“Not as such. All I’ve brought up here is the time until we’re due to break out, accurate to a thousandth of a second. Obviously that’s not nearly accurate enough, but all I need to do is see it, you know? The nav system brings us out at the right time and place.”
Ellis frowned. “But the time you just put up is the real time?”
“According to the ship’s clock, yes. There’s a compound error that’s causing a disparity between the two countdowns. I can compensate at the moment, but the bigger it gets the harder it’ll be to keep on top of it. At this rate we could break out too early or too late, and that could be, well…” He pushed his glasses up. “Not good.”
“So what’s causing it?”
“I have no idea.” Deacon slid his seat back on its rails and stood up. “Sir, I’d like permission to head down to the control core. If there’s a fault, it’s more likely to be in one of the primary systems, given that none of the secondaries seem to have picked up on it.”
“Fine. Get down there and see if you can clear this up before we break out. I’d hate to have to dry-dock the ship right in the middle of all this.” He stepped back to let Deacon go past, then noticed Helen Sharpe, Apollo’s Third Officer, put her head through the aft hatch. Deacon stopped at the hatchway, and there was a swift conversation that involved Deacon pointing at the helm and Sharpe nodding a lot. Ellis couldn’t hear what they were saying, but he knew a situation update when he saw one. A moment later Deacon ducked out of sight, and Sharpe walked quickly onto the bridge and up to Ellis. “Third Officer reporting for duty, sir.”
“Deacon told you about the anomaly?”
“He did.”
“Good. Let me know if there’s any change in that glitch.” He went back to the command throne as she sat down, and dropped wearily into it. Meyers turned to give him a quizzical look, but he just shook his head at her, very slightly. There was no way he would go back to his quarters when there was a situation, even if it was just a data error.
He saw Meyers dip her head and speak briefly into her headset, then continue what she was doing. A few minutes later, one of the bridge techs brought him a mug of coffee.
Ellis didn’t normally like food or drink on the bridge, but in this case he was prepared to make an exception. The caffeine boost was extremely welcome — no substitute for a couple of hours sleep, of course, but in the circumstances it was the best he could hope for. After a few gulps of the stuff, he almost started to relax a little.
He should have known that was a mistake, letting his attention wander.
There was a sudden, urgent buzzing from the helm, followed instantly by a muttered curse from Sharpe. Ellis set the mug down on the deck and leaned towards her. “Status.”
“The glitch just jumped by a factor of ten,” she reported curtly, already working at the keyboard. “I’ve got something else… Hold on… Dammit!”
“What?”
“Power slide. Colonel, if I can’t get on top of this we could lose hyperdrive.”
Ellis keyed his headset. “Deacon, what’s the situation down there?”
There was no answer, just a rustle of static. “Deacon? Major Deacon, report immediately!”
This time there was a response, although not in words. It was faint, softer than the static; a sigh or whisper drawn out longer than any throat could sustain. There was a metallic, ghostly quality to it that made Ellis’ skin crawl. “What the hell?” he breathed.
After that, silence. Ellis gave up and switched channel. “Security, get a team to the control core. Locate Major Deacon immediately.”
“Colonel?” That was Sharpe, sounding something close to terrified. “I think I’m going to lose this.”
“Stay on it, Captain.”
“I’m not sure…” Her fingers were rattling off the keys, insect-quick. “It’s jumping, there doesn’t seem to be any pattern. If the error gets past a certain point the core —”
Apollo dropped out of hyperspace.
The breakout was unscheduled, uncontrolled, and sickeningly violent. Instead of the usual gentle lurch there was a massive impact, a twisting, as if the entire bridge had been hit off-center by something huge and impossibly fast. There was an awful noise, stunningly loud, a shriek of overstressed metal, and the ship seemed to drop away like an airliner in turbulence, the deck falling several meters before rebounding heavily back upwards. Ellis felt it come up and hit the soles of his boots, jarring his spine and almost sending him clear out of the command throne.
There was a second, grinding jolt, this time in a direction he couldn’t even name, and then it was over. The ship was still.
Ellis opened his eyes. He hadn’t been aware of shutting them, but now — after some frantic blinking to clear the sparks from his vision — he could see in just what a mess the impact had left the bridge.
The lights had dimmed to half-brightness, but something behind him was sparking, the fitful bursts of light making the whole scene even more chaotic. He saw Helen Sharpe getting up, steadying herself on the helm console — she must have been flung right out of her seat. Meyers had been sent in the same direction, but the edge of her console had gotten in her way. She was slumped over it, unmoving.
Groans and curses sounded from behind him, over the hateful spitting of whatever electrical failure was sparking back there. Ellis turned his head, wincing at the pain in his spine, and saw people getting up. There didn’t seem to be any serious injuries, but everyone had been hammered off their feet.
“That,” he grated, “was one bitch of a breakout.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” Sharpe replied, holding her head. She sat back down in her seat and slid it forwards. “The cumulative error got too much for the core to handle, and it shut down the hyperdrive.”
“Yeah, I know what happened.” He straightened himself up, rolled his head around a couple of times to free up his neck and shoulders, then got up to see to Meyers. “But it still shouldn’t have been that hard.”
“That was the error. Core gave us what it thought was a smooth exit, but it’s timing was already way off. Charlie foxtrot, sir.”
“You got that right.”
Meyers was coming around, grimacing. “Whatahell?” she slurred.
“Take it easy,” Ellis told her. “Wait until the medics get up here.”
“No time,” she groaned, and slumped back into her seat. “They’ll be busy. What happened to the lights?”
“Not sure. Can you run a sweep with this power?”
“Gimme a minute.”
“Outstanding.” He patted her shoulder, gently, then moved back across to Sharpe. “Anything?”
“Not much. Half the systems are down… Anything that requires fine-sensing is out, hopefully not for long, though. Auto-recalibration.”
“Looks like one of the generators is out, Colonel,” called one of the techs, already back at his board. Ellis glanced up and saw that the man had a track of dark crimson spilling down one side of his face. Scalp wound. “Capacitor banks three and five discharged, could have blown their breakers.”
“Shields are out, sir,” someone else told him. “Comms too.”
“Wonderful. Meyers, can you please give me some good news?”
She shook her head, and then winced and put her hand to it. “Ouch,” she hissed. “Note to self, no head-shaking. Okay, the bad news. I have no idea where we are. The stellar database is out.”
There was something in her voice that told him she wasn’t quite finished. “And?”
“And, I think…” She leaned closer to her board, squinted. “Oh crap,” she whispered.
“Don’t tell me. We’re not alone.”
“No sir.” She looked up at him, her face bleak. “I think it’s the Wraith.”
Chapter Five
Creator
“Chapman,” Sam Carter muttered to herself. “Russel Chapman.” Then she lashed out, hard, with her right foot.
The kick was perfect, a dhe dhad roundhouse that impacted the punch bag solidly at waist height. Had Chapman actually been the target of the blow he would have crumpled around it like a loose sack of grain.