by James Palmer
“That won’t be the case for long, my dear,” said McCoy. Out of viewer range, he gave a subtle hand signal to his copilot, who stared unbelieving at him for a second before punching in a few commands on her console. The lovely face in the viewer scowled at him. Then, strangely, Captain Yin gave a savage smile.
“Then I suppose we must speed up our salvage operations. Goodbye, Mars McCoy.”
The viewer flicked off abruptly. “Punch it!” yelled McCoy as he grabbed the controls.
He pushed full power to the Black Bird’s thrusters, the coordinates Betty-12 entered seconds ago taking them into a section of the Star Lance that was open to space.
Captain Sonya Yin glared after the tiny ship as it disappeared into the derelict battle ship. The blaster fire they sent toward the Black Bird’s location passed harmlessly through space and destroying a large comet fragment. “You’ll not get away that easily,” she hissed through gritted teeth. “Move us along side.”
“But, Captain,” said one of her crew, a little Ban called Weenzil.
“What is it?”
“The Lance isleaving.” He pointed toward the readouts on the massive console in front of them, the telltale early signs of null space distortion were erupting into being around the dead vessel. By the time Yin looked out their viewport, the Star Lance was gone.
*
It took the crew of the Black Hole three hours to find out the Star Lance had been sighted. Voroshilov wasn’t pleased, even though he suspected as much from Verne’s comment about a ghost ship and his unwillingness to give the Russian the details. But when he contacted Navy Headquarters, his superiors kindly thanked him and told him to keep them informed. Which was a nice way of saying, “Don’t bother us with crazy talk about ghost ships.” Smiling, he called back his superiors at the Navy with the news that the Star Lance was found once again. This time, possibly for good.
*
Mars McCoy and Betty-12 were surprised to see how much of the ship was still intact. They were inside what appeared to be a large cargo hold. A few ships sat silently in their docking clamps, looking as if they were never flown. Nearby, held tightly beneath heavy netting, were stranger objects McCoy couldn’t identify.
“I detect some power fluctuations,” said Betty-12. Sections of this vessel are still operational, including basic life support and gravity.”
“Great. That’s a comfort, at least.”
“The null engines are engaged,” said Betty-12. "We have skipped out of normal space."
McCoy guided the Black Bird 5 into a docking area, clamps in the floor automatically slamming around the ship’s landing gear. “That explains why the Purge isn’t firing on us, or following us in. This hold is certainly big enough.”
“Any survivors?”
Betty-12 checked her instruments. “No life signs.”
Then McCoy got an idea.
“What if we could fly this thing?”
His android copilot looked at him. “That is unlikely. According to the stories, this ship has an experimental drive. We don’t know how it works.”
McCoy shrugged. “We’ll learn.”
Within seconds, McCoy was out of his seat and donning his space suit, all thoughts of the alleged curse gone from his mind. After a moment, Betty-12 stood and did likewise. As an android, she didn’t really need it, but the helmet would allow her to talk to McCoy in the airless cargo hold.
Suddenly, McCoy felt a wave of dizziness wash over him. The ship shook for a second, but nothing rattled, no gear was knocked out of place. His vision blurred, as if reality itself was rippling like a pond into which a stone has been thrown.
“Did you feel that?”
“Yes,” said Betty-12. “Another skip, perhaps?”
“I’ve never felt a skip like that.”
Just then the viewport of the Black Bird 5 was flooded in bright, white light. It was coming from the entryway to the cargo hold. A small figure stood in the center of that light.
“I thought you said there were no life signs aboard.”
“There wasn’t.” Betty-12 walked back to her copilot seat, glanced at the console. “There is now. One human, one android and one . . .”
“One what?”
“Uncertain.”
Mars checked his blaster pistol. “Let’s go say hello.”
