Strange New Worlds

by Kevin McLaughlin

  “Captain? Can you hear me?” Ayala asked. There was no response. “How long has she been like that?”

  “Since she touched the thing, sir. I radioed you as soon as it happened,” Evans said.

  Ayala checked the time. It had only been a few minutes, but that was long enough for her stillness to be a concern. He pulled up her medical stats — at least her space suit was still feeding readouts on her vitals. Everything looked good there. Heartbeat, breathing, and blood pressure were all a little elevated, but none of them were anywhere close to dangerous levels. What happened to her?

  He took a step toward her, a wary eye on the robots.

  Evans put a hand on his shoulder. “Careful, sir.”

  Ayala frowned, but stopped moving. One of the spiders had twitched. A reaction to him? Or just an aimless motion? There was only one way to find out for sure, and if the answer were the wrong one he’d be in a hell of a lot of trouble.

  “Damn it, Captain. You’re not supposed to be out there taking all the risks,” Ayala muttered under his breath.

  The response took his breath away. Like a ghost, he heard Beth’s voice. “I heard that, Luis. Had to be done.”

  “Captain? Are you all right?” Ayala asked. The radio. She was reaching out via radio waves?

  Her body remained motionless, but her voice came over his radio again. “More or less? I’ve been better. Remember those damned nanites I was injected with?”

  “Sure,” Ayala replied. She’d had a couple of courses of medical nanites to help recover from serious injuries. He chuckled under his breath. Beth hated the things. It was a strange foible for an engineer and tech-geek like her to have, but she’d always expressed an intense dislike for having machines wandering around inside her.

  “Well, it seems like this device spotted them floating around inside me and recognized me as some sort of kindred spirit,” Beth said. “It reactivated the remaining ones and added a new set of its own.”

  “That sounds…dangerous.” Ayala didn’t know much about the tiny robots, but having alien ones floating about in one’s bloodstream couldn’t be healthy. Human nanites were carefully crafted to do specific tasks and then shut off after a set time, after which eventually the body would break down or excrete them.

  What would the alien nanites do to her? They had to get Beth to medical attention as quickly as possible.

  “I think I’m all right for now, at least. The new nanites are interfacing with the old ones, networking or something,” Beth said. “They’re giving me a connection to the core systems of the alien vessel. Taking me a while to figure it all out, but we’ve got a serious problem.”

  Luis could think of several, the most critical of which was figuring out how to get his captain free from this alien device and back to the Satori so they could fix whatever the alien nanites had done and get them to shut down. He had a feeling that wasn’t what she had in mind, but he had to try. “Can you move?”

  “No, and that’s the smaller problem. The bigger one is why I can’t move,” Beth said. “This ship has sustained some serious damage.”

  Thinking of the vast hole the Independence was sailing through, Ayala just nodded. “Sure.”

  Beth paused before going on. “There was damage to the core as well. The whole ship draws power from the artificial singularity at the center. Near as I can tell, anyway. It’s been able to stave off catastrophic failure so far by keeping everything in low-power mode.”

  “Did we mess things up by coming inside?” Ayala asked.

  “No, but the Independence did when she got close enough to the black hole to create containment instability,” Beth replied. “I’m keeping it together for the moment while I figure out how to use their comm system to reach Dan’s ship. But it requires a lot of manual oversight.”

  “You can’t take your eyes off the kettle,” Ayala said.

  “Right.”

  He paused, thinking. “How long would we have before the thing goes boom if you step away from the controls?”

  “I honestly don’t know. At least a few minutes. Maybe longer, but no guarantees.”

  Damn, but that was going to be complicated. The Independence would have to get clear, then someone would have to fly in, grab Beth, and get out before everything came apart. Worse, they’d need to get clear in time. The Satori could maybe manage it if she jumped in and jumped out. But what would the wormhole jumps do to the already fragile space-time around the barely contained singularity?

