by Cheri Lasota
“James, Hanna, and Feo here will go over the cargo logistics with you. As I understand it, we’ll be picking up some raw materials from you for our temporary housing needs on the new planet, correct?”
“Yes, that’s correct. Once done, we can leave. I’ve shut down the majority of the station already.”
“Excellent. And do you have baggage of your own we can attend to for you?”
Zeiss gave him the evil eye. “One bag. I’ll handle it.”
“Understood.”
“Hey, where has the drive ops chief been?” Zeiss asked, glancing back at Solomon. “She get thrown in lockdown for mouthing up to Challenge Command? Been trying to message her for days.”
He was hoping not to think about Vida on the day when he’d be leaving her for all time. He had almost succeeded.
When he couldn’t answer, Dextra didn’t sugarcoat it. “Commander Edge killed her.”
This did shock Zeiss, who, for the first time since Solomon had met her, failed to find a clever comeback. She stared off through a fenestella across a lounge filled with empty iron chairs.
When Zeiss did finally speak, her only words were: “She was the only tolerable person in the Solar System. It’s a good thing Edge is already dead.”
“Have you said your goodbyes?” Dextra waved a hand toward the back corner of the Command Bridge, where the window still looked back on Earth, now a mere speck of light from their vantage point in Jupiter’s orbit.
They awaited final word from Docking Commander Rhodes that the quantum computer aboard the SS Challenge had successfully calculated the exit point through the Sideris Cavum. Their destination was just outside the orbit of Tenebra, the third planet out in the Paradisi Planetary System.
Solomon shook his head.
She squeezed his arm, and whispered, “Go.”
He didn’t want to, but he got up from his commander chair feeling suddenly like a fraud. How could they have made him commander when he had so much blood on his hands?
When he looked out the fenestella, the glimpse of Earth—a tiny but bright pinprick of light from this distance—made him think first of his sister, Nisolda. Could she still be alive after all these years? He hoped she was no longer in any pain, that the doctors had found a cure, that she could live a little while longer out in the last of the sunshine before the world went dark.
Tears touched his eyes, and he rubbed them away viciously. “I’m sorry, Nisolda. I’m sorry I couldn’t save you.”
Vida’s smiling face came to him, then. Her punching Kasen’s arm after he spouted out a ridiculous joke. Her teasing Tavian about his love life. Her calling him Sol when he wouldn’t let anyone else get away with that. What would he do without her? She was the one who saved him—saved them all. And he left her there to die, to float off into the darkness without even an attempt to save her life. He could have done it. He had the code to stop it.
His conscience argued that entering the abort code would open the door to Challenge Command attempting to get the Serica group aboard again. He had no choice. He touched the glass with his palm. Cold seeped into his skin, making him shiver. No, there was always a choice. He forced himself to picture her clearly in his mind, to picture the children, the grandmothers, the old men crying out against him as the SS Challenge pulled away from them and left them to die. As he left them to die. He pictured Mads Graversen’s wife, and he felt the tears in her eyes stream down his own cheeks.
“Please forgive me because I cannot forgive myself.”
Dextra touched his shoulder. “It’s time.”
All the noises on the bridge faded back in: Rhodes’s grating voice calling out commands, the chatter among the crew, the ever-present buzz of the HVAC systems within the bulkheads surrounding them.
He nodded, and rubbed the moisture from his eyes. As they walked back, she squeezed his arm.
“Tell me about what’s going to happen step by step. I’m not going to lie. I’m terrified.”
He nodded and tried to offer her an encouraging smile, knowing she was also attempting to take his mind off Vida and his sister.
“All right. Strap in and make sure you’re secured.” He did the same, and nodded to Navigator Jonasa Keyes and Docking Commander Rhodes.
“Commander Reach, Ada has nearly completed her calculations,” Navigator Keyes said.
“ETA?”
“T minus five minutes.”
He checked the overhead HUD screen lighting up the Bridge’s main fenestella. All looked well.
Solomon switched his comms to all-ship. Most of the skeleton crew had been strapped into chairs in specialized compartments in the Operation Sector already. Everyone else—around seven thousand crew and passengers—had been secured in the cryo chambers long ago. He cleared his throat to make the transit announcement.
“This is Commander Solomon Reach with the final announcement to all skeleton crew members of the SS Challenge. Sideris Cavum transit begins in 5 minutes. Ensure you are strapped in and secure in your seats. It is an honor and a privilege to lead you through Sideris Gate and on to the Andromeda galaxy. Our first stop will be the planet Tenebra, and then we will head on to our new home: the planet New Eden. Godspeed to us all.”
“Solomon, who is Ada...?” Dextra asked.
“The crew’s nickname for the quantum computer we have aboard. Named for—”
“Ada Lovelace, the first computer programmer.” Dextra looked pleased.
“Yes. So, once Ada’s calculations are done, we’ll accept her recommendation for an exit destination, and Keyes will lock those numbers in. After that, the ship will take off for the asteroid, traveling at speed to ensure we both enter and exit the gate with enough time to make it through. The transit time via the Cavum is only twelve minutes.”
