The Hyperspace Trap

by Christopher Nuttall

She searched the rest of the cabin as quickly as she could. Her mother’s vast collection of clothes, and an exclusive wedding dress that could be only for Angela herself, were completely useless. Angela had to giggle, despite herself. She was surrounded by vast wealth, now worthless. They’d starve to death before they had a chance to sell the dresses, let alone wear them. The thought actually perked her up. Dead or not, she wouldn’t be marrying Finley if she couldn’t get home.

  “I’ve found my mother’s cold-box,” she said. The stasis field had failed. Her mother’s collection of pricey chocolates was already starting to melt. They wouldn’t be very filling, but they would have to do. “It’s all I’ve found.”

  “Check the servant quarters, if you can get in,” Marie called back. “I—” Her voice sharpened. “Someone’s trying to get in!”

  Angela grabbed the cold-box and hurried back into the antechamber. The outer door was shaking, producing a faint rattling noise that set her teeth on edge. Someone was definitely trying to break in, she decided. Help . . . or Finley, trying to track down his intended bride? She wondered if she should look for a weapon. Marie didn’t look alarmed, but that was meaningless. The governess probably didn’t know what had happened between her and Finley.

  Unless he ratted me out, Angela thought. The door opened slowly. I . . .

  She smiled. “Matt!”

  “Angela,” Matt said. “Are you all right?”

  Angela ran over and threw her arms around him. “Yeah,” she said. It was all she could do to keep from kissing him there and then. “Did you come looking for me?”

  “Yes,” Matt said. “I—”

  “We have to check every last cabin,” the other steward said. Her name tag read CARLA FRANCE. She was a young woman, at least a year older than Angela herself. Her tone was disapproving. “How many people are here?”

  “Three,” Marie said briskly. She indicated Nancy, still asleep. “She had a fit when the shaking started. She really needs a doctor.”

  “Right now, we don’t have any contact with Sickbay,” Carla informed them. She knelt down beside Nancy and checked her vitals. “What did you give her?”

  “A sedative,” Marie said. “Do you want the full details?”

  “It might be better to save them for the doctor,” Carla said. “If Nancy isn’t in any immediate danger, she’ll be low on the list for attention.”

  Angela swallowed. “But . . . but she needs help!”

  “So far we’ve discovered thirty-seven dead bodies,” Matt said. He sounded haunted. “And a number of others who require medical attention. Right now, we’re trying to catalogue the damage.”

  “Shit,” Angela said. She jabbed a hand towards the far bulkhead. “Where are we?”

  “I wish I knew,” Matt said. Beside him, Carla looked distressed. “We don’t have the slightest idea.”

  “We’ll stay here,” Marie said. “Good luck.”

  “Thank you,” Carla said. “Come on, Matt.”

  What the fuck, Constable Hamish Singh asked himself, is that banging sound?

  He rubbed his forehead as he forced himself to sit up. His memories didn’t quite make sense, but he forced himself to parse through them anyway. He’d been on duty in the brig, spelling a couple of security guards who’d been called away to deal with a minor crisis. There wasn’t much to it, really. He’d sat at their desk and read his eReader, silently bemoaning the lack of time to download more than a handful of books from the planetary datanet. And then . . .

  You weren’t boozing last night, my lad, he thought. He was fairly sure of it. The days when he’d gone out with the marines and drunk himself into a stupor were long over. God knew he wouldn’t have dared to drink on duty. His sergeant would have taken him around the barracks and beaten the shit out of him if he’d had a wee dram to keep himself awake. You were on guard duty.

  The air felt . . . wrong, somehow, as he stumbled through the hatch. His hand dropped to his holster as the banging grew louder, ready to draw his pistol if necessary. The lights were flickering and fading, even though he’d been assured that the brig was on a completely independent power system. God knew it would be stupid if someone managed to cut the power and allowed a prisoner to break out. Supreme herself might be an overpriced mess—he would have preferred an MEU—but the brig was surprisingly simple. Escape was effectively impossible.

