by Ryk Brown
“My point is that we are no more likely to run into trouble using the hybrid configuration than we are using the original one. In fact, if you think about it, we are less likely, as we would be making fewer total jumps to get home.”
“Now why didn’t I think of that argument?”
“Because you are not as smart as I am,” Vladimir declared as he opened a second meal bar, “or as pretty.”
“The word is ‘handsome.’”
“Ah, yes. Handsome. I get those two words mixed up sometimes.”
“Then you don’t think I’m making a mistake?”
“Of course not. You are my best friend, Nathan, so trust me on this… If I thought you were doing something terribly stupid, I would tell you.”
“Isn’t that what Cameron is trying to do?”
“Perhaps. But what does she know? She is an administrator. She knows nothing of the jump drive or our power systems. And she definitely does not know anything about the ZPEDs.”
“Do you?”
“No,” he admitted, taking a swig of water from a half empty bottle sitting on the end table, “nothing at all.” Vladimir laughed. “According to what I know of physics, they should not work at all.”
“Then how can you be sure I’m not putting the ship at risk?”
“I can’t,” Vladimir said with a shrug, “but the Takarans do know something about ZPEDs, and they do not seem worried.” Vladimir took another long drink, emptying the bottle. “Besides, Abby knows everything about the jump drive.”
“She doesn’t completely understand how it works,” Nathan reminded him. “She has said as much in the past.”
“Even the Takarans do not completely understand how our jump drive works. She knows enough, Nathan. She is a very smart woman, that one. Just do not tell her that I said this. She will never forget.”
“Yeah, I don’t understand half the techno-babble that comes out of her mouth.”
“Nathan, you don’t understand half the babble that comes out of my mouth.”
He chuckled. “True enough.”
“Do not worry my friend. Everything will be fine; you will see.”
“I don’t know, Vlad. Cameron is really dead set against it. I’m beginning to wonder if she might be right.”
“She is not a risk taker like us,” Vladimir said as he rose and headed for the hatch.
“You sure you don’t want something else to eat?” Nathan asked. “I think I have some stale crackers lying around somewhere.”
“No, I must go. I have much work to do.” Vladimir made his way to the hatch. “We might be testing experimental drive tomorrow, and I must be sure we do not explode!”
“Funny.”
“Get some sleep, my friend!” Vladimir ordered as he closed the hatch behind him.
“Even funnier!”
* * *
“Captain on the bridge!” the Corinari guard at the hatch announced as the captain entered. Nathan paused momentarily, noticing the tension on the faces of his bridge staff. After which, he turned and headed into his ready room.
Before he reached his chair behind his desk, the chief of the boat, Master Chief Montrose, entered. “Captain? A moment of your time, sir?”
“Come in, Master Chief.” He stood behind his desk, watching as the master chief closed the hatch and entered the room. “Uh, oh. Are you going to chew me out as well, Master Chief?”
“I’m afraid so, sir,” Master Chief Montrose told him. “I’m just not sure how to adequately express my concerns in English. I haven’t been speaking it that long.”
“You’re doing fine, Master Chief. You’ve even started using contractions.”
“Let’s see if I remember this correctly,” the master chief said. “Captain, what the fuck are you thinking?”
Nathan chuckled. “You’ve been talking to Lieutenant Commander Nash, haven’t you?”
“She does have a colorful vocabulary. Quite spirited in its breadth, I’d say.”
“Definitely.”
“Seriously, sir,” the master chief continued, “what are you thinking?”
“I assume you’re referring to further testing of the hybrid jump drive concept?”
“Yes, sir. Pardon me for saying so, but you’re being stupid, Captain. Stupid and childish.”
“Really?” Nathan took his seat, crossing his hands in his lap.
“Your crewmen are all volunteers, sir. They’re willing to give their lives for this ship. However, if you want them to continue to be willing to give their lives, they’ve got to know that you’re always going to do your best to keep them safe. Risking our lives just so you can make your sword a bit sharper is, well, it’s just stupid, Captain. Fucking stupid, it is.”
“You’re getting a lot of mileage out of that word, aren’t you, Master Chief?”
“It’s more useful than I thought it would be, sir. It sends a strong message, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, it does. Keep it up, and you’re going to fit in nicely with the other chiefs in the fleet,” Nathan added with a smile. “Just be careful who you use it with. Some folks don’t appreciate its use as much as others.”
“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”
“No problem, Master Chief,” Nathan said as he rose from his chair. “Come on, we’ve got work to do.”
The master chief’s eyes widened slightly as the captain brushed past him on his way back to the bridge. He made his way down to his command chair, which Cameron immediately vacated. “Good morning, Commander,” he greeted as he took his seat.
“Good morning, sir.”
“Threat board?” he asked.
“Clear, sir,” Jessica answered.
“How’s the road ahead, Lieutenant Yosef?”
“Nothing on our course for at least thirty-seven light years, sir.”
“Doctor Sorenson, what’s our current maximum jump range using the primary array?”
“Fifteen point four light years, Captain.”
“And the estimated max range using the secondary array with the ZPEDs at no more than ten percent?”
“Twenty light years.”
