by Ilsa J. Bick
“I can imagine.” Joshua gave her fingers a squeeze. “Well, we pull this off, not only won’t Mom and Dad have anything to complain about, we’ll get the Cochrane, and you’ll have to beat the offers down with a stick.”
“We’ll see,” said Bat-Levi. “Don’t jinx it.”
“Fair enough.” He squeezed her hand one final time. “Time to put on a show for the folks on 32, then let you catch up with your boyfriend.”
“Some show.” Bat-Levi gave a shaky laugh. She waved her hand in the general direction of Starbase 32. Squares of yellow light studded the windows of the blue and gray station, and the shape always reminded her of a slowly spinning child’s top. Starbase 32 hung, by itself, on the fringes of the Federation. The nearest inhabited planet was thirty light-years away. “This region of space is just about as deserted as you can get.”
Joshua pulled up their preflight checklist. “Well, that way, if the generator fails, we won’t take out so many planets at the same time now, will we?”
“That’s not funny, Jock-o.” Because if we don’t do this right, half the ship gets sucked into an interphasic whirlpool. Bat-Levi’s gaze strayed back to the prismatic grid flow indicator on her console. The flow had stabilized, and there were no further indications of trouble. Still, she wished Joshua would run just a few more simulations. That damn flow never has settled down. She checked the power couplings on their nacelles and, in an afterthought, the explosive bolts to the nacelles. Just in case.
She stole a peek at her younger brother and saw, with a sudden bittersweet pang, how much more grown-up he seemed. Funny, how she’d left for the Academy and he’d been just a boy. Now they were both breaking out, finding their way in the universe—and probably away from each other.
Her thoughts floated to Devlin Connolly, only this time she felt a little sad. Like she was acknowledging the death of something. Later, she would know: a prophetic thought.
The generator had been online for a half hour into the test flight when Bat-Levi said, “I don’t like the looks of this.”
“Mmmm?”
“The transdimensional rift off the port quarter doesn’t seem stable. Here,” she funneled the information to his control display. “Take a look.”
Her auxiliary console was to Joshua’s left and behind, so she couldn’t get a good look at his face as he bent over the readings. “That doesn’t look too bad,” he said. “The variance in rift integrity isn’t even statistically significant. The simulation proved a tiny variance isn’t important.”
But just how tiny is tiny? “Look, if this were an antimatter injector, you wouldn’t tolerate a variance of even a…no, don’t shake your head at me, Joshua. Listen, no machine is perfect, and that includes our generator. Now, this thing is taking more vacuum energy from port than starboard. We both know that the dimensional rifts must be bilateral and equal. Otherwise, we’ll create an imbalance in the ambient vacuum energy and…”
“And create an energy sink that will theoretically collapse adjacent dimensional branes in a cascade,” said Joshua, his tone a caricature of a displeased schoolteacher, “thereby causing an imbalance in linear acceleration over different areas of the ship. Darya, I designed the simulations, remember?”
“I’m just saying.”
“I hear you.” Turning aside, Joshua shook his head. “Honestly, you’re in Starfleet? Didn’t one of your heroes once say that risk was your business?”
“James Kirk. He was right. He took risks. But he wasn’t stupid.”
“Neither am I.” Joshua’s hands moved over his controls. “I’m going to open up a jump-point. Hang on.”
Facing forward and staring out at the winking docking lights of Starbase 32, Bat-Levi braced herself. What would crossing the threshold of a jump-point feel like? Bat-Levi didn’t know. She’d never been through an actual wormhole, though they’d done simulator runs of gravimetric distortions to warp bubbles caused by an intermix imbalance. Then the effect had been as violent as it was spectacular: a sensation of tripping and the ship lurching then careening through space, out of control. Now she expected the same. Maybe something just as violent, like being thrown from her seat, or a jolt, a quiver running through the ship and shivering up her legs. Something.
Only there was nothing. One moment, she was staring at the gray and blue top that was Starbase 32. The next, she wasn’t.
