The Icarus Void

by CK Burch

  Markov looked distracted. He seemed somewhere else.

  Collins raised an eyebrow. ″Sir?″

  ″Yes,″ he said quickly, a little too quickly, pulled out of his train of thought. He nodded, he composed himself. ″Yes. Doctor Straub, I have to concur with the sergeant and the commander on this. I'm going to allow Doctor Tybalt to continue her experimentation, however – ″ He turned and looked directly at Tybalt. ″ – should any ill effect of the radiation be found, you will stop immediately. Absolutely immediately. Understood?"

  ″Perfectly, sir,″ Tybalt said, and right now she would agree to a blowjob practically to get back into the cargo bay with the object. There were so many tests to run still, so many variables to think of, and she began running numbers through her mind. She grinned; she couldn't help it. It was a huge relief.

  ″Straub,″ Markov continued. ″You will assist the doctor insomuch as you will be monitoring the levels of the extrawave radiation and their effects. Since your concern is high, I'm going to trust you to maintain that level of concern but to come to me only if there's evidence, not conjecture and theory. Understood?″

  ″Yes, sir.″ Straub looked like he was going to pout. Poor Straub. Feeling guilty again, but he'd gone up, made his challenge and now he'd just have to get over it and live with it.

  ″Doctors, you're both dismissed,″ Markov finished. ″I need to speak with Captain Udeh, please.″

  Tybalt nodded, and immediately spun on her heel and left the sick bay in a power walk, almost jogging down the corridor. Her mind was racing: it was going to be her on her own practically. She couldn't trust Straub to remain objective since he clearly could not. Whether or not his loyalties were completely with the captain or the sciences didn't matter. She knew not to trust his impartiality. So –

  ″Doctor!″ Straub was trotting up behind her. ″Please.″

  She stopped and turned to him. She was annoyed, but she wasn't going to let him get to her. Not now, especially not after getting the captain's clearances. ″What is it, Doctor Straub?″

  ″I know this research is important,″ he said. ″Both to you and to the USDSE as well. Anyone else would be telling you to continue the testing and record the data like you would with normal experimentation, but I'm asking you, please, take a look around. We know for a fact that the radiation is blocking sensors and communications, if we continue to aggravate the artifact – ″

  She held up her hand. ″Straub. I understand. You're taking precautions. A few too many in my personal opinion. But we're stuck in orbit with nowhere to go until the engineers can get the engines up and running to a point where we can move out. Then and only then will I consider leaving the artifact alone. Until then, I'm going to extrapolate as much data as I can from the artifact and from the void inside, and neither you nor your guilt over Kerrick will keep me from that. Collect your own data on the radiation and keep out of my way. Are we clear?″

  Straub looked like he'd been slapped. He might has well have been. For a moment Tybalt wondered if he'd take this to a hostile working environment, but his face relaxed. ″Clear,″ he said. ″But I'm going to act in the best interests of the ship and crew. Not my own.″

  ″Whatever will make you sleep tonight,″ Tybalt said, and she turned back towards the lift. Too much to do without worrying over Straub. Just work. Work and numbers and research. Straub could be dealt with if and when it became a necessity.

  ***

  Udeh didn't want to move. He was tired, his head ached and his stomach was tight from clenching. He'd fought hard, real fucking hard in the cargo bay to not freak out, throw up, or collapse. It hadn't been easy. At first he hadn't been able to decipher why, as he'd entered the open space of the bay, he'd suddenly felt so enclosed. They'd been standing there talking for maybe ten minutes before the doctor had gone and flipped the switches on her machines, and then his phobia had gone haywire. The rippling on the artifact had been hypnotic; he'd been entranced by it, only to look away to see himself in a coffin. The cargo bay was a small box tightening itself ever closer around him, no way out, not even the door behind him, which didn't look like a door in the moment but a sealed trap latch, holding him in rather than giving him a way out. Straub had seen it, and Straub had been the one to keep him under control. And as the artifact's rippling had lessened, the ceiling had just as magically pulled itself higher, expanding, opening, the door unlocking, his breathing becoming easier. He'd never felt anything like that in his life.

