by M. D. Cooper
“Oh thank stars,” she whispered.
“West says that she can’t get control of the gate, either,” Lucida said, turning to Jessica. “She’s going to go out to it.”
The admiral couldn’t think of anything encouraging to say, though the woman whispered, “Stars help her.”
* * * * *
“Dammit!” West stormed across the bay to a stack of ring segments they’d discarded and began pulling sections off, dropping them to the deck with little concern for the value of the tech. “We need a drive controller! The one in segment four died, and now that fucking fishbone hit the only other one on the ring!”
“OK, OK,” Trevor approached from behind her, looming over the stack. “There, in the back. I’ll get it.”
West nodded and walked around the pile, watching as Trevor located a controller module.
“Stars,” she muttered. “Must be nice being a billion meters tall. I couldn’t see that at all.”
The mountain of a man chuckled and handed her the controller. West plugged in her analysis unit, and a holo appeared showing that—by some miracle—the drive controller was functional.
With that knowledge in hand, she turned and stared through the still-open bay doors. The ring was not currently in view, so she strode toward the dark rectangle, peering around the corner, trying to catch sight of it.
“What are you doing?” Trevor asked, following after. “You can’t just jump out the door. The ring is three kilometers away now.”
West realized he was right, that she wasn’t thinking clearly; her mind was fixed on getting to the ring and aligning it, just not on how.
“Look, Commander. That ring has to be precisely aligned. You of all people know what happens if you jump on a misaligned ring.”
“Yeah, preaching to the choir, West.”
“What? What choir?”
“Nevermind. From an old vid. So what do we do?”
West cast about and spotted a dock skiff. It was little more than a sled with an a-grav unit, but it could travel in space as well as on the deck.
“I’ll take that out to the ring.”
“I’ll go with you, then,” Trevor said.
West was already striding toward the skiff, and looked over her shoulder at the commander. “No offense, sir, but you weigh a ton. Literally. The skiff will make it there faster and be a hell of a lot more maneuverable without your mass on it.”
Trevor harrumphed but didn’t push the issue, as West pulled the skiff out of its dock moorings and checked it over to determine it was functional. While she did that, the commander looked over her seals, pronouncing them good.
The admiral’s words rang true in West’s mind, and with a nod to Trevor, she stepped onto the skiff and tucked the engine controller into a web of netting behind her.
She activated the narrow sled and steered it out of the bay doors, trying to ignore the fact that it felt like driving over the edge of a cliff with an endless bottom.
In space, everywhere is up, not down, she reminded herself, using the mantra to push the irrational fear away.
She cleared her head, turned to the left, and spotted the ring. Once she had the skiff on a course, she looked over her shoulder and saw that the Exdali were still feeding on their fishbone meals, seemingly unaware or the Lantzer’s presence nearby.
Even so, she didn’t want to delay her ship’s departure, and drove to the ring as quickly as possible.
As she approached, West saw that the entire controller housing in section six was complete slag and knew that she had to replace the one in section four and hope that was enough to get the ring reoriented.
The admiral didn’t reply, and West hoped she hadn’t offended the woman—though she doubted it. Despite the fact that the admiral seemed blissfully unaware of how disconcerting it was to be around someone who glowed bright purple because of a distinctly non-Terran biological source, she seemed otherwise very perceptive when it came to giving her people the space they needed to get their work done.
Letting that notion twist around in her mind, she grabbed her new control module and pulled herself along handholds embedded into the ring, coming to the module’s panel a few seconds later.
She quickly unlatched the stays and pulled the panel free, slotting it into a nearby mooring.
OK, you stupid thing…let’s power you down.
While the control system shut down, she looked over the equipment for any damage, happy not to see any, though still only cautiously optimistic.
West tapped into the ship’s scan and saw that the swarm of Exdali was moving toward the cruiser, which hung motionless against the stars.
Fear grabbed her, threatening to shake her apart. Suddenly the vastness of space, the far-off and dubious safety of the Lantzer, and the threat of the onrushing enemy was too much.
She choked back a sob, unaware of how to even continue.
Though she knew all the steps, Glenn’s voice launched her into action, and she gulped down the lump in her throat and began to follow his directions. A minute later, she had the new controller in, and it began to initialize.
West realized that the Exdali were nearly upon the Lantzer. There was no time for tests. The ring had to be activated so the ship could jump. Jumping was all that mattered now.
Even as she passed control to Lucida, the Lantzer began to move toward the gate, and it occurred to West that she had no idea how to get back aboard.
She reached the skiff a moment later and powered it up, locking her feet into the slots as she pulled away from the ring. Behind her, the machine came alive, the ball of not-space forming in the jump gate’s center, a sight she knew all too well.
The panic threatened to overwhelm her again, and she mentally berated herself for being so weak. She’d trained for situations like this. She’d done plenty of EVA. There was no reason to be so scared.
The rationale almost worked, until she saw one of the Exdali almost upon the Lantzer, and her thoughts turned to gibberish.
The bay was just a few hundred meters away. She was rushing toward it, and it was moving into alignment with her. Her trajectory was true; she would make the spot Trevor had in
dicated. The grav beam would pull her in and—
Roiling darkness appeared just a dozen meters to her left.
West screamed as she realized the Exdali was nearly atop her. She slewed the skiff to the right, angling further toward the Lantzer’s bow.
Her wailing scream set her own teeth on edge, but Trevor’s voice was calm, reassuring.
