Darkness rushed across the ship. It spread like a bursting dam, swallowing every corridor into pitch black.
“What’s wrong?”
High pitched sirens across the bridge coated the room in a piercing noise. The life support capacitors recharged and immediately the lights resumed: it was a small chamber, dark and not more than a few metres across; crewmembers were strapped to their chairs against the zero-gravity, bodies illuminated by the frantic colours of the screens.
“It’s the automatic failsafes,” screamed the First Officer, shoving windows aside on her display, “they’ve all kicked in, every single one; our mirrors are still up and it’s threatening to pull our engines apart!”
“Is our engine about to collapse?”
“Ma’am?”
“Is it about to collapse?!”
“What’s wrong?”
High pitched sirens across the bridge coated the room in a piercing noise. The life support capacitors recharged and immediately the lights resumed: it was a small chamber, dark and not more than a few metres across; crewmembers were strapped to their chairs against the zero-gravity, bodies illuminated by the frantic colours of the screens.
“It’s the automatic failsafes,” screamed the First Officer, shoving windows aside on her display, “they’ve all kicked in, every single one; our mirrors are still up and it’s threatening to pull our engines apart!”
“Is our engine about to collapse?”
“Ma’am?”
“Is it about to collapse?!”
The sirens wailed as the crewmember examined her screen.
“No, ma’am.”
“Then shut off these irritating sirens! Shut them off, I can’t hear myself think!”
There was a brief pause, the officer’s fingers playing across the screens, then the room fell quiet. The captain massaged her temples.
“Alright, so what’s the damage?”
“Every single failsafe activated immediately upon exiting the jump: it’s all locked down and our protective bubble of mirror shielding is still surrounding us, but the chaff launchers all fired as usual. I don’t know why it didn’t go down like normal on terminating the jump. It’s reflecting every single subatomic particle so we can’t get any kind of sensor reading as to what lies on the other side, but it’s also going to reflect our chaff back at us.”
“What’s the state of the stellar core inside our mirror engine?”
“There’s no readings, the failsafes locked the outer shields on the core too so we can’t contact the diagnostics inside. We’re basically sandwiched between our engine and our ship’s external shielding until we can release some of these failsafes.”
“We can start the normal procedures then to get each of these locks removed and find out what went wrong. We have to act as quickly as we can; if we drift into Fort Brno with the shields up we could kill everyone on board that station.”
“Ma’am, but there’s more…”
The captain exhaled slowly, cracking her knuckles with each hand.
“Yes, First Officer?”
“Our soft-- this software, it’s all absolutely FUBAR,” the officer pressed her hands into the display as if to drive her point, “Nothing works, it’s just ‘unresponsive, unresponsive, unresponsive,’ it’s not even throwing up errors, it’s like it’s all sick to a hardware level. We can’t even establish basic communication with other areas of the ship.”
The captain’s eyes closed; her fingers were steeped as she hunched introspectively in her seat. Breathing out slowly, she unbuckled herself and addressed the room in a low voice,
“I’m going to go ‘round each of the departments on this ship and find out what’s going on. I want all of you to stay here and try to undo as much damage as you can. Get the shields down as a priority. I want a report written as you go. I want in particular the things you can’t fix documented. If anything urgent comes up, I trust you to make the right call, First Officer.”
A chorus of acknowledgement reverberated around the bridge. Pushing herself from her seat, the captain drifted to the access hatch and through into the spine of the ship.
The corridor beyond was a gentle quiet. Hilda’s sinuses were stuffy and the low hum of the air ventilation rang irritatingly in her ears. Ahead and to either side, turnings branched off to different areas: living quarters, cargo access, EVA, medical, and the Acer habitat. It was to this last one she turned, and she glided into the claustrophobic confines of the ship’s population of the artificial slave species.
The trypophobic compartment was of a very different design to the main habitat: Acer fitted apparel, equipment and life support peripherals were stored in a mismatching lattice of fractal pits and crawlspaces that covered every surface. Above where she floated by the door, a large animal shape unfolded from a recess and emitted a deep reverberating growl. The feathered creature was large and heavily muscled, about eight feet across with long six-foot arms, extending from thick muscled shoulders, that dwarfed its short dextrous legs. Its feathered wolf-like muzzle bore an ugly mass of vestigial teeth below which a long black prehensile tongue extended from the conspicuous absence of a lower jaw. The Acer’s long leathery tail anchored it to the wall as it watched the captain apprehensively from its large pearlescent eyes.
