Entropy Risen (The Syker Key Book 3) by Aaron Martin Fransen

had decided to use as much of her energy as she could to help John, to protect him and replenish the expenditure of all that teleportation.
    Even if it meant using all of her energy in the process.
    ***
    Pan actually got to be the first test pilot for the new engine design. There had been a long list of folks who volunteered to be the first, but given Pan’s talents, the folks in power agreed that having him at the controls was a good idea. The military wasn’t too happy about it, but fortunately it was a private enterprise.
    The ship sat in the New Mexico sun, painted white and gleaming like a piece of limestone sticking out of the sand. It’s construction probably set some sort of record for speed. Having John and Pan helping probably had something to do with that.
    The flight itself was probably going to be anticlimactic, but Pan surrounded himself in a shield anyways, just in case.
    He checked the controls of the Endeavor, the first of the new tugs. If this one worked, Virgin Galactic had another twenty lined up to be manufactured, and SpaceX wasn’t far behind with a larger design, since the engine technology was no longer a secret.
    “I’m activating the drive now,” he said to nobody except the radio in his ear.
    “Roger,” came the reply.
    The tug was about twice the size of a large semi truck & trailer, but only carried about two thirds the cargo. The rest of the space was taken up by the cab, airlock, and most importantly the drive.
    The drive was the real innovation, though Pan knew it had been secretly in use for decades by the military, and millennia by the aliens who had been controlling mankind. It was nothing more than a plasma generator, one that was able to actually manipulate neutrinos, push and pull them in any way demanded by the driver.
    The effect was artificial gravity, and two separate generators were actually used in the ship: One outside, to propel the ship, and one inside, to provide controlled gravity for the occupant. The math had suggested the craft was capable of withstanding over twenty gravities of acceleration. It would actually get the craft from Earth to Mars, depending on their orbits, in anywhere from less than ten to just over fifteen hours.
    The entire frame was made of carbon fibre for strength, which made it very expensive, but it was the only material readily available that could withstand the forces generated by the drive. The hull itself was titanium, with a thin layer of lead sandwiched between to help with radiation shielding. Under normal circumstances the lead wouldn’t be required, since the drive itself had the effect of being able to block all harmful radiation.
    Thankfully the nuclear power plant at the heart of the ship’s system wasn’t a large radiation contributor; it was a simple thorium salt reactor designed by Toshiba, a design they had been trying to market for years that finally found a home. Pan didn’t imagine they had never envisioned it being used in a glorified truck.
    He hit the start switch, and there was a low hum throughout the ship. Within a second, gravity was gone, and Pan was glad to be strapped in. He hated zero gravity, and quickly reached for the controls that enabled the internal gravity.
    “Switching on fake gravity.”
    Another second later and almost normal gravity was restored. That was it. The ship could now be hung upside down or on it’s side but to the occupants they would always feel “down” as being the deck plates. Pan grinned. He’d half expected it not to work, even though he himself had already tested it. Things always tended to go wrong when the world was watching.
    “Control, we have gravity.”
    He looked out at the New Mexico desert, the midday sun hiding all shadow and betraying the distances of objects. He could see Spaceport America, off to his left, gleaming, it’s population doubled in the last few weeks as the prospect of a new space race attracted literally billions of investment dollars. A lot of