by David Mack
26
Altanexa’s interior went black as the Machine’s unearthly blue light vanished. Free of the paralyzing grip of the energy field that had snared him, Data collapsed to the deck of the nerve center, grateful his circuits hadn’t overloaded from the Machine’s virtual touch. Eerie groans resonated through the ship’s hull. He switched his eyes to night-vision mode, revealing his surroundings in cool green twilight. All the consoles and emergency lights were dark, and he felt a pang of sick anticipation when he considered the possibility that Altanexa itself might be dead.
A jarring collision overwhelmed the residual charges in the ship’s inertial dampers and artificial gravity generators, launching Data across the nerve center like a deadly projectile. He slammed against a far bulkhead head-first. Instead of falling to the deck after impact, he was falling again, then tumbling erratically in seemingly random directions.
The ship must be in an uncontrolled spin, he realized. Flung about like a toy, he flailed his arms, hoping to catch hold of something to arrest his motion.
Rolling and plummeting, Data saw the narrow pedestal of one of the nerve center’s consoles. His fingers slipped off its smooth surface as he fell past it—but then his motion reversed without warning, and he seized the narrow duranium column.
Fighting against the ship’s chaotic death spiral, he pulled himself up to the control panel and hugged it like a shipwrecked mariner clutching a chunk of flotsam. Its glossy surface was dark and unresponsive. He tried to open an internal channel to either Rhea or Akharin, but his first jabs at the panel produced no effects. Then an unsteady flickering lit the controls in fits and starts. Seconds later its interface began to stabilize.
La Forge’s voice startled Data as it resounded in his thoughts via the quantum transceiver.
I hear you, Geordi, he said, transmitting his reply using internal circuits so he wouldn’t have to shout over the din of the maelstrom hammering the mortally wounded AI starship.
I need to warn the rest of the crew!
I understand.
An update on the panel Data was hugging confirmed the intraship PA was active. “Attention, this is Data. In three minutes, we will collide with the black hole’s accretion disk. Everyone, head for the landing bay and abandon ship!”
He felt a momentary sensation of weight, and he used it to press his feet to the deck while he engaged the magnetic attractors in his soles. Rooted to the deck despite the ship’s wild rolling and lurching, he hurried aft, out of the nerve center, into the central passageway. He stopped at the hatch for the first escape pod and opened it. Gatt lay in a crumpled heap just inside the pod, and he glared up at Data. “Here for one last gloat?”
Data grabbed the larger android and hefted him over his shoulder. “I am saving your life,” he said, hauling Gatt’s dead weight at a full run. “Please thank me by shutting up.”
* * *
Constant tremors shot through every square centimeter of the Enterprise. The incessant shaking set La Forge’s teeth on edge, made it difficult to enter commands on the console in front of him, and turned the scads of raw data racing up his screen into smears of multicolored light.
From the command chair, Picard demanded, “Time to tractor-beam range?”
“We still can’t get close enough,” Faur replied.
“Transporters?” the captain asked.
Šmrhová shook her head. “Too much distortion! We can’t get a lock!”
Invisible effects overwhelmed the inertial dampers, and the ship lurched and pitched with sudden violence. La Forge and the other bridge crew who were seated were knocked halfway out of their chairs, while those like Šmrhová, Chen, and Elfiki, who were standing at their posts, were launched head over heels, landed hard, and rolled across the yawing deck.
On the viewscreen, a planet-sized funnel cloud of indigo gas flashing with azure and crimson lightning was being pulled and twisted into a terrifying fusion with the fiery debris of demolished star systems in Abbadon’s accretion disk. It was like watching a firestorm consume a hurricane before they both spiraled down a vortex into Hell.
La Forge winced at an earsplitting screech of metal stressed past its breaking point, then another devastating shear of gravitational distortion battered the ship.
Worf snapped, “Damage report!”
Hanging on to the ops console, Dygan replied, “Distortions from the black hole are affecting us through our shields! We’re losing sections of the hull!”
Picard looked back at La Forge. “Increase power to the structural integrity field!”
“It’s already at maximum,” La Forge reported, “and losing power fast!”
“Move us closer,” Picard ordered.
Worf protested, “Captain! We are already too close!”
Magnified on the viewscreen, Altanexa looked as if it were being flayed by unseen whips, lashed by ghostly forces that were tearing away its outer hull.
“Not as close as they are,” Picard said. “Mister La Forge, reroute power from all nonessential systems to the structural integrity field and inertial dampers. Helm, take us to maximum tractor beam range from Altanexa.”
Faur aimed a worried glance at Dygan, who swiveled to look back at Worf and the captain. “Sirs, at that range to the singularity, our power reserves will fail in four minutes, and this ship will be torn into dust.”
“Then Altanexa’s survivors have that long to abandon ship and reach us,” Picard said. “You all have your orders. Damn the singularity—full speed ahead.”
* * *
Altanexa’s corridors echoed with the groans and cries of a spaceframe being deformed by brutal gravitational shearing effects as Rhea dashed from the computer core alcove, relying on the magnetic elements in her feet to keep her on the deck. She turned left, hoping to take the port passageway aft to the ladderway nearest the landing bay—but as she reached the corner a gut-wrenching boom filled the route ahead of her.