West looked to her left and saw the Exdali close to within three meters of her. This close, she could see an inky reflection to its undulating skin. It was almost as though it was sniffing her, trying to see if she was a worthy diversion.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the Exdali rush toward her, and she turned her head away. She was still in space, outside the hull, when her gaze settled on the gate. She watched in fascinated horror as the vessel’s mirror touched the roiling ball of energy in its center.
Then she knew no more.
THE JUMP
STELLAR DATE: 10.11.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: ISS Lantzer
REGION: Buffalo, Albany System, Theban Alliance
The forward holodisplay went dark, and Jessica held her breath, trembling with anticipation, begging the stars that the next sight that appeared would be the familiar pattern of the Praesepe Cluster.
Three excruciatingly long seconds later, that familiar starscape appeared, and she breathed a sigh of relief, glancing at Karma and Lucida as Gil announced,
“Thank all the things,” Lucida breathed.
Jessica was about to join her, when Trevor bellowed over the shipnet.
“Shit! Not those things!” Lucida blurted out.
She turned to the console at her side and saw that the grav beam Trevor had used to pull in West’s skiff was still active. She reversed it, blasting positive gravitons at the creature, using the same patterns that had gotten them through the dark layer tunnel to Star City many years ago.
The effect was enough to push the thing off the deck and out into space, though the extradimensional beast clawed its way across the plas, shredding the launch rails before flying out into the black.
“Oh shit! Shit, shit!” Karma bellowed. “There are more! They’re just appearing!”
Jessica flipped the main holo to display the location where they’d exited the jump. Dozens of black shapes were appearing and spreading out, hungrily seeking their next meal. Though the Lantzer and pursuing Exdali were a good distance from the planet, a few cargo haulers were nearby, all of which were already turning and boosting away from the rapidly growing mass of darkness.
“Lucida!” she yelled at the ashen-faced pilot. “Full burn! Everything we’ve got!”
“Ma’am!” the ensign said after a moment, nodding manically as her hands flew over the console.
The Lantzer’s deck shuddered, and groans echoed around them as the ship surged forward, away from the mounting threat they’d brought with them to the Albany System.
“Local STC got our call,” Karma announced. “They’ve put out a ban.”
Jessica nodded, listening as they picked up the broadcast.
“Doesn’t anyone know how to send these things back?” Jessica muttered. “Stars…this needs to be in the databanks!”
She accepted the incoming message without hesitation.
Jessica clenched her jaw as she saw the mass of Exdali spreading out, some moving toward the nearby array of gates—which were surrounded by hundreds of ships. She looked at her bridge crew, knowing they’d been through more than she could ever have asked, but also knowing that their trials weren’t done yet.
Even so, they didn’t all have to put themselves at risk. She was the captain, that was her job.
“He’s right,” Karma added a moment later. “We all did this, bringing them here in our escape. We’re not running.”
One by one, the rest of the crew sounded off that they were staying, even the Marines.
Jessica felt a surge of hope in her breast at the thought.
Half a dozen voices called out, volunteering to fly the craft. Jessica felt her eyes moisten as the admiral and the wife went to war in her mind.
The unfairness of making it back to Albany only to risk all their lives hit her like a sledgehammer, and she took a moment to compose herself before replying.
An innuendo-laden joke came to mind, but before she could utter it, he spoke up again.
Jessica chuckled.
Sectioning off her worry, she looked down at the holotank and drew out a plot for the pinnace and the three ARCs. She decided to have Trevor and Meg fly above the Lantzer while the fighters moved further back, playing cat and mouse with the Exdali, hopefully being able to keep them from a consistent course.
It seemed like a good plan, but she had yet to see how it would perform in practice. It was entirely possible that the things out there would ignore the smaller ships and focus only on the Lantzer.
“Thanks, Gil,” Jessica said absently as the ARCs launched from the starboard bay. “With luck, we can manage this on our own.”
“Tons and tons of luck. And if we don’t have it, the rest of them are going to need it.” Karma chuckled at his gallows’ humor.
“We don’t need luck,” Lucida said as she shifted the ship’s vector to follow Jessica’s plot, which largely led t
hem away from traffic lanes and orbital stations. “We have one of the best pilots in the ISF as our admiral. This’ll be a cakewalk.”
“Not if you jinx it like that,” Jessica muttered.
A minute later, the pinnace launched, and Glenn initiated the Call. Many of the Exdali were already pursuing the Lantzer, several of them closer than Jessica felt comfortable with, but the goal was to get the entire group of things to pursue them and not hit the gate arrays. If that happened, the creatures’ next stop would be several heavily populated stations, followed by the planet itself.
Jessica didn’t even want to contemplate what that would occur if the Exdali reached that much mass. She’d made a lot of mistakes in her life and had learned to live with them, but she had no idea how she’d deal with an error in judgement on that scale.
“They’re coming.” Karma’s voice contained a mixture of fear and excitement. “Most are tracking on us, a few on the pinnace.”
“Good.” Jessica nodded, then brought the ARCs in close to the leading edge of the Exdali wave—which was still growing, as more and more of the things appeared in space where the Lantzer had been.
It made no sense to her how the creatures could use a jump gate. They should have been annihilated by the singularity on the other side, but somehow, they were traversing it, as though they had the ability to hold the wormhole open.
Which I guess they must…because they’re doing it.
Ideas about the origins of the Exdali and why they might really be spread so far and wide across the galaxy—while not being present in the Large Magellanic Cloud—began to form in her mind.
She pushed them aside to focus on the task at hand, directing her five ships in a complex pattern that, so far, was keeping the Exdali following them while not letting the things get too close.