“What would that do?” I stood behind Suma’s chair and watched as data streamed onto the computer screen.
“I had an idea about the entire scenario.” She rotated the chair to face me, while the data kept compiling. “I had a feeling that perhaps the star remained, but was invisible. That might give us a clue.”
She turned and let out a series of Shimmali squawks and clicks. I picked up a few of them and leaned forward. “Good news?” I asked.
“I’m not sure. It appears as though the mass of the star exists, but the star itself doesn’t. This makes absolutely no sense,” Suma said, tapping away at the console.
“Perhaps the transmissions are false,” W offered.
“No. It doesn’t look like it. There’s no heat being given off, so that rules out cloaking… maybe. There are too many variables we don’t have the answers to,” Suma said.
“W, don’t get too close. What if Magnus set a course for the star that wasn’t there, and it destroyed him? We can’t let that happen to us. It’s kind of ironic, isn’t it?”
“What is?” Suma asked.
“We’re cloaked and looking for an invisible star,” I said without any mirth.
I went and woke up Karo, Rulo, and Slate, and advised them of what Suma had found. By the time everyone was on the bridge, we were closing in on the end of our planned journey: the starting point of the crashed Keppe lifeboat. This system was the epitome of black space, and if I had any choice, I would have turned around and raced toward the Traders’ world.
“Captain, I’m picking up an anomaly on the sensors,” W said.
“What is it?” Slate asked.
“I’m not sure.” W zoomed in the viewscreen until we were able to see a colorful display some distance from our current position. “It appears to be a nebula.”
It wasn’t as large as some nebulae I’d seen before, but it was dense; dark green clouds of gas stared back at us. “Where did it come from?” Karo was walking past me to watch the image of the beautiful sight.
“We don’t know. It wasn’t there one moment; the next it was,” Suma answered.
“This is it,” I said, as if the entire mystery had been solved in a matter of seconds.
“What is what?” This from Slate.
“Things are vanishing from the system, and a colorful nebula arrives as soon as we reach the spot where Magnus’ ship sat only two months ago. Either it’s coming for us or it expects us to come to it.” I was so sure I was onto something with my theory.
“It’s an interstellar cloud of dust and gases, not an entity,” Suma said.
“Would it be the strangest thing we’ve ever seen?” I waited for an answer, and when it didn’t come, I continued. “If the star is still here, or at least its hidden mass is, then who’s to say that Magnus isn’t here as well?”
“How could he be here? Do you see Fortune on the sensors?” Rulo asked.
“No, and we don’t see the star either. What if this nebula is causing vessels and stars, maybe planets, to disappear to sensors and to our eyes? I’ll agree that it might not even be a nefarious supervillain, just an inert nebula with odd characteristics,” I said.
I expected to receive a little flak for my suggestions, so I was surprised to get some positive responses. “You might be right, Dean,” Suma said. “The lifeboat’s tracking began from over there.” She pointed to the viewscreen, and an icon glowed on it in the rough shape of a Keppe boat.
“Can you try the transmission test again to see if there’s a ship there on some plane or another?” I asked, and Suma nodded.
We waited as she sent out a signal, seeing if it bounced off any object or if it pushed straight through. “Nothing,” she said, “but his ship was a lot smaller than trying to hit a star. I’ll keep trying. If the ship is here in this vicinity in some form, we’ll find it.”
I stared at the nebula in the distance, and it sat there in space, wide and unmoving. “Is that thing big enough to swallow a star?” I asked quietly.
“It doesn’t look like it. Actually, now that we’ve watched it for a while, I’d say this is unlike any nebula on record. It’s moving, and fast.” Suma was right. The clouds were rolling, and it almost appeared that bolts of energy were flashing in its core.
“That can’t be a good sign,” Slate said.
Karo pointed at it. “This is no nebula. Dean was right in his assumption. It wants us. I can feel it.”