“I need two of you,” Hilda commanded, “at least one with paramedic training.”
The creature gave a metallic grunt and kicked off the nearest wall with a loud thud, bounding gracefully from the nearest surface to wake an unmoving Acer across the room.
Once more in the dimly lit corridor, the captain drifted towards the ship’s engine control room at the fore through the dark. The hatch’s interface lit up as she approached; it displayed a query for identification which remained unchanging as the captain impatiently poked at it with her fingers. Cyan light from the display illuminated the trio in the darkness as they hung before it.
“Get this open,” she snapped.
The Acers moved forwards, muscles flexing as they braced themselves against the door and pulled the mechanical overrides out, prying open the hatch to the control room beyond.
“Captain!”
The young recruit looked up from the bristling bank of screens.
“The Chief engineer’s just gone into the ducts to check on the hardware servicing the core’s shields. Do you want me to get him?”
“He’s taking his damned time about getting started. No, corporal, stay at your post. What’s the situation?”
“I’m sorry, ma’am, I-- I don’t know what happened. Everything was fine until we came out of the jump and the ship’s outer shields just wouldn’t break and neither would the core’s. I’m sorry, captain, there’s so many stuck failsafes; we’re trying to get through them--”
“It’s like that everywhere else, corporal. What do you know about the core?”
“Nothing much except there’s some pretty strange heuristics readings from the shields. Whatever’s going on in there is not normal.”
The captain floated in silence behind the console, listening to the rhythmic breathing of the Acers behind her. She pulled back the sleeve of her jumpsuit and examined her wrist.
“Corporal, what does your watch read? Not the console’s time.”
“Ma’am?”
“Your watch: do you have a watch?”
It had caught at her mind, a whim, but she needed to put it to rest.
The crewman hesitated,
“...fourteen o-three.”
“Fourteen o-three?”
Hilda stared into her own watch; the display read “1412”
“Captain?”
The corporal had turned and was watching her nervously.
“Captain?”
“This is time compression. We’re close to a massive object. This is-- the different sections of the ship must be under different speeds of time progression. We… we must have missed-- this was a blind jump.”
The corporal’s face went gaunt. He was staring at her, wide eyed. The captain’s heart was pounding furiously in her chest.
“You’re ABSOLUTELY sure that watch is correct?!”
“Ma’am, yes ma’am,” the corporal squeaked, “I checked it as per standard procedure right before we jumped three minutes ago.”
“We didn’t jump three minutes ago…”
Hilda turned to the Acer.
“Record this message: Massive time compression across the ship. I think the jump went blind and we are inside a supermassive black hole. Use the Acer’s watch to determine the curvature of the gravitational field we’re in; she can tell you how long she spent in each part of the ship. Prepare for a new jump immediately. If you can’t target any known beacons in our library then keep jumping blind until you can. We don’t have time for safeties and every second counts.”
She nodded to the Acer, “Go, as fast as you can.”
The creature grunted and turned to scurry back through the airlock. The captain returned her attention to the recruit.
“Corporal, make sure you and the other engineers keep things running as best as you can! Do not leave this section of the ship to communicate or for any other reason unless it’s an emergency! Is that clear?”
“Yes, captain!”
The recruit’s voice wavered; his eyes flicked to the hatch behind her. The First Officer was floating by the doorway.
“Captain, is everything alright? It’s been half an hour.”
“No, Les’, it’s not remotely alright,” Hilda snapped, “I think we’ve just blind jumped into a black hole. Did you pass that Acer on your way?”
“Pull the other one…”
Her voice trailed off as she saw the captain’s expression.
“...yes, I passed her. A-- a black hole? A blind jump?”
“Go follow her back to the bridge, I’m giving you command of the deck. I’m absolutely serious; I think we’re in deep trouble and I need to make sure each department knows what’s going on so I’m leaving you in charge.”
