by Eric Warren
“Cortez, get us closer, but not too close. Let’s see if we can determine if the ship is still there.” Greene turned to Yamashita. “Is that distress call repeating on auto?”
“Yes sir,” she replied.
“It’s probably been on repeat for twenty-seven years,” Evie said, some of the color having returned to her face.
“This may not be the heaviest trafficked part of space but ships come through here all the time, one of them would have picked it up before us,” Greene said. “So why does it only show up now?”
“We’re in position sir,” Cortez said.
Greene turned to his Ops officer. “Zaal?”
“I’m still not detecting any foreign bodies. But to be honest I can’t determine anything beyond the event horizon. Something is blocking us from scanning deep within. It’s like it is invisible to us.”
“Damn,” Greene said. “We don’t have time for this. Ensign notify Coalition Central to send an investigative unit out here to take a look and send them what little data we have. If anyone is still alive out there they’ll have to make it a few more days until another ship can get here. We can’t waste time chasing ghosts when we have a real threat to deal with.”
“Aye,” Yamashita replied.
“Cortez, get us back on track and through the nebula. I want to get back in the undercurrents as soon as possible.”
“Yes sir,” she replied.
Evie turned on Cas again, as if only now remembering he was still there. “Did you misunderstand your order, Commander?”
Cas grimaced. He’d been so involved in watching the spectacle he’d ignored what she’d said. “No,” he replied through gritted teeth.
“Then I suggest you follow it.” Evie put additional emphasis on the last word.
Cas held her gaze. “Yes, ma’am.” He returned to the hypervator, not daring to look back at her.
“Sir?” he heard Cortez say, her voice wavering. Cas was almost back to the hypervator again and was determined not to look back. He needed to follow orders.
“I can’t seem to move.” Cortez said. “The ship is stuck.”
11
“What do you mean, stuck?” Greene asked, raising his voice.
“The engines are responding but we’re not going anywhere,” Cortez replied. When he’d heard her speak Cas had stopped himself from getting back on the hypervator.
“Commander Blohm to the bridge,” Evie said, then opened a comm to engineering. “Sesster, what’s going on down there? We’re not moving.”
“We don’t see a problem down here, Commander,” Tyler replied for Sesster.
Greene motioned for Cas to check out the currently empty engineering station. Evie scowled but didn’t object. He went to the engineering station on the other side of the captain and pulled up all the status updates. “I don’t see anything wrong here either,” Cas replied. “All our systems are working fine; we’re just not moving. It’s an external force.”
The hypervator doors opened and Blohm stepped on to the bridge. Cas stood from her station and moved to the side. “What did you find out?” she whispered to him.
He shook his head, caught off-guard by her conversational tone. He hadn’t spent much time with the bridge engineer, but when they had interacted it had always been pleasant. “Not much. I don’t see anything wrong with the system.”
She smirked at him then turned her attention to the station. “Confirmed. All our systems are completely fine.”
“Zaal?” Greene asked.
“I don’t understand, sir. There is nothing I can find that would be holding us in place. We’re alone out here. And there are no anomalies I can detect.”
“I want everyone in the conference room in five minutes,” Greene said. “Until then shut down propulsion. No sense in wasting our effort if we don’t know what we’re dealing with.” He tapped his own comm. “Rafnkell, conference room five minutes.” Her acknowledgment came through.
Seeing nothing else he could do, Cas headed for the hypervator once again. “You too, Commander,” Greene said. “I want all heads in on this.”
“Yes, sir,” Cas said, hesitating. He shot Evie a look but she had turned her back to him, instead studying what little information was on the screen. But when he glanced at Blohm she gave him a wink and followed Greene through the doors into the conference room adjacent to the bridge.
