by White, Gwynn
I hope that between the eight of us, we’ll be able to find a solution we can all live with. And hopefully not die on a fool’s errand.
* * *
“So you’re telling me,” Daisy says, pointing at the overlaid map of the bridge, “that there’s supposed to be a whole asteroid field here and there isn’t? Isn’t that a good thing?”
“No,” PC mutters, “it means that something else crippled the Nova. It means that we don’t know exactly what’s going on.” He scrutinizes me. “Isn’t that right, Clem?”
“That’s correct.” I lean against Louis’s console, my arms crossed as I face the entire crew. They all listened to my story with disbelief etched into their faces. I’ve been mulling it over myself and it doesn’t make sense. What could Syn-Tech have gained by lying to us? What are they trying to hide?
Furthermore, what are they wanting us to retrieve from the Nova? Should I believe that they still want their patents, when clearly they’ve lied to us up to this point?
I don’t know.
“What if we just contact the chairman?” Taka reasons. “Ask him if he handed us the wrong information.”
“No,” Louis says gruffly. “The chairman hired us for our discretion, and to contact him before the job is done is to forfeit the job. And I don’t want to do that without coming to a conclusion about the risks involved with this job.”
“So…what do we do?” Daisy asks.
“It’s 300 million Space Yen,” Venice reasons. “I mean…” His voice trails off, and we are all thinking the same thing.
With that amount of money, are we willing to go through with it? That’s precisely why Maas offered so much—so that we wouldn’t turn it down. Maybe it’s reassurance to get us there and finish the job.
That may be giving him too much credit. Then again, he does want something from us—and I’m sure he’s completely willing to do whatever it takes to retrieve that information—even if they are just patents. I’m not so sure now.
“What if we continue on our course?” I say. “We have a little over eleven hours until the Nova reaches the edge of the blackhole. That gives us plenty of time to get there and assess the situation before we enter it. If we show up and we see something we don’t like, we don’t follow through with it. If it looks clear—and we’ll scan the ship for any malicious activity—we stop and get the fuck out of there.”
Granted, that’s if we can say no to 300 million Space Yen at that point. Something tells me that the closer we get to the Nova, the harder it will be to turn it down.
And maybe that’s what Maas wanted.
Louis’s jaw clenches as he considers my words. “What does the rest of the crew say?” he asks.
“Aye,” PC says immediately, his gaze locked on me.
“Aye,” Daisy says.
Venice nods. “Aye.”
Taka hesitates, and I can understand why. There are plenty of unknown variables ahead of us, and even if we are all right with boarding the Nova, there are still a great many things we won’t be able to account for. For someone as analytical as Taka, it would kill him to try to figure it out. “Okay,” he says, his voice soft.
“Oliver?” Louis asks.
The boy makes a surprised eep as all our attentions focus on him.
“Me?” he asks, confused.
Louis nods. “Yes. You’re a part of this crew, Oliver.”
Daisy smiles amusedly at the inclusion of the boy. Meanwhile, he looks terrified to have been singled out.
“Clementine, Orion, and I will abstain from the vote if you say aye,” Louis prompts.
I exchange glances with Orion, and for once, the android looks unhappy. I focus on it a little too long, wondering what’s processing in that head of his, but then I force myself to look back at the cabin boy.
Oliver chews on his bottom lip, as if seeking validation from the rest of the crew. Finally, he nods. “Aye.” It comes out as a meek whisper, but it’s enough for all of us to hear it.
Louis lets out a shaky breath. “All right. Then we continue to the Nova. I suggest you spend this time getting ready. We’re going into something we don’t quite understand, and I don’t want us to get lazy. PC, Daisy, Taka. You’re boarding with Clem.”
“Aye,” PC says. “Will do, Captain.”
“Breakfast is nearly ready,” Venice says, and we’re all so freaked out that no one comments on the state of that breakfast. Venice almost looks relieved about that.