The First Officer shook her head slowly in disbelief and turned to travel back up the ship towards the aft.
“Good luck,” Hilda called after her.
She suddenly inhaled sharply, and screamed after the receding figure,
“The shields! Stop them from overriding the shields! Don’t let them drop them!”
Les’ turned, then suddenly as comprehension spread through her she scrambled down the corridor towards the bridge.
The Acer followed Hilda through the twisting corridors, pulling itself from handhold to handhold through the weightlessness, watching her every move. Through the hull window they passed, the image of their own ship was smeared across the sky, reflecting itself in an endless hall of mirrors between the glittering cloud of chaff that filled the shield bubble. The captain moved in a haze, mind furiously tumbling thoughts as she sought a solution. If they were in a black hole with only minutes’ difference in time dilation across the ship then they weren’t near the centre, however they were probably deep inside the event horizon. Because of this, they were almost certainly inside the accretion spiral travelling well over the speed of light. They would have inherited the velocity of the mass they jumped to, so as long as their shields held they were unlikely to fall dangerously far into the gravity-well for at least a few days. If the jump had taken them within ten million kilometres of the black hole’s centre, the heavy elements in the electronic systems at one end of the ship could have easily undergone nuclear transmutation in the time it took an hour to pass at the other end.
A sudden automated voice broke her reverie; it echoed throughout the ship,
“All hands, prepare for initiation of mirror engine in sixty secon--”
Blackness swept across the corridor, blanketing the pair in complete darkness. Almost immediately at the distant hatch near the bridge the lights resumed, spreading like a wave towards them, its path slowing to a crawl as it neared.
Outside the window the chaff was fizzing, a blur beyond the aft of the ship, while beyond the fore the glittering particles stood still, frozen in time. All around her the corridor was warped like a viscous fluid being pulled towards the ship’s bow.
Movement blurred far down the ship’s spine, the distant bridge hatch flickering like an insect’s wing, dots buzzing around it. The captain grabbed the nearest handhold, blood hammering in her ears, and with a grunt of exertion pulled herself towards the bridge. The handholds sped past, hatchways flying by as she hurtled down the corridor.
Behind her, the Acer fell behind, its limbs scrambling over the handholds slower and slower until they were flowing in slow motion, its clothing rippling with the movement as if underwater.
The hatchway was approaching. Hilda moved her weight as she turned to brace for landing on it. A metallic screech reverberated through the corridors and the world disappeared suddenly into blackness. Her heart jumped; her muscles tensed in apprehension of the impact. The lights flickered back in and the hatch screamed across her vision as she smashed into it, pain exploding through her head and shoulder.
A low whine lodged in her ears; the captain clutched her head and reached out to grab the door controls. Dancing droplets of red liquid floated past her. Pressing the input into the display, then braced against the hatch, she pulled. The door gave way with a hiss. Pulling the blood droplets inwards, the rush of air subsided and Hilda moved into the bridge. The stench of bodies gagged in her throat: figures floated unmoving through the room, some strapped to their chairs; every one was wearing an emergency oxygen mask, drained of life.
A snarl emanated from the door behind her: it was the Acer. Casting its eyes across the room briefly, it reached out to grab the nearest corpse and pull it through the hatch. The captain pushed herself into a free seat and strapped herself in.
“Sitrep,” she said aloud.
“Jump completed twenty-seven seconds ago, target coordinates null; hull temperature average: thirty-five hundred kelvin; chaff at sixty-eight percent; main mirror shield arrays actual through indium active--”
“Was the mirror shield automatically activated?”
“Automatic safeguards engaged upon increased hull temperature; probable situation: star corona, danger close; probable cause: inaccurate jump.”
The captain exhaled slowly.
“We’re free,” she breathed.
A commotion of noise from the corridor outside interrupted her. Raised voices were clamouring, arguing intermittently with the low voice of an Acer.
“Captain!”
It was the chief engineer who had spoken, pushing past the creature to float by the bridge access hatch. He looked agitated, sweat droplets sticking to his brow,
“What happened? The systems went crazy! They just executed two more mirror jumps in under a minute!”
