Utilizing her armor’s maglocks, she walked down the ladder, moving perpendicular to each deck until she reached the bottom of the ship. There, she located the antimatter storage compartment and gently prised the case open.
There they were: five small containers, each with the potential to destroy a fleet of ships or to sterilize a planet. It was also the thing that would give the Voyager the ability to reach their destination in just six months.
With exacting care, she pulled each cylinder free and transferred it into a waiting receptacle. Once they were all in place, and the storage system sealed up, she took a step back and sagged in her armor.
“What a day…”
EMPTY
STELLAR DATE: 03.07.4331 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: Voyager
REGION: Interstellar Space, Rimward of Kapteyn’s Star
“Still nothing,” Katrina said with a sigh as the probe’s latest sensor sweep came back.
After spending half a year in stasis—during which Troy had silently drifted past the cruisers patrolling the edge of The Kap’s heliosphere—they had reached the point where the Intrepid had disappeared.
Neither of them had expected to find anything at that location. The scout ships that had searched there a decade earlier had not found any signs, either.
But now they were a light year further along the Intrepid’s course, and there was still not a single sign of damage, or even stray ions floating in space. Although, finding ions from the engines twenty-eight years later was a pipe-dream at best.
<We can press on further,> Troy offered, <or we can start up a grid.>
“If they’re under thrust, we’d see them, and if they’re dead in space, we could search a thousand years and never find them,” Katrina replied.
<It just doesn’t make any sense,> Troy said, sounding more frustrated than Katrina had ever heard him. <Even if something catastrophic had happened, they could have blown pods; hell, they could have blown the cylinders off to save the colonists. There should be ships, there should be…>
Troy’s voice faded, and Katrina knew how he felt.
“Hey, there’s that weird graviton reading again; the probe picked up a bunch of them, too. What could they be from?”
Troy grunted over the Link. <Beats me; galaxies colliding on the far side of the universe?>
“The scout ships had found some gravitational disturbances, but they were stronger then. They too had assumed that the origin was a wave of gravitons from some distant event, but the wave never passed through the Kap System itself,” Katrina said as she pulled up the relevant records.
<I recall, it was rather puzzling,> Troy said. <I was always in the dark matter camp.>
Katrina compared the readings that their probe had picked up to what the scout ships had found.
“What, that passing dark matter of some sort had created the waves?” she asked, only half paying attention to the conversation as she examined the readings.
<Yeah, but that dark matter was not in our space-time, but rather in some sub-layer of space; it occupies different dimensions, but gravity overlaps into our space-time.>
“Yeah, but there’s no proof of that,” Katrina said.
<Well, there’s some. Just look at that research beaming out of Procyon these days.>
Katrina shrugged; there was that. The work on creating graviton emitters in Procyon—that the researchers there were freely beaming out to all of humanity—was groundbreaking. Many researchers were starting to use gravity to search for other physical dimensions in space-time, ones that were similar to the three that humans occupied.
“What are you suggesting, Troy?”
<Well, we know that Kapteyn’s Star is extragalactic in origin, and spends most of its time far above or below the Milky Way’s disk.>
“Right, we teach that to kids in school. Someday, their dozen-times great grandchildren will look up in the night sky and see the galaxy hanging above them—which will be breathtaking, I imagine.”
<Right, The Kap is a halo star. It also has two major planets, Albion and Victoria, that it picked up along the way. But why? It doesn’t have enough mass to pluck worlds out of the dark. Not at the speed it’s moving through space.>
“Ohhh, I’ve heard this, it’s the Streamer Theory,” Katrina said with a nod.
<Yes!> Troy replied. <The more I look at the original scout ship’s data, and our probe’s, the more I wonder if that theory is true.>
“That theory says that The Kap pulls a supermassive string of dark matter along behind it that it picks up during its extragalactic transit through the galaxy’s halo,” Katrina said with a frown. “But if that’s the case, and the Intrepid encountered it, then where is it? And why didn’t they see it?”
<Well, I know the answer to the first question,> Troy said.
“You know where this dark matter streamer is?”
<Yes, right where it always was.>
<Fine, sorry, I got carried away. Remember, The Kap moves fast. If you were to leave The Kap today and encounter the Streamer, it would not be in the same place as it was when the Intrepid would have encountered it.>
“We’re searching in the wrong place!” Katrina shouted.
<Yes, that is what I’m saying. The Streamer, if it’s real, is sixty AU spinward of here…at least.>
“Do you think the Intrepid is stuck in it?” Katrina asked.
<That, or they’re still travelling inside it, but its gravity is bending their tight-beams back to The Kap, so that we aren’t getting their messages.>
“Troy, if you had a body, I’d hug you!” Katrina exclaimed. “I had always feared we’d never find them…I was starting to give into that.”
<Well, don’t get too excited yet; this is still just a theory,> Troy cautioned.
“I’m going to go take a shower and go down for a nap,” Katrina said as she rose from her seat in the cockpit.
<Sweet dreams,> Troy replied.
