by Dave Bara
She watched on the tactical display as the corvette swerved and dipped, keeping her wings close as she approached the wounded Phaeton. They were already too close. At this range using the cannon could result in an explosion that would consume them both. But that might not be a bad alternative to life on a pirate world, Aybar concluded.
The corvette loomed ever closer now, indicating that the pirates aboard suspected she couldn’t fire, their previous evasive maneuvers abandoned for a more direct approach, ready to collect their booty.
“Not my ship,” Aybar said aloud, then fixed the cannon on the corvette’s impellers. She looked to the unconscious Mischa, thought about Kish and his brave crews’ sacrifice, then made her decision. Phaeton was still her ship.
She locked in the coil cannon, her thumb poised over the firing control. “Good luck, Senator Renwick,” she said aloud, the pressed the firing button down.
OUTSIDE THE WINDOW of the skiff, Renwick watched in horror as the Phaeton’s orange coil cannon energy lanced out at the closing Gataan corvette. The pirate was no match for the Unity cruiser’s weapons, even crippled as she was, and it exploded in a shower of orange and blue.
“She’s fired the cannon at point-blank range!” yelled Renwick.
“I know,” replied Makera, “but we have more immediate problems.” Renwick glanced down at the tactical display. The second corvette was still hot on their tail, and the small life boat was no match for the pirate vessel. The initial burst from the thrusters had pushed them away from Phaeton and the other corvette, but this ship had skipped on past the Unity cruiser and was quickly closing on the skiff.
“If they still have plasma grenades, they could tear us apart,” said Renwick. The Raelen Ambassador nodded.
“If indeed their purpose was our destruction, but they are pirates, and that knowledge gives us some advantage.” Without another word she switched the flight controls from his station to hers and slammed the skiff to port, flinging the vessel forward at full speed.
Right towards the Void.
“Are you insane?” yelled Renwick.
“Perhaps, but I’m betting they aren’t,” she replied. “Pirates want to stay alive, Renwick. If they think we’re crazy enough to fly ourselves into the Void, they won’t follow.”
“Makera, no one survives the Void. It’s dark energy, a null field. Nothing that goes in ever comes out. Nothing,” he said. She smiled casually at him, completely unafraid.
“Perhaps we’ll be the first, then,” she said.
Renwick turned to his two junior diplomats.
“Stay calm,” he said to them, “and hold on tight.” Then he pressed a control icon and sealed them in the pilot’s nest.
“A wise move,” said Makera.
“Unlike flying us into the Void?”
“I still hope to avoid that.”
Renwick glanced at the tactical. “We have less than two minutes to avert contact with the Void, if we can trust these measurements,” he said. Precise measurements of the Void had always been unreliable, especially at this close a distance. It was almost as if it didn’t want to be measured.
The skiff shook with the power of a plasma grenade explosion. It rattled the supporting members of the little ship so violently that Renwick had to shake his head to clear it.
“One more of those and we’re done for,” he said.
“They don’t want us going in,” said the Ambassador calmly.
“Neither do I. What’s your alternative plan?” Makera looked at him with the frozen stare so common with her people that it made her unreadable to most humans. Most, except to a man who had studied them closely for most of his adult life. A man like Tam Renwick.
“You don’t have one,” he said, equaling her calm. He sat back and crossed his arms, then shook his head. “May the Many Gods of Earth protect us,” he said.
The skiff shook violently again as another plasma grenade blasted the tiny lifeboat. Renwick fell from his co-pilot’s couch and hit his head on a support member. He held his head and tried to open his eyes, but all he could see was blurred colors. He shook his head a second time as the proximity alarms blazed, piercing his ears with their warning sirens. Contact was imminent, but with what?
He struggled to his feet, his vision clearing slowly as he pulled Makera off the floor. He checked the controls. The helm was burned out, completely useless. The thrusters were on full, burning He-3 as the skiff continued to accelerate.
“They hit the fuel cells with that last shot,” he said calmly to her. “It ignited the Helium-3 thruster fuel. We’re out of control.” They looked at each other, the reality of their situation hitting them both.
Makera slid into his arms and they stood together staring out the view window of the skiff, nothing but black ahead of them.
“I’m glad I am with you,” she said to him. He held her close, then allowed himself a luxury he had never believed he could have as a diplomat, but now felt entitled to as a man. He kissed her passionately as the skiff broke through into nothingness. Into the dark.
Into the Void.
2. IN THE VOID
The emergency lights flickered on and off, a gentle blue glow enlightening the pilot’s nest with each vibration.
Their kiss went on, breath quickening with each moment until they matched each other’s rhythm perfectly. The cabin lights flickered one last time, then stayed on, the soft blue enveloping them both in a peaceful, silent glow.
Renwick pulled back from their kiss, opened his own eyes and peered into the gentle olive slits of hers. She was beautiful, no doubt, and he regretted every decision to turn her away from his door during the negotiations. But that was a different time, a different place. All they were left with was now.
He withdrew from her and looked around the pilot’s nest, then turned back. “Why aren’t we dead?” he asked.
