“Okay,” Amelia said again. “Understood.”
“Good. Good.”
Claire watched as Amelia reached the forward hatch. She opened it, stepped through and entered the ship’s bridge.
There were shadowy specters everywhere, all seemingly quite busy and none taking notice of Amelia.
§
Claire watched the monitor as her sister’s helmet cam took her slowly across the bridge, amongst and through the specters and toward a console inset along the right wall. The shadowy figures looked to be taking on more solid form by the second. And they appeared to moving about with purpose, just as Amelia had said earlier.
Once at the console, Amelia began making awkward swipes across the panel with her gloved hand. The helmet cam also picked up shadowy movements reflected off the plastic surface of the console.
“All environmental systems coming online,” said Amelia.
“The ship’s power plant quietly waited for you to come along and wake it up?”
“I’m not so sure it was asleep,” Amelia said quietly. She was still thinking that all wasn’t as it seemed.
Claire said nothing, watched as Amelia brought other systems displays up on the console one by one, activating some, letting others remain offline.
Something must have caught Amelia’s attention, because the image on the monitor suddenly shifted up and out across the bridge.
Figures were in position before several of the consoles; some of the specters were obviously standing, others apparently sitting. The forms shimmered, drifted in and out of focus. From what Claire could make out, they did indeed appear to be very busy going about their business, and were for the moment ignoring Amelia.
The focus of the display swung back around and returned to the console.
“Environmental readings all show green,” said Amelia.
Claire saw Amelia’s gloved hand as it passed briefly across the screen. “What are you doing, Sis?”
Amelia unlocked her visor and raised it to the open position. After a moment then: “Cold. Breathable.”
“Don’t take off the helmet,” said Claire. If anything bad happened, Amelia needed to be able to quickly seal the suit. Besides, the helmet was where the camera was located.
“I wasn’t planning on it,” said Amelia. The display on the monitor shifted dizzily and then Amelia started across the bridge. “Time to do a little more exploring; I want to check out supply.”
Amelia wanted to see if inventory matched what she had seen online. She stepped through the hatch and into the main passageway.
What Claire saw through the helmet cam surprised her. The damage in the long hallway was much worse that when her sister had passed through just a few minutes earlier. Walls had buckled, several ceiling panels hung askew, and the lighting, which had previously been off, was now flickering on and off. A thin cloud of smoke was drifting out of one of the open doors.
“Geez!” Claire blurted, then quickly, “Sorry.”
“Hey, I get it.”
“What the heck’s going on, Amelia?”
“I’m getting an inkling of an idea.”
At that moment a spectral form appeared midway along the passageway, a nearly fully formed human figure. It turned and started toward Amelia, then rushed towards her. Amelia thought at first that he had seen her and was actually coming at her, seeking to confront this intruder. And then she realized, somehow knew, that he was in a hurry to get to the bridge.
Specter or no, Amelia quickly made to step aside to let it pass, but it came upon her so fast that she wasn’t in time. The shadow ran right through her.
And she felt it. It pushed through her, pressed at her, tickled at her brain and chilled her deep into her bones.
And then it was past her and behind her and on its way to the bridge.
§
Amelia stumbled into the small mess hall, made her way to the nearest table and dropped down into a chair; not the easiest thing to do in an EVA suit. While flexible, the suits were still cumbersome and the process of sitting was a multi-step affair.
She heard her sister over the helmet’s intercom. The words were soft-spoken, for a change.
“Amelia? Are you all right?”
“I’ll have to get back to you on that.”
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I’m fine.”
Amelia looked around the mess as best she could without twisting about in her chair. Furniture was in disarray, the ceiling in the far corner had partially collapsed, and the wall between the mess and the galley looked as though it had started to buckle.
“It’s getting worse,” said Claire. “How can it be getting worse?”
Amelia didn’t respond; she was still thinking it all through.
“Amelia?” Claire urged.
“Yeah?”
“Just checking.”
“I’m fine. Really.”
“Okay, good,” Claire said flatly. She hesitated then. She had been working on an idea. “So, I think I know why we didn’t see the ship sooner. You know, not till we were like almost up on it.”
“Six hours out,” said Amelia. “Before slowdown.”
“Right. Whatever. Amelia, I’m thinking we didn’t see it before then because it wasn’t here before then.” Claire hesitated again, waiting for her little sister the brainiac to break out laughing or otherwise express her disdain for her suggestion. Amelia did neither, so she went on. “It’s a reflection. The way I see it, whatever happened to that ship years ago threw this reflection of it into the future, to us; to now. And now, now I think it’s being pulled back.”
Amelia held her silence. For Claire, that was worse than outright verbal rejection.
“Amelia?”
“Yeah?”
“Well?”
“I believe you’re almost right.”
“Really?”
“Yes. I agree. I think something bad happened years ago and the ship was thrown into the future, to our present. But it’s not being pulled back. The past is catching up.”