“Cheng, that was entirely deliberate. We just escaped a damned black hole. You were under significantly different time compression to me, and by the looks of things the whole bridge here suffocated because air couldn’t flow through the ship fast enough under those kind of relativistic differences. We’re all incredibly lucky to be alive”
The man stared blankly across the room. Hilda cleared her throat and faced back to the console,
“Let’s see if we can contact any beacons in our library now.”
The captain muttered to herself as her fingers scrolled through the index.
“There’s… a few. Looks like we can’t make contact with over ninety-five percent of these.”
The engineer piped up,
“If we just jumped into a black hole back there, won’t that mean the mirror engine flipped whatever was in that sphere of space we displaced out to our origin at Dhasa station? That could be a big sphere of metal plasma under petapascals of explosive pressure. We might have… probably just killed everyone there.”
“Cheng, I don’t give a damn about that, we barely managed to save ourselves! ...Now look, there’s a beacon I can lock on to at Fort Turin. Ship! Execute mirror jump to beacon fifteen-hundred and forty three, five second silent warmup.”
“Executing.”
“Captain, wait. If we just escaped a black hole I don’t think you’re going to like what you find at that beacon.”
“I don’t care. Shut up, I want to get us to safety as soon as I can.”
“Captain you don’t understand.”
The bridge plunged into blackness. The console chirruped and shortly after the lights resumed. Hilda swallowed the lump in her throat and turned to the wall opposite the hatchways.
“Ship, give me RGB natural visuals from the fore of the ship.”
She spread her arms wide and the wall dissolved into a deep blackness that spread across the cabin. Squinting into the darkness, her eyes adjusted to the low light of the starry background and the silent, unmoving outline of the space station in front of them. Its texture was dull and flat: no lights twinkled in its windows and its docking arms bore no ships.
“What’s… what’s happened?”
The chief engineer cleared his throat and spoke loudly from behind her, “Ship, compare the stellar profile from the Turin system with the currently orbited star and express discrepancies as hypothetical stellar evolution.”
“Please wait… The currently orbited B4 star is of lower temperature and larger diameter than that of the Turin system; this is consistent with a stellar evolution on a timescale between twenty and twenty five million years.”
The vista of darkness spread silently in front of the two figures. The chief engineer gently shook his head.
“Ship--” Hilda choked on the lump in her throat, “Execute jump to home, ten second warmup.”
“Executing.”
“Captain, I… Captain, it might be better if we don’t know what home looks like...”
“Cheng I will not tolerate insubordination!” she screamed, breaking into a sob.
“Six seconds.”
The starscape blurred behind the tears in Hilda’s eyes.
“Four seconds.”
“Three.”
“Two.”
“One.”
“No, ma’am.”
“Then shut off these irritating sirens! Shut them off, I can’t hear myself think!”
There was a brief pause, the officer’s fingers playing across the screens, then the room fell quiet. The captain massaged her temples.
“Alright, so what’s the damage?”
“Every single failsafe activated immediately upon exiting the jump: it’s all locked down and our protective bubble of mirror shielding is still surrounding us, but the chaff launchers all fired as usual. I don’t know why it didn’t go down like normal on terminating the jump. It’s reflecting every single subatomic particle so we can’t get any kind of sensor reading as to what lies on the other side, but it’s also going to reflect our chaff back at us.”
“What’s the state of the stellar core inside our mirror engine?”
“There’s no readings, the failsafes locked the outer shields on the core too so we can’t contact the diagnostics inside. We’re basically sandwiched between our engine and our ship’s external shielding until we can release some of these failsafes.”
“We can start the normal procedures then to get each of these locks removed and find out what went wrong. We have to act as quickly as we can; if we drift into Fort Brno with the shields up we could kill everyone on board that station.”
“Ma’am, but there’s more…”
The captain exhaled slowly, cracking her knuckles with each hand.
“Yes, First Officer?”
“Our soft-- this software, it’s all absolutely FUBAR,” the officer pressed her hands into the display as if to drive her point, “Nothing works, it’s just ‘unresponsive, unresponsive, unresponsive,’ it’s not even throwing up errors, it’s like it’s all sick to a hardware level. We can’t even establish basic communication with other areas of the ship.”
