T.A. Leederman

ERS Hydra, Omicron Eridani (Republic Sector), June 2150
 

“What the hell are they?!”

Even as Soren Kuromoto shouted to his DAISS officer, the bridge buckled under his feet, cracks rippling through adamantine bulkhead like ore deposits.

“Try hailing them again, Captain?” This was Lieutenant Vang, frantically remodulating shield frequencies, sweat dewing her forehead.

On the DAISS display, two more blips appeared from their blaze portal, tears in reality… jumping down from nowhere, transponders reading: “Contact Unknown.”

“Keep their attention off Omicron Base.” Soren strained to control his voice, opening his comm with sweating hands. “Unknown contacts—this is Captain Soren Kuromoto of the Earth Republic Ship Hydra. This is Republic space. Please identify yourselves.”

Static… then nothing. Just nothing. Four contacts and nothing but energy weapon blasts, seven terajoules apiece, seven minutes apart. Like clockwork.

Another shot hit, rippling well past the abused shields, rumbling the ship. The laser turret console sparked, fire erupting; as Commander Henderson moved to extinguish it, a crack opened on the exterior bulkhead.

The sudden, explosive pull of air yanked Vang off her station and smashed her into the wall, spine first. Soren and Henderson scrambled to jam anything at hand into the crack—officer coats, large coils of engineering putty—and Vang crumpled to the ground like a broken doll.

“Three hull breaches!” Coetzee yelled, staring at the Central Ops display. “And damage to the intermix reactor, sir.”

“Get Medical up here!” Soren marched past DAISS, where Coetzee frantically called down to Med Bay. “We need to jump. We can’t take many more of those.”

Henderson paused, tenderly straightening Vang’s arms and legs to protect her spine where she lay on the floor, her eyes closed in sleep or death… both perfectly fixable by Regenifacient or combat stim.

“Soren… the bridge is exposed to space. We can’t jump. There’s a coat and some putty between us and the hyperonic medium.”

Soren swallowed. Henderson had been his Executive Officer for ten years—one of the oldest CO-XO pairs in the fleet. Like a marriage at times… occasionally more intense. When Henderson used his given name, Soren knew he intended to get through to him, reach him on a human level, beyond the dark edifice of uniform and prestige.

“Coetzee… any other sections exposed to space?”

“At the moment? No, sir.” She met his eyes. “Omicron Base is mostly underground. They can withstand bombardment for forty minutes… long enough for us to summon the fleet.”

Henderson’s eyes dodged between them from the floor; he still crouched protectively over Vang’s prone form.

“We should tell the heads of all sections, then close off the bridge.”

Henderson didn’t argue further. He knew what Soren was asking him to do. They didn’t have time to get Vang carefully strapped onto a board and carted down to Medical; she was in this with them, unconscious or dead. Henderson returned to the helm.

“They’re up to fire again in thirty seconds, sir!” Bless Coetzee, that compulsive counter of cards and firing cooldowns.

“Keep the viewscreen active.” Soren took up the shield console while Henderson radioed the chiefs, eyeing the viewscreen and the dark, vaguely angular forms of their unknown contacts. In the impenetrable, starry darkness, one seemed to drift like a deep-sea shark in their direction.

“They’re armored and on a ramming trajectory, sir!”

This was the moment that made captaincies… or destroyed ships. Soren turned to his XO.

“Henderson, JUMP!”

Henderson took one deep breath… before the bridge turned inside out.

Soren opened his eyes on the floor; his comm told him it had been thirty seconds since he blacked out. Coetzee and Henderson shouted at a muffled distance. For a moment, he fixed his eyes on the viewscreen above, attention drawn to a rising, ominous droning… as if the crack in the bulkhead had been colonized by a hive of enormous bees.

Since his days as an ensign, Soren had loved to watch hyperspace portals through the viewscreen. The human brain couldn’t interpret what it saw; the dimension rendered unto the mind as a dazzle of iridescent light, rainbow slicks like oil on the water, a running stream of prismatic glow. He’d wanted to show his daughters the sight someday, when they graduated from Academy.

“Incoming damage, sir!”

Soren strained to drag himself onto the shield console, a searing pain spreading up his femurs. The droning continued to muffle his ears, rainbow dazzles thrown across the walls as he remodulated shields.

Henderson tried to drag Vang away from the crack, abruptly vomiting as he neared the aperture. Soren’s mind drifted to his youngest daughter’s birth, here on this very ship… a tiny body at five months’ gestation, held in Soren’s right hand as the doctors readied her artificial gestator. He’d felt acutely aware of being her only line of defense in that moment, his wife unconscious for surgery, doctors preoccupied with technology and preparations. Eyelids like glass, tiny folded legs, skin diaphanous and pink. He had stood alone with her in a riptide of activity; time stood silent, struck dumb. Going from theoretical to real, her tiny presence yanked an unwilling love from his guts.

Soren felt it now, once again…. He hung onto the shields in a sea of rainbows, fixing his mind on her, as if she stood on the other end of that portal route.

“Hull breach!” Coetzee yelled raggedly, before white light erupted through the crack in the bulkhead. Henderson screamed, a wrenching and final sound. The sear in Soren’s legs became a firestorm, and the deck came up to meet him. He felt a tiny warmth fluttering in his hand, its identity already fading off his mind, dissolving into blinding rainbows and the droning of otherworldly bees.

Time stood still; the riptide slowly receded. The white light dimmed and gentled. The pain deepened and remained, evidence at least that Soren still lived.

Something beeped, rhythmic and abrasive. Fetal heartbeat? Was that little fluttering life, contact unknown, still safe and alive? The warmth of it had vanished off his hand.

Then, her voice.

“Dad?”