“Really?” Claire asked again. Amelia almost agreed with her? That was as weird as the idea that she had come up with.
“The evidence points to it,” said Amelia. “We are witnessing what happened back then.”
“And now that past is catching up to the ship that was thrown our way?”
“And catching up fast.”
There was a very long moment of silence.
“Amelia,” Claire said at last. “What happens when it finishes catching up to us?”
“I don’t know.”
“You need to get out of there.”
Amelia had the helmet visor down and locked into place as she worked her way aft. She was heading for the airlock, though she had a stop she needed to make along the way. She turned into a side passage and then another.
“Amelia,” said Claire, the hint of accusation. “What are you doing?”
Amelia didn’t answer.
“No side trips, Amelia.”
An explosion… silent at first, distant… and then immediate and powerful. It reached out from the past and sent shockwaves into the present. Amelia was thrown against the wall, went down onto one knee before recovering. She got back to her feet, supporting herself with one hand.
The hatch ahead had closed automatically, blocking her path. Amelia stepped up to it and looked through the window set into the hatch.
The entire section beyond the hatch was exposed to space. Debris was drifting in the black and was continuing to spread.
Claire called to her sister. “Amelia?”
“I’m okay.”
“Amelia, I don’t think the ship made it. When the past catches up—”
“I’m getting that.”
“No more fooling around. Get out of there.”
Amelia was already on the move. She had turned back and had started again down the main passageway. There was another side passage that would take her to cryo-juice distribution.
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A specter stepped out through one of the doors ahead on the right. The woman was more than shadow, almost though not yet completely solid. She had a bloody gash on her forehead and was holding an injured arm tight to her chest. She was looking directly at Amelia; not past her, not through her, but directly at her.
She sees me…
Was Amelia a shadow to her? A ghost? A specter?
The woman’s mouth was moving. She was talking to her, she was saying something but Amelia’s helmet audio couldn’t pick it up. Amelia and the woman weren’t yet in the same time. A few seconds apart? Less?
The woman’s expression changed abruptly. She had been surprised by something.
And then she began to drift up from the floor. She held out her one good arm and tried to gain some balance, her hand first on the wall, then up to the ceiling. Regaining a measure of equilibrium, she drifted across the passageway and entered the cabin opposite.
They lost their gravity plating, thought Amelia. Okay, this is starting to get serious.
“Their gravity plating went dark,” said Claire. “Are you feeling it?”
“This suit is as heavy as ever,” said Amelia. How long do I have?
The image on Claire’s monitor showed that Amelia was on the move, quickly now. She was still traveling the main passageway.
“They can’t be more than a few seconds behind us now,” said Claire. “That woman saw you.”
The image on the monitor began to drift, to swim and rise and fall.
Amelia was now in zero gravity.
The past was quickly becoming the present.
“I’m coming in,” Claire called out. “You get to the airlock now.”
Claire turned to the navigation console and swept a finger across the screen, began tapping at the key panel. The shuttle shifted slightly, began a slow, controlled drift toward the larger ship. She continued to make adjustments, the shuttle’s airlock hatch nudging nearer and nearer the damaged hatch of the ghost ship.
A sudden change in scenery on the monitor that was displaying Amelia’s helmet cam image caught Claire’s attention.
Amelia had taken another detour.
“Amelia! What are you doing?”
“Cryo-juice.”
“What?”
“I saw it in the inventory.”
“You don’t have time.”
“Yes I do. We need this.”
“We’ll make do without it. Airlock. Now.”
“We’ll make do better with it.”
The cryo-juice closet opened off the general supply room, shared a wall with the cryo chamber. Amelia drifted across supply, held onto a vertical support bar and opened the door.
The walls to either side were lined with shelves, and the shelves were filled with three-foot long lightweight plastic canisters, all interconnected by a network of tubes that eventually fed the cryo beds in the next room.
“Got ‘em,” said Amelia.
“Yeah? Great… now what are you gonna do?”
Amelia would have to close the valve on each canister, disconnect the tubes and then somehow transfer the canisters from the distribution closet to the airlock and then across to their shuttle.
She drifted into the closet and held onto the right shelf. She closed the valve on one of the canisters, disconnected the tube. She did the same to the next, and then the next. She reached a hand out to the fourth…
A massive explosion rocked the ship. She was thrown forward against the shelf and then back toward the opposite shelf. She felt her helmet strike the shelf, a jolting impact… but it didn’t bounce back. It kept going. Her helmet, her body, she was passing through the shelves, the canisters, and the wall behind them. They didn’t exist, and yet she could see them, could see inside them, through them.
§
Claire saw the explosion first on her navigation monitor, then watched through the forward window. It was silent, blindingly bright and all-consuming. It filled all of space.
And then it was gone. Just… gone. There, and then not there. The ship, the destruction, all vanished in much less than the blink of an eye.
