“Sounds mind-numbing,” Sheri commented.
Gil raised a single eyebrow and the corner of his mouth in sync. “You would think, wouldn’t you? But all that empty space has a nasty way of doing just the opposite. It got our minds wired, in all sorts of ways that make the time out there full of spooky presumption. You get to thinking about things you never thought about, and instead of putting them down in favor of some duty, you’ve got nothing but time to follow the little thoughts into big and scary conclusions, where you start to find out what you really believe in the face of all that nothing that surrounds you.
“Anyway, I’m sure it was in one such mind that the story of the phantom ring first came into being. From one ensign to another, mentioned in passing to a lieutenant, grasped in the commanding tone of a captain, and expelled down again into the ranks, like a wicked little virus of the mind. The phantom ring, as legend has it, is this: When a ship gets out deep enough in the less visited pockets of the Third Arm, it breaches the territory of a peculiar little beast inhabiting the space. Unseen, undetected by any traditional means of operational detection, the phantom ring was the song of a being not of this plane.”
Sheri chuckled, but in Gil’s silence, crossed her arms and wiped the grin from her face. “You don’t believe in planes. Who still believes in that?”
“No, of course not. Then again,” Gil’s eyes drifted into the sea of black. “You float out there long enough, some diffusion starts to happen between your thoughts and the space around you, and what floats in is much wilder than the thoughts that drift away.” He turned back to Sheri from the window. “Not to say I believe it. Point is, so many of us did when we were out there, or believed it enough to let the jitters in, and that was just enough.
“So, when you were out there, the story goes, in the uncharted, you would begin to hear the godawful ringing. It would start quiet at first, nothing more than what you’d expect from temperature changes, which happened all the time back then. Damn ventilation systems weren’t like they are now. And, of course, the fact that such a common occurrence became linked with the early stages of this myth only furthered its effect, crawling beneath the skin of the poor fleetfolk out there. So, in a stew of empty hours and maddening brains, you had the fear of some higher creature percolating every time your ears popped. That was the first stage.
“Then, the story proceeds, the phantom ring began to complicate. It would twist into a tune of new sounds you’d never heard before, you never thought you could ever hear. Sounds, in fitting with the perceived vocalist, not of this realm. You didn’t know the words, couldn’t begin to comprehend the intricacies of its language, but the meaning, that would burrow into your soul. See, this little beast, perched atop the center of your consciousness, caressing your dreams with a monster’s touch, incessantly reminded you of how small, useless, and finite you were. As the phantom ring grew in volume between the walls of your skull, all you came to hear was an echo of your own meaninglessness, and fables of the nothingness awaiting you beyond the insignificant and inevitable demise of your pathetic lifeform.” Gil laid his arms atop the rests to each side of him, his fingertips rubbing at their ends, his eyes watching. “I knew one man, a good man who fell victim. It was the phantom ring, he told us, when he first started hearing a tone in the infirmary after he broke a few bones fixing the filtration system. Couple of fingers, nothing serious, but he still had to report it. He’s down there, treating himself, and that’s when it crept in. No one around him, and suddenly, the sound. Like a gnat nestled into his ear canal, it settled. And after that, it was all he thought about. It would have been all he spoke of had we not expressly forbid the topic, but you could tell, from the look in his eyes, it was on his mind all the time. He didn’t sleep, barely ate, just listened, waiting, waiting.
“One breakfast he skips, just sits with us. We don’t ask him what’s wrong anymore, we already know, we don’t want to know. We sit in silence, revering what he’s dictated with his solemnity. We held our heads down near our plates, and chewed softly so as not to make much sound. It was almost sacred, the silence. Then he tells us the phantom ring told him its name. Then he left the table. That’s the last thing he said. We found him an hour later without a pulse in the infirmary, where it all started. He’d filled his veins. His eyes were vacant, staring down at himself, almost with contempt.”
In a hushed tone, Sheri inquired, leaning forward on the armrests of her lieutenant’s chair, “He didn’t tell you the name?”
