Supernova (7 page)

“You
still have scar tissue. You’ve also had a couple of broken ribs,” the doctor
continued. “They healed naturally, but the breaks are still detectable.”

Just how
much could that thing tell them about her? She thought about the flower tattoo
on her hip, a remnant from her university days.

“I fell
out of a tree both times,” she admitted. “I’m a bit of a slow learner.”

Steg was
still unconvinced. “That happens in the Fringes, too,” he pointed out. “Not
everyone utilizes bone regenerators.”

Even
Ashford’s patience with the security chief was at its limit. “I’m a doctor,” he
said evenly. “And it’s my medical opinion that she is who she says she is.
You’re
the soldiers. It’s
your
job to figure out how the Nym made their way
to the twenty-first century and kidnapped her.”

“Gods,”
said Marska. He pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers. “I’ve heard
rumors like everyone else, but no one really thought this could happen.” He
shook his head and turned to Lily. “It would have been much easier if you had
turned out to be a spy.”

“Why?
What did these Nym people do?”

Captain
Marska looked away. Lily straightened in her chair and tried to sound
authoritative. “Whatever they’re doing, I think I have a right to know.”

Marska
exhaled. “Time travel.”

The last
day had been lifted straight from a sci-fi flick, so the idea of time travel
didn’t perturb Lily as much as it did the men in the room. “You sound surprised
that it exists,” she said acidly. “It’s not like I’m sitting right here or
anything.”

Steg
muttered something under his breath in an unfamiliar language. Marska shot him
an irritated look before speaking.

“Time
travel has been theoretically possible for decades now, but the Commons has
outlawed any research in that area, and most of the Fringes follow that
directive.” He spoke calmly, but Lily could see the tension in his jaw. “Doctor,
may she be discharged? I’ve arranged a cabin for her.”

“Wait,”
said Lily. “If
they
can figure out a way to get me here,
you
can
figure out a way to get me back. I want to go home.”

“We can’t,”
said Marska simply.

A new
kind of fear streaked through her at the finality in his words. This Commons
Space Fleet, the closest  thing to an ally, refused to help her get home. She
may be well and truly stuck in this strange time.

Marska
reached over and touched her hand. The small contact sent a frisson of heat
through her body. Maybe he sensed it, because he quickly pulled away. “We have
accommodations and the means to care for you,” he said. “You won’t be left to
fend for yourself.”

As if
she had even the faintest idea how to survive here. She still got nervous
driving on the Don Valley Parkway during rush hour. She caught his eyes with
her own and nodded, desperately hoping he was telling the truth.

Chapter 4

Rian
argued briefly with Lieutenant Steg when it came time for Lily’s discharge from
the infirmary. She was engaged with the doctor, trying to secure the bag she
had been brought in with but Ashford insisted it be kept in a decontamination
unit for the time being. Steg wanted her cabin to be guarded at all times, and
from his choice of words, Rian knew the security detail wouldn’t be posted to
protect her.

He had
to remind Steg of who was in charge of the
Defiant
and repeatedly
pointed out that she was incapable of being a threat. In the end, he brooked no
argument and escorted her out of sick bay.

Crew
quarters were located on decks fifteen through eighteen, although fifteen’s
weren’t in use at the present due to intermittent gravity malfunctions. Rian
sincerely hoped that when they reached Rubidge Station the
Defiant
would
be put back together or even retired. And while he was hoping, he also wanted a
permanent captaincy, preferably on a battleship with a crew consisting of
members who weren’t goof-offs fresh out of the academy or banished from other
ships for being difficult, like Shraft and Steg.

They
stepped in the lift and Rian ordered it to deck sixteen.

“So you
guys don’t do time travel,” she said.

“No.”

“Why
not?”

“The
theories out there are very risky, and we consider it immoral. Just because
something is scientifically possible doesn’t mean it should be explored.
Potential incidents like this are why we never looked at that possibility.”

