by Trevor Wyatt
And the next morning, they replaced all of that with professionalism to cover up the awkwardness—to make sure they didn’t have to talk about what they had done together the night before.
Jeryl felt the hair behind his neck rise as Ashley came closer. Something was definitely up.
She leaned closer and whispered in his ear.
“Captain,” she said softly so that no one could hear. “There’s something you should probably see. In private.”
Ashley
“In private?” Jeryl whispered cocking one eyebrow as he looked at her. Ashley stood straight, and pursed her lips. She felt the palm of her hands grow sleek with sweat.
A poor choice of words, she thought.
After the New Sydney incident, she had struggled to push her way past the ensuing awkwardness. She did her best to act as professionally as possible, but sometimes her defenses faltered. She couldn’t help it; every time she closed her eyes, and remembered those warm days back in New Sydney, Captain Jeryl just turned into…Jeryl.
The Armada frowned upon their officers falling into personal relationships, but everyone knew it was inevitable; no one could confine people in a vessel for too long a time and expect nothing to happen. Anyone could be sane enough to keep things professional while they were in outer space, Ashley had always thought, but the moment they feel gravity’s pull, things change.
There was the atmosphere to adjust to, and the slight variations in weight. Trading up the Armada uniform for some expensive dress smuggled from the Outer Colonies wasn’t off the table as well, especially for Ashley—at some point, all the formalities drop.
That was what happened in New Sydney.
It was just a short break between deployments, but there was enough time for crass jokes, a bottle of wine, and a night between the sheets at The Oath, one of the landmarks of New Sydney. Jutting more than two thousand feet skyward right in the center of the metropolis, the expensive hotel provided the perfect setting for a weekend of drinking and forgotten boundaries.
The soft sheets of The Oath’s suite were on the far side of the universe, at least as far as she was concerned. She wore her uniform now, the First Officer badge clipped to her chest; she had a job to do.
“In private,” Ashley repeated with a nod, nervously running her tongue between her dry lips. She balled one hand into a fist, and tried to hold his gaze without allowing the First Officer mask to drop.
“Okay,” Jeryl breathed out, reading the serious expression on her face. There was no smile on her lips, putting all the awkwardness to bed. Finding The Mariner and reporting the situation back to the Armada should be a simple enough job, but now she was not so sure.
Ashley had been serving under Jeryl for a few years now, and she had learned to develop that quick intuition the Armada tried to impart on its officers. She had been in more border skirmishes than she could count on her fingers, and lived through so many false alarms that she had already forgotten half of them. But this was different.
This wasn’t a pirate raid in one of the mining colonies, nor just another one of those border confrontations. As far as Ashley knew, no ship tried to encircle The Seeker and none of the ship alarms had gone off for months now. They were alone in the vastness of space, and still she felt there was something wrong about the whole situation.
She felt as if she stood on a shore, her feet buried in the sand, watching as the ocean slowly receded, back into its depths—and then the whole ocean would rise up to swallow her. The readings she had just seen…There was no way for her to be sure, but somehow she felt that a tidal wave was looming above them.
Turning on his heels, Jeryl marched across the CNC. Ashley trailed after him, that tight anxiety taking over her chest. Jeryl stopped for a second, allowing the biometric sensors to recognize him. The door to the Captain’s private office slid to the side and into its metallic partition.
Spartan and rigorous, Jeryl’s office was a reflection of the discipline that allowed him to climb through the ranks all those years. His desk was tidy and uncluttered, the chair behind it is so carefully placed that the whole office looked more like a set than an actual working space.
If she didn’t know all about the ungodly amount of hours the Captain spent in here, Ashley would have assumed Jeryl earned his Captain rank by being an effective pencil pusher. The Armada was full of these types nowadays—the memories of war were distant and faded, and there were few men she trusted to lead the way if shit hit the fan.
But Jeryl…Jeryl she could trust.
Surrounded by bureaucrats from all sides, he somehow managed to retain a certain ruggedness that Ashley found reminiscent of all those war stories about The Schism. If that tidal wave ended up being more real than she wanted it to be, she was glad to have Captain Jeryl at the helm.
“What’s going on, Ashley?” he asked her as the door closed behind them. His lips were a thin line, his voice was clipped and terse.
She looked back at him for a moment, the hard edge in his eyes a reminder that in that moment, she was his First Officer, and not the woman who had slept next to him in a high-rise suite in New Sydney.
“Take a look at this,” she started, walking toward the metallic workstation that took over Jeryl’s entire office. The workstation was a round platform with a sleek surface. Barely noticeable holographic projectors were mounted all around its curved edges. The workstation was smaller than the central console they had back in the CNC, but it was still imposing enough to have a few officers around it.
Ashley opened her palm over the workstation and the whole surface lit up. The holographic projectors heated up, and the main control dashboard appeared in front of her, a see-through projection she could use even if she had her eyes closed. As complex as the dashboard might seem, the Academy drilled their officers hard in matters of bureaucracy and logistics.
Eventually, the entire thing became second nature to a fast learner like Ashley. She pulled up the readings the Science Officer alerted her to, moving her fingers in the air as if she was weaving a fine, invisible web.
