Before Dilly could reply, a power junction exploded in the conduit. The bridge lights flickered and all the comm feeds blinked off the front window.
“Dilly!” Leo threw himself into his chair and poked at the buttons. “Somebody call Dilly! Get those comms back up!” An incoming call popped up on the window and Leo mashed the button to answer it. “Dilly! Are you all—”
“Leo!” the face in the link interrupted. “Are you all right?”
Leo’s brain locked up as it violently switched gears.
“Varlowe?” he cried. “How did you—”
“I’ve been trying to call! Your comm array just came back up!”
Leo realized the array must have lowered its blast shield when the magnetosphere came online. The picture sizzled with distortion, but he could make out Varlowe surrounded by crew on the lavish command bridge of the Opulera.
“We’re in trouble!” Leo cried. “We can’t escape the gravity well!”
“Don’t worry, we’re gonna pull you out.”
“How?”
Varlowe turned to the Opulera’s helmsman. The Ba’lux officer checked his console and spoke with authority. “Americano Grande, prepare for link-up. Fire your mooring beams, full power, vector four-two-niner on my mark.”
Swooch nodded. “You got it, duder.”
The Ba’lux gave the order and a dazzling green beam blasted off the bow of the space ocean liner. It pierced the shield and blazed into the sea of storm. A shudder ran through the deck and a message blinked on the window.
Link-up successful. Fortifying beam integrity.
A pulse thumped off the beam, searing a corridor through the accretion disc. In the window’s augmented view Leo saw the Opulera, five-hundred miles away and safely beyond the edge of the storm. At the midpoint between them was a knot of clawing energy where the two ships’ mooring beams knitted together.
“Pull them out!” Varlowe ordered.
A screeching rumble pulled through the Americano Grande’s bulkheads as the beams tightened. Leo clutched Swooch’s chair. “Is it working?”
Swooch shook her head. “Nah. Still drifting backwards.”
Leo turned and shouted at the Ba’lux helmsman on his screen. “Opulera! Full reverse! Now!”
The helmsman obeyed the command and both ships shuddered as he pushed the engines to maximum power. The Opulera’s Simishi navigator raised a brow at the helmsman. “Since when do you take orders from mammals?”
The Ba’lux elbowed the fish and hissed. “Show some respect! This is the captain who outsmarted Admiral Skardon!”
“No way,” the Simishi whispered. “That was an American?”
Leo smirked. “Human, actually. We’re called humans.”
“Humans. Huh.” The Ba’lux considered it. “I guess we have a lot to learn about your people.”
“We all do,” Varlowe said. “And we’ll get to learn it straight from the source.” She turned to Leo with a tense smile. “I’ve already canceled Skardon’s stupid demolition order and filed a motion with the Four Systems Council to have your world designated a protected cultural site.”
Her smile passed to Leo. “So Eaglehaven is saved?”
“Now and forever,” Varlowe said. “You did it, Leo! So let’s get you home to celebrate! I can’t wait to—”
She stumbled as the video feed bucked and flickered.
“What was that?” Leo cried. “What happened?”
Doctor Waverlee scrambled behind the MonCom console and slapped at the screen. “The Opulera hit the edge of the accretion disc! We’re pulling them in!”
“No!” Leo turned to Swooch. “Can you boost power to—”
The ship violently lurched as one of the engine pods sputtered out. Swooch clicked a toggle switch off then back on. Nothing happened.
“Pod four is smoked.” She flicked the switch again. “Better call Praz.”
“We can’t call Praz!” Leo cried. “Praz is—”
“We’re still drifting backwards!” Waverlee’s webbed hands furiously pounded the MonCom console. “The gravity well is less than a hundred miles away!”
Leo turned to Varlowe. “Pull harder!”
Varlowe shouted at the Opulera’s helmsman. “You heard the captain!”
Behind her, a stout Ba’lux in a WTF command uniform raised a finger. “Technically, I’m the captain. So—”
“You stay out of this!” Varlowe barked.
Leo tumbled back into his captain’s chair as the deck lurched under his feet. Swooch clicked another switch on and off. “Aw, man. Now number three is out.”
