by David Smith
Even knowing all that, they’d found that the numbers still didn’t stack up. Commander Ruiz had recently run a scan to check that the security systems hadn’t been tampered with. This had shown that instead of the four hundred and ninety-six people expected, Tiger was carrying over five hundred.
A scan of DNA signatures had been undertaken as a result but only four hundred and ninety five distinct patterns were identified. The incident that had created an exact duplicate of Aisling O’Mara had immediately come to mind. It was apparent that somebody was up to no good and the finger of suspicion had immediately pointed in Chief Reuben Money’s direction.
He was now in the Brig, and Hollins was considering what action to take against him and over a hundred other members of the crew. They all should have spotted and reported illegal activity when watching two versions of Seamus Donelly beat each other insensible over seven hours of bare-knuckle boxing. Apparently the bout had eventually been declared a draw when PO Starr realised the pool would need to be used again at some stage, but neither version of Donelly was willing to quit.
It later transpired that no less than twenty-two other members of the crew had been willing to pay Chief Money’s team to stage a raid to the cloning lab to create an exact copy of themselves.
Bizarrely that had even included Crewman Liz Holden of the relief phaser operations team, who was far and away the laziest member of the crew. She’d paid a thousand credits for Money to create a clone that could take her place working on the phasers. Inevitably the clone was just as lazy as the original Holden was, resulting in an increase of crew efficiency of exactly zero: The team now had two versions of Holden doing bugger all instead of one.
The untimely demise of the Astrakhan facility had prevented Chief Money from fulfilling his cloning contracts, but he’d still managed to produce eight exact copies of members of the crew.
Hollins had absolutely no idea what to do with the duplicates, nor any idea how to decide which one or both should be punished, or even how to decide who was the “original” person.
Either way, they couldn’t afford to carry all the excess personnel around. He returned to the Bridge and gave the order to return to Hole so they could off-load the extra bodies.
When the ship was underway and the Bridge was quiet, he ruminated on recent events. It was a terrible coincidence that Chowdhury had run into that last lonely predator, followed by a terrible coincidence that they’d arrived at the facility at a point that everything went wrong for them. A nagging suspicion formed in his mind. What were the odds against those events happening?
He gave himself a mental shake. He was just being paranoid. With a sigh he reminded himself that exploration was always dangerous. The need to find out what lay over the horizon had cost people their lives throughout history, and probably always would.
Cats weren’t the only thing curiosity killed.
Chapter 13: ‘The Hole’
Helm Officers Log: Lieutenant James Robert Stallworth
Star Date 9560.6
It’s been a helluva ride this last couple of months. The ship has sailed from system to system as we pretty much follow our noses, and everywhere we’ve gone has given the whole ship challenges.
My life has been relatively quiet, but the skipper is good at getting everyone involved in our missions and he’s even let me lead away teams occasionally to give me command experience.
I have to say that exploring Treaty Space after a couple of years stuck in orbit around Hole has been a real eye opener. I’ve seen first-hand how dangerous exploration can be, and understand why most people only do one or two tours before taking a more sedate job somewhere else in the fleet.
It can be quite wearing to be constantly on your guard, never knowing what’s around the next corner.
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Tiger surged through the void towards her home port of Hole, intending to off-load the evacuees from the Astrakhan facility.
They’d not been able to find out exactly where Jang had come across the alien technology, but during preliminary interviews, a couple of the scientists remembered a time a few years previously when an Astrakhan vessel had ferried staff from the facility to a seemingly innocuous star system about some twenty light-years distant from Hole.
That was further than their recent hops had taken them and the Captain had decided it was worth investing the time, but still needed to off-load the evacuees first. Dolplop had plotted the most direct course possible back to Hole, cutting through one star system rather than skirting around it in order to shave a day off the journey. Even so, it would take three weeks to get there.
As always, the trip between stars was long and boring. The engineers and ops staff quickly fell into a routine that soon became a grind.