Space crinkled. Not a fold exactly, but the stars suddenly puckered into a cone. There was not the usual smearing of stars into rainbows that she associated with warp drive. The stars simply glimmered, winked. Flashed off. She felt a slight jerk, but the feeling was more internal than external, as if her body had pushed through a pane of clear, semi-liquid gelatin. And then Starbase 32 was gone. So were the stars.
“Joshua?” Bat-Levi had to say his name twice because her throat was so dry. “Where?”
Her brother’s body was still as death. “We’re inside.”
“Inside,” she said the word as if she didn’t understand it. This hadn’t been on the simulations. “You mean, inside a rift?”
Joshua pulled his face around, his eyes bright with excitement. “We’re inside a jump tunnel.”
My God. “Are we moving?”
“The computer says so. How’s our influx?”
“Vacuum energy influx is constant,” said Bat-Levi, grateful for something to do. “So is our jump bubble. But where are we…?”
“Going? Haven’t a clue. I programmed in a five second jump, so we ought to be coming out soon.”
“But the stars,” Bat-Levi began, and then her eyes widened. “Joshua.”
Joshua’s head snapped forward. The stars were back. Starbase 32 wasn’t.
Bat-Levi released a breath she hadn’t known she held. “Where are we?”
“Computer says…” Jason’s fingers scurried over his console. “Computer says that we’re twelve-point-five-seven parsecs distant from our previous position.”
“Oh, my God,” said Bat-Levi. Her eyes darted to her instruments. The generator flux was reading steady, the dimensional rift bubble over the ship stable. “That was it?”
Joshua was laughing now. “You were expecting something else?”
“Well, yes,” she said, but she was smiling. “You did it, Jock-o.”
“Yeah,” said Joshua, finger-combing his hair again and again, “yeah. We did.” He let out a sudden whoop. “By God, Darya! By God!”
They grinned at one another like maniacs for a full thirty seconds before Bat-Levi said, “Hey, can you get us back?”
“Hey,” said Joshua, still smiling as he plotted their return and re-initiated, “after that, a piece of cake. A piece of…”
Suddenly, the ship lurched, as if some huge foot had kicked them from behind. Bat-Levi slammed forward, her hand shooting out to keep her face from smacking into her console. Her gaze raked over her controls. “Joshua, the pod’s magnetic containment field…”
“It’s breaking down. I see it.” Joshua’s fingers flew over his command console. “Hang on, hang on. Shutting down.”
Damn, I didn’t check the field; I didn’t double-check it! Bat-Levi felt another lurch. Heard a low groan of metal and then the computer chattering a warning about hull structural integrity. “I read pockets of subspace opening up, Joshua! Off the port quarter, same place I picked up that instability before! And now there’s a second pocket, off the starboard bow!”
“We’re not shutting down. I’m taking the computer off-line, switching to manual…negative. Generator’s still on-line. Damn it, the intake’s frozen!”
“Now abeam to starboard, another pocket,” said Bat-Levi, her voice shrill.
A split-second later, the computer chimed in. “Warning: subspace variance at point-seven…”
“Shut up!” Bat-Levi jabbed the audio off. “Joshua, that pocket’s increasing in size exponentially! And there are two more, one off the starboard quarter, one dead astern!”
“I see them, I see them. It’s an energy surge
in the particle stream, siphoning off vacuum energy at unequal rates. That means adjacent branes are collapsing, because of electromagnetic pressure on the opposite side of the energy sink. Darya,” Joshua spared her a quick glance, “are you sure you adjusted those grids?”
“Yes, yes, of course, I’m sure!” She’d told him, she’d told him. “I did the best I could. I told you, they weren’t stable, and I’ve been twiddling with them…”
She broke off. Get a hold of yourself. She had to think. They didn’t have much time. The ship yawed drunkenly, and her seat spun around, almost throwing her to the deck. She heard a long, low grinding sound and knew that stress on the hull was increasing.
Think. Bat-Levi’s brain clicked into overdrive. As more pockets of subspace opened around the ship, the ship itself would continue to linearly accelerate, but at different rates and in different directions. Just like a starship that had lost one or both of its nacelles: Parts of the ship would travel at different rates, with pieces of the ship slipping past others, or going off in entirely new directions.
