by M. D. Cooper
Tanis sighed.
“It’s okay,” the captain said and smiled; Tanis couldn’t help but believe it was genuine, even though the woman was a bundle of contradictions. “You don’t have to tell right away. I’m betting that you didn’t beat yourself up and hop in a pod for kicks. I assure you that we mean you no harm, though we are curious. What happened to you anyway?”
Tanis thought about it. Honestly, she wasn’t entirely certain what had happened to her. Moreover, she wasn’t entirely certain that she wanted to relate the story just yet. The captain seemed to sense her indecision and apologized.
“I’m sorry, I forget how disorienting all this can be. There are some clothes on the stand beside you. Once you get dressed, I’ll show you to your cabin where you can freshen up, before joining us in the galley for the second-shift meal.”
Tanis looked over to the clothing on her right. Reaching out she put a hand on it. It was soft cotton; natural, too, by the feel of it. A captain wearing animal skins and now natural cotton. Perhaps she was on some colony world where such materials were more common than synthetics.
Sera seemed to take her reaction as disdain for cotton. “I hope they’re alright. Everything I own is custom fitted to me. Those are Nance’s. She doesn’t really wear clothes anyway, so she won’t miss them. I’ll be right outside the door.”
The captain stepped outside the med facility and Tanis could see her back as she waited in front of a window. She sat up, clutching the sheet as she pulled the clothes to her lap and examined them. They sure felt like cotton. If they weren’t, it was the best synthetic she had ever seen. Looking under the sheet, she blushed to find herself totally naked. Well, better naked and alive than the alternative.
Tanis dressed quickly in what turned out to be simple shoes, cotton leggings and a loose, sleeveless shirt. Running a hand through her hair, she wondered if this ship of contradictions would have water showers or the good ol’ sandblasting a freighter ought to have.
The captain flashed another one of those hard, yet genuine smiles as Tanis stepped out of the med facility. “Amazing how getting into at least a scrap of clothing can make you feel so much more human, isn’t it?”
Tanis nodded in response and Sera turned, leading her down a long, well-lit corridor. She couldn’t help but smile to herself at the incongruity of Sera’s statement. The captain certainly seemed to believe in a lot more than just a scrap of clothing, what with her skin-tight outfit covering every inch of her body from the neck down.
They stopped at a ladder and the captain climbed up to the next level.
The captain looked down and noticed her disbelieving expression.
“Sabrina does have lifts, but I find that on long trips you need all the extra exercise you can get. I put the ladders in after I bought her. Also much better than lifts if the AG fields ever have trouble.” She turned and led Tanis down another corridor with a series of doors on the left.
There she went again, referring to a trip that was probably only a few months as ‘long’.’ While Tanis tried to wrap her mind around FTL again, she realized the captain had mentioned AG fields. Massive ships like the Intrepid could generate artificial gravity, but how could a small freighter—where the engines couldn’t be more than fifty meters from the med lab—have AG? Sera must be playing with them now. FTL and AG in one day was far too much to swallow.
“Here we are,” Captain Sera said. “We use this cabin for passengers we pick up from time to time. Consider it yours for the trip.”
Tanis peered in; the surprises just kept on coming. How did a small freighter have cabins of this size? It was at least four meters across and had a bed, dresser, and desk. There appeared to be a closet, and it even had its own toilet and shower.
The captain looked pleased. “Sabrina used to be a pleasure yacht. I know I could probably shrink these cabins down, but it sure helps in hiring crew when you show them their own private bathroom.”
“It’s a water shower?” Tanis asked, hoping it was, because she wanted one, yet wishing it wasn’t, so that something made sense.
“Of course, do we look like savages?” The captain laughed. “Second-shift meal is in about thirty minutes in the galley,” she gestured aft, down the corridor. “We’ll be expecting you.”
With that, the captain slid the door shut and left Tanis to herself. She stood for several moments taking everything in; trying to make sense of what she was seeing. It occurred to her that this could be some sort of holo suite, or an elaborate ruse to fool her. But fool her for what reason? Sure, the Intrepid was very valuable, but no one trying to gain her trust would use such ridiculous methods.
All was not lost; Angela still had her wry sense of humor.
Glancing over at the bulkhead, Tanis noticed a porthole. A porthole in FTL? Was that safe? She couldn’t resist the urge to see what was out there. Peering through the window, she saw only blackness. There were no stars, not even streaks or smears of light as the ship blasted past photons in space. Tanis had always been certain that some light would be visible in FTL. Wouldn’t the ship be intercepting light that was already there? Light toward the bow of the ship should surely be visible? The porthole showed none of this.
