PART ONE
CHAPTER ONE
The Trafalgar
Beyond the Oort Cloud: April 1, 2185
Captain Simone ran his fingers through his peppered gray hair, ignoring what was about to happen to him and focused on preparations. This would be their eighth and final Short Fold, moving them within striking distance of Proxima B. If the jump didn’t kill them, they would be the first humans to visit another star system. He had a hard time wrapping his mind around that fact. However, the jump posed his immediate problem.
When your ship drops out of the Fold, it feels like someone smacked your gut with a sledgehammer. Your eyes track nothing, and your hands twitch like gloves filled with static, stubborn and slow to answer your command. Most people vomit from the disorientation caused by traversing the quantum gateway. The trick was not to asphyxiate in your own puke while your senses ricocheted around your skull like particles in a malfunctioning collider.
His craft, the Trafalgar, named after a twentieth-century British nuclear-powered submarine, had been the first spaceship to jump over two consecutive Short Folds. One light year didn’t seem like a long way in the galaxy’s scheme of things, but when you thought of it as 5.8 trillion miles, that gave room for pause. Now they were nearly four light years from home and about to go further.
The team of engineers huddled around the hologram station, studying the schematics for the Quantum Lattice Array. It comprised trillions of nodes used to build a stable potential field between their current location and the target destination, allowing the system to pull those two points together.
Big Tex, his integrated AI Assistant, addressed his mind, easy to do when they’d surgically installed a thin-membraned computer on top of his brain. His scalp itched for months after the procedure, getting used to it absorbing electricity from his body.
“So far, so good, skipper,” BT said. “We see minimal random fluctuations in the gravity propagation metric, but these appear to have dissipated within normal parameters.”
Simone relied on the AIA to double-check everything said to him. Because of its required top security clearance, no one on the ship knew he even had an AIA except for the XO, Tracey Long. The woman knew him too damn well for him to hide it from her. She’d figured it out and confronted him.
Big Tex had a quirky sense of humor, calling him ‘skipper’ after a character in an ancient TV show where a boat got stranded on an island after a three-hour cruise. Now, no matter what he did, Simone couldn’t get the damn thing to call him by his official title.
Simone watched his chief executive officer work, enjoying the view of a body honed by decades of zero-G drills and hard duty. Fine lines at the corners of her eyes and the silver in her hair hinted at a life that had tested her and never once found her lacking. Not bad for being almost fifty, he thought. “XO, what’s the verdict?” he asked.
Tracey didn’t look away from the 3D schematics. “Target point locked, Captain…” She stopped mid-sentence, staring at him; he saw the flicker of concern in her eyes, the same look she had given him before every dangerous jump they had survived together. “Fold Generator primed. Try not to break anything this time.”
Simone tipped two fingers from his temple in a half-salute that was more habit than regulation. “Duly noted.”
I thought I said we were ready, Skipper.
Simone scratched his white goatee, ignoring the AIA, something he’d gotten used to doing when it became a smart ass. He’d explained on more than one occasion that captains questioned their crew to make sure they knew what they were doing, and that included him.
But sometimes you just have to change course a little to liven things up, Simone thought. “Are the ZPE nodes fully charged?”
Tracey’s obvious irritation showed in her furrowed brows. Her short hair fanned around her in the zero G while the rest of her body held rigid, every word clipped. “The AI babysits the generator; it won’t even twitch if power drops. . .” She stopped mid-sentence, staring at him. He could tell she’d spotted his smile. “You have shitty timing for your jokes, Captain.”
Their Chief Engineer, Ben Agapov, looked at his counterpart and spouse, Science Officer, Katya Agapov, and then at him. Simone gave them both a conspiratorial wink. “Computer, open a ship-wide comm.” He waited a moment. “This is the captain. Prepare for transit.”
—
The upcoming Short Burst covered 2.8 trillion miles, a distance which should have taken a lifetime collapsing into a heartbeat. The dimensional jump slammed him through space, a door between stars wrenching open and shut in the same breath. One instant he gripped Sol’s fading pull and the next a point a half-light year away seized him, every system and nerve scrambling to catch up to the brutal, impossible lurch. The key to success was in the preparation for said jump.
