Paul glanced at the display just as his ship vibrated again. Hyperspace was twisting oddly, bending in directions the human mind wasn’t designed to comprehend. Even his sensors couldn’t quite keep track of the phenomenon . . . the distortion twisted and twisted again, waves of gravimetric force spinning out in all directions. The waves weren’t powerful enough to pose a threat to his ship, he told himself firmly, but they were still worrying. If nothing else, the feedback might damage the drive nodes.
And if we have a drive failure now, we’ll fall right into the distortion, he thought. And that will be the end.
He tried to remember if he’d ever heard of anything like this before, but nothing came to mind, not even rumors or tall tales. And yet gravity behaved oddly in hyperspace. The distortion was starting to look like a gravity wave or a black hole. Had they ventured too close to a star’s hyperspace shadow? Unlikely. The star chart insisted they were two light-years from the nearest star. Perhaps they’d managed to get lost . . .
“Do a full position check,” he ordered. The Commonwealth had established a whole string of beacons scattered through hyperspace. “Get a lock on our position.”
“Aye, sir,” Tidal said. She worked her console for a long minute. “Position confirmed, sir. I—”
The ship shook again, violently. Tidal cursed. “Captain, the distortion just tripled in size,” she snapped. “It’s expanding rapidly.”
Paul bit down the urge to swear too. “Helm, alter course,” he snapped. “Get us away from the distortion!”
“Aye, Captain,” Rani said.
The pirates are still going to catch us, Paul thought. All three enemy ships were closing in now, skirting the edge of the distortion. The prize was worth any risk. What do we do now?
“Ready weapons,” he ordered. Perhaps they could force the pirates to back off. They tended to flee if they saw resistance. “Lock tactical sensors on their hulls.”
“Aye, sir,” Tidal said.
Jeanette coughed. “Captain, we can’t outfight them!”
“I know,” Paul said sharply. Jeanette wasn’t a military officer, but that didn’t stop her from being right. And yet he knew precisely what would happen to his crew if he surrendered. The pirates would rape and kill anyone they couldn’t sell for ransom, then loot the giant liner from end to end. “But if it looks like we can put up a fight, we might not have to.”
“Weapons range in five minutes,” Tidal reported. “Captain, the distortion is still expanding.”
Paul sucked in his breath. Something was weirdly beautiful about the patterns on the display, even though they kept blurring as his sensors struggled to keep track of what was happening. Order in the chaos . . . his sensor records, if he ever got them home, would fuel the next generation of research into hyperspace . . .
He pushed the thought aside. Better to get the ship home and worry about science later.
“It’s coming after us,” Rani breathed.
“Prepare for crash-transition,” Paul snapped. He’d seen energy storms attracted to starships before, like lightning attracted to lightning rods. Even a superdreadnought couldn’t take such a battering and live. “Weapons, prepare to unleash a full barrage, timed for two-minute detonation.”
“Aye, sir,” Lieutenant Thomas Morse said.
“That’s suicide,” Jeanette snapped.
“It’s our only hope,” Paul said. The distortion was scrambling his sensors, but it wasn’t scrambling them enough. He didn’t dare assume that the pirates were having a harder time of it. The risk of triggering a violent energy storm had to be balanced with the need to keep the pirates from getting a solid lock on his exit coordinates. “Weapons?”
“Barrage ready,” Morse said. “Ready to fire.”
“The timing must be absolutely perfect,” Paul warned. “We fuck this up, we die.”
“Yes, sir,” Rani said. The ship trembled again. “Drive nodes powering up now . . .”
“The distortion is expanding again,” Tidal said.
Paul stared. The distortion was reaching for them, coming right towards his ship. It was impossible . . .
. . . and it was happening.
“Launch missiles,” he snapped. “Helm, execute crash-transition on my mark.”
“Aye, sir,” Rani said.
“It’s too late,” Tidal said. “Sir, it’s . . .”
“Hold her,” Marie snapped.
