Once the initial shock and delight wore off, Caitlin began to realize that Seth Garland was just as directionless as her adviser feared. They only managed to convince two planets to assist them—Berkshire and Yuan. They took on two more crew members. The first was a scientist who couldn’t even figure out how the engine aboard the Fenghuang worked. The second was an interplanetary sports superstar who didn’t seem to have any sort of qualifications at all. After a bit of pressing, Caitlin found out that he was Seth’s favorite baseball player. That was enough to convince Seth to invite him aboard.
This didn’t seem like a Dobhriathar at all. The mission began to look like the bizarre fantasy of a single man, a man who just happened to have the only starship in the galaxy. It became even worse when they found their final crew member, Alena Heilmann, the mother of interstellar travel. She was supposed to be long dead, but still lived thanks to “a strange trick of physics”, as she called it. Her existence became the focal point of Seth’s mission and revealed that, until she showed up, he had no plan whatsoever.
But Caitlin did not give up. She knew that she was chosen by the Goddess Airlanni for a reason. Maybe she wasn’t supposed to join them to save the galaxy, but there was someone out there who needed her help. And she would find them.
*
A flash of light. A loud, high-pitched noise. And then a voice. “Wake up.” It was a voice she’d heard before, but it was not familiar.
Caitlin slowly drifted awake. She tried to take a deep breath and stretch her arms. She couldn’t do either. The air was so stale that it choked her. Her hands were tied down. She was sitting in a chair and her wrists were bound to the armrests.
“Wake up, Miss Adair.”
She opened her eyes and tried to figure out where she was. It was a dark room. A flickering panel above her chair provided the only illumination. The walls to her sides were a dark gunmetal and covered with unintelligible writing. The wall in front of her looked more like a giant door, or perhaps a window.
There was a man standing in front of her. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she realized that it was Commander Hathaway. He was turned away from her, looking straight into the giant door.
“What... What is going on?”
Commander Hathaway didn’t turn to face her. He continued staring straight forward as he spoke. “I didn’t understand at first. There were so many things going on. So many wonderful things that I couldn’t sift through them. I couldn’t make sense of them.”
Caitlin once again tried to pull her arms up, to free herself. “Why am I here? Where am I?”
“I worked for decades on this station,” Commander Hathaway said. “I thought I knew every nook and every cranny. But it wasn’t until we were stuck here that I really started looking around. That’s when I found this place.” He finally spun to look at her, a manic look on his face. “Can you imagine? A secret room. It was sealed behind a bulkhead. Probably hidden for centuries.”
“That is...interesting.” Caitlin tried to stay calm. She was still piecing together the last few minutes of her memory. The last thing she could recall was staring at the view-screen in the forge as Toni’s fingernails dug into her scalp.
Commander Hathaway danced around her chair. Caitlin craned her head back, following him. “I wondered why it could be. I wondered what they wanted to hide.” He motioned all about him, towards the scrawled-upon walls. “Someone was here a long time ago. Someone built this room into the station and everyone since then wanted to forget it.”
How long had it been? By now, the rest of the crew aboard the Fenghuang had to notice that she was missing. When did she tell them that she would be back? She couldn’t even remember. Her head was spinning, still disoriented from whatever made her black out before.
“Can I just go back to my ship?”
The commander didn’t even respond. He just continued on, as if speaking only to himself. “It took me weeks to figure out what this room was for. But I had plenty of time. There was nothing more to do. We didn’t need to operate the mine or the forge. Not really. We didn’t have any orders that we had to meet. In fact, no one was going to come to pick anything up.”
“Someone will come looking for me eventually.”
That finally got Commander Hathaway’s attention. He circled back around to face Caitlin and scowled at her. “Why are you so upset?” he asked, his voice now soft. “Why would you ever want to leave?”
Caitlin tried to calm down. Making Hathaway angry wasn’t going to solve anything. He was clearly unstable. She didn’t want to push him to hurt her. “I do not want to leave. Not until we have figured out what is going on. I was to help you. I want to save this station. But there is nothing I can do if I am tied up here, in some room hidden away from everything.”
“It’s too late for that,” he replied. He almost sounded disappointed. “You have seen the surface of the star. And you know what will happen. You know what must happen. I didn’t understand at first. But now I do. And so will you.”
Once again, Hathaway walked to the back of the room. Caitlin managed to turn enough to see that the commander was standing near a small panel. He tapped a few buttons and let out a contented sigh. A loud whirring filled the air. Caitlin turned to see the massive door in front of her begin to slide open.
Her first thought was to hold her breath, as it looked and sounded like an airlock. Her second thought was to remember what Seth had told her about the vacuum of space, which was that holding her breath would do very little to save her. Then came her third thought, which was the relief which came with the realization that the air was not going to be sucked out of the room.
The giant door was not an airlock. It was a window, the only one on the entire space station. The reinforced glass was heavily tinted and several inches thick, but it was now the only thing between them and the brilliant corona of Epislon Andrii below.
“Behold!” Commander Hathaway exclaimed. “And look upon it, for you shall see such wondrous things!”
