by F P Adriani
Karen spoke, and there was an unsteadiness to her voice now: “I don’t know what you mean: cut off the curon stream at that instant, or begin cutting it off before that deadline so the stream stops at that instant?”
“The latter would be best. You do have some wiggle room. I’m trying to get you as close to us as possible without your overshooting where we are. We’re in the middle of a delicate job inside the torsional anomaly; we’re removing a device that we don’t want to affect, so we must remain stationary with respect to the anomaly. If you overshoot where we want you to go, you will be on your own to get back here, and that will waste more time.”
“Talk about pressure,” Karen said over the line, her voice sharper than normal. I could have sworn I heard her breathing too hard.
“Just do the best you can, Karen,” I said fast. “If you can’t make the cut-off, we’ll deal with any consequences later.”
“Damn,” Karen said now, “we’ve used up a lot of fuel so far—even more than I thought we would. We’ll have enough to make it there, but what about after….”
“Don’t think about it now. Just carry on till the countdown,” I said, taking my fingers off the intercom—and taking a deep breath. My hands were shaking like a flesh earthquake, and I had a pain in the center of my forehead.
I was rubbing there when I heard Kostas’ voice again: “Captain Zarro, I’m happy to tell you that the threat from the mistake has passed.”
Several heads on the bridge whipped my way.
“What threat—what mistake?” Chen asked quickly.
“What are you referring to, Kostas?” Jim said in a wary, unlike-him voice.
“Captain Zarro needed to hear what I said, but we will not waste time discussing this now,” Kostas replied. “I am sending some instructions to your device, Jim, for when you reach the anomaly. You will guide Captain Zarro and her crew.”
“To where?” I said, my hands grabbing the arms of my chair tightly. “I hope you’re not going to tell me we’ve got to climb another mountain.”
“No. No mountains,” Kostas said. “Pay attention to the countdown signal, please.”
“I’m on it,” Karen said. I had just opened the intercom line again and, this time, I left it open permanently, at least for now, so everyone could just talk back and forth whenever. However, I never preferred loud noises and lots of talking on my ship or anywhere else while I needed to do something that required focusing; nor did I think that type of the-line’s-always-open set-up was good for my crew. Sometimes, in the quiet was the best way to work.
“Two minutes, Captain, and the stream will stop—oh, Steve just walked in,” Karen said now.
I sighed. “I told him to stay in bed—he’s really drunk!”
“Frankly, Captain, drunk or not, I’m glad he’s here. There was just me, Sam and Cambridge.”
“The three of you handled the curon skipping alone?!”
“Captain Zarro,” Cambridge said over the line now, “I was just offering moral support. I came down to check out engineering’s set-up just as the shit hit the fan.” There was a humorous note in his voice. This seemed to be a weird moment for anyone to feel like laughing, when we were on the verge of potentially who-knew-what. However, I, too, needed the levity now.
“It’s hit the fan before here, and it probably will again—the workers are around!” I couldn’t help laughing now, and everyone else on the bridge laughed too, except for Jim. He was staring down at his device.
“You never told me much about them,” Babs said now, looking at me.
“We will—don’t worry—or maybe you’ll learn on your own soon…. I see the numbers, Karen.” I adjusted the intercom to make sure every single area on the ship was accessible, including all of the bathrooms. Then I said, “We’re leaving the curon space and entering the torsional anomaly—stay strapped in, everybody!”
The scene on the front screen rapidly changed from a silvery, striated image to a cloudy, damp-looking space, as if the Demeter had just sailed into a fog over an ocean.
“Excellent,” Kostas finally said. “Your curon stream is off, and so are your other engines.”
Karen said now, “I anticipated you’d want us to turn off everything, Kostas, based on what happened around you in the past.”
“Excellent,” Kostas repeated. “You’re learning. Your ship’s momentum from the bubble is quickly dissipating, due to the superfriction inside the anomaly’s particulate-heavy space. You will come to almost a stop near us, and then you will be locked into our gravity field.”