I’m lost in my own thoughts as the crew moves to leave the bridge, getting ready in their own ways for our run. PC passes by me and leans in, whispering in my ear, “Thank you.”
I give him a slight nod as he walks through the door. I meet Orion’s gaze, and I notice that muscle is twitching in his cheek again.
“Here’s to hoping that we’re worried for nothing,” Louis mutters to himself, shaking his head. “I’m going to see what that breakfast is about.” He pushes himself to his feet, and he heads out as well.
Leaving me alone with Orion.
“You would have said no, wouldn’t you?” I ask him point-blank. My pulse is humming in my temples, already giving me a headache. So much for getting some rest and being in peak condition.
Orion is so still, I wonder if he turned himself off rather than speak with me. “Based on the data that I have,” he says slowly, “it is inadvisable to proceed with the run. At least until we have further information.”
“That’s why we’re going to run reconnaissance when we get there,” I say.
“There are some things that cannot be accounted for, even with reconnaissance.”
“That’s how they did it way back when for wars on old Earth,” I say. “They used to send scouts to see the enemy before making their attack plans.”
“And that was back when the average human lived to be thirty-five,” Orion quips. “You would think for having a finite amount of life, you would think you would be more careful with it.”
I raise an eyebrow. “I think you were being sarcastic just now.”
Then, as if to remind me that he’s nothing like a human, he doesn’t chuckle or react the way a human would. Instead, he only watches me. “Clementine,” he says, “my function in this operation is to evaluate risks. And I cannot come to a conclusion at this time.”
“We’ll come to it together.”
He doesn’t look convinced. “I hope you are right, Clementine. I hope you are right.”
It’s later that I realize that he used the abstract concept of “hope.”
9
Everyone holds their collective breath as Orion pulls the Pícara out of FTL. All eyes are on the screen, to be the first to see the state of the Nova. I have so many thoughts running through my head, both sides of my brain working in overdrive to guess what we’re going to see and what’s going to happen next.
I feel the motion of the Pícara slow, and the stars stop streaking across the sky.
PC swears under his breath as the situation ahead of us comes into view. Louis is so transfixed by the scene, he doesn’t even chide PC for his language.
The first thing I see is the massive curve of the event horizon ahead of us, where even light is captured and sucked into oblivion. I’ve only been this close to a blackhole a few times in my life, but this blackhole is much larger. It even feels more sinister to me, like it’s sucking all my hopes, dreams, and even my essence to its core.
It also doesn’t match the information that we were supplied by Syn-Tech.
“How wide is that?” I ask in disbelief.
“Three light days,” Orion confirms.
My retina computer immediately calculates a comparison to other known blackholes in the galaxy. “So it’s almost a supermassive blackhole?” I glance over at Louis. “I thought it was supposed to be a normal one?”
“Apparently, that is another piece of information that Maas kept from us,” Louis mutters, putting his hands on his waist. He shakes his head, disapproval evident on his face.
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“Are we at the center of the galaxy, then?” Taka asks.
Orion shakes his head. “This blackhole has apparently managed to be hiding from all of us.”
Rare but not unheard of. The galaxy and the universe are massive places, and we’re still trying to locate and map everything within it. So…it’s not out of the realm of possibility that it hasn’t been discovered yet.
But it’s also true that Syn-Tech could have been hiding it from everything. For what purpose?
“How does that impact our timeline?” I ask, turning to Orion, keeping my thoughts on the subject at hand. “With the bigger blackhole?”
“The event horizon is in the same location on the map that Syn-Tech gave,” Orion says. He clacks across his keyboard and gives a small nod at the read-out. “The difference would be negligible.”
“We’d just have longer to contemplate death as we’re being sucked in,” PC mutters.
“Where is the Nova?” Daisy asks, leaning in her seat to get a better view. “I don’t see it.”
