by Trevor Scott
“Sorry,” Saturn said shamelessly, flipping her ponytail as she turned around and returned to her spot at the table, “Slipped.”
Liam couldn’t help but laugh. Saturn wasn’t a person he wanted to piss off, but he found himself far too pleased when it was someone else bearing the brunt of her wrath. The workers at the other tables mumbled amongst themselves and slowly returned to their conversations.
Liam jeered, “You see Saturn, this is why we don’t have any friends.”
They were interrupted by a crashing noise. The mess hall was quickly silenced as the whole room pricked their ears in anticipation. It was different than the dull sound of a minor asteroid collision. The mining craft had a deflector array that softened the blow. This was something else. It sounded like an explosion that rumbled and then was quickly silenced by the vacuum of space.
Liam stood up and crossed the room to the screens, pressing a button on the control pad when he reached it. The forest images faded, revealing a bay of windows. Outside the ship he could see the dark surface of the asteroid, illuminated only by the outer spotlights from the ship and the countless stars in the distance. He inched closer to the window and looked up.
Liam backed away from the window in awe.
“What is it?” Saturn asked, making her way to the windows and gazing up. Her jaw slackened.
It was a ship unlike any Liam had seen before. It appeared to be pieced together from fragments of scrap, propelled by an unknown force. How it stayed together and resisted the vacuum of space he couldn’t begin to say. Behind the ship was a vortex, making the stars behind it swirl in a never-ending spiral. Whatever the ship was, Liam was sure it wasn’t from Earth. Even the Terran Military didn’t have anything that massive.
The room lit up green, causing everyone near the window to cover their eyes. There was another explosion inside the ship, this time closer than before. Red lights popped down from the ceiling and spun around. The alarm came to life and filled the small room with an ear-piercing noise. Liam knew what the alarms meant. They meant the computer was going to shut the airlocks, sealing them in ever-tighter corners of the ship, trying to maintain life support in as many areas as possible. This wasn’t one of their countless drills. They were under attack.
5
A voice rang out over the loudspeaker, “This is Captain Truong speaking. All hands, man the mining lasers. We’re under attack. I repeat, we’re under attack.”
Liam looked around the mess hall, where miners sat in shock. There had never been a battle like this in space before. Whoever or whatever was out there couldn’t have been from Earth. The miners scrambled out the door, making their way to the mining lasers. They weren’t a fraction as powerful as the beams that were coming at them, but maybe they would do something.
“Come on,” Liam said. “We need to go.”
He grabbed Saturn’s upper arm and led her down the corridor, stepping over metal grates and dodging hanging ductwork disrupted during the explosions. Ju-Long Ma followed close behind, still putting pressure on the wound on his palm and yelling obscenities over the alarms.
“We’re going to die,” Ju-Long blubbered.
“No, we’re not,” Liam replied. “We’re getting out of here.”
“Captain said to man the lasers.”
An explosion rang out overhead before being muffled by the vacuum of space. They didn’t have long before life support gave out and Liam wasn’t about to let himself die. Not without a fight and definitely not in space.
“If you want to stay, no one’s stopping you,” Saturn said, turning her head to Ju-Long with the hint of a smile crossing her lips.
They made a right and descended a metal ladder to Cargo Bay One. The mining craft had several smaller ships suited to scouting asteroids, none much larger than the shuttle with which he used to freelance. It might have measured twenty-five meters wide by fifty meters long and was a piece of crap, hardly capable of two hundred thousand kilometers per hour on a good day. It had a boxy shape with edges that seemed to have been minimally smoothed. Its wings curved down almost to the landing gear and were lined with moveable solar panels. The landing gear was fitted with hooks to attach to an asteroid on three points.
Liam pressed his thumb on a panel attached to the landing gear and a ramp descended, unfolding like a drawbridge. They climbed up the platform into the small craft’s hold. The ship was not meant for carrying cargo per se, more like small samples, not leaving much room to move around inside. Ahead was a passage which led to the cockpit, while the engine room was situated toward the back of the craft.
