by Mark Wandrey
“What the hell?” she wondered aloud, floating with no spin or yaw as with normal zero gravity. Then she realized she was trapped and unable to reach anything or anyone. Paka worked her way along one bulkhead of the CIC until she was within reach of her captain, whereupon she hooked a dexterous foot around a console, reached out, and pulled Alexis down to a handhold.
“You don’t feel any different when you move,” Paka said, waving a hand back and forth. “It isn’t like the air is thicker.”
“No,” Alexis agreed, “it’s just as if there were a retarding gravity.” She moved toward her wardroom, careful this time to remain within reach of something. “I need to see outside.”
Her wardroom was the nearest place with a window; there weren’t many on a warship. It was offset from the CIC, so if a laser found it, the beam couldn’t go right through to the command center. The only other ones were on the gravity decks. This one was an oval, five feet tall and three feet wide, made of nearly clear synthetic ruby, and unbreakable by all reasonable measures. Through it, she saw space. Only, as she inched closer, she realized it wasn’t space at all.
“Oh, my,” Paka said as she moved with her to float next to the window, their faces mere inches away.
“It’s black,” Alexis said. “Black in the same way hyperspace is white. It’s…”
“
“You knew,” Alexis replied.
“
“Why didn’t you say something?”
“
Alexis started to provide a description, and then stopped. She was right, there were no words for this. It was like describing a sunset to a blind person, or the cry of a newborn baby to the deaf. Nothing was an apt description. The blackness drank the light the way a sponge drinks water. Only, it was more than that. It seemed to drink you, as well. She felt it pulling at her consciousness like an itch you couldn’t scratch. Like the thing your parents said you must not touch, and naturally touching it was all you could think of. It was indescribable, and still she had to find a way…
“Shit,” she said and pulled her eyes away with an almost physical tearing. “Oh, fuck,” she hissed. It left a sharp pain behind her eyes, a gently wiggling ice pick of agony that slowly faded. Paka did the same, with the same apparent effort, then put a hand to her head. “Yeah,” Alexis nodded. “Ghost said it’s called The Nothing.”
“Good name,” her XO said. “But what is it really?” Paka glanced out the window for a second, then back at her captain. “Are we dead?” Paka almost whispered the question.
“I honestly don’t know what it is,” Alexis admitted. “But considering what we saw looking out the window, maybe we better keep all the other view ports shuttered for now.”
“Understood, Captain,” Paka said. She relayed the order.
“Captain,” Hoot called. “Intraship communications are being normalized.”
“Good job,” she said.
“Thank you. I’ve had to apply some novel processing to get the signals recognized by the system.” There was a chirp from the comms officer’s controls. “I have a priority request for you from Dr. Sato.” She was surprised to hear from the scientific genius of the Geek Squad, but indicated it should be put through. The man instantly began to babble.
“Is this the most incredible thing you’ve ever seen? Non-Newtonian physics are at play, but we haven’t ceased to exist along with many of the rules we are used to! Our instruments can’t function normally, but our bodies and much of our apparatus appear fine! And have you looked outside? This is unbelievable. We aren’t leaving soon, are we? I need at least a week to study this. No, a month!”
“Doctor Sato,” Alexis barked, tired of waiting for the man to take a breath, “what are you talking about?”
“Why, where we have found ourselves, Captain! If we had any idea that terminating a hyperdrive would take us here, we would have done it on purpose long ago.”
“Do you know where here is?”
“Well,” the man hesitated, “not precisely,” he said, nonplused. Alexis and Paka exchanged knowing looks.
“What can you tell us, then?”
“This is almost certainly another level of hyperspace.”
“Level?”
“Yes, we’ve long believed there might be an infinite number of levels. After all, hyperspace happens to be nothing more than another dimension. Since our three-dimensional minds cannot comprehend it, all we see is a featureless whiteness. Strangely, this is a featureless blackness instead.” She could almost hear the brilliant scientist’s brain spinning in circles. “If we assume that normal hyperspace is level one, this would be level two. Maybe this is a fifth dimension?”