I squinted at the screen and began enlarging some of the Demeter’s camera views, but every single one only showed the same foggy view of the exterior. “Where the hell are you, Kostas?”
“We’re inside the ‘anomaly’ with you. As I tried to discuss with Gary—and as I’m telling you now, the anomaly is a cloaking field. Your ship and ours are invisible to outsiders now.”
“But the UPG reported extensive damage to one of their ships when it actually penetrated the anomaly years ago,” Gary cut in.
“I never said we Keepers are the only species who use the anomaly. But, you need to ask what, exactly, the UPG ship was doing in here when it had an accident.”
Gary was frowning, and his voice was slower when he spoke this time: “That’s a good point. Well, were you speaking rhetorically, Kostas, or am I supposed to ask YOU what the UPG was doing?”
“They were testing a weapon,” Kostas said. “Their test didn’t go the way they planned.”
“I think I know the incident you’re talking about,” Babs said in an eager voice as she snapped her fingers and glanced at Gary. “Parts of the ship’s tetroxite shell were literally sheared off, and other parts were melted, and then the molecules in the melted areas bizarrely reformed into a type of radioactive substrate that gave off extremely high-energy deformed neutrons. But, as soon as the ship managed to get out of the anomaly, it was as if the radioactivity never happened. Analyses of the reformed material afterward showed no physical evidence of any prior radioactive decay. But the damage to the ship was still done.”
“I don’t know,” I said in a slow voice now. “That sounds like someone used a weapon on the ship.”
“Or maybe like someone stupidly, accidentally used a weapon on themselves,” Jim put in.
“Did anyone die?” Shirley asked. “Deformed neutrons can kill instantly. And you said the hull was pierced, Babs.”
Babs turned her head over her shoulder, then shook her head at Shirley. “You’d think there would be casualties, but I really don’t recall what happened to the crew.”
“Well, I’m assuming we won’t suffer the same fate?” Shirley asked, a tremor in her voice punctuating her question. “Captain Lydia, Kostas said something about a mistake before—”
“Captain Zarro,” Kostas cut in, “you will see our ship, the Monument, coming up on your starboard side.”
“I can’t wait,” I said in a slightly sarcastic voice, but, a moment later, I was feeling stupid over my sarcastic tone because I finally got my first glimpse of the Keeper ship.
It wasn’t the same ship I’d seen the last time I’d met up with the Keepers in space: this black ship was more streamlined and even more massive; there were several large areas of sparkling, silver-and-white, pattern-like streaks on the black, and the ship was so long, the Demeter’s computer couldn’t even detect where the Keeper ship’s shell ended in the far distance, though maybe the anomaly’s particulates were interfering with the Demeter’s equipment.
“Oh my god—that ship’s fucking incredible!” Babs said now, and she said it so fast and hard that spit flew out of her mouth. “Oh my god—the ship’s so incredible that I’m foaming at the mouth!” she added, and everyone on the bridge laughed. Well, maybe Jim didn’t laugh….
As if he knew I was thinking about him, he spoke now: “Kostas had to go do something, so she sent me the information you would understand about where we must go. You will be doc
king inside the Monument’s port side—”
“Hang on a second—what?” I said fast, twisting around in my seat to look at Jim.
His eyes rose up from his device to my eyes. “You will be journeying with us.”
“I don’t like the familiar sound of that,” Gary replied, his eyes locking on Jim.
But Jim only shook his head. “Don’t worry—it’s not what it sounds like.”
“Yeah,” I said, “in reality, it’s probably worse. I thought we were just coming here to talk, and maybe you crowd could lend us some weapons by now. Do you need a planet to fall on your heads—do I? You implied we’re under threat again. So help us out, in a real way, finally.”
“As you know,” Jim said in his Jim-dull way, “the Keepers are not a war-like species. They—we primarily take care of the Tasui. We document history, both in the past and in the present. But we sometimes must intervene, especially if we’re asked.”