Trepidation filled his heart with dread of the unknown. The movies make it look so easy, but what do they know? Without the vast array of quantum computing power at the core of their centralized frame, they’d never be able to make a jump so complex. Due to the extreme distance, scans could only produce so much data about your Fold Point. You never knew what shape the other side would take when you dropped into it, and that bothered him.
“XO?” He waited for her standard reply, meaning everything was set.
“Let’s kick the door down and see what’s on the other side,” she replied.
I concur, came from Big Tex. Captain Simone looked around the command center one last time before giving the order. “Very well. Let’s go say hello to Proxima B.”
—
Simone lowered his head, blinking, fighting the nausea threatening to overwhelm him. His mind tingled in numb acquiescence to the dimensional rift tearing through his skull. He struggled to put two thoughts together. Instead of passing in a couple of seconds like previous jumps, time seemed to be drawn out, stressing his body to the max.
“You shouldn’t be here,” echoed in his head, distorted and grainy, as though it leaked through a torn layer of reality rather than a speaker.
The fiery pain coursing through him, peeling away in jagged layers, dissipated enough for him to open his eyes. Stars raced by on the viewscreen in a blur, as if they were traveling vast distances in space. As they slowed, a wizened old woman stood before him. At least, that’s what he thought. She had a dark blue appearance and a thick muzzle, like a cat. Her red eyes glowed with an evil glare. Hooded, he could tell nothing else about her.
She said a second time, “You shouldn’t be here.”
He couldn’t disagree with her. This never happened on any of the other jumps. “Who are you?”
“High priestess Mystrid. Shaper of Ways. You must stay away. It is not what you expect. Your world will become as ours if you do not stop this folly.”
“You’re from Proxima B.”
Mystrid gave a grim, lilting laugh. “No. I am from a place you cannot imagine, nor do you want to know.”
“Where am I then?” he asked.
“Where you shouldn’t be.”
CHAPTER TWO
The RIP Ride
Proxima Centauri System: April 1, 2185
Simone vomited bile. A thought slammed into his fogged mind. Who was that? His mind shifted to the vibrations shuddering through the hull, the kind of deep, grinding shake that made him fear the Trafalgar might tear apart at the seams. Sirens wailed in his ears while lights flashed from several command stations.
Slumped in his chair against the restraints, he pushed back into a sitting position and stared through the forward viewport at a logic-defying scene that refused to resolve into anything his mind recognized. Space itself appeared to ripple and distort. Stars bent and smeared into luminous arcs, as if painted on a warped canvas. The anomaly looked like a black, jagged tear in the fabric of reality.
BT, what the hell is going on?
Welcome back to the land of the living, Skipper. I’ve had quite a time getting you to wake up using multiple internal methods. Shall I detail those for you?
Status now, damn it!
Still in the Alpha Centauri system, but the anomaly formed at our Fold emergence point. Gravitational shear is spiking. We don’t have much longer until it crushes the hull.
The captain looked around, stunned. He said out loud to BT, “Recommendations?”
“Who’re you talking to, Captain?” Science Officer Katya Agapov asked as she sat back at her station. A bloody welt striped the side of her face.
Should have kept that to yourself, Skipper.
“You!” Simone barked. “We’re in the graviton event field!”
“Structural integrity at sixty percent and falling,” the XO announced from his left. “Ben, check the shields.”
Relief washed over Simone at the sound of his XO’s voice, steady and precise even over screaming alarms. She rode the lurching deck, already snapping out orders. The knot in his chest loosened. If Tracey still sounded like that, they had a chance.
The deck heaved under them. Gravity surged, snapping their heads back and forth even with the inertial dampeners. The hull groaned a deep, metallic wail as spacetime shear forces hammered the ship. On the main display, a section of the port-side engine array tore free, vanishing into the anomaly with a silent flash.
Katya yelled, “We need to re-engage the quantum bubble to max so we can snap-jump. Now!”
“Negative! The core’s destabilized,” Ben Agapov countered from the engineering station. “Bubble collapse imminent!”