“It is here,” Orion says, flicking the map onto the window, where I see the red dot indicating the ship. I blink a few times, trying to spot it, even with the dots. Then I do see it. It looks impossibly small compared to the maw that is the black hole. For a panicked moment, I think the schematics I spent so much time trying to memorize are incorrect.
“Can you get us closer to it, Orion?” I ask, my voice hoarse.
Wordlessly, the android flies the Pícara closer towards that dot. It’s disconcerting, seeing the enormous blackhole before us and flying towards it, but I swallow my fear as I tell myself so long as we don’t cross that line, we’ll be fine.
We’ll be fine.
The Nova grows in size as we near it, and I realize that it isn’t as small as I initially thought. It’s bigger than the Pícara, and looking at certain markers, I breathe a sigh of relief that the ship matches the schematics that Maas sent through.
At least that’s correct.
Also, I realize that it’s in bad shape. It may not have been an asteroid belt, but something took chunks out of it, and it looks like it would have fallen apart, even if it hadn’t been drifting towards a blackhole.
The computer side of my brain is analyzing all parts of the ship, comparing it with what I’ve been told and what I actually see. For the most part, it matches. I do know that we’re going to have to wear suits and Grav-Boots, as it looks like there’s no atmosphere on the craft, and I’m almost certain that the artificial gravity is offline.
The thing looks like a piece of holey synthetic Swiss cheese.
“All the escape pods are still there,” Daisy murmurs. “I thought it was crippled and then the crew fled?”
I frown, following where she points. True enough, I see the cluster of pods, all still intact. So, the ship’s crew must have had another mode of transportation. Or they’re still on the Nova. I prepare myself for the possibility of their corpses.
“The dock is destroyed,” Taka says suddenly.
“Where?” I demand, glancing over at him.
“Over there.” He points at a hole in the underside closest to us. I had dismissed it as another hole, but after having Taka point it out, I see the remains of the dock and airlock.
“Shit,” I mutter. Louis glares me, recovered enough from the shock of seeing the blackhole to now be disapproving.
“We’ll have to spacewalk onto it, then,” PC mutters, combing both of his hands though the side of his head that has hair. “There’s no other way on it.”
Not a deal breaker. We’ve all spacewalked before, even if it is exposing us to space. We’ve just never done it by a blackhole before.
“Run a scan of surrounding areas and for any life on board,” I say to Orion. I doubt there would be anything alive on that ship, but with everything that has happened, I’d rather be cautious than get cocky.
Orion keys in the command for the Pícara to run a scan. I hold my breath again, my lungs screaming for more air as I watch the Nova. What happened to it? Why does it look like a bunch of asteroids hit it all at once? Or did something else happen?
Were those holes made from zappers? Did someone fire at it to stop it from continuing its journey?
“No lifeforms detected on board,” Orion says. There’s a tone to his voice that says he doesn’t approve, but I ignore it. “And there are no ships within striking distance.” He nods to the blackhole. “They must be avoiding the blackhole.”
Maybe that will work in our favor.
PC looks back at me. I can tell from his face that he wants to go through the run. Nothing he’s seen has deterred him from that 300 million payout.
And we’re running out of time, especially if we have to suit up for a spacewalk.
“What do you think?” I ask the whole crew. “We need to decide.”
“I’m for it,” PC says immediately, giving me a nod. “I think we came all this way, and there’s no immediate danger. We should do it.”
The others need a little more convincing, though. Conflict roils on Daisy’s face, and Taka is still inspecting the ship, making his own assessment.
“Okay,” he says finally. “Okay.”
Daisy lets out a breath and then shakes her head. I think she’s about to say no when she says, “Two robo-pups, Louis.” She holds up two fingers. “I’ll do it for two. Oliver needs some interaction.”
I glance at Oliver, who doesn’t say anything. I think he’ll have nightmares about blackholes for a while after this.