They exited the ship, blasters drawn. There were large sections of the hangar bay open to space, but the artificial gravity was working. The figure before them did not move. The light that engulfed the cargo hold was very bright, but not painful to look at. It illuminated the cargo stowed beneath the thick netting, and McCoy glanced at it as they walked past. It appeared to be an assemblage of asteroids, with glints of dull metal poking through the black crust. Sections of the metal protruded from the rock at right angles. It looked old, and manmade.
As they closed on the dark figure they began to make out more details. It was humanoid, with pale yellow, metallic-looking skin, and it stared at the human and android with huge, pupil-less golden eyes. Around it an aura of energy shimmered faintly.
“A Faash’Tan,” said Betty-12.
The being nodded, as if he heard her through her helmet in the airless cargo hold. When they finally got close enough to see the alien in complete detail, he smiled at them and nodded. “Greetings, Mars McCoy.”
“Monaik?”
The Faash’Tan nodded again. The mysterious alien had long ago taken a strange interest in McCoy. Perhaps now the Space Ranger would finally find out why.
“What are you doing here?”
“I came to this now to deliver a message. You are in danger.”
“Huh?”
“You are out of space now, out of time.”
“What?”
“You don’t have much time. You are out of the now.”
“Do you have any idea what he’s talking about?” McCoy said to Betty-12.
The statuesque copilot shook her head.
“They see, but they do not understand. I came to this now to tell you this ship is dangerous. You are not Faash’Tan. You do not understand how to move through not-space and not-time.”
“Monaik, what in the twelve moons of Almagurdi are you babbling about? Stop the riddles and tell it to us straight.”
McCoy now remembered why the Faash’Tan’s cryptic visits annoyed him. It was always like this with Monaik; you could never get a straight answer. Of course, what could he expect from a member of a race that left the physical constraints of the universe behind when McCoy’s ancestors were still painting cave walls? A people who flitted about space without ships as easily as mankind could walk across a room?
“We have skipped into null space, haven’t we?” Betty-12 asked, hoping a more direct line of questioning could get a straight answer.
The Faash’Tan shook his yellow head. “Not null space. Not space.”
“Oooookay,” said McCoy. “This is getting us no where, as usual. Monaik, why are you here. What do you want?”
“To warn you.”
“Wait,” said Betty-12. “I understand. We are in a region of the space-time continuum the Faash’Tan call not space.”
Monaik nodded. “Not space isn’t safe. You are not alone here. The crew found out too late.”
Monaik looked down at the grey deck plating, shuffled his strangely booted feet.
“You tried to warn them,” Mars said.
The Faash’Tan nodded. “Was not meant to be.”
“When?”
Monaik looked up at him. “Now. There is only now. You too are in danger. You are not alone here.”
“Who is here with us?”
Monaik looked at Betty-12, then back to McCoy. “You have an old Earth saying. Ghosts in the machine. Beware the ghosts in the machine, Marshall McCoy.”
“Huh?”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Betty-12. “If we are in danger, we can’t stay here. We must take control of the ship and skip back into normal space.”
McCoy nod
ded, glancing at his copilot. “Agreed. Monaik? Do you know where the bridge is on this thing?”
But the alien was gone.
*
Now that the word was officially out, the Black Hole was on the move. Commander Verne was busy shouting commands while Voroshilov communicated with his commanding officers in the Navy, coordinating their response. Both men did everything they could to stay out of the other’s way.
Meanwhile, others were making plans of their own. On the planet Brigand, the space pirates buzzed with the news, and made preparations for the greatest haul in history, while an Orgum-Ree vessel skipped into null space near their homeworld, on the way to sector twelve’s Oort cloud.
*
Cautiously, Mars McCoy and Betty-12 made their way toward the point of the Star Lance’s needle, where they felt the bridge must be. It was slow going. Sometimes they would get halfway down a dark corridor only to find it blocked off by a twisted bulkhead too heavy for Betty-12 to move. Other times they would find the next few meters ahead of them opened to vacuum, though some sort of energy field continued operating to keep these areas sealed off, like a tourniquet for an amputated limb.