***
“For those of you who aren’t up to speed on our situation we seem to have lost the ability to propel ourselves,” Greene said, standing at the head of the long table. Around him sat the entire senior staff: Evie, Zaal, Yamashita, Blohm, Xax, and Rafnkell with Cas at the very end. “According to our engineering team our systems are working fine, but we need to find a way to move again. We’re already off-schedule and can’t afford to sit around here waiting for rescue.”
“How far away is the next closest Coalition ship?” Xax asked.
“Ten days,” Zaal replied. “I’ve already sent word to the fleet.”
“We can’t afford two days much less ten. Whatever this armada out there is, it’s coming for us and the Coalition needs us to be its eyes and ears. So we need to figure out why we can’t move, and how to break free. I’m willing to hear suggestions.” He took a seat.
“Without knowing what we’re dealing with our options are limited,” Zaal said. “But we could try polarizing the ship, see if there is some kind of magnetic force holding us in place.”
Evie turned to Cas. “Could Zenfor’s work on enhancing our defenses have backfired? Could her upgrades be what is holding us in place?”
“I don’t see how,” Cas replied. “But you need to ask her. She knows more about what she’s doing than I do.” Blohm’s eyes lingered on him a moment longer than necessary before she turned her attention back to Greene. He tapped his new comm in the back of his hand. “Consul Zenfor, will you please report to the main conference room?”
“I understand,” she replied.
“Didn’t the message from the Iphigenia say something about being trapped in a gravity well?” Yamashita asked. “Wasn’t that what the Sil used to hold us?”
“I don’t think—” Cas began when the door opened to reveal Zenfor. “That was fast.”
“I was on my way to retrieve you. I’ve made a breakthrough.”
“Consul, will you please join us.” Greene indicated for her to take the seat beside Cas. “We’ve been caught in some kind of gravity situation and the ship can’t move. It has been suggested your improvements to our shielding might be to blame.”
“Impossible,” Zenfor replied, taking the seat. “The enhancements can’t hold you in place. But they will hold a foreign object a certain distance from the hull.”
“And there’s no way they could have malfunctioned?” Evie asked.
“No.”
“Does this sound like anything your people might use? Anything familiar?”
She considered it. “I’d have to study the phenomenon more closely. It sounds like the device we used to immobilize your ship—a gravity net. Though those eventually crush whatever they are holding.”
“Were we seeing any pressure or shearing forces on the hull?” Greene asked.
“No sir, just a pull in one direction. Nothing to indicate structural failure,” Zaal replied.
That seemed to satisfy the captain. “Very well. Let’s move on. Other suggestions?”
“We could…” Yamashita paused and gave Zenfor a quick glance before continuing. “We could send vibrations through the hull, see if a certain frequency might break us loose.”
“Yeah, and shake us all to death in the process,” Rafnkell replied.
“Not if we crank up the dampeners on the ship,” Yamashita said, her cheeks blushing.
“Captain,” Rafnkell turned toward Greene. “Let me and the ‘wings go out there, see if we can’t find anything on the ship holding it in place. If not, we can set off some controlled explosions to dislodge the ship if she’s caught in
something.”
“Any miscalculation on your part would result in significant damage to the ship,” Zaal said.
“This one over here just said her shielding prevents anything from hitting the hull.” She stood and pointed at Zenfor. “I should be able to drop a bomb on the—”
“That’s enough, Chief,” Greene said. “The fact is we don’t know enough about what we’re dealing with to try any of these things. Does anyone have any suggestions of ways to improve the sensors so we can determine what’s holding us?”
“I could modify some of your probes to be more effective,” Zenfor said. “They would be able to run through multiple spectrographic layers whereas they are only capable of using one at the moment.”
“How long would that take?” Greene asked.
“A few hours at most. With the Commander’s help.” She shot a quick look to Cas. “And some of the engineering crew.”
“Pull whomever you need.” Greene stood. “And I want an update in one hour. Once we know what’s got us here, perhaps we can implement some of the other suggestions.”
“Sir?” Evie interjected. “What about the concerns Ensign Yamashita first raised?”
