Wisp

“Wisp” by Mark Suszko

New Worlds Challenge entry, Chapter One

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

But they’re listening to the wrong frequencies. Because 435’s entire herd-group was screaming at it along the EM spectrum; their Leader, strongest of all. That wouldn’t stop 435, would not make it come back.

435 was a runaway. The first of its kind.

435 was committed. And aiming for a tortured, roiling spot where its senses told it an explosion was almost ready to burst forth from below.

Tired of its placid existence - grazing the photosphere of this sun for centuries with the Herd - 435 had turned its attentions outward, to the cold void, and the little round balls of hard, dead matter spinning out there. And beyond those, a long, cold nothingness, with a new home at the end of the journey. A new place to grow and begin a Herd, where 435 itself was Leader.

This is how Wisps propagated their species along the galactic arm. A Herd Leader would decide when it was time to go; it would gather a certain number of followers, link together, and set sail under the pressure of the old sun’s light and radiation, sleeping on the way to the new. It would take thousands of years, but eventually they would fall sunward into the new system, revive, and begin feasting on the emissions of their new home, then eventually fission into more individuals. Like 435. But 435 would attempt this trip alone.

There was still time to shift sails and avoid the eruption. 435 ignored the radio wails of its Herdmates and gathered itself for the leap.

Leader and the others gave up, retreating to a safer region. Their calls and pleas faded with distance and time, until they stopped altogether and went back to their typical grazing formation.

435 felt a sort of relief that the Herd had retreated to safety. It had no desire that any Herdmates be endangered by its rebellion. It simply wanted… more of something Leader and the Herd couldn’t or wouldn’t give it. Creatures that live so long, and living at a slower pace, have the time to observe much, and observe distantly. Leader carried much of that collective observation inside itself, but would not share it with 435. “Irrelevant”, it would always reply; “Our sustenance is here; what happens in the void has no bearing on us.”

At some point, 435 decided it would seek answers independently. It probed its biome in the intermediate layers of the star, noticed the violent eruptions the Herd avoided. These, if harnessed, could provide a considerable propulsive force… if 435 could withstand the launch.

And 435 began developing its escape plan.

It observed the orbits of the small matter lumps circling the star, and calculated a path and timing that would leverage their gravity wells to propel and steer itself along towards the closest star. This would still take a very long time, even for a Wisp. The Herd had once talked of migration sleep to pass the long transit, but only Leader had ever actually experienced it. 435 didn’t know how to do that.

But then 435 noticed something new. From time to time, extremely small, hard bodies with unexpectedly high energy signatures would suddenly flicker into existence out near the orbiting spheres, radiate for a period, and depart, the same mysterious way they had arrived. The Wisp deduced they were somehow traveling between stars in a more or less instantaneous way. Long observation showed an area where such appearances were most common. 435 decided it would aim to cross that region and intercept… whatever these entities were.

Then it waited for the opportunity to ride the wavefront of a sunburst towards that infinitely small target; a lump of metals and organics. If it could somehow attach to one of these…

The chance came fairly quickly; foreshadowed by coronal dimming above, and growing tension in the twisting magnetic field lines below. 435 could gauge the approximate size of what was about to launch, the speed and direction of it, and deemed it appropriate for the trip. The next opportunity with such exact aim might not come for some time. Time to go. The Herd retreated; 435 stayed. Against its deepest survival instincts, it watched and waited, adjusting its fields. 435 balanced photonic thrust from below against gravity’s pull, and sailed across arcing flares and magnetic threads to the launch spot.

The eruption was indeed large, but 435 did not expect the violence of the mass ejection. The shockwave hit with such force, 435 felt parts of its gossamer self ripped away to ragged edges, burning, glowing, flooded with an overload of stimuli. This was… pain. It seared the Wisp’s mind as it tried dampening the sensorium, to only partial effect. Up, up it raced, and the layers of chromosphere grew even hotter as 435 flew up and out, pinned to the ravening torrent of energies and particles vomiting out of the star. The Wisp’s physical core sizzled in that radiation bath, blinded by light and heat, plasmas and particles and then… just a heavy particle wind, a current, tumbling it over and over. Slowly cooling.

