Partners Until the End

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say.

That was before the World Defense Network added telepaths to earth’s space fleet for better communication.

Jacob stumbled when a wave of fear washed over him followed by a telepathic, ‘What the hell?’

‘Sarah, what’s wrong?’ When no response came, he called again, louder, if you could call telepathy louder, straining to be heard over the distance. ‘Sarah? Sarah!’ But again, silence.

“Shit.” Jake turned and ran to the bridge of the Echelon where he could hear alarms starting to blare and saw red lights reflecting against the white walls in the corridor.

“Helm, bring us about,” the man in the captain’s chair said loud enough to be heard over the din. His voice had the air of someone who expected to be obeyed immediately and efficiently. All in all, he was a bit young for a captaincy with no gray hair in his brown crew cut, but really they all were. WDN's scouting program was barely five years old. Still, the captain was already developing crow’s feet on the corners of his eyes from the stress.

The bridge crew swarmed around Captain Hugh with drill-like efficiency. Jake entered the foray, quickly weaving his way between officers as he found his seat at the comms next to Johnson. The captain’s posture remained calm but alert, not even turning to observe Jake as he entered the bridge. “Navigation, start the jump calculations to take us home.”

“Acknowledged,” Ray said, his freckled hands flying over his console.

The captain squinted slightly, learning forward to rest his arms on his knees to get a better look at the viewport that dominated a full ninety degrees of the circular bridge. Bracing himself, Jake looked up to see for himself what caused all the commotion.

Whatever Jake expected, it was worse. On the viewscreen Saturn could be easily identified in the distance from its iconic rings. Closer, a single earth vessel could be seen in the shadow of a massive, black, alien vessel. The size difference was so vast, the Astra looked like a toy. On the other end of the spectrum, the unidentified ship looked like a something out of a nightmare. The alien vessel took on an ethereal quality as stars and sunlight reflected and distorted on the shiny, bumpy surface of the pod shaped leviathan as it twisted and turned in space. With tentacles waving everywhere and what looked like spikes along its spine, it seemed more like a living... something, than a ship. But whatever it was, it was gaining on the Astra even as the engines on the shuttle glowed white as it tried to put distance between the two.

Months ago, some of the satellites had picked up some living ship-like vessels floating out at the edges of the solar system - that's what brought the Echelon and Astra out exploring in the first place - but they had all been the size of a standard car and primarily adrift. Nothing on the scale or speed of what Jake was watching now.

“Any response to our hails from the alien ship or the Astra, comm?” the captain asked, turning towards Jake and Johnson.

“Negative,” Johnson replied quickly, looking over the computer terminal in front of his station. “No response to manual hails, sir.”

On the viewscreen, the monstrous ship caught up with the Astra and reached for the shuttle with a long, curly tentacle. Jake winced and was fairly sure he felt a spike of fear from Sarah, but the sensation was too fleeting to be sure. Jake was just preparing to reach back out when the captain pulled his attention.

“What about telepathic hails?” the captain asked.

“No verbal response from the Astra after an initial message, sir. I haven’t tried to hail the alien vessel. At this distance, I doubt I’d be able to.”

“Try. We need information.”

“Yes sir.” Jake turned away from the captain and started adjusting the dial on the implant behind his ear. Once the gain was turned up, he first sent another query to his partner, Sarah, but continued to receive radio silence. He resisted the urge to continue focusing on his partner. If they could make contact with the new ship, he might be able to help in another way.

Jake pulled in a deep breath and closed his eyes while he tried to block out the humming from his implant at the edges of his mind. ‘Hailing unidentified… ship,’ Jake started uneasily. He was pulled from further broadcasts by the unbearably loud voices around him. Quickly, he dialed the gain back down on his implant.

“It's turning away from the Astra, sir,” the lieutenant at the scanner reported. “It looks like it's changing course for us.”

“What happened?” Captain Hugh looked around at the bridge stations, hunting for answers. When no one supplied any he sighed. “Is the Astra using the opening to get out of there?”

“Negative. It looks like the main engine was damaged in the collision with that… tentacle, and the leviathan is resuming course to the Astra, sir.”

“Anything we can do to help?” Jake asked even though in his heart he knew the answer. They were a search vessel. Even if they were a military vehicle, he had a hard time picturing any of earth’s weapons touching something so enormous.

“Like what? Throw some rocks at it?” Bear asked with a rough laugh.

“Or drop some food out the hatch,” Jake hissed. “Rations would taste better than the Astra’s hull.”

“We don’t know it’s hostile, yet,” Ray said cautiously.

“Not hostile,” Bear shook his head letting out a tired sigh.

“All it’s done is poked a ship with a tentacle. We can’t jump to conclusions without doing some experiments.”

