Furnace

by Joseph Williams

  The woman waiting for me in The Captain’s Quarters, however, was familiar territory. I didn’t want to blow it.

  “Where you headed?” Teemo asked.

  I knew him well enough to see there was mischief in his eyes, but not well enough to realize I should have run screaming the moment the smirk rose to his lips. Luckily, I didn’t learn my lesson from him that night. Or maybe unluckily, I guess. Maybe if he’d dragged me off somewhere to get shitfaced and I hadn’t met up with my old flame at all, we never would have wound up on Furnace. Or maybe fate would have brought us there anyway.

  “The Captain’s Quarters.”

  He scoffed. “The CQ? That place is shit!” He waved both hands and shook his head emphatically to be sure his point was well-received. One thing I learned quickly about Teemo was that he was a consummate showman. Nothing was ever simple or boring for him, if only because he was determined to act as though it wasn’t. “No,” he continued, giving my shoulder a sharp tug. “You’re coming with me.”

  I forced a grin and tried to slip his grip. “Is that so?”

  He nodded. “It must be.”

  That was the other thing about Teemo. No one expected him to speak English (the lingua franca has been Galactic Standard since First Contact) and he wasn’t great at it, but he tried anyway whenever he was off-duty around Americans like myself. I can’t say why. I certainly never learned Polish.

  Planting my feet, I finally wiggled free and started off in the opposite direction. “I’d love to, Teems, but I’ve got plans.”

  “Plans?” he frowned. “What kind of plans? Am I invited?”

  I laughed, and this time the good humor was genuine. I could feel that I was in the clear, and memories of the girl waiting for me—the one I’d been daydreaming about ever since learning our mission included a stop at Europa—were suddenly so suffocating that I had trouble holding my legs steady beneath me. “Not this time. Maybe tomorrow.”

  Teemo studied me closely for a moment, and then his grin stretched wider than I’d ever thought possible. “It’s a lady, isn’t it? You going to meet a girl?”

  I turned away with a smirk and shook my head.

  “You bastard! Take me with you!” he exclaimed.

  I waved him away and he was courteous enough not to follow. I can’t imagine how awkward the meeting with my ‘friend’ would have been with Teemo at our table. It was plenty awkward without him.

  I won’t bore you with the details of my night out, mostly because I’m afraid I’ll slip up and tell you more than you need to know. I’m a firm believer that those sorts of things should remain private. Call me old-fashioned.

  Anyway, once we were finished and I self-consciously hurried into my rec clothes on the side of my friend’s bed, she placed her hand on my shoulder and drew me back to her. Her touch was cold. It made goose-flesh prickle all across my skin.

  “Here,” she said. “I want to show you something.”

  The light in the room from the viewport was even worse than it had been in The Captain’s Quarters, but any navigator knows a coordinate datapad when he (or she) sees one.

  “What’s this?” I asked, accepting the chart from her outstretched hand. It took all of my willpower not to look her in the eye, and even more than that not to look further south, but I was uncomfortable and the datapad was a useful distraction.

  Sitting up in bed without bothering to pull the sheet around her, she kissed me softly on the neck and tapped the screen. A new menu opened on the display. Star charts. Constellations. It didn’t take me long to realize the destination she’d programmed was Marvek, exactly where the Hummel was headed. It took me longer to notice that the simulation course she’d set was different than the standard flight path for fleet ships.

  “Just a theory we’ve been testing here,” she said, wrapping an arm over my back and resting her chin on my shoulder so she could scan the readings along with me.

  I stared at the rainbow schematics on the display screen, trying to make sense of the rapidly reassembling solar systems as the simulation ran at high speed. I was too disoriented to follow, either from the rapid progression of the fleet craft on the datapad or from being half-dressed in the middle of the night with my beautiful—and naked—companion making too much contact. A girl I’d loved since before I knew how to love.

  “A theory on what?” I asked, trying hard to hide how clueless and small I felt.