With time, the plasma current spread and dissipated enough that what remained of 435 could again begin to stretch out it’s manipulative and sensory fields, and see that it was more-or less on-course for the region where the anomalies came and went. The deep cold it was now feeling was somewhat unexpected, compared to it’s lifetime of sun-grazing. 435 did some re-calculation, and concluded it might die, if it did not find another energy source before flying out of the star system.

This, 435 reasoned with new insight, is why the Herd only ever migrated in a large collective; to enhance mutual survival. Leader had been the only survivor of a collective of sixty, after all, and grown the herd to nearly 500 individuals. Maybe Leader was conservative because survival and experience required it. Too late to ask Leader about that now.

435 reached out with its tattered, dazzled senses, desperate to find one of those mysterious little sparks, and not knowing if that would matter in the end; at it’s current rate of energy loss, it might be frozen solid before finding out if the risk would ever pay off.

MV Golden Venture, outward bound from Takit-3 station

“I think we’re going to be clear of the worst of it, skipper, but we’d better take precautions anyhow”, said Raya, her hand waving thru an amber cloud in one corner of her navigation vistank. It showed the 3-D volume of space ahead of Golden Venture, and a plot of their course ran right up against a corner of that expanding blob. “The shockwave has to be pretty thin by the time we intercept it, but there will be additional particle radiation to consider.”

“Will our shielding be enough?” Asked the Captain, eyeing the same display from his seat across the bridge, and leaning forward to peer deeper into it, causing it to rotate to new angles of view with movements of his hand. The bridge was a compact space, with many things requiring Captain Vann’s attention, but the vistank volume and the expanding cloud had him mesmerized. Raya eventually caught his attention and shrugged noncommittally. It would be his call as to go or not, but she stood behind her numbers. Numbers were her friends and weapons. Numbers never lied.

After a pause, Vann thumbed an intercom button to Engineering:

“Evers, we have extra radiation and maybe particle flux in our flight path. Tell me the radshields are optimal, and you have the backup grids secured for translight already?”

“We’re always ready, sir”, the Engineer replied dryly, then, a bit more conspiratorially; “Can’t go around it, I guess?”

“Negative”, Captain Vann replied, “Raya spent hours modeling this departure, and it’s too big a region to go around it anyway. We have to keep to schedule. I’m going thru it…unless you have reasons not to?” Vann almost seemed to be begging for an excuse to avoid the problem. Evers did not let him off the hook.

There was a pause on the line, then the engineer responded with a curt “…We’ll be ready for it, Captain. I have to go run some more checks on it. Engineering clear.”

Vann leaned back in his comfortable but scruffy pilot chair, contemplating, while Raya reset the vistank orientation and went back to running calibrations for the translight shift maneuver. The compartment hatch irised open behind them to admit the always-upbeat Chief Steward, ducking his head thru the opening and bearing bulbs of hot caffenex.

“Evers doesn’t look very happy back there”, Malachi said offhandedly while distributing the drinks. “Just his usual pre-shift jitters?”

“We’re going to graze the edge of a decaying CME up ahead, Mal, said the Captain; “Nothing to panic the passengers about, but just to be safer…” He locked eyes with the Steward: “…let’s gather them in the shielded lounge for the transit, and give them some… distractions, yes?”

The Steward studied his Captain’s expression for a moment, then quickly understood. “Not to worry, skip, I’ll have them strapped-in and well-lubricated by then.” He left the two alone on the bridge.

In the display tank, the course line turned colors to signal a countdown to imminent Translight operations.

