The Void (28 page)

“Did they? Is that what they told you? Is that what you truly remember?”

Aidan looked into the mirror of himself and was confused. None of this made sense. Then suddenly, a moment of clarity.

“You're saying none of this is real.”

The other grinned. “Who can say what is real and what is not? You tell me, Aidan. How many do you know who have seen beyond the wall of sleep and returned to tell the tale? And who knows what dreams may come to the minds of those so afflicted? Who knows what they see with the third eye? What worlds they may form? What visions? What scenarios? What epics their insane minds might conjure to prevent the mad from knowing the truth?

“It seems to me that two possibilities lay before us. The first is that you sit now in an insane asylum in some secret location on the North American continent. A vegetable, hidden away within. Mad. Living a figment of your imagination, and that none of this,” he said, gesturing around the room, “is real.”

“And the other?” Aidan whispered.

“The other is that you woke that day on the
Vespa
the most dangerous of insane men—the one who wears the mask of sanity, one unrecognized either by himself or those around him. Misdiagnosed by careless doctors, you were allowed to return to your position where, mad with fear of what might happen if you reentered the dream, you destroyed your ship, its captain, and the crew.

“You then escaped in a life pod, where you remain in stasis to this day. Your brain passes the time by creating all of this, a world for you to conquer. To give you a way to save your own sanity. Perhaps if you find a way to save this ship, you will find salvation for yourself as well. Maybe that's why you are here. But either way, none of this is real.”

The other watched with smug satisfaction as Aidan's jaw fell open. “That can't be. That makes no sense,” he said, even as he knew that it did.

“Ask yourself, Mr. Connor. What makes more sense? What I just told you? Or that you were a crew member on a ship that was destroyed. You, the sole survivor. Injured, mysteriously, but nevertheless escaping a warp core breach that should have destroyed everything in the vicinity, including your escape pod. And then, despite the fact the ship was deep within the warp zone, your capsule just happened to float into well-traveled space where you were rescued by a ship, one captained by a woman close to retirement.

“That she, despite your recent incident, hired you immediately as navigator of the
Chronos
. Where you met a girl and discovered a mystery to be solved, one that just so happened to involve a derelict, the same ship you had walked upon in your dreams of old. One that so conveniently was once under the command of your captain's father. A ship in distress, one you could save, perhaps redeeming yourself and fulfilling a prophecy given to you by an insane man. And now, you are talking to the physical manifestation of your own psyche. You tell me, Mr. Connor. Which is more insane?”

The doppelgänger took two more steps toward Aidan, and now they stood mere inches apart.  “Either way, this I tell you. All of this is a fiction. And no matter what you choose to believe, what you must do remains the same. You must save this ship. It is the only way you might fix your mind and recover your lost soul.”

“No,” Aidan murmured, his voice shaking. “You’re a liar!”

At that moment the door slid open and Rebecca stumbled inside, falling to her knees. Aidan spun around to the noise and saw it was her. He turned back to where his mirror image had stood. He was gone, vanished.

For a long awkward moment, it stayed like that. Aidan, staring, pale and open mouthed, at seeming nothingness. Rebecca, doubled over on her knees, sobbing on the floor, thankful to God that she had made it here, but also with a creeping uneasiness that Aidan wasn't coming to her aid. But it lasted only a second before Aidan, regaining his senses, raced across the room and slid down on his knees beside Rebecca.

“Rebecca,” he said, grabbing her by the arms, “what's wrong?”

She pointed toward the door, but then she didn't know what to say, how to explain what she had seen without sounding crazy.

“There's something out there,” she said finally, settling on the vaguest possible explanation.

“Something?”

“I saw something.”

“Something from your dreams,” Aidan stated more than asked.

She looked up at him and felt an almost over-weaning relief that maybe she wasn't crazy after all. “Yes.”

“Where's your rifle?”

“I dropped it back there.”

“That's alright,” he said. “Whatever it was, I don't think it uses guns.”