It was the middle of the day-watch, and Commander Ruiz was on the Bridge while Captain Hollins was down discussing the upcoming mission with the science team.
Lieutenant Jim-Bob ‘Crash’ Stallworth was at the helm struggling to stay awake. Flying a starship in a dead-straight line between two stars was an important job, but it wasn’t exactly taxing.
He wasn’t the only one. Lieutenant Shearer sat at the comms station filing an already perfect nail, while ASBeau was sat with his feet up on one of the tactical consoles, snoring quietly.
Lieutenant Dolplop was next to him at the navigation console as always and Crash would swear that even the completely featureless Vosgeean looked bored.
He looked up at the stars streaming by on the main view-screen, which still had a strangely hypnotic appeal even after all his years of helming ships.
He looked down to his console to check their heading and relative speed, and that they were still on target to arrive at the predicted time. The bearing and speed had been unchanged for over a week now, while the clock showing estimated time until arrival was still ticking away, a second at a time, still several days from zero.
They were passing through the unnamed and unremarkable system that had previously been mapped by USS Magellan, but which hadn’t warranted any in-depth study.
He’d had some difficult manoeuvres to undertake recently, such as putting the ship into an orbit over that weird supra-dense planetoid, but just now he’d gladly have done something like that just to relieve the boredom. He watched the display of the long-range scanners hoping that he might need to make a course correction to break the monotony, but it seemed Dolplop had done his job thoroughly and plotted the course faultlessly
He was just wishing anything at all would happen when the ship came to a dead stop.
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One hundred and eighty-six thousand tonnes of mass takes a lot of stopping, but USS Tiger dropped out of warp in less than a millisecond. The ferocious deceleration would have torn the ship into its constituent atoms if it hadn’t been for the inertia damping field that protected the ship. Even this essential safeguard couldn’t fully protect the crew and the instantaneous concussion of the deceleration knocked everyone aboard the ship out cold.
Crash came to in the dark, the only light he could see being small coloured blobs dancing slowly in front of his eyes. Something hard was pressing against his face and her realised he was slumped forward on the helm console. He sat up with a groan. Everything ached.
The Bridge was dark and quiet apart from the odd beep from instrumentation, and odd pools of light from systems supplied with emergency backup power.
There was s beep from the Captain’s chair and Crash turned to see that Commander Ruiz wasn’t in it. He heard the Captain’s voice coming across a link from down in the Science Office on the deck below.
‘Bridge, what the hell just happened? Bridge? Hello?’
Crash realised that Commander Ruiz had been thrown out of the chair and had landed in a heap between the navigation and helm consoles. He quickly checked him. Unconscious, but breathing ok.
Dolplop seemed intact and was already trying to contact Sick-bay, but the rest of the Bridge crew were sha
ken up. ASBeau had been thrown forward too and was grumbling profanely as he unwrapped himself from the handrail in front of his console.
To Crash’s surprise, there was a wrenching noise and a small hatch under the situation board at the very rear of the Bridge popped open. At the last refit, a second turbolift shaft had been built into the Bridge and the stairs that had previously served as emergency access had been replaced by a much smaller entrance. Lieutenant Chen clambered out, followed by Orderly Helga Strauss.
‘Wow you guys got here quick!’
Chen looked surprised. ‘Quick? It’s taken us nearly half an hour to get through all the doors between here and Sick-bay.’
Crash wasn’t sure if he was joking. Chen had an odd sense of humour, but then he supposed it didn’t matter, as long as he was here to attend to Ruiz.
Chen tended the stricken First Officer while Strauss checked the rest of the Bridge staff.
Shearer seemed to be ok, and had pulled herself up on all fours, affording Crash an incredibly distracting view of the ship’s most perfect posterior, unobscured by any vestige of underwear as always.
Chief Wang Shou at the science consoles seemed ok and Ensign Sharan Karki had managed to sit herself at one of the engineering consoles and was already trying to ascertain the status of the ship.
