The Hyperspace Trap

by Christopher Nuttall

“Shit,” Carla said. She lowered the binoculars. Her face was even paler than usual. “Matt . . . what do you see?”

  Matt took the binoculars and peered through them. The automated focusing system refused to work, forcing him to set the range manually. His mouth dropped open as the first of the flecks suddenly zoomed into view.

  A starship. He was sure it was a starship. And yet he’d never seen anything like it. He couldn’t see how it flew. The vessel was . . .

  “It looks like a crushed spider,” he said. The description was all that came to mind. “It . . .” He nearly dropped the binoculars in shock. “It’s alien.”

  “Yeah,” Carla said. She sounded as though she was fighting to remain calm. “That is not a human ship.”

  Matt forced himself to look again. Each of the flecks was a starship, drifting within the eerie green light. None appeared to be moving. He wondered, suddenly, if they’d encountered one of the legendary graveyards of space. He’d heard stories; all of them had, though none had ever been verified. They were just . . . tall tales.

  He moved the binoculars from ship to ship, taking in their lines. They looked as if they came from a dozen different races . . .

  He sat down, hard. This was impossible. There was no such thing as intelligent aliens. Hundreds of years of space exploration hadn’t turned up anything more intelligent than a small dog. But he couldn’t deny what he was seeing. Supreme was surrounded by dozens, perhaps hundreds, of alien starships, all dead. He couldn’t see a sign that they had any power at all.

  “Crap,” he said. There were first-contact procedures that had been drilled into his head while he’d been earning his spacer’s license, but he’d never expected to use them. It wasn’t as if Supreme had been planning to explore beyond the Rim. “What . . . what do we do now?”

  Carla poked her wristcom. “We report to the captain,” she said. “That’s our first duty.”

  Matt swallowed. “What about Angela?”

  “The captain might not know those ships are there,” Carla said. “What if long-range sensors are down too?” She caught his arm. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  Matt followed her, privately admitting she was right. They did have a duty to report to the captain, even though normally they’d be expected to use proper channels. But those channels were gone. His wristcom couldn’t find a single datanet node within range, bothering him more than he cared to admit. In theory, he should have been able to access a datanode on the other side of the ship. If all the datanodes were down, what then?

  The captain will think of something, he told himself firmly. Captain VanGundy had been in space longer than Matt had been alive. We’ll get out of this.

  He jumped as he saw another flicker at the corner of his eye. The sensation was like being buzzed by insects in the jungle, yet . . . whenever he turned around, he saw nothing. His scalp itched; he felt unwashed . . . he reminded himself, sharply, that he’d had a shower only a few hours ago. Or perhaps it had been days ago . . . who knew how long he’d been unconscious? But . . . if it had been more than a few hours, he’d be hungry . . . right?

  Carla opened a hatch and led the way into the passageway. The emergency lighting was working, thankfully, but it was wavering constantly. Matt tried to think about how else they could get light. There should be flashlights in the emergency kits. They should work, shouldn’t they? He felt unnerved as he saw yet another flicker and tried to ignore it. He’d seen the emergency systems built into the starship’s hull. Nothing short of a major disaster should have been able to knock so many systems offline.

  “Shit,” Carla said.

  Matt followed her gaze. A body was lying on the deck, facedown, the head twisted so badly that its neck was clearly broken. Matt checked for a pulse anyway, just to be sure, then turned the corpse over. An unfamiliar face looked back at him. He felt a moment of relief that the deceased hadn’t been anyone he knew, then cursed himself for his thoughts. The dead man, maintenance crew, judging by the uniform, would have had friends and comrades of his own.

  “We need to keep moving,” Carla said. “We’ll come back later.”

  And we’ll be lucky if that’s the only dead crewman we find, Matt thought grimly. We might be the last living people on the ship.

  Paul fought his way back to awareness, fighting the mother of all headaches and a roaring sound in his ears that threatened to drag him under. Something was wrong, completely wrong. He took a breath, tasting smoke in the air. Something was definitely wrong.

