Authors: Sean Williams,Shane Dix
Tags: #Science Fiction, #Fiction, #Space Opera
The Dying Light (5 page)
Roche reached out with a mental hand to touch the Surin’s straining mind and ease her frustration. “It’s okay, Maii. Wait until the next jump. It might be stronger then.”
“ ‘It’ might be the anomaly itself,” suggested Haid.
“Now there’s a possibility I
don’t
want to consider.” Roche sighed as warning Klaxons began to sound again. “Box, any thoughts on that?”
“None that would not offend.”
The rare joke from the Box elicited a chuckle from Haid, but one that was short-lived. The Box’s sense of humor—usually at the expense of carbon-based life forms or epsense science—only reinforced its uniqueness. Roche also detected a faint hint of annoyance, as though it was peeved that the reave had taken the wind out of its sails, ruining the effect of its big announcement.
Maii emerged from her trance as the ship jumped in accordance with the Box’s wishes. she said, her mental voice clearly audible through the groaning of metal. The slow-jump was easily the most uncomfortable so far.
“That’s something.” Haid folded his arms. “But I’d still feel happier knowing what we were heading for.”
“A black hole doesn’t have to bear us any ill will to be dangerous,” agreed Kajic.
“It is not a black hole,” asserted the Box.
“Famous last words,” muttered the ex-mercenary.
“I agree with Kajic,” said Cane. “Just because it’s a natural phenomenon doesn’t mean it can’t still be deadly.”
“At least we could go in with weapons armed,” added Haid.
“Do it, then.” Roche concurred with the ex-mercenary’s unspoken message: sitting around waiting was only making them more tense. “Cane, work with him.”
“Done.” The two men crossed the bridge to take positions at the weapons station.
“Anything else to report, Box?”
“Some inconclusive findings,” it said.
“Such as?” she persisted, silently cursing the AI’s reticence.
“The steep flexure gradient in this region is suggestive of significant, and recent, spatial trauma.”
Roche’s eyebrows knitted. “That means nothing to me.”
“Space-time has been warped on a massive scale,” the Box translated. “The traumatized region occupies a disc-shaped area roughly seventeen billion kilometers across and two billion kilometers thick. The radiant point-source lies at the heart of this region, although I have been unable as yet to determine whether it is the cause of the flexure or simply another effect. It is conceivable, perhaps even likely, that the point-source and the anomaly are different facets of the same phenomenon. However, more research is required before I can be certain of that.”
“How much more?”
“That depends on the result of this slow-jump,” the Box replied. “We will be jumping to the very edge of what should be Palasian System, not far from the anchor point that was our original destination. It is my conjecture that the degree of flexure will increase sharply at this point.”
“Proving...?”
“Again, I hesitate to speculate until we have concrete data.”
Roche grunted. “How long, then?”
“I estimate fifteen minutes before we arrive at our destination.”
“So soon?”
“As a result of the flexure gradient, our relative velocity is greatly increased. In a sense, the anomaly has been drawing us toward the point-source.”
“It sounds even more like a black hole, now,” said Haid over his shoulder.
“The effect is only relative to real space,” continued the Box. “In hyperspace, we are actually fighting an uphill battle: although our movement in hyperspace corresponds to greater than normal movement in the real universe, it is becoming increasingly difficult to move in hyperspace at all. I have consulted Kajic and arrived at a maximum output rating for the slow-jump drive—a rating which we will not exceed.”
Roche nodded in satisfaction. Even though she didn’t understand how progress could be easier in real-space but more difficult in hyperspace, at least Kajic and the Box were cooperating.
Roche glanced across the bridge. The Surin was frowning once more. “Where?”
“Can you at least tell if it’s mundane?”
The reave looked troubled.
A Sol Wunderkind?
Roche wanted to ask, but didn’t. Maii would have said if that were the case. Yet she couldn’t quash the thought: something in hyperspace was pushing them away while in real-space drawing them closer. If not the fugitive, then what?