Cas stopped short of standing. What was she doing? The captain had already dismissed those concerns.
Half the faces in the room turned toward Greene while the others trained their sights on Zenfor. Greene seemed to think it over. “Consul. You are sure what is holding us is in no way related to the gravity well your people used on us back at Quaval?”
Zenfor took her time responding. “Yes.”
“I believe your people used an artificial well, correct?” Blohm said. “That type of well emits micro radiation we can easily detect. But I scanned for the same radiation here and came up with nothing. Whatever this is, it’s not the same.”
Cas was impressed. Why was Blohm coming to Zenfor’s defense? He thought he would have had to ward off the question and he hadn’t been quite sure how to do it. Was it because she genuinely didn’t suspect Zenfor or had those just been the facts? Regardless, right now he could reach across the table and kiss the woman.
“Then if there’s nothing else,” Greene said, glancing around. “Everyone get to work. I want to be out of this thing in six hours or less.”
Everyone stood, and Cas noticed Zenfor give a subtle nod to Blohm before they exited. He also noticed the bridge engineer’s gaze lingered on them as they left the conference room. “Your species is very…diverse,” Zenfor said as they reached the hypervator.
“Tell me about it,” Cas replied.
12
Evie perched on the edge of her chair on the bridge, studying what little information she could find on the USCS Iphigenia. The records listed her as lost somewhere in this sector with no explanation given. The ship had made one distress call but it had taken Coalition ships over a week to reach this area. Despite a massive search no evidence of the ship being destroyed was ever found and no explanation for her disappearance existed. She was simply missing. So then why after all this time had Tempest picked up her distress call? Could the ship have been thrown through time and that was why there had been no trace? Perhaps there was a temporal anomaly close by which connected space to the past.
“Zaal, have you scanned for tachyons?” she asked.
“Yes, Commander,” Zaal said in his strange voice. “There was no indication.”
What in the living hell was going on out there? She had half a mind to jump in a shuttle and go see for herself, but she didn’t want to get trapped in the same snare that held Tempest.
But what if Zenfor’s probes didn’t work? The captain had made it clear they couldn’t wait around for rescue. There was a good chance if they were stuck here much longer the captain wouldn’t be able to approve her detour to Cypaxia. There wouldn’t be time anymore. They needed a backup plan; something in case the probes couldn’t find anything about what was holding them in place. Rafnkell had suggested some kind of explosive blast to knock them out of whatever held them in place. It was crude, but it might be necessary.
“Diazal to Rafnkell,” Evie said, tapping her comm.
“Go ahead.”
“Your comment about using the spacewings to shake the ship loose. I want to keep that in our back pocket in case we need it. How soon can you be ready?”
“Considering I don’t know what we’re dealing with out there, I couldn’t say, Commander. I’d like to make some modifications to my ships down here. See if we can’t use anti-grav technology to make them impervious to whatever is out there. If you can spare an engineer or two we could get started. We could test the modifications to see if the ships can fly without getting trapped out there before we implemented anything for Tempest.”
“That’s a good idea. I’ll see if I can’t get you some help down there. Diazal out.” Evie moved to make another call down to engineering but stopped short. She didn’t want to pull anyone from engineering if she didn’t have to; they were all working double-time down there. But there was one qualified engineer on board without an official duty list.
She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. Even though she didn’t necessarily want to, this might need to take place in-person. She and Cas hadn’t been on the same page ever since his reinstatement and even though she knew it was partly her own fault she couldn’t help it. But she had to admit he’d taken his duties more seriously than she’d expected. Either he was stellar at pretending or he had moved past everything the Coalition had done to him—something she hadn’t thought possible. And if he had, good for him. He didn’t deserve to be punished for it. But at the same time it made it difficult to know where his loyalties lay. If he could turn on a switch and go back to the organization that had betrayed him like nothing had ever happened, what else was he capable of?