  The question triggered a change in her. She lost the sexy, dark-haired mystique and vulnerability that had melted my brain into my gravity-equalizing boots. In their stead rose the look of an appraising, powerful fleet officer who might as well have been wearing seven layers of clothing beneath a full spacesuit. In the end, I felt equally overwhelmed. Lost. Amateur. Swallowed by everything about her. We started dating as teenagers, remember. When you know someone that long, I think you subconsciously revert to your old self in new encounters with them, no matter how hard you try to exist as a separate, novel entity. Which is all to say that, in relationships, some things never change.

  “We think we can cut the duration of supply runs in half using these launch points.” She swiped her finger across the datapad to restart the simulation, tapped the screen to pause, and then pointed at a set of tiny, flashing blue dots spread across the galaxy. “Basically, if you circle these stars with the right propulsion and time your orbit-break perfectly, you can use them as a slingshot to the next point. It’s not just the mass relationship of the star with the warp bubble that drives FTL travel anymore. They’ve been testing propulsion with naturally-occurring gravity slip-streams and plasma tubes on the Sol facility.”

  I furrowed my brow and stroked my stubble absently, watching the simulation again with renewed concentration. “Why only these stars?”

  “Like I said, the presence of natural gravity slipstreams with a unique energy spike. We’ve identified them around these specific bodies so far. You can use any one of them, or all of them if you want to go really far.” She dropped the datapad on the bed and shot me a sly grin. “It takes an expert navigator to pull it off, though. The coordinates have to be laid in manually during the slingshot.” She fell back to the pillow and pulled at my gray rec shirt with eyes that positively glowed in the starlight. I was hungry for her. Then again, when wasn’t I? “If you don’t want to try it because you don’t think you can pull it off, I totally understand.”

  “Oh really?” I glared at her, feigning an injury to my pride that felt all too real.

  Then she giggled and I couldn’t hold back.

  Some two days later when we re-boarded the Rockne Hummel, I presented her suggestion to Captain Gibbons. Based on my personal recommendation, he accepted the proposal—no doubt eager to return home—and two-thirds of us went into hyper-sleep. The rest kept watch, but they never saw what went wrong. It happened in the blink of an eye.

  By the time I woke again, we were already fucked.

  BEYOND

  “That’s impossible.”

  “I agree, but that’s what the ship’s telling us.”

  “We must have fried the systems somehow. Does it show any temporary blackouts? Did we pass through an electrical storm or something?”

  “No, sir. Everything appears to be in working order, except the sensors say we’re trillions of light-years beyond charted space.”

  Captain Gibbons stroked his beard, frowning. “Fuck…”

  Teemo punched in a few commands on the control console but, evidently, wasn’t pleased with the results. “Shit.” He rubbed at his neck. “What was the last checkpoint we hit?”

  I consulted the computer readouts on the holo-projector and shook my head. “I can’t tell. We passed Pluto Station three days ago but we don’t register anything after that.”

  “This is bullshit!” Teemo shouted at the viewport while he jammed on the flight controls. “Is the screen down? I can’t see anything! I’m flying blind!”

  “Calm down, we’re still on auto-pilot,” Gibbons told hi
m, then turned in my direction. “Where are we?”

  My stomach did a somersault. I felt like I was going to vomit, probably from being ripped prematurely from hyper-sleep. I prayed it would be the only side-effect. “Like I said, sir, I have no idea. We’re beyond charted space, even using the Tsoul maps.”

  The captain sighed and approached my station, where he examined the readings on my console to verify my findings. The extra set of eyes wouldn’t have done much good even if I was wrong, of course. Navigation is a highly-skilled trade. Even captains, even good captains, rarely understand what they’re looking at when we submit readings for review or file a report. They’re almost entirely dependent on our skills and expertise.

  “Where are the stars, Chalmers?” he whispered, trying to prevent the others from hearing. It was no use, though.

