The Voice in the Void

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. Captain Einreb and his Immediate Response Team of fifteen comrades stood at the Bridge of the J. Wrecker 72: a support vessel. The J. W. 72 was not a particularly large ship. It was large enough to have a fully equipped hospital that could hold forty-five passengers on the lowest deck, feed twice as many in the chow hall on the second floor, and still have room for thirty bodies to sleep on the first floor outside the Bridge of the ship. However, it was small enough to be crewed by just three people if it came down to it and fast enough to avoid any pirates or any planetary governments audacious enough to lay claim and set boundaries on the ceaseless infinite of space. This ship was perfectly designed and equipped for one purpose. To provide aid to lost and damaged ships before the ruthlessness of the void could claim them. In the past seven years this ship did exactly that. They responded to every distress call, finding and recovering everyone they could. Since Einreb took over as captain he has recorded a 97% survival rate if a distress call was received within two hours of an incident. Today marked the first time he arrived too late the call.

Einreb and his crew stood at the Bridge of the ship overlooking the pure destruction laid before them. A graveyard of metal and flesh floated hazardously through space hitting the J. W. 72 as it drifted through the area. The captain stood in disbelief as he gazed at the disaster before him. Biting his lip to hold the rage he tapped his forefinger to his thumb, then his middle finger to his thumb. Then his ring finger to his thumb. He repeated this movement over and over again, whispering something under his breath inaudible to the crew. He took a deep breath and exhaled, letting go the anger and disappointment in the things he couldn’t control.

“It must have been a pirate attack in the area. They must have scavenged everything before we got here sir. I don’t see any cargo from the distress ship. From our records the M. Rover should have been carrying precious metals to Anthenheim. I don’t see anything in the scans of the wreckage indicating those metals are still here,” a voice sounded breaking the silence. It was a smaller man compared to the crew, standing only about 5 foot 6” with dark brown hair and slightly squinted eyes accenting his hair. He wore a tight gray uniform that hugged his body showing just a bit of his muscular frame.

“There is no way this was an attack, Johnathan. Look at how calmly these pieces are moving. It is simple physics, if you throw a ball in space it will travel at that speed forever unless another force interacts with it. The center mass of the ship is only about two Klics out and we are at the edge of the debris field. From the time we got the distress call and now only an hour has passed, and this is how far from the center the debris has reached. If they were attacked with cannons and phazers the debris field would be spread out across this entire sector by now,” the captain started pacing back and forth. “Leighton, was there any indication of a force field being placed since the time of the distress signal and now?”

The man directly to the captain's left was a tall skinny man with tight curly black hair and a scar that traveled from the top of his right brow, down to his cheek bone in an almost crescent shape. He was standing over the computing station that showed graphs and signal strengths. He started typing on one of his many keyboards, “No sir, there are no latent energy waves emitting from this sector, no one cast force field to slow the debris or even stop it.”

Einreb turned around away from the glass and stared, gathering his thoughts tapping his fingers again. “Was there any other signal, distress, or otherwise that was transmitted from this point of origin in the last six hours Officer?” He asked Leighton, still looking down lost in thought.

“Uh, hold on sir let me check the records from before the stress call,” Leighton sat down at his desk and started typing on two separate keyboards looking at results on two of his monitors. In a few moments he responded, “It looks like another transmission was sent to the M. Rover. I am trying to decipher what was sent to their ship. Give me a moment while I try to decode it.”

“Very well,” the captain started walking towards his chair and sat down, “Patrick, where was the M. Rover coming from?”

Patrick, the largest man in the crew standing almost seven feet spoke in a low growl of a voice, “It appears that the ship left port at Stephelheim fourteen hours ago sir. In my experience it should not take more than eight hours to travel from Stephelheim to Anthenheim. That is taking the route around the Sovereign Cascade. According to the logs, the M. Rover should have already made it to Anthenhiem if they took the fastest route. And as Second Officer Johnathan stated, the M. Rover was hauling precious metals to Anthenheim. The Last time we were in Anthenheim we were told they had just been commissioned by the Sovereign Cascade to build their armada. The M. Rover would have known this and gone through the Cascade to save time, fuel, money, and be granted protection on their journey.”

