Wrinkle in Time (9781458093967) (2 page)

"Yes, Commander?" Dennis replied as Parillo
and the last security officer followed her out into a corridor. The
air smelled as stale and moldy as on the bridge, and an identical
layer of fine dust whorled around their boots as they walked.

"Four more sets of bones down here, Sir. No
sign yet of why."

"Acknowledged. Stay in contact."

"Captain Dennis, I realize how unorthodox
this will sound," Parillo said as he adjusted the hoverlamp to
higher luminosity. "But if I may make a suggestion..." he waited
for her assent, then continued, "I think we could greatly benefit
from my wife's powers of observation, and puzzle-solving skills.
She has a great deal of experience solving mysteries."

Dennis did a double take. "Your wife?
Congratulations. I had no idea."

"We tend to keep things private," Parillo
explained. "She's one of the archeologists. Vale."

Besides
,
Parillo didn't speak his thought out loud,
She will kill me if she doesn't get the chance to see
this.

Dennis signaled her ship. "Adams, contact the
archeologists. Request that Vale come down to our location.

#

Dennis leaned forward, elbows on the
conference room's oval table, and fixed an impatient glare on
Parillo.

"The tests were almost completed," Parillo
said as he claimed an empty chair. "I'm sure she'll only be another
few minutes."

Dennis's entire senior staff had gathered for
the meeting. Parillo recognized Dr. Chen, Cdr. Burnette, and Lt.
Saran. A young woman from the investigating team was also present,
presumably as the Science Officer. Dennis addressed her as Kalli.
Two strangers—male, both commanders—had to be her First Officer,
and Second Officer.

The doors slid apart to admit Vale, and
Parillo's spirit soared. It didn't matter if five minutes had
passed, or five years. He had the same reaction when his wife
walked into a room. She wore a plain dark green pullover and paler
green trousers, and the same style work boots as he. To his eyes,
she looked gorgeous.

He'd left the fleet for her—for himself, he
corrected—when he could no longer bear their long separations. And
while he sometimes missed the old life—even a great deal, on
occasion—he never once regretted the choice.

"Ms. Vale, you found something worth waiting
for, I hope." Dennis's mild tone questioned the results rather than
criticized the delay.

"Just Vale, Captain. And yes, if we're lucky
anyway. I can't promise yet, it's way too soon. But I have a
program going over the physical computer drives. We might be able
to recover those logs after all."

"How long?"

"Several hours, I'm afraid. It's incredibly
intricate work."

Parillo noted that several officers, most
particularly Saran and Kalli, looked most interested in her
statement. He'd likely have to run a bit of interference seeing as
the program wasn't legal.

He hid a rush of relief and gratitude when
Dennis steered the conversation in a different direction.
"Jairgage, did you find a cause of death?"

"No, Captain, not definitively. It's been too
long and there is no obvious damage to any of the bodies. I'm
getting readings of residual radiation, but it's such trace
amounts, and the particles don't decay at a constant speed, so
there is no way to tell if levels were lethal or not."

"Well we didn't find anything either," Dennis
said, for Vale's benefit. "The ship was designed a standard crew of
around forty," she concurred with Parillo's estimate, "but could
handle two or three times as many in case of emergency. We only
found evidence of ten people on board."

"That fits with how Engineering looked,"
Burnette said. "The way the systems were set up, almost jury-rigged
in places, they completely lacked safeties like redundancies and
shutoffs. Whatever they were doing, Captain, it looked like a test
run."

"An experiment that went wrong?" A
contemplative look settled on Dennis's face. "A test flight would
explain the minimal crew. What else did you find out about the
engines themselves?"

"I have no clue what several of the
components do. We're still trying to figure them out. I'll need to
power up the ship to do more."

Adams's brows drew together. "Is that wise?
We don't want a repeat of whatever killed them."