Gil only shook his head.
Sheri’s eyes fell to the floor in thought, sorting through the story, while Gil added, “That silence must’ve been his funeral. He knew it, we found out later.”
“Do you believe him?” Sheri asked.
Gil gave a soft chuckle, a grim humor teasing his thoughts. “The boy was mad.”
Sheri leaned back. “That’s it?”
Gil offered a shrug. Sheri crossed her arms.
“What would you like to make of it, lieutenant?”
Sheri ground her molars against themselves in circles, her eyes still wandering the floor of thoughts, cast astray by the quandaries of the tale and her captain’s irreverence. “I don’t know. It’s unnerving.” She looked up into his eyes. “Not made any less so by your flippant reaction to its conclusion, captain.”
“Oh, Sheri,” Gil spoke, somewhat patronizing.
“Don’t,” she interjected.
His eyes caught the sincerity in hers and begrudgingly accepted a more serious tone. “Look, human makes its own madness.”
“What of this ship? What of those people in the hold? Isn’t that mad?”
Gil scratched the underside of his chin, shifting his bottom jaw forward for a good angle. “I don’t know, could be. Could be.” He cleared his throat and stared down at the panel before him. “But here’s what I do know. The mind fears the strange. People, when they encounter it, lose communication with their faculties. This,” his hands swept over the surface, “whatever it is, isn’t something we know. And what we don’t know is the strange.” In their tracing, his fingertips discovered the power switch and flicked it. Lights raced along the surface, outlining buttons and controls. Gil and Sheri exchanged glances, then watched while Gil’s hand attempted to maneuver the panel. As his hands engaged, the screen before him remained blank, the controls themselves only blinked, and nothing more happened.
“It’s like it’s a model,” Sheri commented.
Gil nodded. “Or an attempt at mimicking aesthetics.”
Sheri squinted, wondering his point, though he offered no more on the subject.
“Alright,” he said, “let’s get the strangers back to the fleet. General Hardy’s going to want to hear all about our trip.”
Gil lumbered out of the chair and back towards the door, while Sheri remained in hers a moment longer, eyeing with curiosity the sparkling, and useless controls before her. Some of the thoughts that had failed to congeal on the floor were making a second attempt, but against the backdrop of the ship’s mystery, they only collected in wild and unnatural combinations that Sheri packed away, refusing madness.
Five.
Asteroids Crumble Into Smaller Asteroids
____________________________
As Gil stepped foot back into the hold where the rest of his crew stood gathered among the four strangers, a rattling came up through his left leg which was distinct from its normal tremors. It didn’t take him the length of a second to recognize it.
“Debris,” he spoke sternly. “Back to Berserker One!”
Despite seeming quite engaged, yet entirely perplexed, in conversation with Evan, Olivia pivoted away and followed behind Captain Graves and the other lieutenants, her curly red hair bouncing with her stride. She swiped it away from her eyes as she turned over her shoulder to command the strangers, “Come on!”
Evan gave a quick, yet unaffected head nod to the other three and they all followed quickly behind, blank expressions ignored by the sweat
ing, panicked ones worn on the faces of Berserker One’s crew leading the way.
The ship rattled all around them, the crumbs of the giant bodies surrounding them ravaging the metal casing. A pair of hefty asteroids must have ground together, Gil surmised, shedding a nasty cloud of comparatively small, yet nevertheless potentially lethal, small rocks that now rained down upon the vessel they had boarded.
As he watched his lieutenants pass him, his bum leg holding him back, he called forth, “Lt. Mills, first thing, shields up, one hundred percent!”
Lt. Cameron Mills gave a quick nod back as he bolted forward down the long, empty hold, his boots striking the floor and echoing all around, joined with a hectic symphony of similarly wild footsteps. In stride with him, Sheri had caught up, assuming the lead as she secured her rifle on her back, fastening the strap to keep it from getting in the way of her perfected sprint. Her pony tale lifted in the air behind her as her speed kept it afloat in a trajectory towards the far door.