“My thoughts exactly Patty,” Einreb pushed a few buttons on his control panel, “Show me sectors AA1247 through AM1291,” in front of the captain holographic three-dimensional images appeared showing a myriad of planets and star systems. These systems were laid out atop a grid system, each grid labeled numerically from left to right then front to back. From the Captain's chair the first grid read in the top left corner, ‘AA1247’, and the top right corner read, ‘AA1258”. Then the row behind the first grid of 44 grid blocks was another set, all numbered the same but instead of ‘AA’ the phonetic code read ‘AB’. The sector map is what connects all of known space. Continually growing as new space is traveled and cataloged in every system that takes to outer space. If a crew cannot read and comprehend the basics of navigating sectors, then that crew is not taking off.

“Stephelheim is located here in a sector cube centered at AB1249, the Cascade is located further in at AD1255, and then Anthenheim is further in still and AH1258,” as the captain speaks, he draws the route of straight-line distance to each target planet avoiding and going around any smaller planets or stars that may hinder a direct path. “This is the route the Rover should have taken. It is fast and easy. They are flying heavy because they have precious metals which means they are slow. They want to get out of open space as fast as possible; they shouldn’t have taken any detours getting to the Cascade. They would have burned hot for as long as they could, knowing that they were going to refuel at the ports of Cascade. There, they would have picked up a diplomatic envoy and continued at a slower pace to Anthenheim. All together it should have been a six-hour transit time maximum, taking in account a slow refuel time and the slowest speeds from the Cascade to Anthenheim.”

The captain leaned back in his chair, his chin resting in his palm as he tapped his fingers, “This is not what happened at all. We are currently here in AC1258 which means after take-off they traveled almost perpendicular to Stephelheim across the grid completely ignoring the Cascade and any help they could have been granted. I know the Captain of the Rover and she is no incompetent captain. She would know just as I do what her best course of action would be to take. Yet we sit here in this situation now,” Einreb rubs his forehead out of frustration, unable to solve the riddle that taunts his mind.

“Leighton, have you decrypted that transmission that was sent to the Rover yet?”

“I am sorry sir; it seems that the communication waves were not a transmission to the Rover. It appears as though someone or something else was communicating and the Rover happened to pick it up. Unfortunately, I am unable to piece together any of the information with such spotty data. If we are able to recover the Rovers transmission box, I may be able to fill in the gaps of the transmission and make it readable. However, I have never seen anything this advanced before. I can’t even tell what kind of device they were communicating with. In all honesty I don't even know how the Rover even picked it up because our equipment isn’t even designed to be used with so little data transfer.”

“What does that mean Leighton?” Patrick stepped in, feeling his captain's irritation, “get to the point’.

“Well, the point is, this transmission is so simple it's comparable to the ancient times when kids would talk to each other with a cup and a piece of string.”

The captain leaned forward and looked to his left, towards the communications officer, “So you're telling me that two entities were talking on the ship with a piece of string? And during that conversation it somehow got picked up by the transmission box?”

“That’s the strangest part, captain! Whoever was communicating was outside the spaceship while the other was inside. The only plausible explanation I can give you right now is that someone held a cup to the outside of the ship and talked for hours to someone inside the ship. But that would mean whoever was outside had to have been talking in the vacuum of space, and their voice would have reverberated through the walls of the ship causing the Rover’s communications box to pick it up. But as we all know there are no sounds in space, there is no medium in which ANY life can communicate with sound. And the last of the craziest things going on right now is that whatever transmitted this line of communication was so powerful that the metals of the debris are still faintly carrying the sound! That is how I was able to piece as much as I could together.”

The captain sighed, “So all of that to say, we can't do anything until we find Rover’s COMS Box because you don’t have the slightest idea of what caused the transmission signals to occur?”

“Leighton sat up straight and looked at his captain, and without a hint of shame or embarrassment, “YUP! That about sums it all up.”