"I can't do anything else without power. It
won't do me any good to take it apart. I'd still have no clue what
some of the parts are for." Burnette shrugged. "How badly do we
want to solve the mystery?"

"We could wait for the results of the
computer scan," Saran said.

Burnette opened her mouth to reply and the
impish sparkle in her dark eyes told Parillo it wasn't going to be
in agreement. She never got the chance.

The ship careened to one side, hurling them
all from their chairs. The alarm claxon blared and lights went red,
then completely dark. The emergency lights that came on were so
faint that Parillo figured they were only at quarter power.

"Sound off!" Dennis barked as she pulled
herself slowly to her feet. Blood ran down the side of her
face.

Chen's voice came first. She was hunching
over Kalli's still form. "She's out cold. I don't know how bad the
injuries are. I should get her to sickbay."

"Can you manage?"

"Yes, sir,"

No one else reported any injuries, although
all looked worse for wear. Saran was favoring his left leg, the XO
cradling his right arm. Ugly bruises were already showing on
everyone else.

Dennis tried her comlink but got no response
from it, or from the door. She and Saran pried the doors open. He
immediately crossed the corridor to an accessway hatch and opened
it manually.

"Chen, go," Dennis said as her security chief
stepped aside.

The doctor hoisted her patient over her
shoulder and still managed to dash out of the room, which thus far
was cooperating and staying still.

"Burnette..."

"On my way to engineering, Captain."

Dennis let her go ahead as well. Burnette had
much further to get to engineering down several decks, since the
conference room was only one level below the bridge. At least she
was descending the ladders and didn't have to climb up. She took
the same hatchway Saran had opened for Chen.

Parillo glanced over as Vale slid her hand
into his. Even in the gloom he could read her questioning look.

Dennis answered the silent question for him
when she said, "You two, with us."

They emerged onto a smoke-filled bridge. The
fire suppressant system was obviously out, because two crewmembers
were using hand-held equipment to extinguish flaming consoles. Vale
gave Parillo's hand a squeeze then went to help them.

Dennis helped the pilot back to his station
even as she barked, "Report."

"Running on emergency backup at thirty
percent." The sandy haired ensign who replied looked
impossibly young to Parillo's eyes, as if the boy should have been
home playing in the backyard. "I'm just getting sensors back
now."

The viewscreen flickered, then showed a
ship about half the size of the
Nyranik
. Its round main hull had four nacelles
attached above it, arranged equidistant and all angled outward.
Those nacelles were all pointed away from the planet as a blinding
blue beam sprang from the bottom of the ship.

"Captain, they're firing at the surface, at
the downed ship," Saran said.

Parillo clenched his teeth as he watched,
knowing everyone else on the bridge shared his frustration. After a
few minutes, the ship ceased firing. Its nacelles flared a deeper
blue, and the ship vanished.

"Power coming back, Captain," Saran said as
the lighting returned to normal. "Communications working. Shields
at a hundred percent. Engines also. Damage reports all coming in
negative. Dozens of injuries in sickbay, though. None
critical."

"What just happened?" Dennis sank into the
center chair.

"The wreckage is completely destroyed,
Captain." Saran's words confirmed the news everyone already
anticipated. "I'm not even reading trace metals any more. It's been
completely disintegrated."

Vale gave a little snicker, drawing
everyone's attention. "They don't know we removed the backup
computer core."

#

"Readings coming in now for batch one,"
Vale swiveled her chair away from the panel she'd been hunching
over in the science lab on the
Whirlwind
. "Just another minute and we'll have
the logs." She turned back to check more settings.

Parillo stood at his wife's side, his hand
resting on her shoulder. The rest of their team pressed in close to
see, as did Dennis, Adams and Saran.

As they were directly behind him, Parillo
heard Saran whisper to Dennis, "Don't you think we should clear the
lab?"

"You think I should send you back to your
ship?" Vale asked casually without looking up, feigning
misunderstanding.

"Pardon?" Saran sounded downright shocked to
Parillo's ears.

