by Hugh Howey
The secret was The Chart—meticulous, precisely kept, always by the pilot’s chair. No one touched it but him: that was Harry’s one rule, and he was otherwise easygoing enough that the crew happily acquiesced to this one odd eccentricity. The Chart itself was a promise to his mother, who had asked how long he’d be gone. She didn’t understand the math, but Harry did. And so, each trip, he composed a chart of ship time and realtime: acceleration, deceleration, distance, jumps. Even the computers didn’t calculate it so precisely—they knew only standard courses, and besides, a Class H like the Emily May wasn’t likely to have a newer computer, nor did it have the energy to spare for calculating realtime ETAs. So for accuracy, there was only Harry’s chart, and it was a damned sight better than what the other captains used. He stared at it now and tried to find the error.
“There a reason we’re not moving?” Li, head stuck through the door.
“We’re off schedule,” Harry said, knowing his voice betrayed the depth of feeling and not being able to bear it alone.
“Well, sitting here won’t help with that.”
Harry stared at his calculations. Adrift. Something had come unanchored.
“Oh, come on—you were going to mess up eventually.”
“I didn’t mess up.”
“It’s right there, dumbass.” Li’s voice faded as she disappeared down the hallway, and Harry tossed a disgusted look at her retreating form, at the blond hair catching the low glints of shipboard lights.
“I didn’t mess up.”
“Facts.” He could hear her opening cupboards in the kitchen. “Let’s get moving!”
Harry typed the coordinates in, then leaned over and adjusted the chart before he hit enter. Two days along standard acceleration-deceleration curves; one-point-seven-nine at standard warp, two-point-four minutes’ drift with the jump. He watched the clock count up to the half, and hit enter.
Accurate to the second.
* * *
Walther Junck was not pleased.
“Three days behind schedule is not acceptable,” the message read. “We will discuss your continued employment when you return.” It was an empty threat and they both knew it. Harry was Junck’s most reliable pilot by far, even if they counted in this incident. Still, it troubled him. He was halfway to the galley, needing somewhere to go and somewhere to be, when he stopped.
“Three days?” Very like Junck to make this more serious than it was. The freighter had been drifting for years, to hear Maller describe its condition; its buyers could wait an extra half-day. Harry busied himself with cooking. It would keep him from thinking about the fact that it was not like him to miscalculate, not at all. And it was not like him, either, to say the buyers could wait a bit.
* * *
Maller slept for ten hours and had to be woken for his watch by Hernandez pounding on the door. He took a plate of beans on his way to the little study off the cargo hold. He still didn’t look all the way awake, and Harry watched him bump into the walls as he went.
“Are you sure those scans came back negative?” Laurents asked doubtfully.
“Yes.”
“Maybe it’s his heart or something,” Hernandez suggested around a mouthful of beans. “What is he, sixty?”
“Thirty-two.” Harry always knew how old the crew were.
“No way, he’s got one foot in the grave.”
“He’s just tired,” Li said. She didn’t look entirely convinced, but when Maller called Harry down to the cargo hold later that watch, Harry had to admit the man looked better.
“All recovered?”
“Sure.” He flashed his trademark smile, bright and roguish. It always made Harry wonder how Maller ended up here, on a lonely freighter. “Haven’t been sleeping enough. Sorry, chief.”
“Just as long as you’re okay when we get back to Essen. Mr. Junck’s not happy we’re behind schedule.” He’d be checking the logs very carefully after this flight, that was for sure. “So what’d you call me for?”
“Just something weird. Dunno what’s up with the warp this time, but it’s making a hell of a show. Go see.” Maller had a love of everything space, from stars to warp ripples. Harry often looked up from a book to find that the man had installed himself in the co-pilot’s chair with a mug of terrible coffee and was staring silently out the window. Harry had taken to calling him when they flew through something particularly lovely, and Maller returned the favor.
