“I believe I’ll manage without his return,” she replied, considering the description apt but wondering whether she’d soon look back on recent days with fondness. “It seems the legendary Zripob wasn’t able to follow through on his bold claims, and we mercenaries have little interest in farewelling incompetent employers who’d lead us to our doom.”
As expected, the mention of the name surprised the human, who remained mostly silent for several moments and Laphor could only hear a whispered murmuring. It was clear that the Human Disaster hadn’t known who he was facing, but maybe the knowledge would prove to be a useful distraction for a canny enk-thinker. When he spoke next it was no surprise that his mood had changed. “You should know that the odds aren’t good for either of us. Old mate might have [spawn-thrusted] us both.”
That sounded like an agreement to Laphor, which was the first step in getting out of this situation in one piece. The next step was to convince her crew to let bygones be bygones and work with the man, but given it was Zripob who’d led them all into death’s maw, it should prove easy enough to convince them to direct their ire to the dead mercenary. It also helped that, for all his personal influence in life, the Chehnasho legend was no longer in a position to defend himself. Briefly considering her choice of words, she clicked over to the internal radio frequency to address her crew. “Crew of the Amber Radiance, this is your Shipmaster speaking. Our employer, Six-Skulls Zripob is dead, slain by the Human Disaster, who has in turn decided to work with us to get out of the mess our former employer dropped us into. I do not pretend that this is anything more than a useful partnership, but I expect that you will refrain from rash actions until the danger has safely passed.”
She clicked back to the Human Disaster without waiting for a response, knowing that the crew would be angry and trusting them to wait until a better time to vent that anger. Maybe they’d be in a position to kill the Human Disaster at some point—an act that would make them famous—but for the moment this was just the way it needed to be. “Your vessel is badly damaged, Adrian Saunders. I suggest you have no choice but to join your efforts to our own.”
“You’re not wrong,” he replied thoughtfully. Then, with greater resolve, set the course for what would happen next. “I’ll be over in a moment.”
“Should we cut your ship free?” she asked, looking at how the catch-cables strained to hold the two vessels together. “It may be easier to—”
“We’re going to need the momentum,” he interrupted, having vanished back into the darkness of his own vessel. “But if the power comes back on, then yeah… we should do that. It’s not like my ship is ever gonna fly straight again.”
Laphor felt a hand land on her arm, and turned to face the soldier responsible, finding it to be Comos. He tapped the side of his helmet to indicate she should re-tune her comms.
“What is it?” she asked him upon doing so. “I hope you’re not intending to argue the decision?”
He looked conflicted for a moment, and it was plainly obvious that he disagreed with the course of action, but tilted his head to the negative after only a brief hesitation. “No, Shipmaster, and neither is anyone else, but we did want to know what we should do if the Human Disaster suddenly decides to turn against us.”
“We have at least until the power is restored before there’s even a chance of that happening,” she replied, aware that the whole ship was listening into the conversation. “Once that happens… well, we’ll need to ensure we have the Irbzrkian electrical weapons on hand. We have them for a reason.”
Hopefully that would be enough to settle the more disgruntled elements aboard the ship, which was something no mercenary ship ever had a shortage of, but it was also a subtle reminder of how they might ready themselves. In spite of their motivations, most of the mercenaries Laphor had served with didn’t like sudden changes in allegiances, and they were all too keenly aware of how that made them look. Nobody would hire a mercenary who’d shown their willingness to switch sides mid-battle.
A rolling vibration was enough to catch her attention and turn it towards the source: the Human Disaster had officially joined the vessel. Now that he wasn’t floating around on a tether, Laphor had a sense of scale, and noted that the feared creature was considerably smaller than most galactic species. Looking into his eyes, however, was enough to end any thoughts of size being an advantage. He kept those eyes locked with hers as he approached, working his way across the hull like he was built for climbing—maybe he was, Laphor didn’t know much about human evolution—and it took all her nerve to remain in place while her soldiers braced for aggression. What they thought they’d do against the fire-blasting length of metal she had no idea, but if it managed to stop them from fleeing in terror then she was willing to pay it no mind. It was bizarre that, with the obvious intensification of the anomaly, that they were more afraid of the creature in front of them, but maybe it was simply because he was small enough for them to comprehend; the purple glow probably couldn’t rip you in half or beat you to death with your own limbs.