“Like
cryonics,” Lily commented dryly.

“Like
cryonics, yes.”

“That
was the argument opponents made when the regulations went into effect in
Canada,” she continued. “Some people were worried about reanimated bodies
bringing back old diseases or now knowing who they were.”

“That
never happened,” Rian said. “Cryonically preserved remains didn’t rise again,
either.”

“Just
me.”

“You
were in stasis,” he corrected. “That’s very different. Dead is still dead, Miss
Stewart.”

The lift
pinged and the door opened. She followed him down a long corridor. There were a
few sad, wilting palm trees with orange leaves every few feet, bolted to a
grimy blue carpet runner. She had to jog to keep up with him. “Lily,” she said.

He
stopped and faced her. “Beg your pardon?”

“You can
call me Lily,” she repeated. “Captain.”

He
thought about asking her to call him by his first name, but not in the
corridor. There were crew members around, the shifts changing in engineering
and communications, and many of them couldn’t say “Captain Marska” without a
few degrees of disrespect in their voices.

He
stopped in front of a cabin and gestured to a pad next to the door. “Put your
hand on it,” he instructed. “We already programmed it to your DNA.” She
shrugged a little but obeyed. The door slid open. She jumped back a few inches,
startled.

“Convenient,”
she said.

The one
good thing about being on a rust bucket like the
Defiant
was that most
of its crew quarters still had galleys with modest cooking space and water
showers in the bathroom. Newer patrol ships boasted only replicators and
particle light stalls, something that would have thrown her world further into
a tailspin. It looked almost like a regular apartment on any Commons planet,
except for the sight offered through the viewports. It was the first thing Lily
noticed.

“Wow,”
she said. She touched the viewport’s plastiglas. “I never thought…well, space
tourism was just picking up when I was kidnapped. Only billionaires could
afford it.” She looked at him, a small smile forming on her lips, the first she’d
made since she woke up.

She had
a lovely smile.

He
looked away, feeling ashamed. He didn’t have the right to notice things like
that, nor could he afford to with his career on the line and a Nym threat to
contend with. He had too much to lose. Instead he looked out at the starfield,
at the asteroid belt beyond. “It’s the most common means of transport,” he
finally said.

“You’ve
been to a lot of places, then,” she deduced. “Where are you from?”

He
paused, unused to personal questions. “Repub-2,” he replied. “A small planet
just outside the galaxy where Earth is, and one of the oldest settlements.” He
turned away. “Let me show you how things work.”

First he
demonstrated the galley panels and replicator. “You can cook, but the unit here
dispenses only beverages and soup,” he explained apologetically. “Most of the
crew take their meals in the mess.”

“Replicators?
You can actually tell a machine what you want and it’ll make it for you? I can’t
believe they exist.” Her eyes lit up as she took in the wall unit. A small set
of dishes was strapped down in a cabinet next to the unit, and on the other
side was the menu screen. She flicked her fingertips across it curiously,
squinting at the choices.

“It’s
not quite that easy, but yes.” If all he had to do to make her smile was tell
her about the not-so-modern technology on the ship, he could comfortably talk
to her for hours— maybe give her a tour of engineering.
As if she’ll be this
fascinated by navigation consoles and the finer points of transport units
,
he thought. But he had been wrong before. Maybe she
would
want the
details on life support systems. “I can increase the size of the text,” he
offered.

“It’s
not that. I’m trying to read it. You may
speak
something like English,
but this looks like it’s phonetic.” She stepped back. “Oh, now I get it. This
says ‘coffee.’”

“It
does.”

“That
K
should be a
C
, and it’s missing an
F
.” She tabbed through the
screen again, translating items, before going back to the viewport to gaze at
the starfield beyond. “You know, the one decent thing Zadbac and Pitro did when
they sent me out of 2017 was bring me to a time like this. I could be stuck in
the Middle Ages.”