“Less than fifty miles to the event horizon!” Waverlee blubbed. “And we’re speeding up!”
“We’re losing position!” the Opulera’s helmsman shouted. “They’re pulling us in!”
Swooch tapped a long finger on her panel. “Ooh, number two is not looking good.” She glanced at Leo. “Last call, buddy. Smoke ’em if you got ’em.”
“No!” Varlowe wailed. “Listen to me, Leo! We’re getting you out of there! You’re going home a hero! You’re gonna make that girl regret dumping the savior of Eaglehaven!”
Leo jolted at the non sequitur. “What girl? What are you talking about?”
“The girl! The one who dumped you and sent you running off to space! Remember?”
“Oh, that girl.” Leo rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah, we were never technically dating, as such.”
Varlowe cocked her head. “But you said she broke your heart!”
“She did.” Leo blew out a breath. “She was a regular at my karaoke gig. I had a huge crush, but I was too shy to tell her. We never actually spoke. She married some other guy and I ran away feeling sorry for myself.”
He shook his head at the memory. It seemed like it was something from another life. A simpler life with simpler, stupider problems. Alerts screamed at him from the arms of his chair. Proximity warnings and system failures. Reminders of problems far worse than an unrequited crush.
Varlowe’s empty eyes turned sympathetic. “Well, I’m sure your experience as a WTF captain has made you more confident.” She bit her lip. “If you cared about a girl now you’d tell her. You wouldn’t just let her go.”
The Opulera shuddered as it was dragged into the deadly electrical storm. Flying debris sheared a cluster of solar sails off its hull, smashing them to bits. Leo laid a hand on an armrest control as he gazed into Varlowe’s eyes.
“Sometimes the best way to tell someone you care is by letting them go.”
He disengaged the mooring beam.
The Opulera blasted backwards into the safety of open space.
The Americano Grande plunged into the gravity well.
Chapter Eighteen
Time stopped. Existence accelerated. Leo couldn’t feel his body. At the same time he could feel it being unraveled to the edges of eternity. Light pulsed. Colors swirled. Consciousness expanded. Leo was no longer Leo. He was greater than Leo. He was a being of absolute, everlasting illumination drifting in the celestial—
A thunderclap like an open-palm slap to reality threw him from the captain’s chair. His knees and elbows hit the deck. Leo sat up, reeling at the very idea of having a corporeal form. He blinked his wet eyes and forced focus through their crude, organic cameras. He was on the bridge of the Americano Grande. He was alive. He leaped to his feet.
“Aagh! What the shix just happened?!”
Nausea curdled his belly. To his left, Waverlee glubbed bubbles into her helmet as she peeled herself off the MonCom console. Behind him, Burlock’s collapsed gurney gave off sickly electronic beeps indicating some form of life. To his front, Swooch slouched drowsily at the helm.
“Dude,” she giggled. “What a rush!”
“We’re alive,” Waverlee said. “Stars and gas, we’re alive!”
She hopped out of the MonCom station and rushed to Burlock to check his stats. Leo’s gut and mind continued to re
el as he blinked out the window. The Blue Hole was gone. In its place was a velvety black space pinpricked with stars. In the distance, a grotesque spiral of blazing orange storm vomited a cloud of energy into the cosmos.
“Is everybody all right?” a voice mewled.
Leo didn’t turn as Kellybean and Jassi rushed onto the bridge, followed by Dilly and Hax.
“It is fine,” Dilly said, scratching a patch of black char off its exoskeleton.
“All systems go!” Hax said with a double thumbs up.
A knot formed in Leo’s belly as he gestured to the monstrous space geyser outside the window. “Could somebody please tell me what that is?”
“Whoa!” Kellybean pounced into the MonCom console and pulled up sensors. “It’s… weird! It’s got all the same properties as the Blue Hole, but the opposite. It’s like an…”
“Orange Hole,” Leo said.
“I was going to say obtuse, negatively charged gravitational anomaly.” Kellybean shrugged. “But sure, let’s go with Orange Hole.”
“Who cares what it is?” Jassi said. “Where the huck are we?”