"She's politely reminding us we're not on our
ship," Dennis explained, saving Parillo the trouble.

"Still, security concerns..." Saran tried
again.

Taking his cue from the wry smile Dennis
directed his way, Parillo said, "Lieutenant, what Vale says, goes.
But don't worry, she considers you perfectly trustworthy. I vouched
for Captain Dennis, who vouched for her whole crew."

Saran scowled mightily. Only with supreme
restraint did he appear to take the cue from his captain and fall
silent.

Parillo had no doubt that his own
erstwhile security chief, now Captain Dennis, would be in for a
debate once back aboard her ship
.
Luckily she seemed to realize that the EMF could not
arbitrarily declare jurisdiction over non-military matters or
civilian ships.

Dennis's XO's words cut into Parillo's
reverie. "I thought this was your dig?" Adams asked.

"Oh, it is. I'm the lead archeologist.
Vale, however, is the
Whirlwind's
captain.

"All right, girls and boys, here we go. This
should be a reconstruction of the captain's log." With a flourish,
Vale hit three controls.

Static and snow played across the monitor.
The figure of a man coalesced, never clear but still perfectly
recognizable and sitting on the wrecked ship's bridge. He wore an
EMF uniform. That much was clear from the insignia and the similar
tailoring. But the color of the uniform was different. He wore a
black crewneck under the light blue instead of white under navy
that Parillo and the others were used to..

In the background, three other crewmembers
could be seen as well. Their uniforms matched his, with the same
color adjustment.

Audio kicked in in mid sentence.

"...experiment isn't going well. We've yet to
figure out how to survive the trip, but we're getting much closer.
Zenrel says she only needs a little more time. Normally we'd be
overjoyed at being so close to a breakthrough. But ironically, time
is what we don't have."

Even the wavering picture didn't dilute the
exhaustion on his deeply lined face. He rubbed his eyes then
brushed aside a recalcitrant strand of gray hair. "The raiders are
only half an hour away, and no friendly ships are in range to
intercept. Our engines are completely dead, as we knew they would
be. We'd relied on secrecy to protect us, but somehow word got out.
Word not just of the timeship, but of its location has leaked.

"The crew has taken a vote. We agree that
under no circumstances can we allow the raiders to capture this
technology. The damage they could do with it, not just across the
galaxy but across time, is simply unimaginable. If they had the
ability to go anywhere, anywhen, it would be impossible to
apprehend them.

"So, after we've finished recording our logs,
we will transmit them along with all our data to EMF Command. It
will be days till they receive them, but at least there will be no
mystery about our disappearance. Then, we're going to activate the
timestream. At the same time, we'll erase all data in all the
ship's systems, including all our logs.

"It would be better to simply destroy the
ship outright, but with all the new engineering brought in, and all
the standard engineering we took out to make room for the new, we
don't have the means.

"On behalf of all the crew, don't let this
project fall by the wayside. Don't give it up because of this
setback. It's important to all of us that it continue. Don't let us
down."

The log ended.

The scientists from the
Whirlwind
and officers from
the
Nyranik
stood silent, each
lost in thought. Then Vale saw another indicator light flashing
that more information had just been calculated.

"Would you look at that." She reread it to
ensure she hadn't missed something, but the particle readings were
double checked for accuracy. "This ship isn't from our timeline, or
a splinter of it. It's from a parallel line, an alternate universe.
They didn't just go back in time, they jumped dimensions."

"Another time and another place," Parillo
murmured.

"But why not simply destroy it before we
found it?" Dennis voiced what Parillo, and a number of them, were
thinking.

Vale shrugged. "Maybe they're not that
accurate yet. Or perhaps there are other reasons we can't imagine.
At least it looks like the crew successfully escaped the raiders,
and that the research continued. That's something."

Parillo agreed. The sacrifice they'd made was
noble regardless. But he was especially glad it hadn't been made in
vain.