“Middle
Ages?”

“Medieval
times,” she tried to explain. “Dungeons and knights. You know. Ancient history.”

“I don’t.”

“Not a
good time to be alive,” she summarized.

Rian
thought about her healed ribs and ruptured appendix. Her time didn’t sound like
a good one to be alive in, either.

“We kind
of consider your time a middle ages of sorts,” he said.

“It wasn’t.
I have a degree in history. Believe me.” She sighed. She froze for a moment,
fear in her eyes again. “Wait,” she said. “You guys aren’t into dungeons and
torture, are you? You don’t slaughter what you think are undesirables or
practice cannibalism?”

“No,” he
assured her, and her face relaxed. “The Commons Fleet doesn’t even impose
capital punishment.”

“I’m not
going to press the wrong button in here and end up sucked into space?”

Rian
shook his head. She turned back to the viewport.

“What
are you going to do with me?” she asked finally.

“We’re
not going to jettison you or leave you stranded, if that’s what you’re asking,”
he said. “I was up most of the night in conference with my superiors at Fleet.
We’re not changing course, and you’re staying here for the time being. We don’t
know what the Nym know, and we want to find out what they’re up to. You’re
being treated as top-secret.” He led her to the bathroom and demonstrated how
the shower unit worked. “Fresh water is a luxury in space,” he warned. “The shower
gets shut off automatically after seven minutes. Crew members can take longer
ones if they want, but the water consumption is docked from their pay.” He
pointed to a button inset in the wall. “That’s the dryer unit.” He pointed to
the vacuums built into the unit’s walls that sucked off every last droplet of
water from a body in a minute.

“No
towels?”

“No need
for them, but some crew members have their own.” Leading her back to the lounge
area, he showed her how to operate the computer.

She
nodded perfunctorily as he demonstrated the unit. He could tell she wasn’t
thinking about her new home. “Tell me about the Nym,” she finally said.

He
tensed. Talking about Fleet’s theories on their activity could be a security
risk, but who could she talk to? “They’re intergalactic scum,” he said, and
mentally kicked himself.
Very good, Rian, tell her right away how prejudiced
you are
. But he was. Nothing good had ever come off that planet. “They’re
from a small planet of the same name, outside the Fringes.”

He
decided to sidestep Fleet’s concerns and just give her their history. “They’re
terrorists,” he said. “They invade other worlds and stations and take whatever
they want and murder the inhabitants. They’re a small race of people, praise
the gods for that, but they’re bloodthirsty and violent. Fleet and all of
civilized space, including the Fringes, ostracize them.” That was the one thing
similar between the Commons and the Fringes. “We have trouble keeping up with
them,” he admitted. “Their technology is often much more advanced than ours,
and it looks like that now includes time travel.”

“What
would they want with twenty-first century humans?” she demanded. She took her
eyes off the starfield and faced him. “You don’t know what it was like to see
Andrew Claybourne with his face smashed in.”

“No, but
I
have
seen what the Nym can do,” he countered. “And I’m not trying to
trivialize your situation. But I’ve led rescue missions in the Fringes and seen
what they inflict on a large scale. As far as we know, history hasn’t been
rewritten yet, so no damage has occurred to Earth.”

“How
would you know if history had been rewritten?”

The
conversation was turning philosophical, something Rian had never excelled at. “Good
point,” he admitted.

“What
happened to Earth, then? Besides these shipyards you keep talking about?”

He
shrugged, but at least he knew this much about Commons history. “Individual
colonies, the original republics, were slowly established independently of
Earth and its governments, and they joined together and formed the Commonwealth
in 2120. Earth’s natural resources were depleted long before then, and
synthetic resources were developed. The Kurran Empire initiated contact a
hundred years later, an alliance that still continues. Eventually, most
civilians left for other stations and worlds, and Earth turned to manufacturing
and shipbuilding. The
Defiant
’s sensor panels were built there.”