by Mark Wandrey
“Sleipnir, this is Pegasus actual,” she called to the other Winged Hussar battlecruiser in the system, hoping it was still there.
“Pegasus, this is Sleipnir actual. What’s your situation?”
“We’re screwed,” Alexis said. “I think we just took an EMP. Can you give me a status update on the enemy? Am I about to get turned into atoms?”
“Negative,” the other commander replied. “You kicked them in the balls, Commander Cromwell. They are retreating toward the stargate. Shall we pursue?”
“How are my escorts, Hrunting and Glambril?”
“They ate that last wave, Commander. They’re gone.” She exhaled and shook her head.
“Understood. Do not pursue in force. Send a cruiser, Seattle Slew or American Pharaoh, whichever is in better shape, and four frigates to harry them until they transition out. Notify me if they decide to rally.”
“Understood, Commander. Do you need assistance? You appear adrift.”
“Yes,” Alexis admitted. “Send over all the available damage control teams from the fleet support vessel ASAP. We’ll also need the medical teams.” She switched to a local channel. “Good job, Katrina. You saved us and the fleet. The enemy is bugging out.” There was no reply. “Katrina?”
Alexis had reached the CIC secondary exit, a small, one-person air lock. It was manual, a contingency for this sort of event. She spun the controls with a growing sense of dread. “Captain to any damage control teams!”
“DC Team Nine,” a beleaguered elSha answered.
“Get to Deck 18, auxiliary and drone control computer room, on the double!”
It took her several minutes to get out of the CIC; even the emergency exit had damage. It was a miracle she was alive at all. The entire armored CIC was only held in place by a pair of reinforcing beams. Cut them, and the room would have floated into space. She managed to move down to Deck 17 via the spinal service way and then crawled through the access shaft onto the nearest gangway. There she encountered a pair of medics seeing to an injured MinSha gunner.
“Is she stable?” Alexis demanded. The medic looked up in annoyance, then surprise as he realized it was his captain addressing him.
“Oh, yes sir,” he replied.
“Then come with me!” With the medics in tow, she left the surprised gunner behind. When they got to the next deck, they found the damage control team already there, with the doors to AuxCon open to reveal the trashed interior. The room was full of smoke and flame suppressant. Normally the backup command crew would be there, in case the CIC was taken out. Most had been in the CIC with her as replacements from earlier attacks. It was clear the EMP had roasted most of these controls too. Pegasus was a wreck. The DC team was just opening the access to the computer room, at the back of the AuxCon.
The door pulled open slowly. There was no light inside, only the headlamps of the elSha damage control team illuminating the interior. Her sister, Katrina Cromwell, floated in the center of the room. A dozen wires led from her pinplants to the various computers in the room. She’d been using her implants to run the computers and provide control at the critical moment of the battle. All the leads were smoking and blackened. Her sister’s eyes were open and staring as she slowly spun in the web of ruined, smoking wires.
* * * * *
Chapter 39
The access door at the back of AuxCon opened as she floated toward it. Moving in this new water-like medium was taking some getting used to. As the door opened, and she pulled herself inside, she realized it was the first time she’d been there in many, many years.
A food container was stuck to the wall magnetically, waiting for a crewman to pick it up. The room held the slightly sour smell of unwashed bodies and ozone. It was dark except for a few displays glowing on a work bench. That light revealed electronics and parts of robots and drones strewn haphazardly.
“Hello, Ghost,” the captain said.
“I knew you would come,” the voice said. It sounded just as inhuman as it did through her pinplants.
“I can’t see anything,” Alexis said.
“The light hurts.”
“Maybe turn it up a little bit?” After a moment, a series of inset lights began to glow slightly, revealing a figure strapped into a reclining chair, held in place with a single belt. The head slowly turned toward her and Alexis saw herself. Only this vision looked much older, with skin stretched taut over bones, and hair floating in wispy threads. Eyes regarded her, the same brown eyes, the same white hair. Alexis cringed and swallowed.
“Does the sight of me disturb you that much?”
“No,” Alexis lied, then changed the subject. “How do you know about this place, and why didn’t you say we could get here and keep me from scaring my crew to death?”
“I said nothing because arriving here intact after a drive failure is not an assured outcome. I know about it because it was explored eons ago,” Ghost said. “As you have no doubt surmised, it is a place well beyond our normal universe’s rules and understanding.”
“Your people explored it?” Alexis asked.
“For our masters, yes.” A skeletal hand rose and made a sweeping gesture. “The Nothing led to the discovery of the rules of hyperspace travel. Before that, travel in regular hyperspace was risky, even dangerous. Coming here allowed for the development of the hyperspace navigation system. This level of hyperspace was kept a careful secret.” A robot skittered, and Alexis jerked slightly. It moved along the work bench, across the floor, and up the chair to Ghost’s chest. A tube came out and she drank. It was an almost mechanical action. The robot looked like a spider with long delicate legs; its abdomen was a water bladder. After a moment, it skittered away. With her eyes becoming accustomed to the dim light, Alexis could see the place was crawling with all manner of little robots. She could also see the array of pinlinks and the gossamer cables connecting the woman to the banks of computers.