She caught herself pondering all the types of FTL she had heard postulated or seen in holos. Most utilized a space folding, or space compression/stretching technique to achieve a circumvention of relativity’s limits. The amount of energy to achieve either of those effects was proven to be completely impractical. Earnest had created stable wormholes in previous research, but creating one over interstellar distances, stable enough to safely transfer matter, turned out to take as much energy as a star emitted over a billion years.
This had to be a farce. If Earnest couldn’t determine how to achieve FTL, then there was no way that this yacht turned dingy freighter could exceed c. Yet, if they were traveling at the speeds she thought, it must be much faster than light speed—hundreds of times faster. It was mind-boggling. How did the ship even hold together?
Tanis suddenly felt very unsafe. Though, she rationalized, the ship must have been through an FTL trek more than once in its decades of service. It could last a few more weeks for her. Besides, after the torture and beatings from her previous hosts, a shower would feel amazing—even if it was a holo shower.
She spent as much time as she could under the flow of hot water before getting out in time for the meal Captain Sera had mentioned. Feeling greatly refreshed, she stepped into the corridor. At the end of the hall, the sounds of cutlery clinking on plates came from what must be the galley.
Tanis entered and saw Captain Sera and another man enjoying a meal at a large table. Tanis couldn’t help but admire the quality of the wooden table and surrounding chairs. It reminded her of her cabin back on the Intrepid, which in turn made her think of Joe. She forced those thoughts down. She didn’t want her first impressions to be all warbly-voiced and teary.
“Hey Tanis,” Sera stood to greet her. “This is my first mate, Cargo.”
The man stood and offered his hand, which swallowed hers to her wrist. His skin was dark, as though few of his ancestors had spent any time in space; his voice was soft, but very resonant, as he greeted her and offered a chair.
“You’re in luck,” Sera said, as she spooned some vegetables onto her own plate. “W
e’re just out of station, so we have fresh food. A week from now, we’ll be on to frozen stuff. Enjoy it while it lasts.”
Tanis picked up a plate from the counter and sat across from Sera and Cargo. She scooped some salad onto her dish, and poured a creamy dressing over it.
“You were just at a station?” she asked as she mixed the salad up.
Angela supplied.
“Coburn, in the Trio System,” Cargo filled in. “Picked up some cargo, including you.”
Tanis set aside the part about herself being freight to be picked up, and asked about the location. “I don’t know any places named Trio.”
“No?” Sera cocked her head and gave Tanis a quizzical look. “It’s a pretty well-known system. I forget what it used to be called, before it was colonized. It’s about ninety-six light-years out from Sol. Lemme see if Sabrina knows,”
She watched Sera’s eyes blink a few times, as the captain chatted with the ship over the Link.
“Looks like it was cataloged as HD 111232 before it got settled and named.”
Angela provided Tanis with an image of the system, relative to Earth and 82 Eridani. It wasn’t possible; they were well over a hundred light-years from where she should be. On the far side of Sol from the Intrepid!
She forced herself to remain calm.
“You said you picked me up. Are you slave traders or something?”
The Captain looked genuinely appalled. “No! You were packed in a shipping container that was supposed to have a prize-racing dog in it. After we came under attack leaving Trio, I decided to see what we’d risked our necks for.” Sera wore a smile that made Tanis want to cringe. “Someone wants you real bad.”
“You came under attack because of me?” Tanis couldn’t make any sense of this. Events just wouldn’t line up for her, and her mind still felt sluggish from her prolonged incapacitation.
Sera related the story of how they came under fire while leaving the Trio System. Tanis felt numb as she took it all in. The acceleration and maneuvering the freighter captain described was unheard of. No ship could do that and not kill its inhabitants—unless they were in shoot-suits, or augmented like Joe. As she mused over the meaning of this information, the captain fixed her with a very level stare.
“I know you probably are still feeling out of sorts, but my crew and I would really like to know exactly why you’re so sought after. You came this close,” Sera held her thumb and index finger very close together, “to getting us all turned into fine stellar dust. We would like to know why.”
Tanis knew many people who wanted to kill her, but—if her suspicions were correct—none of those people were alive, or if they were, she couldn’t imagine that old grievances were relevant anymore. She certainly had no idea why she was over a hundred light-years from where she should be—being chased by pirates, no less.
The pirates had to be after the Intrepid.
Tanis took another bite of her salad and looked at her two dinner companions. It was impossible to tell if they had been truthful or not. This still could all be a ruse to get the Intrepid’s location.
She decided to play dumb.
“I…I really don’t know. I don’t understand what someone would want from me.”
Sera pushed her chair back, a look of exasperation washing across her face. She looked to Cargo and waved a hand, indicating he should try.
“You seem like a smart lady, Tanis,” he said softly. While there was no threat in his voice, she imagined it wouldn’t take much for it to appear there. “Surely you can at least determine where the current course of events began and tell us the tale of how you came to be in that cargo container.”
Angela chuckled inside Tanis’s mind.