“Come on, Cameron!” she shouted to Lt. Mills beside, and now behind her.
He grunted in frustration, pushing himself to keep pace.
Then a violent quake shook through the hull of the ship, throwing all off their feet. Gil felt his side collide with the floor and the air expel itself from his lungs, refusing to return for several moments. He coughed until he could suck it back in, at which point, he noticed his crew already stammering back onto their feet, Lt. Ian Lucas nearest, rolling over, cradling his crippled hand that he had landed on. As Gil made his way back onto his feet, he offered a helping hand. “Up we come,” he said, hoisting Lt. Lucas back onto his legs. Gil looked behind him at Olivia doing the same for the strangers, lifting them one by one from the floor, then directing them to rush once more towards the door.
As he waited for the stiffness to retreat from his left leg, Gil made large, emphatic circles with his arm, rushing them along. He watched Olivia pass with concern over her face, but Gil waved her off. Then followed Evan, with Gloria on his heels. Benji came a few paces behind, but Teri seemed only to manage half the pace of her cohorts, pushing her plump, short legs to work themselves. Gil watched her as she made her way forward, his leg finally finishing with its pins and needles in his toes.
“That’s it,” he called out to her. Though, by her blank expression, it seemed she didn’t hear. Or, in the moment Gil had to ponder it, she did, and she simply had no reaction. A thought, despite its brief moment, that managed to unnerve him.
The hull filled with the metallic sound of another hit. This time, however, it did not shake. Instead, the small rock managed to do precisely what Gil had feared one might. As he watched the space behind him, back where Teri brought up the rear, he saw a small yard length tear rip through the side some fifty feet over her head. Before he could even think to curse, the air rushed through the room, creating a tremendous force sweeping out towards the vacuum of space. He could only play witness to the tragic outcome as Teri’s body, too near to the damage, was lifted from her feet and jettisoned like magic towards the wall. He watched as she slammed into the metal, her size too large to squeeze through the narrow passage. Her head rapped against the ship and cracked. A splatter of blood went up onto the surrounding wall, offering a halo around her lifeless face. Staring into it, Gil knew it would be an image he would carry with him. Oddly, it was just as it had been as she ran, void, and cold, but without question as to its state. She was gone. Her body plugged the hole momentarily, long enough for Gil to safely escape the hull and race along behind his crew up into Berserker One.
When he was clear, Sheri slammed her fist against the button for the door. Then she pulled a lever, detaching Berserker One’s latches and separating it from the body of the massive vessel. “The last one?” she asked.
Gil shook his head. “Come on,” he said, though she hoisted half his weight by wrapping an arm of his around her shoulders. He had been injured more than he thought in the fall. They hobbled their way to the bridge, where Lieutenants Mills, Lucas, and McCarthy had already taken their seats and strapped in. Evan, Gloria, and Benji had secured themselves in three seats at the back of the room, their eyes wandering excitedly around the bridge. Gil couldn’t withhold his disgust as he watched Evan’s eyes peer down like a child’s through the transparent floor into the engine as it glowed at full capacity. There was nothing of fear, nor loss, nor trace of anxiety of any kind. Merely observing.
Lt. McBride set him down in his captain’s chair at the front, where he immediately spun around and viewed the field before them. As he assumed, a pair of massive asteroids had ground a pair of edges together, fracturing their rock and shedding a collection of high velocity debris that occasionally ricocheted off their shield as he watched. They rippled the blue plasma casing around the ship, lightly vibrating the body within, which Captain Graves could feel in his seat. Alexander came rushing up from behind, leapt towards the window, bounded off it, and landed squarely in Gil’s lap. He rubbed his hand behind Alexander’s ears and whispered to him, “It’s alright, old friend. Just a few stones.”
A larger chunk shot down from above, the size of a pair of hefty men, and it thwacked the nose of the ship, breaking in half and proceeding at high speed into space. Its impact rattled the ship, and Alexander’s golden face burrowed into Gil’s armpit. “A few big stones,” he amended.