Aidan and Rebecca both jumped when the door slid open again. In stepped Gravely, and she held her rifle in her hands.

“Come on,” she said, without bothering to ask why they were on the floor. “Dr. Ridley's gone missing.”

Chapter 22

“I'm not so sure we should split up,” Ridley said. “Not with everything that's happened.”

Gravely and Ridley stood at the entrance of the corridors that housed the crew compartment of the
Singularity.
Since Jack had a complete list of the ship's computer codes, he was able to override the security procedures that had kept the doors locked.

“There's nobody left on this ship, Malcolm.”

“Yes, but after everything you've been through are you sure you want to be . . .”

Ridley stopped in mid-sentence, cut off by the way the captain squinted her eyes and set her jaw. He immediately felt shame. The truth was, he didn't want to be alone. That was bad enough. Seeing how the captain knew it also, well, that was intolerable.

“You're right,” he said. “The faster we get this done the better.”

“And the sooner we can get home,” she said.

It was the first time Ridley had heard her mention home. He knew something about the captain's past and he knew that she had no home. Not really. He wondered if she meant Earth or the
Chronos
.

“I don't like it,” she said, glancing around. “It's strange. Something's off.”

“The gravitational effects . . . “ Ridley began.

“No, no it's something else. I don't know. Maybe nothing. Look,” she said, turning to him, “we probably won't find anything here. Take fifteen minutes. You go left. I'll go right. Go through the quarters and if you find anything that looks official, just take it with you. If Aidan and Dr. Kensington can't get the engines going, we'll need all the information from the ship that we can get.”

“Jack will, you mean.”

“Right,” Gravely said. “The simple fact of the matter is his mission is our mission, at least until we can go our separate ways.”

“Understood.”

“Fifteen minutes. Then we meet back here.”

Ridley watched Gravely disappear into the corridor beyond. He was amazed out how quickly she seemed to be swallowed.

Ridley shivered. It wasn't that he was a coward, far from it. But most people who use words like “coward” have never really tasted fear, never known its weight. Have never had to stand in its midst, and feel its hot breath on the nape of their neck. Ridley never had. Only in the dreams when he faced his mother.

Maybe that was why he found so much terror in this place. Why he hated every inch of it. This felt like them, the dreams. Not in a simple way. Not in the smell of decay or the cold kiss of the air. In the sights you saw or the things you heard. Something deeper than that. A sixth sense maybe. The cold chill of a premonition. Like the feeling you were being watched. Yes, those feelings all came with the dream. He had felt them since he had stepped onboard this ship.

The first room he came to was that of an Ensign Robertson. He knew the name only because of the pair of discarded fatigues he found on the floor. There was a blood on them, Ensign Robertson's or someone else's. Maybe both.

What struggle had gone on here, he wondered. He questioned whether the captain could have done it all himself, or whether some others in the crew had initially sided with him, only to be betrayed in the end. Or maybe it was simpler still to assume the captain had surprised them, killing a large number before facing resistance from those who had remained. But why had it happened? That was the greatest mystery of them all.

They knew so little about the ship, so little about its mission. Jack knew, of course. Rebecca too. If Dr. Ridley had any skill at figuring the yin and yang of humanity left, he was sure Aidan knew by now as well.

There was much that was obvious from the captain's final log, however. An experiment had taken place on this ship and those upon it were the test subjects. That experiment had been to avoid the effects of the dreams, perhaps to circumvent the sleep altogether. To provide a new way to travel that did not come with its burden. Oh, how they had failed.

“No,” Ridley said to himself. “Not failure.”

When the guinea pigs all die, the test is merely completed. With results unsatisfactory, yes, but results nonetheless.

He left Robinson's room behind, having found nothing but personal logs. Holos of family and friends back home. He entered the next room and couldn't stifle a gasp. It was just like Ensign Robertson's, save for the fact he recognized the woman in the picture sitting on the bedside table.