“Poked it hard enough to send it into a tailspin,” Bear replied gruffly. “Permission to radio WDN for reinforcements, sir.”

“Try hailing the Astra, again. Both electronic and telepathic.” The captain waved at Johnson and Jake for emphasis. Both men nodded and turned to their various tools, Jake with a fleeting glance at the viewport before he turned his concentration elsewhere.

In the background, the crew discussed how long the Astra would need to make the jump to lightspeed, assuming they had started the calculation as soon as the leviathan had shown up.

‘Sarah? What’s going on? Can you get out of here?’ Jake called mentally.

“Did anyone see that?” Ray asked, pointing at the viewport.

“What?” Captain Hugh leaned forward, his body otherwise eerily still.

“It twitched.”

“Twitched,” Bear said sarcastically. “Your eyes are probably playing tricks on you with the swirly lights.”

The Captain shook his head. “Enough. Jake, we need to know how close the Astra is to jumping. That monster could be interfering with telepathy.” The captain’s voice lost some of its edge. “Can you handle full gain for a minute?” There was an unspoken implication at the end. Could he handle it for Sarah?

Jake’s eyes returned to the viewport. The bridge was otherwise oddly silent as the crew waited for the next order. He let out a long breath. Of course he’d try. But only a handful of telepaths were strong enough to handle the overload. Sarah being one of them. That’s how they’d ended up on the front lines of space. Sarah could broadcast messages farther than any telepath.

“Course I’ll try.”

“Good man.” The captain sat up straighter. “Johnson, get a doctor up here.”

“Yes sir.” Hands flew over over the console and Johnson whispered quietly enough into his headset that Jake couldn’t hear the details of the conversation. But that didn’t matter. Jake had a job to do.

Jake was already adjusting the dial on his implant. A little warning about 100% gain buzzed in his ear but he quickly tapped the override sequence on the small buttons.

“Sir, the vessel is breaking off pursuit of the Astra.”

Once the gain on Jake’s headpiece reached 90%, Jake winced, jamming his eyes shut against the onslaught of surface thoughts. He couldn’t tell which thought came from who, but he knew none belonged to Sarah. He was intimately familiar with what her mind felt like. The intensity continued to ramp up as the headpiece alerted Jake to each new gain level reached. 91%... 92%...

“Sir, the alien vessel is definitely turning our way.”

“Ignore it. Keep making lightspeed calculations. ETA on when we can jump?”

“Two minutes sir.”

“Based on our previous observations,” Ray said nervously, “the vessel will be on us in one.”

“Move us away, maximum speed.” Once the ship started moving the Captain turned back to Jake. “Any response?”

“Gain at ninety-seven percent, sir,” Jake reported. “Five more seconds until full power.”

“The doctor won’t be here for another thirty seconds,” Johnson reported.

“That’ll have to be close enough. Jake, make your attempt as soon as you have full power.”

Jake really wished the captain would stop talking. With the gain increased each word was like a knife in his oversaturated senses. Still, Jake nodded before making sure he was seated securely in his chair and five point harness. If he had seizures, he didn’t want to get thrown out of his chair and into the control panel next to him.

Finally, the headpiece alerted him that it had reached full gain. His temples felt like he had knives in them. His eyes were seeing all sorts of bright lights even though they were closed. Even the sensations along his skin felt almost alien in their intensity. The places where the harness made contact with him felt like he was trying to squeeze into a suit three times too small. And the surface thoughts around him now felt like he was caught in a mental tsunami. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to pick one person’s thoughts out from the din, even if they were Sarah’s. Still, none of that mattered.

“Broadcasting,” he announced, wincing at the volume of his own words.

‘Sarah, do you copy? Sarah, please resp…’ Jake’s own thoughts drifted to a halt with a terrifying realization.

“The ship is picking up speed, sir.”

“It’s tracking our telepathic communications,” Jake whispered. What was hailed as a faster means of communication was bringing enemies right to their door.

“Time till jump?” Captain Hugh asked. There was no mistaking the increased tension in his voice.

“Still a minute thirty…”

A deep, cavernous voice broke into Jake’s thoughts. It was so loud it was like he was sitting next to a speaker blasting old rock tunes and him wearing a hearing aid.

‘What are you?’

Jake couldn’t assemble a coherent thought in response. Black was encroaching on his vision, trying to save him from the imminent sensory overload. Then another voice broke through, but the emotions he could feel with it made him grow cold. ‘Jake, it’s too late… please… run… run now…’

He tried to assemble a response, he really did. “No, Sarah!” he managed to whisper aloud, but he couldn’t manage to broadcast it back.

An ear splitting yell of pain from Sarah whited out every other sense.

And that was the last thing Jake remembered.