Star Wars_ The Black Fleet Crisis 02_ Shield of Lies - Michael P. Kube-McDowell [59]
“The display options are on the command menus. But the basic display really tells you all you need, most of the time,” Luke said. “A green bar means a ship that is a safe distance away on a noncollision course. Yellow bar, a ship that’s closer than the standard spacing, but not on a collision course. Red bar, something on an intercept course. Same rules for rocks, except the symbol is a circle—like that one.”
“So any red symbols mean danger.”
Luke nodded. “I’m sure this ship has some fairly obnoxious alarms, and collision-avoidance protocols.”
“What if someone fired a missile at us? Would it show up as a red bar?”
Frowning, Luke considered. “Probably as a circle, as though it were a fast-moving asteroidal body. Missiles don’t send out recognition signals, and skiffs don’t have threat-recognition modules in their scanners.”
“I have never been in a warship,” Akanah said. “Tell me—how does this compare with the cockpit of a military spacecraft?”
“Oh—worlds apart,” Luke said.
“How, exactly?”
“Well—in a military ship, the automated systems are there to support the pilot—most everything that matters is done with your hands on the controls,” Luke said. “A ship like this is designed to have the expert systems take over as much as possible, to protect casual pilots from making mistakes.”
“So there are more controls in a fighter.”
“A lot more. Heck, a combat flight stick has almost as many controls on it as there are on this whole panel,” Luke said. “Most of what this ship will let you do by yourself is buried three levels deep in the command option displays.”
She nodded. “Tell me, if we were pursued by a warship, or intercepted by a fighter—how much could you do?”
Luke ran his fingers back through his hair. “Less than you’re probably hoping,” he said. “It’s not a test I’d look forward to.”
“Not even with your reputation as a pilot?”
“She’s underpowered for realspace, which means we can’t run away. She doesn’t have true vector thrusters, which means she’s not very agile, despite her low mass. The nav shields would pop on the first hit, and the hull would breach on the second—unless the second hit was from an ion cannon.”
“What would happen then?”
“All the systems would sizzle, and we’d be dead in space.” He showed a rueful smile. “Piloting ability doesn’t count for much then. And reputations count for even less.”
“So our only hope would be to jump to hyperspace before we were hit.”
“That’s about the size of it.”
Just then a sweet-toned signal sounded from the console, startling Akanah. “What is it? What’s that?”
“Nothing to worry about,” Luke said as he leaned forward. “Incoming hypercomm file transmission. A report on the Star Morning. I requested it from Coruscant while you were napping.”
Her eyes flashed angrily. “I asked you to wait until we’d jumped.”
“You also asked me to use my judgment,” Luke said. “We can’t do a quick jump-and-go if we’re sitting out there somewhere waiting for a report to come in. And I thought this report might have information we’d want in hand before we commit to Atzerri.”
“We’re already committed to Atzerri,” she said stiffly. “That’s where the scribing at Teyr told us to go.”
“I want to look at the report,” Luke said. “The way I see it, the more information we have, the better.”
“All it can do is mislead us,” Akanah said. “I told you that we leave no trail an outsider can follow.”
Another, low-pitched tone signaled the end of the transmission.
“Then I’ll count on you to keep me from getting lost,” Luke said, bringing up the secondary display panel. “You can look at this or not—but I have to. I never have liked making decisions in the dark.”
Luke had anticipated two possible reasons for the delay in the report’s arrival—and either a very thin or a very thick file, depending on which was to blame.
It was a thick file, almost overwhelming with detail. Star Morning, a.k.a. Mandarin, a.k.a. Pilgrim, a.k.a. Congere, had had a long