Ficly

Cartographer

Our little ship coasted on the rough turbulence around Yvonne’s Delight. We were five days out from the Hydras, running a shipload of tetrahydride to Phis Minor. The pilots up front yelled incomprehensible vectors at each other, every now and then passing me a new set of data. I was too busy to notice, fingers tapping away in a frenzy at the holographic keyboard.

“We’re going to need the routing code quick, Carto!”
“Carto, estimate time is four-half seconds!”
“No way, four-half secs? The fastest record is four-two!”
“No choice, four-five is the best we can do. Leave it.”
“Coming up! Lock and load!”

I looked up calmly, fingers still flying over the surface in front of me.

“Code ready. Move into position Five-Five-Nine-Delta-Five.”
“Roger that, Carto. T-minus five seconds!”
“Routing code ready. Extend vector array.”
“Array’s up, hurry! "
“Code base logic written.”
“Come on!”

The instability changed to smooth running.

“My god. That…”
“Was three-nine. Our carto’s broken the record!”

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