“Which is?” Ali asked.
“Alpha Bootis; that’s a barren star system near Beta Comae Berenices,” Jimmy said. “That’s where we were headed before Stiles messed with the nav systems.”
“Hey!” Stiles shouted angrily. Everyone turned his way in concern. “If you ever say that again ….” Stiles walked menacingly toward Jimmy.
Peter eased over and blocked his way. It did not take much in the small space. “Back off, Stiles.”
Stiles reluctantly stopped, but before he did so he bumped his chest in warning against Peter. “Later, puke-face,” Stiles said, looking over Peter’s shoulder. “And you, too,” he threatened, looking down at Peter.
“Fine, go right ahead,” Peter suggested. He hitched up his shoulders, trying to look bigger. He pointed to his chest, offering Stiles a shot.
“Guys,” Henrietta said, “now’s not the time.”
The two boys glared at each other, neither willing to back off.
Ali cleared his throat. No one paid attention so he did it again, but much louder. Peter finally glanced his way for a beat before looking back at his foe.
“So we don’t know where we are?” Ali asked, defusing the situation innocently.
“No, we don’t,” Peter replied. He tore his concentration from Stiles’ face a final time.
“Ship,” Ali commanded.
Peter shook his head. “That won’t work, Ali. He’s offline.”
“Not again!”
“It’s at minimal operational capacity,” Stiles quoted. “Life support and the factories are set at one hundred percent.”
“That’s true,” Henrietta confirmed, “I almost made myself a diamond necklace.”
Peter looked at her in confusion. He shook his head like he had not heard her correctly.
Color came to Henrietta’s dark cheeks. “It’s a long story,” she answered.
“The internal communications are working, but nothing external. The databases are inactive and locked out.” Stiles paused for a second trying to remember all he had learned before continuing, “We’re also drifting.”
“How’d you figure all that out?” Peter asked.
“I asked the fighter craft for a status report.”
Ali nodded knowingly. “Good thinking, Stiles.”
Stiles beamed. “Better than what our Peter Pan here did, huh?”
“I didn’t know we were in a contest,” Henrietta suggested.
Peter glanced between Henrietta and Stiles, considering what she just said. “We aren’t,” Peter conceded. “Good work, Stiles.”
Stiles ignored the compliment, but still basked in the limelight.
“Let me get up and check things out.” Ali tried to get out of the chair, but stumbled backwards.
“Whoa, take it easy,” Peter suggested. “You’ve been in stasis for quite a while. I’m sure your body is still trying to recover from it.”
“He thinks,” Stiles amended. “I still say that was a normal jump. We should be hearing from the Colonial Fleet soon enough. They’ll rescue us, and then we can all go our separate ways. And good riddance,” Stiles said glancing Peter’s way again.
“Well, wherever we are,” Peter said, “Ali is still gonna need to take some time to recover.”
“No, that’s alright,” Ali replied. “I’ll be okay.” Ali slowly made it to his feet, steadying his wobbly legs. Nothing short of the end of the universe would stop Ali from fidgeting with the ship and maybe not even then. “Now, where’d I put my PAD?”
* * *
Ali stifled another yawn. He was still in engineering, elbow-deep in slime-covered electronics. Ship’s parts of various sizes were scattered throughout the deck in a large circle around him. He reassembled the final piece yet again, and activated a panel. “Why won’t it work this time?” Ali asked in frustration.
The others were watching his every move. Ali tried ten restarts throughout the day, each with the same result. Everyone wanted to help, but no one had a clue what to do. Peter would make a suggestion, only to be ignored. Jimmy would suggest something else and Ali would simply roll his eyes. The most helpful thing Henrietta did all day was fetch some snacks from the galley. “You guys are making me nervous,” Ali admitted, “looking over my shoulder so much.”
“Your incompetence is making me nervous,” Stiles replied. “I thought you knew about this ship.”
“I do,” Ali pleaded. “Me and my dad went through almost every system on this ship.”
“Not enough, obviously.”