No one complained; everyone who worked the cargo routes was a bit weird. Li worked out obsessively, Hernandez went reclusive for days at a time, and Laurents sang. All the damned time, he sang. At least he had a good voice; Harry had never heard so much music in his life. In any case, sitting silently and watching warp ripples was about the most harmless habit one could hope for from a crewmember.
“So what’s it doing?”
“Just watch.”
Harry leaned against the doorway and watched out the back cargo window. The square of black flickered, a few stars wavering in the warp signature. Pretty enough, and Harry was about to thank Maller politely and walk away, when the silver bulk of the Arrow’s port side, a bright anchor in the corner of the window, disappeared completely. Harry jumped and choked on his coffee, and Maller leaned in to look before laughing.
“Been doing that for about an hour now. Ever seen something like that?”
“… No.” The ship flickered back into existence, and Harry tightened his fingers on the coffee cup. The next mouthful burned his throat, and he swallowed it down anyway. “Wait, did you see that?”
“What?” Maller, despite his quirks, was a good worker. He didn’t look up from his scans.
“The lights just went on. I thought.”
“On the Arrow?” Maller half-stood to peer around Harry.
“They’re off now.”
“The whole ship’s been going in and out, it’s not like seeing lights is any weirder.”
“It’s all weird,” Harry said. The back of his neck was crawling. A flicker where the lights should be was, truth be told, more like a warp signature than the flickering ship. Maller was right, it shouldn’t disturb him.
Was this a technical malfunction? He should stop the ship, stop it right now. There was only one way things turned out when machinery broke during warp. Harry should drop them into realtime travel; Junck would yell, but they’d both know Harry had done the right thing. Even the buyers would know.
Harry glanced at his watch. Already behind schedule… But if the equipment was breaking, and he’d never seen anything this weird in the warp signature, then—
An alarm interrupted his internal debate. Harry left his mug on Maller’s desk and went sprinting for the cockpit.
“What’s going on?”
“Autopilot isn’t working.” Hernandez slid out of the way to allow Harry to sit.
“Autopilot isn’t on anymore.”
“I took it off. But she’s handling like a drunk pig.”
Obstacles were coming up in the course. A planet and some moons. Harry began the swerve gently. There was nothing too difficult about piloting manually in warp. Even at those speeds, obstacles were few and far between. It was the stakes that got him. After a few hours of nothing, it was difficult to stay alert, and a collision at this speed…
Not worth it. Harry, like Junck, was cautious by nature.
To his horror, the Emily May refused to bank.
“Sir?”
Harry pulled the rudder farther. Nothing.
“Sir?”
“Working on it!” He slammed the rudder hard to port and the Emily May slid, back end slipping around until Harry jammed their speed up with shaking fingers and they shot off-course, forty-five degrees into the shipping lane, could only hope that no one else was there and Hernandez was holding on to a rail to steady himself while the ship shot into high gear.
“What the hell?” Harry heard from the galley; Li, scraping her chair back to come to the cockpit. Laurents’s voice crackled on the comm:
“Sir? I think there’s been a malfunction. The engines just went—”
“That was me, Laurents.”
A pause.
“Are we all right?”
Harry steered them back onto course before answering. His heart was pounding in his chest, his mouth felt dry. So close; they had skirted the gravity well by a second, by half a second, by less than that. He had flown this ship for five years, and never once had she failed to listen to his commands.
“Check on steering,” he said to Laurents, and then he rested his forehead on both fists and shook.
“What happened?” Hernandez asked.
“Yeah, what was that?” Li’s angry footsteps halted. Harry could picture the scene: Hernandez, grey in the face, himself hunched over the piloting desk.
“Ship’s not responding,” Hernandez said finally, when Harry said nothing. “She won’t steer.”
“Christ.” Li whistled between her teeth. “You gonna take us out of warp, sir?”
“We don’t have time for that.”