“Dr. Sato, this is fascinating, but what can I do for you?”
“We need to take samples,” he said, just as excitedly. “We need to go outside and examine the environment!”
“Doctor, that might not be a very good idea.”
“I don’t see it that way,” he insisted. “Unlike the first level of hyperspace, we’re not being maintained here. This is a stable state. How could it hurt?”
“I have no idea,” Alexis replied, “and that calls for caution.”
“Discovery calls for risk!” the doctor countered. Alexis sighed and thought for a second.
“Before we go in that direction, do you know how we might get out of here and back to normal space?”
“Not at all,” he admitted. “One can assume that the hyperspace nodes might well do that, but how can we be sure? The drive systems are a mystery we still haven’t solved after a century of study. No one knows how they take us from one star to another once you enter hyperspace. Thanks to your friend, we at least have cracked the problem of fixed destination.”
“Do what experiments you can from inside the ship,” Alexis said, “and begin checking with the crewmen to see who can tolerate The Nothing without going nuts.”
“The Nothing? You mean this level of hyperspace? And what do you mean about going nuts?” She explained Paka’s and her reaction to staring at it. “Oh, fascinating. I found my brief exposure to it rather exhilarating.” Alexis shuddered.
“Proceed with caution,” she ordered, “I’ll get back with you shortly.” She turned to Paka. “You have the conn. I need to go see the Ghost in person.” As she moved down the companionway toward drone control, she tried to forget the last time she’d been there.
* * * * *
Interlude
Twelve Years Ago
Planet Degardo
Degardo System Orbital Defensive Operation
“Maximum defensive missile spread!” Alexis barked and instantly felt the tubes unleash a hail of missiles in all directions. The missiles exploded in only seconds, filling the space around Pegasus with high velocity outbound metal fragments and sensor-confusing EM chaff. The Tri-V in the CIC showed that most of the incoming missiles lost their locks or prematurely detonated, filling the area with a string of high-order nuclear explosions.
In the year since she’d taken command of the Hussars after her mother died, Alexis had never been in a fight like this. Two full Hussars’ task forces were in the Degardo system fighting to hold a Wathayat ore processing facility against a concerted and unrelenting effort to take it from them. Large quantities of high-grade titanium dioxide in the system’s asteroid belt made the system valuable, but when they cracked open an asteroid and found several hundred tons of red diamonds, everything escalated. The Winged Hussars had been hired, along with 13 other merc units. Elements of fifteen alien merc units showed up a week after the defenses were arrayed, though, and it was game on.
Alexis’ side had lost the emergence point a week ago, and the fighting had been nearly nonstop since then. The red diamond strike was considered the biggest in history. In raw value alone, it was estimated at five trillion credits; however, many of the diamonds appeared to be flawless
and exceeded 100 carats in size. These were worth many times their weighted value; after all, what collector wouldn’t want a red diamond, the basis of currency valuation in the Union, larger than a MinSha’s head?
“Try and get me a firing solution on that damned Pookur-class missile cruiser!” Alexis ordered Pat Viebey, her TacCom.
“I’m trying, ma’am,” he said. The man was down one arm; his other was immobilized from taking a metal fragment. A kinetic missile had penetrated the hull and hit the armored CIC two days ago. It didn’t further penetrate the CIC, but some of the armor spalled, sending pieces hurtling across the CIC. Three of her command staff were killed, and Viebey’s left arm was so badly damaged that nanites couldn’t fix it. There hadn’t been time to get him into surgery, either.
The tactical display flashed; more missiles were incoming. The last of her drones was trying to get around the enemy’s defensive formation to lay a nuke on the command battleship. It was already damaged, a victim of a Night Bird attack which cost the Japanese mercs a frigate. Alexis should have transferred the flag to another ship; it was a foolish move on her part to keep it, but now she had a clear target which might well break the assault’s back.
