Into the Black: Odyssey One (10 page)

Weston looked at Palin in surprise, “You said it would take you several days.”

“On the contrary, I said it might take me a few days. I was wrong.”

“All right. Thank you, Doctor. I’ll want you to be present when I go to speak with her.”

“Of course, I’ll be waiting for the call.”

“Good. Thank you for the report,” Weston said, looking back down to the PDA that had managed to pick up four more forms for him to work on while he was talking to the Commander and the Doctor.

“Yes Sir” Palin replied after a long silence and, finally getting the clue, turned and left the bridge.

As the academic vanished from sight, Weston set down his PDA and turned to his first officer, “His records don’t do him justice, you know.”

“Perhaps Sir, but his attitude needs a lot of work.” Roberts was looking after the retreating doctor with an odd expression on his face, “he’s broken at least two assistants in the Communications labs. They’ve been begging for transfers since Alpha Centauri.”

“You’re kidding,” Eric said in shock.

“I’m afraid not, Sir.” Roberts shrugged, “I shifted them to another shift in the same lab. That’s holding them for now, but Palin has a habit of working odd hours, so I don’t know how long it’ll last. Everyone who knows him says he’s insane.”

“True enough, but genius has a way of tempering people,” Weston shrugged with a laugh, “or, at least, it has a way of excusing eccentric behaviour.”

“I suppose, Sir,” Roberts said in a noncommittal manner, shrugging. As far as he was concerned, if the person wasn’t capable of operating within proper military structure, he didn’t have time for them. Genius or no.

Roberts turned away, returning to the sensor reports that were still flooding in. Weston sighed before toggling another switch on his armrest, “Doctor Rame, are you available?”

The call came back a moment later, “Yes Captain, anything I can do?”

“How’s the patient, Doctor?”

“She’s fine Sir, just requested a glass of water and accessed the entertainment library.”

Weston’s eyebrow rose slightly, “Palin did a very good job, what’s she listening to?”

“Oddly enough, ‘Brahms lullaby’. It seems to be doing her some good, she’s resting comfortably.”

“Good. I’ll want to speak with her, soon, Please see to it that she gets whatever she needs.”

“Of course, Sir,” The doctor’s tone indicated that he considered the order almost insulting.

“And Doctor…,” Weston hesitated slightly.

“Yes Captain?”

“We’re going to Transition to another system shortly,” Weston said with a degree of hesitance.

There was a long pause from the other end of the conversation, until finally the doctor sighed, “I can’t say that I’m overjoyed to hear that, but thank you for the warning. . . . I’ll have my staff standing by with relaxants.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” Weston nodded. “And make sure you have someone in Engineering, will you?”

“Certainly,” Rame replied crisply, “I’m just thankful that my newest patient is asleep. She doesn’t need that stress added to everything.”

“The thought had crossed my mind, Doctor,” Weston smiled softly. “In fact, if you think it’s wise, I’ll support adding a sedative to her air mix. To be frank, I’m hardly happy with how properly trained and briefed people, react to Transition. . . . I wouldn’t want to deal with untrained reactions, not if we can avoid it.”

“Agreed,” the doctor said after a moment. “I’ll check her vitals and, if I believe it to be safe, I’ll consider adding something to slip her a little deeper.”

“Excellent, keep me apprized. Captain out.”

*****

“Crossing the heliopause, Sir.”

Weston nodded, taking his command chair, “Thank you, Daniels. Commander?”

“Yes, Captain?”

“Advise Winger that she’d better wrap up her scans. Then, signal a Transition Alert.”

“Aye Captain,” Roberts said, his voice thick with distaste.

Weston just hid his own discomfort behind a wry smile and focused on appearing calm, confident, and relaxed. There was no sense in giving anyone else the silly idea that the Captain didn’t trust the Transition Drive any more than they did.

Especially, if the Captain really
didn’t
trust it.

So Captain Eric Weston did what he’d always done before a particularly dangerous mission. Whether it had been in the Marines, back when he flew the last of the venerable Harriers into the ground as increased budget cuts made his job more dangerous during peacetime than if someone had actually been shooting at him, or in the Archangels, when people actually
were
shooting at him and the only thing that saved him was the billions of dollars invested in making sure that his team was at the very top of their game.