A ‘nap’ was the term that Katrina had adopted for going into stasis. At first she thought that she would stay awake the entire time they searched, but it had been years since they had left The Kap, and she found herself staying out of stasis for increasingly short periods.
She did, however, luxuriate for a solid half hour under the hot spray of water before flipping the shower to its dry mode. Once dry, she walked across the hall to the stasis chamber and pulled a stasis suit from the rack.
The suit wasn’t strictly necessary—the Voyager had true stasis pods, not cryostasis like the Hyperion had for the trip from Sirius. The suit, however, allowed the stasis pod to snap her in and out of stasis periodically, and get an instant reading on her health.
She pulled on the suit and then sat on the edge of the pod, staring at the wall of the stasis chamber.
“Do you regret this?” she asked softly, knowing that Troy would be listening.
<Not for a moment. I’ve been dismayed, yes. Annoyed at our lack of results, certainly. But never have I regretted. Can you imagine staying at The Kap and just waiting…waiting another forty years to hear if they made it?>
Katrina shook her head. “I don’t know if I would have made it this long.”
<You and me both, and I plan to live forever,> Troy replied.
“Wake me if you need me,” Katrina said as she settled into the pod. As she got comfortable, she wondered briefly about Laura and how she was faring back at The Kap. Katrina hoped that the young woman had moved on with her life.
Living in the past was no way to live.
Katrina grew still; the pod sensed her readiness and slid the lid shut. She saw the readout give a five second countdown and read the numbers, 5…4…3…2…1….
THE SEARCH
STELLAR DATE: 08.17.4352 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: Primacy Capitol Buildings, Constance
REGION: Victoria, Kaptey
n Primacy, Kapteyn’s Star System
Twenty-two years since Katrina departed in the Voyager…
Chancellor Laura rose from her chair and walked to the windows of her office. Below her, lay the planet Victoria, and beyond that, The Kapteyn Primacy. It was strong, it was secure; her people were unified and building a civilization that would be the envy of any star system—save Sol, perhaps.
And yet she felt so very empty.
The latest reports had come in. There was no sign of Kat’s ship. Just like the Intrepid before it, the Voyager was gone. Not long after, a message had arrived from the FGT. The terraformers declared the Intrepid to be lost, disappeared without a trace.
Laura knew that whatever fate had befallen the Intrepid must have also taken Katrina. If the greatest colony ship ever built was obliterated by whatever lay in the darkness between Kapteyn’s Star and New Eden, then there was no reason to hope that the Voyager would have fared any better.
A tightness grew in Laura’s throat as she remembered the years she had spent as Katrina’s assistant; how the woman had given her guidance and support without hesitation, even when she had been feeling a deep sadness herself.
Laura’s eyes stung as hot tears spilled down her cheeks, and a sob tore free from her throat. She laid the side of her head against the window and gasped for breath as long moans of despair tore free from her throat.
She had never told Kat how she really felt.
And now that opportunity would never come.
Laura let herself cry until there was nothing left. She had to get it out now, before the press called her for a quote, and before she had to write a speech for Katrina’s state funeral.
But for now, for however long she had, Laura would stare out at the world that Katrina had been so instrumental in building, and know that so long as she was here, so long as she was able, she would carry on Katrina’s legacy and guide the worlds that drifted in the warm, ruddy glow of Kapteyn’s Star.
CRASH
STELLAR DATE: UNKNOWN
LOCATION: Voyager
REGION: UNKNOWN
The cover to Katrina’s pod slid open, and she was immediately assaulted by the sound of a klaxon blaring and the sight of emergency lights flashing. All around her, the ship shuddered like a groundcar riding down a washboard gravel road.
“Troy! What’s happening!”
<I think I found the Streamer!> Troy replied, his voice anxious, but not panicked.
“I’m on my way up,” Katrina said. “Can you kill the alarms, though? It’s deafening.”
<Sorry, I always forget about things like that,> Troy replied and a moment later, the blaring sound and flashing lights stopped.
Now that Katrina could think straight, she climbed out of the pod and pulled herself through the zero-g environment to the ladder shaft.
Traversing the ladder shaft was no simple task as the ship continued to shake around her. Several times she lost her grip and slammed into the bulkhead. Then, as she entered the cockpit, the shaking ceased, and she looked out the forward view to see only darkness.
“Uh, Troy, where’d space go?” she asked while settling into her seat and fastening the harness.
<Good question,> Troy replied. <For a moment there was a tiny point of light ahead, and then it was gone.>
“Nooo…” Katrina whispered. “Troy, that’s not possible. Seriously, stop messing with me.”
<I wish I were,> Troy said, his tone genuinely bewildered.
“But…that would imply we’re going faster than the speed of light—which isn’t possible,” Katrina said absently as she reviewed the scan data—which showed nothing at all outside the ship.
<It’s not possible in space that is governed by general or special relativity; but there’s no light here, that I can see, so why would it be a speed limit?>
Katrina rubbed her eyes, feeling like she needed to go take another shower to wake up—even though she had taken one right before her nap. “So where are we, then?”