The captain’s eyes closed; her fingers were steeped as she hunched introspectively in her seat. Breathing out slowly, she unbuckled herself and addressed the room in a low voice,
“I’m going to go ‘round each of the departments on this ship and find out what’s going on. I want all of you to stay here and try to undo as much damage as you can. Get the shields down as a priority. I want a report written as you go. I want in particular the things you can’t fix documented. If anything urgent comes up, I trust you to make the right call, First Officer.”
A chorus of acknowledgement reverberated around the bridge. Pushing herself from her seat, the captain drifted to the access hatch and through into the spine of the ship.
The corridor beyond was a gentle quiet. Hilda’s sinuses were stuffy and the low hum of the air ventilation rang irritatingly in her ears. Ahead and to either side, turnings branched off to different areas: living quarters, cargo access, EVA, medical, and the Acer habitat. It was to this last one she turned, and she glided into the claustrophobic confines of the ship’s population of the artificial slave species.
The trypophobic compartment was of a very different design to the main habitat: Acer fitted apparel, equipment and life support peripherals were stored in a mismatching lattice of fractal pits and crawlspaces that covered every surface. Above where she floated by the door, a large animal shape unfolded from a recess and emitted a deep reverberating growl. The feathered creature was large and heavily muscled, about eight feet across with long six-foot arms, extending from thick muscled shoulders, that dwarfed its short dextrous legs. Its feathered wolf-like muzzle bore an ugly mass of vestigial teeth below which a long black prehensile tongue extended from the conspicuous absence of a lower jaw. The Acer’s long leathery tail anchored it to the wall as it watched the captain apprehensively from its large pearlescent eyes.
“I need two of you,” Hilda commanded, “at least one with paramedic training.”
The creature gave a metallic grunt and kicked off the nearest wall with a loud thud, bounding gracefully from the nearest surface to wake an unmoving Acer across the room.
Once more in the dimly lit corridor, the captain drifted towards the ship’s engine control room at the fore through the dark. The hatch’s interface lit up as she approached; it displayed a query for identification which remained unchanging as the captain impatiently poked at it with her fingers. Cyan light from the display illuminated the trio in the darkness as they hung before it.
“Get this open,” she snapped.
The Acers moved forwards, muscles flexing as they braced themselves against the door and pulled the mechanical overrides out, prying open the hatch to the control room beyond.
“Captain!”
The young recruit looked up from the bristling bank of screens.
“The Chief engineer’s just gone into the ducts to check on the hardware servicing the core’s shields. Do you want me to get him?”
“He’s taking his damned time about getting started. No, corporal, stay at your post. What’s the situation?”
“I’m sorry, ma’am, I-- I don’t know what happened. Everything was fine until we came out of the jump and the ship’s outer shields just wouldn’t break and neither would the core’s. I’m sorry, captain, there’s so many stuck failsafes; we’re trying to get through them--”
“It’s like that everywhere else, corporal. What do you know about the core?”
“Nothing much except there’s some pretty strange heuristics readings from the shields. Whatever’s going on in there is not normal.”
The captain floated in silence behind the console, listening to the rhythmic breathing of the Acers behind her. She pulled back the sleeve of her jumpsuit and examined her wrist.
“Corporal, what does your watch read? Not the console’s time.”
“Ma’am?”
“Your watch: do you have a watch?”
It had caught at her mind, a whim, but she needed to put it to rest.
The crewman hesitated,
“...fourteen o-three.”
“Fourteen o-three?”
Hilda stared into her own watch; the display read “1412”
“Captain?”
The corporal had turned and was watching her nervously.
“Captain?”
“This is time compression. We’re close to a massive object. This is-- the different sections of the ship must be under different speeds of time progression. We… we must have missed-- this was a blind jump.”
The corporal’s face went gaunt. He was staring at her, wide eyed. The captain’s heart was pounding furiously in her chest.
“You’re ABSOLUTELY sure that watch is correct?!”
“Ma’am, yes ma’am,” the corporal squeaked, “I checked it as per standard procedure right before we jumped three minutes ago.”