“Can you guarantee that range is achievable without any range variance issues?”
“No, sir, not without further testing.”
Nathan looked at Cameron and the master chief standing beside her. He also looked at the faces of Josh and Loki sitting at the helm in front of him. “Mister Sheehan, what jump are we at?”
“Forty-five, sir.”
“Plot jump forty-five for fourteen light years using the primary emitter array.”
“Yes, sir,” Loki responded, smiling as he spun around to face his console.
“Sorry, Doctor, but further experimentation using the ZPEDs will have to be done by Fleet R and D. Take the ZPEDs offline for now. You can use them to speed up the recharge of the energy banks, but I want them throttled down to far below safe levels whenever we jump.”
“As you wish, Captain,” Abby answered, offering no reaction to his orders.
Nathan couldn’t tell if Abby was relieved or annoyed at his orders, but he didn’t care. He had done what was best for his ship and his crew, as well as for his primary mission, which was to get home in one piece. “Comms, inform the Cheng that we’re proceeding using the primary array.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Doctor, am I correct in assuming that the new emitters on the secondary array will still work in the standard configuration?”
“Yes, sir,” Abby confirmed. “However, we still need to conduct calibration testing of the entire array, as it has yet to be used in the standard power configuration.”
“Very well.”
“Jump forty-five plotted and locked, sir,” Loki reported.
“Execute jump forty-five, Mister Sheehan.”
“Activating auto-nav,” Loki reported. “Jump point in ten seconds.”
Nathan smiled at the master chief who looked rather pleased with himself. “It was a nice speech, Master Chief, but I h
ad already decided not to continue the tests before you entered my ready room.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Jumping in three……two……one……jump.”
The bridge filled momentarily with the blue-white jump flash.
“Jump forty-five complete.”
“Verifying position,” Lieutenant Yosef announced. “On target, no significant variance.”
“Time to jump forty-six: seven hours and four minutes,” Loki reported.
“Very well.” Nathan turned to Cameron. “Commander, if you’re not too busy, would you mind taking the bridge? I haven’t been sleeping well lately, and I think a nap is in order.”
“Those big decisions are tiring, aren’t they?” Cameron said, the barest hint of a smirk.
“Very.” Nathan stood.
“You might try a workout first,” Cameron suggested. “Helps me when I can’t sleep.”
“Good idea. You have the bridge, Commander.”
* * *
Nathan looked down at his shackled hands, the weight of the heavy irons digging into the base of his thumbs. A chain led from the wrist irons down to those around his ankles. People were yelling at him, their voices familiar, yet unknown, many of them in languages he did not understand. A man, an elder man in a uniform among many similarly dressed men, sat in judgment of him, confident that Nathan had committed heinous crimes against his people. A voice stood out amongst the others in the crowd, his father’s. “Why did you do it, Nathan? Why?” He looked toward his father’s voice, but saw only the smiling face of his older brother, Eli. “Who’s the favored son now?”
Nathan squinted, trying to see through the haze in the room. There was a sharp sound, a gavel striking its wooden base in rapid succession. Screams of pain and suffering continued to emanate from all around him, punctuated suddenly by his mother’s voice. “Nathan, don’t worry; we’ll fix it. Everything will be fine.” Nathan felt a sudden sharp pain in his head, his hands raising to his face in response. “You’ll have to find your own way out of this one, Nathan,” he heard his father say. “It’s time you stood on your own two feet.” A panic swept over him. He felt alone, abandoned. “How could you do this to us?” someone cried. He pulled his hands away from his face. They were wet, covered with blood. “How could you…”
Nathan opened his eyes. He was on his back, his hands and feet free of restraint. He sat quickly upright, his head spinning. He glanced at his hands, finding them clean. He looked around and realized he was in his quarters on board the Aurora, sitting on the floor next to his bed. His head hurt. He touched his forehead, eliciting more pain. There was blood on his fingers now, apparently from a wound on his head.
There was a sudden thud. The room shook without warning. “General quarters. General quarters,” Naralena’s voice announced over the ship’s loudspeakers. “All hands, man your stations.” Nathan scrambled to his feet and made his way shakily to the main room. He stumbled as the ship shook violently again. What the hell is going on? Why aren’t the inertial dampeners working?
Nathan made his way into the corridor and immediately headed forward at a jog. The ship shook again and again, threatening to knock him off his stride each time. He reached out to steady himself against the walls as he continued forward, passing crewmen in the corridors as they all headed for their posts.
“Captain on the bridge!” the guard called out as he clung to the hatch frame to stay on his feet.
“Report!” Nathan bellowed as he stumbled over to the tactical station, grabbing onto Jessica’s shoulder to stay on his feet as the ship seemed to suddenly jerk sideways under him.
“We’ve jumped in too close to the event horizon of a black hole!” Cameron said. There was uncharacteristic fear in her voice.
“Well get us out of here!” Nathan ordered, his pulse pounding as his own fear began to build.
“We’re trying!”
The ship shook again, nearly knocking Nathan to the deck. “Why aren’t the…”
“Inertial dampeners keep cutting in and out,” Cameron said, anticipating his next question.