“Is this place dangerous?”
“In the short term, no. However, there are dangers.”
“It hurts to look at it,” Alexis said.
“The effects can be unpredictable. It’s one of the reasons it was never utilized as a regular form of transportation.”
“Regular? That means it was used?”
“Yes, by many races, in many galaxies, over all of time.”
“You said dangers, plural.”
“Other races have used this place, some continue to do so. There are things that live here; it is where they are from. Nightmare things even my kind fear. Things everyone fears.”
“Then we should get out of here as soon as possible?” The head nodded on a neck no thicker than Alexis’ wrist. “Can we get out? If so, how?”
“Yes, you can leave,” Ghost said, “and it is far easier to leave than to get here. I can give your engineers the data they need to power the hyperspace nodes to work here.”
“I hear a ‘but’ coming,” she mumbled.
“Because you are intuitive, for a Human.” Alexis felt the irony of that statement wash over her like a wave. “It will take more power than we have. Your people must get another one of the fusion reactors operating.”
“I don’t know if that is possible. Reactor Two still works, but Long never finished building the other one.”
“It is possible,” Ghost said confidently. “I have been monitoring Long’s computer access. He will explain. There are great risks, and I advise you take them quickly.”
“Then I better get to work,” she said. “If anything comes up I need to know…”
“I will not hesitate to tell you,” Ghost finished for her. Alexis nodded and moved toward the door, then stopped and spoke without looking back.
“I don’t hate you,” she said, “I hope you understand that?” She closed her eyes tight, trying to forget how her sister looked floating there, her brain burned out. Trying to forget the horror when she realized the body wasn’t dead, and something new had moved in. Something that had been hidden in the ship for unt
old eons. The person who used to be Katrina Cromwell looked at her with expressionless eyes. “I just hate Katrina had to die so you could live.” Ghost watched her go without comment.
* * *
An hour later Alexis had briefed the department heads on the ship’s current condition and had them disseminate the details to the crew. She hadn’t told them everything Ghost told her; that didn’t seem prudent. No need to scare them with stories of boojums or unknown monsters in the mind-rending dark of The Nothing. What she did explain was that there was a way out, and they were working on it. She needed to give them a reason to work, some hope there was a future. Further fear wasn’t useful.
Next, she went to engineering and talked with Long. Just like Ghost had said, her Jeha chief engineer verified it was possible to get another reactor going.
“Possible, but not easy,” he said. “Reactor Two is unstable, but serviceable. At least for a short time. We have forty of the buffers salvaged from the other reactors, and the vessel from Reactor One.”
“You said before it was wasted,” Paka said.
“The shot that took it out hit the inside buffers and caused an overload. However, the breakers kicked in and not all of them were blown. The 30 buffers along the hull side were saved. Because the safety functioned, and the drive plasma vented, the vessel is fine. I’ve already had a drone inside examining it. It’s had a lot of hours, but no damage. We can put together a reactor. In fact, I’ve started work already.”
“That’s excellent news,” Alexis said. He held up a pincher to forestall any celebration.
“That just leaves the F11,” he said. “We scrubbed some from the atmosphere, but not enough. We need another 50 gallons, minimum, to have any hope of generating enough power to do what your Ghost says needs to be done.”
“Where in entropy are we supposed to find 50 gallons of F11?” Paka asked.
Alexis’ pinlink chirped, letting her know someone was trying to reach her. She checked and saw it was Dr. Sato, and ignored it. They talked about ways of solving the problem, including filtering the atmosphere for more of the lost F11. Possible, but not practical. Her pinlinks went off again. Sato was persistent.
“Excuse me a moment,” she said to the others and answered the call. “Dr. Sato, I’m really quite busy.”
“I thought you’d want to hear the results of the first EVA experiments and sensor modifications.”
“What?” she said. “You went EVA already?”
“Well, yes,” he said, and sounded pleased with himself. She suddenly remembered why they never took the Geek Squad on cruise.
* * *
Rick was jarred into consciousness as Pegasus’ hyperspace generator cut out. It was immediately his least favorite way of being woken up. Period. Bar none.
“What the fuck!” he screamed and looked around in shock, afraid he’d been murdered in his sleep…or worse. He was alone in his little cubicle. A zero-gravity IV was hooked into his right wrist, and a small bio monitor beeped quickly in time with his racing heart rate. It indicated medical staff had been summoned, but none showed up.
Rick examined the IV in his wrist and, after a minute, figured out how to pull it out without injuring himself. He shut off the machine and tied a knot in the tube to keep it from leaking all over his cubicle, then realized he’d used both hands to tie the knot.
Remembering his injury, Rick studied his left arm. His new arm was similar to his natural one, but not exact; it was a bit thinner and colored a strange metallic blue. There were ripples for the cybernetic muscles, and it made a tiny scritching sound when he moved it. The limb felt and responded just like his own had before it was burned off, though, and he reached out and touched it with his right hand. It was cooler than skin, but not cold, and he felt the touch from his right hand on the left’s skin just like normal.