  The entire bridge crew watched us intently, even the Master Gunner, Lao Gang, who should have been one level below in the Rockne Hummel’s Weapons Command station. Everyone wanted to know what the hell had happened and why they’d been yanked early from hyper-sleep. Waiting to jump down my throat, too, in all likelihood. Detours aren’t exactly welcomed when you’re out on the black sea. Especially when the readings tell you that the ‘detour’ took you so far from home that there’s no conceivable way back.

  “I don’t know, Captain. The only reading I’m showing is a planetoid directly behind us. If the scans are right, there’s nothing else within a quintillion miles at least.”

  “Wolski, turn us around,” Gibbons commanded, returning to the captain’s seat at the center of the bridge. “Our scanners are damaged. We’ll have to fly manually until we find somewhere to make repairs. Chalmers, you said there’s a planetoid behind us, right?”

  I nodded before I realized he wasn’t looking at me for a response. “Yes, sir. About eighty thousand miles off. Technically, it’s not a planetoid, though. It’s not orbiting anything.”

  “Can you land us there, Wolski?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then let’s lower the shields and get a look out the window with our naked eyes. Lao, I expect you to be down at Weapons Command five minutes ago. You know protocol.”

  Lao Gang glared at the captain but slipped into the elevator before he could be rebuked.

  Gibbons didn’t seem to mind all that much. “Rosie, where are you? I need a damage assessment on our scanners. Maybe on the FTL drive, too, while you’re at it. I want to know what the hell went wrong here.”

  I was itching to speak up, mainly to clarify to the captain and everyone else that I hadn’t even attempted my lady friend’s slingshot approach yet because we hadn’t reached the star where I was supposed to try it. I may have altered our course toward the first glowing blue dot in her simulation, but I hadn’t diverted beyond that in any respect. It was supposed to take us a while to get there. The captain knew that, I’m sure, but that didn’t mean the rest of the crew did, and I didn’t want to make a bad impression. A very thin layer of confusion was all that kept them from storming my station. I only had to glance at Sergeant Ronia Salib’s scowl to know she was out for blood. The squad leader for our modest infantry complement (twelve soldiers who were essentially on a ‘rest’ mission after a prolonged period of heavy combat) wasn’t one to cross, and that was on her good days.

  “Bringing us about, sir,” Teemo said.

  Even in the throes of anxiety, I couldn’t help but notice how perfect his Standard was in contrast to the way he usually butchered English. It made me wonder why he even attempted English at all. I guess it’s not my problem.

  “I want you heavy on those dials, Chalmers,” the Captain told me. “If you catch so much as a fart on the scanners, I want to know everything about it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “In position,” Lao Gang’s voice boomed over the comm line. “All weapons prepped.”

  I winced at the Master Gunner’s purposeful omission of ‘sir’ or ‘captain’. Lao was the only one of us with balls big enough to act like he didn’t give a damn about rank. Excluding, of course, the Crown Representative assigned to our mission, Elizabeth Gallagher, who bore the title of Quartermaster by default as long as she was hitching with us. She was a politician, though. A Crownie. Lao was fleet through and through, and most officers would have confined him to quarters for not addressing them properly, let alone doing it on purpose.

  Not Captain Gibbons, though. Gibbons scared the hell out of me (which is a very good trait for your commanding officer to have) but he was a reasonable man who made allowances for protocol slip-ups during high-pressure situations. It seemed like most of those allowances were made for Lao by necessity, but that was no skin off my ass. I was perfectly happy keeping my head down until my name was called.

  “Thank you, gunner,” Gibbons replied. “Stand by.”

  It was clear this wasn’t a combat situation so we all knew Lao would probably wind up standing-by for a very long time, twiddling his thumbs. But protocol was protocol, and it was there for a reason. It only took one slip-up with an enemy vessel nearby for us to punch our tickets to the great nothing, and our scanners couldn’t always detect hostile crafts. Especially when they were malfunctioning.

