—New transmission ready for your review—
08
Power
Marina typed frantically with her thumbs on the little touchscreen. What do you mean “Jump Complete”?
She didn’t have to wait for a reply this time. We were ahead of schedule after the sustained burn. Captain chose to make the dimensional jump at the earliest possible chance once we reached the minimum velocity.
Her blood ran cold, and her skin got too warm as the bottom fell out of her stomach through the soles of her feet and her heart tried to climb out her throat. She’d made a jump, she, the Stalingrad and the entire colony station, were now in a different, adjacent dimension of space, a whole separate reality. She knew it was going to happen, knew it was coming, but that hadn’t prepared her for the crushing otherness of it. Marina shoved the terminal back into her pocket and kicked off from the wall, reaching out with her arms, she rebounded herself off the hatch frame, bouncing off it, into the passage. She got her footing on the rim of the hatch across the hall and kicked off, launching recklessly fast up the passage. Headed down the spine of the ship towards the bridge.
Her mind raced, her heart pounded, her itching throat filled with words she was too hurt to speak. She blew past two other crew members as she came to another hall that still had its lights on, the brilliance jabbing her in the pupils. Terror gripped her, throwing her across the ship in a blind panic as she made her way to the bridge.
She gripped a corner, ready to wrench herself around into the next passage on her way to the bridge when a hand touched her shoulder. She flinched, but the familiar soothing voice threw a wet towel over the panicked cat driving her mind.
“Marina, what are you doing up here?”
The hand on her shoulder pulled her around, a flurry of motion berating her. Another hand yanked the headlamp off her face. “Mar, why you got this on?”
She blinked hard, realizing it was Tatiana. She swallowed hard, trying to use her saliva to lubricate her strained vocal cords enough to talk more. “Forgot.”
“You forgot you were wearing this big old headlamp, just waving the beam around, blinding everyone, you could at least turn it off.” Her face was jovial, her tone teasing, but her mood soured quickly.
“Marina, what’s wrong with you? You look so tired? Why are you up here, shouldn’t you be back on Charlie deck? Something going on?”
“Jump.” she grunted, her pained voice somewhere between a gasp and a moan.
Titania tried to blink away her confusion, her gaudy long eyelashes fluttering. “Yes, we made our jump, isn’t this exciting? Now we get to cruise and recharge the banks until it’s time to jump back.”
Marina shook her head, covering her ears. “We’re gone. We’re not in the Milky Way anymore, we left Earth. We left the dimension, we’re not even a part of reality anymore. Where are we?” She gripped Tatiana’s shoulders, trying to shake her, but the weightlessness meant she just pushed her friend away from herself.
Tatiana let herself drift away, her face twisted as she tried to look concerned and confused at the same time. “Marina, what happened to you? Why does your voice sound like that, and the bags under your eyes, my God, have you not slept all week?”
“Chemical burns, smoke inhalation from electrical fire.”
“That was you? Girl, you gotta tell me these things!”
“You never checked on me.”
“I heard there was a fire and someone was hurt, but I was never told who.”
“Didn’t think to find out?”
“I’ve been busy. All the calculations, checklists, navigation, double checking, there’s a lot going on, on the bridge, and Captain Mironova has really been on our asses.”
“Just one message…” she trailed off, the hurt in her eyes as sharp as the hurt in her voice.
“I pulled three doubles in a row, only breaking to sleep. We simulated this jump fourteen times just to make sure we all knew what we were doing and what everyone else was doing too. Then we went through four more dry runs after that.”
Marina was genuinely surprised. “So much? Not just run with computer and captain pushes button?”
“This isn’t a normal jump. This was the first civilian dimensional jump for a colony. We’re making history, Marina, and it’s got to go perfectly. Sure the navy has done it a lot of times, with bigger ships and larger crews, even while towing their own space stations, but this is different, this is for peace, without all the guns and missiles all the navy ships have, the first real foothold out in the stars that isn’t going to be just a bunch of soldiers pointing guns at each other from behind their government assigned asteroids.”
Marina shook her head, her shoulders sagging in begrudging understanding. “More important than me.”
“Come on, don’t be like that. Let’s go up to the bridge and have a look at the new stars. And we can catch up, I have a little bit of time.”
Marina, feeling sheepish after her panicked rush to the bridge, didn’t tell her friend that’s where she was already planning on going to. She realized she should get back to work on the relay panel, but it had been a long time since she’d been on the bridge, and maybe seeing the new stars would make her feel better. “Still hurts to talk, but I’ll come up for a quick look.”
Tatiana led her on, chatting like nothing was wrong, that everything was normal, that a random coworker hadn’t made a pass at her at the same time they had jumped into a whole other dimension of reality. “You’ll have to send me a message. We’ve so got to catch up. But I don’t know how much time I’ll have to talk because we’re only going to be in the transfer dimension a few days, a week at most, and I’m sure captain will want to run more drills before the jump back in. But it’s been too long since we hung out.”
“Yes, too long. I want your advice. Lev came on to me. He wants to start a relationship.”
Tatiana stopped, her hand on the panel, as she looked back, shocked. Her eyes wide, mouth in a perfect O shape, as her hand trembled centimeters from the buttons. “He what? Like, Lev, the mechanic?”