She fought to control her breathing, to bring it back to normalcy. A Raelen woman’s passion, once ignited, was a difficult thing to dowse. She crossed her arms and took three deep breaths before responding, then looked around the cabin.
“I don’t know,” she said.
He studied the flight controls. The helium fuel was no longer burning, and the board was showing no forward momentum. Where they were was unclear.
“Every ship, every probe that has entered the Void has vanished completely,” he said. “Absorbed by dark energy. As far as we can tell, they’ve simply ceased to exist. So why are we still alive?” He looked to her. She shook her head.
“Science is not one of my specialties,” she said. He punched the control to open the pilot’s nest to the main cabin again.
“What’s happening?”
“Where are we?”
“Why is it so quiet?” came the chorus of questions. Renwick faced his companions and raised his hands to quiet them.
“We’re inside the Void,” he said plainly. This started another round of excited questions from Poul and Myra. Again he held up his hands. Makera came to his side.
“I’ve just checked the status boards,” she said. “We lost nearly one quarter of our power when we entered the Void, but the rate of decay has decreased markedly. I would say we have approximately two of your days of power in reserve.”
“Unless the rate of decay increases again,” Renwick said. He mulled the situation. “All right,” he said to his companions. “Let’s survey this boat, find supplies, food, water, anything that might be of value.” They sat as if waiting for further instructions.
“You’re not going to find anything out sitting down,” he finally said. Poul and Myra shot to their feet then, moving about the cabin, opening cabinets to see what they could find.
Renwick went back to the control console, Makera peering over his shoulder. He ran a series of scans that took nearly five minutes to finish.
“Nothing,” he said when the scans were complete. “As in zero. Nothing on the sensors, nothing on the scanners, if I launch a probe it simply doesn’t register. Eve
rything shows as a zero. It’s like we’re inside nothingness.”
“As I said, I am not a scientist,” Makera said. “But if this were really dark matter, shouldn’t we be registering something? Some kind of output? Gamma rays or solar winds or tachyon particles? Even dark matter has to exist in our universe. Therefore the Void must be composed of something else, something we can measure.”
Renwick shook his head. “Everything is registering as a null field. Like I said, we seem to be inside nothingness. The motion sensors don’t indicate that there is any movement, but where we are is a complete mystery. The sensors don’t have anything to bounce a measurement back off of.”
“This is not what I expected,” she said.
“Nor I,” agreed Renwick. “From what our scientists have told us about the Void it should have consumed us in the first instant that we touched it. Instead, it’s like we’re preserved inside of it.”
Her eyes widened at this possibility. “Or encased,” she said. He stood and looked at her studying her again. The Raelen were very close to humans in their genetic makeup, so close as to be nearly indistinguishable, as were the Gataan, the other race in the Known Cosmos. Makera was tall for a human woman, but wiry like all of her race, and beautiful. He broke his thoughts then and focused on her words.
“One of our science’s theories is that the Void is indeed a dark matter field, but that contact with a light energy object, light matter, as you call it, should result in a catastrophic explosion,” she said. “One of our alternate theories, however, is that the Void was designed as an enveloping plasma, creating a null energy field around any light-matter object, thus encasing it in a protective field of energy.”
“A protective field of energy?” he repeated. “Protected from what?”
She shrugged. “For whatever purpose the designers intended, I suppose. If it was indeed designed, and not a natural field.” He crossed his arms and looked at his board readings again.
“I’m no scientist either,” he said. “But we’re alive for some reason. I think we should use this enveloping field as our working theory for Void Space, for now at least.”
Poul Rand came up at that moment with an inventory report. “There are two cabins in the rear compartment with double-stacked sleeping berths. We also found enough food and water for two people for two days. With the four of us rationing that makes enough-“
“For approximately about as much power as we have left at our current rate of decay. Thank you Poul, call Myra over.”
Myra reported a pair of airlocks with two EVA suits each. Unfortunately the oxygen supply for the suits was tied directly into the skiff’s reserves. She found a first aid kit and a single coil pistol in a utility cabinet.
“Well, that’s it then. We have enough water, oxygen, and energy for two days, plus emergency food rations. At least we won’t starve,” he said after they had all gathered back together in the main cabin. “The downside is, we have two days to find a safe port of some kind before we all die, and we’ve no way to navigate the Void.”
“But we are still alive,” chimed in Makera, “which is more than we could have expected when we entered.”
Renwick gathered their supplies and made everyone eat a ration bar and drink their first allotment of water. Renwick thought the bars were awful, and he watched with amusement as Makera devoured hers.
“Delicious,” she said.
He laughed. “If you say so.”
At Renwick’s insistence they all divided up time to stand watch while the others got their rest. The fact was that resting quietly might lengthen their life support time and enhance the possibility of a rescue or some other resolution to their crisis. It was worth a try anyway.
They agreed on four-hour shifts and Renwick wanted to stand the first watch but Poul Rand insisted. Renwick watched as Myra made for one of the cabins and shut the door behind her. That left him with the Raelen Ambassador as a bunk mate.
