Burnt Worlds (10 page)

Tassali Yenaara faced forward and bowed her head.
 
She started again.
 
“The realm of Elinth begins with the dusk…”

Head Mechanic Saparun Vish continued watching the console for the port engine.
 
He had been staring at it for almost ten minutes, not making a sound.
 
His night crew, Anderson and Stewart, were working at the fabricator, discussing the design of an improvised tool they hoped to create.
 
The ‘apprentice Mechanics’, volunteers from among the crew, had grown to six.
 
This allowed two of them to be on duty at all times of the day and night, which Saparun thought was quite adequate.
 

Ninety-four, ninety-five… now.
 
Sap looked at the pressure readout, and watched as it dropped by half a percent.
 
His green eyes flicked to the field strength indicator, which began to move slightly higher.
 
In his mind, he began to count again, and eleven seconds later the readings started to return to normal, right on cue.
 
Unstable injector.
 
Regular fluctuations in pressure.
 
Injector will fatigue, then fail.
 
Engine will take itself offline, but no other harm or threat of harm.
 
He closed his eyes and leaned back his head, breathing deeply.
 
Tomorrow.
 
Maybe the day after.

He turned his head to look over at his human apprentices.
 
They got along very well with each other, communicating mostly in a series of jokes and insults.
 
Large amounts of their informal language revolved around sex and sexual organs, body excretions, and religion.
 
This seemed to be the case for both positive and negative expressions.
 
Despite his relatively long time spent working with humans, mastery of idioms remained elusive.
 
Each nationality, or tribe, of humans had its own uniquely impenetrable set of idiomatic expressions.
 
Like the encouraging farewell, “Keep your stick on the ice”, which made no sense.
 
He shook his head.
 
Anderson was now suggesting that Stewart’s sexual preferences included a domestic animal.
 
Stewart, for her part, was smiling as she interrupted to escalate the barely-disguised innuendo.

Saparun listened to a lot of human conversation.
 
He usually got his meals from the so-called “junior ranks mess deck”.
 
Not because the food was better, which it wasn’t, but because it was only a few steps from the engine room.
 
Apparently, human tradition required that the ship’s senior staff use the “wardroom” for its meals, but that was one deck up and, with only three other officers on the ship, it was almost always empty.
 
He was a practical person, and the lower ranks seemed entirely welcoming of him.
 
They were comfortable speaking with him, and several had even given him their coffee rations.
 
In fact, the sight of the Mechanic enjoying his blessed coffee was evidently a source of great enjoyment for the enlisted crew.

For the past two days, he’d noticed a change in the messdeck conversation.
 
With the arrival of the Palani aboard ship, the human crew had begun to speak, almost exclusively, of the newcomer.
 
Some thought her to be exotic, others thought her haughty or arrogant.
 
Most all of them, male and female alike, at some point speculated on the sexual attributes and/or behaviour of the Palani in general, and even of the Tassali in particular.
 
He had very nearly spoken out, to strongly discourage such talk.
 
Such discussion was acceptable, perhaps even entertaining, among the Dosh.
 
But not among the Palani.
 
He’d remained quiet, partly due to the regular, distracting transcendence of a mug of coffee held tightly under his mouth.
 
He wanted to speak to the Captain about his concern:
 
having a Tassali on board was a greater threat than the humans realised.
 
A full-blooded Tassali was a powerful being; if her skills were fully developed she would be able to manipulate the minds of anyone she spoke with.
 
The entire crew could be influenced, made susceptible to her will.
 
Which was to say nothing of any combat training she might have had.
 

For now at least, he would remain quiet.
 

There was also the greater question, of why a senior member of the Palani religion would be out here.
 
Once the Palani leadership knew where she was, they would want her back.
 
And when it came to looking after their own, the Palani were anything but subtle.

The chirping of the engine room’s speaker broke his train of thought.
 
“Cho to Engineering, is the Head Mechanic there?”

“Yes, Lieutenant,” said Saparun in reply.
 
“How can I be of assistance?”

“Sir, if you have some time, could you come by the tech suite?”

“Of course.
 
I am on my way.”

The Dosh gave a quick nod to his apprentices at the fabricator, and walked out of the Engineering space.
 
He moved quietly through several hatches before entering the dark, screen-lit confines of the technology suite.
 
A half-dozen consoles were back-to-back along one wall, and Cho sat at the far end.
 
The golden glow of the screen lit up his fatigue-lined face.

“Lieutenant,” said Sap.
 
“The hour is late.
 
You must be very interested in something.”

“I am,” said the officer, pulling up a chair next to him.
 
The Mechanic sat down and looked at the console.
 
Directly in front of him was a steaming mug.
 
His face lit up, and he glanced at Cho, who nodded and flashed a wide smile.
 
“A bribe, sir.
 
We might be a while.”

Saparun picked up the mug in both hands.
 
“Happily accepted, Lieutenant.
 
Thank you.”
 
He put the mug to his lips and breathed deeply, his face splitting into a toothy smile.
 
“Sensor logs, I see.”

“Aye, sir,” said Cho.
 
“The Captain told Lieutenant Atwell and I about your theory, and asked us to help investigate it in our spare time.
 
I’ve been looking into it.
 
I intend to figure it out.”