Einreb rubbed his head again, “God help me not fire another one of my crew”. Patrick heard his captain speak under his breath and let out a small laugh. He stepped up to the right of the Captain’s Chair, “So forward to the epicenter of the blast then?”

“Ay, and let’s be quick about it. I don’t want to get caught up in whatever freak explosion this was. And to be frank I highly doubt that whatever did this was stupid enough to leave the COMS Box here and intact for us to find. Be careful navigating through the field! I want our shields at maximum capacity if we are to encounter any such destruction and live to tell the tale."

The crew scattered across the Bridge finding their respective control stations, guiding the ship in closer to the distressed signal, deeper into the debris field. As the Wrecker approached what remained of the Rover, Einreb grew more and more uneasy about the situation. "What is the status of the area around us?"

"Everything is normal nothing is moving sir," the navigator explained, "I'm surprised that all the metal chunks stopped moving soon after we started." Einreb jumped out of his chair, "FULL REVERSE!" he yelled at the crew.

"What's wrong sir? Everything is going smoo--"

"Shut up and put this ship in reverse now! Rear thrusters at 100% and punch it, Anthony!"

The navigations officer didn't question the captain the second time. He did as he was ordered, "Full power to rear thrusters sir. We will be out of the field in a moment."

Einreb was jolted back into his chair as the ship went in reverse. Tapping his fingers to his thumb in a rhythmic steady beat, whispering again under his breath. Not moments before the Wrecker left the destroyed ship a blinding light exploded from what remained of the Rover, "SIR, we are being drawn in!"

"Lower the blast doors and keep those thrusters at full power, I do not care where you have to divert the power from! keep us from getting pulled in Anthony!" The ship began to shake violently as two forces began pulling the ship apart. "Come on baby hold on just a little bit longer," the captain was whispering to his ship, "I know you can do it girl just a few more seconds." He was tapping his fingers violently back and forth, "three...two...one," and as if on cue to the captains orders the ship stopped shaking. There were no creaks or moans nor any sign that the ship had just been ceasing before. The blast doors opened slowly allowing the captain and his crew to once again see what was out before them.

"Impossible!" Exclaimed Patrick, "There is no way," the captains eyes widened as he began to slowly tap his fingers again. There was no remaining piece of the Rover left. No piece of scrap metal, no body of the Rover's crew, no evidence that anything had happened here moments ago.

The captain stood in disbelief at the events that just occurred. "Is everyone alright? Is anyone hurt?" after the crew sounded off Einreb sat back down, relieved that whatever was happening around here was taking a break.

"Sir, how did you know we needed to leave the area? It's like you knew what was going to happen without any evidence, how could you have pos--"

"Relax Jose. It seems that whatever is going on, it is over for the time being. This doesn't mean we are finished trying to find out what happened here but for now we need to rest. We came here after a 72 hour rotation because there was no one closer to the distress call. We don't have any work to be done right now as we have failed our mission to provide support and aide to the Rover. There are going to be a lot of questions that we won't have the answers for. This may even paint a target on our back from the Cascade, Anthenheim, and Stephelheim. We have a lot to do but we cannot do anything if we die of exhaustion. We will stay adrift here as we let our power supplies recharge in the suns' radiation. I will wake you guys when it is time to get back to work. Shower, grab something to eat, and get some sleep."

With that the captain stood up and walked towards his quarters without another word. The crew was dismissed and there was no arguing with the captain at this point. The crew all walked off the Bridge to attend to themselves. Patrick walked over to the captain before he closed his door to his quarters. "Patty, did you hear it? Out there crying out?"

Patrick looked at his friend in slight confusion, "No Ein. I didn't hear anyone crying?"

Einreb looked up at his first mate, "Of course, it must have been the ship screeching under the pressure. No one could have possibly been crying out, after all, nobody can scream in the vacuum of space." Einreb gave Patrick a weak smile and walked into his quarters and shut the door. He laid in bed knowing that he heard a soft cry, a whisper traveling through the vacuum of space. The smallest of voices crying, 'come and find me and you will see'. The last thoughts that ran through the captain's mind as he fell asleep.