Just as Alexis ordered another course change, the computer interfaces on the CIC flickered. It took a full second to clear; the same hit to the CIC had badly damaged their computers.
“Katrina!” Alexis called to her sister, and XO, over the intercom.
“I’m working on it!” she yelled back from the computer room. Their computer specialists had died in the attack, so Katrina had gone down to the computer core to make manual repairs. With the ship under multiple nuke attacks, the last thing Alexis wanted her sister doing was plugging her substantial pinplants into the system. EMP in space could be just as deadly as on a planet, especially in a big metal can. The computers flickered out entirely for a moment, before coming back online.
“Update?” she asked her sister, bucking sideways in her command couch as the helmsman made several radical direction changes.
“The connections for the primary and backup cores are severed,” Katrina said. “That missile really fucked things up down here. I think the primary is completely shot.”
“Without the connection, how is the secondary even running?”
“No clue,” Katrina responded. “I think it’s managing to feed through the dedicated engineering trunk and then back up the command lines.”
“No wonder everything is lagging and overclocking,” Alexis said.
“Incoming missiles have locks,” tactical said. Lasers were lashing out at the previous wave, finishing off the last of them.
“How many?”
“More than last time,” the man grunted. Alexis could see his arm bleeding again. Fuck, if she lost him, there were no more tactical officers to take his place. “Mixed nuclear, high explosive, and kinetic!”
“Anti-missile spread,” she ordered.
“That will clean us out,” Viebey warned.
“I know,” Alexis said through clenched teeth. The missiles launched, and she watched the Tri-V, but her gaze was drawn away from near space to the distance where the command battleship skulked. The last of the Hussar drones had just gotten lucky; a screening frigate went up in a growing ball of death. The jamming cleared, and there was the command ship, clear and unobstructed.
“Only half the incoming missiles have been destroyed,” Viebey reported, “firing lasers…. damn!” A second later Pegasus’ shields were bombarded. One of the missiles was nuclear, exploding in a hydrogen fireball against the battlecruiser’s shields, causing several to fail. Two kinetic missiles penetrated, punching into Pegasus’ aft sections near engineering. The last was a high explosive, and it hit amidships, just behind the CIC. The explosion tore a 20-foot hole in the side of the ship, breaching the aft water tanks which helped shield the CIC. Part of the blast punched into the already weakened armor, penetrating and exposing the space to vacuum.
Everyone in the CIC already wore armor and helmets, which closed automatically in response to the pressure drop, but the hole was almost five feet across, and the decompression was explosive. Alexis watched in horror as a hurricane-force wind tore at her remaining command staff and flying chunks of armor killed indiscriminately.
The comms officer was pulled halfway across the compartment and impaled on a jutting lance of torn armor. Two engineering assistants who had been working on the electrical system, both elSha, were sucked into space. Viebey was torn from his couch. He hadn’t been able to properly latch his safety harness with only one hand and never asked anyone for help. She saw the horrified, pleading look on his face as he was sucked toward the hole. The jagged hole raked his suit like a Besquith’s claws, breaching it in several places, before he was taken by the black.
“Glambring, Hrunting!” she called out over their fleet’s tactical channel. They were the closest escort frigates.
“Go ahead, Pegasus,” they replied.
“We’re hit. I need you to screen for us!”
“That’ll leave the Manticore in dire straits,” the captain of the Hrunting warned. The carriers were a priority for the escorts, because they were less able to defend against missile swarms; normally, Alexis would never have done this to protect herself.
“Understood, Hrunting, assist as ordered.” Both frigates acknowledged and under their much higher thrust, quickly moved to bracket Pegasus and bring their defensive laser batteries into play.
