The Void (25 page)

Jack breathed deep and exhaled slowly. Finally, blessedly, he was alone. But somewhere, in the deepest recesses of his mind, he knew that was a lie. The shadows were there to keep him company.

Chapter 20

“Alright,” Aidan said, as he rushed out of the bridge, Rebecca on his heels, “I think the time for secrets is over, don't you?”

“Aidan . . .”

She followed close behind, though she had to jog to keep up. She held the map of the ship in her hand, but Aidan didn't seem to need it. He rushed ahead, not paying attention, turning down what she would have thought were random corridors, but each one was the right decision, leading her down the path her map dictated, as if he knew the way.

“No,” he said, turning on her. He didn't really trust her, not after everything that had happened. But he needed to hear something from her, even if it provided only a glimmer of the truth. “Don't Aidan me. You saw what happened here. I don't think I have to explain. Nothing about this ship makes sense. Captain Gravely's father? Last time I checked, he was killed in action a decade ago. So why was he walking around on this ship?”

“Aidan, I don't know what you want me to say.”

“Yeah, usually when people say that, they know exactly what to say,” he said, turning away from her. “You know,” he said, “in the old days, when you found a ship adrift on the seas, the sailors would claim it was cursed. That whatever bad luck had befallen the ship would follow anyone who tried to take it for themselves.” He looked back over his shoulder at Rebecca. “You believe any of that?”

“Maybe some of it.”

Aidan turned and walked back to where Rebecca still stood and put his hands on her shoulders. “Tell me what happened here, Rebecca. Why is everything obsolete? Why is the captain's last log entry from a decade ago? I know you know. Just tell me. Don't you think it's time?”

Rebecca looked up at Aidan. “Why not,” she thought. Why not?

“You don't speak of this to Jack. Or anyone else either. Not unless it is absolutely necessary. Do you understand?”

Aidan nodded. “Of course.”

She fixed him with her eyes for another second, hoping to seal that promise. But she knew that there was no need. “I’m only telling you this because I think it will help us finish what we need to do here. Anyway, it should be obvious by now,” she said. “Honestly, you shouldn't need much explanation.”

“I'd like to hear it from you anyway.”

“Officially,” she began, now walking ahead of Aidan as they talked, “Captain Alexander Gravely and his crew of seven men and women were killed in an accident, tragic and unexpected, of course, involving a core breach that occurred while the ship was in warp.”

“No debris left behind, no evidence.”

“Exactly.”

“The perfect cover.”

“You have to understand, Captain Gravely wasn't the sort of man who could just disappear.”

“I know,” Aidan said, “I remember when it happened.”

“That's why he was on this ship. We needed a man like him, an experienced and respected commander. What we were trying was extraordinary. An entirely new form of travel.”

“What's wrong with the old way?”

Rebecca stopped walking. She turned to Aidan, “You know the answer to that.”

“The dreams.”

She nodded. They were walking again, through the darkness that should frighten them. But familiarity breeds contempt and so they ignored it, almost sauntering along, no longer hearing the whispers that grew louder at the mention of the dreams.  

“Yes, always the dreams. Here's the real truth, Aidan,” she said, stopping in front of the door that lead to the engine room. “The one that could get me in a lot of trouble if it ever got out. The dreams are much worse than you've been lead to believe.”

“What does that mean?” Aidan asked. He had lived the dreams for a decade. He knew exactly how bad they could be.

“Their effects, I should say. The official position of the Spacing Guild is that less than one hundredth of one percent of sailors will experience Braddock's Syndrome, sleep-madness. One in ten thousand. You tell me, Aidan, in your experience, does that sound right to you?”

Aidan frowned. It did not. He had known too many men who had lost it, seen too many pairs of insane eyes, heard too many mad shouts, given his condolences to too many widows—widows in mind, if not in body. “No,” he said softly. “It doesn’t.”

“That's because it's a lie. The number is a hundred times higher than that, worse even. Current estimates are closer to one in seventy-five.”

