by F P Adriani
“What exactly are you stumped about?” someone asked. Shirley. She had just walked up to us, and now her eyes were shooting a question at both Gary and the stone. “What have you got there?”
“A firestone,” I said. “It’s what that guy in the Cardoon hall wanted. Take a look at it.”
Gary handed the stone to her.
“Hmmm,” Shirley murmured, her blue eyes lighting up a little, almost like a child’s. “How interesting-looking.”
Gary adjusted a knob on the microscope. “It’s actually even more interesting than it looks. It’s unexplainable.”
Shirley lifted her face to Gary’s. “How so?”
“Take a look,” he said, waving at the gray microscope.
Shirley did look; then the two of them spent a little time discussing what Gary had explained to me.
When Shirley finally lifted her eyes from the microscope, she stared down at the stone attached there and said in a slow voice, “Have you heard of infinite wells? Maybe the hypotheses about them are actually based in fact. Maybe this stone is a bucket for an infinite well of some kind.”
Gary was frowning. “I’m not familiar with this.” He looked over at me, but I just shook my head from side-to-side.
“Well,” Shirley said, turning to the two of us, “here’s how I used to explain it to my students—I knew that would come in handy outside the classroom someday!
“But, consider the idea of a perfect absorber. Let’s say you had a well of water that you could keep adding water to ad infinitum, but the water couldn’t evaporate or get out or be removed, except by a perfect bucket, which is also an infinite well, and so is also very limited in how and when the water could get across it. But as soon as the bucket hits the well, the well opens, and the bucket can get the water. Once you pull that bucket out, the water’s locked inside it, and there’s no way to get it out, at least no known way.
“It may be that the stone-well is—was a technology for a being that no longer exists. Now the complete technology for how to use the bucket and well is just lost.”
Shirley removed the stone from the microscope, then held the stone in one hand while the forefinger of her other hand rhythmically poked down at the strange, fiery surface. “I remember hearing about this type of stone years ago—there was an article in The Journal Of Theoretical Space Chemistry, I think. I wish I could remember the details, but….” She sighed and shrugged, her small shoulders quickly shifting the white fabric of her blouse. Her eyes looked up at me and Gary; my eyes had widened at her: I was impressed with the way she’d explained everything.
I watched her face flush. Then I smiled and said, “Great job in explaining the wells, Shirley. I knew I was right about you and that you’d fit in here!”
She laughed a little and her flush deepened. She really did seem like a very intelligent, very nice woman. And I was sorry that her life apparently hadn’t turned out to be the life she wanted. Hopefully, her life on this ship would turn out much better.
*
When I left engineering, the stone was nestled in my belt once again, and I was thinking about the boatload of paperwork I had to do in my office—I’d gotten backed up lately because I’d been busier than normal with other issues on my ship, and, occasionally, even I tired of always having to be such an organized businessperson. The partying break I’d taken at the Cardoon hadn’t helped matters: taking a great break could really make you feel averse to going back to work afterward.
Of course, I had to go back to work now anyway, but I moved through my workflow feeling quite lethargic.
That night, the Demeter reached the next layer of space. At that point, some of my crew were asleep; others were getting ready for the graveyard shift.
And I was thankfully lying on my bed on the verge of sleep—till Chen intercommed me from on the bridge.
Groaning, I got up and moved to the wall intercom beside my bed; I noticed the time on the clock there—it was later than I’d thought. “Chen, what are you doing there still? I thought you were on your downtime, and Pete was on watch for the autopilot.”
“Pete actually was on watch—still is. But we’ve noticed something we want you to take a look at. Can you come to the bridge?”
I sighed. “All right. I’ll be down in five minutes.”
I flung off my pajamas and yanked on my usual uniform, then rushed down the hall outside my room, picking up Shirley along the way. She had been wandering the deck in a sweat suit, her face looking pale and lost; she said she’d been having trouble staying asleep because of the slight humming noises and vibrations coming from the ship.
