"Is this it?" she asked, a little too loud as she dove across the room before holding up the vial. As soon as she held it up, Safa bobbed her head enthusiastically. "What do I do?" She was already moving to hand the container to Safa despite being half-a-foot closer to their target.
"Sprinkle it over the hole. As long as it makes contact somewhere it will activate throughout. And be careful not to touch any of it."
Gwynn didn't bother pointing out that she didn't need the warning, instead doing exactly as she was asked, as carefully as she possibly could.
"Nothing happened," she said, staring down through a tiny hole onto the desk she'd been sitting at only moments ago. "Did it work?"
Safa moved closer to the hole, peering downward, leaving Gwynn to follow suit despite having no idea what they were looking for. A series of pops sounded in quick succession, causing both women to quickly retreat.
"It worked," Safa said after a grin. "We're good."
"What the hell was that thing?" Gwynn was still out of breath, and while she trusted Safa to know that in this at least they were going to be okay, her body wasn't yet convinced that she wasn't about to die.
“It's something I've been playing around with for a while. I figured out the solution by accident, since then I've been working to figure out how powerful I could make it."
"Why exactly?"
Safa looked at her like Gwynn was more than likely going insane. "For fun. I’m just glad it was only the first version. If the latest prototype had gotten out it would have made it straight through the bottom of the ship before Sprocket managed to turn the power back on.”
“Good to know. But if we’re sure you haven’t invented anything else that might kill us all, I need you on the bridge for a minute. I’ve got something I need to show you. Everyone.”
Back on the bridge, Lincoln and Oliver were talking through a mixture of signs and typing on a shared screen, heads bent close together. If there was any duo on board that was going to get them all out of this mess, it was those two. Either that or Safa would figure out the whole thing on her own, and get them back moving again in a matter of minutes. Somehow.
But in case that wasn’t an option, at least now Gwynn could give the crew something that might really help. “Is there a free screen I can use?” she asked the guys, sparing a quick, teasing look at Evie behind her.
Looking mildly curious, Lincoln pointed her toward a still black screen over his own station. With the touch of a few buttons, Gwynn pressed play and let the truth fly.
The shocked look on Evie's face was all kinds of satisfying, but seconds later, after the message was finished, not one of Gwynn's friends looked as outraged at the revelation as she had been.
"I can explain," Evie said before anyone else could ask any question. "There hasn't really been a chance to put all the pieces together here."
"You could have made a chance," Oliver said, expression unreadable.
Evie dropped her head, but only for a moment before tilting it upward again and locking her gaze on the captain. "I know. And if I'd really thought it would have helped, I would have … I don’t know. But I swear, I don't know what happened or why."
"But your family is involved somehow? They're the reason we're here?" Oliver continued, stepping in to lead the interrogation.
"I don't know." Desperation leaked into every syllable. Evie's grandfather had been a legend. He'd gone off on one of the early deep space missions, only to disappear for half a decade. When he'd returned, not even he had been able to explain how he'd survived. He'd gone on to start a technological revolution years later. And now the last link in his family line just seemed so … lost.
Oliver clicked his tongue against the top of his mouth, thinking. His usually kind face having shifted into a firm grimace. "What do you know? I need all of it. A job is a job is a fine strategy when all that's on the line is a paycheck. And now my ship is being held together with a wish and a prayer while my crew could be somewhere that shouldn't even exist. Whatever information you have, I need to know it too. And I need to know it now."
There was the barest hint of a threat in Oliver's voice. Gwynn knew he would never resort to violence, but hopefully Evie didn't. The time for secrets was long gone.
"You're right. Of course." She took a breath." My family business is innovation."
"That's nice," Gwynn said. "But where the hell are we?"
Oliver held up a hand. Fine. Gwynn had a million questions, and accusations, of her own, but she was willing to wait her turn.
"My grandfather created things that people of his generation never would have thought were possible. My father took it even further. He changed the worlds. That's what I grew up hearing, and for as long as I've been alive, I've simply assumed they were as brilliant as everyone said. But then my brother entered the family business …"
"Mason?" Safa asked. "He was in the news recently."
Evie nodded. "Yep. News outlets started reporting that he's getting ready to unveil his first contribution to the Casseract line of technologies. They were all debating whether it will be as groundbreaking as anti-gravity technology, or if he'll start small with something like the Gentle-Nudge force fields. The problem is that my brother couldn't invent anything more interesting than a pick-up line. I love him. I do. I also know him better than anyone, and there's no way he's created something game changing, or anything at all. Not after working with my dad for a few months, not ever. It's just not in him. But no matter how many times I asked him to explain, he wouldn't budge. He wouldn't trust me."
"I'm not sure what that has to do with us," Oliver said gently. Too gently. He was buying this crap.
"He and my dad were set to go on a business trip in a few weeks, and Mason has been bragging that he'd be showing off his new product as soon as they got back. No matter how many times I asked him about it, he wouldn't tell me what it was, or how he did it. He just swore that I'd love it. Part of me hoped that my dad was just planning to let Mason take credit for something he'd done. But that's not like him. And I had to know. So, I got a hold of Mason's computer. And I made a copy."