  Once when he was a little boy, he'd fallen into the basement of a neighbor's house while playing with a friend. The door had been open just a crack, and six-year-old Okwudili had tripped, fallen into it and then down the stairs to the basement. He'd broken his ankle on the way down, but the pain hadn't been so bad; it had been the darkness, the musty smell, knowing he was underneath the rest of the house, alone, trapped, unable to get up or move. His friend had gone outside to get his mother for help, and in those ten minutes Okwudili Udeh discovered his fear of enclosed spaces. When the paramedics came at last, they thought he had gone into shock from the break. Later a psychologist would give Okwu's concerned parents the correct diagnosis. But even then, that first time, the walls had just felt like they were too close, too tight, no room to breathe. He'd never actually seen the physical movement of the environment as it closed in, only felt it, but in the cargo bay the whole world had shifted radically. Now he was thinking about the expansion of the hallways in the corridors, how the walls moved in and out, and he wondered how much of this was his real phobia and how much was potentially hallucination.

  ″You're making a mistake,″ he said to Markov.

  Markov, his friend, stood before him with his arms crossed and a worried look. Udeh remembered how Markov had looked when he'd first arrived in the Prometheus Captain's Boat, and now wondered if that had been fatigue or something else.

  ″Ok, I don't have the evidence to support any of Doctor Straub's claims, I just don't,″ Markov said. ″Gaines doesn't have any evidence, Straub doesn't have any evidence. There's nothing that says yes, this is bad, or no, that this isn't, and quite frankly what I do know is that this ship needs to get under power and under way. We can't do that if we're devoting extra time and effort to arguing over a piece of alien rock and effects that are only theoretical right now.″ Markov rubbed his face; good god he looked distraught.

  ″Are you okay, Gordon?″ Udeh asked. It came out a little more pointed than he meant for it.

  Markov raised an eyebrow. ″I'm fine,″ he said flatly. He'd reacted the same way earlier, just after Udeh had come on board. He'd been on his way to rest, doctor's orders, and Udeh had told him to get going or he'd call him unfit for duty. Gordon Markov knew how to take a joke, but he hadn't then, and right now he looked exactly the same way. Distortedly displeased. Udeh felt a roll of sweat bead and drop over his brow as he fought his panic, brought on by – what? Markov? The walls? The artifact? He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Maybe he wasn't feeling all that great. Maybe he was imagining things because he wasn't feeling all that great. Maybe the world around felt like it was spinning, spinning, spinning, closing in and spinning –

  Udeh laid himself out on the medbed and kept his eyes closed. ″I'm sorry,″ he said. ″That came out wrong. I still feel – ″ Jesus. With his eyes shut the world seemed a little more stable. It was the after effects of the medication. Right? He couldn't remember; it had been so long since he'd needed to take them.

  He heard Markov sigh. ″We're all under a lot of stress, Okwu. All of us.″ He paused. ″Including me. We all need to make sure we're resting. You do your part and stay here, for now. Let Gaines look after you and I'll look after the ship.″ Udeh felt Markov's hand on his shoulder. ″I'll keep my eyes on the radiation effects. I promise.″

  Udeh nodded. Markov didn't have to promise anything. He knew that, they both did. This wasn't Udeh's fucking ship, and they also knew that. Or did they? Did Markov understand that he wasn't trying to run things arou
nd here? Was he thinking about that time when Udeh had put in to take over captaining the Icarus? God, how long ago was that now? Three years? Markov hadn't been too pleased when he'd found out, however he'd found it. They'd been good friends, damn good friends, and that had damaged things. Udeh had never meant any harm, but he could see how it might have looked like a takeover behind the scenes. Markov was thinking of leaving after that shuttle accident, and Udeh hadn't wanted anyone else to captain a ship that he and Markov both had loved. But Icarus was never his. Prometheus was. And she was out there, somewhere, without her captain and without means of talking to her sister ship. Here on the Icarus, all anyone could do was wait. And that was something that, in a high-pressure situation such as this, no one was good at doing.

  ″Can I speak to you alone for one minute?″ Udeh asked.