“You’ll get used to being here,” I said in an abrupt voice. “But since you’re up, you might as well come with me to the bridge and get your first look at it….”
When we reached the bridge, I was kind of sorry I’d asked Shirley to come there: right away I saw that Chen hadn’t called me to here because of a routine issue. On the front viewscreen, there was a ship—a massive ship, a delivery ship like mine probably, only it seemed outfitted for more than delivering; there were lit up tubes of what appeared to be electrified weapons along the emerald-green ship’s front and sides. The weapons radiated outward all the way around the long axis of the ship, in an umbrella-like fashion, as if the weapons also functioned as armor. And, going on the numbers Chen was relaying to me now, this highly weaponized ship had been following us for almost an hour.
Space could be dangerous socially, especially deep space in far layers where the Interplanetary Commerce And Flight Committee, the Unified Planetary Government and the Space Force didn’t have any presence. So I knew some private ships and paranoid captains were armed to the hilt for defense, not offense.
Still, I also knew that because the galaxy was so damn big, two ships “meeting in the night” and then sailing together for an extended period of time was extremely rare. There were many previously traveled “safe” paths for flying to most individual places, too, including to Keron-3, if that was even the green ship’s destination.
But, right now, we were also in the dead zone of this layer; for hours there would be nothing massive here—either natural or human-made—majorly affecting our plotted paths and movements, especially restricting them.
My head turned toward Pete, who was sitting in the pilot’s chair; Pete only came on board my ship occasionally, and he wore the hat of an engineering assistant or a pilot when necessary, as he had been doing tonight. Chen was standing beside him now, and they had both been looking down at the pilot’s panel.
Pete finally glanced up at me and said, “Captain, that ship was far behind us for most of the hour, but five-minutes ago I switched to a coasting-path, and the ship switched right along with me—and it’s been moving closer.”
“Are you getting an ICFC identification beacon from it?” I asked.
Chen shook his head fast. “No. We’ve also enlarged the view to all visible angles—there’s no ID insignia on the hull anywhere.”
A ship’s not broadcasting an ID and not having an insignia was against the ICFC rules while the ship was in ICFC controlled space, which that ship and mine were.
“Clearly,” I said now, “if they don’t have either identifier, they don’t give a damn about following the laws of spaceflight, which is not a good sign….” My voice faded when I turned to my right and spotted Shirley there. She was standing behind the science panels, looking down at them, her hands dangling helplessly.
Right now, Gary was probably in his cabin asleep. Earlier he’d told me he was feeling unusually tired tonight, so I’d told him to go to bed—without me. I didn’t have the heart to wake him now, but I knew Shirley probably couldn’t do Gary’s job yet.
I walked over to my chair, my right forefinger finally pressing the intercom on my chair’s black side panel. “Karen,” I said in an urgent voice, “Chen and Pete are too busy right now to take care of this, so you and your assistants need to do two things: work the science panels from there and ge
t on the communications-line. Send out a distress call to the Space Force.”
“What?!?” came Karen’s shocked voice.
“Just do it. And fast. Then tell Steve to get down to engineering.” My finger jerked from the intercom—but my order to Karen had been too late: the image on the front viewscreen changed as a bright-red, comet-like shape appeared from one of the green ship’s weapons-tubes. The red comet-blast soared through space, right in the Demeter’s direction.
“Shit!” I screamed. “Raise the exterior shield-strength to max—” Again, I was too late: the red shape grew so large, it blocked the view of the green ship behind it, and then the Demeter lurched as the red pulse made contact with the aft part of the hull. Those of us who weren’t strapped in promptly fell right onto the floor—me, Chen and Shirley.
Chen and I scrambled back to our feet, but Shirley was still half-lying on her ass; her eyes were too wide and too still in her pale face. I asked her if she was okay, but I had no time to pamper her into feeling better: in all the years I’d been flying the Demeter, no one had ever fired on it. Not only was I scared now, I was fucking pissed.