He turned his seat around to address his ready crew. “Good work on the shields, Lt. Mills. Siphon off five percent for the rear gunner. Lt. McBride, you know what that means.”
“Blast our way out.”
“Bingo. Lt. Lucas.”
Lt. Ian Lucas lifted his head from his controls as a hologram appeared before him, a red line tracing itself through a recreation of the area, then disappearing into a point marked “warphole.” He peered through the display and addressed Captain Graves, “Already locked in. Just need to be free of debris.”
“Excellent,” Captain Graves replied, gripping the armrests to keep from falling out as another tremor shook through Berserker One. A flash of light shone across his face as Sheri McBride used the rear gunner backwards, having overridden its mounting and twisted it around, firing along the underbelly of the ship at rocks floating past the nose. For only a moment, just to watch her go, he turned over his shoulder to watch the round crack an oblong body in half, its two pieces floating away from the ship without so much as teasing the shield. “Astounding,” he muttered to himself.
As he turned back around, he caught Evan’s gaze. His immediate instinct was to offer a moment of condolence then assure them they would address the fallen once they were out of this mess. Instead, as he stared deeply into the stranger’s eyes, he saw no concern for the now deceased Teri. It was as though she never existed. And as the moment dragged on, Gil felt as though Evan was trying to read him as much as he was trying to read Evan. The stare broke when Lt. McBride shouted, “Clear!”
“Engaging thrust,” Lt. Lucas followed, and the ship lurched into high speed through the path Lt. McBride had provided. When they were through, he called out, “Engaging spacefabric,” and in the moment after the next they were floating at the edge of the Fleet. Hundreds of massive ships floated in organized clusters, all hovering just outside the gravitational pull of a large, blue planet beneath them.
“How do you find the quickest warpholes?” Captain Graves asked of Lt. Lucas.
“Secret sauce,” Lt. Lucas replied. The levity was welcomed by Captain Graves as he smiled back.
“It’s incredible,” Lt. Mills spoke, adjusting his glasses as he stared into the hologram screen before him.
“What is it, Lt. Mills?” Graves asked.
“The cargo vessel,” he replied. “Scans of the belt show it’s gone.”
“Destroyed?” Lt. McCarthy posited.
Lt. Mills shook his head. “No pieces. Just...vanished.”
Lt. Sheri McBride and Captain Gil Graves both found their attentions sneaking back to the newcomers behind them, their stony gazes trained f
orward without a momentary crack.
“Hey, where’s Teri?” asked Lt. Olivia McCarthy.
“She didn’t make it,” Evan answered.
Upon his answer, Gil and Sheri looked again to one another, knowing he hadn’t seen. It was possible, of course, Gil admitted to himself, that Evan was merely stating the obvious. However, there was something in his delivery that led Gil to believe otherwise. Like Evan was reporting more so than anything else.
“I’m sorry,” Gil offered, made halfhearted by his distaste for the new acquaintance.
Evan only nodded, once, then unbuckled. “Shall we meet with your commanding officers?”
Six.
General Peter Thomas Hardy
The general was a man of valor, having personally engaged in hand to hand combat with pirates, rebels, and terrorists throughout the galaxy before rising into his position. He was also a man of myopic vision, Gil surmised, on the basis of the many conversations shared between them. The general, a man of sixty, a mere three years on Gil, still insisted his wisdom upon all his subordinates. The trouble, Gil thought, was that wisdom so often shows itself through listening. As he sat in the lavish and pristinely organized office of General Peter Thomas Hardy, watching the man himself pace past the window overlooking the fleet below, hands cupped behind his back, posture erect with chin raised and eyes narrowed, the fact of his ignorance was all the more rendered. Despite this, Gil was very fond of Peter, and appreciated the man for the strength and leadership that kept the IURF ranks in line. The allegiance of the participating planets proved, at times throughout its history, shaky.
Fallen Fleet (Berserker One Book 1) Page 4