Skipper, we need to deploy the quantum field dampeners before the tidal forces generate enough lethal spaghettification to pulverize the ship.
“XO, activate the QFD,” Simone ordered. “That should buy us time.”
“On it!”
Not going to be enough, Big Tex whispered in his mind.
“Engineering!” Simone yelled through the comms. “Reroute all available power to the inertial dampeners and hull fields.”
The anomaly’s gravitational waves battered the Trafalgar. Each pulse tore into the ship’s exterior. Simone gripped the armrest. Vibrations from the tortured armored skin buzzed up through his bones. He hated asking the AIA, but time was of the essence. It didn’t help that his mind felt like scrambled eggs. BT, it’s crushing us. Give me something to work with.
Gravitational waves are hitting at irregular intervals but with measurable peaks. The collapsing bubble amplifies the crest impact and weakens the trough.
Simone grasped onto that thought — a graviton surge, hell more like a tsunami. But if we match the ship’s drive output to the anomaly’s rhythm, maybe, just maybe. . .
“We don’t punch through,” he said. “We ride it. Helm, on my mark, pulse the maneuvering thrusters to sync with the next wave crest. Let’s see if we can time it to avoid the worst of the graviton.”
Graviton incoming. Now, skipper.
“Helm, fire!”
The ship shuddered as another wave smashed into the port side. Alarms echoed in the command center. The ship’s AI warned. “Hull failure on decks fourteen and fifteen.”
We missed.
No shit. “Helm, stand by.”
Now, skipper!
“Again!”
The Trafalgar lurched, fighting to ride the crest of the graviton wave like a leaf on a storm surge. More sections of the outer hull peeled away, torn loose by the anomaly’s tidal grip. Sparks and debris spiraled into the void. But the ship held. It bucked and groaned, but with each synchronized burst, she gained momentum, inching away from the anomaly’s core. The anomaly’s black heart hung at the center of the forward display, light bending around the oily shadow. Distant stars magnified, duplicated, or twisted into impossible shapes. Some appeared as rings or crescents, while others seemed to spiral inward, vanishing into the anomaly’s core.
We won’t survive another miss, Skipper.
You think?
Fire! BT screamed in his head.
“Again!” Simone ordered.
The next wave surged, promising to be the last. Helm fired the thrusters in perfect harmony with the anomaly’s rhythm. The ship shot forward, breaking free of the irregularity’s death grip. A second later, the stars exploded into their proper places, and the hull groaning faded to nothing. The crew sat at their stations, stunned.
Well, I wouldn’t have bet on that.
Never count us out, BT. Simone wiped the sweat from his forehead. Now for the hard part. “Damage report.”
The XO glanced up from her station with a forlorn look on her face. “We lost the port engine array and half the outer hull, Captain. But we’re clear.”
“How, how many?”
“Most of those sections housed crew chambers,” Ben said.
“Computer, count personnel tags. How many are on the ship?” he asked.
“There are 80 people aboard the Trafalgar.”
“Only 80?” Katya echoed, surprise in her voice.
Silence fell across the bridge. Simone’s eyes moved from station to station, counting lit panels, occupied chairs, the places where no one answered. Training told him to prioritize systems, to think of checklists and repair trees. Instead, the number 80 lodged in his mind like shrapnel. The number hit harder than the anomaly. Simone took a deep breath to steady himself until the computer said, “Of those, only 60 are alive.”
Simone lowered his head. “I can’t believe I lost so many.”
The XO put a hand on his shoulder. “You saved the ship from certain destruction. None of us would be here without you.”
Or me, the AIA added.
Not now, BT.
Outside, the anomaly shrank behind them, a cosmic wound, still hungry, but denied its overall prize. Not a comforting thought to the captain. The Centauri solar system didn’t appear on the forward screen like he would have expected. We’re lost.
Skipper, looks like the anomaly threw us a hair over 10,000,000 miles away from the Alpha Centauri system.
What part of ‘not now’ didn’t you understand, BT?
Sorry, then I guess I shouldn’t tell you that with the port-side engine gone, it will take us a year to get back there.
Simone gave the override signal. Computer, deactivate the AIA for one hour.
But, Skipper . . .
Click.