Gwynn shook her head, but no one had bothered to look at her or ask if she was buying any of this as Evie detailed what had been involved in—apparently—stealing from her own family, probably leaving out an important detail or two along the way.
"I found these coordinates in a file about the trip Mason and my Dad had been planning. They were supposed to be gone for weeks, far longer than it would take to make a return trip. So, whatever they were planning, that was probably when it was going to happen. When I saw that they were headed out to the middle of empty space, I needed to see it for myself."
"And that's where you got my ship involved."
"That's when I hired a ship to take me to the coordinates I'd found, yes. I thought it would be a lab, or a space station, or a ship. Or nothing at all and there was another explanation . . ."
"Instead we're here," Gwynn said, finishing for her, getting to the point.
"And I don't know how that happened. Or why. Or if it has anything to do with my family."
"Or how to get us out again?" Oliver asked.
"I've got the engines working," Sprocket said, his head popping up from below and causing everyone on the bridge to jump. "Not well, we're barely crawling, but they work."
Sprocket moved to look at Oliver as soon as he made it all the way upstairs. "So, Captain, where are we headed?"
Chapter Nine – Oliver
"Where do we go now?" Gwynn asked again, not ten minutes later.
Oliver still felt like the last person let in on some disastrous joke.
He'd only gotten to spend a few minutes in his office, trying to work through the situation they were in, and knowing there was no way he was going to find a solution by sitting on the couch. There was work to do, and he needed to start moving forward again.
He'd gone back up to the bridge, forgetting he'd promised to go help below decks, only to
have Safa run off a second later, beckoned by Gwynn. He'd been a little relieved it hadn't been his name she'd been calling, and now that they were back there was no part of him that wanted to know what they'd been up to. Unless they told him he had something to worry about, his mind was perfectly content to assume everything had all worked itself out. He could trust his crew, if not his passenger.
He still hadn't worked out if there was any way to take what he'd learned from Evie and use it to his advantage. Was there some clue he was missing that would help lead the way out of all of this?
Assuming that was even possible.
There was too much going on already for Oliver not to trust his crew. Casseract family secrets, Gwynn acting like some sort of amateur sleuth, a ship so damaged it could barely fly, sucked into some bizarre non-space. He'd gotten Gwynn caught up on Safa's theory, Sprocket caught up on Evie's confession, and now he was back to the big question. Still the one being called on to decide what happened next. It wasn't like there was anything they could aim for.
Straightening his shoulders, Oliver did his best to at least look like he had his act together.
It would be nice to actually have his act together for once.
"Forward," he said finally, mostly because it was the only answer he had. And really, there was nowhere else to go but forward. "If something new comes along that offers a better option, we'll do that. For now, we just keep moving forward."
And hope the ship stays in one piece.
"Will we be able to see anything?" Gwynn asked no one in particular. "There's no light here, right? If someone else is in here, won't we just slam into them and explode?"
"We'll call that plan B," Oliver mumbled, knowing full well everyone could hear him.
"Maybe," Safa said, equally unhelpfully. "But we don't know anything about where we are or how it works. And sensors will likely pick up anything substantial before we actually run into it."
Silence enveloped the room.
"Well, I feel better," Sprocket said.
"Want to do the honors?" Lincoln signed, taking his seat. Oliver shook his head. This was no time for ceremony. With the push of a button, the Lexiconis' engines sprung to life, propelling the ship forward once again.
And it was the strangest thing, it actually made Oliver feel a little better. Ships were meant to move, and staying still for so long had been yet another thing that hadn't felt right. At least this much he'd been able to fix.
"This place is creepy," Gwynn said as they all stared at the viewscreen, searching for any hint of anything. "I know space is a void, but this takes it too damn far."
"Anything on sensors?" Oliver asked, not wanting to think about the void outside his ship, while at the same time reminding the crew they still had a job to do.
"Only small things on sensors," Sprocket said. "Probably debris. But I'm not getting clear readings on any of it. Nothing is registering to the computer enough to be identified and catalogued. Maybe if we get closer …"
Closer to what exactly?
Nobody had any answers.
"I hate this," Safa said, her voice forlorn.
"We'll get out of it," Oliver said, trying to encourage her in return.
"That's not what I mean. This is the biggest scientific discovery of our time, and I'm right there in the middle of it. And I can't do anything."
Oliver barely avoided smacking himself in the forehead. He shouldn't have been surprised. Oliver was pretty good at reading people, but he held out no hope of ever understanding Safa.
"Do something like what exactly?" he asked, more to keep her talking, to keep the silence at bay, than out of actual curiosity.
"Study it, scan it."
"We are scanning it. We'll have lots of readings to bring back home." Safa let out a puff of air, crinkling her nose in the process, unimpressed. "You want to go out there, don't you?"
"In a suit!"
Oliver didn't have it in him to laugh. He hoped Safa would never get her wish.