  He opened his eyes as he stumbled to his feet. His bridge was a nightmare. The emergency lighting was on, yet blinking and unsteady. Three consoles had exploded, and all but one of the remainder looked to be offline. His crew were fighting their way back too, save for two who were definitely dead. Paul glanced at them—their wounds made it clear that they were beyond salvation—and then stumbled over to his personal console. It was dark.

  “Damn it,” he muttered as he opened the hidden compartment in his command chair. His fingers felt thick and stubby, useless as they fumbled their way through the emergency section. He could barely pull out the stimulant tab, press it against his bare skin, and push the trigger. “I’ll have to . . .”

  The drug felt . . . odd . . . as it burned through his system, fire tearing into his thoughts. He knew, from countless medical warnings, that he’d have only a few hours before he had to catch some sleep or risk collapse. The stimulant wasn’t something he would have taken if he’d seen any other choice. The risk of hallucinations, or worse, was too great as it wore off.

  “Captain,” Rani managed. She stumbled to her feet. “What . . . what happened?”

  “Good question,” Paul said. Rani looked a mess, but the sight of her still gave him hope. At least one of his crew was alive, awake, and coherent. “Check the working consoles; then see if you can get a link to Engineering.”

  “Aye, sir,” Rani said.

  Something flashed at the corner of Paul’s eye. He frowned, then dismissed it as a hallucination. He’d thought they were dead when the distortion swept them up . . . perhaps he was dead and in hell. Perhaps they were all in hell. He cursed the drug under his breath, unsure if his imagination was working overtime or if the stimulant was causing him to hallucinate already.

  He helped Tidal to her feet, then pointed her at the nearest console. There was no time to tend to the guests, let alone the wounded or dead. They had literally no way to see outside the hull. Anything could be out there, including one or more of the pirate ships. The distortion could have easily swept them up too. And Supreme was blind, effectively defenseless.

  “Main power is offline,” Rani reported. “We have limited emergency power, but much of the datanet and power distribution network is also offline. Internal communications are down, sir. Short- and long-range sensors are completely offline. The entire network is a mess.”

  That’s supposed to be impossible, Paul thought. The communications net . . .

  He dropped the thought. It had happened. He had to deal with it.

  “Switch wristcoms to direct transmission,” he ordered. Corporate preferred to use datanodes, which ensured there would be a record of everything the crew said, but Corporate could go piss up a rope. Supreme was in deep shit, perhaps the deepest. “Use it to establish a distributed network.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Rani said. “It may take some time to boot up.”

  “Better get started,” Paul said.

  Tidal opened the emergency case and produced a flashlight. It worked, but the light was alarmingly dim. Paul stared at the low glow, feeling an insane urge to start gibbering like an idiot. The flashlights weren’t connected to the starship’s power net. Whatever had damaged the power grid shouldn’t have affected them. And yet it had . . .

  “The glow sticks work, sir,” Tidal reported. She passed one to Paul, then stuck two more in her belt. “They’re about the only things that do.”

  “Let’s hope you’re wrong,” Paul said.
/>   His thoughts felt as though they were moving through thick molasses. Without power, they were screwed. He’d read novels where starship crews had somehow navigated their way home with old-fashioned sextants, but doing so in real life wouldn’t be easy. He wasn’t even sure they were back in realspace. If they were drifting through hyperspace, it was only a matter of time before they were sucked into an energy storm and torn to shreds.

  And anything could be out there, he thought. Anything at all.

  “I’ve started to ping wristcoms,” Rani reported. “Got a couple of people reporting in.”

  “Very good,” Paul said. He bottled up his relief. People were alive, but . . . Supreme was still in trouble. They had to get a grip on the situation. “See if you can get me a link to Engineering and the secondary bridge.”

  “Aye, sir,” Rani said.