Aidan gasped. “God in Heaven.” He had believed it to be higher, but not that high.

“And it creeps up every year. The testing for the Navy? When I took the tests, the standard was much harsher than it is now. The fact is, if they bounced everyone that falls within our most recent parameters for Braddock's, we wouldn't be able to staff the fleet. It's particularly bad among the merchant guild. The number of ships that are lost every year in hyperspace is staggering.”

“And the Guild needed an answer.”

“The whole government did. And this was ten years ago, remember? Things have only gotten worse.”

“And you've been covering this up for that long?”

Rebecca shook her head. “What was the alternative?” she asked, throwing up her hands. “The whole system depends on deep-space commerce. End the warp system? Close the warp channels? Then all of these worlds become tiny little outposts. God, half of them can't even support themselves. Not without the trade. No, if the data got out there would be a panic.

“It was bad enough with the Guilds. They don't believe the official numbers anyway. Why do you think the freight rates have skyrocketed the last decade?” Rebecca rubbed her hands through her hair and she felt the pressure of the mission on her again, the responsibility that had led her to deceive Aidan in the first place. “You can see why this ship is so important. Things are getting critical, Aidan. If it gets much worse, I don't know how much longer the system can take the strain.”

“So that's what they were doing these past ten years? This ship? Conducting experiments? Looking for some new technology?”

“No, no,” Rebecca said. She almost laughed, not that any of this was funny. “Nothing like that. I wish that were true. The
Singularity
wasn't researching anything. The
Singularity
is a test ship. She carries a new drive, a new design. One specifically built to handle the stresses of high gravitation.”

“High gravitation?”

Rebecca nodded. “The
Singularity
bears her name for a reason. As long as we've known about the black holes, there's been a theory. The singularity in a black hole is a myth, a fiction. It doesn't really exist. It can't exist.

“It is the ultimate flaw in our mathematics. The singularity is like dividing by zero—it can't be done. There must be something else there. Some people have speculated that what goes into a black hole must come out somewhere. Our theory is that every black hole has a sister, a twin. And that if you map these twins, you can find pathways through the stars.”

“Wormholes?” Aidan asked.

“Something akin to them, yes.”

“But that's absurd. Even if the theory was right, nothing can go into a black hole and come out of it.”

Rebecca smiled. She held up both hands, gesturing to the walls around them.

“Wait,” Aidan said, “you mean this ship . . .”

“Yes, this ship.”

“But how?”

“The key was,” Rebecca said, “to change the way we thought about the gravity wells. You're right; whatever goes in is destroyed. There's no construction technique that can survive the black hole. But we could do some things to lessen their effect. We made it elongated, like an arrow.

“The gravitational forces of the black hole tend to stretch objects as they enter. The shape helps mitigate that. Liberal use of tempered glass. Solid, but able to flow, expand somewhat amidst the heat and gravitation. But those were merely design choices to soften the blow, as it were. They were not the key. The key was to combine warp technology with the black hole.”

“What good would that do?” Aidan asked. “Wasn't warp the problem in the first place?”

“Warp yes, but there are two phases to the warp process. First, creation of the warp bubble,” she said, holding out the palm of her hand and demonstrating with the other. “To separate the ship, to move it between realities—our reality and the other. Then, when the warp drive engages, the jump begins.

“That's when the dreams start. The
Singularity
was designed to do something different. To engage the bubble, yes. But then, rather than engaging the warp drive, to use the standard engines to move it through space. Specifically, into a black hole. The gravitational effects are minimal. The warp bubble protects the ship, and the ship is able to travel, through regular space, into the heart of the black hole.”

“So that's what they did.”

“Yes, it is. On June 17, 2159, the
Singularity
warped from Earth space and arrived at Sigma-1, the nearest black hole.”

“But wait, why warp at all?”

“We still have to get to the black holes. It's a limited solution. Some warping will always be necessary. But we could dramatically cut down on its use with this technology, hopefully enough to eliminate its ill effects altogether. At least that's the hope. In any event, on June 18, 2159, the
Singularity
engaged her warp bubble and passed beyond the event horizon of Sigma-1. That was the last anyone ever heard of her.”