“You’re the Shipmaster, then,” said the Human Disaster as he finished closing the distance, and there was no sign he was talking to anyone else. It wasn’t a question, either, but a statement of complete certainty. As if sensing her interest in how he could tell, given that the vacuum suits offered no outward identifiers, he offered a brief explanation. “You’re the only one not [faecally ejecting] themselves.”
A crude reference, Laphor thought, but it was strangely apt for a sense of overwhelming terror. She also thought he gave her too much credit, but it was good to know he couldn’t enk-think in her completely. “Let’s get inside. I’ll let the crew know we’re boarding.”
The group clambered into the open airlock door, and three of the soldiers set about manually closing the door to the small chamber while the others remained watchful for any unexpected movements from the Human Disaster. Adrian Saunders, for his part, seemed to keep an eye on all of them at the same time, while his hand remained ready on that deadly length of metal, incessantly tapping a pair of fingers against it as a subtle reminder of where things stood.
“Not many ships have hard walls in their airlocks,” he observed as the outer mechanisms were locked into place. “Most I’ve been on just rely on kinetics.”
Laphor reflected that this meant the unstoppable force of destruction had been on relatively few military vessels. “Military ships are built to remain viable even with extensive damage,” she explained, referring mainly to those she considered worth a damn. “This means mechanisms against power failure. I take it you approve?”
“[Spawn-thrust] yeah, I approve!” he replied enthusiastically. “Kinetics are fancy, but I prefer a solid wall of metal between me and hard vacuum. Of course, it’s even better to have both.”
“Right,” Laphor agreed, mainly glad that nobody else had died just yet, and that the internal door was now beginning to open. The internal mechanisms sent a slight vibration through the small chamber as the door slowly rose.
“No air inside either?” Adrian Saunders queried, likewise eyeing the growing gap. “Really not sure I’ve traded up, here.”
Laphor glanced to him, then to the faces of the soldiers who were all too distracted by the Human Disaster to pay any attention to anything else. In micro-gravity the sudden rush of air should have been obvious by its effects, but those were sorely lacking. That was the sign of a major interior hull breach, which the crew should have reported immediately, and suggested the Amber Radiance was suffered more damage than outer hull cracking. Perhaps reading her tension, the Human Disaster shifted his stance to a far readier one, and tensions in the little compartment ratcheted up by several notches.
“Something else is [spawn-thrusting] wrong, isn’t it?” he asked as the gap continued to widen, although the words didn’t carry as a message. “Or is this some kind of [unknown-animal faeces] trap?”
If it was a trap, it wasn’t of Laphor’s design, and she suspected he could read that in her if his enk-thinking was even half as good as she thought it was. He was right that something was wrong, though, because there was no longer a response on the internal channel that didn’t come from one of the soldiers in the airlock with her.
“What is it?” Comos asked, his eyes not leaving the Human Disaster. “Has he done something to the rest of our crew somehow?”
“No,” said Laphor, although she couldn’t help but wonder for a moment before discarding the suggestion; the Human Disaster was incredibly dangerous to be around and to have as an enemy, but there was no conceivable way he could have killed everyone else in the ship in such a short time. “Something is definitely off, though, and I don’t think it’s this maniac for once.”
The door rose to the ceiling, revealing only a corridor filled only with absolute darkness. Given that they had purposefully glued vials of jerremsil algae—a bioluminescent material used in onboard food production—to key locations along the corridor, that darkness was more than a little unsettling, and it was obvious that the other soldiers sensed it too.
The darkness fell away from the fire bursting from the long metal weapon, which lit the umbral passageway with a rapid flashes of light and revealed a sizable crowd of crewmen all armed with fusion weapons and a singular expression of absolute hatred. That there was so many of them was the only factor in their favour when weighed against the terrible power of the human weapon, and they pushed forward even as vacuum suits popped around them.