Marina paused, trying to choose the fewest words possible to get her answer out when Tatiana punched the keys on the panel, opening the door. Marina forgot her response as the new light washed in through the open hatch.
The two women drifted onto the bridge. The void beyond was no longer the blackness of space, the empty, yawning vastness between the stars was gone, instead replaced with a deep, angry indigo that made the eyes itch. Vague squirming shapes swirled in the purple ink. The undulating formlessness broken up with twisting electric blue streaks. The slow motion lightning, trapped in a twisting, gnarled claw, reaching to grasp at the Stalingrad like a titan’s fist from inside a purple lava lamp.
Tatiana worked her way to her console, taking up position next to the ship’s navigator. Marina drifted between them, one hand on the back of each of their seats. Looking through the domed ceiling above, her mind too overwhelmed to think in words, her voice was still too broken to speak.
The otherness, the wrongness, the overwhelming feeling of dread, consumed Marina. Telling her she didn’t belong, that she needed to leave, to go back to earth, to reality where she belonged, that none of them should be there. The angry purple trying to invade her soul through her pupils, a burrowing parasite trying to get inside. The hair stood up on the back of her neck, her joints got stiff, her skin felt too tight. Marina turned, heading back for the bridge door control console, trying to look calm as she rapidly tapped on the keys to open the hatch again.
Tatiana twisted around in her chair to look at her suddenly departed friend. “Mar, what’s going on?”
“I have to work, too.” She grunted breathlessly through her leathery vocal cords.
“Come now, Mar, it’s not every day we get to look into another dimension. A different reality. Work can wait more two minutes.”
“Yeah, it’s wild.” she agreed, drumming her fingers on the wall as the hatch worked itself open. Is this taking longer to open this time than it did when we just came in? She didn’t wait for the hatch to swing all the way open, and shimmed her way through the gap, back down the hall, the two turns down other passages back to the electrical compartment and her damaged panel.
Her hands shook until she held her screwdrivers again. They worked quickly, moving on autopilot. Her brain too numb to think, too shocked to form words as she finally shoved the last of the fresh parts into the cold panel under the narrow light of her headlamp. She finished and had pulled her computer from her thigh pocket to message Chief Engineer Konstantin again when Lev came back.
He took up position next to the hatch as she typed away. “Look, I know I probably came off a bit strong, I could see your surprise, but I’m just trying to be honest with, hundred percent open. I don’t see a reason to not be direct. Like we were saying, we’re both intelligent, well educated, put together people. I see no reason why we can’t be direct with our feelings and intentions to each other.”
She stopped her typing and looked up at him. I had forgotten about him, about that. It… it just doesn’t feel like it matters anymore. He’s not purple. “You realize we’re in another dimension, right not, right? Have you seen it, the new void?”
“No I haven’t.”
“So you haven’t seen the angry purple?”
“Angry purple?” Now she had him on the back foot.
“The violent violet?” She smirked at him, forgetting it hurt to talk.
“What are you on about Mar?”
“You’ll probably see Lev, don’t worry about it.” She turned back to typing her message to Konstantin, even if her mind wasn’t thinking about the words she was putting on the screen. He’ll see, eventually, probably. I… this doesn’t seem like it matters anymore. After seeing that, something… more void than the void of space. I’m just a girl, one person, in something more vast, more complex than what can be believed. My concerns don’t matter, my reservations don’t matter, but maybe I don’t want to be alone right now either.
“Look. Mr. Lev. You want me to be completely honest? I don’t know what to think. I’ve been focused on work, on the mission for so long, it had never occurred to me. We are just co-workers. I’m sorry I forgot romance exists. Sue me. So no, I’m not super excited to jump into a relationship, and to be honest my biggest concern is that we still have a mission, still have a job to do, and one way or another, one reason or another, I don’t want that hypothetical personal relationship to mess with the professional relationship, and make it harder for us to get our jobs done properly. Something you seem to already have a problem doing.” She pointed behind her at the still open panel.
He set his jaw, nodding along as his face hardened while she went on. “But sure, why not?” she continued. “We’re just a couple of Tug mules working on the cart. What’s it matter?” She swept her hands along the roof of the compartment. “In the vastness of everything, we’re two people, a handful of water drops in the endless ocean of wet. So, sure, let’s give it a try. We’re both on this colony mission, we’re risk takers, what’s a little personal risk too?” Her voice gave out and she coughed away while clinging to the ceiling.
Lev blinked in surprise. “I figured you were winding up for a rejection.” His hard face split into a wild smile.
Marina waggled a finger at him. “Don’t make it weird.” Her voice cracked, a sharp pain shooting down the back of her throat and branching into both lungs, re-inducing her coughing fit. She had been talking way too much today.
She winced, swallowed hard, and hit enter on the message she had typed, sending it to the chief engineer. Repair complete, please verify everything is off so we can hook this back into the system.
If you liked this, Chapter eight of the serial novel Pending Receipt check out our already released full length sci-fi novels Altar of Scales, and it’s sequel Cave in the Sky.
Editing progress continues for Book III: Knowledge of Gods, we’re pulling audio equipment out of storage, and consulting with cover artists.
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The Descendant Saga 