The Hyperspace Trap

by Christopher Nuttall

  “Have you not heard their voices?” Brother John asked. “Can you not hear them calling?”

  “Return to your place and sit down,” Carla ordered. Matt drew his stunner. “This is not the time—”

  “This is our time,” Brother John said. He reached out and shoved Carla, hard. “Get out of our way.”

  Matt pulled the trigger. The stunner produced a low hum but nothing else. Matt stared at it in shock, then jumped backward as Brother John threw a punch. He wasn’t quick enough to evade the blow. The force of the impact knocked him off his feet and threw him to the deck. He heard someone shout in delight, the deck vibrating as the entire crowd seemed to hurl itself forward. Matt forced himself to crawl backward . . .

  “Get down,” a new voice thundered. “I say again, get down!”

  Matt kept moving as the security team raced into the compartment. They wore riot gear, wielding clubs in unison. Their stunners weren’t working either, he realized dully. His jaw was throbbing badly, badly enough to make it hard to think. A pair of strong arms caught him and yanked him backward, practically throwing him out through the hatch. More security officers flooded into the section, stunners at the ready. Matt noticed that a number carried chemical weapons.

  He rubbed his jaw as he was thrust to the rear. He tasted blood on his tongue.

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

  “I’ve been better,” he managed. Carla looked uninjured but was clearly shaken. He didn’t feel much better himself. “Are you all right?”

  “My pride took a beating,” Carla said. She smiled without humor. “A mortal wound, of course.”

  “Of course,” a new voice said. Matt looked up to see Raymond Slater. He forced himself to stand upright despite the tiredness gripping every part of his body. The security chief outranked both of them. “What happened?”

  “Brother John was raving about his gods living here, sir,” Matt said. “He . . . he attacked us.”

  He turned to watch as he heard the security team dragging a set of zip-tied prisoners through the hatch. Brother John was bleeding from a nasty wound to the forehead, but his eyes were defiant. Matt fought the urge to take a step backward as the fanatic glared at him. His hands were tied behind his back, yet Matt had no doubt that Brother John was a dangerous man. The other four prisoners looked just as fanatical, save for a man who was already threatening to sue the security team for everything they had.

  “Take them to the cells,” Slater ordered. “We’ll discuss formal charges later.”

  His hand snapped at the air. Matt stared at him in complete incomprehension, then understood. Slater was seeing the flickers too. They were all seeing the flickers. He shivered, wondering what it meant. Nancy Cavendish had talked about hearing voices, hadn’t she? Perhaps Brother John wasn’t insane after all.

  Carla cleared her throat. “What do we do now, sir?”

  “Keep feeding the passengers,” Slater said. “Unless you think we should seal the hatches and leave them to starve?”

  “No, sir,” Matt said. Slater looked tired too. “Will your team remain here?”

  “For the moment,” Slater said. He paused. “Do I misremember, Steward, or do you have an EVA certificate?”

  Matt blinked, not seeing the connection. “Yes, sir,” he said, surprised. It wasn’t exactly uncommon. He’d needed to cross-train, and EVA had sounded fun, but he’d never had the opportunity to use his skills. “I have a first-rate civil EVA badge.”

  “Then report to the shuttlebay at 1700,” Slater ordered. “I need EVA-qualified personnel.”

  Carla looked astonished. “Sir, I thought everyone in security had a full certification . . .”

  “Yes,” Slater said in a tone that suggested he thought he was talking to a particularly stupid child. “However, I cannot spare more than two or three of my people. They are also trained in riot control and emergency medicine.”

  Carla flushed angrily. “Sir,” she said stiffly. “In that case, Matt needs some sleep.”

  Slater looked Matt up and down, then nodded. “Find yourself a bed and get some kip,” he ordered. “I’m sure someone else can help distribute the food.”

  Matt fought down the urge to tell the security chief just what he thought of him undercutting Carla so blatantly. “Yes, sir,” he said. “I’ll get some rest now.”

  “Very good,” Slater said.