“Hold on. Lemme check.” Swooch tapped the navigation panel and brought up a star map on the cracked front window. “All righty. So here’s the galaxy. This is Ba’luxi Prime.” An indicator popped up. “And here’s Gellico, and way over here, that’s Jaynkee.”
“Those are all great answers to the question ‘Where the huck aren’t we?’” Jassi said. “I asked where the huck are we?”
“Oh yeah.” Swooch messed with her console. “Okay, got it.”
She pinched her panel and the star map zoomed out. And out. And out again. Worry creased Leo’s brow. “Please tell me we’re not outside the Four Prime Systems.”
“A bit,” Swooch said. “As far as I can tell, we’re somewhere around…” She continued to zoom out until the border of the map came into view, including the copyright notice of the Geiko Star Cartography Institute. When it would zoom out no further, Swooch stood up, crossed to the back of the room, and pointed to a spot on the wall. “Here.”
“Holy crap,” Leo whispered.
Kellybean checked her sensors. “She’s right! We’re beyond the boundaries of known space!” She looked up, eyes dilated. “Not just beyond what’s been explored, but beyond what we can see with our largest orbital telescopes. Do you know what this means?”
“Yes!” Hax said. “Nobody use your tabloyds or you’ll get dinged with roaming charges!”
Kellybean ignored him. “We’re the first ship to ever navigate an interstellar wormhole!”
Leo scratched his head. “So… the Orange Hole is the exit from the Blue Hole?”
Hax got behind the EngTech console and clicked some switches. “Yes, sir! That’s definitely where we came from.”
“Okay, great,” Leo said. “So is it possible to go back through it to get home?”
Swooch nodded. “If we adjust the—” Without warning, the orange deluge of ejecting cosmic mass roared backwards into the tear in space like a reverse geyser. When the last of it had vanished, the void sucked in its own edges, pulling itself inside out before disappearing with a pop. Swooch blinked. “No, it’s not possible.”
Leo gasped. “What happened? Where did it go?”
“It’s gone,” Hax said.
“I know it’s gone!” Leo barked.
“But it’s like gone gone.” Hax tapped at his screen. “Sensors don’t see any trace of it. It’s as if it never existed.”
Waverlee laughed. “Well, ain’t that a kick in the gills?”
Panic tightened Leo’s throat. “But if it’s gone, how are we gonna get back home?”
“Dunno,” Swooch said. She dropped into her chair. “Oh, hey. I’m getting something. Check it out.”
She twisted a dial and a dark mass appeared on the scarred window. Leo cocked his head. “What is it?”
“Looks like a ship,” Swooch said. “And it’s coming in fast like zoom zoom, bro.”
She tapped the helm and a sector of space magnified on the enhanced window, bringing a strange vessel into focus. It was like a pair of mile-long Bowie knives mounted side by side, the blades black and marred with uneven ridges as if it had been scorched in a campfire. A halo of blazing orange ringed its rear end, bending the light of the stars behind it.
“I don’t like the looks of that,” Leo said. “Power up weapons systems.”
“Sorry, I can’t do that,” Hax said.
“Why not?”
The robot shrugged. “There aren’t any weapons systems.”
“This is a luxury cruise ship,” Kellybean added. “We’ve got no defenses.”
“None?” Leo asked.
“There’s an archery range we could pillage if we get really desperate.”
“Okay, good to know. Actually, not good to know. Very disheartening to know.” Leo’s eyes stayed glued to the ship as it approached at ludicrous speed. “Can you open a comm channel to them?”
The hospitality chief pawed at her screen. “Channel is open.”
Leo straightened his uniform and stood in front of his captain’s chair, projecting his voice at the window. “This is Captain Leo MacGavin of the WTF Americano Grande to the alien… pointy, burned-up looking thing. Do you copy?” A video link opened on the glass, rolling with static. A dark shape loomed in the center. Leo squinted and turned to Hax. “Could you make that more clear?”
“Righto!” Hax said cheerily. He adjusted his controls and the image resolved. Leo yelped and flinched.
“Could you make that less clear?”
