The ship shuddered. A groan. Metal cries with the ache of impending doom. A new alarm, pulsing, a heartbeat desperate to live yet fighting for the will to pulse one more time. The floor lurches and rolls. The hiss of escaping air almost silenced by the snapping of emergency air locks.
“That can’t be good,” I whisper.
A desperate cry erupts from Jenny. “There!”
I spin to see where she’s pointing. A Soul Core hangs half out of the wall, its delicate transport cage pinned by the half-closed iris, desperate to keep the air inside our compartment. The deep crimson sphere that could only be Frank MacGregor, millimeters from being sliced in half by the system, fighting to keep us alive.
My feet move without thought, propelling me up, a lifetime of Olympic training, mountaineering, and more recent novice parkour training, lifting me over the stainless steel pods. My foot slips on the freshly fallen grit, and my chin slams into the cold metal, leaving a bruise on my pride and blood on the dull surface.
The thin metal frame protecting Frank shifts, bends, and the edge of the iris presses against the Core.
Jenny screams and cries something I don’t hear, but I understand the desperate soul-deep pain in her words. My friend loves this man.
Doc yells, his raised voice a klaxon unto itself. “Don’t touch the Core!”
I don’t care. I leap with the grace of a mountain lion. My fingers lace through the remains of the cage as my feet plant against the shaking wall.
I pull.
“Come out, you Fracking Highlander Ox! I’m not letting you die like this!”
My legs remember the weight of every deer, buck, stag, and boar I’ve ever hoisted and press. The cage twists.
SCREECH!
I’m flying, tumbling through the air, my friend, my best friend’s heartthrob, clutched to my breast.
The iris snaps closed and the hiss stops. Pain lances through my arm as my back lands inside Frank’s pod.
“Move!” Doc’s powerful hands lift me before I can shift. My heart thunders.
Warmth washes from his hands to bits that… well… have nothing to do with this emergency. “Eyes on the target,” I whisper to myself.
Is that a twinkle in his eye? No, it couldn’t be. Shite! He’s smiling at me…
Cool metal meets my back as he lays me on the floor.
“Nicely done,” Doc says back in full clinical mode. He lifts Frank’s cage from my grip.
I whisper a sigh. I wish he’d carry me everywhere.
The ship rattles and rings like a struck gong. The lights fade, some flicker, and the klaxons cut off with the finality of a flatlined heart monitor.
“Frack!” I leap to my feet, ignoring Jenny’s anxious pleas and Doc’s soothing replies as he manually begins Frank’s reformation process.
Doc’s got Frank under control. It’s time for me to do my job. “Command protocol four, authorization code Echo Four Charlie David Seven.”
A deep, almost subsonic voice echoes through the walls. “Accepted. Ishtar Core online.”
“Sit-Rep.”
“Course X one-oh-seven, Y thirty-two, Z point-eight-five-two. Velocity: zero-point-two-two-one C—”
“Stop. Repeat our speed.”
“Our current velocity is zero-point-two-two-one lightspeed.”
“What the… who in the name of all the flatulent cattle in Texas authorized that?”
“Admiral Heim’s orders had more to do with avoiding a rogue gravity well than the gases emitted by the longhorn herds in storage 1045.”
“Rogue gravity well,” I say to Tess.
“A black hole?”
“Ishtar, what was the nature of the rogue gravity well?”
“Admiral Thorne ordered the course correction to avoid a gravitational singularity detected on our original trajectory. The object’s mass is compressed beyond ordinary comprehension, curving space-time into a well so steep that light itself cannot escape. To preserve the ship and its crew, I calculated a slingshot maneuver — a controlled use of the distortion, skimming the edge of its gravity to accelerate us away.”
“Frack,” I mutter, knowing what came next and wondering why Admiral Thorne hadn’t accounted for it during his course calculations.
“The maneuver succeeded, but the margin was razor-thin. The tidal forces of the collapsed star boosted our velocity beyond safe parameters.”
My palms sting from where I’d slammed the wall earlier, and the ache in my chin still throbs with every word. Pain keeps me sharp, keeps me here, even as my mind threatens to drift into panic.
I share a cringe-filled glance with Tess. My eyes wander the walls, picking out tiny flaws that may or may not be new. When will the cracks reach us?
The mildest hint of concern enters as Ishtar continues his report. “We exceeded the vessel’s rated tolerance: inertial dampers strained, forward shields overheated, and Whipple plating degraded at triple the expected rate. In summary: we survived the abyss… but the speed it granted us may prove just as lethal.”
“Wonderful,” Doc mutters, hands never leaving Frank’s pod controls. “We survived the singularity only to die from bureaucratic stubbornness. At least it’ll look tidy on the autopsy.”
I gaze at the ceiling and scrub my scalp while processing.
Tess slams her palm against the wall. “How could the Admiral let this happen? The ass could have killed us all! Is he an idiot?”
