Redemption Ark

Skade showed Felka a display of the rear starfield, with one dim yellow-red star outlined in green. That was Epsilon Eridani, two hundred times fainter than it had been even from the remote vantage point of the Mother Nest. It was now ten million times fainter than the sun that burned in Yellowstone’s sky. They were truly in interstellar space now, for the first time in Skade’s life.

Six weeks out from Yellowstone, over thirteen hundred AU. We’ve been maintaining two gees for most of that time, which means that we’ve already reached one-quarter light-speed. A conventional ship would be struggling to reach an eighth of the speed of light by now, Felka. But we can do better than this if we have to.

Which was true, Skade knew, but there would be little practical advantage in accelerating harder. Relativity ensured that. Arbitrarily high acceleration would compress the subjective duration of their journey to Resurgam, but it would make almost no difference to the objective time that the journey consumed. And it was that objective time which was the only relevant factor in the wider picture: it would still take the same amount of time to reach Resurgam as measured by external observers, and more decades still to rendezvous with the other elements of the exodus fleet.

Still, there were other reasons to consider an increase in acceleration. And at the back of Skade’s mind was a dangerous and alluring possibility that would change the rules entirely.

‘And the other ship?’ Felka asked. ‘Where is that?’

Skade had already told her about the vessel behind them. Now a second circle bisected by two cross hairs appeared on the display almost exactly centred above the one that demarked Epsilon Eridani.

That’s it. It’s very faint, but there’s a clear tau-neutrino source there, and it’s moving on the same course as us.

‘But a long way behind,’ Felka said.

Yes. Three or four weeks behind us, easily.

‘It could be a commercial ship, Ultras or something, on a similar heading.’

Skade nodded. I’ve considered that possibility, but I don’t find it likely. Resurgam isn’t a very popular destination for Ultras, and if that ship were headed for another colony in the same part of the sky, we’d have seen lateral motion by now. We haven’t — she’s dead on our tail, Felka.

‘A stern chase.’

Yes, deliberately following us. They have a modest tactical advantage, you see. Our flame points towards them; theirs points away from us. I can track them because we have military-grade neutrino detectors, but it is still difficult. But they need no finesse to spot us. I have separated our thrust beams into four components and given them a small angular offset, but they need only detect a tiny amount of leaked radiation to fix our position. We are neutrino-quiet, however, and that will give us a definitive advantage after turnover, when we have to point our flame towards Resurgam. But it won’t come to that. That ship can’t ever catch us, no matter how hard it tries.

The ship should be falling behind already,‘ Felka said. ’Is it?‘

No. So far she has maintained two gees all the way out from the Rust Belt.

I didn’t think normal ships could accelerate that hard.‘

They can’t, not usually. But there are methods, Felka. Do you know the story of Irravel Veda?

‘Of course,’ Felka said.