They did not get much longer to work together before Shango broke in on their corteX. “We have a situation up here. Everyone get to the bridge immediately.”
Bentley and Jade made their way carefully past Jelly Bean's slippery floors and got back to the bridge in time to see the rest of the crew gathered close around the captain's chair. Everyone looking up at a screen projected directly in front of it. The screen showed what looked like a storm, vortexes of dark clouds lit up briefly by flashes of blinding lightning, all swirling rapidly together in a chaotic fury.
Bentley's first instinct was that they were looking at a storm raging on some distant planet somewhere, which was the only thing that made sense. But there was this gut feeling that this was something else, something that made a lot less sense. “Is that … is that storm here?”
Shango was seated in the captain's chair, entering commands on his console. “That's right. This is right in front of us. All around us, actually, surrounding us. We're about to fly right into it.”
Olofi hadn't removed his thick blue scrubbing gloves, which for some reason looked natural on him to Bentley. “That shouldn't be possible. How can there be a storm in the middle of space?”
“I don't know, but I don't like it. Better not take any chances. I'm going to turn the main engines back on and we'll jump past them. They ready to go, Jade?”
Bentley interrupted before Jade could speak. “Shango, I don't think that's going to be possible.”
He looked away from his console to glance at her. “Why not, Bentley?”
Yeah, why not, Bentley? There was something ticking around inside her head, something she couldn't explain. All she could do was give voice to it and hope it wasn't crazy garble.
“I think what we're seeing here is actually a field of unstable quantum particles, and they're messing with our hyperspace engines. That's why Jade was getting such weird readings before. If we try to activate the drive they won't work and that field will destroy us. But I have an idea that might get us through this.”
Bentley was fully aware that she might be humiliating herself. For all she knew she was just shouting some techno-drivel she had read in an adventure novel somewhere. But if she stopped now she would only look more stupid, so she was committed.
She walked to Jade, who was looking at her with eyes eager to help her intellectual equal. “We're going to create a hyperspace bubble to get through this field. I'm going to send you a list of very specific calculations. I'm going to need you to haul ass to the Engine Room and get them set up to match them. Hurry, we have only minutes.”
Jade burst into action, riding her wave of excited energy, without even waiting for Shango to approve Bentley's plan.
Speaking of Shango, there was one more hurdle for Bentley to overcome if she was going to finish her crazy stroke of what was either brilliance or lunacy. She strode with as much confidence in her step as she could muster right up to the captain's chair, where Shango watched her curiously.
“Shango, I need that seat. I also need you to give me the passcode to override the automatic calculations for the hyperdrive. I need to input the right ones manually.”
He didn't budge from his seat. “You realize one misplaced variable in the hyperdrive calculations could lead to the engine overloading and the whole ship being destroyed. This isn't a game.”
Bentley wanted to argue with him, but she still couldn't explain how she knew what she had to do. The closer they got to the storm, and she could see from the screen they were only moments away from entering it now, the more confident she was that this was the right course of action. But without some better explanation than “maybe I used to be a physicist,' she wasn't going to be able to convince anyone of that.
“Oh, let the girl have her chance.” Her defender came in the strangest of all forms: Loco. “Look at her, she clearly knows what she's talking about. That's a level of confidence you have only when either you know exactly what you're doing, or you're five drinks deep and been challenged to wrestle. And no one here's been greased up in baby oil, so I think it’s the first.”
Olofi looked as stunned as the rest of them. “I don't know what's going on, but I'm willing to die in a hyperspace explosion to not risk spoiling this rare moment of Loco being nice to someone.”
Loco scowled. “Damnit, where's the baby oil? You and me, Mr. Vanilla!”
The ship began to shake as it entered the inner edge of the storm. There was no time.
Shango grimaced, deep concern written all over his face, but conceded. “Fine. But this better work.” He entered the passcode into his console to override the automatic calculations and gave his seat up to Bentley.
Bentley's fingers flew over the console as she entered the long formula she somehow knew. The shaking in the ship was getting worse. Things were flying off tables. Glass shattered. Svend was knocked off his feet and thrown into Jelly Bean. Olofi tumbled to the back of the bridge. Loco pulled out a bottle of alcohol he had gotten from somewhere and took a big swig as he clutched onto the bolted center table with his other hand.
Shango was clutching on to the other side of it. “Hey, you found where I hid your stash.”
Loco was forced to spit out some when the ship's shaking caused the bottle to hit the roof of his mouth. “Yeah, well you left it in plain sight by the trash compactor. Some kind of stupid scavenger hunt you had there, making me find it by tossing the trash. You could have just asked me to straighten up.”
“I did.”
Bentley didn't know how much time there was left as she entered the last couple of variables into the formula. Maybe a minute? Less? The shaking was intense now, threatening to throw her from the chair. Something overhead cracked and the severed wiring shot sparks as it descended down into the bridge, freed from its housing. The ship couldn't last much longer. Could Jade make it in time?
The answer came over the corteX just a moment later. “The engines are ready! Hope this works!”