The weird thing was that Peter was thinking the same thing. He did not like the idea of agreeing with Stiles, especially against his best friend. “Stiles, don’t you have somewhere else to go?” Peter suggested.
“Where?” Stiles asked sarcastically.
“Out the airlock?” Jimmy offered helpfully.
“Sure. You first.”
Ali threw a tool against a wall. Instead of a satisfying clang, it only produced a disappointing thud. “I just don’t understand what’s going on. I ran three diagnostics and they all say nothing’s wrong.”
“Could it be a command interface problem?” Henrietta asked.
Ali scratched his head. “I thought of that earlier, but we should at least have access to external sensors. I checked the sensor rooms three hours ago, and everything there looks fine. Just like everything else; only nothing works.”
“Environmental and supply works,” Henrietta said.
“And we should be thankful of that,” Peter observed. Essentially, the ship was dead. If environmental was also offline, the kids would have no air to breathe, and no heat to keep them warm. Above the bare necessities of environmental, they also had food and water to drink.
Small victories, Peter reflected.
“But we have no connection to the outside world,” Ali said. “We gotta get the ship back up, or else we’re in serious trouble. We have no windows to look out of; no external sensors; no idea where we are, or what’s out there.”
“For all we know,” Jimmy offered, “we might be at the ends of the universe, or on the edge of a giant black hole.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Stiles said.
“Well,” Ali replied, “he might have something there.”
Peter pulled himself out of his thoughts. Did they just say we were on the edge of a black hole?
“I do?” Jimmy looked more worried about guessing correctly.
“The point is,” Ali offered, “who knows? We’ve got to see where we are.”
“Do you think the Fleet will come rescue us?” Jimmy asked. “Maybe they’re out there, trying to get in.”
“Or maybe the Wasatti.” Stiles tried to make his comment sound haunted. “Ooooh ….” he continued.
“If it was the Wasatti, they’d already be inside,” Peter snarled. “And that was pretty stupid of you, trying to negotiate with them.”
“Well, if we had, we wouldn’t be in this position, would we?”
Peter tried to piece together the ridiculous nonsense Stiles was spewing. “No, Stiles, we wouldn’t,” Peter replied. “We’d all be dead. The Colonial Fleet was the only thing protecting us from those insects.”
“Do they even know we jumped from Vega?” Henrietta asked. “Maybe they think we were all destroyed.”
“My dad saw us jump.”
“Yeah,” Stiles replied, “and with a bunch of missiles heading up his butt. How do you know he made it out alive?”
“Stiles!” Henrietta cautioned. It was obvious all the parents trapped on the base did not make it out alive, but there was still a chance for Peter’s father.
Peter hated to admit it, but found he could no longer ignore it. “Did anyone besides us make it out of Vega?”
No one answered.
Jimmy asked the obvious question. “What do we do if no one knows where we are?”
Ali answered him, “We’ll need to get the ship operational again and find our way home ourselves.”
Sure, that sound
s easy, Peter thought. None of them had any more experience flying a starship than being a passenger. They had no crew, and the ship was drifting. Ali had some ideas about fixing the ship, but so far had no luck.
“Can you do it?” Henrietta asked. “Fix the ship, I mean?”
“Depends what happened,” Ali replied.
Peter was mulling over a few thoughts for some time now and decided to try out his theory. “A ship like this never entered K-T-space before.”
“So?”
“Well, there’s a lot of talk about it being alive or not. If it is, what does it jack in to? How does it stay alive in a jump?” The more he thought about it, the more sense it made. And hearing it out loud further convinced Peter he was right.
“Do you really think it’s a living machine?” Jimmy asked.
“Yes, sort of,” Peter said.
“Yep; me too,” Ali added.
“I still don’t see the problem,” Stiles said.
Ali started to nod his head. “I see what you’re getting at. If any of us were unplugged for a jump that was anything over a couple light-years, we’d starve to death. Or die of thirst.”
“But even so,” Stiles insisted, “the ship doesn’t eat, does it? It simply accesses nutrients, like a body burns stores of fat.”