“Kill all secondary systems and channel power into the main drive!” Nathan ordered.
“Vlad’s already working on it,” Cameron said.
“I’m assuming we’re at full power on the mains.”
“Aye, sir,” Josh reported.
“And we’re steering away from the black hole?” Nathan asked. It felt like a stupid question, yet it also seemed important enough to ask.
“Aye, sir,” Josh answered.
“We turned away as soon as we came out of the jump but got picked up by its gravity well,” Cameron reported as something else struck the ship and jostled them about.
Nathan suddenly felt himself become lighter. For a split second, he felt as if his feet would come off the floor. A confused look came across his face. “Is it affecting our artificial gravity?”
Cameron shrugged her shoulders as she rose from the command chair. “What happened to your head?” Cameron asked, noticing the blood.
Nathan plopped down in the command chair, happy to get off his feet. “I fell… must’ve hit my head.” Nathan wiped the blood away from his forehead again. “I’ll be fine. Loki! Are we making any headway?”
“Negative, sir! We’re barely holding position as it is!”
Another thud. “What the hell is hitting us?” Nathan keyed his comm-set. “Cheng, Captain! How much more can you push the reactors?”
“Captain, Cheng,” Vladimir answered. “They are already at one hundred percent, all four of them. I can push them to maybe one ten.”
“Give us one ten on all four,” Nathan ordered.
“Aye, sir.”
“All decks are reporting minimal power usage,” Master Chief Montrose reported from his position near the ship’s systems console. “Getting reports from all over the ship, sir. Variations in artificial gravity and a lot of shaking.”
“Engineering reports all reactors at one ten, sir,” Naralena reported.
Nathan turned his attention back to the helm. “Any progress?”
“Not yet,” Loki said, shaking his head.
“Put up the aft camera,” Nathan ordered. The screen immediately switched, displaying the view from the aft end of the ship facing directly astern. The screen was normal, showing nothing but distant stars, except that they were only on the periphery. The middle of the screen was pitch black.
“Is that it?” Nathan wondered, seemingly disappointed.
“It’s a black hole, Nathan,” Cameron quipped. “What did you expect, a light show?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Where did it come from?”
“Unknown, sir,” Lieutenant Yosef admitted. “I haven’t been able to get a fix on our position yet. The gravitational lensing from the black hole is distorting everything.”
“We’re beginning to make a little headway,” Loki reported. “It’s not much, sir. Maybe a few meters per second.”
Something dark and mysterious suddenly passed across the view screen extremely close to their stern. “What the hell was that? Do we have external lights on our stern?” Nathan asked.
“We have lights all over the place,” Jessica told him.
“Light up everything directly behind us.”
Nathan watched the main view screen as the stern lights snapped on. A faintly lit ring of dust and debris appeared around the outer edges of the dark circle that filled the screen. The objects flickered as the Aurora’s stern lights reflected off of them. They swirled slowly inward toward their eventual demise. Large, closer chunks of rock occasionally passed by at a range close enough for them to see surface detail.
“Were we jumping into a system?” Nathan asked.
“No, sir,” Loki answered as another rock struck the ship, shaking them from side to side. “We should have jumped into open space.”
“That’s a lot of debris for open space,” Cameron commented.
“At least we know what’s
hitting us,” Nathan stated. “Cheng, Captain,” he called over his comm-set.
“Go for Cheng.”
“Vlad, any chance you can push the reactors to one twenty? We’re making a little headway, but it’s not enough.”
“No, sir. One ten is already at the red line.”
“I need one twenty…”
“We can die now in an antimatter explosion, or we can die later in a black hole,” Vladimir responded with irritation. “The choice is yours, sir.”
Nathan exhaled in frustration. “Understood.”
“Captain, at this rate, we’ll run out of propellant long before we get clear of the event horizon,” Loki reported.
The ship rocked several times in succession as more debris stuck the hull.
“That’s what I figured,” Nathan told him. “Abby, can we jump out of here?”
“We don’t even know where here is, Captain,” Abby told him.
“I don’t care where here is, Abby. I just want to be somewhere else.”
“We can’t calculate a jump plot away from here if we don’t know where here is,” Abby said.
“It doesn’t have to be perfect, Doctor. We just need to move a few million kilometers.”
“The jump fields won’t even form in the presence of the event horizon’s gravity well,” Abby said, exasperation in her voice. “Even if they did, there’s no guarantee that they’d all work properly, which means that…”
“Part of the ship might not jump,” Nathan finished for her. “Any other ideas, Doctor?”
Abby thought for a moment as the ship was again rocked by debris impact. “We could try the ZPEDs,” she suggested.
“I thought you said the jump fields wouldn’t form,” Cameron stated.
“Not for the jump drive,” Abby explained. She got blank stares from both Nathan and Cameron. “Our engines use electricity to accelerate propellant as thrust. That’s why you wanted more power from the reactors, to further accelerate that propellant, thereby increasing our thrust. The ZPEDs could give us that extra power and then some.”
“Is it safe?” Cameron asked, suspicion in her voice.
“Is staying here?” Abby countered, her face defiant.