  Paul silently reviewed the situation. He had four officers who seemed to be in a reasonable state and five more who didn’t seem to be in any shape to help. If he couldn’t get a link to Engineering, he’d have to get down there himself, which wasn’t going to be easy. The internal hatches would have sealed and locked themselves when he’d sounded the alert. They could be opened without power, but it would be hard to know what was on the far side. If the hull had been breached, his team might walk straight into vacuum.

  He tensed as he heard the bridge hatch being opened from the outside. Someone was trying to get in. He glanced at his crew, then hurried over to open the hatch himself. The ship couldn’t have depressurized completely. In hindsight, he should have ordered his crew and passengers into spacesuits as soon as the shit hit the fan. A military crew wouldn’t have hesitated.

  The hatch clicked open, revealing a couple of stewards. Paul blinked in shock. He’d expected engineers or maintenance crew, not stewards. But all stewards were cross-trained, he reminded himself. Beggars could not be choosers.

  “Captain,” the lead steward said. She sounded as though she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. “Captain, there are aliens out there.”

  “It’s true,” the second steward said. “Captain . . .”

  Paul looked from one to the other. Aliens? Impossible. A joke. The only spacers who saw aliens were either playing games or drinking too much. Still . . . these two seemed in earnest. No one would joke when the entire ship was crippled.

  “Explain,” he said. Another spark danced at the corner of his eye, just for a second. “What do you mean, aliens?”

  “We’re in a graveyard,” the male steward said. His name tag read EVANS. “Captain . . .” He swallowed and started again. “We were on the promenade when . . . when we blacked out,” he said. He didn’t sound much calmer than his coworker. “When we woke up . . . it isn’t hyperspace out there, Captain. It’s . . . it’s something else. Green light. Greenish-yellow light everywhere. And ships, alien ships.”

  Paul exchanged glances with Tidal. If they weren’t in hyperspace, where were they? Another dimension? Or a part of hyperspace that no one had ever visited? Could they be inside the distortion? It had been small, by the standards of hyperspace storms, but easily large enough to contain a thousand starships like Supreme. Or . . .

  Maybe they are drunk, he thought.

  He looked at Rani. “Reroute power to the upper porthole,” he ordered. The armored cover had sealed shut the moment they’d sounded the alert. “Open the cover.”

  “Aye, sir,” Rani said. It took her nearly five minutes to set up the power transfer. “Opening it . . . now.”

  Paul looked up as the hatch opened. Eerie green light poured in.

  “Shit,” he said. He would have preferred for the stewards to be lying. “Where the hell are we?”

  He rubbed his forehead. “We’ll deal with it, somehow,” he said. He had no idea if he could keep that promise. “I want you stewards to check out the hatches at the bottom of Gold Deck. Do not try to open them unless you have a solid read on the other side.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Paul looked back at the sickly light. Where were they?

  And how were they going to get out?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Angela felt sick.

  She swallowed, trying to keep the urge to vomit under control. Her head refused to cooperate. She couldn’t tell if she’d been sick or if she was going to be sick or . . . her thoughts ran around and around in circles, taunting her. Her memories were a jumbled mess.

  A hand fell on her shoulder. “My Lady,” Marie said, “can you hear me?”

  Angela opened her eyes. She hadn’t realized they were closed. “I . . . yeah,” she managed. She felt so rotten that she was pleased to hear the governess’s voice. “Where . . . where’s Nancy?”

  “Lying on the sofa,” Marie said. Angela became aware that she was lying on the carpeted deck with no clear memory of how she’d landed there. The lighting was dim and seemed to be growing dimmer. She hoped that was her imagination. “She’s not in a good state.”

  Angela forced herself to sit upright. Her chest heaved. She’d felt bad the first time she’d drunk enough to make her really drunk, but this was far worse. Her chest hurt, as if she’d thrown up. She looked down, seeing nothing.

  “I hurt,” she said. She fought to clear her mind. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know,” Marie said. “The primary and secondary internal communications networks both appear to be down. I’ve tried to log into the crew network, but it kicked me back out after spewing gibberish into my terminal. We might have taken a massive disrupter attack.”