Everyone gaped at the creature staring back at them from the window. The face was mostly teeth of various sizes and sharpness, arranged in a circular hole in what looked like a lump of pale, fleshy clay covered in pasty goo. Three things that might have been eyes were lined up across its forehead, looking like sucking pink sphincters. Its body was a collection of greasy, crustacean-like limbs, jointed at painful-looking angles. The alien leaned forward and its hideous mouth expanded, screeching with a noise like an accordion being beaten to death.
“Holy shix,” Jassi grinned. “I think I found my new bass keytar player.”
With a nauseating blink of its wet, puckered eyes, the creature bellowed and howled, waving its forelimbs and slashing them at the air. Leo cleared his throat and waved.
“Yes! Hello! So… this is awkward. I don’t suppose you speak Quipp, do you?”
A shudder ran through the alien captain’s blobby head and it turned and brayed at a few other abominations perched on a ring of stools around it. The crew members opened their circular mouths and howled at each other, their teeth jiggling in their soft skulls. Several of them stuck their arms into divots in the walls and began levering them up and down.
Kellybean eyed her panel warily. “Um, guys, I don’t want to freak you out, but I’m reading a big power surge on that ship.”
Rivulets of orange energy poured through the crevices on the alien vessel, running toward bristling arrays of cannons.
“Ah crud,” Leo grumbled. “Swooch, get us out of here!”
The helm officer cranked the wheel and accelerated. The blobby alien bellowed and a barrage of weapons fire sizzled through the magnetosphere, grazing the Americano Grande’s exterior decks.
“Stop!” Leo shouted. “Don’t move! Nobody move!”
Swooch froze the ship in an awkward half-turn away from the battleship. The alien captain sprang off its command stool, eyes clenched in constipated rage. It pointed a claw at Leo and bayed savagely. Three more energy bolts sizzled past the window.
“I don’t understand!” Leo shouted. “Listen, we’re not your enemies!”
“Their weapons are at full power!” Kellybean said. “They’ve got targeting beams locked onto our engines!”
“We need to move!” Jassi said.
“If we move they’ll shoot us!” Leo argued.
“If we don�
��t move they’ll shoot us!” Hax cried.
“What’s the call, Cap’n?” Swooch drawled.
“I don’t know!” Leo admitted. “I don’t know what they want or—”
“SNEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRF,” a voice wailed.
Everyone on the bridge convulsed and flinched away as Dilly bellowed at the comm. The glowing gem at the throat of its translator collar had turned from its usual gold to a dull blue. The alien captain stopped blustering and blinked its fleshy eyes. Dilly continued. “Aaaort. Heeeeeeerrrrrrrrg. Heeerrrrnnn.”
The blob tipped its head and made a noise like a broken party favor. Dilly repeated the sound and the alien seemed to calm.
“Whoa, you chilled that dude right out,” Swooch said.
“You speak grease crab alien,” Leo asked. “How?”
Dilly cranked the gem back to gold. “Its collar has a learning mode. Is crude translation, but it can understand little bit.”
“What did you tell that guy?”
“It told alien we are not threat.” Dilly blinked. “Probably.” The pasty blob scuttled toward its screen and let out a spittle-filled wail. Dilly returned the aggressive posturing and cranked its gem to blue. “UUUUUNG. Heeeep heeeeep. Uuuuut.”
Everything went silent on both ships. The energy cannons sparked and pulsed, bursting to fire. The alien captain’s round mouth constricted. Leo held a tense breath. Swooch yawned.
A savage bark sounded from the monster’s throat, repeating with such furious passion it shook its whole body. Leo’s pulse raced as he took a scrambling step back.
“What’s that?” he hissed. “What’s it saying?”
Dilly turned the gem. “Is not saying anything. Is laughing.”
“Laughing?” Waverlee asked. “At what? Did you actually manage a joke?”
“It reported we are unarmed pleasure vessel.” Dilly cocked its head. “Is not joke. Is truth.”
The other aliens surrounding the battleship captain hooted and brayed excitedly to each other before the leader raised its claws to quiet them. It barked an order and the energy canons powered down and retracted into the scorched black hull. The circle of its mouth broadened as it addressed Dilly with a series of howls. It tipped its head expectantly. A tense silence fell over both crews.
Galaxy Cruise: The Maiden Voyage Page 23