After the radar alerted them to the presence of debris in the area, Ashley had sent a small probe out for visual confirmation; she thought she had simply found a small asteroid field, nothing remarkable at all. The visual readings, however, quickly dispelled the naïve thought.
“What am I looking at, Ashley?” Jeryl asked her placing his hands on the edge of the workstation. He leaned forward, his eyes narrowing as he focused on the images Ashley just projected. In the projection, a few shards of contorted metal seemed to float freely in the vastness of space, tiny crumbles of glittering debris in a dark canvas.
Instead of replying, Ashley spread her fingers wide once more and zoomed in on the debris. A dark shadow took over Jeryl’s narrowed eyes, Ashley knew the Captain was trying to escape the inevitable answer. The Seeker had set out on a simple reconnaissance mission, its purpose to retrieve a small crew of overexcited scientists who unwittingly entered uncharted territory—but all that was about to change.
A deep exploration vessel turned into scrap right in the middle of nowhere; if Jeryl was already fidgety about the whole situation, Ashley couldn’t even imagine what the Admiral’s reaction was going to be. She could already see this mission’s folder stamped with a large red S, all that information turning into a slew of “on a need to know basis” facts.
It just made no sense to Ashley. She doubted any of the Outer Colony fleets would be this deep into outer space, and even smugglers and pirates wouldn’t be venturing this far. What the hell had happened here?
“Are you sure, Ashley?” Jeryl asked her again, looking up from the projected images and staring right at her, the lines in his face turning into deep trails of concern. “We have to be sure.”
“I’m positive,” Ashley nodded, taking a deep breath as she felt the words claw up her throat. “We’ve identified the debris as The Mariner—and it was destroyed.”
Jeryl
After staring a
t the expanded view, taking in the data readouts cascading down the side of the screen, Jeryl looked back at Ashley’s face. Her lips were compressed into a thin line and her brows furrowed. Jeryl cleared his throat.
“The energy signatures from that wreckage...”
Ashley nodded.
“No radioactivity. No CP beams. Something—”
“Unknown,” Jeryl finished.
Unknown, he thought.
Alien.
“But there’s no trace of any activity in this sector,” Jeryl said. It was needless to say that there had never been a trace of activity in any of the sectors. It was a matter of historical fact; there was no intelligent life anywhere in the volume of space controlled by the Union.
“What are we dealing with here?”
Ashley allowed a small smile to soften her tight lips.
“As you say, it’s unknown.”
Several thoughts raced inside Jeryl’s mind.
Is this it? First Contact?
No, he couldn’t buy that. The Outer Colonies, despite his ruling out their interference, could have upped their game with weapons research, and come up with an advanced tech they had come a long way to test. Or had a new player entered the game? But still…Jeryl wondered how any of those reasons could explain why anyone would destroy an unarmed vessel like the The Mariner.
He drew a breath.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s look at the facts. The Mariner is destroyed. We are ruling out something internal—sabotage, some experiment gone awry. Right?”
He shot Ashley a glance and she nodded once. “So we assume an outside force. And yet—,” Jeryl deliberately tapped the top of his desk. “—there aren’t any. As far as we know,” he added quickly, seeing that Ashley had opened her mouth to reply. “It’s a big galaxy, but still.”
There were only a few billion humans scattered across a couple of hundred worlds—plenty of room for strange things to lurk in unexplored places, even in systems they had colonized.
“We have already agreed that it’s an unknown,” said Ashley. “Alien? Human agency? Or perhaps some sort of natural phenomenon.”
“Natural?”
Jeryl thought about that for a moment. “Well, they were out here on an exploratory mission. Our records show they were to investigate the Anderson Nebula.”
“That’s right,” Ashley said.
The Anderson was a small planetary nebula. It was young, less than two thousand years old. It was far enough from Earth, only detected by one of the more distant Union worlds. The Mariner was sent to investigate the neutron star spinning at the nebula’s center. It would be the closest neutron star to Union territory, which had made the place worth a visit.
Jeryl cast another glance at the readouts.
“Well,” he said, “if you’re suggesting they tangled with the Anderson’s neutron star, Ashley—mmm, I don’t think it parses. Given the position of the wreckage, it’s clear they never got close enough to the nebula to be affected by its collapse. Sensors give no indication of anything else in the vicinity like, I don’t know, a mini black hole...which in any case wouldn’t have torn the ship apart. Nor would the neutron star. Either one would have sucked the ship in.”
Jeryl shrugged. “Gravity being what it is. There’d be nothing at all here.”
Ashley sighed. “I know. But whatever it was, it was more powerful than anything in our records.”
Jeryl had trouble concentrating on the conversation. He kept thinking back to the time they spent at the Oath, when they—
No, he thought., Best not go there. He shook his head to dispel the memory.
“There’s no use denying it,” she said sharply, misinterpreting Jeryl’s gesture. “As you’ve said, it’s a big galaxy. Shit happens, sir. Did you take a really close look at Lannigan’s report on the wreckage?”