“Ju-Long, do you mind?”
He shook his head. His face looked a little pale but he said with a serious voice, “No, I’m on it.”
Ju-Long jogged toward the rear of the ship to the engine room, for once not making a crude remark or losing his cool.
“You remember how to fly one of these?” Saturn asked.
“We’re about to find out.”
There was a rumble overhead as yellow crates filled with ore samples toppled off their pallets outside, landing near the ship. Liam cursed and made his way to the cockpit. He knew that if they took another blast like that they weren’t going anywhere. The ship’s main corridor was short and thin, with barely enough room for Liam to walk upright. The interior of the ship was utilitarian, with plain metal walls that were smooth to the touch. All the panels and surfaces inside were made compact for short missions.
When Liam and Saturn reached the cockpit, he sat down in the pilot’s seat and strapped himself in. He held his hand over the control panel, prompting it to wake up from hibernation. Saturn took the seat to his left, buckling in for the ride.
Liam touched a button on the panel and opened a link to the engine room. Over the din he asked, “Ju-Long, how are my engines?”
He could hear several words he knew to be Chinese curses come over the audio link.
“Almost,” Ju-Long finally said. “There. Good to go.”
Liam could hear the sound of the ion engines jumping to life, a dull hum in the cockpit but a deafening roar in the engine room. Liam cut the audio link and took hold of the joystick, pulling back and feeling the landing gear leave the cargo bay floor. He pointed the ship toward the bay doors and sent a signal for them to open. Nothing. Through the side window Saturn pointed at Captain Truong, a squat Asian man with a stark white uniform. He spoke into a handset and his voice came through their consoles, “That’s far enough, Kidd.”
“Shit, how’d he know it was you?” Saturn asked.
Liam shrugged, pressing a couple buttons on the control panel and opening a channel. Two mining lasers dropped from the bow of the craft, pointed at the bay door.
“Stand aside, Captain. Unless you want to take an unscheduled spacewalk.”
“Vesta Corporation will not rest until they find you,” the Captain said viciously. “You’ll work the mines for the rest of your life.”
“I’ll take my chances,” Liam said, before cutting the audio link.
Liam charged the lasers, prompting Captain Truong to scramble past the airlock to safety. That was the smartest thing Liam had ever seen him do.
“Ready?” Liam asked Saturn.
“Ready.”
Liam fired. Shards of metal blasted out into space as all of the air was sucked out of the cargo bay. Crates went flying by, bouncing off the hull of the ship, until a berth wide enough for them to traverse opened. Liam kept the small craft level as the objects passed them, using the reverse thrusters to keep from being pulled out of the ship. The last thing he wanted was to catch a wing on one of the side walls. Without the solar cells they’d be dead in the water before long. Liam moved the joystick with his right hand and slid his fingers forward on the control panel with his left, accelerating as they crossed the threshold into open space.
6
Liam maneuvered the small ship beside the long edge of Vesta Corporation’s mining craft, cutting his hull lights and flying in the s
hadows between the vessel and the asteroid. In a moment they’d passed the edge, cruising over the dark asteroid. Away from the mine, the artificial gravity was only sufficient enough to let them know which way was up and down, relative to the field generator. It was an odd feeling after the relative normal gravity on the mine.
He opened an audio channel to the engine room, the roar of the ionizers piercing through the speakers. “Ju-Long, what’s your status?”
“The last burst has us at two hundred thousand and gaining.”
“Can we give it another burst?”
“I wouldn’t advise it. We took some superficial damage in the cargo bay. If we push it we could break up.”
Liam cut the link and looked up at the unclassified ship. Upon closer inspection, the alien craft was easily several kilometers long. On the control panel he looked at the rear camera feeds. The mining vessel’s sparse lighting revealed countless punctures from the laser attacks. The other ship was able to pierce clean through.