“She disappeared?”

“Completely. We expected to lose communication once she went beyond the event horizon. But all of our projections, our calculations, our theories, pointed to her arriving here, at this spot, just beyond Anubis, the farthest colony at the time. It was the perfect location. This was deserted space. No trade ships, no warp traffic, no danger of espionage or accidental witnesses.

“Unfortunately, the science vessels waiting here for her to reappear did so in vain. She never returned. You can imagine what happened next. Scouring every known black hole. Accusations and recriminations. Assumptions that our calculations were wrong, followed by a belief that the test had merely failed. The ship had gone in and been destroyed. The story was put out that Captain Gravely, and his crew, were lost in an accident.”

“So they found nothing?” Aidan asked.

“Nothing, until a week ago. Listening satellites circling Anubis detected a ship in normal space where no ship should be. High resolution scans returned images of a vessel, one matching the general specifications of the
Singularity.

“I was given the task of making contact with the
Singularity
, establishing the whereabouts of the crew. Salvaging her if possible. But collecting the data gathered by the crew was our number one priority. Jack Crawford was tasked with assisting me. It is a testament to the seriousness of this mission that he was chosen. His reputation precedes him.”

“But wait,” Aidan said, “what happened these last ten years?”

“You already know,” she said. “I mean, there's only one answer, right? Judging by what we found so far, I would say that the
Singularity
went in to the black hole ten years ago. For those on the ship, ten years passed”—Rebecca snapped her fingers—“in the blink of an eye. They arrived here. The captain went crazy. Murdered the crew. A week passed, and we found them.”

“But how could a ship lose ten years?”

“The truth is, we know so little, so very little, about these things. All we know for sure now is it seems that the ship came through relatively unchanged. No worse for the wear.”

“Are you so sure?” Aidan asked.

Rebecca hesitated. “What do you mean?”

“Nothing. It's just . . . the air feels different here, if that makes any sense.”

She smiled. “After all we've been through, I can see why you would say that. But no ,Aidan, the worst for this ship has passed.”

Rebecca inserted the portable battery into the terminal and opened the door to the engine room. She and Aidan stepped inside. As their lights illuminated the room within, Rebecca gasped. Aidan's initial thought had been that the engine was unlike any he had ever seen and he was glad Rebecca was with him.

Without her, he would have had no hope of fixing it. But when he saw what had startled her so, he knew that it probably didn't matter who they had with them. The ship wasn't going anywhere.

“What happened here?” Rebecca whispered.

The computer consoles were smashed, along with the lower half of the engine itself. Bits of silicone and computer chips were scattered about the floor, broken into a thousand pieces. The culprit sat discarded at the bottom of one of the terminals—a bright red ax.

“Look,” Aidan said, pointing. “Fire control.”

It had amused him, on occasion, that ships still carried them. The bright red axes from a time long ago, labeled as part of the fire-control equipment of the ship. Though if the automated flame suppressant systems failed, what purpose could an ax really serve? In truth, he had never known them used for good. For murder and mayhem, though? They were the perfect choice.

“I have to talk to Jack about this. I knew we had some problems, but nothing like this.”

“I don't know if this is salvageable, Rebecca.”

“Look, you stay here. See what you can do.”

“I don't know how to fix a machine like this!”

“Don't worry about fixing the machine,” Rebecca said, “but if you can at least get the computers online, that would help.”

Aidan started to protest, but she held up a hand. “Aidan, please, just do this for me, okay?”

He suddenly was angry, but only with himself. He had no resolve when it came to her and he hated it. “Alright,” he relented.

“Be back soon.” Rebecca reached up and kissed him quickly on the lips. “I promise.”

As the door closed behind her, Aidan looked up at the broken monstrosity before him. The room suddenly grew darker, as rooms and corridors seemingly had at regular intervals the entire time they had been on the ship.