  “And that means actual rest,” Carla reminded him. “Go straight back to the wardroom and sleep.”

  “I will,” Matt promised. “See you soon.”

  “There’s nothing that can be done for your arm right now,” Marie said. Her voice was surprisingly compassionate. “I’m going to bind it up for the moment. Don’t try to use it.” She looked at Angela. “Pass me the bandages.”

  Angela was too tired to be surprised. Marie . . . a qualified nurse? Angela had certainly never assumed that her governess was qualified to do more than merely supervise her charge’s life. But she supposed it made sense. Angela had never gone in for dangerous sports, unlike some of the other aristocratic children she’d known, but she might have changed her mind at any moment. And the prospect of injury on a camping trip could never be eliminated completely.

  Not that I would have wanted to take her with me, she thought as she removed the bandage from its packaging. She’d become something of an expert in preparing bandages over the last few hours. Marie had dragged her to Sickbay and put her to work. She would just have dampened everything.

  “Hold still,” Marie said. She took the bandage and wrapped it around the young woman’s arm. “Try not to move the arm while the bandage is settling into place.”

  The woman whimpered, sweat clearly visible on her forehead. Angela shuddered despite herself. She’d seen a handful of war reports, but they’d all been surprisingly cheery about death and injury rates. None had shown the effects of the war on something as fragile as a single human body, let alone hundreds of thousands of innocent victims . . .

  She shook her head. She was woolgathering.

  “It hurts,” the woman managed. She was clenching her uncovered fist. “Can’t you . . . can’t you give me something for the pain?”

  “We don’t have any painkiller tabs left,” Marie said. “The pain will have to be borne.”

  She helped the woman to her feet and escorted her out the hatch. Angela watched, feeling cold. Marie had lied. She knew Marie had lied. And yet . . . she glanced at Nancy, who was sitting on the chair staring at nothing. Her sister was mumbling to herself. Angela didn’t recognize the language.

  “Find the next set of bandages,” Marie ordered. “We have seven more people to help—”

  “You lied to her,” Angela said, without thinking. “We have boxes of painkiller tabs.”

  Marie looked pained. “We can’t spare them,” she said. She jabbed a finger at the bulkhead, indicating the emergency ward beyond. “There are people who we can’t save too. They’ll die in the next few hours . . .”

  “You could help them,” Angela protested. “Marie—”

  Her governess met her eyes. Angela recoiled. Marie was . . . different. She wondered, suddenly, if her governess had always worn a mask. She’d never been scared of Marie—angry, yes; resentful, yes—but scared? She’d never been scared . . . it dawned on her, suddenly, that perhaps she should have been scared all along. What was Marie, really?

  She swallowed. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

  “We have a very limited supply of working medical equipment,” Marie said. “Our supplies of drugs are far lower. The synthesizers are completely offline. We cannot hand out drugs to everyone without running out, nor can we afford to treat everyone who needs to be treated. There are people over there”—she jabbed a finger at the bulkhead again—“who are dying because we cannot give them the treatment they need. We cannot even make their last hours easier.”

  Angela stared at her. “You’re just going to let them die?”

  Marie cocked h
er head. “What would you have us do?”

  “Save them,” Angela insisted.

  “How?” Marie asked. “With what? We are cut off from the outside universe, dependent on our own resources, and those resources are not up to the task. All we can do is let those people die, because the drugs that will ease their last moments will give the others a fighting chance.” Her voice hardened. “This is the reality of life for uncounted trillions of people throughout history,” she said. Angela took a step backward. “They cannot escape the realities of life, Angela. You can’t either, not any longer. Your family name means nothing in . . . in this place. If it was you lying on one of those beds, you’d be left to die too.”

  “That’s not fair,” Angela said.

  “The universe isn’t fair,” Marie snapped. “You were raised in a protective cocoon. You never saw the harsh reality of life.”

  “I’m going to marry Finley,” Angela protested. She didn’t want to marry Finley, but she would. For the family. “That’s—”

  “Oh, terrible,” Marie mocked. “Poor little rich girl. Do you want to know what some girls have to do to survive? You are a spoiled little brat.”

