Ripples in the Void

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. They also used to say that the world was flat, and that the Earth was the center of the universe. Shows how much they knew. We shouldn’t judge them too harshly, of course. They were operating without all the information. It would do us good to keep that in mind. Chances are we’re in the same boat. Chances are we always will be. If we try to remember that, it might not hurt as much when reality comes knocking and shreds our sense of self-superiority without breaking a sweat. And it will. Every time.

Captain James Ordron hovered in that ephemeral space which exists between waking and dreaming. There was a choice to be made. Sink down into the black depths of unconsciousness, surrender to it and let its unseen currents whisk him away into the unknown. Easy. Terrifying. Scratch, claw, drag his way back to the surface; back to the crew and his responsibility to lead them. Harder. Familiar.

Within the landscape of his mind’s eye, Ordron reached out a hand and struggled to pull himself upward. It was exhausting. Ever muscle in his body cried in protest. His lungs seized and the air caught in his throat. He knew, on some level, that he wasn’t really swimming. He wasn’t in danger of actually drowning, or suffocating. Those were just the means by which his addled brain processed and understood what was happening to him. It was damned convincing.

Dull, red light flashed all around him. It pierced through the umbral veil and revealed his surroundings. He wasn’t alone. There were other people, other minds, drifting and tumbling through the endless void. Too many to count. Some looked serene, restful. Others bore faces contorted in moments of rage and pain. The light faded, and darkness crept back in. At least he wasn’t alone.

He stopped struggling. Stopped reaching out for the world above. Stopped worrying about the aching of his lungs and the tearing of his muscles. He stopped caring about his duty, his responsibility. Stopped caring about his mission. He allowed himself to stop living. His body became limp, and he sank. Down, down into the darkness. Into the cold, loving embrace of unending sleep. He could almost feel the depths reaching out to embrace him, welcoming him home at last.

Another flash. Bodies drifting. A face inches away from his own. Familiar. Beautiful. Piercing eyes. Tessa. All thoughts of rest fled from him in an instant. He twisted at the waist, bringing himself around to swim once more. Moving was so much harder now. Every inch of him was on fire. He’d come so close to letting go. The pain didn’t matter. He focused his willpower and surged forward with all the power of a runaway freight train. His hand lanced through the water to reach the woman. The light faded, and darkness crept back in. He fumbled about in the black, unable to feel her. She had been right there, right in front of him. How come he couldn’t find her?

“Tessa!?” he shouted as loud as he could. His own voice echoed across the fathomless expanse and washed back over him. Was it mocking him?

Red. Bodies sinking. Tessa was farther away now. Twenty, maybe thirty feet. Farther and farther with each passing moment. He swam toward her, yet for each inch he moved, she seemed to drift away by two. Is that what he had looked like moments before? Had she surrendered to the sleep? Had she given up? Her arms trailed in front of her as she was pulled backward, as if she was reaching out for him. Of course, she was. Tessa would never give up. She’d fight to the bitter end. She hadn’t been given the same choice he had. This was different. She was dying. She needed help. She needed his help. If he couldn’t reach her here, he’d have to make it back.

Ordron wrenched his gaze away from the image of his wife and instead turned his attention up. It was a vague direction, more of a sense, or perhaps an intent, more than anything else. It was precisely where he needed to go. He began to struggle. He kicked and clawed and forced his way back to the land of the living. The light faded, and darkness crept back in.

Light burst through his eyelids. It was dim, red, and it begged for his attention. Every bit of his body ached. His lungs heaved but failed to pull in anything but the slightest whiff of air. His head throbbed with each beat of his heart, causing wave after wave of fresh, knife-like pain to ripple down his spine. He could feel a cheek pressed against the cold metal of the deck, and something warm and slick running down the other. Another flash through his eyelids, the dull red followed by a brilliant white this time. At long last he opened his eyes.

The bridge was in ruins. Pale red emergency lights painted everything in a sinister glow, broken only by the occasional shower of sparks from a damaged electrical conduit overhead. Display terminals had been ripped from workstations and wall mountings, then dashed against floor, sending small beads of glass and chunks of circuitry running in all directions. One of the walls bore a dark streak of crimson. He followed the trail with his eyes to a body slumped on the floor underneath it. Ordron looked away. Mourn the dead later. Save the ones that are still living now. Tessa!