He looked to Saturn, who was getting her bearings on the control panel. It was obvious that she was used to being the one flying. It was dark in the cockpit, save for the faint glow of their computer screens. Saturn pulled down her jumpsuit’s zipper and freed her arms from its embrace. The faint blue glow bounced off her toned arms. The mine had that effect on people. Though Liam didn’t often look in the mirror, he was sure he’d gotten a bit more muscular. Another jet of green flashed in front of them, penetrating the hull of the asteroid mine.
“This ship will never make it back to Earth,” Liam said. “It’s only meant for scout missions, a few days of supplies, tops.”
“Well, we can’t go up against whatever that thing is,” Saturn said, pointing to the unidentified ship.
Liam thought for a moment. He’d seen a swirl of stars behind the other ship. He’d heard about those kinds of occurrences before, but never in their own solar system and only from theories. It was a wormhole, though. It had to be. Where it led was the bigger question. If they were to make it through to the other side, would there be more of those ships waiting for them? Would they even be in the same part of the galaxy?
Liam tilted the joystick back and a burst of pressurized air from under the nose of the scout ship forced them away from the asteroid, on course for the enemy spacecraft.
“What are you doing?” Saturn asked.
“Trust me,” Liam said through a smile. “Take the laser controls. Lock onto them and wait for my mark.”
Saturn cursed and swiped her hand over the control panel. The menu changed and a new set of commands were at her fingertips. She charged the mining lasers and held her finger over the trigger. Green lasers emanated from the other ship and glanced their bow. They were approaching the alien ship fast. Too fast.
Liam turned the joystick to the left and missed the alien vessel’s jagged outer hull by what seemed like meters, coming about and maneuvering the mining craft toward the rear of the enemy ship. A stray laser pierced their wing, the force spinning them around in a circle and veering them off course.
“Stabilizing jets!” Saturn yelled.
With great effort, Liam reached the button on the console to self-stabilize and they leveled out relative to the enemy ship. He turned to Saturn, determined. “Take aim and fire.”
Saturn pressed the trigger and two blue lasers shot out from their nose, pointed down at the enemy vessel. After a few seconds, Saturn cut the lasers. She examined the readout on the control panel.
“The sensors say we hardly made a scratch. Whatever it’s made of, the computer doesn’t recognize it. Some unknown alloy.”
“We can’t take another blast like that, I’m punching it.”
Liam used his left hand to slide along the control panel, increasing the output of the engines. Their seats began to rattle as they accelerated ever faster.
“What are you doing?” Saturn asked. “Ju-Long said—”
“I know what he said.”
Liam accelerated past three hundred thousand kilometers per hour. Saturn tightened the straps around her shoulders and asked, “Where are we going?”
Liam pointed up ahead to the swirl of stars behind the enemy vessel. “There. Three thousand kilometers.”
“What is that?”
“If it’s what I think it is, we’re in for a bumpy ride.”
Ju-Long came in over the speakers. “Are you crazy, Liam? Do you want to die?”
Green lasers shot up past the cockpit’s window, missing them by a few meters as Liam shifted out of the way. Liam cut the audio feed and noted that the enemy lasers were far more powerful than their own, but they were hardly crack shots. If they were aliens, maybe they’d never seen another species’ spacecraft before. If that were the case, Liam wondered, why did they have such powerful weapons? Saturn examined the computer readouts on her panel and pointed to the screen.
“The computer is picking up life forms in the hundreds. Whatever they are, they aren’t human.”
“Fifteen hundred kilometers,” Liam said.
“Did you hear me, Liam? Aliens.”
“Hey, if you want to get probed let’s slow down and chat about it, otherwise target their laser arrays and try to make a dent.”