  Angela clenched her fists. “I’m not spoiled!”

  “Yes, you are,” Marie said. She reached out and tapped Angela’s forehead. “How long have I been your governess?”

  “A million years,” Angela muttered.

  “Ten years,” Marie corrected. “It only feels like a million years. And spoiled is a very good word for you.” She cleared her throat. “Get the next set of bandages ready. While we’ve been arguing, people have been dying.”

  Angela hesitated, then hurried to obey.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  “We’ve simplified everything as much as possible,” Slater said as he inspected the small group of explorers. “But we cannot afford to rely on any of our navigation aids.”

  Matt swallowed, hard. He hadn’t slept well once he’d returned to his bunk. In truth, he felt as though he hadn’t slept at all. He’d awoken four times from nightmares he hadn’t been able to remember. Judging from some of the other muttered comments, he wasn’t the only one to have an uneasy sleep. Slater didn’t look any better.

  “Check your suits, then cross-check,” Slater said. “Evans, you’re paired with me.”

  “Yes, sir,” Matt said. It was the last thing he wanted, but he understood the logic. The remainder of the away team had worked together before. “My suit appears to be in working order.”

  “Remember to be careful,” Slater said. He checked Matt’s life-support system, then motioned for Matt to return the favor. “We can’t rely on anything.”

  Matt nodded in agreement. The list of system failures was growing longer by the hour, an endless liturgy of disaster. Some of the failures were annoying—losing the entertainment databases was hardly a major problem, under the circumstances—but others posed a serious threat to the entire crew. Two decks had to be isolated after their local life-support systems had failed completely and refused to be reactivated, no matter what the engineers tried. A second string of such failures would doom the entire ship.

  He locked his helmet in place, then tested the radio. It worked, but a hiss of static bothered him. Slater had speculated that something about the local region of space absorbed energy. The team would be leaving a string of relay beacons in their wake as they moved towards the derelict ship, but Matt knew better than to rely on them too. It was growing harder and harder to disbelieve the rumors about an alien trap . . .

  Alien ships are out there, he thought as they walked towards the hatch. Who knows? One of them might still be active.

  The hatch hissed open. Matt braced himself, then stepped into space. The sickly yellow-green radiance washed over him, casting Supreme into stark relief. There was no visible source, save perhaps for the sheets of energy in the distance. They were trapped inside a hyperspace bubble, something he’d thought existed only in bad movies. Surely, if there was such a bubble, there would be no way out.

  He told himself to stop being silly as Slater led them away from Supreme. They’d gotten in, somehow. Logically, there had to be a way out too. Alerts flashed up in his suit’s HUD as the team moved farther away, warning him of everything from an air leak to total systems failure. He forced himself to remain calm, somehow. The radio hissed, relaying messages from the rest of the team . . . and strange hints of voices that were never quite clear, no matter how hard he tried to pick them out of the background. He couldn’t shake the sensation that they were being watched.

  The alien graveyard unfolded itself before them as they pressed onwards. A jumbled mass of starships, ranging from simple designs close to humanity’s work to designs that made very little sense at all. One looked like a squashed spider, another a giant tear drop; a third, largest of all, favored a bird in flight. They were all covered in sickly green light, making it hard to study the craft closely. He’d seen hundreds of fictional designs in dozens of movies, but something about the alien ships defied him to say they were human. The people who’d designed the vessels had different ideas about how the universe worked.

  “That might be a hyperspace motivator,” Lieutenant Avis Grosskopf said. The muscular security officer sounded nervous. Matt had seen her at work, subduing rowdy passengers. He wouldn’t have dared to tangle with her in a bar fight. “Those spider legs might be a way of manipulating space-time to provide propulsion.”

  “Or maybe whoever built it was a giant spider,” Lieutenant Toby Robinson said. “They might have built their ships in their own image.”