Nothing felt right. McCoy couldn’t put his finger on it, but he knew that something was strange and different. He didn’t need Monaik to tell him that they weren’t in normal–or even null–space. He also had the feeling they were being watched. “How much farther do you think it is?”
“Unknown,” said Betty-12. “We are not exactly working from a map here.”
“Was that another joke?”
Just then the ship shook, a jarring shudder that reverberated through the vessel like the shiver of a giant. McCoy could hear strange sounds too, echoing through the walls and coming up through his boots to his ears.
“What do you think Monaik meant about us not being alone?”
“I do not want to be here long enough for that to be a concern.”
“Let’s keep moving, then. The sooner we get to the bridge, the sooner we can figure out what’s going on.”
Another shudder almost knocked them to the deck. Betty-12 grabbed McCoy’s gloved hand and helped to hold him steady until it passed.
“Perhaps after twenty-seven years, this vessel is merely falling apart,” she offered.
“Sure, that’s a comforting thought. Let’s hang on to that, shall we?”
The lights in their suits picked out a partially open door to their left. Betty-12 used her android strength to slide the door open, and their suit lights picked out what kept it from closing completely.
On the floor was a space-suited figure, its arm sticking through the now fully open doorway.
Betty 12 knelt to examine the corpse, turning it over. The bubble helmet was smashed, and what was left of the doomed form was little more than a mummy. Leathery skin stretched tightly over a skull cracked open like an egg, the face a ghastly rictus of frozen agony.
“Humanoid,” said Betty-12 emotionlessly, while Mars McCoy stood back in horror, his eyes scanning the rest of the room. He let his suit lights illuminate what appeared to be a large galley or mess hall. Metal tables and stools were upended or tossed into corners, their legs bent and mangled. Among them were dozens of bodies.
“Some of these aren’t wearing spacesuits,” said McCoy.
Overcoming his initial shock and revulsion, he stepped over the threshold and inspected the bodies more closely. He recognized the Navy colors circa thirty years ago. “Some of the ship’s crew. But who are all these other guys?”
There were space-suited bodies slumped and piled among the other remains. A few he recognized; such as a four-armed figure that could only be a Trenago. Others were completely unknown to him, and would be to anyone in the Empire of Man. He walked toward a large, hulking shape, in a suit of some heavy grey material with a large black bubble helmet that blocked the intrusion of McCoy’s suite lights. The suit was covered in strange markings and had shoulder pads covered in lethal-looking spikes. The front of the suit was ripped open as if by sharp talons. McCoy gulped. Despite his training and experience, he wouldn’t want to meet this guy in a dark alley on Brigand, but something had torn him open like a ration packet.
“Whoever this person was,” said Betty-12 of the corpse in the doorway, “he wasn’t Navy.”
“There are a lot of people here who weren’t Navy,” said McCoy. “They must have stumbled upon the Lance just like that pilot we rescued.”
Betty-12 nodded. “Your orders?”
“Let’s keep going, find the bridge before whatever did this comes back.”
As they started to leave the galley turned charnel house, McCoy’s right boot came down on something hard and metallic. He stepped back to shine his suit lines on it. It was a mechanical hand that had been ripped violently from its owner. “Let’s go,” said McCoy.
*
The chime in Commander H.G. Verne’s office rang. Annoyed, he jabbed the comm button with his thumb. “Yes?”
“It’s the pilot we rescued, Sir,” said a woman’s voice. “You wanted to be advised of his condition.”
“And?” Verne snapped.
“He’s dying.”
Verne headed for sickbay, with Lieutenant Commander Voroshilov hot on his heels.
Nathan Rand looked worse than when he was brought in, his eyes sunken and staring wildly, his sweaty face ashen. His arms were extended toward the asteroid rock ceiling, his fingers bent into cruel talons.
“They are in danger!” the patient shouted.
“What’s he going on about?” Verne demanded.
“He’s been like this for the past five minutes,” said the nurse. “His vitals are dropping. We’re trying to stabilize him but...”