So Captain Eric Stanton Weston masked anything resembling nerves with a cool facade of titanium steel, and hoped to God that no one saw through it.

So far he’d been lucky. By the time any of his men, or women, were smart enough to see through it…, they were too busy building facades of their own, to notice.

So he smiled, looking perfectly relaxed and the Bridge crew around him relaxed markedly themselves, even as the blue lights that marked a Transition Alert began to flash.

Ah, the glory of command.

The alert lasted for another twenty minutes, until all sections had checked in as being ready, and then Weston bit back his reluctance and gave the final order.

“Activate Transition Drive.”

Everyone on the bridge winced, as Lieutenant Daniels pressed the final activation command, and slammed his eyes shut. Most everyone on the bridge did the same, except for Captain Weston and Commander Roberts.

Both men had time to privately note this fact, and promise themselves that they’d speak with the bridge crew about the dangers of entering a potentially hostile area with their eyes closed.

The swirling maelstrom of tachyon particles ripped them apart as the Odyssey transitioned out of the White Giant system.

Chapter 7

Twenty light years from where it began, the NAC Odyssey reintegrated into normal space with no external sign that anything untoward had occurred.

Internally, however, was a far different story.

“Commander! All posts, report!” Weston ordered, diplomatically ignoring the retching sound from one side.

Roberts waved a hand to an Ensign who wasn’t busy at that time. And who took the hint and rushed to help the unfortunate Lieutenant, who was losing his spaghetti dinner under the fire control station. As he was helped away, a young woman slid discreetly into his place while being careful to keep her feet out of the mess on the floor.

“Passive sensors are picking up a disturbance on the fourth planet,” Roberts said, calmly.

Weston could understand that, passive sensors were just picking up data from not less than twelve hours earlier. They’d have to wait for the Tachyon generators to regain a useful charge before they’d get anything current. Even so, information from twelve hours ago might well explain some little piece of the puzzle, they were unravelling. “Correlate and send it to my station, Commander.”

“Aye Captain,” Roberts flipped over a manual control panel and typed in a fast command, supplementing the vocal orders that he was snapping quietly over his induction microphone.

Weston sighed, flipping open his own small display screen and wished, not for the first time, which the Holographic displays had been cleared for Bridge use. Unfortunately the displays were deemed potentially unstable and were not approved for use in critical systems. It was a decision that Weston approved of intellectually, but he still felt a mild pang of loss as he stared at the fourteen inch screen he’d pulled in front of him and missed the room sized equivalent projection that his simple desk system provided.

*****

Michelle Winger frowned, pouring over the data stream, and wished that she’d been able to hijack the same three arrays, she had used earlier. The information pouring in from her long range array was interesting, but correlating data across multiple frequencies was her forte.

Whoa,
her eyes narrowed as she spotted something,
what the hell is this?

Her fingers flew over the old-fashioned keyboard as she cursed the power drain that Transition caused. As the data began to coalesce into something resembling a picture for her, she shot a glance to one side to check the power display.

Bridge systems had full priority, with weapons and navigation following right behind. But her systems were on the list too, and the reactors were pouring out enough power that she would be fully online in a couple minutes, at most. In the meantime, all her scanners were already up and functioning perfectly, so she would simply have to make do with the basic interface for another hundred seconds or so.

“Commander!” She spoke up, a little louder than she’d intended. “I’m sending you over my initial findings!”

*****

“High energy discharges?” Weston questioned as he looked at the data, abruptly he noticed something familiar in the information and looked up with a cocked eyebrow, “Weapons?”

“It seems likely,” Roberts nodded. “Though we could be looking at a storm front on the planet.”

“That powerful?” Weston shook his head sceptically. “No. . . . It’d have to be the size of Jupiter to flash that high.”

“Probably Sir,” Roberts agreed.

“All right. Helm take us in…, slowly,” Weston said calmly, even as his heart raced. “Commander, Anything on passive tactical scan?”

“Negative. Just some background hisses from the star,” Roberts replied.