“Amazing,” he said. It felt great.
No one responded to the monitor’s summons. Recalling the strange, reality-rending sensation he’d felt, he decided something might be seriously wrong and decided to go investigate. His pinplants said he’d only been asleep for six hours after the cybernetic grafting; that would have to be enough. He slid open the partition and quickly discovered physics didn’t work like they used to. He coasted to a stop only halfway down the corridor.
“Woah,” he said, and tried to push off into a spin. The spin quickly slowed and stopped. “That’s not normal.”
“You think?” asked Johansson as she came into the corridor.
“What’s going on?” he asked her.
“Hyperdrive failed.” Rick blinked. “Yeah.”
“Shouldn’t we be dead?”
“Don’t know what we should be,” she said, “only that no one has ever admitted to coming back from a hyperdrive failure.” They went to the squad bay where the rest of the surviving marines were relaying their experiences.
“We’re not dead,” he said, obviously.
“So it would seem,” Oort agreed. Did she sound disappointed?
Everyone was experimenting with the not-quite zero gravity.
“It’s almost like water,” Johansson laughed, now stuck floating in the middle of the room with the same movements you’d expect from someone in freefall. “But you can’t feel any resistance slowing you down!” They were all trying to understand the new reality when the lieutenant received a summons on her pinlink. She listened for a moment then spoke.
“That was Dr. Sato. He wants the marines to report to the hangar deck immediately.” They all exchanged looks of uncertainty. The Geek Squad had a reputation. It was Rick who spoke up.
“Courage is being scared to death…and saddling up anyway.” Nods went around the assembled marines, and in a second, they were all heading forward.
“That is an interesting bit of philosophy,” Oort said to Rick. “Which philosopher said it?”
“John Wayne,” Rick said.
“I will need to read his material.”
Dr. Sato, along with Kleena, Thing 1, and Thing 2, had conducted a systematic test of the ship’s various races and had determined which ones could be exposed to what they called “Level Two Hyperspace” for more than a few minutes. Humans were generally tolerant, though that tolerance varied greatly. The Selroth had no tolerance at all. One Selroth, a laser gunner, almost had a psychotic episode from just a few seconds’ exposure. The Veetanho and the Jeha responded similarly to Humans. The MinSha seemed a bit less tolerant, and the elSha became disturbed after only a few minutes.
The most resistant proved to be the Vaga laborers and Oort. Rick mentioned to Dr. Sato that Oort noticed something was different shortly after they arrived.
“Has to be a peculiarity of their neural makeup,” the scientist said. Rick proved, by far, the most resistant Human tested, but all the Human marines tested high on the tolerance spectrum. It was Rick and Oort who were floating outside in pressure suits when the captain discovered the unauthorized experiments.
“Why did you take it upon yourself to authorize this?” she demanded shortly after arriving. “Was it that important to get someone out in the black?”
“After your blasted sensor officer refused to allow me to modify any of the ship’s instruments, I was forced to conduct hands-on experiments.” The scientist gestured toward the airlock and shrugged. “Your marines graciously volunteered to help.”
“Flipper did the right thing stopping you,” she said, making the doctor scowl.
“I don’t recall volunteering,” Rick said outside in ‘space.’ Sato grumbled something about ungrateful people. Rick didn’t feel any different. It was a strange version of space, with no visible stars, but not disturbing.
“I find it rather compelling,” was all Oort had to say.
“You can have it,” Captain Cromwell said. She grudgingly gave them permission to continue.
Rick and Oort spent over an hour running tests under the close supervision of the Geek Squad. Once Dr. Sato had the data, he became even more excited.
“Wow,” Edwards said from his tactical station.
“I’m picking up large returns,” Flipper said. Every second there were more returns, ever further away. “The lidar and radar bounces were not returning at the normal speed.” He looked at Dr. Sato who was floating in the CIC, watching with a huge, satisfied grin on his face.
“The rules are different,” he said.
“Selectively different,” Alexis agreed. “If the speed of light isn’t a constant here, though, why do our electronics still function? Or even our nervous systems?” The doctor looked at her, and his grin faltered. “Can you determine what those readings are?”
“I’m not sure I can trust the returns,” Flipper said. “They’re not big, in the cosmic scheme of things. I’d say ships.”
“Ships?!” Paka asked, surprised. “Are any moving?” Both Glick and Edwards were suddenly more alert.
“I don’t think so,” he said. Rick and Oort confirmed the same phenomenon that kept crew from floating any distance in the ship seemed to hold true outside the ship. It was also still a vacuum. “The returns are so slow, it will take a few sensor-sweeps to find out.”
“Our number one priority is F11,” Alexis said, and turned to Paka. “Assemble a team of those with the highest tolerance. Have a shuttle prepped and standing by.” She looked at the Tri-V display and chewed her lower lip absently. If those ships, if they were ships, were castaways like the crew of the Pegasus, there was a good chance they’d have some F11. She didn’t need a lot, just 50 gallons. Long’s report said he’d have it ready in five hours.