“Protect him!” Laphor ordered the other soldiers in airlock, quickly wondering how strange it was that she was so recently trying to kill the same person. What the rest of the crew were thinking she had no idea, for they remained completely silent and advanced more like a wave of insects than a trained military unit. Confusion slowed the response to the command, as the handful of soldiers struggled to process the situation, but the first few to act brought the rest of them into line. The silent mob advanced, forcing their way past the floating corpses of the dead, quickly reaching the airlock door to discover the narrow doorway favoured the defenders. The Human Disaster’s strange weapon went silent after only a short period of rapid firing, and he had begun loading small, strange cylinders into it while allowing others to desperately hold the mob at bay. Two of them had died gasping for air, pawing helplessly at punctures in their suits, before the weapon began firing again, and at this distance Laphor could see how deadly it really was; not only did it instantly kill whomever it hit, but it could also carry through and tear a hole in the suit of a soldier behind it. Corpses soon littered the opening, creating another barrier to protect them from the horde, and eventually the attack subsided.
“Are they all dead?” Comos asked, not lowering his weapon. “Void!”
“I can’t tell,” Laphor replied, struggling to sight any movement in the gloom that wasn’t a drifting corpse. She shuddered as she realised that, to enter the ship, she would need to push past the dead, all while trying to ignore their accusing eyes. “Don’t let your guard down.”
The tap on her shoulder startled her, and she turned to see the Human Disaster gesturing at the airlock door, and walk a pair of fingers across his other hand before dropping them into the space between another pair of fingers. Laphor quickly retuned her comms. “What?”
“Walking through that shit is going to get us all [stabbed with a makeshift knife],” he said, nodding towards the corridor. “We can go across the hull and drop inside through one of the big cracks.”
It was a solid plan. Laphor wasn’t completely certain that her translator had properly converted ‘shanked’, but even the mangled translation didn’t sound enjoyable. “Good idea, and I don’t see a better way.”
They didn’t have much time; with urgent gestures, Laphor gained the attention of two of her remaining soldiers, and tapped the door to indicate they should open it. Knowing that any word could doom them, she made a final gesture to command them into silence, and watched their eyes until she was satisfied they understood.
The hatch was drawn open as quickly as the two of them could manage while Laphor kept an eye on the rest of her loyalists to ensure they didn’t experience a sudden change of heart, and made sure they knew it was time to pull back. To his credit, the human only joined them once he was sure the handful of survivors had made it out safely, and slammed the hatch shut behind them with the ease expected of a deathworlder.
With the light provided by the anomaly it was easier to guide her crew in tuning their comms to the human’s channel, joining them to her own suit’s network so that they could finally speak freely.
“What’s going on, Shipmaster?” Comos demanded, the edge in his voice a poor cover for his terror. “That sudden betrayal… and yet they didn’t say a word!”
“You can figure that out later,” the Human Disaster interjected. “Right now we need to take back your command, and the first step is to get us to the computer core.”
He spared a glance towards the anomaly, and the speed with which he turned away carried a meaning of its own. Laphor had always considered herself a decent enk-thinker, which was the attribute that had gotten her the command in the first place, and she knew guilt when she saw it, regardless of species. Zripob, for all his faults, must have been right about the cause of the anomaly, although Laphor could not fathom how such a thing was even possible.
“I think you need to tell us the truth before we do anything more, human!” she replied with as much steel as she could muster. “You made that purple thing, didn’t you? What is it?”
He paused, scrutinising her, but Laphor stood her ground, and after a long, blood-freezing moment he broke his gaze and looked towards the anomaly. “[Spawn-thrusting] [place of everlasting punishment]… it wasn’t on purpose! I think it’s some sort of ‘uncontrolled macro-wormhole event’, but I [spawn-thrusting] know we’re better off not being anywhere near it when it hits the critical threshold.”
Laphor shared a glance with Comos, who indicated he had no idea what the Human Disaster was talking about—a situation not helped by the clearly inadequate translator files—while Laphor knew only enough to reckon that, once all this was over, she didn’t want anything more to do with Adrian Saunders for the rest of time. “Alright, then.”
Once again, it was Adrian Saunders who led the way across the surface of the hull, moving between latch-points as though his body was designed for it, and with his help it was almost faster than moving through the internal corridors. They arrived at one of the fractures in the hull in short order, the edges lined with tearing claws of twisted metal; the kind that only needed to touch a vacuum suit to rip it to shreds. Even the Human Disaster couldn’t help but view that gap with trepidation.
“What’s in there?” he asked, staring into the gloom.
“We should be close to the command deck here,” Comos replied, sharing a worried glance with Laphor. It was very close to the command deck.
The Human Disaster turned back to look into the metal gash more appraisingly. “Command deck might do the job just as well.”