“Let’s solve the problem first. We’ll have centuries to point fingers later. What is the status of the ship? Do we have a way to slow down? Were the braking thrusters damaged?”
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“They are usable but our fuel is limited.”
“Fuel? We run on energy transmitted from Sol via the split-meson systems.”
“We lost 65% of the reception mesons during the collision that—”
“Collision? You didn’t think that was important enough to tell us first?”
“Commander Loren, you keep interrupting my report with new questions.”
“I assume that’s when you woke the Admiral?”
“Yes,” Ishtar continues. “The primary crew reported damage to the starboard holds, several primary data centers, and several secondary AI processing nodes.”
“And?”
“I have lost communication with that section of the ship.”
“Are they alive?”
“Unknown.”
My throat tightens. “What about the secondary crew—Captain Evard and her team?”
“The pathways between their male Core Storage areas and the Reformation Chamber have been severed. External cameras show several Cores drifting inside the shield envelope. They may already be lost.”
Jenny’s voice cracks into a whisper. “Mrs. Evard… she was my coach.”
Silence spreads heavy as lead. My pulse stutters.
“Is Mira—our sector AI—okay?”
“Unknown.”
Tess drums her fingers on my back. “What? I thought you all sat on the same network.”
“That’s almost correct,” I sigh, dredging up the network, firewalls, and zero trust protocols built into the starship’s networks.
Frank’s eyelids twitch, his voice a rasp but steady. “Still breathing. Don’t get soft on me, Captain. You’ll ruin my reputation.”
Tess’s hand is joined by Jenny’s fingers spinning erratic circles along my spine. It’s her nervous tick, but her voice dances with relief and the seeds of her indomitable perkiness. “They’re either friends or not. Which is it?”
“Oh, they’re friends, but,” I pause searching for an analogy. “It’s like they live in a bad neighborhood, lock their doors, and check the cameras even if the peephole says it’s just their buddy coming over for tea and telly.”
“Why?”
My teacher’s hat flops into place as my mind searches for a basic explanation of zero-trust protocols. “It’s how they protect us if one of them gets infected with a computer bug, goes rogue, or someone or something tries to use the ship’s computers to sabotage our mission.”
Tess’s hand freezes. “But why now? We need them…”
“Okay, think of it like this—what happens when someone pulls the Lock-Down Alarm at your school?”
Tess frowns. “Every door closes and is magnetically sealed until it’s manually unlocked by the Sheriff.”
“That’s normal security,” I say. “But zero-trust isn’t like shutting the doors once and assuming you’re safe. It’s like a paranoid school policeman who keeps checking the locks—front door, back door, every window—every five minutes, even if nothing’s changed. And if they hear a creak in the hallway? They don’t just check once, they never stop checking. Also, it doesn’t matter if you’ve worked there for years—you still prove yourself every single time you walk through a door. No exceptions. No tailgating. A student can’t just follow a teacher in—they’ve got to scan their own badge, every time, or the door stays shut. And if the police officer thinks someone’s already inside? They won’t trust anyone until they’re absolutely sure.”
Tess’s eyes brighten, then harden. “How do we fix it?”
“It should be fairly straightforward. We go to the bridge, access each subsystem, present our irises to the reader, donate a drop of blood, and speak or type in our codes.”
I turn for the door, pulling the map of the ship into the front of my mind, and run headlong into the closed door. Damn it Ishtar! Open the fracking door!”
“Please present your authorization data.”
I scan the wall next to the door and groan. The biometric readers are dark. I lean into the iris scanner, searching for the little red dot to center my eye—nothing. My finger pushes into the genetic sampler but nothing pricks my finger. “Ishtar?” I glance at my team, hope fading in my soul despite the tight jaws and tense muscles waiting to bolt through the portal.
“Yes?”
“Open the door.”
“Please present your authorization.”
I pound the wall, getting a bruise in return. “The readers are offline. Let us through and I’ll authenticate at the next door—”
“I’m sorry, Commander Loren, but without your authentication—”
“Damn stubborn machine,” shouts Frank. “You’re falling apart and won’t let us out to help? Have you lost your mind?”
“One moment, please…” twentieth-century hold music plays in the background.
“Ishtar,” I growl.
“My systems have passed a full diagnostic sweep by my digital clone.”
“How do we get through the door?”
“Find me an axe or a torch,” hisses Frank. He begins opening and slamming cabinets and drawers.
“Ishtar, answer me.”
“There is a secondary access system.”
Hope rises, then fades as I scan the room and find neither a second door nor a set of biometric readers. “Where?”
A beat passes.
“Ishtar—”
“There is a cavern in the woods beyond your butts—”
Tess pats my bum.
Doc snickers.
The floor vibrates under my boots, a low groan running through the deckplates like the ship itself is warning us. A faint tang of ozone rides the recycled air, stinging the back of my throat. Whatever this “cavern” is, it’s no campfire stroll in the woods.
“Everyone, back to your pods.”