Bentley hit the control to activate the hyperdrive. There was a whir of energy as the engines came online. The ship continued to shake and Bentley was finally tossed from her seat. She rolled uncontrollably across the floor, trying to stop herself as she saw she was about to come face to face with a large shard of the broken glass. Svend reached her just in time, grabbing and shoving her in the opposite direction. The two of them, limbs entangled, rolled towards the front of the bridge.
The lights flickered as the power threatened to fail. Bentley had been wrong. Whatever nonsense had gotten into her head had not saved them. The whole ship was going to come apart and it was all her fault. She held onto Svend for dear life as the vibrations of the ship grew.
And then they suddenly subsided. They didn't stop completely, but they had been reduced to a low rumble, a small quivering compared to the earthquake they had just been experiencing.
Svend helped Bentley get back to her feet. Around them, the rest of the crew was also rising, a little bruised but mostly unharmed. The sparks stopped raining from the loose wiring as the ship's emergency power shut-offs cut the energy from the affected sections.
Loco downed the last of the contents of his bottle, most of which had spilled during the quake. “So, I guess it worked. We all get to live?”
Bentley got a look at what was going on outside through the viewport and pointed. The hyperspace bubble had formed, a white hot, almost transparent film around the ship separating it from the thin, black strands that composed the storm. “See for yourself.”
Jade's voice popped into their corteXes. “Did you all see that? I think we just did something no one has ever done before. I bet we could write a paper on this and become famous. Well, Bentley could, anyway, she's the genius. I want to learn more about how you came up with all this when I get back up there, Bentley!”
Bentley wasn't sure what she was going to tell her. She could barely even remember parts of the formula she had used, much less how she had come up with it. Guess she'd cross that bridge when sh
e came to it.
Shango looked around at the damage to the bridge and shook his head. “And we just finished cleaning up, too.”
Loco came up behind him and put an arm around his shoulder, leaning on him in his intoxicated state. “Oh come on, it doesn't look that bad.”
There was another sparking and a large piece of the metal roofing came crashing down, landing directly on the center table and shattering it and causing a large cloud of dust and wood splinters to erupt into the air.
They stood there for a while as the dust settled and the last bits of wood rolled across the ground past them. “You weren't too attached to that table anyway, were you?” Loco asked.
Shango sighed and put his head in his hands. “Jelly Bean, get the broom.”
Chapter Nine
“The Ellis-Ocrom Conjecture?”
Bentley shook her head. “Sorry, never heard of it.”
“The Twining Hyperspace Theorem?”
All she could do was shrug. “Doesn't ring a bell.”
“Certainly you've heard of the Rimwalldy Law of Space Travel?”
It sounded vaguely familiar. “That's the one about how time impacts people in hyperspace different?”
Jade's eyes lit up. “Yes! So you do know!”
Bentley scratched her head. “I mean, I know of it. I heard it somewhere. But I don't remember whether it was that time impacts us more or less in hyperspace.”
Jade sat back in her seat and pouted. “Are you sure you're not just acting like this because you don't want to hang out with me and talk about engineering and physics?”
“I swear, that's not it. I really don't know anything about hyperspace physics or the way starship engines work. How I came up with that formula … it might really be something from my past memories that I don't have access to. I don't remember any of my life from before. I could have been a physicist, or maybe once I just watched a really in-depth documentary on hyperspace theory. Or maybe I was just a book nerd who once read a tech-fantasy that actually turned out to work in real life. If I ever get my memories back, I'll tell you.”
The engineer sighed and slumped in her seat. “Yeah, I guess you're right. But if you do end up being a brilliant physicist, you will come and hang out with me and talk about it?”
Bentley put a hand on her shoulder. “I would really like that. I just … wouldn't get my hopes up too much.”
“Well, it was still pretty cool. I mean, a quantum storm? A hyperspace bubble? That was so awesome! It was like a space opera written by a physics genius!”
“It was, wasn't it? I wonder if Legba will be impressed with us, figuring all that out without him.”
Jade smirked. “You can ask him when we finally get to his rock. I bet he'll be jealous he missed all the fun. Even someone like him can't have seen something like that before.”
“Hmm... I wouldn't be so sure.”
Shango came into the kitchen and grabbed a cup of coffee. “Bentley. Jade. I'd like to get some more work done on repairing the bridge today. I'm going to move the spare table from storage and try to get it installed. We also have some glass fixtures to replace. Can you both come by in a few minutes?”
“Actually, Shango, I've been meaning to talk to you.” Bentley got up to drop her cup in the sink, which was already beginning to pile up with dishes again. “I'd like to have today off. You've been working me pretty hard, I think I've earned it. Plus, I did save your ship.”
He looked surprised but didn't protest. “Oh. Well, I suppose that's fine. Take the day. See you tomorrow.”
“Yeah, tomorrow.”
Bentley walked back to her room on her own, and waiting outside her door like she had asked, was Svend.
He cleared his throat nervously when he saw her. “Bentley. I'm here – I mean, obviously I'm here, you have eyes. Nice eyes. Uhm, what I meant to say is, you asked me to come here and so I came here.”