  There was no reply; for a moment Udeh wasn't sure that Markov had heard him. Then he heard the sound of the sick bay doors open and close, and then Markov said, ″Collins and Laguardia are gone. Gaines is paying about as much attention as he always does. What is it?″

  ″I'm a little itchy about getting back to my ship. I'm not feeling well. Everything is exaggerated and sensitive right now. I'm not trying to run your crew.″

  ″I know that, Okwu. What – ″

  ″Gordon.″ Udeh opened his eyes, saw the ceiling lowering towards him, but focused his gaze on Markov. He needed to convey this clearly. ″I'm not trying to run your crew.″

  Markov didn't say anything at first. Above him, the ceiling was still lowering, pulling itself inward. Udeh tried to ignore it. He told himself that it wasn't moving, wasn't going to crush Markov and himself and wasn't tightening in, ratchet by ratchet. It was impossible. It was the radiation. It had to be. It was a hallucination. God, please, please god let it be a hallucination.

  ″Okay,″ Markov said. He smiled, looked away, clearly embarrassed. ″Thanks. I guess I'm still a little touchy from...you know.″

  ″I know,″ Udeh said, and he closed his eyes again. He couldn't take the view. His ribcage even felt like it was collapsing inward. ″That was once upon a time. Right now I'm concerned about my own crew. On my own ship. I need to get back to where I belong.″ He winced; holy fuck, he couldn't take this. Individual ribs felt like they were beginning to pull apart, bending about to aim for his lungs. They would puncture and fill with blood, and then there would be no space in his lungs for air, suffocation, no, drowning, god, fucking Christ man, this was enough. He'd had enough. He was no good to anyone anyway. ″Will you do me a favor?″ He had to speak through his teeth. ″Will you get Gaines to give me a sedative? I think some sleep will get me through the next six hours a lot easier.″

  ″Of course,″ he heard Markov say. Gordon sounded better already. It hadn't been easy to deal with the elephant in the room, and still it had only been peripherally, but it had been enough to count for something. Markov sounded a bit renewed, and that was good because the ship needed her captain. Her actual captain.

  Markov called out Gaines's name, then spoke towards Udeh again. ″I give you my word, Okwu: once the engines are online we're dumping that hunk of rock into space and getting clear enough to contact Prometheus. We'll get you home soon.″

  ″Thank you,″ Udeh said. He kept his eyes shut and waited for Gaines to bring the knockout juice.

  He thought he felt his lungs moving against his ribs.

  God help me.

  ***

  Markov turned around as the doors on the lift closed, and he reached forward to press the STOP key on the holo controls. The lift locked into place and Markov leaned against the doors and sighed, heavily.

  There were a lot of things on his mind.

  There were the engines: he'd spun it heavy when explaining to the scientists and to Udeh what Mac had told him, but Collins and Laguardia knew the truth, that the engine burnout from the heatshielding on the port side was only part of the multi-system outage that they were looking at in full repairs. With the scientists, Markov hadn't wanted to stir them into a cabin fever and start experimenting all over the place, but look what good that did. Now he hoped that by allowing Tybalt to focus herself on the artifact it would keep her out of the way long enough for Mac to get the engines back to a degree where standard thrust wouldn't be doing more harm than good.

  There was the notion of this radiation: Straub meant well, and god damn good on him for speaking up and trying to take the high road, even against Tybalt. But what good would it really do right now? That was the real question. What fucking good? Devoting time to investigating the effects of the radiation and doing full sweeps across the ship would delay them even further, and right now that was the last thing that anyone on the ship needed. No, Markov was utilizing hope again with this one. Hope that there were no actual effects on crew or ship beyond blocking signal feeds. That explained why the Prometheus Captain's Boat wouldn't transmit or receive now, and if they could get out of orbit and leave the artifact out in space with a stationary buoy, and then clear the radiation waves, they'd have a chance to broadcast. Markov knew that dumping the damn artifact would result in strict action from the upper brass in the USDSE, otherwise he would have done so already. Fucking upper brass. Fucking scientists. Fucking mission.

  Then there was Rene.