A Translight Shift is always dangerous. Creating the gravitational flux to rip open a hole into Transpace and squirt the ship into it, like spitting a seed, took tremendous energies, more than a ship’s reactor could practically generate. So T-Ships would run their reactors full-out, diverting their output to charging a massive bank of accumulators, which could release the needed power in one, instantaneous burst, thru an arrangement of vanes and waveguides on the hull. Usually it worked. Occasionally, it didn’t, and nobody ever survived to describe what that felt like.

Now Golden Venture was preparing to make the Shift, and to Raya, the air on the red-lit bridge seemed a little close and stale, fans struggling to move air that smelled faintly of ozone and hot plastics. The headrest behind her close-cropped hair felt slightly damp. The usual dull hum of the powerplant was now a higher, whining sound, as it began gathering itself for the effort ahead. She tidied her station and tightened crash straps around her, more as a calming ritual than something which could save her in an accident. Anything bad happening at this stage was not going to be helped much by being strapped-in. Raya ran her numbers yet again; it reassured her more than crash straps could.

Vann returned to the bridge from a final walk-thru of the ship, exchanging a few words with the rest of the crew and passengers, and strapping himself into his own command couch with a little grunt and sigh, began flipping toggles with a slightly forced air of confidence, but Raya could see his gaze drawn to the vistank, and that yellow cloud, now taking up half the volume in the display, small callouts of changing numbers along it’s periphery - details from the ship sensors.

Vann loosened his top collar button, switched his com to all-ship, in a ritual as old as flight. “All hands and hello, passengers, this is Captain Vann, announcing that we are about to take the ship to Transpace. Please secure yourselves until the Steward has released you, and we look forward to our traditional celebratory dinner shortly after we transition. Malachi has promised some truly impressive dishes for you tonight, and we look forward to trying them with you this evening. Your drinks are on me. Captain out.”

The smile Vann wore while making his canned speech dropped instantly with the cut-off of his mic. His brows narrowed and his mouth turned to a hard, flat line. The computer did most of the flying, but a Captain had a few manual duties with immense responsibility, and Vann now felt that weight.

Captain and Navigator both talked in hushed, clipped tones, that sounded more like ritualized prayer than conversation; call and response, concentrating on checklists and readings as their automated displays ticked down to the moment of committing the ship. It might as well have been real prayer: Once the accumulators were at full charge, they could only hold that massive amount of power for a few minutes at most, before letting go - somewhere. If they didn’t channel that energy to the Shift drive almost immediately, it would simply all at once turn into heat in the ship’s belly, equivalent to detonating an atomic warhead.

The vistank burned brightly; the amber blob depicting the approaching coronal shockwave was washing-out the normal dim red cabin lighting like a dawning sunrise. Vann squinted, adjusted the tank controls to dim it back, and watched the line with the little ship icon approach it, and an even closer intersecting red line showing the upcoming Shift point. Faint traces of perspiration were shining around his uniform collar. He clicked his com onto crew-only mode.

“All stations, secure for transit, final go/no-go for Shift”, Vann intoned, and across the intercoms, the crew called back: “Engineering is go,” “Cargomaster is go”, “Steward is Go, passengers secured.” Vann turned to Raya. She nodded and spoke: “Nav is go for shift”.

Captain Vann unlocked and flipped open the oversized safety cover on one of two large buttons, firmly stabbing the first. The ship computer announced: “Shift drive is activated; Shift will occur in thirty seconds, confirm command to commit.”

Vann pushed the first button again, with a twist, and the ship responded: “Command confirmed; banks are charging, ship is committed. Grid continuity one hundred percent. Charge level fifty percent and rising.” Raya could hear the straining of the powerplant go up another notch.

Then the ship lurched. Which was unexpected, due to the artificial gravity and compensators. An alarm began bleating, instantly, Raya turned it off. Vann looked at her inquiringly, his hand reaching to uncover the second, overly-large switch.