She had an arm around a man no older than she, her head tilted against his, the kind of smile that couldn't be forced. She wore a yellow summer dress, he a shirt with NAVY emblazoned across the chest. A fiancé, husband maybe. He preferred that, somehow, to boyfriend. For when she disappeared, a boyfriend would have simply moved on. Forgetting her. Finding another to take her place. But a husband, a fiancé, he would remember.

Even if he did marry again, that woman would know her story. Know that she had been someone of surpassing importance to her husband. The first love of his life. And she would think, what a woman she must have been for a man like my husband to love her. Somehow, that made Dr. Ridley feel better.

Yes, he had seen her face before, though it had looked nowhere near as lovely as the image he now looked upon. He had seen her as she had died, her face cut to ribbons, her body left to molder on the cold, metal floor of the
Singularity'
s corridors, a warning to those who would follow. He guessed he might owe his life to her, for if he and Gravely had not come upon her body when they had, they might have been the mad captain's next victims.

He almost left the room behind, not wanting to desecrate this, her final memorial. But something, something inside urged him to go forward. Not as a voyeur of the dead. No, there was something here that he needed to see. Something he was meant to find.

He stepped inside and jumped a little as the door slid closed behind him. He shone his light around the room, from pictures, to computer pads, to an old-fashioned bound book,
Physical Geography of the Sea
by Matthew Fontaine Maury. “She must have been the navigator,” he thought.

This book had probably come from him, on her first commission. He picked up the book, rubbing his hands across the leather cover, brought it to his nose and breathed in the musty aroma of three hundred years. Of something real, something not plastic or prefabricated. But when he opened his eyes, he saw the technology of the present age—the blinking red light of a holorecorder sitting next to where the book had been.

He set the book down on the table and picked up the tiny device. Probably her last personal log, he thought. The red light flashed angrily at him, demanding that he press it, urging him to see what was contained therein. Whether out of curiosity or some preternatural sense that this was the thing he sought, he pressed the button.

An image appeared in front of him. The same girl, dressed in the uniform of a naval officer. The compass and sexton emblazoned on her shoulder confirmed his suspicions; she was the navigator on this ship. She had seen better days. There was blood on her face, dried for the most part, the wound from which it sprang having been closed by what looked to be a temporary suture. But this was a respite at best from battle. That much, her eyes told him.

She was gasping for breath, as if she had just run full sprint from something or someone, endured some horrible physical struggle. She'd also been crying. She wasn't crying now. No, she was determined. Determined to share whatever she must.

“My name is Lieutenant Samantha Erickson,” she said. She paused and glanced off camera in the direction of a distant scream that echoed its way down the halls of the ship.

“I don't have much time,” she said, looking back at the camera. “If you are watching this message, I have either managed to launch it in an escape pod or you have found the
Singularity
yourself. In either event,” she said, glancing once again toward the door as what sounded like rifle fire boomed somewhere off screen, “I don't intend to ever leave this ship. And that makes what I have to say all the more important.”

She took a deep breath, involuntarily smoothing the sleeves of her uniform, a habit left over from basic training, no doubt. Then she continued.

“An hour ago, the
Singularity
, under the command of Captain Alexander Gravely, entered the black hole, Sigma-1. Our objective was to discover a new means of travel, one that did not require stasis, and therefore did not result in the dreams. We made this effort with the best of intentions. We had hoped that perhaps we would save lives. In reality, it appears we have only lost our own and possibly endangered many more.”

Her voice cracked and Ridley wondered whether she could continue, but continue she did.

“That was an hour ago. The jump itself lasted less than thirty seconds. We entered the black hole, but then something happened. We saw things. Things I cannot explain. Things that will seem mad to anyone who hears this message. It was as though we were transported across the whole of the galaxy all in one moment, some galaxy at least.

“In that moment, we saw vistas and worlds unimagined. Black stars that seemed to give no light, but rather cast gloom upon the empty, dark seas of dead worlds below, planets unlike any I know. Or any that can be. The beings that lived upon them were shadows from my darkest nightmares, from the dreams themselves. And then, what we saw was no longer a vision of distant planets, but the ship itself.