A roar like the voice of a tornado signaled a hull breach, and she clutched the corner as a howling gale of escaping atmosphere threatened to pull her along with it. She bent her arm around the corner, found the control panel by touch alone, and closed the nearest emergency bulkhead in the port corridor, muffling the din of ongoing destruction.
She looked back toward the starboard corridor at the end of the transverse passageway. Blocking her escape was Senyx, which had pitched upward and twisted half around in its futile bid to escape the de facto snare of the partially closed hatch. Its disruptor cannon remained pinned and was crowned with dancing forks of wild energy. Its grappling arm was extended upward, blocking what had been the gap above the sentient robot—and with it, her path of escape. Whether by design or by fortune, Senyx had made her escape contingent upon its own.
“Look,” she said, stepping up alongside it. “We both need to get out of here, so let’s just call a truce, okay? I’ll open the door, and you lead the way to the landing bay.”
Senyx replied with a few feeble blinks of lights on its top sensory module. Rhea took it on faith that those were signals of agreement, and she reached over to the control panel and pressed the control to open the hatch. The heavy portal retracted with a loud pneumatic gasp.
A gray wash of motion, a dizzying sensation of collision, and then free fall.
Half a second later, as Rhea landed on the deck—then rolled and plunged against the overhead while the ship spun in a mad tumble—she realized Senyx had cold-cocked her with its grappling
arm the moment it had slipped free. Dazed, she sat up to see the security ’bot thrust the fractured muzzle of its damaged disruptor cannon against the outside control pad for the emergency hatch. An incandescent flash and a sharp report were followed by a cascade of sparks that bloomed like a burning flower inside the starboard corridor—and the hatch slammed shut.
She scrambled to her feet and ran to the sealed portal. The inside control pad was dark and unresponsive. Totally fried, she realized. That’s just great. She returned to the port corridor and took four seconds to consider her options.
I can try to cross through the damaged sections. She stole a look through the transparent-duranium viewport on the emergency bulkhead. Beyond it, decks were collapsing and chunks of the ship were being shorn away and lost to the looming river of stellar fire.
Okay, screw that. I could try to rewire the blown control panel. A glance back at the control panel on her side of the door revealed molten slag oozing out from behind its cover panel. Not a chance. That left her only one choice: go forward instead of aft in the port corridor, cross over through the first transverse passageway, and then run aft as fast as she could.
There were a hundred things that could go wrong with that plan. Another hull breach could leave her stranded. And if Senyx was sealing other hatches on its way aft, she would have to go all the way forward to find a ladderway down to the next deck before she could head aft—but that would take too long, and she knew it. The next transverse passageway it is, then.
Knowing that the only thing dwindling faster than her options was her remaining time to escape, she ran like hell.
* * *
No matter how many androids Akharin built, he was certain he would never understand them. Even as Altanexa spun and rolled toward a fiery end, when it should have been obvious to its crew that he was the least of their concerns, some of them refused to lower their weapons, forcing him to remain huddled inside the force field surrounding the master control platform. He clung to the base of the chair as shifts in gravity and momentum pulled him every which way. The androids, meanwhile, remained rooted to the deck, thanks to magnetic safeguards either built or retrofitted into their bodies to make them ideal space travelers.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” he shouted over the cacophony of the fracturing ship. “This fight is over! We need to get the hell out of here!”
Inside the translucent body of the floating jellyfish known as Cohuila, a cascade of flickering light attracted the attention of the other AI personnel for a few seconds. Then the crew lowered their weapons, and a bipedal android with a blank face called up to Akharin, “Truce.”
“You promise you’re not going to shoot the moment I lower the force field?”
“You have our word.” Was he lying? Akharin couldn’t tell. His skill at sussing out mendacity was rooted in understanding the subtleties of inflection and microexpressions. A monotonal mannequin was impossible to read.
More flickers from the jellyfish. Faceless added, “We are leaving. Decide.”
He stretched one hand up to the control panel, shut off the force field, then let himself drop. He hit the deck at an angle as the ship yawed. Just before another shift in angular momentum would have launched him toward the forward bulkhead, an industrial robot snagged hold of him by one arm and one leg. Faceless explained, “You will not be able to keep up with us unassisted. We will carry you.” With the terms spelled out, they turned about and left the engine room single file, heading aft to the ladderway to the bottom deck.
Being toted like a sack of groceries by the load-lifter was embarrassing, but Akharin swallowed his wounded pride long enough to say, “Thanks.”
“Do not thank us yet,” Faceless replied. He reached out to a bulkhead on his left, pressed a button, and opened the hatch of an escape pod.
“No!” Akharin struggled to break free, to take his chances bouncing off the overhead and bulkheads, but the ’bot’s grip was like iron. He was positioned in front of the open hatchway to the escape pod. With his free hand he tried to reach the control panel, but it was too far away.