Just then the little hatch opened again and the Captain scrambled out from the opening. He took a quick look around at the state of the crew before trying to gauge the state of the ship. The Captain was nothing if not focused.
Over his shoulder he shouted ‘How’s Ruiz?’
Chen had finished his examination. ‘Nasty head wound and a dislocated shoulder. Got a slight concussion, but he’ll be fine.’
Happy that his First Officer was in good hands, he turned his attention to the wider issue. ‘I need feedback, people. Find out what just happened. Shearer, I need comms to Engineering.’
The gorgeous Geordie nodded and opened a channel. Lieutenant Marten Jonsen answered, but sounded confused. ‘Engineering is good sir. A few circuits tripped out, but the warp-core is stable and engines are running at nominal output. I thought I’d already confirmed that?’
‘Not to me, Marten, I’ve only just got to the Bridge’ said Hollins warily.
‘Sorry sir, I must have got confused. I told someone that nearly ten minute ago.’
The Captain sounded as confused as Jonsen. ‘But that incident only happened about five minutes ago? Are you sure, Marten?’
Crash’s attention had been caught by Jonsen’s statement about the warp-engines and he hastily returned to his console to check the ships progress. What he found didn’t make sense. ‘Engines aren’t working sir, our relative velocity is sublight. Inertial systems have us still moving at about point four of light-speed, but we’re not in warp-space.’
Jonsen heard this and answered ‘That can’t be right, sir. There was an interruption in the plasma stream but it was only microseconds, the warp-field never collapsed and is still intact. We should be moving at warp-factor eight?’
Hollins didn’t understand but had more pressing issues. ‘Ok, don’t worry about that just yet. Run full system diagnostics. I want to know if anything is broken and what caused that crash.’
There was a beep from the Captains chair, and Crash noticed that the Captain seemed reluctant to answer it.
At last he stepped forward and pressed the button. Seeming uncertain he said ‘Hollins here.’
There was a pause before someone at the other end of the link said in a voice uncannily like the Captains ‘It can’t be. I’m Hollins.’
Shaking his head, the Captain said ‘Then I suggest you head for the Bridge immediately. Take the Jefferies tube, the lifts . . . ‘
‘Are out of action. I know, I was just calling the Bridge to let Ruiz know that.’
The line went dead, and Shearer and Crash looked at the Captain, now as thoroughly confused as him and Jonsen.
Hollins noticed their stares and sighed. ‘No, I don’t understand it either, but a couple of minutes ago, I had the other half of that conversation while I was in the Science Office down below.’
The Captain moved forward to Crash’s Helm console and checked the readings. ‘What the hell . . ?’
There was no heading showing and the time clock appeared to have stopped completely.
Scratching his head, he returned to his chair and contacted the Science Office. ‘Where are the O’Mara’s? They said they’d be right behind me?’
The voice at the other end sounded confused. ‘Are they not there yet? They left straight after you, about fifteen minutes ago.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous! I only left five minutes ago myself!’ snorted the Captain.
At that moment, the little hatch under the situation panel opened and familiar looking knot of orange hair poked through. ‘Blimey, you move quick sir! I thought we’d be right on your heels.’
Hollins sighed. ‘Your team said you left the office fifteen minutes ago?’
She stopped where she was, still on all fours, and looked up at them like some slightly deranged red-setter, with her other self peeking out of the tube behind her. ‘Away with you! It’s taken us three minutes, tops!’
There were looks of bemusement all around the Bridge, but O’Mara ignored them, and both of them scrambled up and took seats next to Chief Wang Shou at the science station. ‘Hey Wang, what have we got?’
Wang was a theoretical physicist and had been running every sensor he could since returning to his seat. ‘Damned if I know Ma’am. Madames? I can’t make sense of anything. The navigation sensors are on the fritz, and when I tried to fix our position by taking bearings to nearby pulsars, I couldn’t find them.’