She looked at him expectantly as he contemplated their circumstances. He sighed as she took his hand and led him back to their bunk room and closed the door. She pushed him down on the bed and then stood at the door of the tiny cabin, hands on her hips.
“Will you have me now, Senator? Or will you reject me a final time?” she said. He looked up to her and sighed.
“Sexual activity at this time would consume much more than our fair share of the oxygen that we all need to survive, Makera,” he said, speaking a practical truth. She let out a sigh of frustration, shaking her head at him, then she leapt in a single motion to the upper bunk.
“I hate you, human,” she said. It was the biggest insult she could make, reducing him to one of the rabble of humanity.
“I’m sorry,” he said honestly. At that she was finally quiet, then he closed his eyes and tried, for the moment, to forget the precarious predicament they were all in.
RENWICK RELIEVED RAND right on time, then watched him depart for Myra’s cabin as Makera joined him in the pilot’s nest.
“Do you think they are mating?” asked Makera frankly.
“Um, I suppose so.”
“If so, then they are using up the extra oxygen that we could have used ourselves.”
Renwick shrugged. “They’re young. They have many more years to lose than you or me,” he said.
“I suppose. It seems strange to me though. I had her selected for you,” Makera admitted.
“Myra? Gods no! She’s a child,” insisted Renwick. Makera looked confused.
“But I was sure she was sexually matured,” she said. He shook his head as he scanned the console readouts.
“I don’t mean that. I mean emotionally. She’s not the kind of... girl I would ever choose to engage in a relationship with.” Makera contemplated this.
“So emotionally maturity is as important in picking a sexual partner as physical maturity?” she asked. He smiled again.
“For some of us, yes.”
She shook her head, confused.
“Humans,” she said.
He spent the next hour coursing through the scans, hoping to find some indication of their movement or location, but all of the scanners and instruments maintained their null reading. A thought came to him and he broke the silence between them.
“Makera, what if the readings are accurate?” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“What if the null readings are accurate, and we are in fact, at this moment, motionless inside the Void?”
“You mean, as if we just came in and stopped?” she said.
“Exactly!”
She thought on this for a moment. “Then we could be only a few meters, or kilometers, from normal space.”
“That was my thought,” he said.
“Then, in fact, we could conceivably find a way back to normal space?”
“Yes.”
She looked at him. “The EVA suits?” she asked. He smiled.
“You read my mind.”
HE GAVE POUL AND MYRA another hour of sleep before he woke them to run his idea by them.
“An EVA would likely take up about thirty minutes of resources,” he said. “And I’ve been charging the suits while you slept. One of us, in an EVA suit with a tether attached, could go out and determine if there’s any chance of us reaching normal space again. I realize it’s a long shot, but it beats sitting here staring out a black window and waiting to die.”
They all agreed with that sentiment, but not the next.
“I’ll be ready to go out in ten minutes,” he said. This set off a chorus of objections, the core of which were related to their nearly-forgotten diplomatic mission to Raellos, capital of the Raelen Empire.
“The obvious choice is me,” said Makera. Renwick shook his head.
“No. You’ve been involved in every moment of these negotiations. You’re the foremost expert on this treaty in the entire Raelen Empire,” he said.
“And you’ve just proven my point, “ she retorted. “My job is finished. All tha
t’s left now is for you to deliver the treaty and for the Emperor-Regent to sign it. Once that’s done then the Empire and the Unity can begin to exploit Thousand Suns Space together, establish new colonies far away from the Void. As I said, my job, negotiating the terms, is complete. Therefore I’m by far the most logical choice to do the EVA.”
“But what if your people won’t sign it, or don’t agree with all the provisions?” Renwick protested. She threw her head back and laughed.
“Even after all these years you really don’t understand the Raelen mind, do you Senator?” she said. “Of course they will sign it. I speak for all the Raelen. Why do you think they sent me?”
And with that the debate was over. Ten minutes later Ambassador Makera was fully suited up and ready for her EVA.
“You’ll have about a kilometer of tether,” said Renwick through the com. He was on the other side of the airlock for the moment, fully suited and ready to join her to manage the tether once she had departed.
“And if we’re one kilometer and one more meter beyond normal space?” she asked. He shrugged.
“Then we’re shit out of luck,” he said.
She puzzled at this turn of phrase as he purged the airlock of its precious atmosphere. She turned to face the blackness as the outer hatch slid up and open, exposing her to Void Space.
She stepped off and immediately felt disoriented. The feeling of being surrounded by nothing swept over her. All was black. She looked down at the tether. It vanished a few centimeters past the suit connector. She surmised that this was the extent of the radiated light energy from the suit, her “bubble” of light matter, if the theory she and Renwick had concocted was correct. Still, it wasn’t comforting to see the tether simply cease to exist beyond a certain point. She decided to test it, for her own ease of mind. She tugged on it three times. A few seconds later and she got three tugs in response. Renwick was indeed on the other end of the line and she was still attached to the skiff.
Her mind calmed for the moment, she used the small jets at her hips and set out on her journey into the black. The bursts were designed to move her a few hundred meters at a time, if indeed she was moving at all.