  He cursed as he realized the banging was coming from the lone stasis pod. The power had failed, of course. Roman Bryon was awake. Hamish checked the lock quickly, reassuring himself that it hadn’t failed. It wouldn’t have, of course. He’d inspected the lock as soon as Bryon had been shoved into the cell. There was no way to reach its vitals from inside, let alone manipulate them. And Bryon didn’t have any tools. The stasis pod crashed open a moment later, allowing the serial killer to sit up. He looked around, blearily. Time hadn’t passed for him . . .

  Hamish gripped the butt of his pistol. It would be easy to shoot Bryon in the head, then swear blind that the prisoner had been trying to escape. No one was going to waste time arguing over the legalities. Many had suggested that Bryon should simply be executed on Williamson’s World without the formality of a trial and extradition. Britannia had provided more than enough proof of the man’s crimes.

  He didn’t look like much, Hamish thought. Roman Bryon was a weedy little man, too small and petty to ever amount to much. He looked like an accountant, the kind of man who would claim to lust for adventure yet never dare to walk away from his life. And yet he’d tortured and killed nine innocent people, perhaps more.

  And he’d managed to board ship and escape a manhunt, Hamish reminded himself. Bryon might look harmless, but he was too dangerous to be underestimated. It was sheer luck we caught him before he started his games on Williamson’s World.

  Bryon cleared his throat. “What happened?”

  “You will be silent,” Hamish said. God, even Bryon’s voice was weedy. Hamish could barely believe that the small man had killed nine people. But the most vicious bastard in his old platoon had practically been a dwarf. “This ship is in trouble.”

  “I can help,” Bryon said.

  “You will be quiet, or you will be gagged,” Hamish said. Regulations insisted that no one was to enter a prisoner’s cell alone. He was sure he could break Bryon over his knee with one hand but saw no point in taking chances. “For the moment, you will stay in your cell.”

  Bryon looked back at him evenly. “Is there anything to read?”

  “No,” Hamish said. Regulations also forbade giving anything to the prisoner without a careful security check. “You get to stay in your cell and meditate on your crimes.”

  He glanced down at his wristcom, then at his personal terminal. Both were reporting low power, something that baffled him. He’d made sure to have them both charged before he’d boarded the liner. Neither was able to establish a link to the starship’s communications network. He and Bryon were possibly the only two survivors on Supreme. The brig was meant to be completely isolated.

  Anything that gets to us will take out the whole ship, he told himself firmly. But surely we can’t be the last two survivors.

  He forced himself to wait. He’d find out, in time. And if the air started to run thin . . .

  Bryon coughed. “What happened?”

  “Be quiet,” Hamish snapped. He wasn’t going to admit ignorance to a serial killer. The really dangerous ones were consummate manipulators. “Keep your mouth shut.”

  “Or what?” Bryon asked. He sounded amused. “Do you know what they’re going to do to me on Britannia?”

  “No,” Hamish said. “But I look forward to watching.”

  Paul didn’t want to leave his bridge, even though they’d made contact with the secondary bridge and Jeanette had resumed her duties as his XO. But he had to see for himself, even if it meant going down to the promenade. He didn’t think anyone had lied to him, but . . .

  Supreme was a disaster, he discovered. Power surges had destroyed p
ieces of equipment and killed people, leaving dozens of bodies littering the decks. Half his crew manifest hadn’t reported in, suggesting that he was dangerously undermanned. Hopefully most of them were merely out of contact, but they might as well be dead. Some of the recovery crews had lost contact too.

  We never planned for ship-wide disaster on this scale, he thought. He’d seen the hulks of a handful of dead ships back during his military service, but none of them had been anything like this. We assumed that anything this bad would destroy the entire vessel.

  The promenade glowed with an eerie yellow-green light. He picked up the pair of binoculars and pressed them against his eyes, peering out into the shadowy realm. Were they inside the distortion? He had no way to tell, but . . . he thought he could see an energy storm in the distance. He moved the binoculars from side to side, trying to see if there was a way around the disturbance. But it looked as though there was no way out.