“That’s the front hitting us”, she explained. “Outside rad and particle levels are elevated. Not great, but we won’t be here much longer. “ After a moment re-checking her readouts, she added; “We should be good, course stable.”

They could hear a faint kind of whisper on the hull, similar to the beginnings of a normal planetary atmospheric entry. Plasma. Also a mild vibration, and the staccato tapping of Vann’s boot on the deck plating.

“Charge level, eighty percent”. Added the computer.

Vann’s finger rested next to the second button. A shift required one hundred percent power transfer; anything less might result in the ship and contents being turned into abstract sculpture. A hold in the count could only last perhaps a minute at this stage, with the risk of accumulator failure rising by the second. If they had to abort the Shift, this switch under his finger would trigger an explosive ejection of the fully-charged accumulator system, before it could fail and detonate inside the ship. Dumping the A-core would strand them in this system, but at least they’d live. Probably. The manuals only recorded two successful emergency ejections.

One more slight shudder, the whispers on the hull faded, and the ship was again rock-steady.

“Ten seconds to Shift”, the computer said: “Power at 98 percent. Nine, eight, seven…”

“That’s weird”, Raya mumbled. “Mass reading is off now.”

Vann stiffened his hand by the dump button slightly, his dancing foot now welded to the floor, and asked: “Did something shift in the cargo bay?”

“No, we’re just… heavier, by a little. Slowed, just a fraction. Drag from the shockwave, I expect.“ the Navigator replied, in level tones, keeping her emotions level while working the problem. “Checking….”

“Are we still good to go!?!” Vann’s voice was louder than he’d planned. His finger felt stiff and numb, as it slid along the bezel of the dump switch…

“The course model is still good”, Raya asserted; “it’s probably the shockwave or radiation affecting sensors. Go for Shift.”

Vann pulled his hand away from the abort switch as if it was scalding. The computer finished; “three, two, one,… Shift.”

A successful shift isn’t really felt by the occupants of the ship. You only know it worked, because you were still alive, and because there was suddenly nothing to see out of the windows but a distorted silvery mirror reflection of the ship itself. Beyond the field bubble surrounding them, was a non-reality, a mathematical singularity of sorts, which human senses could not interpret. For the next several days, there was nothing for the bridge crew to do until the shift ran its course and deposited them in realspace near their destination, light-years away.

Vann breathed out quite loudly, carefully shut and locked the cover on the now-inert dump switch, then undid his crash webbing and turned a few devices to their standby settings. Raya safed her panels, unclipped her harness, and deactivated the vistank which was now only full of visual static. She could hear the formerly-screaming power plant die back to a barely-audible background hum. The red cabin lighting switched to shipwide-normal daylight. All instruments read nominal, they were on the way to Danar-5, a countdown to arrival running in the displays.

“That’s not something I’d like to repeat, I’ll tell you!” Vann said, adjusting his collar buttons: “what was that last-minute problem all about, anyway?”

Raya wasn’t really sure yet, but was still of the opinion it was confusion of the sensors. “Ships don’t gain weight in flight. It must have been residual plasma brushing up against us, like I figured. Or radiation flux on the mass sensor. But I can run some tests with Evers, if you…”

Vann interrupted her, while dabbing his face and neck with a kerchief: “That’s fine, I know you'll be on top of it, but go ahead and do it after dinner; we’ve both earned the break, and everyone’s waiting.” The captain motioned for Raya to leave the bridge ahead of him, as he stood and straightened his uniform, and put on his passenger relations smile.

They passed their crew cabins beyond the bridge door, and then thru another hatchway, into the passenger lounge beyond, where Malachi had the promised fancy dinner already in full swing, passengers already abuzz with conversation, the air alive with attractive aromas, and light music in the background. Raya surveyed the happy throng of passengers and crew, and suddenly back-tracked to her cabin for a jacket, slipped it on before heading on to re-join the dinner party.

For some reason, she felt a little… cold? That was odd.

End of Chapter 1