Tanis weighed her options. Getting back to the Intrepid and Joe was really all that mattered. Perhaps honesty would be best—if these people double-crossed her, she could kill them and take their ship. Though there was something about the captain—she felt a kinship with Sera.
“I haven’t been entirely honest with you,” she began. Neither of them looked surprised. “My name is Tanis Richards, yes, but I’m also a major on a ship you would know as the GSS Intrepid.”
“Well that explains a lot,” Sera slapped the table with a laugh. “Go on.”
Tanis gave her a sidelong look. She wasn’t certain if the reaction was good or bad for her. She decided to give them the paraphrased version.
“We had some ramscoop problems as we were passing by LHS 1565 on our way to our colony world. We managed to slingshot around the star, but an x-ray flare baked one of our engines. We lined up with Kapteyn’s Star and drifted for a good seventy years.
Tanis considered telling them about the Victorians, but decided to leave that colony out of it. “Once there, we managed to mine a few small comets and asteroids to get the materials for repairs.”
Sera was giving Cargo a strange look, and Tanis decided to keep going. “It took us some decades to get everything ship-shape, then exit the system and get back up to speed. It was only 8.9 light-years to 82 Eridani, which we were calling New Eden, so everyone went to stasis for what was expected to be about sixty-year trip with the deceleration burns. Only something happened—we got trapped in some sort of gravity well and accelerated out of control. Our sensors were completely off the charts and we couldn’t make heads or tails of what was going on. All we could tell was that we did not appear to be in regular space-time.”
“Kapteyn’s Streamer,” Sera said with a nod. “You can get some amazing speed cutting across that thing, but if you hit it at the wrong angle it’ll take you for a ride.”
“Or crush you to powder,” Cargo added.
“It has a name? What is it?” Tanis couldn’t believe that this was a known phenomenon.
“It’s a supermassive stream of dark matter streaked out beyond Kapteyn’s. If you hit it just right, it will accelerate you and then dump you out the far side into a gravity tunnel that has a very unpleasant lensing effect. Significant time dilation occurs,” Cargo said bluntly.
Tanis was dumbstruck. They had just described what had happened to the Intrepid. She noticed then that Sera was giving Cargo a scathing look.
“You sure know how to break things nicely,” she sighed.
Cargo just shrugged.
“I already figured out we moved forward in time a fair bit,” Tanis said. “How far? Hundreds of years, a thousand?”
Sera stood and pulled a bottle of whiskey from a cupboard. She grabbed three glasses and poured everyone two fingers. Cargo gave her a long stare, but said nothing.
The captain sat back at the table and tossed hers back before answering.
“I’m guessing you’re from a colony ship that probably left Sol sometime in the late fourth or early fifth millennium. You were headed for 82 Eridani, which interestingly is now called New Eden. You hit the Kapteyn’s Streamer and then found yourselves somewhere in the vicinity of 58 Eridani, about 28
light-years further out than expected; wondering how the hell you got there and what the heck the year is.”
Tanis hadn’t known where the Intrepid ended up, but 58 Eridani was along the ship’s trajectory.
“Yours isn’t the first gen ship to dump through there. The first one managed to settle 58 Eridani, named it Bollam’s World, and is doing fine now—for a system full of greedy assholes, that is.
“Anyway, due to the vagaries of space-time, they probably left Sol after you. Unluckily for you there isn’t a single habitable planet within a hundred light-years of where you came out that’s not already taken.”
Tanis couldn’t believe it. The Intrepid had spent hundreds of years of blood, sweat and tears to make it to a colony; a world she could call home. She slumped in her chair; it would take centuries to travel to a new world. If the FGT had any worlds available—if the FGT still existed.
“But how is that possible?” she all but whispered.
“It’s all thanks to the greatest advance and the greatest tragedy of mankind: FTL. While all you gen ships were still chugging through interstellar space sucking up hydrogen in your ramscoops, some brainiac back on Procyon figured out the gravity drive,” Sera said.
“I remember hearing something about graviton experiments at Procyon while we were at Kapteyn’s. Our engineers were very excited about the possibilities,” Tanis said with a furrowed brow.
Sera nodded. “I know it doesn’t seem like the biggest discovery ever, but trust me it is. Once we could create gravity to react against other gravity, all the other pieces just lined up. Ships got AG fields to provide internal gravity, without rotation, thrust, or phantom mass. Inertial dampeners came out of fiction and into our ships; and we discovered a lot more about dark matter.”
Tanis was glad she hadn’t eaten too much. She was certain she was going to be sick.
“You know that scientists have always known about other dimensions, as well as sub and super-layers of space-time. But transitions to those other layers were prohibitively expensive, energy-wise, or it ended up being a one-way trip.”
Tanis nodded slowly; this was basic physics.