Without answering, Jeryl did as she suggested, and spent a few minutes going over the abstract that Taft Lannigan, The Seeker’s Science Officer, had prepared. As ship’s captain, he didn’t have the time or the inclination to wade through screen after screen of technical data when all he wanted was a summary. Dr. Lannigan knew that, and knew better than to waste his time. He was a good officer. But now, what Jeryl found in Dr. Lannigan’s report made him frown.
Unknown energy signatures, they already knew that. But the traces they left behind indicated levels so powerful that they were not only unknown to Terran science, but also stronger than anything else they had encountered before.
When Outer Colonies split off, they had taken some of Earth’s finest—and most malcontented—minds with them. Jeryl wondered about them again.
“It’s not the Outers. It can’t be them,” Ashley said as if she were reading his mind.
Jeryl stared at her.
“I think you’re right,” he said after weighing the possibility. “I think they’re too busy trying to stay alive.”
“In which case,” she said, “what about someone else?”
Jeryl scoffed. “Who?”
“One of the corporate fleets.”
While it was true that the corpers—that was what they called them—bragged about having more advanced hardware and AIs than the Union ships, all those things had been fairy tales they had let them believe. A commercial enterprise anywhere in history that has a leg up over the military was non-existent. Jeryl supposed there were isolated examples, but for the most part, more technical advances had come through military necessity than through corper blue-skying.
Except genetics, Jeryl thought. And even there, he knew for a fact that the Union had research facilities at least on par with the civilian facilities.
But the bottom line was the corpers simply weren’t anywhere near the fringes of known space. There was no money to be made in undeveloped areas. The corpers weren’t humanitarian outfits; they were motivated by financial gain, and not prone to much speculative exploration.
Once a promising world was located, some place thickly forested, abundant with foreign vegetation with potential to cure diseases or prolong life...Then the corporations would show up, glad-handing the colonies and dumping money into research for a cut of the gain. It was politics and business as usual.
“There’s just no reason to suspect any kind of corporate involvement here,” Jeryl said. “And what would they have to gain by destroying a Union starship?”
“Because they’ve stumbled on something lucrative? Like, something incredibly lucrative that it’d be worth killing for?”
Jeryl shook his head. “It just doesn’t make any sense, Ash.”
Ash—he had used her nickname, despite himself. Ashley, however, didn’t seem to notice the breach in professionalism.
“That would be, I don’t know, renegade behavior,” Jeryl continued. “No one could get away with that for long. And what could possibly be that lucrative?”
“All right then, what about someone completely new?”
Jeryl grinned. “How long did you say you’ve been an officer on a starship?”
Ashley flushed.
“There’s nothing. No one else,” said Jeryl. “Look, excuse me for being obvious, but in 150 years as a space-faring civilization, we’ve never found any other sentient life. Not even a trace. No ruins, fossils...zero. Zip. Not even radio signals.”
“What if they don’t use radio?” said Ashley.
Before he could object, Ashley waved her hand.
“I know, I know—you’re right. I mean, I understand perfectly well that neither the outers nor the corpers could develop whatever destroyed The Mariner. But something did.”
“Undeniably.”
“Have you ever heard of Sherlock Holmes?”
Jeryl blinked at the abrupt change of subject.
“No. What ship does he command?”
Ashley smiled. “He’s a fictional character, Jeryl. A detective, created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in the Nineteenth Century.”
“Oh. Well, no, I’ve never heard of him.” Jeryl knew she
read a lot, but he had no idea her tastes included pre-Union fiction until now.
I learn something new every day, he thought.
“Well, Holmes once said, when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. So, if we rule out involvement by corpers and outers, and other human agencies, and natural phenomena, we are left with...”
She raised her eyebrows at Jeryl. Jeryl, in turn, concealed his irritation.
“I don’t know,” he said in a clipped tone. He saw a telltale blink red on his desktop. “Look, I have to report to the admiral. He doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”
“Of course, sir.” Ashley smiled. It was nice smile, a private one, like the ones she gave him at the Oath. Jeryl hoped to see more of it.
“Shall I talk to Dr. Lannigan? Have him bring some of the debris aboard for closer study?”
“Precisely what I was going to suggest,” said Jeryl. The telltale blinked again. Admiral Flynn really didn’t care to be kept waiting.
“See to it, please, Commander.”
Ashley snapped off a salute, and Jeryl returned it automatically. They both smiled, a private undertone shared between them. Jeryl wanted to say something else, something personal, but before he could sort out his thoughts, Ashley said, “I’ll be in CNC, sir.”
She turned and left his office. The telltale sign of an incoming transmission blinked and Jeryl, alone, tapped the comm link.
Time to face the music that was Armada Command.
Jeryl
“Dammit, Montgomery, I want answers. I need answers.”
“I understand, Admiral. I’m doing my best to—”
Admiral Flynn waved an impatient hand as if to wipe Jeryl’s words away from the air. Flynn was a choleric man in his mid-sixties, still craggy and in great shape, his brush-cut hair gone grey. Jeryl knew he was an enthusiastic amateur boxer, and personally, he wouldn’t want to step into the ring with him despite Flynn being shorter and lighter than he was. The Admiral had a fire for personal best.