“Outside time. Outside space!”
The nurse dialed up a sedative on the life support console at the pilot’s bedside and poised her hand over the inject button. “I’m going to sedate him.”
“Beware the ghosts. Ghosts in the machine!”
“Wait,” said Voroshilov, grasping the nurse’s hand in his iron grip. “Let him speak.”
“But he’s in pain, Sir.” The nurse glanced hesitantly at Verne since Voroshilov wasn’t her commanding officer.
Verne looked at Voroshilov. “This is pointless. The guy’s feverish. He doesn’t know what he’s saying.”
Voroshilov narrowed his eyes and looked at the ranting pilot. “Who is in danger?”
The pilot continued staring at the ceiling, his face a mask of agony. But he heard and understood the question. “Captain McCoy . . . that pretty copilot.”
“In danger from what?
The pilot’s look of comprehension turned once again to madness. “Lurkers beyond Time. Eater of Space!”
He grabbed Commander Verne by his uniform front, pulled him toward him. “Ghosts. The Lurker in Darkness!”
Then the pilot’s body convulsed, his back arching in pain. “Beware the Lurker beyond the stars! The Eater of Space!”
Verne pulled himself free as the nurse hit the inject button, but there was no need. The pilot was dead.
“What happened?” yelled Verne.
The nurse checked her readouts. “Massive heart attack ”
Voroshilov turned and walked out of the sickbay. Grumbling, Commander Verne followed.
“You mind translating that mumbo jumbo for me?” he said, catching up to the Russian.
“I do not know what you are talking about.”
“Don’t give me that.” Verne grasped the shorter man’s shoulder with the iron grip of his mechanical arm, twisting him about. He was met by a cold stare.
“You know more about this than you’re letting on, and if two of my people could be in danger because of it, I want to know.”
“If Captain McCoy is in danger it is only because he acts rashly, and without thought.”
“What do you know about the Star Lance?”
Voroshilov looked down at the floor, then back at Verne. Then he looked around quickly and stepp
ed closer to Verne.
“I was in the running to be an officer aboard the Star Lance,” he said in a low voice. “I’ve seen some of the specs. Most of them were classified beyond top secret, especially those dealing with propulsion, power and weapons systems. Only crew assigned to those areas would learn the details, and then only after they were aboard.”
“And?” whispered Verne.
“I saw enough. The Lance contained alien technology. Highly advanced.”
Verne nodded. “We’ve all heard the stories. What else is new?”
Voroshilov shook his head. “The stories say that we used Faash’Tan technology. This isn’t true. We don’t know what it is. We found a remote alien planet, the remains of a long dead, highly advanced civilization. Makes what Faash’Tan tech we've seen look like an old Earth internal combustion engine.”
“The Navy lost a lot when she disappeared,” said Verne. “They’ll want it back.”
Voroshilov nodded. “And other races will want it as well.”
Now it was Verne’s turn to nod. “I’ve already thought of that possibility. I sent McCoy and Lieutenant Betty-12 to find the Lance and sit on it until we get there.”
“If pirates or the Orgum-Ree find out it was spotted, they’ll need help.”
“Call who you need to,” said Verne. “I’m moving the Black Hole to Sector 12's Oort cloud.”
“You’ll help us retrieve the Lance.”
“I’ll help rescue my people, if it comes to that. If the Navy gets its top secret toy back, so much the better. Now let’s get going.”
*
McCoy and Betty-12 finally reached the bridge. It was intact, and flooded with the same white light they saw earlier.
It was coming through the forward viewport, an almost all-consuming whiteness punctuated here and there by black motes.
“It is like space in reverse,” said Betty-12. “White space and black stars.”
McCoy nodded. “So this is what not space looks like.” Turning to his copilot, he said, “How soon can we be underway?”
Betty-12 was already walking around the large bridge, looking over the controls. “I do not know. There is power to many of these consoles, but I am at a loss as to what some of them do.”