“Come on. You got us back ahead of schedule. Junck’ll understand.” Her voice was soft. “Mr. Junck,” she corrected herself. “Sorry.”
“We’re not even close,” Harry said. His eyes were closed.
“We’re supposed to be there on the fourth, aren’t we? Can’t take more than five days to get there.”
Harry picked his head up. 21:35:59, October 30. He stared. The numbers stared back. He looked at his chart. He looked at the clock. He pulled up Junck’s last transmission. The time signature flashed at the bottom: 12:45:32, November 3.
Harry looked over at Hernandez, who came to bend over the desk. His eyes narrowed.
“That’s weird.”
“It’s not weird,” Harry said, a bit desperately. Over his shoulder, Li was looking at the chart.
“You said you didn’t mess up,” she said slowly.
“He did mess up.” Hernandez snapped. “Look, here’s your problem. By this, it took two and a half days to salvage the Arrow. You know that’s not right.”
“You saw Junck’s transmission,” Harry told him.
“Computer glitch.”
Boots sounded on the floor, and Maller popped his head around the door.
“I told Laurents I’d come see what the fuss was all about.”
“You’ve got three more hours on your shift,” Li said, annoyed.
“No, I don’t.” Maller looked at her cheerfully. “Time’s been dragging. I watched that clock like it was my job.”
“So go do your job.”
“Oh, come on, it’s 0220 at least—” His voice trailed off when he saw the clock. “I must have been wrong. Should I tell Laurents everything’s fine?”
“Harry,” Li said. She was staring at the chart, and her lip was red and swollen where she’d been chewing on it. “We have to find out what’s on that ship.”
“What?” Harry and Hernandez looked up, and Maller’s departure halted.
“When did things start going wrong? When we picked it up.”
“Any of a million things could be wrong with our shipboard computers.”
“It’s not those. It’s everything. Maller said the ship was all rusted out, but you can see it out the back window, Harry, it’s not rusted at all.”
“What are you suggesting?” he asked her, and she shook her head.
“All I’m saying is, something’s wrong.”
* * *
Harry took Laurents, because no one would let him go alone and no one wanted to go. They all volunteered awkwardly, until Laurents said, with his characteristic shrug, “I’m good with machines. If something goes wrong in there, I’m the best one to help.”
So off they went, suits close and confining on their bodies and their breath echoing in their ears, hand over hand down the cables to the hull of the Arrow. No one mentioned that Junck’s manifest said to tow the ship and deliver it intact; there was the sense of hovering on a precipice. Of just how big the black was outside the window.
Both of them turned slowly before entering the Arrow’s airlock, a visual check for an airtight suit. Who knew what was in there?
“You sure you want to do this?” Harry asked Laurents. He knew the crew was listening over the radio, but no one spoke. Laurents paused to consider.
“Yeah.”
“Okay.” Harry turned the manual crank and the airlock shot open. No loss of pressurization, but that could be good or bad. They switched on their helmet lights and drifted inside, through the airlock to the docking bay. It took a few minutes of Laurents fiddling with the locks, and then they were into the body of the ship, heading aft for the cargo bay.
The ship was disturbingly quiet. Whoever had been there once, there were no bodies to see now. No stains on the walls. No carbon streaking. Whatever had happened here, it happened quietly. That did not make Harry feel any better.
The cargo bay was, by volume, at least half of the ship. The passageways opened abruptly into a vast blackness, and they swung their heads side to side.
There was no doubt about what they were looking for—the machine was huge. It was moving slowly, shafts and cogs turning, a low hum coming from its insides. The closer Harry moved, the deeper the vibration went into his bones. It took up nearly all of the cargo hold, and Laurents whistled low between his teeth.
“Now, that…”
“What does it do?”
“I don’t have any idea. I don’t even know how it’s still running. Ship’s gotta have been here for what, twenty years at least?” Legal salvage rules. Harry nodded. “But this is running like new. Just slow, but look at it. No grease, nothing’s hitched up or squeaking. There’s a computer in there somewhere.”