That same feeling in the pit of my stomach began to grow as I watched it. There was nothing friendly or aloof about the lifeless cloud of dust. This was something more. Much more.
“Suma, hurry up with those tests.” I said it softly, worried that alarm would ring out with my voice. If Magnus was nearby, trapped in a non-visible state, I wanted to know before the dancing dark green cloud raced toward us. “I really wish we had those probes now.” I crossed my arms, trying to think of an alternative to send into the maw of the beast.
“Come with me. We might have something in the cargo bay that will work,” Rulo said, and I followed her to the rear of the ship.
“I think I know where you’re going, Dean. You want to send something into the nebula and see where it leads.” Rulo began moving crates, opening a few before she appeared to find what she was looking for.
“A nebula doesn’t have a mouth or opening to transport anything through it. If the object flies past the cloud and to the other side, we know it isn’t related. What do you have in mind?” I was curious, and confused when she pulled out a small box.
“This is a tracker drone. We use them on ground missions. If we program a target into them, they follow it, above tree lines, underwater. Anywhere the target goes, this will follow,” she said. It was even smaller than the palm-sized light-drone I’d used on the asteroid, and I watched as Rulo powered it up.
“That’s tiny.” It was the size of a field mouse. “Good for reconnaissance.”
“It records everything, and this” – she held up an arm-strap console – “intercepts instant feeds from it, so we always have visual, anticipated body temp, whatever we need. Pretty great, isn’t it?”
“And you can control it from there?” I pointed to the small strapped console.
“Yes.”
I smiled. At least we had something to test the colorful space cloud with.
“Dean, you’re going to want to see this,” Suma’s voice carried over the ship’s speakers.
We jogged to the bridge, and if my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me, our friend the nebula was growing larger on the screen. “What did you find?” I asked.
Suma spun in the chair and stared at me with her big dark eyes. “There was pushback.”
She showed me an image on her console of a series of dots going out in a net. They hit a surface, and some kept moving above and below, but others remained stagnant. The end result was the shape of a space ship.
My heart beat quickly in my chest. We’d done it. “Can you run measurements?”
“I already did. The length matches Fortune.”
Nineteen
Two days had passed, and we weren’t any closer to having answers than we’d been when Suma told me her discovery. It was so frustrating to be in such close proximity to them, without the ability to contact them or solidify their existence.
We were all cramped into the kitchen, W and Karo standing along the wall so we had enough seats.
“Are they really there? That’s the question. Is that a stamp of what was, and for some reason, the imprint is still there, like the star?” I asked the theoretical question again. The truth was, none of us knew.
We’d approached the location of the ship and passed through it. Apparently, the shadow of the ship didn’t give it substance. It was like Fortune had become a ghost.
Slate took a bite of the remains of dinner and ran his hands through his hair, leaning back in his chair. “We have to test the nebula,” he said.
“I don’t know why we insist on calling it that. It’s clearly nothing of
the sort.” Suma was becoming frustrated too. This whole mission had us on edge; none of us had been able to benefit from a good night’s rest since the discovery.
“Then what would you call it?” Slate asked her.
“I don’t know. The Cloud. The Void. The eater of hopes and dreams!” She shouted the last bit, and I raised a hand.
“I know morale is low, and we’re all tired. Let’s not let our emotions get out of hand. Fine, Suma, for your sake, let’s call the distortion the Cloud. Slate, I agree. It’s time we send Rulo’s tracking drone through the Cloud. I’m sorry it took me so long to make this decision. I was hoping to be able to contact the ghost ship before we attempted anything against the colorful adversary.”
“You think it’s responsible now?” Karo asked me.
“I do. There’s no other explanation. It’s coming for us, moving slowly over two days, but according to W, it’s picked up speed three times, only to decelerate to a common drift toward us. That means it’s capable of moving of its own volition,” I said.
“And this tracking drone. Do you think it will be able to return to us?” Karo was full of questions tonight, but not many suggestions.