The pain subsided as his adrenal gland poured its potent stimulant into his bloodstream. Strength returned to his arms and legs as he laboriously hauled himself up off the floor and onto his knees. Something pulled and teased at his hair. It felt like a breeze. On the bridge? Realization dawned on him. The ship was leaking atmosphere. The sharp pain from his lungs intensified, as if to confirm the thought. He cast his gaze about wildly, trying to assess and repair the situation. There. The door to the elevator.

The emergency bulkhead had tried to slam shut when a breach was detected, but there was an obstruction. His own captain’s chair. High-backed, steel framed, it had been warped and mangled when the door tried to shut on it, but the hydraulic powered system hadn’t been enough to cleanly cut through the metal. The solution was simple: hit the manual release, then reengage the emergency seal. That could cut the bridge off from whatever section the rupture was in. There had simply been no one to carry it out.

Ordron struggled to his feet, then staggered over to the hatch. The airflow was stronger here. It was all being sucked down to one of the outer decks. He flipped open the panel embedded in the wall to the side, grasped the release handle, pulled, then twisted. The door lurched back, freeing the mangled mess of a chair and allowing it to tumble down into the elevator shaft. Strangely, neither the doors, nor the descending scrap metal made a sound. He palmed the big red button just below the release lever, and the door finally slammed down into place. The rushing of air stopped, as the fire in his lungs began to die down. Tessa.

Once again able to breathe properly, his double-vision subsided. Once more he scanned the room, getting his bearings enough to be able to locate the remains of the navigation terminal. Tessa was slumped in her seat. The harness had kept her locked in position and prevented her from becoming another streak on the wall. Ordron hobbled over to her, ignoring what he had suddenly discovered was a dislocated kneecap on his left leg. She was more important. He practically slammed into the desk as he spun around to face her.

She was alive. Breathing, with no major injuries as far as he could tell. He lifted her arm and spun her wrist over, allowing him to inspect the vital monitor attached to the sleeve of her uniform. Stabilizing. Relief stole over him. She had nearly suffocated, but with the breach sealed off, her vitals were improving. He tapped the edge of the monitor for a more detailed report. Minor concussion, severe bruising along the restraints, hypoxia, ruptured eardrums. Nothing life-threatening, now that the hypoxia was subsiding.

Ordron gently tilted Tessa’s head to one side to get a look at her ear. There was blood running down the side of her face and neck. He remembered feeling something on his own cheek and reached up to touch it. The tips of his fingers came away slick and red. That certainly explained why he couldn’t hear anything. That meant he wouldn’t be able to hear the automated output from the ship’s system either. Wait. The computer! It had probably been droning damage assessments this whole time!

“Galileo!” he ordered, only registering his own voice as a dull vibration in his vocal cords, “Switch to text output, display on terminal…” Shit, everything was destroyed. Well, almost everything. “Display on medical bracelet 001, Ordron, J., Captain.” He held his wrist up as if checking a watch and was rewarded with a flurry of text flying by on the thin, flexible screen. Better than nothing. “Damage assessment. What the hell happened!?” All at once the wall of text vanished, replaced instead by a few painfully short sentences.

Collision confirmed. Object unknown. Catastrophic system failure.

Collision? Coming out of a tunnel? Someone back home must have really messed up.

“Acknowledged. Display current location.”

Unknown.

Ordron felt his stomach drop and his blood run cold. The pounding in his head doubled. Someone was using his skull as a drum. Unknown? That couldn’t be right. Even if they were off course, the computer should be able to verify star positions and compare expected versus actual locations. Maybe it was overtaxed and hadn’t gotten that far yet.

“Access external cameras. Identify constellations and verify location.”

Acknowledged. Beginning attempt 3720. Result: Inconclusive. Stars missing.

Ordron reread the computer’s analysis more times than he could count. Stars were missing!? That had to be a malfunction. Debris clinging to the external cameras, or damage to the computer systems maybe. Stars didn’t just go missing. Something was very, very wrong. They were adrift, heavily damaged, and had no idea where they were. How the hell did this happen?

Asking himself that question caused his spine to go stiff. He remembered something. Something from just before he blacked out. It had started as a low whine, nearly imperceptible. A kind of ringing in the ears that you just ignored until it went away. This one hadn’t gone away though. It had grown and intensified. He flashed back to members of the crew grasping at their heads and crying out in pain. He recalled falling out of his chair as his head felt like it was going to be cleaved in two. He remembered crawling toward Tessa, trying desperately to reach her. The ship began to tremble, equipment sent flying across the bridge. The ship lurched forward violently, tossing crew members about like ragdolls. The very air around them began to shriek and howl as if it was being torn asunder.

No, not the air. It came from outside the ship and slammed into them. It was space. Space was screaming.