“Intervene in what?” I said on a frown.
Jim seemed to straighten in his chair. “I am sending Karen the necessary information for where and how to dock inside the Monument. We will explain more inside.”
“Goddamn you people,” I growled. But then my anger quickly deflated some. “Karen, just do what he says. What choice do I have? They, well, they scared me into coming here, and now I guess I’ve got to see it through.”
The instructions Jim sent to my ship indicated we had to move toward one of those patterned areas on the Monument’s dark hull.
“Because you are inside our gravity field now,” Jim said, his eyes on his device, “you will only need the proper velocity direction to take you to the door. It will be opening in ten seconds.”
The spot on the Keeper ship did as Jim said; golden light spilled out the huge doorway, which light reminded me of the Keeper areas inside the Rintu mountain. The Demeter slowly closed the gap with the Monument now, but I couldn’t make out any forms inside the golden opening, even when I enlarged my front viewscreen’s image.
“It doesn’t look very interesting inside there,” I mumbled.
“Lydia,” Gary said in one of his sudden, something’s-wrong voices, “the sensors are showing a loss of integrity in the Rodrum Barrier in aft Nozzle 1. One of the electromagnetic connectors seems to have developed a tear in the circuitry.”
“Well, that’s just great,” I said. The Rodrums protected the ship’s engines—and the ship, period—from backflow through the nozzles when the Demeter was traveling in an atmosphere at low speeds or was idling. And I really didn’t need anymore goddamn issues with backflow, especially when we were flying in a particulate-heavy area—
“Jim,” I said, my head whipping in his direction, “did this anomaly area damage my ship?”
“We will be out of this space in a moment,” he said.
“That does not answer my question.”
Unbelievably, Jim blushed. “I don’t have an answer to your question. I am on my own at the moment because both Kostas and the Keepers are busy with that device. I was not a space-faring person when I set out to find Rintu years ago. I was dropped into the gravity cloud in an emergency pod by the ship I hired to take me there and drop me there. I am not a very technically proficient person outside of doing things like manipulating my worker-suit and the Keeper-devices I’ve learned to use.”
“So, you’re telling me we’re supposed to land inside the Monument, but you don’t know a damn thing about my ship—and the Keepers aren’t helping you with the Monument right now?”
Jim lifted his device toward me. “I have the information on here Kostas sent me to give you.”
“Captain,” came Steve’s voice, “we hear what’s happening on the bridge, and I can’t get anymore data than what Gary said about the Rodrum—I don’t know if it’s my fuzzy brain from the booze or what. But when we dock inside, I’ll disconnect the nozzle from the engine-joints and visually check it out.”
“I do believe that won’t be necessary,” Jim said.
“Jim,” Karen cut in over the line, “what are we supposed to do next here?”
“As far as I can tell, you are exactly where you need to be to enter the Monument.”
Jim’s “as far as I can tell” was apparently not that far, because as the Demeter finally nosed its way into the golden Monument space, I heard a loud craaaaaaack.
I nearly shot out of my seat, half in fear, half in anger—I wasn’t sure which I should feel—
“Was that you or us?!?” I demanded in Jim’s direction.
“It was you,” Jim said, in a very small voice.
“Dammit,” Steve said over the intercom. “We’ve got damage to the hull, over where the forward weapons-array protrudes.”
I threw up my hands. “Ah, more great stuff! More great timing!”
Karen’s voice: “Captain, look at the view—we’re in all the way now, and we’re slowly being turned around.”
“Just don’t work any of your equipment right now,” Jim said, but I felt really dubious about anything he could say about landing in the Monument.
“Keep a close eye on the numbers till we’re 100% still inside here, Karen,” I said fast. Then my eyes fixed on the viewscreen.
Now that we were inside the Monument and we didn’t have the anomaly’s matter clouding our cameras, the Keeper ship’s interior space looked even brighter. It also looked bigger—a lot bigger. The area here was very level and it apparently stretched far into the distance both behind and on the left side of the Demeter. The hangar wall on the right side appeared to be half-stone and half the same shiny black building-material that was common on Rintu. It definitely looked like we were in another of the city-ships from there.