“Raise whatever hull defenses we’ve got—fast! Sound the hull-breach warning alarm, and all crew get strapped in,” I yelled over the intercom as I fell back into my captain’s seat and strapped into it. Chen helped Shirley to her feet then helped her secure herself in one of the chairs in the back of the bridge; then Chen rushed to the navigator’s seat and panel near Pete, which navigator’s station was usually empty because I had no official navigator.
“Pete, stay there, but I’m taking the lead,” Chen said.
“Be my guest,” Pete replied, exhaling in relief.
“Shields are at maximum now!” Steve suddenly said from engineering.
I smirked. “Um, it’s a little late—which is my fault. Any info on damages?”
“Nothing that would affect life support. Luckily, aft Nozzle 2 took most of the force of the blow—sensors are showing a small rupture on the bottom half. And we’re experiencing a slight wobble because the equilibrium’s off now when we’re thrusting. We’re adjusting some of the settings to compensate.”
“Did Karen send the message—”
“What the fuck was that?” someone shouted—Gary, as he rushed onto the bridge. His brown hair had been pillow-pressed into a lopsided shape, and he was in a white T-shirt and red pajama pants. His shocked eyes immediately jerked to mine.
And my right arm flailed up toward the viewscreen. “That fucking ship fired on us!” I wanted to say more but the ship-wide breach-alarm sounded and was apparently set to too loud on the bridge. I hadn’t had to manipulate the alarm in years; I couldn’t remember where its control was on my panel. My fingers uselessly scrambled over there now. “Wow, that’s too damn loud. Gary—get to your panel,” I shouted, but he was already there.
The wail of the alarm suddenly diminished, thanks to Gary.
My breaths were coming too fast. I felt so blindsided—I had been so blindsided. And that fucking ship was still there—and still following us.
I glanced at the others on my bridge. “Any suggestions from anyone on what our options are? I know in the dead zone here, we’ve probably got no options for outside help anytime soon, which means it’s up to us to get ourselves out of this.”
The Demeter had two retractable pulse cannons: one on the front of the ship, and one on the back below the nozzles. However, as far as I could remember, the cannons hadn’t even been tested in years, and I’d never had to use them so hadn’t tested them in practice either. This wasn’t a warship, and I was no general.
Nevertheless, I was still feeling so pissed. My eyes were on the viewscreen, and the menacing dark-green shadow of that ship and its electrified weapons was still there; it hadn’t fired on us again—yet. It seemed to be waiting for something from me. And, wow, did I want to oblige….
“Gary,” I said, without turning around to him, “when was the last time the cannons were tested at a maintenance depot?”
I could have sworn I felt Gary’s head whip toward me. “Lydia,” he said now, and I could tell by the severe way he’d said my name that he wasn’t a fan of my cannon idea.
“I don’t see that we have a choice here,” I said. “We can’t just sit here and not respond—”
“That ship has a Level Seven weapons-apparatus and an equivalent shielding. I’ve never seen a ship like that in person—I’ve never even heard of one being this far outside The Reimark Layer, which is full of mercenaries. This looks like a warship that’s been refitted into a commercial ship—but, apparently, in name only.”
I snorted and intended to speak, but Chen interrupted me: “Captain, we’re getting a communication attempt from them—should I let it through?”
“Yes—audio communications only.”
“Captain Zarro, I’ve given you only a little taste of what I’ve got here,” that same accented voice from the hall said over my bridge speakers now. “Why not turn on your video and I’ll turn on mine? Then we can make a deal over the stone, face-to-face.”
I shot up straighter in my chair. “I never give people I don’t know and trust a view to the inside of my bridge, and I don’t know or trust you, you fucking scumbag.”
Now he responded in a smooth and confident tone: “What does the inside of your ship matter when I have command of the outside?”
“You wish,” I spat.