“You are not co-operating with Lieutenant Atwell?”

“No.”

The Mechanic said nothing, but looked into the human’s eyes.
 
He took another deep coffee-infused breath, his eyelids twitching.
 
“My theory, do you believe it?”

Cho nodded.
 
“Absolutely, sir.
 
I don’t believe jump drives just explode for no reason.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant.
 
What have you found?”

The broad smile faded.
 
“Nothing.”
 
Cho sighed and pointed to a long list of entries at the side of the screen.
 
“I’ve run processing filters, spectrum filters, time filters, and eleven different types of signal processing.
 
The computer is convinced that there was nothing there.
 
No other ship within the range of anything we have.”

“A problem, then.”
 
Saparun's green eyes ran back and forth across the display.
 
“I have been spending a lot of time thinking about this.
 
Thank you for running so many different types of analysis.”

“You’re welcome, sir, but it doesn’t help.”

Saparun shook his head.
 
“I don’t agree, Lieutenant.
 
In a way, it does help.
 
It tells us we are looking at the wrong thing.”

“Sir?” asked Cho, his brow furrowing.
 
He was looking intently at the screen, his hand absently scratching at the back of his head.

The Mechanic took a long breath from the mug, holding it in for a while before sighing it out.
 
“The sensors show nothing.
 
Let us ignore them.
 
What other data does the ship have?
 
How about navigation?”

“Aye, sir.”

The human officer put both his hands on the console, his fingers beginning to tap across the display.
 
Several windows opened and closed, before one popped open and quickly filled with long columns of numbers.
 
Cho poked at the window, and the columns flew upward until he let go.
 
A few more taps and he was satisfied.
 
“Here, our position in the last few seconds before the explosion.
 
This is us, moving forward, decelerating after the jump.”

“The numbers are not very helpful.
 
Perhaps a picture?”

“Aye, sir.”
 
Cho poked a few times more, and a window opened with a line plotted through it.
 
The line had a slight bulge.
 
“What’s that, Lieutenant?”

“It shows a slight deceleration just before the explosion.
 
Looks like we drifted a bit aft and to port.
 
Not much, though, sir.
 
It’s pretty much within the system’s margin of error.”

Saparun took slow, lingering drink from his mug.
 
He looked at Cho.
 
“The explosion occurred aft on the port side.
 
Perhaps it is not an error.
 
Suppose we did drift slightly aft and to port.”

The Lieutenant stared at the Mechanic for several seconds, his face expressionless.
 
He squinted.
 
“Gravity?
 
Some local gravity anomaly?”

Turning back to the console, Cho tapped at the display.
 
More windows opened and closed, before a final image showed a top view of the ship surrounded by a disc of varying colours.
 
The disc was green mottled with yellow, except for the rear of the ship on the left side, where the colour showed a small dot of red.
 
Cho dragged his finger left and right across the display, and the yellow and green flowed around the ship.
 
The red dot winked in and out, moving in a straight line to and from the side of the ship.
 
He leaned in and read a line of small text.

Slowly putting down his mug, the Mechanic leaned forward, his eyes flicking back and forth between Cho and the display.
 
His voice was low and fluid.
 
“What does it say, Lieutenant?
 
What is that?
 
Is it evidence?”

Cho leaned back, his eyebrows coming together in concentration.
 
When he spoke, it was slowly and carefully.
 
“I believe… I believe it shows a point of gravity heading right at the ship.
 
Well, not a point of gravity.
 
More like an object, microscopically small, with a mass alternating between zero and…” he leaned forward again, squinting at the screen, “...three hundred thousand tons.”

The two fell silent, staring at the screen, watching as the animation repeated.
 
The same small dot, blinking green and red as it approached the ship again and again.
 
Saparun coughed, not taking his eyes from the red dot.
 
“It travels in a straight line, Lieutenant.
 
Can we track its point of origin?”

“Yeah, let’s do that.” said Cho quietly.
 
His fingers moved back and forth across the console, hesitantly at first, then with greater speed.
 
The animation zoomed out, showing more of the space around the
Borealis
.
 
The red dot appeared at a point in space some distance away from the ship, before starting its track toward the hull.

“It came from there,” said Cho.
 
“From nothing.
 
Some sort of anomaly?”

Saparun shook his head.
 
“No.
 
I do not believe that.
 
A point of variable mass appears a kilometre away from the ship.
 
In a tenth of a second, it flies in a straight line right into the hull.
 
That is not a natural thing.
 
It cannot be.”

“But,” said Cho earnestly, his fatigue forgotten, “the sensors say there was nothing there.”

“Then let us see the nothing, Lieutenant.
 
Show us that area of nothing at the moment the point appeared.”

The officer tapped some windows back open, dragging them on top of the coloured animation.
 
More details appeared, bits of data dotted throughout the space around the ship, moving about as the recording played.
 

The two of them sat and watched the animation run several times, looping back to its start point and playing through again.
 
Saparun leaned forward and tentatively poked at the display, dragging his red finger across the animation.
 
The image tilted, drawing a three-dimensional view.
 
“There,” he said at last.

“Sir?
 
Where?”

The Mechanic pointed at the screen.
 
“See?
 
There.
 
Where the point originated.
 
This area of nothing.”

“I don’t see it.
 
I...we need to—”