“How do you know?”
“Not sure. Things look different when they’re all mechanical. I like them better that way. Less likely to get fucked up and send you into a planet. This, though…”
“Can I touch it?” Harry held out his hand, fingers clenched in the suit gloves. Laurents waved a meter and frowned at the readings.
“Uh. Sure.”
It was as Harry touched it that it began to whir. Cogs clicked together more sweetly. It was not revving up for anything in particular, he sensed. It was almost as if it was pleased to have company.
“What’s it doing?”
“Well, to be honest…” Laurents handed the meter over. “It seems like it isn’t doing anything at all. It’s got no readings. Not outputting anything.”
He was right: all the dials rested at zero. The meter in Harry’s other hand, testing the air for poisons and residues, was standing at normal levels. There was nothing unusual here at all. He sighed.
“Let’s get back to the ship.”
“But this thing—”
“Is none of our business. We’re cargo runners, Laurents.”
“Fine.” Laurents pushed off to follow Harry up to the corridors again. “Maybe I should go work for whoever’s buying this.”
“Funny.”
“I’m just saying.” They drifted through the airlock, and Harry carefully moved the door back into place. He was twisting the lock when he realized that Laurents was hardly breathing.
“You okay?”
“Harry,” Laurents said. He was looking up at the Emily May. “Look. At the window.”
Harry had to squint to make it out. Li was watching for them. For a moment he didn’t notice it, then he saw what Laurents meant: Li was not just still, waiting for them. She was frozen entirely, a lock of hair across her face and her hand half-raised to brush it away. They stared, Laurents and Harry together, and Li did not move. If she saw them, she gave no sign of it. The lock of hair, across her eye and her nose, did not fall back to the side of her face. Her hand did not tuck it behind her ear.
So they hung, frozen in the black, watching Li, turning to look at one another. A silent communion: Are you seeing this? Is it still happening?
And then the moment passed, the hand moved and
tucked the lock of hair behind her ear, and Li waved at the two of them.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Laurents said softly, but he raised his arm and waved back.
* * *
“So what was in there?”
“A machine. Not sure what for, but the readings are fine.” Harry stripped off the gloves gratefully and stepped out of his suit. He flexed his fingers and looked over at Laurents, who was not meeting his eyes.
“So the problems…”
“Are internal, whatever they are.” Not heartening, but at least understandable. “I need you to go send a transmission. Say we’re having shipboard computer failure and steering problems, and we’ll be dropping out of warp as soon as we can get to the edge of the lane. I’ll be up in a moment.”
“Sure.” She disappeared up the metal stairs and Laurents looked after her.
“I saw that, right?” he asked finally. “You saw it too. She wasn’t moving.”
“Yeah, I saw it.”
“Harry.” Laurents was staring at him, skin greyish in the bay lights.
“I know. But right now what we gotta do is get this ship out of warp and wait for someone to come pick us up. Whatever the hell is going on, I don’t want it going on at these speeds.”
“Harry, it’s not going to help.”
“Laurents—”
“Uh, Harry?” Li’s voice, booming over the comms. “I think you’d better come see this.”
Proximity alerts were going full bore when Harry reached the cockpit. He reached over and switched off the sound as Laurent came crashing through the door behind him, but neither Li nor Hernandez paid much notice; they were both craning out the window.
“What is it?”
“Another ship. I think. It’s right on top of us.” Hernandez levered himself up on the navigation desk and Li braced him; Harry watched the boots on his chart and said nothing at all.
“Can you see anything?” Li asked.
“Class H, but I can’t tell any more than that. Literally, right on top of us.”
“When did it sneak up?” Harry pulled his chair out and slumped into it.
“That’s the thing.” Li helped Hernandez down. Her face was all screwed up. “Came out of fucking nowhere. I mean it. Nothing anywhere, then bam. Right there.”