Fortunately for my peace of mind, I'd long been in the habit of keeping my own ephemeris data with me whenever possible. Knowing this, Helen had had the ephemeris chip she'd bought me cleverly inserted in my wedding ring. Since the latest fad was to build a carbon lattice around memory chips anyway, it had added a pleasingly retro look to the traditional red-gold band. Helen had joked that now I could keep both my loves with me at all times.

Blinking away some decidedly unhelpful tears, I linked into my ring's ephemeris from my handcomp and pulled up the current coordinates for Earth, adjusted for my current position. Accessing the ship's visual sensors manually, I entered the coordinates, but no luck. In fact, widening the field a bit, it looked like the completely wrong patch of sky. I groaned - of course. Some Earther equipment still used the archaic earth-based equatorial coordinate system, whereas my ephemeris used the standard Jupiter based ecliptical system. A few minutes work on the handcomp sufficed to translate the ephemeris coordinates into something the sensor system could use. This got me in the right area, but Earth was almost a tenth of an arcsecond off from where it should be. I sat back and stared at the navcomp projection, starting to get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.

"That's assuming my current position is correct..."

I calculated a high-precision bearing for Earth, then refocused the visual sensors on the MJ and did the same thing. This gave me a rough idea as to my true location. Using that, I picked up Luna (a dim point from this vantage, but good enough) and confirmed the bearing.

"Fuck!" My voice sounded harsh and loud in the silence of the cabin, suddenly making me feel alone in a way I'd not felt for the entire trip. "Fucking shit!" I pushed my palms hard together on either side of my head, trying to quell the rising tide of anger. I could not afford to act like a temperamental male now. I needed to be calm, rational and methodical. I growled out my old mantra: "Testosterone is of no advantage when math and accurate typing are all that stand between life and death." I was definitely off-course. Possibly dangerously off-course.

I hammered in a rough approximation of a reciprocal burn that would get me back close to my previous course, but when I tried to execute the commands, the computer rejected them. Since it considered us to be on-course, I, as the pilot, was not allowed to take us off-course. A sudden wave of claustrophobia passed over me and I found myself starting to hyperventilate slightly. With some effort, I managed to control my breathing and get my mind back on task.

"Calm down Austin." I panted. "Let's not panic over nothing."

Space is a lot more empty than full. Sure, I might break a dozen laws and regulations, but the chances of a random malfunction causing a serious incident were pretty low.

"Someone's eventually going to notice that I'm off-course, right?"

The universe failed to grant me any immediate comfort, but at least my outbursts had helped clear the building fog of frustration and anger. I picked up the handcomp again and started calculating what my present course might intersect.

I'm sure the sound of my harsh breathing filled the cabin, but I couldn't hear it over the pounding of blood in my ears. Cold prickles of sweat covered my body. "There's no way this could be an accident."

I could not be precisely sure, since the malevolent machine controlling my destiny, and that of potentially thousands of others, was still accelerating; but the present course appeared to be a classic slingshot maneuver around the rift. Sitting in the cone of course probabilities leaving the slingshot, given my current entry vector and acceleration range, was one of the larger NorAm habitats. My ephemeris also included population data. The number 3,560 hit me like a punch to the gut, but further than that, I could see all the useless deaths that would follow in the war that would undoubtedly follow this kind of atrocity.

I kicked up from the over-padded pilot's chair and pushed off across the cabin. I needed to burn off some of the adrenaline flooding my system so I could think. I grimaced. Humans, particularly men, were just not designed for the modern world of spaceships and computers. Right now, my glands were telling me I should be running from the lion, or bashing someone's skull in with a stone axe.

"So it's bad. Really bad." I muttered. "What can we do?" I ping-ponged back and forth across the cabin that had seemed so overly spacious before, but now felt like it was closing in on me.

"The computer is not about to let me override it." I'd poked around in it enough trying to diagnose the network connection errors. "Damned Earther piece of crap!" I was stuck by an idea and just about forgot my mid-flight turn, ending up taking the brunt of the wall impact on my shoulder.

"The computer is an Earth company re-fit, but the cargo frame is just an old D-5 hull with this fancy cabin stuck in its guts. I bet they didn't remove the old D-5 command interfaces. They probably just re-routed the control leads to this fancy new machine and dropped in a software interface."

I sailed over to the command console and started to prod at the paneling. It was not designed to be easily removed, but using my little pocket knife and a spoon from the galley I was able to pry off all the decorative panels around the computer.

There were a few wiring harnesses, but further examination and testing showed them to be connections to the entertainment system, galley and console chair. Nothing vital, and nothing connected directly to the D-5 frame. The entire computer body was protected behind thick composite armor plate. I'd seen setups like this before on military ships, but I guessed this was intended to prevent the very thing I was trying to do, take over the computer from inside the cabin, not to prevent battle damage. I let loose a slightly hysterical laugh.

"Wouldn't want the pilot taking control of the ship. They might hurt someone!"

I hung in the middle of the cabin for a few minutes, staring at nothing. I was beyond anger or frustration now. I could feel the minutes ticking down in the back of my head. Given my velocity, how long would it be before I wouldn't have enough delta-V to clear the station even if I did take control?

Thinking about the D-5 architecture had also reminded me about the cargo pod detachment system. The system was designed to make cargo handling easier and safer for the ship. Rather than relying on tugs to connect with the containers, possibly jarring the ship frame with too much force, the pod grapples could be used to gently separate the cargo pods from the ship allowing them to drift to the waiting tug. Anyone smart enough to plan this escapade must have thought of pushing all the cargo pods out from the ship shortly before impact, exponentially increasing the contact area and the destructive potential. If I was going to do something, I needed to do it before the pod separation, or it would be a waste of time.

I grabbed my handcomp and pulled up the D-5 specs.

"If I was going to run a conduit to patch the old D-5 controls into this fancy machine here," I waved in the general direction of the dismantled navcomp, "where would it go?"

I mentally oriented myself to the frame. The head and galley had the best chances of conforming to similar structures from the old D-5 cabin, since pipes are harder to run than fibres. Yes. The locations matched. I moved over to where the navcomp would have been on the D5. This area was now occupied by the huge entertainment screen. The new navcomp was situated farther forward where the old manual piloting controls would have been. On the D-5, all those controls ran though the navcomp which was positioned deeper in the ship, closer to the main control bus. The old D-5 control junction should be right behind that screen.

(Continued...)