“Test it,” he said.
And my fingers on my front panel quickly cut the communication. My breaths were coming too fast again—what to do—what to do….
“Captain—Captain Lydia,” came Shirley’s shaking voice, “what’s happening? Why is he doing this because of the stone?”
I glanced over my left shoulder at her. “I don’t know. But, at least that he wants the damn thing so much, he’s unlikely to destroy us. That must be why there’s only been the one shot so far. Maybe I should play along….”
My fingers hit my panel, opening the line again. “Scumbag, whoever you are—let’s say I agree to send you the stone in a capsule, how do I know you won’t try to shoot up my ship afterward?”
“I do not think you have a choice. I come from The Reimark Layer. We have our own rules, and, as you might know, war is our business.” Now, he cut the line.
“Captain,” Chen said to me then, “they’ve moved even closer.”
“I can see that.” My eyes were on the viewscreen again; my heart was bouncing around inside me like an errant lightning bolt as sweat streaked down my cheeks.
“Steve,” I said over the intercom now, “ready the cannons.”
“Lydia, what—I think this is a mistake,” Gary said fast in a loud voice.
But I gave him a hard look back, feeling a spark of anger at him.
“I meant, Captain, I don’t agree that we should do this,” Gary added in an even faster voice.
“I appreciate your willingness to criticize my course of action, but do you have any actual ideas to offer?” I was so pissed at him. I was having enough problems with the asshole guy on that ship. I really didn’t need my own fucking boyfriend to start behaving like an asshole on this ship, questioning my command.
Gary must have seen something in my face; I had been glaring at him. But now he just sighed hard and said, “No, I don’t have any ideas. I’m sorry for what I said. This just sucks so fucking much.”
“Nooo kidding,” I said. Then I added fast, “Does the firestone really matter? I’m inclined to just send it over, then take off while they’re distracted by that.”
“Captain, I—I actually have an idea,” came Shirley’s unsure voice. “I know it’s not my place to say, but, like you said…how about just running away? There’s no shame in that. It’s a valid course of action at any time. Steve showed me your curon engine. Why not set up a spacetime bubble with that—and just get out of here fast!”
It was true that sometimes you had to be sitting outside a situation to see the inside o
f it clearly. The rest of us on the bridge now looked at each other with why-the-hell-didn’t-we-think-of-that? eyes.
Then I said to Steve in engineering, “Can you set up a locked curon bubble that the warship can’t enter? Do we have enough Evan hydrocarbon to fuel that for an extended period of time—to give us some breathing room, so we can plot a new trajectory?” I frowned heavily. “Forget about the Keron job; we’re probably not gonna make it on time.”
Steve didn’t respond right away, but I heard him talking with someone else—Karen, it sounded like. Then he finally said, “We didn’t plan on having to use a locked bubble in this part of the trip—we were supposed to refuel before we reached Keron-3. But, unless I’m mistaken, there was a surplus of Evan in the cargo bay from our last refueling, and Karen just gave me the numbers on the Evan gauges on the beam engine; I think we can comfortably manage jumping into a locked bubble now and remaining for about four hours. I’ll need about ten minutes to set it up.”
“Then do it—and let me know right before it’s ready.” I clicked back with the warship. “You win: I’ve decided to send over the stone. I’ll release it in a capsule in about twenty minutes. Be ready to capture it.”
“I knew you were too smart to pass on my offer,” the asshole guy said. “I’ll expect your capsule—and without any tricks.”
I sighed now. “No tricks. I know when I’ve been beat.” I clicked off the line. “Yeah right,” I spat. Then I glanced at both Gary and Shirley and said, “Come with me,” before rushing off the bridge.
*
When I reached engineering, Steve was over by the long gray casing of the beam engine, which was to the right of where the red shafts of the ship’s reactor were. There was a big space between the two engine areas, where several people were running back and forth, providing back-up to whatever Steve was doing.