  It’s like the Gap, he thought, remembering the storms that limited passage into Theocratic Space. But there’s no way through here.

  He focused on the nearest ship and sucked in his breath. The craft wasn’t human. Paul had memorized nearly every starship designed and built by humanity, from crude battleships and superdreadnoughts to luxury yachts and cruise liners. They all followed the same basic pattern, even though the civilian craft often had an elegance the military vehicles lacked. But these ships were starkly alien, built by creatures he surmised to be far from human. Some of the designs were so alien that his mind refused to accept their existence.

  The realization struck him like a punch in the gut. The stewards hadn’t lied after all!

  And none of the vessels appear to be moving, he thought. Dead in space.

  Part of him was relieved. He’d reviewed the first-contact protocols, but his ship was in no position to make contact. Come to think of it, he was supposed to sneak away and inform higher authorities. He couldn’t do that either. He was relieved, in many ways, that the alien ships were dead, but . . . if they couldn’t escape the distortion, what did that say about Supreme’s chances?

  He strode around the promenade, trying to spot the pirate ships. Had they come through the distortion too? But there was nothing, save for the brief flashes at the corners of his eyes. He had no idea what they were, but he wasn’t the only one seeing them. He’d checked with the bridge crew. Everyone was seeing sparks.

  His wristcom bleeped. “Captain, we’ve opened a passageway down to Engineering,” Tidal said. “We don’t appear to have lost any atmosphere.”

  “That’s something, at least,” Paul said. “Inform the chief engineer that I want him to meet me in my office in thirty minutes.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Tidal said.

  Paul closed the connection and peered up at the nearest alien ship, which was alarmingly close by interplanetary standards. He was fascinated. Being the first man to meet aliens would ensure his place in the history books, and yet his first duty was to Supreme and the personnel under his command. Getting them out was more important than attempting to make contact with inactive starships . . .

  And the more he stared out into the eerie light, the more sure he was that something was looking back at him.

  You’re imagining things, he told himself firmly. It’s the drug.

  But the uneasy sensation refused to go away.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  “We managed to get some sensors back online,” Tidal said half an hour later. “As far as we can tell, we’re the only living things in this . . . this graveyard.”

  Paul wasn’t reassured. Aliens! Their place in the history books would’ve been assured if they weren’t as trapped as any of the alien ships. The graveyard contained at least seventy starships, all seemingly from different races, none of which had succeeded in escaping the trap. Supreme was one of the most over-engineered starships in human history—only a superdreadnought had more redundancies built into her hull—and yet she was practically crippled. If any of the alien vessels were alive and hostile, it would be a very short fight.

  He looked around the battered conference room, silently assessing his senior crew. Jeanette and Raymond Slater looked tired, while the others were clearly stressed. None of their training had prepared them for this. Robert Cavendish, who had somehow inveigled his way into the meeting, looked oddly relaxed. Paul wasn’t sure if the CEO truly understood the stakes. He had a nasty feeling that his ultimate boss wasn’t used to problems that couldn’t be made to go away by a large infusion of cash.

  “Dr. Mackey reports that Mr. Garston is dead,” Jeanette said. She sounded too tired to feel anything. “His stasis pod lost power and . . . and his medical condition caught up with him.”

  Paul rubbed his forehead. A disaster, under other circumstances. Now, Garston’s death was a minor footnote to a far greater problem. The ship was trapped and crippled. The rest of the crew and passengers could be dead within the week.

  “I see,” he said finally. “How many have we lost?”

  Jeanette glanced at a paper notebook in her hand. “One hundred and seven deaths, two hundred and thirty-six injuries ranging from minor scrapes to broken bones,” she said. “Sir . . . there are parts of the ship we haven’t managed to reach yet. The numbers could be considerably higher.” She winced. “The doctors are doing everything they can, but half the medical tech is offline,” she added after a moment. “There’s no way we can fix everything until we find a way to bring main power back online.”

  “Tell them to do their best,” Paul said. That wasn’t going to be easy. Even the third-class passengers were used to prompt, effective medical care. “Is there any way we can bring the stasis pods back online?”