Angela struggled to hold her sister still. Nancy was younger and smaller, but she was fighting like a wildcat, screaming and shouting about voices. She’d struck Angela twice and managed to hit Marie with a shoe before the governess caught her legs. Angela would have enjoyed that if it hadn’t been so clear that something was horribly amiss. This was no temper tantrum.
“She’s frightened,” Angela shouted. Panic yammered at the back of her mind. “I don’t know what to do!”
Marie let go of Nancy’s legs and jumped backward, narrowly avoiding a kick that would have caught her in the face. “I’ll get a sedative,” she shouted. “Just keep holding her.”
She hurried off. Angela glared after her, then held Nancy as tightly as she could, which wasn’t easy. Whatever was wrong with Nancy seemed to have given her superhuman strength, allowing her to struggle violently. Her shrieks didn’t help. Angela was thoroughly unnerved by the time Marie returned, carrying an injector tab in one hand. It was all she could do to hold Nancy still long enough for the governess to press the tab against her neck and inject the sedative.
“Hold her steady,” Marie ordered. “Don’t let her go!”
“I don’t dare let her go,” Angela said. Her arm was throbbing. She didn’t think Nancy had meant to hit her, but that hardly mattered. “I thought you couldn’t use sedatives in emergency situations!”
“I can carry her if necessary,” Marie snapped. Angela hoped she could. “Hold her!”
Angela clenched her jaw as Nancy resumed her struggles. She had no idea what Marie had given her sister, but it didn’t seem to be working. Nancy was still awake, still struggling, still screaming about them . . .
The ship rocked again. She was no expert, but the drives sounded labored, as if tired. Angela tried to imagine what was going on. Were they under attack? Surely pirates wouldn’t be taking potshots at the hull for kicks. She remembered, suddenly, the horror stories she’d heard about girls who’d been kidnapped by pirates. In truth, she didn’t want to think that they might be true.
“Let go of me,” Nancy screamed. Her face was red. “They’re coming!”
Her body convulsed one final time; then she collapsed like a sack of potatoes. Angela had to hold Nancy tightly to keep her from falling to the deck. Marie held a medical scanner against the girl’s forehead for a long moment, then scowled as Angela laid her sister on the sofa. It didn’t look good.
Angela coughed. “What . . . what did you give her?”
“A standard sedative,” Marie said. She sounded worried. She had to be worried, if she was actually answering the question. “Most people who take such an injection go to sleep within two minutes.”
Angela scowled. “So why didn’t Nancy?”
“I don’t know,” Marie said. She was definitely worried. “Some people have implants or nanites that flush the sedative before it can take effect, but Nancy doesn’t.” She peered down at the scanner. “There’s some unusual brain activity . . . almost as if she was having a waking nightmare. I don’t—”
Nancy twitched. Angela stared at her. The girl was bleeding in a dozen places, crimson staining her hands and lips. She’d bit her lips and dug her nails into her palms. Marie fussed over the younger girl for a long moment, tugging her into recovery position. Angela hoped the governess knew what she was doing. God knew Angela had never studied medicine. She cursed herself, again, as another shiver ran through the ship. She was unable to do anything to help her sister.
Angela looked at Marie. “Where are the others?”
“I don’t know,” she said, sounding
oddly annoyed. “Your mother went out with a group of friends, your father was having breakfast with the captain, and—”
Nancy sat bolt upright and shrieked. Angela recoiled in shock. Nancy had been sedated! There was no way she should have been able to move. Angela had used sedatives herself, and they’d always given her at least ten hours of sleep.
“Hold her,” Marie shouted. “Don’t let her hurt herself!”
Angela couldn’t take her eyes off her sister. Nancy was still asleep, her eyes twitching frantically under her eyelids, the girl screaming as though she was having a nightmare . . .
“Call the doctor,” Angela demanded as she caught hold of her sister. Whatever was going on outside the ship didn’t matter. Nancy was far beyond their help. “We’re out of our depth!”