  Ayala couldn’t believe he was even asking himself questions like that! Nothing he’d studied in college physics had prepared him for these sorts of problems. The best he could come up with was that yes, a wormhole would almost certainly interact with the singularity if it opened close enough. They already knew the wormholes generated by the Satori’s drive were affected by gravity wells. It made sense for the reverse to also be true. Given the already unstable nature of the containment, the arrival of a wormhole would likely cause things to decay even more rapidly.

  “We can’t jump the Satori in to get you, can we?” Ayala asked.

  “Already thought about it. You know more about the math there than I do, but my feeling is no — the arrival would screw things up even worse. I won’t have you blowing up my ship trying to save me,” Beth said.

  Ayala thought Colonel Wynn might have something to add to the conversation once he heard about all this. Dan Wynn didn’t strike him as the sort of man to leave his partner behind. He kept that to himself for the moment.

  “OK, I’ve got the Independence,” Beth said. “I’m going to let them know what’s going on and where the rest of you are, so they can arrange a pick-up.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Ayala replied.

  “I’m sorry,” Beth said. He could hear the frown in her words. “If there were any other way…”

  “You’d take it. I know. I’d have done the same if it were me instead. But I can’t take your place, can I? I’ve never had a nanite treatment,” Ayala said.

  “Don’t think so, no. Head to the innermost deck. I’ll have Dan’s people pick you up there,” Beth said.

  “All right,” Ayala said, holding back all the other, less polite things he wanted to say. It most definitely was not all right. Nor had he given up on getting Beth off this dying ship. Not by a long shot.

  Thirty-Two

  Charline’s ears rang from the impact. She was bruised in places she didn’t know she could bruise. But damn it, she was on the ground. She opened fire on the spiders, blazing away with a new canister of ammo hooked up to her machine gun.

  “I’m on the ground! Tessa, you OK?” Charline asked.

  “Yup. Oh, god, that hurt.”

  Charline grimaced. “Yup. Remind me to Article 15 the idiot who thought air-assault in Armor was a smart idea.”

  “It was your damned idea, boss,” Tessa snapped back.

  “You didn’t have to follow me. Volunteers only,” Charline pointed out.

  Tessa scoffed. “Like I’d let you do something this stupid without me. Watch your three o’clock.”

  Charline turned and blazed fire at a batch of spider-bots trying to sneak up on her. She and Tessa were outmatched, but damned if they didn’t seem to have surprised the robots with their stupid-ass move. The Satori was a hundred feet overhead. They’d dropped from her aft ramp using cables to sort of slow their descent. “Sort of” being the operative phrase.

  The shuttle’s hatch opened and people poured out, leaping to the ground. Charline shot some spiders that were coming too close, but there were so damned many of them! They needed to evacuate these people quickly.

  “Grab the civilians. I’ll keep our friends here occupied while you do,” Charline said.

  “On it,” Tessa replied. She had her armor kneel down while the civilians ran toward her. Charline heard her friend shouting directions at the terrified shuttle passengers.

  There might be room for a second person inside an Armor, but it would be snug. No way to pul
l out so many. Instead, they’d hastily rigged a set of harnesses around Tessa’s Armor. All their people were still supposed to be wearing full EVA suits to protect against exposure to any planetary pathogens. Those suits had loops that could be hooked to the harnesses. Get everyone to clip in and then have the ship haul them all skyward.

  Easy in premise. The hard part was keeping the robot swarm away from them long enough to make it work. Charline found herself hard-pressed at first, and then entirely overwhelmed.

  Scores of the smaller robots raced past Charline. They scrambled between her legs and clattered across her armor in their frenzied forward rush. They weren’t even bothering to attack anymore. It seemed all other thoughts and actions had gone by the wayside, replaced by one singular focus: get onto the ship.

  The shuttle hatch was still open. Spiders poured through the gap while others clambered across the small ship’s outer hull. Charline tried in vain to cut them down, to stem the tide. Nothing worked.

  “Got all but two before they broke through,” Tessa said. “I…I’m pretty sure they killed one of the passengers on their way in.”