Saturn clenched her jaw and slammed her finger down on the trigger, sending the dual lasers at the vessel beneath them. Liam cautioned a glance in her direction. Her brow was glistening with sweat, but her tan cheekbones picked up most of the light from the console, making her appear gaunt despite her normally athletic form. She turned and her dark ponytail lightly touched her shoulder as she examined Liam.
“If you want to get us out of this, you’d better focus,” she said.
Liam’s gaze returned to the readings on his console. He turned the joystick sharply to avoid another laser blast. He read off the distance on his screen, “Five hundred kilometers.”
As they approached the vortex, Saturn’s eyes grew. The closer they came, the more clearly they could make out the spatial distortions. Time seemed to slow down, as though Liam was hyper-aware of the things around him. The wormhole was massive, large enough for two of the alien spaceships abreast of each other. Saturn fumbled with the console and brought up the camera in the engine room. Ju-Long was making adjustments to the engine with a wrench, holding onto a stabilizing pole in the slight gravity field with his injured hand.
She opened an audio link. “Ju-Long, you might want to strap in.”
Ju-Long looked up at the camera and gave her the finger. “Yeah, yeah.”
“Three hundred,” Liam said.
The cabin began to rock more violently than before, making it difficult for Liam to keep the scout ship’s course true. Saturn wiped her forehead and pressed a button on the panel, projecting her image into the engine room. “Strap in, Ju-Long. Now!”
Ju-Long cursed and started toward the seat near the engine when a blast shook the room. He dropped the wrench and was pressed against the grates below.
“What was that?” Saturn asked.
“We’re hit!”
“How much farther?”
“One hundred. Fifty. Now.”
They were sucked in by the wormhole, spinning off their axis violently through what amounted to a corridor through space. There were flashes of multi-colored light as they appeared to pass countless stars and spatial phenomena. The corridor turned to a cloud of vibrant gasses, reminding Liam of the nebulas he’d seen in school. He remembered being a lot less nauseated in class.
“Can the computer tell how far it is to the other side?” Saturn asked.
“The sensors are going haywire, we’re flying blind.”
The scout ship spun slightly off-kilter. Liam tried to compensate, but they were losing hull integrity the farther they traveled. Up ahead, he saw what looked like normal space approaching; a spot where the stars appeared to stand still. Liam’s stomach yearned for a smoother flight path.
It took three more minutes for them to reach the threshold. When they crossed
, Liam eased off the engine. He felt the ion engine slow to a mild hum, just enough to keep the lights on. The cabin stopped shaking and Liam let go of the control stick.
“We made it,” Saturn said, shocked, “We’re alive.”
“You know what I say, always deliver more than expected.”
“For you that can’t be too hard.”
Liam smiled. There was the Saturn he’d missed for so long. Even in the face of danger she was the one cracking jokes and having a good time.
A heads-up display on the cockpit window materialized showing Ju-Long hanging onto a control panel in the engine room, bloodied from the ride and sporting a few bumps which would surely bruise.
“In case anyone was wondering, I’m okay.”
He collapsed onto his back on the engine room floor, groaning in agony. Liam smirked. Ju-Long was a tough guy, he thought. He would be all right. Ju-Long tended to exaggerate to get attention anyway.
“Should we help him?” she asked.
“In a minute. I need to check something first.”
Liam brought up a blue hologram of a star map over the control panel. He put his hand out and manipulated the image, zooming out until most of the Milky Way was in view. He pointed to one section and said, “That’s our solar system. Sol.”
“Where are we now?”
Liam fiddled with the controls and the computer examined the stars around them, searching for a point of reference. It took more than a minute for the computer to calculate their location. The hologram spun around and flashed their new position in yellow.
“That’s impossible,” Liam said, looking to Saturn in disbelief.
“What is it? How far?”
“If this is accurate, we’ve traveled more than ten thousand light years.”
7
“How can that be?” Saturn asked. “Nothing can travel faster than light.”
“We didn’t. It was a wormhole, connecting two points in space separated by thousands of light years.”