  “Perhaps we’re light-years from where we were,” Avis said. “There are no aliens within the human sphere, are there?”

  “Explored space is tiny,” Matt said. He wasn’t sure he wanted to take part in the discussion, but talking was better than being alone with his thoughts. “We’re a teeny tiny fragment of the galaxy, let alone the universe. Anything could be lurking beyond the Rim.”

  “Watching us,” Avis said. “Whoever brought us here could have yanked us millions of light-years from home.”

  “Stow that chatter,” Slater snapped. “We don’t know a damn thing about what’s actually going on, and until we do, we won’t speculate.”

  Silence fell. Matt was torn between relief and fear. The spacesuit felt cold, cramped . . . he wondered, suddenly, if he was truly alone. He shivered, helplessly. Was someone touching him? Was it just his imagination? The radio buzzed, spitting a string of nonsense words. A moment later, everyone was chattering. They’d all heard the broadcast.

  “Remain calm,” Slater ordered. “We’re moving towards our target now.”

  Matt braced himself as the ancient starship loomed up in front of them. It was definitely human, he told himself, although he couldn’t place the design. The letters on the hull were English: HMMS GLADYS. Offhand, he couldn’t recall ever hearing of a ship by that name, although that meant nothing. HMMS . . . His Majesty’s Merchant Ship. A Britannic ship, then.

  “She’s one of the explorer cruisers,” Avis said. She sounded calmer, now that they were nearing their destination. “A common design, back in the early days of hyperspace exploration.”

  Matt thought she was right. Gladys was two hundred meters from bow to stern, a long, thin cylinder of a starship with a massive drive section at the rear. Avis chatted happily, telling them facts and figures Matt hadn’t particularly wanted to know. Gladys and her sisters had been designed for five-year missions into hyperspace, mapping out the first spacelanes and locating planets for human settlement. A number of those ships had gone out and never been seen again . . .

  “Evans, we’ll go in at the master hatch,” Slater ordered. “The rest of you, remain behind.”

  “Aye, sir,” Avis said.

  Matt steered his way down towards the hatch, following Slater. Up close, the starship had an air of age that somehow chilled him to the core. The sensation of being watched was growing stronger, nagging at his mind. Slat
er didn’t seem to be bothered as he wrestled with the hatch, but Matt had his doubts. The ancient vessel felt creepy. The hatch opened. The inner hatch was already ajar.

  “She’s depressurized,” Slater said, sounding troubled. “That should be impossible.”

  “I didn’t see any visible damage, sir,” Avis said. “Do you want us to come in with you?”

  “Not yet,” Slater said. “Evans, follow me.”

  He switched on his helmet flashlight and swam into the ancient ship. Matt followed, shining his light around. Gladys appeared to be completely powered down. No lighting, no gravity . . . nothing. His suit told him, just for a moment, that the air was safe to breathe . . . he stared at the reading in disbelief. The hatch was open. The ship could not have air.

  Something flickered at the corner of his eye. The sensation of being watched was impossible to ignore any longer.

  “This way,” Slater said. “Follow me.”

  Matt swam after Slater as he led the way deeper into the derelict. The shadows seemed to move as he watched, drawing back . . . he forced himself to remain calm, somehow. Slater paused in front of an inner hatch, then started to open it. An instant later, a corpse drifted through . . .

  “Shit,” Matt said. He felt warm liquid trickling down his leg. “Sir, I—”

  “It’s dead,” Slater said dryly. He sounded oddly reassured. “And . . . that’s interesting.”

  Matt frowned as he inspected the body. He’d seen holos of corpses preserved in vacuum before, but . . . the body before him looked dried out, fully desiccated. Matt had the strangest feeling that a single touch would crumble the entire cadaver to dust. It made no sense at all. In the void of space, the corpse should have been frozen solid.

  “We’ve found a body,” Slater said, for the benefit of the recorders. “Apparently male . . . no sign of visible genitals . . . appears to be in its early thirties. I can’t say for sure, but the rank badges suggest a commander. The body seems to be a husk, nothing more.”