I shook my head. “No. I don’t think it will, but maybe we’ll learn some important information about it in the process.”
“What if we learn nothing?” Karo asked.
I was fed up with his questions. “If you have something to say, spit it out.”
The room was tense, and Karo’s eyes softened. “Stay with me, Dean. I’m leading somewhere.”
“If we learn nothing, we’ve neither gained nor lost anything. We stay for a while and try to find a way to contact Magnus.” I drank the dredges of coffee from my cup. It was cold and bitter, but I didn’t care. It was fueling my exhausted mind.
Karo asked another one. “And if it disappears inside the Cloud, never to return?”
“Then we know what happened to Magnus and the others. Probably the star too,” Suma answered for me.
“I know where you’re leading, Karo. You want to know if we’ll be going into the Cloud if we think that’s where Magnus and Natalia ended up.” My cup lowered to the table with a louder bang than I intended. Slate jumped at the startling sound. “I don’t know. That’ll be a new discussion.”
Rulo stood up, the chair battering against the kitchen wall as her bulky frame shrank the room. “What are we waiting for, then? No time like this moment to shoot off the drone.”
Five minutes later, Rulo released it through the containment field at the belly of our ship, controlling it with deft fingertips. For a woman with substantial muscles and armored skin, she had a light touch on the controls.
After the ramp was closed and sealed, we moved the party to the bridge, where the massive Cloud loomed closer with each passing moment. We’d considered moving away from it, and W programmed the ship to do just that, should it settle within two thousand kilometers of our position.
“How far away is it now?” Slate asked W.
“It’s twelve thousand, five hundred and eleven kilometers from us,” W answered.
Rulo pulled a stick from the side of her armband console and passed it to Suma. “Plug this into the universal adapter you have jury-rigged on that thing. We’ll push the feed onto the viewscreen.”
Seconds later, we were intercepting a live feed from the miniscule tracking drone as it propelled toward the great Cloud. It was getting larger and darker the nearer it got to us, adding to the tension. It showed us nothing but the rumbling clouds and shades of moss green, energy within cracking sporadically. This was a big bad ball of energy, and it was coming for us.
Not much happened as the drone shot quickly across the expanse between us and the Cloud, until it was a thousand kilometers away. Rulo tried maneuvering it, but the drone began to spin out of control. “It’s being sucked in now. I’ve lost control.”
“I don’t see a vortex or singularity. This is the strangest black hole slash nebula in existence,” Suma said.
We all watched with fraying nerves as the drone’s feed kept showing us the spinning colors and blazing lightning within the Cloud. For a second, I was reminded of the Iskios vortex, but this was different, far different.
“I’m glad Mary’s not here,” I whispered.
“So am I,” Slate said.
“Drone is sending pressure and temperature data. It’s cold. Colder than expected.” Rulo’s voice rose, even though we weren’t hearing any sound from the stream.
I had to avert my eyes. The constant rotating was doing nothing to calm my already nervous stomach.
“It’s entering the Cloud’s perimeter,” Suma warned. We’d determined the Cloud was five hundred kilometers deep, and twice as wide and tall. Not something to be messed with.
I glanced up, and the feed was now a mess of dust, debris, colorful gases, and crackling energy.
“It continues to send readings,” Rulo said.
“Can we make use of anything?” I asked.
“Not yet, Captain. Perhaps once we have time to analyze the results.” W was typing away on the console, his fingers moving faster than my brain could decipher.
Instantly, the room’s mood changed, and the viewscreen side with the livestream went black before the Cloud took over the entire screen again. “It’s gone,” Slate and I said at the exact same moment.
“It’s gone.” Rulo unstrapped the control from her arm and dropped it to the floor.
____________
“What did we learn?” I was on the bridge with Suma, alone for the time being. We’d been through all our options countless times at this point, and we’d also moved away from the Cloud on three occasions. We were spinning our wheels out here, but the good news was, we hadn’t been swallowed by the Cloud yet. I was clinging to the small victories.