  “Linda! Can you still hear me?” Charline asked.

  There was a too-long pause, and Charline thought her friend was gone. But then Linda replied. “Still here.” Her voice cracked with strain. “They’re ignoring me. I don’t understand it.”

  The shuttle’s engines vibrated as it prepared to take off. It would blast into the sky, bringing Linda with it. Charline had seconds left to do something. “Tessa, go take the other survivors up with you.”

  “Don’t have to tell me twice!” Tessa replied. She engaged the system that would haul her Armor skyward to the Satori. The massive cable attached to her Armor dragged her up, carrying her precious burden. The other civilians would be safe. That just left rescuing Linda. Charline eyed the open hatch. There was no way her friend could make it out while more spiders were still pouring in. And there was nothing she could do to stop them. She glanced down at the shuttle’s landing struts. They were sturdy things, designed to survive even hard landings in difficult terrain.

  Martelle’s voice came to her over the radio. “Don’t do it. I know what you’re thinking. It’s too late. She’s gone.”

  “Not yet, she’s not.” Charline reached down and hooked her arm around the nearest landing struts. If the robots were taking the shuttle someplace, then they’d be taking her along for the ride as well!

  The shuttle’s main drives ignited, sending plumes of flame and smoke out from underneath it. Charline could feel the heat in her legs, but her armor protected her. Its dense alloy had been designed to withstand plasma bolts, at least for a while. It could handle this. She hoped so, anyway, or this would be a very brief trip.

  With her free arm, she smashed at the line connecting her to the Satori. In a tug-of-war between the two ships, the Satori would surely win. But it was just as likely that either her Armor or the landing strut would crack first. She couldn’t risk it. The hook attaching her to the Satori broke away, letting the cable bounce clear. Then she reached around and looped her second arm over the strut as well. No sense taking any more chances than she already was.

  The shuttle was lifting off. Charline’s feet left the ground, and the shuttle slowly picked up speed. But now that it was airborne, there was no way for more spiders to get aboard. On the ground below, the rest of the robot force went motionless. They were all still as statues. It looked uncanny, but seeing them all shut down like that was good news from Charline’s point of view. She was willing to bet that there was only one of the smart robots directing the whole mess of them. That one was on board the shuttle, so of course the robots remaining on the ground were no longer taking action. It had abandoned them, so wasting more effort controlling them was pointless.

  The spiders on the outside of the shuttle’s hull had frozen in place as well. They hunkered down and dug in against the metal beneath them. Once secured firmly, they too stopped moving altogether. This was the moment she’d been waiting for.

  “Linda, can you make your way past them to the hatch?” Charline asked over the radio.

  “They’ve all stopped moving, so I think so. Why?” Linda replied.

  “I’m hanging onto the shuttle, just outside. I need you to make your way to the door and then jump to me,” Charline said.

  “You want me to what?” Linda replied. “No way. They’re not moving anymore. I’m safer just staying put.”

  The robots inside the shuttle must have shut themselves down just like the ones attached to the outside. That was excellent. They might not even notice Linda as she made her way out. But how to convince her of that?

  Being blunt and direct usually worked for Charline. “In about two minutes, the air is going to be too thin to breathe. Do you have a spacesuit with you, Linda?”

  Linda’s voice came back immediately. “No, I’m talking to you on the shuttle’s radio. The channel was still open when they started pouring in. There are some suits in one of the shuttle lockers, we were shown where during orientation. But it’s covered with robots. I don’t think…”

  “No, I agree. Don’t do anything that rouses them,” Charline said. “Make your way to the door as slowly and unthreateningly as you can. I’m just outside. “

  “I’ll try,” Linda said.

  Charline could only imagine the other woman’s terror as she picked her way carefully through the mass of slumbering robots. Who knew what they would perceive as a threat? Would they attack her if she bumped into one of them? If she stepped on one by accident? There was no way to tell, and no time to carefully experiment. Already the shuttle had ascended dizzyingly high above the ground below.