Weston nodded, his eyes rising to look at the yellow star that was the system primary. There was always some background hiss from anything the size of a star, the massive gravity made certain of that. “Helm, you are not to cross the Heliopause until we have our Tachyon generators back up to full force. I want a system wide ping before we even think of becoming trapped, however temporarily, in that gravity well.”

“Aye Sir. A full system ping,” Roberts nodded. “Wilco.”

*****

“How’s the patient, Doctor?” Eric Weston asked as he stepped over the knee knocker that separated the medical lab from the hallway.

“She’s sleeping comfortably,” Rame replied, not looking up from his current patient, who had displayed odd symptoms from the Transition. “Something much of the crew would dearly love to be able to do. The transition effects are growing worse, Sir.”

Weston sighed, “How bad?”

“Nothing quite as serious as Lieutenant Tearborn, thankfully,” Rame straightened from his unconscious patient and wiped his brow. “But unless I’m completely off base, I believe that part of the crew is allergic to the process.”

Weston snorted. “Doctor, trust me, all the crew is allergic to it.”

“I didn’t mean psychologically,” Rame snapped. “I mean physical allergies. There has been a series of consistent symptoms in approximately twelve percent of the crew.”

Twelve percent?
Weston blinked, “That’s almost forty people!”

“Indeed? I hadn’t counted,” Rame said sarcastically, as he passed his hands under s dissolvent spray to remove the sterile coating he’d applied.

Weston let the sarcasm slide, knowing that the man was tired and stressed, “How serious is it?”

“Nothing permanent or debilitating. Not yet, at any rate,” Rame sighed. “But it has affected the eyesight of twenty-three crew members. Again, not permanent. But disturbing just the same. Thirty crew members have developed a disturbing cellular degradation of the soft tissue of their noses, mouths, and throats. I’m not certain about the internal effects of these, yet. I’ve scheduled a series of tests.”

“Keep me posted,” Weston said tensely, wondering about long term effects of Transition, not for the first time.

Rame nodded, sliding the patient under a large panel and opening the crew member’s hospital gown. He punched a command on his PDA and turned away as the panel began emitting a snapping sound, like a strobe light.

“Infrared treatments seem to work against the degradation,” Rame sighed. “Thankfully. In the long term, however, I just don’t know.”

Weston nodded, “All right. Like I said, keep me posted. And inform me when she wakes up.”

“Of course, Captain.”

*****

“Prepared to initiate tachyon pulse.”

“All systems go / no go,” Roberts replied, following the book.

“Tachyon generators… Go.”

“Receptor array… Go.”

“Forward shielding… Go.”

Roberts nodded, “Drive system?”

Waters half turned and smiled, “We see anything spooky, we’re ready to bolt, Sir.”

“We don’t ‘bolt’, Ensign,” Roberts smiled tightly, but without amusement. “We advance cautiously to the front, and quickly to the rear.”

“Aye Sir.”

“Initiate sensor ping.”

Like Submarines using SONAR in the previous century, the Odyssey’s tachyon array was a powerful detection device but it had many of its own drawbacks. Unlike infrared, RADAR, and other telemetry systems, the Tachyon generators could produce real time imaging data from a distance measured effectively in light years or more. However, Tachyons were not cheap to generate, and didn’t last long once they had been generated. In fact, if you wanted to get technical about it, they didn’t last any length of time at all.

Neither Roberts nor Weston were intimately familiar with the mathematics of the subject, though both were aware that, on paper, tachyons didn’t even exist. It was one of those amusing mathematical ‘proofs’ that seemed to be at odds with the real universe. On paper a tachyon didn’t exist because its half-life was literally too short to be measured. However, in that period of nothingness that the particles existed in, they could travel across the rim of the galaxy and back.

So when the Tachyon generator on the Odyssey pulsed, a shotgun like spread of those impossible little particles leapt out through the fabric of space and spread out from the ship, creating interference in the local area of space, as they passed. When they hit something, anything from a single atom to the local star itself, they created a ripple effect that rebounded out from the object and travelled back to the waiting receiver that was on the Odyssey.