“We didn’t jump three minutes ago…”
Hilda turned to the Acer.
“Record this message: Massive time compression across the ship. I think the jump went blind and we are inside a supermassive black hole. Use the Acer’s watch to determine the curvature of the gravitational field we’re in; she can tell you how long she spent in each part of the ship. Prepare for a new jump immediately. If you can’t target any known beacons in our library then keep jumping blind until you can. We don’t have time for safeties and every second counts.”
She nodded to the Acer, “Go, as fast as you can.”
The creature grunted and turned to scurry back through the airlock. The captain returned her attention to the recruit.
“Corporal, make sure you and the other engineers keep things running as best as you can! Do not leave this section of the ship to communicate or for any other reason unless it’s an emergency! Is that clear?”
“Yes, captain!”
The recruit’s voice wavered; his eyes flicked to the hatch behind her. The First Officer was floating by the doorway.
“Captain, is everything alright? It’s been half an hour.”
“No, Les’, it’s not remotely alright,” Hilda snapped, “I think we’ve just blind jumped into a black hole. Did you pass that Acer on your way?”
“Pull the other one…”
Her voice trailed off as she saw the captain’s expression.
“...yes, I passed her. A-- a black hole? A blind jump?”
“Go follow her back to the bridge, I’m giving you command of the deck. I’m absolutely serious; I think we’re in deep trouble and I need to make sure each department knows what’s going on so I’m leaving you in charge.”
The First Officer shook her head slowly in disbelief and turned to travel back up the ship towards the aft.
“Good luck,” Hilda called after her.
She suddenly inhaled sharply, and screamed after the receding figure,
“The shields! Stop them from overriding the shields! Don’t let them drop them!”
Les’ turned, then suddenly as comprehension spread through her she scrambled down the corridor towards the bridge.
The Acer followed Hilda through the twisting corridors, pulling itself from handhold to handhold through the weightlessness, watching her every move. Through the hull window they passed, the image of their own ship was smeared across the sky, reflecting itself in an endless hall of mirrors between the glittering cloud of chaff that filled the shield bubble. The captain moved in a haze, mind furiously tumbling thoughts as she sought a solution. If they were in a black hole with only minutes’ difference in time dilation across the ship then they weren’t near the centre, however they were probably deep inside the event horizon. Because of this, they were almost certainly inside the accretion spiral travelling well over the speed of light. They would have inherited the velocity of the mass they jumped to, so as long as their shields held they were unlikely to fall dangerously far into the gravity-well for at least a few days. If the jump had taken them within ten million kilometres of the black hole’s centre, the heavy elements in the electronic systems at one end of the ship could have easily undergone nuclear transmutation in the time it took an hour to pass at the other end.
A sudden automated voice broke her reverie; it echoed throughout the ship,
“All hands, prepare for initiation of mirror engine in sixty secon--”
Blackness swept across the corridor, blanketing the pair in complete darkness. Almost immediately at the distant hatch near the bridge the lights resumed, spreading like a wave towards them, its path slowing to a crawl as it neared.
Outside the window the chaff was fizzing, a blur beyond the aft of the ship, while beyond the fore the glittering particles stood still, frozen in time. All around her the corridor was warped like a viscous fluid being pulled towards the ship’s bow.
Movement blurred far down the ship’s spine, the distant bridge hatch flickering like an insect’s wing, dots buzzing around it. The captain grabbed the nearest handhold, blood hammering in her ears, and with a grunt of exertion pulled herself towards the bridge. The handholds sped past, hatchways flying by as she hurtled down the corridor.
Behind her, the Acer fell behind, its limbs scrambling over the handholds slower and slower until they were flowing in slow motion, its clothing rippling with the movement as if underwater.
The hatchway was approaching. Hilda moved her weight as she turned to brace for landing on it. A metallic screech reverberated through the corridors and the world disappeared suddenly into blackness. Her heart jumped; her muscles tensed in apprehension of the impact. The lights flickered back in and the hatch screamed across her vision as she smashed into it, pain exploding through her head and shoulder.