Evie stepped on the hypervator with thoughts of apologies swirling through her mind. Why did it make her so angry he’d regained his old rank? She’d even gone so far as to call out Zenfor in the conference meeting; something she’d never thought she’d do. And unfortunately, she’d embarrassed poor Laura in the process, who had returned to the tactical station with her face all red and eyes avoiding Evie at all costs. She sighed. Another apology for later. When had things on this ship become so complicated? In the beginning it was easy; she knew her duty, she performed it and went about her day. But the longer she stayed in a place and the more she got to know people the more complicated things became. She’d never been great at interpersonal interactions; but she knew enough to get by. What was it they said? Fake it ‘till you make it? Evie felt like she’d be faking it for the rest of her life. If only people were as simple as work.
The hypervator let her off on level ten and it was only a few short steps to the weapons lab. She tapped the entrance with the back of her hand and the doors slid open to reveal Cas and Zenfor, their heads hunched over different stations. Cas glanced up as she entered and dropped his gaze again.
“Commander. Consul,” Evie said.
Zenfor looked over her shoulder. “Commander Diazal. Is there a problem?”
She glanced around the room. “How are the probes progressing?”
“They should be ready within the hour,” Zenfor replied.
“That’s good news. Do you still need Commander Robeaux’s help?”
“I can manage without him if that’s what you’re asking.”
Cas glanced up at the mention of his name again and Evie’s eyes met his for the first time. “Commander, I’d like you to report to Bay Two to help Chief Rafnkell with some modifications on the spacewing fighters. She has some ideas about—”
“Unbelievable,” he muttered under his breath.
She held her tongue at issuing the retort bubbling up her throat. Her eyes flicked to Zenfor who was looking at her over her shoulder again. “Report to Bay Two immediately, Commander.”
Cas pulled his fist to his chest in salute. “Yes, ma’am,” he said with sarcasm dripping from his voice.
> “Is there a problem?” She hated the way her voice sounded. It was like she was scolding a child. But then again he was acting like one. Maybe if he didn’t want to be treated like that he shouldn’t be acting this way.
“Oh, no problem at all, Commander Diazal. No problem. At. All.”
She bit her lip to keep from snapping. Here it was. The cracks were finally showing through. He’d been away too long and it had just taken time for the pressure to build. This was not the man she’d rescued from the Sargans, or even the one who had risked himself to contact the Sil. This was a man constrained by something he couldn’t handle. “One more smart remark and you’ll be written up. Now. Proceed to the Bay, Mr. Robeaux.”
Evie caught him wince and he moved to open his mouth but apparently thought better of it as he cut his eyes to the floor and made his way out of the room. Evie glanced back over to Zenfor who was still watching the two of them. She didn’t like doing this in front of the consul but he wasn’t giving her a lot of options. He passed her without another word and left the weapons lab. Evie hadn’t realized she’d been holding her breath. She hated the combativeness of it all, but he seemed determined to keep playing this charade, no matter how transparent it was to everyone else he just couldn’t fit back into the Coalition. She turned her attention to Zenfor. “I assume you have everything you need?”
“I’ll be fine. If I need further assistance, I’ll ask Commander Sesster.”
Evie nodded, ashamed she hadn’t handled Cas better. She took another cursory glance around the room then turned on her heel and exited. Maybe she needed to ease up on Cas. After all the Coalition had put him through hell and the last thing he needed was another officer souring its good reputation. Or maybe he was doing it all on purpose. Maybe he was determined to have a bad experience as an officer so he could say he tried and it was obvious everyone was against him. Why was she so opposed to him regaining his rank again anyway? Was it because it undercut everything he’d ever complained about the Coalition? Or jealousy someone could be reinstated, just like that after seven years with no other consequence? She didn’t think that was it but she had to consider all possibilities. Something was fueling this antagonism and she needed to figure out what was going on. Because if it really was her and not him, she needed to fix it before things got any worse.