"This is . . ." The cockpit looked nothing like he was expecting. It would be wrong to say the area was cramped, but he definitely felt himself wanting for room. Sitting down at one of the three seats, he turned his attention to the crazy amount of 'things' on the wall. It was ridiculous to imagine that three people could control something larger than a galley. "How does any of this even work?"

"Most of them are indicators and gauges." The person in the front seat of the ship, the ship's captain, lazily answered his question while fiddling with a multicolored cube. "We don't care about half of them until they start blinking or turn red, and the other half of them we ignore until we want to actively move the ship." He flicked the sides of the cube around a bit, shifting the colors around.

"You mean you aren't in control of the ship right now?"

"Eh, kinda." He set down the cube and flicked a switch. His hand then moved to cover a stick, which he moved around. The orientation of the stars outside changed, and Levro felt himself lurch around. "I can move us around if I want, but the guidance computer keeps us on the optimal heading along the stream. I suppose I could also push us faster, but I don't want to get chewed out for working the engine too hard."

The switch automatically flipped back to it's previous position once he took his hand off of the stick, the ship righting itself to its previous orientation.

"It sails itself?!"

"Partially. She can do about twenty thousand micro adjustments every second to correct aspects like approach angle, bubble geometry and bubble strength to keep it running as efficiently as possible within the supplied parameters. She rarely ever does more than seven a minute though. The streams we travel along are pretty smooth." He pointed to a screen on the ceiling, just above the front window. "The automated action and alert log is there. Looks like she isn't doing anything right now."

"Wow." Levro had no idea what that meant.

"Hmm, relay point in thirty seconds. Arrow, do I have clearance to perform the maneuver manually?"

"Clearance granted. Sub-system operating in support mode." A voice emanated from the walls. "Do you require anything else."

"Only a countdown. I want to show our passenger I'm not just a waste of space."

"Understood. Please begin maneuver in 10, 9, 8 . . ."

"I think I will go back to my call now. Feel free to call for me if you need anything."

"Sure thing Kathy." The captain snickered, avoiding the tail swipe directed at his head.

". . . 3, 2, 1, returning primary controls to pilot." A series of switches flipped simultaneously, three of which the captain returned to their previous positions. 

"Hold tight kid, this might get a bit bumpy." He pushed the stick to the side, the ship responding with a roll.

"This isn't that-" Levro suddenly found himself sinking into his seat. His head, craned forward so as to see what he was doing, slammed back into the padded headrest. The slightest tug backward on that stick had imparted such a force on him that he could barely move.

"Alright Arrow, back to automatic." Just as quickly as it started, the four second long maneuver was over. Levro's body returned to normalcy, though his mind had yet to recognize what was happening. "What was my score?"

"On the single degree scale, you received a score of 83%. I would recommend slowing down your turning speed to adjust, you had more than seven seconds remaining in the optimal maneuver window."

"Blegh. Better than last time, but I'm still not up to combat standard."

"W-what was that!?" Levro shook his head. "What happened?"

"Hm? Just a basic stream transfer."

"Stream transfer?" Levro racked his brain, trying to recall what that meant. "Aren't those supposed to take a few minutes at the bare minimum?"

"Maybe for one of your dinghies, but the one I just performed was far from perfect." The Captain flipped a few switches. "The guys flying escort could probably do the same maneuver in half the time without a mistake."

"Escort?"

"Don't worry about it. You had questions about the stream transfer?" The Captain looked over the dials and gauges he claimed he didn't care too much about. Up above, Levro could see a few lines of text appear in the log.

"Um, a few. How did you do it so quickly?"

"Hm? If you are talking about orientation then that's just because the ship can do that. I hear the Trawlers can take up to a minute to about face with a full payload, but everything else can do it in matter of seconds. Well, maybe that's not entirely true, but everything you will see can do it that quick."

"What is that supposed to mean."

"And if you were referring to how much faster that process is in comparison to what you are used to, then I would need to know how everybody else normally does it first. Its a bit unfortunate, but navigation classes only covers modern maneuvers."

"Modern?" Levro wanted to ask what qualified as 'modern', but decided against it. "Never mind. Let's see . . . as far as I recall, the process of transferring streams involves exiting the previous stream, travelling to the entry point of the next stream, aligning with the stream's direction, raising the bubble, and then entering the stream. I might be missing a step or two."

"Eh, I get the gist." The Captain pulled out one of those tablets ubiquitous amongst Terran nationals from the pocket on the side of his chair. "Arc, how much am I allowed to share with regards to Split Stream Transfer?"

"It was decided some time ago that information regarding interstellar travel was to be shared with the galactic community in the interests of commercial cooperation and safety. Talks are currently ongoing with academics at the Sanctum to introduce a course around navigational safety and efficiency. So long as sensitive information in other fields is not revealed, there is no issue."