Even through the the thick glass, the light from the star was overwhelming. Caitlin could almost feel the heat singeing her skin.
Caitlin cringed as the pain in her head roared back to life. It wasn’t just because the room was now incredibly bright. There was something else.
The high-pitched tone filled the room. It was loud, almost deafening, but just beneath it she could hear something else. Soft whispers and dissonant chimes echoed in her ears. It was almost as if something was trying to speak to her.
“Close it!” Caitlin demanded. “Close the window!” She continued to struggle with the rope binding her wrists, realizing that it was getting a tiny bit looser with each pull.
“Why would I ever do that?” Hathaway asked. Caitlin looked back again to see that he was still at the console. “When I come back, you will understand. And you will see what we both have to do.” A loud woosh revealed a hidden sliding door on the left side of the room. Commander Hathaway crossed in front of Caitlin, staring out of the window the entire time. He had to tear himself away just long enough to close the door behind him.
And just like that, Caitlin was alone with the star. Even though she was focused on freeing herself from the rope around her arms, and even though it hurt her head and split her ears, she couldn’t help but gaze into the light.
Shadows danced on the surface of the corona in perfect, undisturbed patterns. The whispering grew louder and louder until it almost overwhelmed the high pitched tone. She couldn’t understand a single word, but it was still starting to make sense to her. It was an idea, repeating itself over and over again.
The Dobhriathar must be broken.
What did that mean? Images flashed in her head. She could see herself aboard the Fenghuang. She could feel the heat in her hand as she reached into the bowels of the Heilmann Drive and grabbed something. What was it? She didn
’t know. But she knew that as soon as she pulled it out, it would destroy the ship. It would send the Fenghuang and the Antigone spiraling into the star below. All she had to do was free herself and she could do it. She could end everything. Just like she was supposed to.
Why did she want to do it? She would die too, wouldn’t she? But it wouldn’t really be death. She would join the eternal peace of Epsilon Andrii. She would become part of its perfect cycle
Then, just as these thoughts were about to overwhelm her, her right wrist broke free. She looked down to try and untie the ropes around her left arm. As soon as her gaze broke from the surface of the star, the whispering stopped. Her mind was clear again.
Sweat poured down her face as she realized what was going on. The star was doing something to her. She couldn’t look at it. She couldn’t let it control her. It was going to kill her.
Caitlin fumbled as she unwrapped the knot around her left arm. Once it was free, she briefly glanced up. The light from the star seared into her eyes and tried to lock her in place. The whispers returned louder than ever.
The Dobhriathar must be broken.
It took every ounce of strength for her to turn away again. She jumped to her feet and turned her back on the window.
She couldn’t let herself look at it again. One more glimpse, and there would be no more fighting it. It would have her. She ran to the back of the room and slammed her hand on the panel that had opened the window. There were only a few buttons, one of them had to close it.
As soon as Caitlin heard the grinding gears, she was overwhelmed by a sudden desire to look back. It would be the last time she’d ever get the chance to look upon the star, and that ate at her. Even though she knew what it would do to her, her entire body ached to let her stare into the light once more.
Caitlin’s hands shook as she held the wall in front of her, resisting the urge to turn around. The light filling the room began to fade. The high-pitched tone grew quiet. Her head twitched, as if she wanted to turn around involuntarily. But she held firm. She would not give in.
Finally, the room went dark. The air was silent. And Caitlin dropped to her knees. She was exhausted, but she knew that she didn’t have any time to rest. Commander Hathaway was right about one thing. Looking upon Epsilon Andrii made her understand. She now knew what he saw, and how he and everyone on board the Antigone got it wrong.
The station was not falling into the star. The star was trying to force the station to destroy itself. It was reaching into the mind of everyone on board and planting that idea in their head. But why? Why did it want to destroy the station?
*
Caitlin looked left and right as she exited the Antigone forge and stepped into the hallway. She didn’t know where Commander Hathaway was. She wasn’t even sure he was the only one who was a threat to her. Everyone on board seemed shiftless, anxious, as if they were somehow being affected by the star as well. Did they even need to look into it to feel its influence?
All she knew was that she had to make it back to the Fenghuang to tell Captain Garland and the others what she discovered. She still wanted to save the station, but she now knew that it would take more than a few systems diagnostics and repairs to keep them from destruction. Now that Commander Hathaway was beginning to understand what the star was asking of him, it would only be a matter of time before he figured out a way to do it. Caitlin didn’t understand anything about the machines that kept the Antigone in steady orbit, but she knew that they were complicated enough that it would be simple to make them malfunction.
One of the crew members, a young woman with brown hair and deep-set eyes, approached Caitlin in the hall. Before, everyone on board the Antigone looked down at the floor as they passed her. It was like they refused to even make eye contact with her. Now, this woman stared straight at her as she grew closer. Something was different. Something had changed.
As Caitlin continued towards the airlock, she found that the other members of the crew were similarly fixated on her. They all watched her intently as she passed, their gaze never deviating from her face. It was eerie, and as each one passed her, she feared that they might try and stop her from reaching the ship. It was not until she was only a few yards away from the airlock that one of them actually did.