Dextra studied his face. “What happens if we don’t make it through the gate?”
“Are you sure you want to know?”
She seemed to hesitate, and then nodded.
“T minus three minutes to launch, Commander,” Keyes said.
“Final systems check,” Solomon called out loudly.
A series of shouts erupted at short intervals from every crew member in the room as they all indicated they were a go for launch....
“Deploy SECASM, Rhodes.”
“Deploying SECASM, Commander.”
“The SECASM aboard our ship houses a mirror array,” he explained to Dextra, “which you will see deploying out in front of our nose shortly. That mirror will lock onto the two static mirrors attached at the far end of the asteroid. That will deploy enough negative energy to allow the ship space to travel through the gate’s force field.”
In seconds, the view out of the fenestella was solely taken up with the SECASM’s nanosilc mirror, which began to balloon out in front of them, taking shape.
“And if that doesn’t happen?”
“The wormhole won’t open, and we’ll slam into the gate, shattering the mirrors.”
“But we’re going to make it, because you’ve built us a strong ship.”
He smiled, but pride in his accomplishment eluded him.
“We’ll make it because we must,” was all he could muster. His promise sounded hollow even to own his ears. What did he know? Certainly, the precision of the design w3qas on his head, but beyond the ship lay the vacuum of space and the unknowable. So many things could go wrong. Things he could never dream up in a thousand years.
“T minus one minute to launch, sir,” Rhodes said.
“How long until SECASM is fully deployed?” Solomon asked Rhodes.
“We’re cutting it close, sir,” he replied, wiping sweat off his forehead.
“How long, Rhodes?” Solomon repeated.
“Sixty more seconds.”
“Will our launch impede the SECASM’s full deployment?” he questioned the docking commander.
“I’m not certain, sir.”
“Launch initiating in ten... nine...” Keyes yelled out, her pale, tense fingers hove
ring above her keyboard, waiting for any eventuality.
Solomon flipped open the abort switch on the panel in front of him. He glanced at Dextra, who was gripping her armrests with white knuckles.
“It’s going to be all right,” he reassured her.
“...Five... four...”
Dextra’s breathing quickened but she tried to smile.
“Keyes and Rhodes, prepare for launch abort sequence if needed.”
“Yes, sir,” Rhodes said, as Keyes continued her countdown.
“Three... two... one. Launch has commenced.”
A shudder coursed throughout the bridge. Solomon felt the ship’s Cav Drive engage at seventy-five percent power.
“Ada is operating optimally, sir,” Docking Commander Rhodes said.
“Keyes, final word on launch?” Solomon had his finger hovering over the red abort key, waiting.
“Hold please, sir,” Keyes said.
For several agonizing seconds they all waited as they watched the SECASM begin to form the concentric ring array. The center ring opened up, and suddenly they had a myopic view ahead toward the Sideris Gate. The massive sliding door behind the gate was already fully opened, and they had already entered the asteroid, their destination loomed large in the fenestella.
“Keyes, respond now.”
“I’m sorry, sir, we have passed the safe abort stage.”
“Report, Keyes,” Solomon nearly shouted as he abandoned the abort key and held tight to his chair.
“Entering quadrant 2,” Rhodes said.
Another second of interminable waiting, and then Keyes uttered the words they had all been waiting for.
“SECASM fully deployed. Wormhole expansion has commenced.”
And indeed, the wormhole field began to morph its shape, its colors shifting wildly between the mirrors. They caught glimpses of the Sideris Cavum sphere expanding beyond the gate outside of the asteroid. Stars from inside shown out like pinpricks of light, as they rushed ever closer.
Seconds later, the lights flashed brilliantly, and the SS Challenge left the Milky Way galaxy behind. The Sideris Gate sucked them up into what felt to Solomon like a madness, a waking dream. His body shook in places he never knew existed. The only words in his mind as they screamed through space-time were “don’t blink, don’t blink, don’t blink.”
And he didn’t. He grabbed hold of Dextra’s hand across the divide and watched worlds and suns pass by in light so brilliant it blinded him. Whole galaxies whirled past, seemingly expanding and contracting in refracted light as he gazed in both awe and amazement. Time was passing in front of his eyes, years, centuries... it was unfathomable as they moved like gods through the gas clouds of new stars and passed supernovas burning in the distance.
The shaking moved into his teeth, jangling his head so it felt like it would burst. He wanted to ask Dextra if she was okay, but he found he couldn’t form words. Somehow their hands had broken apart, and they were holding onto their own chairs once more.
Beyond the brightness and the swirling greens and pinks and oranges of new star formations, Solomon gasped at the shape of something he could not comprehend. It was a flash of grey speeding toward them like a train on a track. What was it?
“My God...” he whispered only to himself as it passed by. Another ship!
The SS Challenge shuddered violently, and warning alarms sounded everywhere.
“We’ve had a collision,” the feeble voice of the navigator rang out. “Ada course correcting. Sixty seconds to cavum exit!”