“I’ve tried,” Marie replied. Her voice was detached, calm, and professional. Angela would have been impressed if she hadn’t been so terrified. “There was no response.”
Angela swallowed, hard. She’d never been anywhere where help couldn’t be summoned at once if needed. Even on camping trips, she’d known how to call for help. But now . . . it dawned on her, slowly, that they were alone. God knew what had happened to the other servants, let alone her parents. They were alone . . .
Something moved through the air. A small electric shock ran down her spine. She glanced at the room’s terminal just in time to see it go dark. Nancy shrieked again, thrashing against her sister. Angela grunted in pain as Nancy slapped her. She tasted blood in her mouth as she bit the inside of her cheek. The lights failed a moment later . . .
. . . and then the shaking really started.
Paul couldn’t believe what he was seeing on the display. The distortion was reaching out for them, almost as though it were a living thing. Space twisted itself into a pretzel, dragging his ship backward into the maw. This must be a black hole, part of his mind insisted, although such an eventuality was impossible. The closest black hole to Tyre was well over two thousand light-years away. No one had ever gone near it . . .
“Crash-transit,” he ordered. The move was probably suicide, but it was the only way out. Damn the pirates. He’d just have to hope that they were in the same boat. Maybe they were already running for their lives. “Now!”
“The vortex isn’t opening,” Rani shouted. On the display, the vortex flashed into existence and then vanished just as quickly. “The energy matrix is disrupted! I can’t compensate!”
The display flickered then failed. Paul felt his heart stop, just for a second, before the system rebooted. That should have been impossible. The main lighting failed too, plunging the bridge into near-complete darkness. Nearly twenty seconds passed before the dim emergency lighting came online. That too should have been impossible. The emergency systems should have taken over at once.
“Multiple power failures reported, all decks,” Tidal said, sounding as though she didn’t believe her own words. “A handful of emergency systems are offline. I . . .”
Paul swallowed. Supreme had more redundancies built into her power distribution network than anything smaller than a superdreadnought. Even if main power failed, emergency backup systems and power cells waited to jump into action. Losing power completely was damn near impossible. The entire system was designed to survive.
“The main drive field is failing,” Rani added. She looked up. Sweat poured down her face, glistening oddly under the lighting. “It . . . the power is draining.”
“Divert all power to the drives,” Paul ordered. If they were caught in a black hole, or something similar, they were dead. There was no way they could outrun its gravity pull. But they had to try. “Get us out of here!”
“The drive field has collapsed,” Rani said. She sounded as though she was starting to lose control and panic. “Compensator fields are weakening!”
Supreme shivered, then started to fall into the distortion. Or maybe the distortion was reaching for them. Paul had a sensation, just for a moment, as though they were spinning like a top. His head swam, strange prickly lights appearing at the corners of his eyes and then vanishing back into the semidarkness. Rani screamed, throwing herself back from her console an instant before it exploded. A second console followed a moment later, blowing its operator across the bridge . . .
Paul struggled to stand, to get a medical kit, to do something, anything, to stave off doom for a few more seconds. Consoles didn’t explode, not outside bad movies. What sort of idiot starship designer would cram explosive packs into a real console?
“Systems failure, Deck Seven,” Tidal yelled. Red alerts flashed up on the display. “Engineering reports main power offline. Switching to backups . . .”
Paul barely heard her. The universe seemed to be dimming, the bridge going hazy in front of him. He stood; then his legs buckled, and he fell to his knees. A third explosion shook the bridge . . . something had exploded, but what? He looked up at the display just in time to see the outside universe twisting into madness. There were things in the display, things his mind refused to accept . . .
The displays failed a second later. Paul slumped to the deck, suddenly feeling drained. His body felt limp, worthless. Someone was screaming . . . who? Was it him? He didn’t know. So hard to think clearly. His mind was sparking, flickers of pain bombarding his thoughts. Supreme spun around him, the gravity field twisting slowly out of shape. If the compensators failed, they were dead. He wasn’t sure why they still had gravity. If main power had failed, the gravity generators should have failed too . . .
