Into the Void

Chapter 9

Nate and Damon sailed straight past the wreck and into the void on the other side of the ship. Damon slapped the distress beacon on his exo-suit. Suddenly, a blinding white spot glowed through the hull sending rivulets of molten metal streaming off into space. The strands of liquid alloy drifted every which way in the vacuum, slowly cooling from white, to orange and finally disappearing against the black. As the molten spot on the hull grew wider a wave of static washed over Nate's head's up display. Seconds later the the display, the radio and the electric motor circulating his oxygen died. Closing his eyes and forcing himself to take slow easy breaths, he turned awkwardly and pressed the faceplate of his helmet up against Damon's with a hard reverberating clunk. "Do we have anything that can set us drifting towards the hangar," Nate shouted, the sound passing through the remaining air in his suit, vibrating across the two helmets and hopefully into Damon's ears.

"I have a gauss pistol." shouted Damon. "Can we shoot our way over to the other half of the wreck?"

Nate shrugged. "Maybe, it's better than waiting for the air to run out!"

Damon held Nate tightly by the shoulder with one hand and drew a long sleek pistol with the other. He aimed the pistol away from the drifting hulk and fired three shots in quick succession. With nothing to brace themselves against in the void, the pistol sent the two men drifting at an angle towards the ship. It still wouldn't be enough, they were only moving at a few centimeters per second. Their air would run out long before they hit the other half of the wreck.

As they drifted a huge black shape passed in front of them, obscuring the hangar and the rest of the ship. Lungs burning, and vision fading to grey, a strong hand seized Nate by the wrist and hauled him down onto a hard metal floor. Someone was trying to pry open his suit. Thrashing and struggling, Nate pulled in a long involuntary breath as his helmet was torn off, coughing uncontrollably as the cool air filled his lungs.

"Nathan, relax," said a deep booming baritone voice. "You are safe. We caught you."

Nate blinked tears out of his eyes and saw Onyx holding him down on the floor of the cargo space in the gunship. The big construct's feet were anchored to the wall with magnetic plates and its massive arms kept Nate locked to the deck. The gleaming green war machine let him up and he floated up to the cockpit, where he found Rowan and Izzy seated in the co-pilot and engineering stations respectively. Rowan was a picture of calm and tranquility flying as casually as if he was delivering cargo to the safest planet in the galaxy. Izzy sat in sharp contrast to Rowan's calmness. Her black hair was plastered flat to her scalp with sweat and she was breathing heavily as she worked frantically at her controls. Glancing over Izzy's shoulder, Nate saw a series of lines and graphs all growing and shifting from yellow to red on her control panel.

"Jesus Christ," said Nate. "That's not a readout from our drive core is it?"

"No" said Izzy, brushing a stray lock of hair from her eyes. "It's the ship we just came off, the reactor is going to go nova in a minute or two. I've got our barriers all pointing aft and the engines are overheated as hell, I can't get anymore thrust out of them until they cool down."

Nate jumped into the pilot's seat and hastily strapped in. Warning lights blinked all across the control panel, the engines were on the verge of melting their heat sinks. "Izzy, can we push the waste heat from the engines into the weapon's heat sinks?" he asked.

"That might work, hold on." Izzy shrugged out of her restraints, opened a panel in the floor and disappeared into a crawlspace. The lights in the cockpit flickered and the engineering console spat a stream of sparks. Izzy poked her head back up through the hatch. "Check the heat now."

Nate glanced down at the control panel, the warning lights had shifted from red to yellow, and rammed the throttle forward. His head bounced off the back of his chair as the gunship leapt away from the dying exploration ship, rushing back to the Dauntless as 7g's worth of thrust pushed him back into his seat. He keyed the feeds from the rear cameras onto the main screen and watched as the drifting hulk behind them shrank in the distance. The ship was replaced by a new sun as the reactor went critical, exploding in a small supernova, and reducing the drifting hulk to a cloud of radioactive dust. Nate cut the thrust, nearly vomiting as they went from crushing acceleration to nausea inducing weightlessness in an instant. He left Rowan to land them on the Dauntless and sat staring vacantly out at the main display.

The console beeped. A priority communication was coming through. The main display faded to static for a moment before being replaced with the narrow hawkish features of the Dauntless' communications officer. "We have a problem" she said. "There's a large metallic object closing on the Dauntless, potentially another ship. At its current speed it'll intercept you. Sending you a rendezvous point. We'll collect you shortly."

The display faded back to the feed from the ships camera and a yellow diamond pointed them towards a debris field in the system. Rowan hauled back on the stick, sending the ship on a long loop angling towards the rendezvous point.

Izzy crawled back into her seat. "Did I hear that right?" she said.

"Yup," said Nate quietly. "Something's gone wrong and we're heading for some kind of debris field."

"A debris field? Do we have any more specific information?"

Rowan brought up the dropship's sensors. "System information from the Dauntless says it's mostly ice with some rock. It's too tightly packed to be an asteroid field, could be the remains of a destroyed moon or a protoplanet. Sensors are running now, although I doubt they'll tell us anything more specific. It's going to be long flight, do we have enough supplies for everyone? I know I don't need to eat but I'd rather not make the RV with just me, Onyx, and six starved corpses."

Nate unclipped his restraints and floated towards the door. "Izzy, you might want to see what else we can do about our heat problem. If there's another ship out there we'll be glowing like a beacon on their thermal scopes."