Roche folded her arms and watched the main screen as the minutes ticked by; the large number of unknowns made her want to scream out in frustration. She needed answers, not possibilities.
any answers,> put in Maii,
Before Roche could acknowledge the truth of the reave’s comment, a low rumble echoed through the ship, beginning at the stern and fading to silence at the distant prow.
“Now what?” asked Roche, looking around in alarm.
“Uh—one moment,” said Kajic.
“We had a flicker of red lights down the port hull,” said Haid, “but they’ve cleared now.”
“A slight disturbance,” said the Box. “Nothing to be concerned about.”
Roche bit her tongue until Kajic delivered his own report.
“No problems with the drive,” said the ex-captain finally. “We must have encountered some sort of turbulence. Possibly a hyperspatial shock wave of some kind.”
“The anomaly again?” said Roche.
“It seems likely.”
“We are nearing the edge of the anomaly,” said the AI. “Obviously there will be some turbulence.”
“Aimed at us, perhaps?” suggested Haid.
“No,” said the Box. “Describing what we are experiencing as a shock wave is peculiarly apt. The turbulence may be caused by the anomaly only in the same way that the presence of a large mass ‘causes’ gravity.”
“Not deliberate then, but symptomatic.” Roche ran a hand restlessly along the arm of her chair. “It’s all the same from this end, isn’t it?”
“Not really,” said the Box. “If we can piece together a pattern to the symptoms, we should be able to deduce the nature of the anomaly that is causing it.”
“Here comes another one,” said Cane, his head cocked, listening.
The groan returned, as gradually as before but noticeably louder when it peaked. Roche, her hands pressed firmly into the chair’s armrests, felt a faint buzz through her fingertips.
“Could it hurt us, Uri?” she asked.
“Conceivably, yes. The stress is caused by sympathetic vibrations in the hull. So far I have been able to dampen the resonance.”
“Let me know if it gets too bad.”
“I will. If we encounter it again.”
Roche waited anxiously as the ship traveled onward. Barely two minutes later, a third shock wave rolled through the ship, this time accompanied by a sluing sensation to starboard and down, as though the ship were being dragged off course.
“Red lights again,” said Haid.
An instant later, from Cane: “Clear.”
Roche waited on edge for Kajic’s report.
“No damage,” he said finally. “But it was definitely more severe. The closer we get to the anomaly, the stronger they’re becoming.”
“Can we ride them for much longer?”
“If they continue worsening at this rate, no,” said Kajic. “But we’ll come close.”
“Good enough.” Roche swiveled her chair to face the main screen. Only a handful of minutes remained before the slow-jump was due to end. “Pull us out the moment we can’t take it. I’ll leave that decision in your hands.”
“Understood.”
As another groan began to build, Roche again gripped the chair’s armrests, and held on tight. She felt as though a bell were tolling directly behind her head, a bell so large that its vibrations were absorbed by her bones rather than heard. Before it had completely faded, another swelled to take its place.
“Box,” she said, raising her voice above the noise. “If you have
any
idea at all what that anomaly is, I want to hear it.”
“I now have several theories, Morgan. Which is the correct one, of course, remains to be seen.”
Roche opened her mouth to demand an outline of the various possibilities, but was cut off by a sudden lurch upward. Her stomach dropped, then rose again, into her chest.
“We’re experiencing gravity fluctuations,” said Kajic. “I can only keep us going another fifty seconds.”
Roche studied the main screen, momentarily tempted to call a halt. Their planned arrival point was inching slowly closer. Given a further half-minute, they would almost make it. She decided to trust Kajic’s instincts.
“There must be some way to dampen the shock waves,” she said.
“I’ll raise the E-shields, but I don’t think that’ll help much.” The ex-captain’s voice sounded strained.
“Whatever you can do, Uri.”