<The calculations I’ve run show that—if it were in the right configuration—a string of massive dark matter could create a lens that would pull us out of regular space-time, and put us into some sub-layer of space…or over-layer.>
“Troy,” Katrina began cautiously. “’Gravity lens’ sounds suspiciously like ‘wormhole’.”
<I wondered if you’d notice that,> Troy replied. <I suspect it will have not dissimilar properties.>
“So how do we get out of it?” Katrina asked.
<Or do we even try?> Troy responded.
Katrina let out nervous laugh. “What do you mean?”
<Think about it, Katrina. If the Intrepid fell into this Streamer, then we should follow it and see where it goes. That’s where they’ll be.>
“Or they tried to get out,” Katrina said. “Do you think they would just stay in this thing to see where it goes?”
<Good point,> Troy said. <I suppose they would try to get out. Perhaps to move the ship laterally.>
“Should we try the probe?” Katrina asked.
<Yes, why not? We have three of them; we can push this one out and see if it makes the transition smoothly—if there is anywhere to transition to.>
“You’re so full of encouraging statements,” Katrina said.
<Sorry, but this is fascinating, you know. We could be some of the first people to travel faster than light!>
Katrina nodded slowly. It was amazing, but all she could think of was them flying past the Intrepid, and coming out of this wormhole somewhere ridiculous—like the Andromeda galaxy.
“Yeah, we’d be some of the first…if you failed to count the two and a half million people on the Intrepid.”
<Well, one of the first ships, then. OK, launching the probe in ten seconds.>
Katrina pulled the probe’s sensor feed up, in addition to the Voyager’s exterior view, and watched as the small, oval probe drifted away from the ship’s port side.
It experienced only minor gravitational fluctuations as it travelled; then, when it was eleven kilometers away, it disappeared.
“No debris,” Katrina said as she reviewed the data.
<There one second, and gone the next. I was worried about shearing forces at the edge, but there don’t appear to be any.>
“On this side,” Katrina whispered.
Neither of them spoke for a minute. Then Troy finally replied. <So, are we going to do this?>
Katrina nodded slowly. “Yes…yes, let’s. If they’re nowhere to be found, we can always go back into the Streamer.”
<Probably.>
She didn’t reply; she knew what he meant. Even if they made it out, there was no way to know if the Streamer could be entered at any point, or if they would have to travel back to The Kap to slip inside once more.
<Fusion drive isn’t doing anything in here; trying the AP…maybe the gamma rays can shift us over.>
The ship’s status board showed the AP drive’s nozzle spooling out, and the antimatter annihilation began. Usually an AP burn was accompanied by a feeling of thrust, but this time there was barely anything.
Troy twisted the nozzle slowly, and the ship began to move toward the edge of the darkness. Or what they had to assume was the edge.
Once the Voyager gained momentum, Troy retracted the nozzle, and the ship drifted toward where the probe had exited.
Well, probably not the exact same place.
Even though there was no reference frame in this place, they had to be moving somewhere….
After only moving seven kilometers, a shudder traveled through the ship and suddenly, stars snapped into place around them.
Not only distant points of light, either; one was very close, only 70 AU, by the scan suite’s quick estimate.
“Holy shit…” Katrina breathed. “We made it.”
<Yeah, but where?>
Katrina watched the nav system attempt to match their position with any known charts, and fail.
<Oh…I think I know what’s wrong,> Troy
said in a strange voice, and Katrina watched him bring up the stars within a thousand light years from Sol on a chart, and then remove Betelgeuse.
The action caused a small shift in the positions of all the stars, and suddenly the stellar cartography system chimed as it identified their location.
They were at the edge of 58 Eridani, almost twenty-four light years from New Eden.
“Wha…I…” Katrina stammered.
<I feel the same way,> Troy said. <By our clocks, we were in the Streamer for only half an hour; but we’ve travelled thirty five light years.>
“You removed Betelgeuse…to make the stars match up,” Katrina said, unable to process what that meant.
<That’s because it went nova…about a thousand years ago,> Troy replied, and Katrina wondered if it was fear that she heard in his mental tone.
The stellar cartography system finished its assessment of stellar drift, matching it against nearby galaxies. The date that appeared on the nav system nearly made Katrina’s heart stop.
- Current Date, Gregorian: 8511 -
BOLLAM’S WORLD
STELLAR DATE: 11.09.8511 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: Voyager
REGION: Edge of the Bollam’s World System (58 Eridani)
Once the shock wore off, Katrina brought up the comm systems and initiated a passive scan of the star system they were on the edge of.
“I have radio signals coming off the system,” Katrina said. “A lot of radio signals. I guess people have colonized this far out.”
She could barely believe the words she was saying. Of course humans would have made it forty light years from Earth in the intervening four thousand years.
<I hear it as well,> Troy said. <I’m listening for any mention of the Intrepid, or any signals from it…>