Claire had a moment of absolute sheer panic. Amelia! And then she saw her. Amelia was floating, drifting… there, where the ship had been, her white EVA suit set against the backdrop of the black of space.
Claire sat back with a heavy sigh.
Serve you right if I left you out there…
She hesitated, frowned, finally turned again to her navigation console.
§
Amelia finished slipping into her coveralls, fastened the front and then sat down on the bench to put on her shoes. Beside her, Claire was sliding the suit along the ceiling track back into its closet.
Claire hadn’t said much since helping Amelia into the airlock and then the gear room; a quiet word here and there, only what was needed to assist her sister out of the suit.
Claire stepped around Amelia and went to the forward hatch, opened it and left the gear room. Amelia finished slipping into her shoes, hesitated and finally stood up. She hesitated again, followed her sister forward through the shuttle to the main compartment.
Claire was standing in front of the food warmer. She was holding two mugs. She held one out to Amelia, then took the two steps to the table and sat down. She took a sip of the coffee, peered over the mug and watched Amelia sit down opposite.
“The ship went back,” she stated matter-of-factly. “In the end, when it exploded, it went back.”
Amelia nodded. “I figure whatever generated that final explosion is what threw it forward, to our present, and is also what pulled it back to its own time.”
Claire took another swallow of her coffee. “Wow.”
“At the instant of the explosion, in their time, the ship was sent forward. From our perspective, it came to us in a steady stream. For them, it—”
“It all happened in an instant.”
“I think so.” Amelia took her first swallow of her coffee. “I felt it, Claire. I felt it leave us. I felt it go back. I was there. I walked the passageways. I activated the ship’s systems, breathed in the air. I saw the crew. They saw me.”
Amelia set her mug onto the table. She stared at it for a long time. Her breath came in a shudder.
“I felt them drawn back, pulled back, to their time... to their… end.”
Claire reached out and took hold of Amelia’s arm. “We’re going to figure this out, Sis. We’re going to figure out what happened to them; what happened to everyone.”
“That won’t do them much good.”
“No, it won’t. But maybe we can help make things right.”
Amelia had to give her sister a smile. Leave it to Claire. Two young women in a tiny shuttle decades out in the middle of nowhere, decades after whatever it was that happened, and they were going to set things right.
“Well,” Amelia said softly. She looked up at Claire, nodded in the direction of the cockpit. “Guess you should get us out of here then, huh?”
Episode Four
“Adrift”
Claire stepped groggily into the cockpit still wearing her cryo-coveralls. She dropped into her seat and swung herself around, reached out and began working the panels, mostly by instinct. She was at it for several minutes before her sister entered and sat down in the copilot’s seat beside her.
“We were asleep for 84 days,” said Amelia. “We have about 15 months cryo-juice left in the tanks.” They had gone into cryo three weeks after entering into this latest void. They had expected to be brought up after 13 months with 5 months of juice remaining.
“The ship didn’t bring us out because of the juice,” said Claire.
“And that’s never a good thing.”
“It hasn’t been yet.”
Amelia was looking through the forward viewport. There was nothing to see out there. “Still,” she said. “Out of cryo ten months early is better than out eighty years late.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” said Claire. S
he slid back in her seat. “No engines.”
Amelia turned sharply to look at her sister. “Waddya mean, no engines?”
“I mean just that. No engines. Ship needed to make a course adjustment, but couldn’t activate engines. No thruster jets.” Claire raised a brow as she watched Amelia absorbing what this meant.
Amelia turned forward again and again looked out the viewport. She stared at the black.
“So we just coast at ten percent the speed of light until we run into something,” she said.
“Which, by the oddest of coincidences, is the very reason the ship needs to make a course adjustment.”
§
Amelia lifted the access panel that was set into the gear room floor, slid around and wormed her way down into the power closet. The small room was five feet by five feet. Once inside, she faced the equipment wall. Floor to low ceiling, it was divided into six distinct panels, one above the other. Each panel had its own set of buttons, switches and indicator lights.
At the moment, only two of the panels showed signs of life, their tiny bulbs glowing faintly.
She activated the small intercom on her left. “Mostly dark, as we feared,” she said, reached up to the top panel. She took hold of the pair of handles and pulled out the rack. It locked into position before her at a 45 degree angle, exposing the panel box’s internals. She brought a diagnostic pad up from her equipment belt and slipped it into a slot behind the panel front cover.
“Hmm… okay,” she mumbled.
“What’s up?” she heard over the speaker.
“It’s not talking. I’m going to have to do this manually.” She had half-expected this and had brought a computer interface with her. She unfolded it and set it on the rack in front of her. It had a small keypad and screen.
“Let’s do this quickly, Amelia,” said Claire. Her voice sounded tinny over the intercom speaker.
“That I shall, sister.” Amelia plugged the interface into the panel and went to work.
In the cockpit, Claire was working at the nav station, interfacing with several different databases.
Sisters in Space: The Complete Series Page 5