  Angela frowned. The governess’s words meant nothing to her.

  “A disrupter works by damaging exposed electronic devices and suchlike,” Marie explained, seeing her charge’s confusion. She held up the flashlight in her hand. “Most military gear is hardened against it, but civilian stuff isn’t always so well protected. Even the military can have problems. It only takes one exposed datanode to damage the whole network. I thought this ship was hardened, but there are limits.” She shook her head. “We may be in some trouble,” she added. “I don’t know what’s on the other side of the hatch.”

  Angela looked at her. “What do you mean?”

  “The hull is over there,” Marie said, jabbing her finger towards the master bedroom. “If there’s a crack in the hull, say, in the promenade, and the internal hatches have failed, Gold Deck might be in vacuum. If we open the hatch, we die.”

  “I thought it was impossible to open the hatch into vacuum,” Angela said. She was sure she’d read something about that in the safety notes. “The door won’t open . . . something like that.”

  “Normally, yes,” Marie agreed. “But now . . . I don’t know.”

  Angela looked at the door. “What happens . . . what happens if we can’t get out?”

  “We die,” Marie said. “Does that answer your question?”

  “Yeah.”

  She forced herself to stand. She was nineteen. She had at least a century to look forward to, didn’t she? She could be assured of perpetual rejuvenation if she wished, ensuring effective immortality. The oldest man on Tyre could recall Earth before humanity’s homeworld had been blasted clean of life during the Breakaway Wars. She couldn’t perish here, not in a cabin with her sister and her governess. What could she do?

  Nancy gasped in her sleep. Angela looked down at her sister, feeling a pang of guilt. Nancy was so innocent. God knew Angela hadn’t been the kindest sister in the known universe—she’d had problems adjusting to the arrival of a sibling, particularly one who’d been born with unearned fame—but Nancy didn’t deserve to die somewhere in the inky darkness of space. Her parents didn’t deserve to die . . . hell, Marie didn’t deserve to die. Finley, on the other hand . . .

  Perhaps his stateroom vented into space, she thought vindictively. Maybe he’s dead now.

  “The sedative wasn’t perfect,” Marie said. She held up the scanner. “And this is completely useless. I don’t dare give her anything else.”

&nb
sp; “Fuck,” Angela said. “All we can do is wait?”

  “It looks that way,” Marie said. She frowned. “Can you stay with your sister? I need to check the bedrooms for food and drink.”

  Angela blinked, then understood. If the ship was crippled and effectively powerless, there would be no water for drinking, let alone washing. Or food. The stasis pods might have failed too. She thought ration bars couldn’t decay; they were designed to remain edible for years. But everything else was doomed. Or . . .

  “I’ll do it,” she said. “You stay with Nancy.”

  Marie tilted her head. “As you wish, My Lady.”

  Angela headed over to her father’s office and tried the door. Locked. She knocked on it out of habit, then remembered that her father had been having breakfast with the captain before all hell broke loose. There was probably a way to break the lock, but she couldn’t imagine it. Everything she thought of required tools they didn’t have.

  The master bedroom was open, but she struggled to force her way in through the suddenly stiff door. An eerie green light greeted her, a pulsing radiance that made her feel sick to her stomach. That wasn’t hyperspace. It looked as though Supreme were trapped at the bottom of the ocean, with light shimmering through water. She hurried over to the window and peered outside, ignoring her stomach’s muted rebellion. The sickly light chilled her to the bone. She gazed up and down the ship’s hull, but saw nothing. It didn’t look as though the ship had vented completely, but all the running lights were gone too. Supreme looked . . . dead.

  She lifted her sight, trying to peer into the greenish-yellow glow. There were . . . things . . . out there, no larger than dust specks. She decided they probably weren’t important as she tried to spot the source of the light, but found nothing. The radiance came from everywhere and nowhere.

  Marie’s voice echoed through the half-open door. “Any luck?”

  “Not yet,” Angela said, remembering herself. Something glinted at the corner of her eye, just for a moment. “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”