I rap on the console and stand. “All right,” I say, looking at Louis, “let’s suit up. We’re running out of time, and I’d like to be out of here before we drift too close toward that.”
I point at the blackhole, and there’s nothing else to be said about it.
We have a deadline ticking in front of us, drawing us ever so close.
And we’re about to face whatever’s on the Nova. Hopefully, it’s just space dust and empty hallways. Just grab the patents and leave.
Hopefully, that’s all there is to it.
Orion doesn’t say anything as he steers us closer to the ship.
Closer to 300 million Space Yen.
.
10
Spacewalking. Did I ever tell you how much I hate spacewalking?” Daisy grumbles as she shimmies into her too-small spacesuit. Our suits are all a mismatch of different trims and colors, as they are all secondhand. Some of the areas are so worn, I can see through to steel mesh underneath. One good tear and…
“It’ll be fine,” I tell her. I cinch the sleeve of my right arm. With no atmosphere on the Nova, I’ll have to take my glove off in space in order to downloot all the data that Maas wants. I’ve done it before in the past, but I am starting to get the heebie jeebies thinking about it. “We just go in there, do our thing, then get out. Job done.”
“Just how I like my sex,” PC says with a grin. “Then again, none of those jobs came with a 300 million Space Yen happy ending.” He attaches tape to the outside of his jacket. His suit has the worst trouble sealing fully, so he just resorts to taping all the seams. “What?” he asks at my expression.
“Usually, men like to pretend they’re awesome at sex,” I say. They certainly try to sell themselves that way to me at every spaceport we’ve been to for the last ten years. At least since I’ve hit puberty. And the few men that I did sleep with usually didn’t follow through with their promises.
He shrugs. “I’ve had no complaints so far.”
Hearing that from my surrogate brother makes me cringe, so I just turn my full attention to Taka, who looks like a robot cat tangled up in a bunch of wires. “How are you holding up?”
“I’ve been better,” he says, and I head over to him to help him get into his suit.
“Everyone knows where to go?” I ask as I help him shrug on his outer shell. “And what to do?”
I can’t help that nagging question. There’s adrenaline pumping through both halves of me, making me
itchy and a little sick to my stomach.
“Of course,” PC says with a roll of his eyes. “We looked at everything.”
“But are you sure—”
“This isn’t their first run, Clem,” Louis says. “They know what they’re doing.” He claps PC on the shoulder and gives Daisy a nod. “Orion says we’re as close as we’re going to get and time’s ticking. I told him I’d tell you myself because I know you’d be freaking out. Am I right?”
He didn’t have to ask, but I bite my bottom lip and nod.
“You’ll be fine, Clem,” he says, giving me a wink. “Just remember to breathe.”
Breathe. Right.
Hard to remember to do that properly when you’re putting a plastic bubble over your head. My helmet is old and scuffed, and the humidifier no longer works, so my breath constantly fogs up the visor. Not to mention that I can hear my heartbeat in my ears, so loud inside my helmet.
But I lock it in place and give Louis a weak smile. “All right, let’s do this.”
There’s more bravado to my voice than I would have expected, and it seems to encourage everyone else to get to their feet and twist their helmets on.
“Good luck,” Louis says as he gives my shoulder a squeeze. “You’ll be fine.” He even sounds like he believes it, and I fervently wish he was coming with us. He turns his back and steps out of the airlock, the door snicking shut behind him.
Now it’s just the four of us. I give a quick glance around me to make sure that everyone is properly suited up—well, as suited up as you can be with these—and I face the outer door. There’s a window where I can see out to the ruined dock of the Nova, so close yet so far away.
I try to not think about how close we are to that supermassive blackhole. Just get in, get out. Job done. I had told PC that, but I apparently need to remind myself.
I lick my chapped lips. “We’re ready, Orion.”
There’s a pause on the other end. “Airlock opening,” Orion says. I think I’m the only who picks up on the hesitation in his voice, as PC claps his hands together in anticipation.