The noise worsened, despite the shields, as did the rolling sensation in Roche’s gut. Mali, lacking eyes of her own and therefore more susceptible to balance problems, looked decidedly uncomfortable. Haid had taken the precaution of fastening his impact harness. Cane, behind him, was as steadfast as ever—but even he swayed when a particularly strong wave shunted the ship in an unexpected direction.
Roche watched the seconds counting down on the big screen: 21... 20... 19...
The shock waves became inseparable, and the ship seemed to toss on the surface of a stormy sea. Red lights flickered on and off across all the boards, registering slight damage across the hull. Most would be repaired almost instantly by the tide of maintenance nanomachines swarming over every external surface of the ship, but the fact that they were occurring at all was disturbing.
Ten seconds remained.
Roche watched their destination creep closer. It was becoming increasingly difficult to hear over the prolonged groan surrounding them.
The lights flickered once, steadied, then flickered again.
“We have a standing wave in sectors G through K,” announced Kajic grimly. “Preparing to abort the slow-jump.”
Five seconds. Roche winced as the smell of ozone reached her nose.
Three seconds. On the main screen, the difference between the ship’s current location and its destination was measured in millimeters.
Two seconds—
“Aborting now,” said Kajic, the very instant artificial gravity ceased entirely. A siren began to wail a split second later. The lights flickered a third time as the drive drained power from the bulk of the ship to translate itself safely back into real-space. In the short-lived darkness, Roche actually heard the engines strain—a deep, regular thrumming coming from somewhere to her left. Their tempo was rapid but reassuringly regular under the circumstances.
Then the lights returned, unsteadily and noticeably dimmer than they usually were. Space twisted inside out, and the floor bucked under her feet. Her momentum tried to pull her forward, onto the floor and across the bridge. Gripping the chair’s armrests even tighter, she resisted the impetus with all her strength. To her left, Maii lost a similar battle and skidded on her knees into a bank of instruments. Even Cane staggered, clasping Haid’s shoulder to keep his balance.
The floor bucked again, this time in the opposite direction. Maii gasped in pain as she slid backward and collided with her seat. The bulkheads around them likewise groaned in protest.
“Uri!” Roche shouted above the racket. “What’s happening?”
“We are experiencing difficulty emerging from hyperspace,” said the Box, its voice amplified but calm—
too
calm for Roche’s liking. “I will act as an intermediary between Kajic and yourself for the time being. The ship is his primary concern at the moment.”
Another jolt almost cost Roche her grip. She reached behind and over her shoulder to fasten the seat’s restraint harness. “Are we going to make it?”
“I should think so,” said the Box. “The chances are very good that we will all survive.”
Roche was grateful for the “all.” The Box could endure almost anything, and had been known to assume the same indestructibility of its wards in the past. Cane, on the other hand, had already moved across the bridge to help Maii into her harness.
“We have damage,” reported Haid from the weapons station, his voice raised to be heard. “Lost some banks on the starboard bow. I don’t quite know what happened; looks like they’ve been sheared clean off. No pressure drops reported, though, and hull integrity’s intact.”
Roche concentrated on what he was saying. “What have we lost?’
“Hypershields in that area. Some A-P cannon. We’ll be able to compensate easily enough.”
“Good. We—uh!” The
Ana Vereine
swung to starboard, then down; Roche winced as her restraint harness cut deep into her chest. The thrumming of the engines rose in both pitch and intensity until it became a screaming—like the screaming of a mighty wind—
—she was falling—
—and nausea flared deep within her as the association with the dream made her feel impotent and therefore even more anxious.
The main screen flickered, attracting her attention. Abstract representations of their course swirled into increasingly complex shapes, then disappeared entirely, leaving nothing in their wake. White lines scattered across the screen, making Roche blink; then it went black again.
Without warning, the ship began to steady. Bulkheads settled back into place with a series of decreasing creaks. The screaming of the engines ebbed, losing the desperate edge that had contributed to Roche’s anxiety. The groan of tortured space faded with one last rending sound, then ceased entirely.
In the sudden silence, Roche didn’t dare ask the question.