I asked Jim about that, and he replied: “Yes, we are. This is one of the largest we have. And you are the first non-workers to be inside it.”
The Demeter finally stopped. And I quickly undid my strap and stood up to face Jim. “Thanks for the honor, but once again I’m screwed here.” My hand shot out in no particular direction. “Will you use that yellow beam-thing of yours to fix my problems this time? I’ve got an outer-hull breach and part of the forward weapons-array has been CRUSHED—I only just bought the fucking thing!”
“I can’t answer your questions,” Jim said in that small voice again. “But you are here now, hopefully for a time. I misspoke before: you have a choice here. I didn’t mean to suggest we will be forcing you to do anything. Though we do need you to do something.”
I didn’t know how to respond to his semi-conciliatory mouthful, and my other crewmembers on the bridge and around the ship were now discussing what to do about the damages….
“You know what, Lydia?” Babs suddenly said, sounding a bit out of breath. “I see why you were reticent about my coming on here again. You were right; things have changed. And in such a bizarre way.”
“Yeah!” I shot out now, shaking my head and sighing.
*
My crew and I finally had a few moments to catch our breath; Jim told me the workers needed a bit more time to prepare some things on the Monument. I shrugged at Jim, but my mind was on the state my ship was in, the broken state, which had unfortunately become a much more common occurrence lately.
I was still on my bridge now, but I was coordinating with Karen and Steve down in engineering on the damages—and trying to answer any questions my crew had, including from Cambridge, who had joined us all on the bridge.
“I don’t think I’ve had this much excitement since the last time I was on Diamond ten years ago!” Cambridge said. “Do you crowd always have such strange stuff to do?”
“Um, yeah—lately,” I said in a dry voice.
“I’m trying to get a reading on the glossy black material out there in the hangar,” Babs said, from the navigator’s seat and panel still. “But there’s a substance I can’t understand interrupting the molecular structure of the lumenite—at least I think it’s lumenite—”
“Don’t frustrate yourself, Babs,�
�� Gary said. He was standing beside me now; I was in my chair. “On Rintu, I worked on that for days, and every time I thought I came up with the answer, I’d then get data that negated it.”
“Well,” Babs said on a frown, “maybe the mysterious compound changes composition.”
Gary pointed a forefinger her way. “Exactly.”
Kostas’ voice again: “Captain Zarro, please have all of your crew exit your ship. Jim, lead them to the small meeting room. Devin is opening the door now.”
On my front viewscreen, a small, bright, rectangular spot appeared on the hangar’s massive side wall.
“My crew and I will be there in a little bit,” I finally said to Kostas.
*
My “little bit” wound up being more than a little bit because some of my crew were worn out from our emergency exit from Makron and from our stay on there—like Matt, who uncharacteristically said to me, “I’m too tired to deal with worker bullshit now.”
I had gone to get him in his cabin, and he was still in his pajamas. He was so beat that he’d slept in his cabin wall-straps through half the emergency flight from the station, and he hadn’t even had any booze at dinner. However, he had been on alert all day at Makron Station; that must have taken a toll: his big body was slightly hunched now, his eyelids slightly puffy.
I patted him on his back in a sympathetic yet vigorous way as I coaxed him toward his cabin door. “Matt, we’re all beat, but you know how it goes with the Keepers. We’ve got to go out there now.”
“In my PJs?” he crabbed.
“Yeah, in your PJs.”
*
Every member of my crew finally made it down to the cargo bay; then May punched the wall-controls to open the inner and outer doors. Chen and Jim moved to beside her, and the three of them walked out of the ship and onto the ramp; everyone followed them, including me. Babs and Cambridge were behind me, and they remained behind me as we walked across the flat expanse of the Monument’s hangar, then through the doorway into the “small” meeting room, which looked as big as an auditorium.