Faceless lifted his foot and snap-kicked Akharin in the solar plexus at the exact moment the load-lifter released his hold. The blow knocked the air from Akharin’s lungs, and his vision purpled and blurred as he struck the far end of the escape pod head-first. Drifting half-stunned in free fall, he fought to orientate himself, and he employed an old yoga trick to relax his diaphragm and regain his breath. He glared up at Faceless. “Why?”
“Your friends saw fit to cripple Altanexa and condemn her to die. We’re repaying you in kind.”
The mannequin shut the pod’s hatch. Akharin scrambled to find some way to prevent the launch sequence, but he heard the thunk of releasing docking clamps a fraction of a second before the roar of ejection thrusters left him pinned to the hatch and covering his ears.
In moments the crushing acceleration abated, and he was back in free fall. An eerie silence surrounded him. He pulled himself to the viewport and caught fleeting views of the hellish vista outside. A massive gravitational distortion was bending space-time to create a new wormhole. In the process it had pulled the Machine’s nebula into its deepening throat, and the crippled shell of Altanexa with it. And as the violet river of storm-wracked gas spiraled down that path to annihilation, it intersected with the fiery horror of Abbadon’s accretion disk, which was being siphoned off ahead of the main event: the shifting of the singularity itself.
Akharin jabbed at the escape pod’s controls until they powered up, and it took him several seconds to decipher the alien characters and numerals used in its interface. Ancient Arkalian, if I’m not mistaken. Which would mean the guidance and navigation controls would be right about . . . here. He fired the maneuvering thrusters to halt the pod’s rolling and tumbling, then he brought it about to face toward the distant Enterprise, which was little more than a faint echo on its long-range sensors. Patching in full power . . . now.
The pod’s main engine fired at maximum thrust, but the distance to the Enterprise continued to increase. I’m too deep into the distortion. This thing doesn’t have enough power to break free. He left the engine at full burn, hoping to delay the inevitable long enough to call for help. If memory serves, this icon activates the subspace transmitter. He powered up the comm system. And though he was not by nature a religious man, he prayed someone would hear the desperate SOS he was about to send.
* * *
A steady rain of sparks fell from ruptured plasma relays crisscrossing the overhead as Data hurried into the landing bay with Gatt over his shoulder. Tyros’s vessel was the only one of the small starships that remained in the bay. Its last companion was already in motion, passing through the faltering force field at the end of the bay and speeding off to make its escape.
Data reached Tyros’s ship and for the first time noticed its name, stenciled in Dinasian characters on the bow of the main fuselage: Gyfrinac. Its entry hatch was closed and the exterior controls to open it flashed red at his touch. He tried again, only to be rebuffed a second time.
Gatt let out a snort of derision. “Don’t bother trying to hack it. Tyros was a clever bastard, and you don’t have the time to break his code.”
“Do you know it?”
A mocking chortle. “Of course I do.”
Fear and frustration boiled over inside Data. “Tell me!”
“For a price.”
Pushed past the edge of his temper, Data dropped Gatt’s broken body to the deck and seized his head with both hands. “The code or I crush your skull.”
“If I die here, you die with me. You want to live? I need assurances.”
There was no time to argue, no time to negotiate with a fanatic. “What do you want?”
“Promise you’ll bring me with you, you’ll fix me, and you’ll let me go.”
It galled him to capitulate to this monster, but he had no better alternative. “Done.”
“The code is Aleph three Mem five Teth one
Kendar Samek two.”
Data keyed in the code sequence. The ship’s hatch opened and its ramp descended. As it touched the deck, he started climbing it—alone. Gatt called out, “There’s a separate code for the launch sequence.” Data pivoted to glower down at Gatt, who added, “Like I said—Tyros was a clever bastard.”
Data went back, hefted the paralyzed android over his shoulders, and carried him inside the ship. Stepping quickly toward the cockpit, he warned, “If your claim proves to be a lie—”
“It won’t. Strap me into the copilot’s chair.”
Data secured Gatt in the seat’s safety harness, then strapped himself into the pilot’s seat. He tapped the master console—which oddly used a Terran alphanumeric set—and was prompted by the interface for a command authorization. “The launch code.”
“It’s a phrase: Kuolema on ikuista.”
He instinctively translated the Finnish idiom as he keyed it in: Death is forever.
The console lit up, the engines thrummed to life, and Data wasted no time pivoting the ship one hundred eighty degrees and engaging full maneuvering thrusters.
Gyfrinac left the doomed wreckage of Altanexa like a bullet from a gun, and then Data found himself contending with the terrors of space-time turned in upon itself. “I am patching in auxiliary power,” he said. “That should be enough to break us free of—”
Rhea’s voice shrieked from the comm speakers. “Mayday! Mayday!”
He opened a response channel. “Rhea! Where are you?”
“In an escape pod, being pulled toward the wormhole!”
A man’s voice crackled over the comm. “Data? Is that you?”
“Akharin?” Steering the ship toward the wormhole, Data set Gyfrinac’s sensors to maximum range and resolution. In an instant, he saw the horrible dilemma that was taking shape. There were two escape pods tumbling on divergent headings into the river of stellar fire. Aboard one, a human life sign: Akharin. Which meant the other had to be Rhea’s.