“Pegasus,” the captain of Glambring called, “be aware you are venting fire just forward of engineering. Looks like your missile magazines are ablaze.” Alexis looked at the DCC station, but the operator was slumped over her console; part of her head was gone. Alexis accessed the damage control on her pinplants and saw there was fire reported on Decks 28 and 29, Section Three, in a missile magazine and launcher. A second later her interface failed, and the computer flickered yet again.
“Thanks, Glambring. Try and keep them off us for a few minutes, and we’ll see if we can end this fight.” With a sinking sensation, she realized she was the only one alive in the CIC. Alexis tried the redundant controls in her command station and found them nonresponsive. Her pinlinks would connect with the computer, fail, then try to reconnect again with the same results. The big tactical Tri-V showed the enemy missile cruiser maneuvering to fire again, and Pegasus, unable to maneuver, was a sitting duck.
“Katrina, I need those computers!” she said as she unbuckled and pushed toward the tactical station. Vacuum-boiled, black blood stained the controls, and the couch was bent slightly on its mounting. Alexis pulled herself onto the couch and clipped on the waist restraint. There wasn’t any reason for the heavy three-point harness; no atmosphere was left and no one was piloting the ship. She configured the controls as quickly as she could; it had been years since she’d run a tactical station. Her hands remembered, though, and she found what she wanted. It also appeared to still be functioning. The problem was, she’d need helm to use it.
“Katrina, I need to get the ship repositioned.”
“I’m not stopping you,” her sister replied over their pinlinks.
“I’m the only one left alive here; that last hit hulled us and penetrated the CIC. The ship is in bad shape.” Silence for a moment as Alexis’ hands worked almost without thought, redirecting power from the two functioning reactors to get the shields back. “Kat, I need you to figure this out or we’re dead.”
“Okay,” the other woman replied; “I got this, Alex.” The two sisters hadn’t called each other by their childhood names since before their mother died. “It’s just like old times, right?”
Alexis worked frantically, getting the defensive lasers functioning to sweep away a few errant missiles, all the while praying her sister could make good on her promise. The seconds ticked away as the enemy escorts tried to close the box. A pair of heavy cruisers were also trying to come around her starboard flank, where a squadron of Zuul ships had been badly mauled by a drone
attack. The status board reported the weapon ready.
“Now or never,” she whispered to her sister as the computers continued to flicker.
And then, all the systems came alive. The computers were acting like the CIC hadn’t just been blown to shit, or the computer room half-trashed from secondary explosions hours ago. Atta girl, Alexis thought as she brought a secondary control alive and worked it with her pinplants. Pegasus groaned as she spun, and her torch burned anew. The bow of the ancient battlecruiser swung rapidly, the shield doors opening. Alexis fired the spinal mount.
“Surprise, asshole!” she snarled as forty terawatts of particle energy lashed into the enemy’s command battleship. Pegasus continued its turn during the two second beam pulse, and the weapon punched through the battleship’s superstructure, and sliced out its side. The engine room was hulled, three of its nine reactors completely destroyed, and the ship exploded like a supernova.
The power drain of firing the particle accelerator was usually compensated for with capacitors to allow secondary systems to continue functioning, but one of the enemy’s kinetic missiles had damaged the capacitors, halving the ship’s backup power. Her screen showed more missiles incoming, but only half the defensive lasers had power to fire. It wasn’t a big wave of missiles, but it was enough, and one of the ship-killers detonated its nuclear warhead within 100 meters of Pegasus’ already severely weakened shields.
The EMP washed over Pegasus, creating a power spike through the entire ship. Alexis yelled as the ship was rocked by the impact, and the tactical console exploded in her face, pelting her armor with shrapnel and cracking the visor on her helmet.
“Damn it!” she cried as her armor’s life support system cried an alarm. She felt a pain in her gut and looked down to see the plume of escaping air. It was tinged red. She grabbed at her patch kit, and as she slapped the goopy thing on the leak, she saw several more. Her suit said 10 minutes of life support remaining. Time to get out of the CIC. While she worked to extract herself, she made a last radio call.