Ali thought for a moment. “Well, not really, but he does regenerate fluids and organics that gets used up. He … cycles through products. He sort of eats, kinda. The thing is: if he does require food—or whatever—how does he get it in a jump? Does he even stay awake?”
“That’s crazy talk,” Stiles said.
“Exactly,” Ali said. “Humans can’t stay conscious in K-T-space. If the ship stays conscious maybe he could eat, if you want to call it that, but how does he stop from going crazy through all that time alone? My dad always said he was unsure how he’d behave. But that’s when he was joking.”
“Hive entities don’t need to jack-in-jump,” Stiles observed.
Ali dismissed the comment, “They’re different. Plus, they’re always connected telepathically.”
“So is that why the ship isn’t working?” Henrietta asked.
Ali shrugged his shoulders, “Maybe Peter’s on to something. We need to wake him up. Get him restarted. Like you guys did with me. And I’m not having much luck.”
Peter smiled, handing Ali back the tool he threw. “Look, Ali, you’ve been working all day. You need rest, or you’ll make mistakes, right?”
“But—”
“—but you won’t get it done overnight. And you’re not thinking straight anymore.”
Ali stared at the spanner in his hand, rolling it over in his palm. “Alright, sleep may not be a bad idea.” He set the tool back on the workbench, looking around for what to do next.
Peter turned Ali’s shoulders toward the lift, gently guiding him along. “Come on, guys; let’s pick ourselves a room.”
They took the aft lift up to deck five. Crew quarters faced them to the left and the radiation room faced them to the right. Ali started off toward the rooms.
“Hold on,” Peter suggested. “You’re going the wrong way.”
“But the rooms are over here,” Ali said, pointing aft.
“Yeah, but the officer’s rooms are in the front.” Peter glanced at Jimmy, “Forward, I mean. No sense settling on crew rooms when better are available.”
He led the kids through the rad room and out to the forward crew section. Most of those rooms were the same as the smaller aft rooms, but a third of them were better equipped for the officers. They also had one larger bed as opposed to double bunks.
“Well,” Peter suggested, looking around the connecting corridor, “here they are. Take your pick.”
They looked around, settling on five rooms furthest to starboard. They were also closest to the lift leading to the bridge, one deck above.
“Wouldn’t someone rather bunk with me?” Jimmy asked. “Peter?”
“I don’t think so, Jimmy,” Peter began.
“Don’t sweat it, Null-Grav; the boogeyman won’t get you in the middle of the night. But I might.”
Stiles jumped toward Jimmy, trying to scare him. Jimmy just smiled back.
“There is no ‘night’ out here,” Jimmy corrected him.
“No, but you’re always walking around like you’re in the dark.”
Jimmy was not ready to give in. He always seemed to find the one or two best things to worry about. “Shouldn’t we post guards?” Jimmy asked.
Everyone thought about the suggestion for a moment.
“Maybe we should,” Henrietta replied, “but there aren’t enough of us to set up a schedule. And what if someone does come along? I don’t think any of us could stop them.”
“Speak for yourself,” Stiles answered. “We should find the small arms locker and prepare.”
“So go ahead and stay up,” Henrietta suggested.
They stared at each other for a beat. “Nah, fend for yourself,” Stiles finally replied.
“My true hero,” Henrietta motioned like she was in love.
Peter looked mad and headed to a room, ignoring the banter. “I’m going to bed. Let’s see what tomorrow brings.”
Over a huge yawn, Ali said, “Good idea. Can’t be any worse than today.”
* * *
It was three days since they came out of jump and the young crew was as much in the dark about their situation as when they first arrived. For all they knew, they could have been captives in a sealed shipping container sitting in the middle of some cosmic warehouse. They still believed the Colonial Fleet would come charging to their rescue, but their hopes weakened at the end of each lonely day.