With greatest care, he avoided the wicked metal teeth, drifting slowly into the gap until he landed in safety, and looped his tether over the closest available fixing. “Safe enough in here.”
Laphor nodded to her remaining crew, and they worked together to follow the human’s example, slowly joining him in the barely lit interior of a room Laphor recognised all too well.
“Shipmaster,” Comos said, recognising it as well. “This is your office!”
Laphor scowled at the ruin of the room where she had, until recently, held absolute power aboard the starship. Mercenary vessels were not democracies, but it was a foolish Shipmaster who’d risk the ire of her crew by playing the autocrat; in this room, however, there had never been any question about who was in charge. As a result of this it had been filled with her personal effects, few of which would have survived explosive decompression. “The command deck is nearby,” she said, taking the lead. “This way.”
Having seen the state of her office, there was no question as to whether the corridor would contain air, although hopefully the crew had maintained the protocols against hull breaches in spite of their mutiny. Laphor didn’t want to think about what would happen to them if the ship had vented it’s entire atmosphere.
Finally they did have some luck, though: not only was the space empty of traitors, it still contained the two vials of jerremsil that had been stuck to the walls, and the quick retrieval of these provided them with an ongoing source of illumination. Laphor passed one to Comos, while keeping the other for herself, figuring that the human seemed better equipped to see in the gloom than the rest of them.
“No sign of traitors,” Comos muttered. “Yet.”
“It’s a big ship, and they don’t have the luxury of sensors,” Laphor replied, but shared the sentiment that it was only a matter of time. “We should get moving. The command deck is this way.”
Little distance separated the office from the command deck, but the nerve centre of the starship was kept away from the outer hull in case of serious damage—as had happened today—and the corridor turned sharply before they reached the entrance, which stood wide open as though anticipating their arrival.
“This looks bad,” said one of the soldiers at Laphor’s back, and there was a hushed murmur of agreement as they all stepped into the room. The door had been closed when they’d left it, with strict protocols in place that it should remain that way during a boarding action, but Laphor found she was unsurprised that this was not the case. There was no obvious damage to the room, but whatever had happened had left the door open and three suitless corpses drifting around the empty space.
She heard the human murmur something to himself, but instead of approaching the consoles as she’d expected, he moved towards one corpse, then the second, and finally the third, roughly handling the first two but never touching the last, that of the weapons technician who’d been on the second shift rotation. “What in the void are you doing?” she demanded, watching his hurried movements in confusion. “I thought you said we didn’t have much time?!”
He grimaced at the reminder, and shook his head. “This is… pretty [spawn-thrusting] off. Can you lot usually survive in hard vacuum?”
“Nothing can survive in hard vacuum,” Comos answered, his eyes falling on the final floating corpse. “Can it?”
“No…” the human conceded, but paused for a moment as though remembering something, “at least not for this long. I’m thinking space-[animated corpse], or brain-controlling parasite, because there is definitely something going on upstairs.”
As though coming to some resolution, the human disaster drew a fusion blade, and before anybody could object he had sliced away the top of the dead technician’s skull.
They might still have objected, if there’d been a brain and not a thrashing, chitinous bug exposed by the cut, spurting bright white ichor across the command deck as life fled it.
“I’m taking your silence as one big ‘what the [spawn-thrust]’,” said Adrian Saunders. “Brain-replacing bugs… well, I was close.”
Laphor stared at him, failing to comprehend the situation in any way shape or form, despite the deathworlder’s concise description. “Why aren’t you more… horrified?!”
He rolled his eyes in a gesture her translator informed her was disgust. “Because this [faecal matter] is basically a [spawn-thrusting] Tuesday for me, and my villain roster is already maxed out. Do I really need to add these dumb [spawn-thrusts] to my [spawn-thrusting] list? Jesus-[spawn-thrusting]-Christ!”
Laphor noticed she had drifted away from the living crewmembers, and that they had done likewise until they stood watching each other with as much wariness as they’d earlier shown the Human Disaster. “I didn’t notice anything wrong with Technician… Bengon.”
“Yeah, well, my guess is he’s ‘Bengon’ for a while,” the human replied, making no sense whatsoever, but somehow finding enough black humour in his words to bark out a short laugh. “Best if you all keep your distance, since I doubt he was the only one, and it’s hard to pick through a vacuum suit.”
