make the jump, if that's what thousands of microjumps could be called. It was a clear corridor through the ice, like someone had built a tunnel through the void. At the speeds they were about to hit, even a grain of dust would punch through the hull. That was what the Reality Anchor Field was for. Luca chose not to think too hard about how thin the margin was between "fastest humans alive" and "fastest smear of atoms in the solar system."

He kept his voice level. "Everyone ready?"

Zoe confirmed from navigation. "All systems green, Captain. Reality Anchor Field pre-charge nominal. Capacitor banks at one hundred percent. Just waiting on your go to initiate the FTL jump sequence."

He was sweating, hands slick enough that he wiped them on his pants and hoped nobody saw.

"Engage," Luca said, grinning.

"What is this, Star Trek?" Ryan said, a huge, goofy smile plastered on his face.

"Brace yourselves," Zoe said, jaw set.

Adrenaline hit like a slap. His whole body locked up.

Here we go!

The bridge rumbled as the FTL engine engaged, and a low hum filled the air, vibrating through the deck and up into his chest. Time did something weird. He couldn't tell if it slowed down or sped up or just stopped bothering to exist in a straight line.

Through the viewport, the stars stretched. They twisted into streaks of light and then they were gone, all of them, and a gut-wrenching lurch slammed him into his seat as the ship plunged through something that was definitely not space. The universe outside the viewport warped and sheared, light bending in directions that shouldn't have existed, and his stomach flipped hard enough that he tasted metal. For one bad second he wondered if this was what dying felt like.

Then it was over. The pull stopped, the hum eased, and they were back to normal speed and he was still breathing.

[System Notice]
Now entering: Oort Cloud Passage (Sol ↔ α Centauri)

Luca stared out the viewport. Where there had been streaks, there was nothing, just pitch-black nothing with no stars, no light, no reference point for how fast they were going or whether they were moving at all. He'd never seen anything like it, and it made his skin crawl in a way he couldn't explain.

Zoe was the first to move, hands blurring across her console. Her brow furrowed and Luca stared, trying to read her face. If she was scared, she buried it so deep he couldn't find it.

Emily let out a long breath. The sound cut through the silence on the bridge, and Luca's whole body unclenched at once. She leaned back in her seat and her eyes found his. He grinned at her before he could stop himself, the kind of stupid, wide-open grin he'd never let anyone else see.

They'd done it. They had actually done it.

"Holy shit!" Ryan yelled, and the tension shattered. He slapped Danny's shoulder hard enough to rock him in his chair. "We're alive, man!"

Danny met the high-five with a crack that echoed off the bulkheads. Luca finally unclenched his jaw and the whole bridge erupted in laughter. Even Zoe cracked a smile, which for Zoe was basically a standing ovation.

"Trajectory locked, Captain!" Zoe called from her console. "We are on the money. The current acceleration curve puts us at Alpha Centauri in... call it three weeks, give or take a few unforeseen mechanical emergencies out here."

Three weeks from now they'd be standing in another star system. Luca's brain tried to process that and gave up.

Emily clapped him on the shoulder, laughing, and every thought in his head went quiet. "We did it!" she said, and her eyes were so bright it hurt to look at them and impossible to look away.

"Hell yeah, we did," Luca said.

Before he knew it, he was hugging her. His arms wrapped around her before his brain got a vote. She was warm and solid and alive and she smelled like recycled ship air and something underneath it that was just her. His pulse slammed hard enough against his ribs that he was pretty sure she could feel it.

Chris clapped him on the shoulder hard enough to stagger him. "Alright, Rossi, save some of that love for the rest of us. We all survived!"

Luca pulled back, still grinning like an idiot, and shoved Chris in the chest. "Alright, alright."

He leaned in and pressed a quick kiss to the crown of Emily's head. It happened fast, the way everything happened with her, his body moving before his brain caught up. She didn't pull away.

They turned to look out the viewport together, side by side.

She exhaled. "We did it."

"Yeah," he said quietly. "We did."

He slipped his arm around her waist and pulled her in close. She leaned into him, warm against his side, and they stood like that, shoulder to shoulder, staring out at the black. There was nothing to see. No stars, no light, no sign of where they were going. Somehow that made it better. They were racing toward something they couldn't even look at yet.

After a moment, she turned toward him. That soft grin tugged at the edge of her lips and his chest did something painful and good at the same time. "Want to go up to the observation lounge?" she asked. "Zoe said the view's incredible when the field stabilizes."

He nodded. His heart was still going. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I do."

They left the bridge together.

The corridor was quiet. The ship hummed around them, alive with whatever the FTL drive was doing to physics, and Luca walked beside Emily and tried to remember how to think about anything other than the warmth of her shoulder brushing his.