Suma listed the items off. “We learned what the temperature was inside the Cloud, and what percentage of gases it’s composed of, and the relative pressure within and around the anomaly.”
“But nothing to help us learn what’s on the other side.” Our seats were facing each other, and Suma wasn’t meeting my eyes as I watched her. “What is it?” I asked.
“I really thought we could help. I was so sure that if we assembled this team of you, me, and Slate, like the good old days, that we’d come out here and bring Magnus and Natalia home, along with the kids and the Keppe crew. But here we are, a week in-system, with no answers.” Suma seemed ready to cry, and I reached across, grabbing her shoulder.
“Chin up, Suma. I’m sorry if I’ve been a little short lately. I want the same thing as you do; as all of us do. Under any other circumstance, I’d probably be storming inside the damned Cloud to see what happens and figure a way out after the fact,” I said.
“But…”
“But I can’t do that any longer, and I can’t ask any of you to either. Plus, we only have one ship.” I let go of her, and she finally met my gaze.
“We could leave and come back, then head in,” she suggested.
I’d thought the same thing the night before as I stared at my ceiling instead of sleeping. It was all catching up to me. I had to cut the caffeine for a day and get some rest, or I wasn’t going to last much longer.
“We could do that, but it might be too late then. Magnus is here. We know there’s some weird stuff going on that we don’t understand, but his ship’s outline is there, as is the missing star’s. If only I could figure it out.” I squeezed the communicator in my hand. It was the same one we’d used when Leonard and I went to the Bhlat home world after we first landed on New Spero, and the others were in captivity above Earth after the Bhlat were threatening a takeover.
Now I had one side, and Magnus had the other; only they were proving useless across this Cloud barrier that seemed to separate us from each other’s plane or dimension, or whatever it was really called.
Suma nodded to it. “Have you tried it today?”
I shook my head. “Hasn’t worked any other day.
Why should it now?”
“I don’t know. We can’t give up, Dean. That’s all I know. Magnus would never give up,” she said as her eyes went wide and she gave me a sad smile.
“You’re right. Did he give up when we were stuck on Sterona?” I asked.
“Nope. He traded with the Keppe so he could come rescue us. And that very trade got him where he is today.” Suma sat up in her chair, her posture improving as we chatted.
I flipped the communicator around in my hand. “What the hell. Can’t hurt.” I tapped the icon and smiled at Suma. She was such a great young woman, and Mary and my lives were much richer for having her around. Even now she was able to lift my spirits. “Magnus, come in. It’s Dean. We’re outside the anomaly and know you’re nearby. Where are you? Come in, Magnus.”
It stayed silent in my hand. “See. Nothing…”
“Dean! You’re here…” The voice cut off, but there was no mistaking my Scandinavian friend’s voice.
“Magnus!”
“…inside… can’t leave… don’t…”
“Don’t what?” I was standing up, pacing the bridge, Suma right beside me.
“Dean. Don’t come for us…” His voice was hard but fearful. I knew his protective tone like the back of my hand.
“We can’t do that. We’re coming for you!” I said into it, but the call was over. “Magnus!” I shouted into it, but the connection was lost.
The others must have heard my shouting, because they all raced to the bridge, surrounding me. My heart was in my throat, and I passed Suma the communicator like it might burn my hand.
“He’s alive. They’re alive!” I shouted, finally letting an ounce of joy press through the stress and pain.
“What happened?” Slate yelled. He was in his underwear, and Rulo rolled her eyes at him.
“I tried to reach him like I have every other day, but this time, he answered. He’s alive. He said they were inside, and that they can’t leave, right, Suma?” I was pacing frantically, and I was sure that my heart would never reach a normal pulse rate again.
“He also said, ‘don’t come for us’,” Suma told the group.
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