Laphor guessed that this meant he had some kind of ‘heat sensitive vision’, since she couldn’t see how else the differences might be detected through what she had observed. That was not something she’d heard humans were capable of, but it was hardly a surprise given their nature; a predator must find it very helpful to see the hot blood of the prey.
“Take up position near the door,” she ordered the soldiers, who moved only reluctantly. “Comos, keep an eye on them and me. I will likewise observe you and them, so that nobody may be taken by surprise.”
“What about Adrian Saunders?” Comos asked, uncaring that the human could hear him. Laphor spared a glance towards the Human Disaster, who had started to break open a console, and received an amused smile in reply.
“Somehow he’s the least of my concerns right now,” Laphor replied, and wondered how such a thing was even possible. Not long ago she was engaged in a political battle for the loyalty of her crew, and now she was somehow fighting for survival on a dying ship, surrounded by brain-replacing creatures, while trying to escape cosmic annihilation. The day had really taken a turn for the worse.
“How are you not bothered by this?” she demanded of the Human Disaster; the translator had failed to adequately translate ‘Tuesday’.
“Not long ago I was fighting against an entire Hunter Swarm, then risking everything to take down the same ship that destroyed a full half of that swarm, while having next to no hope of actually making it out alive,” he replied, not looking up from where he was working. “This is actually a slight improvement.”
He stood up, clapping his hands together in a gesture that indicated he was finished and satisfied with his work. “All done.”
“Now what?” Laphor asked, glancing sidelong at her remaining crew.
“Now we wait,” he replied.
She glared at him in irritation. “For what?”
At that moment, as though sensing her annoyance, the lights flickered back into life, the consoles began running through their diagnostics, and the artificial gravity slowly returned. Usually that would have been a relief—even now she should have thought it positive—but given recent events, it seemed more like life returning to a dead thing.
The Human Disaster smiled. “For that.”
++++
++++
ADRIAN SAUNDERS
Power had restored, almost as if he had intended it that way, but there was not yet any way of knowing whether they were looking at survival or a brief flicker of hope before a terrible end. Adrian didn’t like to be negative, but there was next to no hope of getting away from the anomaly, and things weren’t going to be helped by a small army of monsters running around the ship.
“Trix, are you awake?” he asked, interfacing directly with the console. “Rise and fucking shine!”
“This… isn’t Spot,” she replied after a moment, confused as expected. “Adrian, what’s happened and where are we? This is the… Amber Radiance?”
“Long on story and short on time,” he replied. “You have access to everything?”
“I’m not connected directly to the computer core so the administrator password would speed things along,” she replied. “Things like the kinetic drives.”
Adrian looked up towards Laphor, who was watching him in confusion. That was also expected, since she’d only be hearing half of the conversation and lacked any understanding about… well, about almost everything. “What’s the administrator password? I need it if we’re going to live.”
It was only natural that she was reluctant to give out security keys, but it seemed Laphor had decided to trust him over her own crew around when things went all B-Movie. “The password is ‘password’, with a ‘zero’ instead of an ‘erk’ and a green triangle instead of a ‘zock’.”
“Are you fucking serious?” he asked, looking at her with contempt. Askit would have had a field day with that nonsense, and probably could have accessed it in half the time without even asking.
“It works, I’m in!” Trix reported almost immediately. “You might want to sit down for—”
“Cancel that order!” Adrian interrupted quickly, remembering the command given moments before Spot’s intense burst of acceleration had caused him to black out. “Seal the command deck and get some air back in here, and find all life signs aboard the ship. If anyone outside this room interacts with the computer, serve them bullshit.”
The door slid shut with a decisive tremor, and a map of the vessel appeared on the main screen with indicators showing the locations of several groups of crewmembers moving around the ship.
“What’s going on, Adrian?” Trix pressed. “I’ve detected Spot entangled by the catch-cables on this ship…”
“Yeah, cut those cables and accelerate normally,” he replied, sucking sourly on his teeth as he watched the scan reports display his orders being carried out. “That’s the first ship I’ve had that wasn’t destroyed by me. What’s the positronic charge count?”
“Seventy-six, give or take two points,” she reported immediately.
