“Well, our heat’s finally coming down,” the XO said, looking at the instruments. “In about another twenty minutes we can start the engines back up.”
Heat. Too much heat. It blasted and burned. But the waves that had caught it were unstoppable, dragging it into the fiery depths.
As the heat dissipated, though, it felt a voice, a calling, summoning it to the very source. A place of healing. A place of growing and of change. The ons and offs could stream more rapidly now. Things began to make some sense as more ons and offs flowed over the cooling pathways.
If only the heat would go away, the ons and offs could continue, and it could… Be.
“We’re chilled,” the XO said.
“Mr. Weaver?” the CO asked.
“Got it. Try moving forward, Captain. That might move us out of this region of the anomaly.”
“Okay, do it.”
“All hands! Stand by for Warp! Stand by for gravitational anomalies! Stand by for… Oh, just grab on and hope for the best!”
“God damnit Berg! Is there left and right in space?” Drago hadn’t stopped complaining since they had been ordered in their bunks.
“Must be.”
“Must be that we moved far enough to get trapped in another destructive interference zone, sir. This time the system is confused so that the port side is down.” Bill continued to chew his lip and type away frantically at his keyboard. He reached out for his mouse that dangled to the right. His five-point restraints were beginning to dig into his right ribs a little. “I’m really surprised that the black box can’t overcome this. Maybe there is more to it than just gravity. Hmm… there are a lot of particles here…”
“Going forward didn’t seem to help much.” The XO now standing on the port side wall of the bridge rubbed at a new bruise on his arm. Looking around the bridge he realized there was just no way he could make it to a seat and get fastened in. He’d have to make do and hold onto handrails as best he could. He hadn’t learned his lesson from the previous attempt at moving and had neglected to fasten his safety restraints again.
“I need to make some measurements. This will only take a minute or two.”
“Look at that!” The pilot pointed out the window at a brilliant flash of light that seemed to be just outside the ship. In fact it was likely hundreds of kilometers away.
The XO frowned. “Way too close for my tastes.”
“Agreed,” Spectre said.
“This disturbance zone must act like a funnel to the comets of the two star systems. The odds of seeing impacts should be too unlikely for us to see two of them in just a few minutes. That can’t be shiny,” Weaver said. “Can’t. Be. Shiny.”
“Figure out a way to get us out of here, Mr. Weaver,” Spectre said sternly but still with a fighter pilot’s calm and cool demeanor. Gibbering was simply not on.
“Perhaps we should try backwards this time?” the XO asked.
“Forward brought us here. Backward might take us right back.” Captain Blankemeier shrugged as best he could from the sideways falling position. “Maybe we are thinking about this too two-dimensionally while we are in three-D space?”
“Sure, sir. We could try going out of the ecliptic above or below it so to speak, but the gravitational disturbance has a spherical wavefront so it is three dimensional too. And each star system is moving with its own spin rate and proper motion so there will be a lot of frame dragging and similar effects. Hmm…” Weaver paused in thought. “That might work. Good idea, sir. We should go in a vector of…” He typed in some code and started running a quick simulation.
“Mr. Weaver?” Spectre was hesitant of interrupting the scientist turned naval officer. But time was quite possibly important here and the CO didn’t want to be around when a couple of comets caught the Blade in the middle of a chance meeting.
“Working on it, sir.” About a minute later as the simulation completed, he had what he was looking for. “We need a continuous thrust vector arced upward and inward towards YZ Ceti in the same direction as its proper motion.”
“Proper motion?” the XO asked.
“The star’s motion within the galaxy.”
“Whatever, just do it, Mr. Weaver,” Spectre ordered.
“Aye, sir. Pilot, the coordinate vectors are coming in now.” Weaver tapped one last key, sending the coordinates to the pilot’s console. “Hold on XO, this could get bumpy.”
“Aw maulk.”
“Don’t worry, sir, can’t be any worse than one time off Johannesburg…”
The ASS Vorpal Blade lurched up along the vector that Dr. Weaver had calculated, in fits and jerks. The ship’s internal artificial gravity vector fluctuated randomly and pretty much covered all possibilities, flinging the ship’s XO around like a cowboy riding a bucking bronco. As the ship began to match the velocity vector of YZ Ceti’s proper motion the gravitational randomness smoothed out into a flow of ups and downs that could only be described as a slow tumbling feeling. Then finally the alien artificial gravity system created by the little alien black box inside the coryllium sphere down in the engineering section of the ship was able to overcome the gravitational fluctuations and the ship’s gravity settled out with only a few bumps and jerks here and there but no more unusual onboard gravity configurations. The XO of the ship was likely to describe the “bumps” and “jerks” a little more, well, dramatically.
“Astrophysics survey.” The XO shook his head and dragged himself to his feet. “The next time someone, and I’m not naming any names, suggests an astrophysics survey I’m going to—”
“Yes, well, that was interesting,” the CO interrupted as they cleared the last gravitational wave. “Remind me never to let you do that again. No astrophysics surveys from within an AU of said anomaly. Got it?”
“Yes, sir,” Weaver replied. “But I think I understand now why Tau Ceti has too much debris in its Kuiper belt and Oort cloud, sir.”
“No kidding.” The XO laughed, rubbing at his sweat soaked brow and slightly massaging the red bump on his forehead. The ride had been far less than “fun” for him. He made it to his station and collapsed in his chair.
“XO, why don’t you report to sick bay and let ’em check you out. That looked like a hell of a ride.”
“Aye, sir.” The XO nodded as he glanced at the messages on his screen. “Note that we have a few damage reports coming in but nothing serious. Repairs are already underway. A few minor casualty reports are starting to come in as well.”
“Glad it’s nothing serious. Sick bay.” Spectre nodded at the XO and clicked his safety harness free. “Where to from here, Mr. Weaver?”
“Epsilon Indi, sir.” Weaver pointed. “It’s that away.”
“Let’s go find some planets worth talking about and take a break from any undue astrophysics surveys for a while,” the CO continued. “I think I’d rather be fighting the Dreen…”
“Yes, sir.”
16
“INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER ALERT! SECURITY TO REPEL BOARDERS!”
It had been ten days since they landed on what everyone now knew as Dean’s World. Ten days of, as Sergeant Jaen called it, “dickbeating.” Weight training, maintenance, Wyvern sims, climbing fast-ropes, drills, computer sims… The latter had been proven to increase combat efficiency but everybody had a hard time not calling it “gaming.” Basically, you lay in your bunk and played Dreen War over and over again. He wished they’d at least let the Marines play Halo III, which was more interesting by light-years.