"Thank you." The Captain typed something on the tablet and swiped a few times. "Ah, here it is. How much do you know about Split Streams?"

"I only know that they form between two stars that are relatively close together."

"Incorrect. Technically, Split Streams form between every star and every other star, its just that they are easier to access the closer the stars are together. Functionally this means that stars on opposite sides of the galaxy don't have a stream one can use to navigate with, but it still exists." He put the tablet in a place Levro could see. Obviously it was meant as a graphical aid, but Levro was distracted by how beautiful it appeared. "Of course these 'streams' aren't actually lines either, and in the majority of cases Split isn't actually flowing across it, so 'stream' is really the wrong word for them. I'll keep it brief, but there is an area, sort of like a massive elongated bubble, that surrounds the two stars."

"Is this like a magnetic field?" Levro didn't know much about magnetic fields, nor had he ever been taught about how they worked, but the diagram he had been shown was remarkably similar to the one he was staring at now. 

"More or less. Just know that the 'stream' is strongest in a sort of central pylon between the two stars - but there is an appreciable distance perpendicular to that pylon that is navigable so long as you have a strong enough bubble. You know what happens when the bubble pops, don't you?"

"Not specifically, but I have heard that everything inside of the bubble is reduced to nothingness."

"For our purposes, that's good enough." He swiped once more, a new image appearing on screen. "Now, because your bubbles are really weak and inefficient, that area is a death sentence to you. In order to get into a new stream, it is necessary for you to exit the old one and then line up inside of that pylon I mentioned earlier. Once that bubble gets strong enough though . . ."

A second 'pylon' appeared on screen, perpendicular to the first. Then, a pulsing red dot began to travel across the first pylon. It traveled as one might expect until it approached that second pylon, where it then 'jumped' off the line, curving until its path merged with the other stream.

". . . you can utilize that less efficient and more dangerous space to turn onto a separate stream. The stronger that bubble gets, the easier that maneuver becomes, and the further away you can perform it from."

Levro cocked his head. He wasn't exactly a navigator, but he had taken enough trips and looked maps long enough to figure out why routes that would be considered 'circuitous' at best on land were actually shortcuts when it came to getting from planet to planet in space. In short, traversing the length of a Split Stream was far faster than moving across an entire solar system. In fact, it was so much faster that if the planet that was your destination just so happened to be on the other side of the star at the time of your arrival, you might get there faster by moving through streams roughly adjacent to the one you just came out of just so that you could pop out of a stream on the other side, closer to your destination.

Of course, those transfers between streams meant spending some amount of time traveling inside of a star's well in order to reach the starting point of another stream. This method removed that step, meaning one never had to hop out of the stream. He couldn't take into account the time saved from travelling between midpoints, or the time saved by not travelling the entire distance of a stream, but he imagined it was appreciable.

"How did you even figure that out?"

"I don't know if its true or not, but the story goes that the Pegasus was forced to drop out of it's bubble when an obstacle appeared in the Stream it was travelling along. Apparently, the Emperor spent about a week trying to figure out how to fix his predicament before discovering that the Split Streams weren't what he was told they were, that being fields and not lines. Once he got back he immediately set about arranging a series of experiments to test the various theories he had developed. He didn't authorize the Stream Transfer experiment until Arc verified there was an significant chance of survival for the crew, but by that point it was just a matter of course."

"So . . . you're saying that it took a week?"

"A very stressful week. Of course, that is only if you believe the story." The Captain put away his tablet, a small frown growing on his face. "Part of me wishes he figured it out sooner."

Levro had a passing understanding of what the Nekh had gone through. Anybody who spent more than half an hour with any of them at a bar would inevitably end up hearing about the Grand Dying their people had been the victim of for countless years, and the Great Rescue that defined their loyalty to the Terrans. If he had to be honest, Levro had once thought the story to be exaggerated. The transportation of millions of people in that short a time period was preposterous, and it wasn't uncommon for those under the influence of alcohol to blow their tales out of proportion. Now he felt like it was well within the realm of possibility.

Had this technique been available at the beginning of the operation, how much faster could their ships have gotten from Nectar to Nekh and back? How many more people could have been saved as a result?

"Well, there's not much point in dwelling on it now." The Captain pulled out his cube again. "We should be arriving in about two days. You're free to drop by any time you want to talk."

"Oh, for sure. I must say that this is much more interesting than the normal method of sailing."

"I'll let the others know that you are interested. They have a few interesting stories, especially the two military guys." He pressed down a button for half a second before letting go. "Hm, weird. Not my concern though." 

"What was weird?"

"Nothing much. Systems check took a little bit longer than usual. Probably because they turned gravity off."

"Oh." Once more into the realm of Levro not knowing anything. "Okay."