If they couldn’t shut down the generator, they would break apart.
On a starship, in a runaway, there was only one option. Jettison the core and worry about how you got home later.
The Lion shuddered. Spun to port. An alarm sounded; their inertial dampers were failing.
“Joshua, we have to blow the pod,” she said urgently, trying not to think what a sudden explosive influx of energy would do to the surrounding spacetime. “We have to!”
“Darya, I know, I know, but…”
The blood iced in her veins as she read his look. “Oh, no.” Quickly, she scanned her readouts. “Oh, no, no, no, no…”
“The explosive bolts are frozen,” said Joshua. His face was white as salt. “No way to blow them automatically.”
The ship rocked as if slapped by a giant hand. Bat-Levi thought fast. There were pockets of subspace opening all around them, which meant that the generator was still siphoning vacuum energy. If she could just get a stable jump-point, re-initialize the computer and have it reverse course and get back, or closer to Starbase 32, they could abandon ship.
Her fingers were a blur over her console. “I’m re-routing auxiliary power to the generator.”
“Darya, no! You’re going to increase…”
“Don’t you see? It’s the only way,” she said, not bothering to turn around. She punched in their return coordinates. “If I just reopen a jump point where we had before…”
There was high metallic scream. A sensation of something ripping apart, like a piece of cloth pulled in opposite directions at its weakest point. “There goes the hull, there goes the hull!” Joshua shouted.
“Hang on, hang on!” Bat-Levi grabbed her console with both hands. “Jump point opening…now!”
This time, she saw it: a jagged hole in space that dilated, gaped like a huge mouth…and then sucked them in.
Suddenly, she couldn’t breathe. She tried taking a breath and couldn’t. Her chest felt as if she were flattening, elongating; her heart slowing, her limbs spooling out like long threads…
Passing through a dimensional shift. Her brain was sluggish, ticking through the problem like the old gears of a grandfather’s clock. The ship must be caught in different dimensions; that was why her body felt like putty, and was this what it felt like to exist in a two-dimensional plane…?
And then it was as if her mind, held in place by some invisible tether, snapped back into her body. She was aware that her lungs burned, and she inhaled a lungful of air and let it out in a moan.
The ship groaned with her. In an instant, she knew. The generator was still engaged. A shrill alarm undulated through the shuttle, and the emergency lights had turned burnt amber, dying her skin muddy orange. They were functioning on auxiliary power only, but the ship was still bucking and heaving. She realized then that she was sprawled on the deck, and her chin ached, and when she brought her hand, her fingers came away red with her blood.
“Joshua,” she choked, spat out a gob of blood-tinged saliva. Her mouth tasted like warm salt. She propped herself up on her arms. “Joshua?”
He wasn’t in his pilot’s chair. Bat-Levi clawed her way over to the command console and hauled herself upright.
Starbase 32 was there, dead ahead.
She brought her fist down on the companel. “Starbase 32, Starbase 32, request emergency beam-out! I repeat, request emergency beam-out! We have a runaway! Starbase 32, do you copy?”
There was a sizzle of static, a sputter, and then Bat-Levi caught fragments of words: …n’t…good lock…gravi…distor…evacuate… Then a wash of interference.
Starbase 32 couldn’t get a lock. The shuttle staggered, and Bat-Levi grabbed hold of the command console to keep from hurtling to the deck. They had to get out, she and Joshua had to evacuate, they had to get out!
Bat-Levi spun on her heel. “Joshua, we have to go, now! Josh…!”
Her voice died in her throat. The hatch to below-decks was open.
No! No! He’s trying to take the generator offline…
“But there’s no time,” she whispered, and then she was shouting again, to no one, “there’s no time, no time…!
Somehow she stumbled below deck. Her eyes flicked to the rack where they stowed their environmental suits. Her stomach bottomed out. Joshua’s was missing.
