“Well boss, hate to say it, but that’s that. No more sail to run out as a surprise. We’re in the hands of physics now.”

Captain Gerjac Caash hummed at that pronouncement from their executive officer, Vuld Saahn, in a sign of displeasure. “It’s too close a race.”

The race between the Pride of Gavlor and the People’s Will was a race they’d been in second for since the day they launched. The Kinship had gotten moving well in advance of the Pact, but scientific brilliance had allowed them to catch up, even put them in with a real chance of winning the race to Xemis, but hadn’t managed to cinch a win.

They’d been too late in starting their own project, in construction and launching to make a win a guarantee, so the Gavlor Pact’s leaders had opted for a secondary and arguably more substantial prize –  a sustained presence in orbit of Xemis to show what they could do. Let the Kinship have their flyby, but the Pact was going to arrive and spend months orbiting Xemis before returning home.

Where the People’s Will was a simple design, with engines at one end and stacked decks above, a flying tower block essentially, the Pride of Gavlor was a vastly different beast. A central spine pierced two counter-rotating rings, with small engines at one end and the truly gargantuan solar sail assembly at the other. The rings, some of the largest structures built in space by Qalians of any nation, provided the living and working space for Pride’s crew, which outnumbered the People’s Will by roughly six to one.

And more importantly, it provided them with a full simulated gravity, unlike the Kinship’s rather weak micro-gravity they were able to produce.

They could grow food, sleep in gravity, exercise and avoid the perils of zero gravity. They could function almost as if they were home.

But it meant that the sails had to drag a truly massive and spectacular ship. Which meant a truly considerable mass to go along with it. Which close to their home star had propelled Pride of Gavlor along and a decent clip, but as they sailed further away the constant acceleration dropped off. More sail was needed for the same effect.

And eventually you ran out of sail.

“Crunch the numbers and ask the folks back home to do the same. I want to know what sort of margin we’re looking at.”

“Will do boss. But I reckon they won’t be far off Thufal’s estimate. We’re sailing in margin of error territory.” Saahn nodded their head and turned back to their station on the Pride’s command deck, consulting with one of the junior officers.

Phela Thufal was the Pride’s chief scientist and after leaving the command deck and walking half away around the A ring, was Caash’s next port of call. Thufal had only a few years prior passed through their second Ordeal, near the start of the Pact’s own project to race to Xemis. Since being introduced all those years ago Caash had found Thufal distracting and it had only gotten worse as they re-matured. But despite protests, Thufal had been assigned to the mission. Best minds and all that.

And that the Thufal family was incredibly influential in the Pact, to the point of being a major shareholder in the government with absolutely outsized voting privileges. As they say, money talks.

“Afternoon Doctor,” they said, stepping into Thufal’s personal domain aboard the ship.

Two of Thufal’s juniors, if you could call trained spacefarers with multiple degrees or doctorates juniors, looked up at Caash’s entrance, nodded to each other and made their excuses, leaving the space to just the two of them. The crew had obviously picked up on at least something and no one wanted to be around for such awkwardness.

“Captain,” Thufal said, looking up from their computer screen. “We caught the response to the Kinship’s request for telescope telemetry from Qal.”

The Pride had a telescope just as capable, if not more so, than the People’s Will’s was, but when they’d been asked for data it turned out Pride’s was pointed in the wrong part of the sky. But the request had been broadcast openly to any and all back home. Political suicide for the crew most likely, but it had sparked a flurry of scientific curiosity back home. And from Thufal who had been waiting to see what the scientific community back home had to say.

“Oh?”

“From the surface the streak of x-ray emissions covered nearly two degrees of the sky.”

Caash wasn’t an astronomer but was a practised navigator earlier in their career. The whistle of appreciation was genuine. Whatever the Kinship folks had stumbled upon was massive. Either massive and close, on a galactic scale, or gargantuan on a cosmic scale. Either way, a worthy find, if by accident. “Any idea on distance?”

“No, not currently. All the X-ray telescopes are too close to the planet to give good parallax for distance calculations. Save for the Conglomerate’s Atep-1 probe. The Conglomerate haven’t released any information just yet, but I’m hoping it’s just them wanting to confirm details before releasing anything and not being…stubborn in releasing scientifically interesting findings.”

A wave of a hand to silently ask if they could sit, Thufal acknowledging, Caash took the opportunity to proceed further into the lab and sit. “So we’re waiting on the losers to enlighten the universe?”

Thufal’s face scrunched up at that, clearly unhappy at the statement. “Please don’t call them that.”

“They entered themselves into this race. They wanted to play at the big table.” Caash raised a hand to halt Thufal. “And they haven’t even launched a ship. And unless they’ve figured out how to make an engine that gives them one gravity of acceleration the whole time, there is no chance for them to win this race. We’re three weeks away from Xemis. They are, by definition, losers.”

“And yet both our Pact and the Kinship are constantly courting the Conglomerate back home, like a pair of firsts after a second.” Thufal shook their head. “I know some of their scientists. I’ve watched their interviews for years. They still seem supremely confident they are going to win this race and honestly, either they have something in mind, or I’ll never play cards with anyone from the Conglomerate again.”

“I…shall grant the point, Doctor.” Caash sighed. “There’s nothing we need to worry about from this x-ray emitting plasma stream?”

“Not a thing. A friend back home says the closest it can be is lightdays away, the further is lightyears. There is no way something could be illuminated all at once like that if it was further away than four lightyears.”

“So focus on the race?”

“Focus on the race,” Thufal repeated. “Though really there isn’t much more we can do at this point.”

Caash stood with a few nods of their head. “Thank you, doctor.”

“Oh and Captain,” Thufal said as they were standing in the open hatch a few moments later.

“Yes, Doctor?”

“Smile.” As Caash did so, Thufal did as well. “You’re much cuter when you smile,” they added before spinning back around to their computer screen. “Send my associates back in when you see them please.”