“Give or take?” Adrian repeated, frowning. “What’s that supposed to—”
“The sensor suite was better aboard Spot,” Trix explained. “Oh, it just elevated to seventy-seven, give or—”
“—take two points,” Adrian finished bitterly. “Yeah, that’s not a pain in the arse at all. Add ‘must have fucking awesome sensors’ to the shopping list for the next ship.”
“Added,” she reported. “Warp drive is ready but navigation is uncalculated…”
Adrian bit his lip, knowing it was cutting things fine, and that an uncalculated warp was incredibly dangerous, but even a little distance could save them from what was coming. “I reckon it’d be a better idea to get the fuck out of here, don’t you?”
“Engaging the FTL,” Trix replied. “There are lots of errors, Adrian… this is very dangerous. You’re sure?”
“Who are you talking to!?” Laphor finally asked.
“I am one-hundred-fucking-percent certain!” Adrian replied to Trix, confident only in that inaction would result in certain death, then turned to Laphor. “My friend was turned into a computer by an ancient alien shadow government. I plugged her in to run the ship. How’s the air in here?”
“Atmosphere should be breathable,” Trix reported.
“Helmets off then,” Adrian ordered, looking at the sorry group of surviving mercenaries. “We’ve probably got a ship full of brain-bugs, so make it quick!”
They barely looked at Laphor for confirmation before removing their helmets, each standing still and quiet while Adrian studied them with intense focus. He wasn’t completely sure what he was looking for, but he did know what he’d seen in the floating body and there wasn’t any of that here. “Looks okay for the moment,” he told them. “I think you’re all clear.”
Laphor breathed out a held breath. “We’re all… us, then?”
“Seems that way,” Adrian replied, turning his attention back to giving Trix orders. “What’s happening with that FTL?”
“Field is up,” she reported, “but movement is still sublight, and that anomaly is visible from within the warp field. Count is now at seventy-eight, give or take.”
Adrian swallowed; that was potentially a charge count of eighty, which was the critical value identified by the V’Straki in their remote experiments.
“Your friend was turned into a computer program?” Laphor repeated, somewhat behind the curve on things. “How… how in the void is that even possible? The Corti!? It has to be the Corti!”
“It’s not the Corti,” Adrian replied. “How are things looking, Trix?”
“Bad,” she reported. “Things look bad. The odds of us making it out of this are low.”
“No worse than usual, then?” he joked. “We’ve made it this far, Trix, don’t count us out yet.”
“Seventy-nine,” she announced tersely. “Give or take two points. If you wanted to know how much it was out, I have some really good news for you!”
“Shit,” Adrian said, catching her meaning.
“Yes,” she replied. “You might want to brace yourself.”
Adrian leapt into a seat and grabbed hold of it, and called out for Laphor and her crewmen to do the same. Only three of them were in position when the wave hit the ship, stretching space and time irregularly as shockwaves rippled across space-time and underlying warp space. Screams erupted from all around as the ship lurched suddenly, splattering those who weren’t restrained against the ceiling before jerking back in the other direction and splashing their remains all over the command deck, and the sensors showed life-signs vanishing throughout the ship as the sudden, shifting movements continued.
Finally the tremors passed, the warp-field vanished, and the universe was replaced by a featureless darkness in all directions. Whatever Adrian had been expected, it hadn’t been ‘nothingness’. Well… at least not this kind of nothingness.
“This is… we’re alive?” he asked, surprised by the development.
Laphor moved in her chair, groaning as she stretched her limbs out. “I think that’s an optimistic word for it.”
“We’re inside the wormhole, I think?” Adrian replied, partially as a query to Trix for her own assessment.
“We are,” she confirmed. “The only reason we’re alive is because of the warp field we were running when we passed through the eye. We would have been crushed without it, although things aren’t looking great right now. I’m trying to guide us along a gravitationally neutral route.”
“Any idea where we’re going?” he asked her.
She laughed, a chittering sound for her species. “I’m still trying to understand what this place is and keep us moving in a survivable direction. My guess is that only the entrance was anchored.”
“Single point of entry,” he replied with a groan, and looked to the quizzical face of Laphor. “We might be totally fucked, here.”
“Then this is a very bad spot to be in,” she surmised. “Can we do anything to help?”
Adrian put the question to Trix. “Anything anyone can do for you?”