He’s in the pod. Bat-Levi’s mind raced. He’s in the pod. She had to stop him. She’d drag him out by force; she’d knock him unconscious, if she had to, but she had to stop him before the ship broke apart. Grabbing her own suit, Bat-Levi dashed to the magnetically sealed hatch that led to the pod. Through the portal alongside, she could see Joshua’s suited figured hovering over the generator.
“Joshua!” she screamed, bringing her fist down on the portal, even though she knew the sound wouldn’t carry in vacuum. Maybe the movement would get his attention. “Joshua, stop!”
Joshua didn’t look up. Quickly, she pulled on her suit. Kneeling, with her helmet tucked under her left arm, she keyed in her combination to open the magnetic lock.
But nothing happened. She punched in the code again. Her eye caught movement, and she watched as Joshua glided away from the generator and then Bat-Levi understood. They hadn’t been able to blow the pod free because the explosive bolts had frozen. So Joshua was arming them himself. Joshua was going to blow the pod clear…from the inside.
“No, no!” Bat-Levi screamed. She brought her fists down again and again, hammering on the portal. “Joshua, no, stop, stop!”
Whether it was the vibration, or some premonition, Joshua looked up. She saw the horror on his face through his faceplate, and then he waved his hand the way a person does when he wants you to go away, and she saw his mouth moving, the words he was shouting: No, no, Darya, go back, get out, get away!
“Damn you!” Bat-Levi clawed her way to a computer com. She punched the audio to life, and the computer, silent for so long, urped, “…ull breach imminent in twenty-five-point-nine seconds. Recommend immediate emergency evacua….”
“Computer!” Bat-Levi shouted. “Magnetic seal to vacuum pod, emergency override!”
“Emergency override command acknowledged. Magnetic hatch disengaged.”
At her feet, the hatch began to dilate. Bat-Levi jumped down into the airlock, her fingers flying over the controls. As she jammed her helmet over her head and toggled the seals shut, she heard two things. One was that maddeningly calm voice of the computer telling her that the explosive bolts to the vacuum pod were engaged, and they had three seconds to detonation.
The other was her brother’s anguished scream: “No, Darya, no!”
And then the bolts ignited. And blew.
Bat-Levi was aware of the light more than she actually saw it: a white-hot flare that seared her retinas. Then she was aware of her body impacting something solid, and her brain exploded with pain. There was a sensation of being flung back and of something—the ship, or maybe it was the pod—
blowing free, disintegrating into a halo of debris. Bat-Levi was standing, and then, suddenly, she wasn’t standing on anything anymore, because the airlock was gone and she was standing on empty space and the stars spread like diamonds beneath her feet and then the strange shape of Starbase 32, upended like a child’s top, wheeled in her vision.
And then she saw nothing. Felt nothing. Because there was nothing left.
Chapter 16
“You understand now, right?” Bat-Levi’s voice was thick. Her streaming eyes focused on Tyvan. “You understand why I’m…why things are the way they are.”
Tyvan debated then said, “I understand that what happened to you was a horrible thing. And I understand how you feel that you’re to blame.”
“I should have double-checked that grid. But I wasn’t on task. I just wanted to get the hell out of there, get on with my,” she gave a bleak laugh, “my damned love life.”
“Right. But Joshua was in a hurry, too. But,” he said, cutting her off when he saw her open her mouth, “but you’ve already made up your mind about that. We could argue all day, and I’ll bet other doctors have done just that. So I don’t think it’s worth rehashing. I don’t see the point in trying to talk you out of guilt you so clearly want to hang onto. But I’ll tell you what I’m more interested in.”
Bat-Levi’s lips had thinned, and Tyvan knew this was not how she expected things to go. She’d told her story, and it was horrific, but he also knew that she’d told it before. The words had a rehearsed quality; the story was a neat, tidy package, and Joshua’s death would be the first thing that any psychiatrist, him included, would’ve latched onto—because it was so obvious.
“And what’s that?” she asked, her voice flat.
“Did you keep your date with Devlin Connolly?”
Bat-Levi blinked. “What? That’s what you want to know?” An undercurrent of fury churned in her voice. “That?”