Crash was no scientist but even he understood how strange this was. Pulsars made perfect natural navigation beacons, sending out regular pulses of radio waves that were easily detectable for thousands of light years around.
Each pulsed at a specific frequency and by taking the bearings of known frequencies a navigator could fix the position of his ship down to a few thousand klicks, near enough spot-on in astronomical terms.
One O’Mara checked his readings and then tried again, her brow wrinkling in confusion. ‘Now that is odd . . . ‘ she mused quietly to herself. ‘Odd, odd, odd . . . ‘
She went quiet, so the Captain had to prompt her. ‘What’s odd?’
Neither O’Mara replied for a moment and Crash wasn’t sure if they hadn’t registered the Captains question or had just been completely side-tracked, which was an everyday occurrence. He also had to consider the possibility that the two O’Mara’s were now communicating telepathically in some way, as they both still knew exactly what the other was thinking.
Just as the Captain was about to ask for a second time, one of them finally answered. ‘There are pulsars on the bearings we’d expect to see, given our last navigational data, but they’re all showing the wrong frequencies. In fact the pattern of positions doesn’t match any recorded pulsars.’
‘Are you telling us we’re lost?’ asked the Captain nervously.
Crash could understand the Captain’s nervousness: it wasn’t that long ago they’d spent months lost in a giant dust-cloud, and then spent months lost in a weird parallel universe. It was very comforting to know exactly where you were.
The other O’Mara shook her head. ‘No, I don’t think so. I’m not quite sure what’s going on, but I’m still thinking we’re in right place.’
‘Have you got any idea why we’re getting . . . ‘
At that moment there was a beep from his chair and the Captain answered a call from the Main Engineering Deck. ‘Romanov here, sir, we’ve finished reconfiguring the engines as requested.’
There was another pregnant pause before the Captain risked answering ‘But I haven’t asked you to reconfigure anything?’
Romanov sounded confused. ‘Yes you did sir! About half an hour ago? You asked us to configure the engines to draw matter for the warp-core direct f
rom the tanks rather than the ram-scoops.’
Everyone on the Bridge shrugged this time and Hollins shook his head and chose not to argue. ‘Ok, thank you Commander. Um, we’ll . . . be in touch.’
He turned back to O’Mara. ‘We seem to be suffering from some sort of temporal discontinuity?’
‘Yeah, how weird is that??’ smiled both O’Maras.
Everyone was staring at them and it suddenly clicked that they were looking to them for some kind of explanation. They looked at each other for a moment before saying ‘Oh, um, well. Don’t have a clue really.’
They could see everyone’s disappointment and added ‘Hey, we’re working on it, these things take time . . . ‘
A penny dropped, and they looked at each other and began synchronised thoughtful chewing on a thumbnail. ‘Time, time, time . . . time’s not flowing right . . . ‘
They closed their eyes as their completely eccentric brains sought patterns and made connections.
Their eyes suddenly snapped wide open and they sat bolt upright. ‘Oh right!!’ one smiled.
They looked very pleased with themselves and it took a minute for the fact to sink in that no-one else had made the same mental leap.
‘It’s a hole’ one announced, as if this was self-evident.
There were blank looks being freely exchanged. Registering this, the other O’Mara cleared her throat, did her best to stop smiling and adopted the manner of a junior school teacher explaining something to a five-year old.
‘It’s like this, you see: Warp-drive works by squishing space so you don’t have to travel the whole distance between two points. We’ve run into a sort of pot-hole. The warp-drive stopped working because there’s nothing here to warp.’
Almost as one, everyone on the Bridge said ‘What??’
The other O’Mara nodded. ‘Yep. It’s a big hole in the fabric of space-time. That’s why we’re having all these weird time delay effects. There’s no framework for cause and effect because neither space nor time exists here.
‘So how can we exist here?’ ventured the Captain.