  Just two years earlier, the ship would’ve been using old human-invented chemical rockets for thrust, and it already would have been too late to jump. Old-style rockets accelerated a craft very rapidly to reach escape velocity.

  The shuttle would’ve already been going far too fast.

  But this ship was using technology borrowed from the Naga. The advances in human science since capturing two Naga battlecruisers had been stratospheric. This shuttle, the Armor she wore, and a lot of their other newer devices were all at least partly based on alien tech. Charline wasn’t even sure precisely how the new drive worked. It was supposed to be more energy-efficient but used a much gentler acceleration curve for lift-off.

  Even so, it would eventually have to reach escape velocity to break orbit. Linda had to be off the shuttle long before then, or she’d be dead.

  There she was! Charline spotted Linda’s face peering through the open hatch. She’d made it to the door! Charline opened her mouth to say some words of encouragement, then remembered that Linda wasn’t carrying a radio. She had no way to reach out to the woman, no way to communicate. With both arms wrapped around a chunk of the shuttle, Charline couldn’t even use her Armor’s arm to beckon without risking her grip.

  This next part was going to suck. Charline had to open her Armor canopy for Linda to make the jump. The wind speed outside would be ferocious. Charline slammed down the visor on her helmet to lessen the impact. She reached for the button that would expose her to the hurricane-force air currents outside her Armor.

  Thirty-Three

  Dan forced his hands to relax their grip on his seat. He wanted nothing more than to stand up and take the helm from Ensign Scott. The hole in the planetoid’s shell was enormous, maybe the size of Australia. His ship, in comparison, was tiny. But the gap wasn’t regular. The edges were ragged, spools of once-molten metal reaching out into space at odd angles. Someone had tried to do repairs, too. There were places where the edge looked like it was trying to grow into the hole in the same way a bad burn would heal on skin.

  Shattered bits of metal drifted all around, held in place by the planetoid’s light gravity. Most of those were too small to be a real threat to the ship, but others were massive enough to punch right through the hull. It was anything but the smooth flight Dan had assume
d it would be.

  “Looking good, Scott,” Dan said aloud. He worked to keep his voice firm and confident. For his own sake, as much as that of the young man he addressed.

  “Thanks, sir. We’re almost through.”

  De Toro looked up from his station. “Something damned peculiar in there, sir.”

  “What sort of peculiar?” Dan asked. “Can you get it on screen?”

  “Sort of, sir. Here, I’ll show you what I mean,” De Toro said.

  The main screen flickered and then revealed an image of the planetoid’s inside. The whole thing was hollow, like a shell around a vast open space. But that wasn’t what drew his eye. It was the darkness in the center of the sphere.

  “What the hell is that?” Dan breathed. It was a disk of utter blackness. He couldn’t see through it at all. “Magnify, focus on the edge.”

  Even at maximum resolution, there didn’t appear to be any blurring of the edge. It was utterly opaque. The object wasn’t reflecting light at all, either. Dan tapped his computer and ran the screen through a variety of sensor scans. Radar, LIDAR, SONAR, infrared, and a host of other tools the Naga had invented scrolled by, one after another. None of them were reading anything at all. A gravity scan showed the smallest blip of something there, focused mostly at the polar ends of the disk, but that was the only evidence they had that it existed at all.

  “We’re getting some serious energy surges from the poles of that thing, sir,” De Toro said. “They’ve been rising as we get closer and just surged.”

  “Take us around to the side. Nice and slow, Ensign,” Dan said. This time he did stand up and walk toward the pilot’s seat. He didn’t try to take the controls but wanted to be closer to that screen and the impossible image it held.

  “Yes, sir. Nice and slow, no problem sir,” Scott replied.

  Dan looked down at the kid. He seemed shaken but was holding it together pretty well. Then again, he’d already been with the ship when it went up against impossible odds. Something that was merely ‘weird’ was a nice change of pace.