  “Sergeant Salib,” Gibbons called, stroking his beard and turning the chair to face his staff sergeant. She was watching from the door with her trademark scowl hanging off her lips like an overused catchphrase. “Please wake the rest of the crew from hyper-sleep and make sure your troops are combat-ready.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said, stepping through the doorway to the main corridor.

  The captain turned to me and shrugged. “You can never be too careful.”

  “No, sir,” I agreed, then turned back toward the viewport to do my job. I hadn’t done so hot on the mission so far, and I was determined to make up for it if and when I was needed.

  The moment my eyes focused in on the planetoid outside the window, though, a huge heat flare whipped up from the surface and slammed into the port bow of the Hummel.

  I clenched my teeth. Shit, The viewport shield is down, I thought.

  “Fuck!” Teemo shouted. He braced himself against the rebellious ship-controls. I was distantly aware of a sound like snapping branches from his station, and then the ship shook violently and I couldn’t hear anything at all.

  Warning lights started flashing. My display screen lost power momentarily and then flickered back to life. It may as well have died altogether for all the good it did me. Even if it had been functioning at maximum efficiency, I’d pointed out myself that there was only one ball of rock within a quintillion miles, and we could already see it with our naked eyes. For once, the consoles were useless.

  To their credit, though, my nav scanners did pull one final reading from the planet’s surface before gasping out completely, and it was a fairly useful one. It analyzed the atmospheric conditions of the planetoid, which allowed us to manually calibrate our shields for the emergency descent. It also helped us prep our suits for the ground mission, although that, too, turned out to be a pointless luxury. The planet adapted to us more than we adapted to it.

  But that’s getting ahead of myself. At the time, we thought we were finished. The idea of the surface had been driven from all our thoughts the moment the bridge went dark. Of course, the bridge was always dark in the sense that the only lights were some old movie theater-style dots on the floor and ceiling along with the glow of data screens at each station, but even those modest tubes went out in the wake of the fiery whip that struck us from the surface.

  “Was that a goddamned solar flare?” the Captain asked incredulously, calmly pulling himself from the floor to reclaim his seat.

  It wasn’t technically a solar flare, but it sure as hell affected the Hummel like it was. Royal Space Armada (fleet) ships are built to withstand a hell of a beating, so the fact that our secondary shielding hadn’t done shit to protect us—especially with our navigation systems down—was frightening. Whatever energy had caused the whip to r
each so far off the surface packed one hell of a punch.

  No one answered Captain Gibbons because no one had any data readings to confidently say one way or the other, but the confusion on the bridge was short-lived nonetheless. We were experienced fleet astronauts, remember. Not rookies. Not civilians. Each one of us was an expert in our respective field, otherwise they wouldn’t have sent us out on a political mission in the first place. This was new territory for us, but almost every mission broke new ground in some way or another. In the grand scheme of things, after all, we’re still in the early days of space exploration.

  “Is everyone all right?” the captain asked.

  A few anonymous voices confirmed that they had no major injuries, and then Teemo cursed and inhaled sharply. “I think I broke my arm, sir,” he groaned.

  Gibbons leapt from his chair and crossed the bridge to the pilot’s station in two seconds flat. Before Teemo could protest, he yanked the controls from his hand and pushed into the chair with his hip. “Let me take us in, then,” Gibbons told him. “Go have the doctor give you a look.”

  “Which one?”

  The question was understandable (we had three crewmembers on board with the designation of ‘doctor’ and none of them were strictly medical) but Gibbons wasn’t in the mood for hand-holding.

  “I don’t give a shit which one. Just get the hell out of my sight before I crash this goddamned ship.”

  Teemo staggered past me, looking wounded in more ways than one.

  “Go see Sillinger,” I whispered when he was close enough to hear it.

  “Isn’t Sillinger one of Ronia’s brutes?”

  “He’s also a field medic. He’ll fix that for you no problem. Besides, I don’t think our esteemed doctors are awake yet. You might be waiting a while.”

  He frowned but nodded appreciatively. “Thanks,” he told me.