He didn’t understand what he had seen. The ship was there, and then it wasn’t. It looked identical to the SS Challenge, but how was that even possible? Could the Founders have sent another ship back through? Was it a mirage, a trick of the eye? And yet they had hit something. Something had gone wrong. Solomon glanced wildly at the HUD, trying to make sense of the numbers Ada was spitting out.
The ship veered toward the edge of the wormhole. If they hit the threshold, the ship would disintegrate.
“Course correct, course correct!” Solomon heard himself shouting through the maddening alarms.
“Ada correcting,” Keyes shouted back, as she struggled to keep her fingers from shaking off her keyboard.
With quantum precision, Ada began to turn the SS Challenge toward the center of the cavum. But it was as if he could feel Ada fighting gravity and the negative energy within the wormhole. The ship shook from the immense forces.
And then Ada’s calculations failed to hold their course. The ship convulsed, and Solomon felt a nauseating centrifugal G-force threatening to rip him to pieces as the massive ship began to spin.
“Five seconds to exit!” Keyes yelled out, as the ship spun out of control, and the SECASM began to warp and collapse.
The stars began to take on a familiar, solid shapes, and the passing galaxies disappeared.
“Exit achieved. Programming Ada to decrease speed.”
The ship’s spinning slowed to a stop and her shudderings quieted. Solomon gazed out into the view of billions stars in a galaxy he had never seen before: Andromeda.
He glanced at Dextra, but her head lolled against her chest. As he unstrapped himself from his chair, he shouted out orders to the crew.
“Keyes and Rhodes, complete a full crew and systems check immediately. Report any anomalies. Report also on the extent of the SECASM damage.”
“Yes, Commander,” came a chorus of replies.
Solomon ripped the straps away from his body, and knelt at Dextra’s side, gently shaking her shoulder to try and rouse her.
“Dextra, wake up.”
She jerked awake, and shrank back, not immediately understanding her surroundings.
“What happened? Did we make it?”
“Yes, we’re through. You must have passed out partway through.”
“Yes, I—I saw something. I swear I saw—”
“A ship.”
“Yes, you too? How could it be?”
“I don’t know anything yet. We’re in the middle of a systems check. Will you be all right?”
Dextra ran a hand over her face and ripped off her uniform cap so she could clutch at her head. “That was hell.”
“Yes, it was.” He contracted and relaxed his neck muscles, trying to release the effects of the forces on his body. He felt impossibly tired.
“Commander, extensive damage to the SECASM. Full nanosilc repair team required.”
“Are you able to retract the SECASM manually?”
“Unknown at this time, sir. Recommend spacewalk team be assembled before any attempts to retract.”
“Understood. Bridge crew check complete? Is everyone all right in here?”
Several voices rang out that they had survived the transit, though a little worse for wear.
“Keyes, turn this ship around and line up fifty kilometers from the cavum’s exit. I want a more thorough systems check before we go anywhere.”
“Fifty kilometers from exit, confirmed.”
Solomon made the rounds to check in with each of the bridge crew as well as make a general ship-wide announcement to the skeleton crew and med bay crew scheduled to be awake during the journey requesting any damages or injuries be reported immediately. He hoped they made it all through safely.
“Commander Reach, we have an... anomaly.”
Solomon looked up from one of the modules to find a group had gathered at the main fenestella.
“What is it?” he asked as he strode over.
“You’ll have to see this for yourself,” Dextra did not take her eyes off whatever lay outside.
When he saw it, he wondered if it, too, were a mirage, like the strange ship in the cavum.
“Impossible,” he whispered.
But there it was: a space station, not unlike Sideris Station in what was now the next galaxy over.
“It is, but we can all see it,” Rhodes said. “Like we all saw that other ship.”
“It could have been a mirage,” Solomon sai
d. “Strange things can happen with negative energy. Even Ada here doesn’t have it all figured out.”
“But that doesn’t explain this space station,” Keyes said, shaking her head. “There is no way in hell the Founders could have built a station out here in two years. It would take that long just to transport materials out this far.”
Solomon ran a hand down his face, trying to think. “Rhodes, try to make contact with that station.”
“Yes, sir,” came his reply, and everyone on the bridge waited in silence as Rhodes worked the comms on his module.
“Sir?” Rhodes turned and his expression was unreadable.
“Rhodes?” Solomon said, feeling uneasy.
“The time,” was all he would say.
Solomon frowned and looked at the HUD. Nothing seemed amiss at first glance.
“What about it? The time is right. Only about twelve minutes has passed.”
“I pinged the station and they responded.
“Put it up on the main HUD, Rhodes.”
The message read simply: “Communication acknowledged. State your business in Paradisi Planetary System immediately.”
“Look at the time stamp on the message, sir,” Rhodes said quietly.
“What do you—?” Solomon did a double take. The year read 2244, not 2094. He frowned again and glanced at Dextra whose face mirrored the churning confusion settling in the pit of his stomach.
“Ada must have gotten damaged or the transit screwed up her data streams,” Dextra said.
“Hmm...” Solomon rubbed at the back of his neck, thinking. “Keyes, is Ada throwing out any errors?”
“No, none that I can see.”
“Double check it.”