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” Chief Engineer Conrad Roeder said. He sounded frustrated. “Sir, whatever happened to us scrambled far too many control circuits. I wouldn’t care to rely on anything if it could be avoided.”

  “That’s supposed to be impossible,” Jeanette protested.

  “Impossible or not, it happened,” Roeder said. He shook his head. “We might be able to repower a bone regenerator, sir, but we . . . we couldn’t depend on it. I’d hate to risk using something more complex.”

  “Blast,” Paul said. He looked at Jeanette. “Do we have enough medical supplies to handle the wounded?”

  Jeanette turned to another page. “Maybe,” she said. “Our working assumption, sir, was that anything we couldn’t handle onboard could be held in stasis until we reached a planetside hospital. Right now, we should be able to handle some of the problems and make the others comfortable, but that won’t last. Once we run out of drugs . . . we’ll have a lot of people in agony on our hands.”

  Paul sighed. “See if you can organize some of the passengers into helping with the wounded,” he said. It wasn’t the best solution, but he saw no alternative. “Mr. Roeder?”

  The chief engineer cleared his throat. “We’re in deep shit, Captain.”

  “I noticed,” Paul said dryly.

  Roeder reached for the console automatically, then stopped himself. “I am confronted by a whole string of problems that don’t make sense,” he said. “I think . . . I think there’s something very odd about this region of space.”

  Paul narrowed his eyes. “Like what?”

  “We are losing power,” Roeder reported. “Main power failed the moment we passed through the . . . the distortion. At least two of our four fusion cores are beyond repair, while we have been unable to restart the remaining two. And . . . Captain, our emergency power cells are losing power too.” He paused. “It doesn’t make any sense. Captain . . . the high-power cells are losing power at a greater rate than the low-power cells. It’s as if something is feeding on the cells.”

  Something gleamed at the corner of Paul’s eye. He ignored it. “I think we’re going to have to become used to six impossible things before breakfast,” he said slowly. “Can we get out of here?”

  “I don’t think so,” Roeder said. He sound
ed as if he’d already given up. “The vortex generator appears to be intact. The core programming appears to be sound. But it requires a large surge of power to open a vortex, and . . . and the drain, whatever it is, may prevent us from generating the power. I don’t even know if we need to reprogram the generator to return to realspace. I’ve never seen anything like this.”

  “We don’t have a choice,” Paul said. He looked at Rani. “Can we leave the graveyard?”

  “No, sir,” Rani said. “As far as I can tell, the graveyard is hemmed in by hyperspace storms.”

  “This is a trap,” Tidal said. Her voice was unnerved. “Someone built this place.”

  Paul gritted his teeth. “Explain.”

  “Look at the ships,” Tidal said. “They’re not drifting randomly. They’re lined up, ready for the slaughter. That pattern could not have occurred by chance.”

  “That might be true,” Cavendish said. “But anyone who could reformat hyperspace to do that wouldn’t need to . . . to drag us here.”

  “That would be impossible,” Jeanette said. “Wouldn’t it?”

  “There are some theories about using a modified vortex generator to alter hyperspace’s . . . ah . . . aspects,” Roeder said slowly. “The power requirements were so far off the scale that there was no way anyone could experiment. It’s right up there with the schemes to ignite a gas giant or construct a Dyson Sphere. Theoretically possible, practically impossible.”

  Paul glanced at him. “Are we actually in hyperspace? This isn’t a third-dimensional realm?”

  “Captain, I honestly don’t know,” Roeder said. “We can’t even begin to measure this realm’s properties and compare them to what we know of hyperspace. There’s no way to be sure of anything. I don’t even know what will happen when we open a gateway.”

  “They won’t let it happen,” Tidal said. She waved a hand at the bulkhead. “They brought us here for a reason.”

  “Calm yourself,” Paul ordered. Tidal had been on duty for hours. Normally she would be in bed by now. He yawned, feeling tired himself. The stimulants were wearing off ahead of time. He should be in bed too, before he collapsed completely. “Mr. Roeder . . . how long do we have?”