She chuckled at the fact that he couldn't even say something that simple without stumbling over his words. “Come on in.”
They went into her room and Bentley sat with him on her bed. “I've been thinking a lot, ever since the incident with the storm the other day– By the way, I never properly thanked you for keeping me from getting a face full of glass, did I?”
Svend looked embarrassed. “Oh, you don't have to thank me. I just kind of lucked out when I grabbed you.”
“Nevertheless, thank you for saving my pretty face.”
“You're welcome. I like your pretty face.”
She laughed and moved in closer to the young android. “Like I was saying, I was thinking about why it is that we're always so awkward around each other.”
“We are?”
She gave him a look that said 'Seriously?'
“We are,” he agreed. “I don't want to be, I just – sometimes I get tongue tied around you. I don't want to say the wrong thing and ruin this. I'm terrified about ruining this.”
“It's my fault, too,” she admitted. “We haven't spent much time together since you came on the ship, and that's because I'm always busy. But I want to make the effort to spend more time with you. I told Shango I'm taking the day for myself, and the two of us are going to spend the entire day together.”
Svend coughed and wrung his hands in embarrassment. “I … I appreciate that. I do. So what are we going to do today?”
She smiled and leaned in towards him. “I'm sure we'll think of something.”
+++
Jade frowned at the clock readout being displayed by the Chesed's computer system. They had received an update ping the last time they had dropped out of hyperspace to rest the engines. The pings are supposed to ensure all ships are synced to Universal Time after the effects of time dilation from space travel. It’s not unusual to find your clocks slightly changed after receiving a ping, but it was usually a matter of minutes, or perhaps hours for extremely long distance travel.
This was a difference of months. According to the current clock displayed on the computer, they were roughly three months in the future from their last update. That was impossible. There must be a bug in the ship's timekeeping system, but for the life of her she couldn't find it.
She sighed and decided to let it go. After all, she was an engineer, not a software specialist. She'd bring the problem to Jelly Bean's attention later, she was better at interfacing with the ship's computer.
Plus, there was already plenty to keep her busy down here. The engines took a beating creating Bentley's hyperspace bubble and were still only running at half efficiency. When she was done with them, they would be at greater than 100%.
She rolled up her sleeves, wiped the grease on her hands onto her pants, and got back to work.
THE END
— — —
Want to read more by Ell Leigh Clarke?
The Sword-Mage Chronicles
Three gods kicked out of the Unseen World. One chick with a sword. In space. What could possibly go wrong?
When you wake up with no memory of who you are, you know it's probably going to be a bad day.
That's exactly what Bentley thought—but she had no idea how bad.
When she saw the wires connecting her to a strange, glowing sword, and an old guy bleeding out next to her, she started to get an inkling.
And then she met the Three.
Three gods cast out of the Unseen World, condemned to make their way in this universe as best they can. Naturally, after 300 years wandering through space, they've devolved into rogues in robes; hustlers with a (strange) moral code.
While desperately trying to keep from being thrown out the airlock, Bentley discovers that the Three have a secret. A secret that involves the sword, the Unseen World, and a big bad that's hell bent on hunting her down.
With the fate of both worlds hanging in the balance, Bentley has to survive long enough to figure out how to get the Three on board and stop the fabric of spacetime from being torn apart.
But that starts with figuring out the signifi
cance of this damn sword!
Can’t get enough Bentley? You’re in luck… there’s more.
Receive updates and a series list from Jelly Bean, and a FREE(!) story “The Atropos”, by registering your cortex/ email address here: EllLeighClarke.com/Jelly
About the Author
Ell Leigh Clarke is a recovering theoretical physicist, professional geek, sci-fi novelist, and die hard Doctor Who fan. Though she is originally from England, she is mostly what her friends call a "digital nomad", hanging in whichever country calls to her... as long as it has good wifi, and coffee.
Want to hear more about Bentley’s adventures? Receive updates from
Jelly Bean by registering your corteX/ email address here:
EllLeighClarke.com/Jelly
Connect with Ell Leigh Clarke:
Facebook: www.facebook.com/ellleighclarke
Patreon: www.patreon.com/ellleighclarke
Website: EllLeighClarke.com
TO FLY SABRINA: AN AEON 14 SHORT STORY
by M. D. Cooper
Cheeky would do anything to get back into the deep black.
Dumped on a backwater station by her former captain, and saddled with the ship’s debt, Cheeky’s once bright future as a pilot is looking grimmer by the day.
Pulling double shifts as a tug operator is barely keeping her afloat with loan sharks and deblt collectors constantly hounding her for credits. She watches the boards for new jobs, but with her debt and past, offers to pilot anything bigger than a shuttle never materialize—until she gets a bite.
A captain named Sera is looking for a pilot for her ship, a sleek freighter that looked more like a smuggler’s blockade runner.
Cheeky doesn’t care about what the ship does, she’ll do anything to get off station and fly Sabrina.
Galaxia Page 55