Silence returned and with it, the sinking feeling that was taking over Oliver's body.
Beside him, Lincoln waved his hand to get Oliver's attention before leaning over to type a few words into the computer. "Something's coming up on sensors," his voice said. "Something big."
"I see it," Sprocket said.
"Any ideas what we're dealing with?" It was a question that answered itself, which was probably for the best as every person on board had been simultaneously stunned into silence as a massive shape formed in the distance, hazy and unknowable as the Lexiconis crept closer.
"It's a ship," Evie said, breathing out at the same time as the realization dawned on Oliver. It was a ship unlike anything he had ever seen, and they were headed right toward it.
The vessel in front of them was shaped somewhat like a cube that had been stepped on, elongating it at the ends, with a long wing coming out of either side around the middle.
Or at least that was probably what it had used to look like before something else had blown a hole in the side of it.
But whatever it was, whatever it had been, there was no way it had been built by humans.
Aliens. Oliver couldn't say the word out loud any more than he could shake the thought. Something not human had built that ship. It was real, aliens were real.
Oliver's mind took a quick minute to implode and reboot, trying to make sense of what he was seeing.
Aliens.
"Are there any signs of life?" he asked, turning to Sprocket whose own eyes were still glued to the view screen. "Sprocket?"
"Sorry?" his friend answered, his eyes regaining focus.
"Is there anyone still in there?" Are there any aliens still alive in there? This was all too strange. Too much like something out of a dream.
A dream Oliver had been having since he was a little boy.
"There's no way anything survived that," Sprocket said, not bothering to check with the computer.
"Not anything human," Gwynn said, plunging the room into silence again. Sprocket glanced down at the screen in front of him. They could no longer trust anything they thought they knew.
Everyone had been wrong.
All of the top scientists, researchers, theorists. While no one had ever been able to concretely rule out alien life, most agreed that it was extremely unlikely that humanity would interact with complex alien life within the next century.
And yet here they were. His crew. Looking at the wreckage of an alien ship that had likely been destroyed by another alien ship.
Where the hell were they?
Oliver got his best view of the ship right as the Lexiconis passed it, so close to the gaping hole that he could almost imagine what the inside was like.
And then there was only blackness all over again. If he'd wanted to, Oliver could have ordered them to stop, just so he could take in the experience all over again, or to turn the ships cameras back to face where they'd just come from. But the moment was over, and there was still nowhere to go but forward.
An hour passed easily with only a few small pieces of debris on sensors. People left the bridge, restless or needing some time to themselves, but they always came back, no one wanting to miss anything. No one wanting to miss being a part of history, even if this wasn't a story they'd ever get to tell.
"Do we have any way of knowing how big this place is?" he asked, hoping for ideas that were better than the ones he'd been playing with that wouldn't have taught them anything new.
"There's nothing on sensors that indicates any kind of edge or end," Sprocket said, confirming Oliver's fears. No end, no doors, no way out.
Like Safa, Oliver would have been completely content to explore this place for days on end, if only there was some guarantee he'd be able to get out again.
If Oliver was going to get his crew out of this place, they needed more information, as much as they could get. And none of them could afford to spend any more time simply staring off into space, or whatever this was, in awe and wonder.
They'd go back to the last ship, Oliver decided. They'd do a more thorough sweep for useful information. Where had the ship come from? How had it gotten here? What had happened to it? He turned, opening his mouth to give the order.
Sprocket spoke before he had the chance. "I've got something." Everyone else converged on him at once, attempting to cram six bodies around one console, squishing their engineer down into his seat in the process.
Only to see an empty screen. "I swear, there was something weird coming in—there!" Oliver saw it, a rapidly moving stream of data—and just like that, it was gone.
"More damage?" Safa asked, pulling back from the group at the same time as Oliver.
"No," Sprocket said. "The sensors are fine. I'm pretty sure they're just trying to take in something too unlike anything they were built for. Whatever it is I'm seeing here, it's massive."
"Why don't we see it on screen?" Gwynn asked.
"We're technically headed away from it," Lincoln's voice said, though the pilot was already back to studying the helm. "Do you want me to adjust course?"
"Not yet. Not until we know what we're dealing with. Can someone get me the closest camera? Let’s have a look."
One second, a dark screen, the next, a similar dark screen but with something nearly as large as Centuri Station taking up a chunk of the display, but shaped more like a chrysalis than a multi-story complex meant to exist in orbit of a planet.
"Is it a ship?" Evie asked, speaking up for the first time in a while.
"More like an apartment building," Gwynn said. "I can't imagine how that thing could possibly move, but this would be a bizarre place for a space station, so who knows?"
Safa had an answer, or at least an opinion. "One. We don't know anything about where we are. There could be a hundred reasons to put a station here. Or, this isn't a space station, or even a ship. It could be something humanity hasn't even conceived of yet. Or two, and more likely, I think, is that this is a space station. And they had the same thing happen to them as we went through, brought from one place to another without warning."
Into the Void (Beyond Humanity Book 1) Page 7