On the second day, they were each assigned a task. Ali, of course, continued to work on the ship. Stiles volunteered to assess the condition of the three craft in the hangar and the ship’s tactical and weapons systems. Peter tried to discover any clues about their location, and Henrietta began a thorough inventory of all the supplies on the ship. Jimmy knew the most about computer language and programming, so he was asked to investigate the ship’s computing systems, but was rudely instructed by Stiles not to “mess anything up.” For two days, they wandered about the ship, separately working at their own self-imposed schedules.
Peter was on the bridge at the command station and had not seen anyone in the past thirty hours except Ali silently working just behind him. As absorbed in his work as Ali was, he might as well not have been there. Many times Peter completely forgot his friend was even on the bridge.
For everything Peter did, he was still no further along completing his quest, and by now he was thoroughly exhausted. He flipped open the PA, “Is anyone hungry?”
“Starved,” Henrietta answered immediately.
“I could use a break,” Jimmy replied.
“Me too,” Stiles broke in. “I’m pretty much done here, anyway.”
Peter waited for Ali to answer, but all he heard was an occasional rustling of fabric and a few squeaks from his chair. Peter smiled and asked without looking back, “Ali, are you still awake back there?”
After a moment, Ali reluctantly answered, “Yeah.”
“Thought so. How about taking a short break?”
“Give me five minutes; I’m almost done with this.”
“Ali, with you five minutes turns into a day.” Ali ignored him. Peter opened the PA again. “Okay, everyone, let’s meet up in the galley.” He stood up and headed for the deck hatch. Before leaving the bridge, he said, “Ali, don’t forget to quit. Even machines need maintenance now and then.”
“I won’t.”
Peter stubbornly stared at Ali and waited until he looked up.
Ali smiled, “Promise,” he conceded.
Peter walked into the galley to find Henrietta already there. “Hey,” he offered in greeting. “Didn’t take you long to get here.”
“Was already here,” she replied wearily. She was standing by the dispenser. “You care much what you eat?”
“Surprise me,” Peter replied.
She dialed in two servings and brought one to Peter, who by now was resting at a table. His chin rested in one propped-up hand.
“Thanks, Arietta.” He looked down at his bowl, seeing an unappetizing gray pile. It looked like worms. “Are those noodles?”
She nodded. “I’ve discovered they taste the most like what they’re supposed to be.” She shoveled in a mouthful and began chewing.
Peter lifted a few strands with his chopsticks and suspiciously sniffed at the meal. He took an experimental bite, being sure not to get any on his lips. They were not as bad as he feared. He scooped up a larger portion and sucked them off the sticks. Around a mouthful he said, “Not bad.”
“And she can cook, too,” Henrietta replied preening. “Any luck up there?”
Peter finished chewing before answering, “No, not at all. I can’t break into any external systems. Can’t tell where we are if we can’t see outside.”
The ship was designed for maximum efficiency. Within the design was a requirement for a strong and resilient hull in times of war. As a result, there were no physical portholes or observation platforms which would have provided points of weakness had they been there. Instead, the designers utilized piezo-electronic panels that could be turned on or off to make portions of the ship’s hull transparent. When they were on, it was like there was no wall at all. The perfect example was the main bridge view screen, but when the ship was off line there was no way to turn them on. That was something the designers had never planned for.
“That’s it, then? No idea where we could be?”
Peter considered her question for a moment before reluctantly replying. “I tried doing some research on what we felt like coming out of jump; mostly to estimate how far we traveled. Figured we could at least draw a sphere around Vega. Tried to correlate our physical conditions to what the doctors published in the literature about hyperspace effects.”
Henrietta waited for him to continue, but he just sat there staring at his noodles. She could see he needed prompting. “And …?” she continued impatiently.
“Did you weigh yourself after we came out, by chance?”
“No.”
Peter looked disappointed. “Me either. Weight-loss rates might have helped, ’cause that seems to be the main constant. That’s about the only thing they talk about with real numbers. But I doubt any of us did it. I did some other calcs with hair loss and dehydration, but all the answers I got were too weird to believe. So, no; I have no idea where we could be.”