And then the darkness reached out and claimed him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Matt was sure he was having a nightmare.
They’d been on the promenade, hadn’t they? They’d been making their way back to their emergency stations, when . . . he wasn’t quite sure what had happened then. The entire ship had started to shake, the lights had failed, and he’d blacked out . . . or had he? He couldn’t comfortably swear to anything. Part of him was still sure he was dreaming.
He heard a moan. His eyes snapped open.
He was lying on the deck, his body so limp and drained—and yet aching dully—that he thought he must be concussed. A sickly yellow-green light poured in through the windows, drenching the entire deck in an eerie radiance. Something was nagging at his mind, something missing. What? He forced himself to sit up as he heard the moan again, looking around as quickly as he could. Carla was lying on the deck beside him, blood leaking from her nose and a nasty gash on her cheek. Matt forced himself to rise, despite the lethargy pervading his body, and crawl over to her.
“Carla,” he managed. His voice sounded odd. “Can you hear me?”
“Yeah,” Carla said. Her voice sounded strange too. “What . . . what happened?”
“Your nose might be broken,” Matt said. He helped her to sit up. “I’ll call the medics.”
He keyed his wristcom. Nothing happened, not even an acknowledgment chirp. Matt tensed, feeling a flicker of alarm. There should have been something, even if the doctors were overloaded with patients who needed immediate treatment. The datanet would have logged the call, if nothing else. He forced himself to look at the wristcom and sucked in his breath when he saw the POWER LOW message. The battery was at 9 percent.
That shouldn’t have happened, he thought, too shocked to think clearly. They’d been threatened with everything from a hefty fine to immediate dismissal for letting their wristcom batteries drop below 20 percent. He’d always made sure to charge his every weekend, even though the power usage was actually minimal. But now his wristcom was practically dead. That’s . . .
He shook his head. The wristcom should have been able to link to the datanet even if it was on the last dregs of its power. The alarm should have been bleeping to warn him to recharge . . . every alarm should be bleeping.
The deck was quiet.
His head spun as he realized what was missing. The omnipresent hum of the drives was gone.
“Check your wristcom,” he said,
cursing Corporate’s paranoia under his breath. Carla’s wristcom wouldn’t work for him and vice versa. “See if you can call for help.”
Something flickered at the corner of his eye. Just for a moment, he was sure there was someone or something behind him. He forced himself to look around. Nothing was there. The deck was as cold and silent as a grave. His fingertips touched the carpeted deck as other implications began to sink in. If the power had failed completely, the life-support systems would be offline too.
“It can’t have failed completely,” Carla pointed out when he voiced his concern. “We still have gravity.”
Matt glanced at her. She was right. If the ship had lost all power, they’d have lost the gravity field too. Still . . .
He forced himself to his feet. The gravity felt . . . odd, as though the generator was slightly out of tune. He hoped that didn’t mean it was going to shift without warning. He’d trained in a high-gravity environment, but there were limits. No one would be able to move if the gravity field suddenly got a great deal stronger.
Or worse, he thought as he helped Carla up. Blood stained her tunic from the cut on her cheek, but she seemed otherwise unharmed. What if the compensators fail?
They stumbled over to the giant canopy and peered out. The sickly yellow-green light was everywhere. He suddenly grasped that they might no longer be in hyperspace or realspace. Where were they? Hyperspace glowed with light, but this . . . this was wrong. This was . . . just looking at the light made his skin crawl. It was easy to imagine that there were things out there in the light, peering back at him. He thought he could see something . . . flecks of light so tiny they were barely visible.
Carla muttered a word under her breath, then knelt down and started hunting through the supply lockers with desperate speed. Matt watched, puzzled, as she retrieved a pair of binoculars and pressed them to her eyes. They were normally used by ship-spotters, if he recalled correctly, who seemed to think that using optical sensors or augmented eyeballs was cheating.
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