He was a man with silvery eyes and a receding hairline. He stared at Caitlin as she approached, just like all the rest, and she was beginning to ignore it. Then he reached out and grabbed her arm. Before Caitlin could even react, he pushed her up against the bulkhead.
“You know what has to be done,” the man hissed. His breath was foul and sulfuric. “The Dobhriathar must be broken.” With that, he let her go and walked away.
Caitlin was frozen to the spot, though her entire body was shaking. Her head was swimming and, this time, she was sure it had nothing to do with the stale air on the station.
She tried to justify what she had just heard. It was the same exact phrase that echoed in her head as she stared upon Epsilon Andrii. But then it made sense. The star was pressing into her, using ideas and thoughts in her own head to influence her. But how could this man, this miner on a space station thousands of light-years away from Airlann know about the Dobhriathar? It was impossible.
“Hey!” a familiar voice shouted. She looked up. Alena Heilmann was standing down the hall, near the airlock. “Where have you been? It’s been almost twelve hours. We’re starting to worry.”
Caitlin took a deep breath. How could she even begin? “The station is in danger. I think the ship is in danger.”
Alena didn’t even flinch. “We already looked at everything. There’s nothing wrong with the station. It’s not falling into the star.”
“I know,” Caitlin replied. “That is not what I am talking about.”
Alena put her hands on her hips, waiting for a further explanation but it wasn’t forthcoming. Caitlin wasn’t even sure she wanted to elaborate. Even if Alena believed the truth, all it would mean was that they would have to leave the station immediately. And as much as Caitlin wanted to be away from Commander Hathaway and the hypnotic power of Epsilon Andrii, she needed more answers. If the people on the station knew about the Dobhriathar, Caitlin had to understand how and why.
“You have an open mind, right?” Caitlin asked. “Because I need you to have an open mind.”
This just made Alena more skeptical. She cocked an eyebrow and sighed. “Just be quick about it. I don’t want to waste any more time here than we already have.”
“The star is doing something to the people aboard this station,” Caitlin replied.
Alena stared at her. “The star?”
“I know it sounds crazy, but...” Caitlin considered what she would say here. There really was only one way to get Alena to understand her. They had to go back through the forge, to the massive window out on the star. Once Alena saw that, once she realized that the star was trying to get in her head, just like it got in the heads of the entire crew of the Antigone, she would be just as curious. “Just give me fifteen minutes. I need to show you.”
“Why am I even listening to this?” Alena asked, but she didn’t refuse to go along with Caitlin as she turned around and headed for the forge.
Caitlin felt a lot safer with Alena at her side. She was a scientist—perhaps the most famous scientist in the galaxy. There had to be some explanation for the madness of the crew, the images and words Caitlin saw in her head when she stared at the star, and the almost inconceivable reference to the Dobhriathar. If anyone could figure out what was going on aboard the Antigone, it was Alena Heilmann.
While Caitlin saw several crew members on her way to the airlock, returning to the forge was a very different experience. The halls of the mining platform were suddenly very empty. The crew was gone.
“Where is everyone?” Alena asked as they approached the forge
“I have no idea. There
were people everywhere just a few minutes ago.”
Alena motioned towards the heavy metal door to the forge. “Do you think we can get in there on our own?” Caitlin just shrugged and approached the panel next to the door. The controls were unfamiliar to her. She couldn’t remember what Toni did to get inside. “Maybe we should turn back. This is all ridiculous anyway.”
Caitlin wasn’t ready to give up. She pressed the largest button on the panel and, when that didn’t do anything, started mashing her fingers against the rest. The light above the door went out. A machine near the back of the hall whirred to life. And then, to Caitlin’s relief, click! The door swung open.
The forge was now almost completely dark, illuminated only by the flickering of a view-screen. At first glance it looked empty, but as Caitlin gazed through the dim light she could make out several figures in burnt orange jumpsuits. They were standing several yards into the forge, facing away from the door and staring at the view-screen in the back.
Caitlin was quiet as she entered the forge. They people inside didn’t seem to know she was there and she wanted to keep it that way. But as she approached them, she couldn’t help but let out an audible gasp.
It wasn’t just a few members of the crew standing inside the forge. It was all of them. Dozens of men and women stood in front of the dim view-screen, completely still, watching the light from the star.
“What the hell is going on?” Alena exclaimed as soon as she saw the crowd of people. Caitlin turned and put a finger to her lips to silent her, but it was unnecessary. No one in the forge even flinched at the sound of her voice . “What are you all watching?”
Once Caitlin realized that either the Antigone crew couldn’t hear them or didn’t care, she tried to explain the situation to Alena. “This is what I was talking about,” she said, still keeping her voice down. “The star is responsible for this. And we need to figure out how and why.”
Alena circled around the crowd, and Caitlin followed right behind her. She approached the crew member nearest the back, a younger man with black hair, and examined him. He was perfectly still. His eyes were glassy and unblinking. His jaw hung slightly open.
Faster Than Light: Dobhriathar Page 6