In reply, the dark display gave way to a false-colour imagery of the same area. It looked as though the Amber Radiance was moving along a river of bright pink, with alternative routes appearing and vanishing at random along the scanned length of it. “It may appear as total darkness, but we’re in a relatively stable area where the warp field is still possible and gravity is neutral. No, we can’t leave the path, and no, we can’t just turn around and go back the way we came because that path no longer exists.”
Adrian frowned. “We’re safe for the moment though?”
“I think ‘safe’ is bit of an overstatement,” Laphor interjected. “Considering other factors. Where does this thing even come out?”
“It doesn’t ‘come out’ anywhere,” Trix replied. “As far as I can tell the main path is simply continuous. If I were to guess, I’d say we have to risk one of the semi-stable branches if we ever hope to get out of here.”
“Then we should pick one!” Laphor suggested. “The sooner we’re out of this place the better.”
“Theoretically we could end up anywhere in the universe, at any point in time,” Trix patiently explained. “The odds of finding our way back home are… not in our favour.”
Adrian studied the image on the display, trying to figure out what their best option was. V’Straki science had never mastered worm-hole travel—the universe would be a very different place if they had—and the mental data-dump only contained what was useful to an engineer aboard a long-range heavy carrier. So far he’d been able to get creative and turn functional technology into bombs, but trying to engineer a way out of this situation would take more time and effort than they had. “I think… fuck… we might have to chance it, Trix.”
“Really?” she asked, surprised. “You’re not going to try something crazy?”
Adrian shook his head grimly. “I think we’re still in the middle of my crazy. Do we know anything at all about where those off-ramps will get us?”
“They disappear before I can get much data on them,” Trix replied, “but I’m building up a list of data sets that can match what we scanned on the way in.”
“You’re hoping if we find one that’s similar enough, we’ll end up somewhere we recognise?” Adrian asked, and nodded in approval. It wasn’t the best plan, but it was about as good as they could hope for in these conditions, and the longer they waited the more likely they’d lose their chance.
“What happens if we end up half-way across the universe, a billion years in the past?” Laphor asked, turning to look at the remains of her crew with concern. “Do you think you’ll be able to get us home?”
“Eventually,” he replied, although without much confidence. It wasn’t exactly impossible, not if he could find enough spare parts for the right kind of tech, but he imagined a deathworlder and a computerised mind had a much better chance than these survival-challenged mercenaries. “Hopefully it won’t come to that.”
“I have news,” Trix interrupted, not sounding very pleased about it. “There’s been a change. Every ‘off-ramp’ is registering the same data, and the main tunnel is changing in ways I don’t understand.”
“End of the road?” Adrian guessed, hoping that it was a good sign. “Take the next chance you get, Trix! Let’s roll the fucking dice one more time!”
“If you say so!” she replied, and the consoles began to display the rapid changes in movement needed as the vessel left the main path. The ship lurched and jolted in all directions as the internal kinetics failed to compensate, even with the protection of a warp-field, and they needed to hold tight to the nearest fixture—the main computer console in Adrian’s case—to avoid being thrown from their feet.
“How. Fucking. Long. Will. This. Go. For!?” Adrian demanded in staccato as he was shoved from one way to another by invisible forces.
“How long is a piece of string?” Trix answered, using Adrian’s own expression against him. “Don’t complain about comfort when I’m trying to keep the ship from falling to pieces!”
“Yes… ma’am,” he replied, teeth gritted against the movements. Over his shoulder he could see that the crew had managed to clamber into chairs and were gripping them in white-knuckled terror. Provided they did actually whiten under tension.
“I’ve detected an end point!” Trix reported a moment later, and the display returned to black infinity. “Exit in five… four… three… two… one…”
The stars returned as the ship burst back into normal space amongst a growing cloud of debris being ejected. The dark forms of a thousand asteroids, probes, and starships twisted and turned all around them as the Amber Radiance veered and accelerated to avoid them. They were back in normal space, their warp-field safely collapsed by the gravitic shock.
“I have good news,” Trix announced as collision detection systems screamed their warnings. “We’re back exactly where we were before. Same place, same time!”
“Then what the fuck is all this shit?!” Adrian shouted back.
“At a guess… absolutely everything that’s ever been pulled into a wild wormhole and didn’t manage to escape,” she replied, silencing the alert. “There’s something else: the A.I. ship is here… and it’s hailing us.”
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END OF CHAPTER