  Doctor Fleur, he told himself. Remember to think of her as the ship's psychologist, nothing more. Because now a fearful thought had entered his mind: what if this new relationship, the flirtatiousness, the sex, these urges and drives bubbling to the surface were a part of Straub's theoretical effect of radiation exposure? Markov took a deep, slow breath; he knew how he felt about R – Doctor Fleur. He'd known how he'd felt about her for a long time now. His feelings weren't suspect. He knew. It was her. The idea that she was acting under an unknown influence made their affair less of a dream coming to life and more of a tryst, one that would end once they got clear of the artifact, a harsh reality. Jesus Christ, how could he look at her now without wondering? How could he ask without asking her?

  He had to try.

  Markov grabbed his comm and paged Fleur but she didn't pick up. Probably sleeping or attending to one of the crew. He put the comm in his pocket, and immediately wanted to try again but stopped himself. He needed to have a little composure. He was the ship's captain for Christ's sake. On top of that he was sixty-five goddamn years old. He needed to man the hell up and stop acting like a fucking teenage girl impatient to know if a boy really likes her.

  Maybe his feelings were suspect. But could they be? And if they were, or even if they were just exaggerated, did that mean that what they had potentially started would just fizzle and die once they moved away from the artifact? His heart sunk and he turned and leaned his forehead against the wall of the lift.

  God damn it all to hell. This was worse than pathetic.

  Markov let out one more deep sigh and then pressed the FUNCTION icon on the holo controls. If Straub really was right about the radiation effects, then everyone needed to be dealt with in sensitive and careful manners. Everyone. Including the ship's captain and psychologist. Markov couldn't allow himself to succumb to whatever it was that was working over Doctor Kerrick and Captain Udeh...if that was even the case.

  The only option was to expect nothing and be prepared for anything.

  If not him, who would?

  ***

  CHAPTER X.

  That was the problem about being the chief engineer: everyone seemed to think that you had the fucking answer to whatever the fuck they had to ask.

  Mac leaned back, pushed his fists into his spine and felt the satisfying pop of vertebrae. He was exhausted like he couldn't remember. It was fucking nonsense. Ten hours ago he'd projected a twelve-hour repair time to the engines, which had evolved into systems analyses, maintenance, rerouting of subsystems and power sources, and now finally was beginning to come around to the first stages of warming up the engines to give them a few test fires to see if the flux core was working properly or merely grinding d
own on its tesseract axis. If the hypercube module that burned the fuel in the thrusters was grinding, then they had a serious problem that even Mac would have to admit defeat upon. No tesseract meant maneuvering thrust only, and only until they could get clear of the extrawave rads produced by that goddamn marble rock in the fucking cargo bay. Mac had half a mind to track down the captain and just tell him to enable that option, but depositing the artifact anywhere other than outside standard orbit of the Sun was unacceptable. Probably get some demotions and court martials for leaving behind and potentially eradicating a unique xenoarchaeological find.

  If it were up to Mac, he'd say fuck that shit and carry on. But it wasn't up to him.

  Mac leaned over the three-dee holo of the engine well, flanked on either side by Clarke and Hartman. Clarke had always been the right hand go-to man, and Hartman had quickly proved himself invaluable in engineering matters. Between the three of them, they'd jury-rigged a helluva lot more on Icarus than standard operating procedure certainly allowed, but looking at the malfunctioning discworks in the tesseracts made each man cringe and shake his head with a lack of hope.

  ″We might be good and fucked,″ Mac said out loud. It was really more of a testing of the waters to see who said something first, but neither man at his sides said anything, and that was a bad sign.

  ″Can we try replacing the rotational manifold with a combine of solar tubing and welded insulation?″ Hartman suggested at last.

  Mac shook his head. It wouldn't work, but it was a goddamn good start. ″The problem with that is the insulation.″ Mac reached into the holo schematic and opened his palm, zooming in on the tesseract. He pointed at the offending piece – one of the arms connected to the hypercube – and said, "The insulation would be useless right in this area, because we're going to need it to be just malleable enough to rotate, but the insulation is designed to not move at all. Rewelding it won't do us any good either, because once it cools down the pliability reduces as well. But it's a step in the right direction. The solar tubing – ″