A low whine lodged in her ears; the captain clutched her head and reached out to grab the door controls. Dancing droplets of red liquid floated past her. Pressing the input into the display, then braced against the hatch, she pulled. The door gave way with a hiss. Pulling the blood droplets inwards, the rush of air subsided and Hilda moved into the bridge. The stench of bodies gagged in her throat: figures floated unmoving through the room, some strapped to their chairs; every one was wearing an emergency oxygen mask, drained of life.
A snarl emanated from the door behind her: it was the Acer. Casting its eyes across the room briefly, it reached out to grab the nearest corpse and pull it through the hatch. The captain pushed herself into a free seat and strapped herself in.
“Sitrep,” she said aloud.
“Jump completed twenty-seven seconds ago, target coordinates null; hull temperature average: thirty-five hundred kelvin; chaff at sixty-eight percent; main mirror shield arrays actual through indium active--”
“Was the mirror shield automatically activated?”
“Automatic safeguards engaged upon increased hull temperature; probable situation: star corona, danger close; probable cause: inaccurate jump.”
The captain exhaled slowly.
“We’re free,” she breathed.
A commotion of noise from the corridor outside interrupted her. Raised voices were clamouring, arguing intermittently with the low voice of an Acer.
“Captain!”
It was the chief engineer who had spoken, pushing past the creature to float by the bridge access hatch. He looked agitated, sweat droplets sticking to his brow,
“What happened? The systems went crazy! They just executed two more mirror jumps in under a minute!”
“Cheng, that was entirely deliberate. We just escaped a damned black hole. You were under significantly different time compression to me, and by the looks of things the whole bridge here suffocated because air couldn’t flow through the ship fast enough under those kind of relativistic differences. We’re all incredibly lucky to be alive”
The man stared blankly across the room. Hilda cleared her throat and faced back to the console,
“Let’s see if we can contact any beacons in our library now.”
The captain muttered to herself as her fingers scrolled through the index.
“There’s… a few. Looks like we can’t make contact with over ninety-five percent of these.”
The engineer piped up,
“If we just jumped into a black hole back there, won’t that mean the mirror engine flipped whatever was in that sphere of space we displaced out to our origin at Dhasa station? That could be a big sphere of metal plasma under petapascals of explosive pressure. We might have… probably just killed everyone there.”
“Cheng, I don’t give a damn about that, we barely managed to save ourselves! ...Now look, there’s a beacon I can lock on to at Fort Turin. Ship! Execute mirror jump to beacon fifteen-hundred and forty three, five second silent warmup.”
“Executing.”
“Captain, wait. If we just escaped a black hole I don’t think you’re going to like what you find at that beacon.”
“I don’t care. Shut up, I want to get us to safety as soon as I can.”
“Captain you don’t understand.”
The bridge plunged into blackness. The console chirruped and shortly after the lights resumed. Hilda swallowed the lump in her throat and turned to the wall opposite the hatchways.
“Ship, give me RGB natural visuals from the fore of the ship.”
She spread her arms wide and the wall dissolved into a deep blackness that spread across the cabin. Squinting into the darkness, her eyes adjusted to the low light of the starry background and the silent, unmoving outline of the space station in front of them. Its texture was dull and flat: no lights twinkled in its windows and its docking arms bore no ships.
“What’s… what’s happened?”
The chief engineer cleared his throat and spoke loudly from behind her, “Ship, compare the stellar profile from the Turin system with the currently orbited star and express discrepancies as hypothetical stellar evolution.”
“Please wait… The currently orbited B4 star is of lower temperature and larger diameter than that of the Turin system; this is consistent with a stellar evolution on a timescale between twenty and twenty five million years.”
The vista of darkness spread silently in front of the two figures. The chief engineer gently shook his head.
“Ship--” Hilda choked on the lump in her throat, “Execute jump to home, ten second warmup.”
“Executing.”
“Captain, I… Captain, it might be better if we don’t know what home looks like...”
“Cheng I will not tolerate insubordination!” she screamed, breaking into a sob.
“Six seconds.”
The starscape blurred behind the tears in Hilda’s eyes.
“Four seconds.”
“Three.”
“Two.”
“One.”