Embarkment 2577 (13 page)

“That’s fine, I don’t care. Ensigns
can’t be wrinkly, but no one will yell at me for it.”

I patted his chest. “Stay right here.”

My teeth and my hair needed brushing,
and I bounced off the bed and into the restroom. I didn’t really expect him to
stay; his sense of duty would most likely call on him to get up and do
something, but nothing wrong with hoping.

When I returned, Adam lay with his hands
behind his head. How could I thank him for everything he did? “You’ve been
wonderful.”

What would I have done if roles were
reversed? Could I have been as calm and patient? Not likely. “Was it difficult?”

He entangled his fingers in my hair.
“Yes. But you’re worth it.”

“You don’t want to run off with the
pretty blonde ensign?”

The joke rewarded me with hearty
laughter. “Laura? No, I’d rather wait for you. At least for a few years.”

My hand found its way over his chest and
toyed with the buttons on his shirt. He looked good in it, but I still wanted
it to disappear. Artificial or not, I wanted to feel his skin against mine. How
could I have forgotten something like this?

We didn’t pay attention to the world
outside the door for hours, but it still moved on. When I got dressed, the
computer reported that several Confederacy ship travelled to the mines and
rescued scores of kidnapped workers from all across the galaxy.

Eventually, we did leave the rooms. When
we stepped into the corridor, holding hands, a young man stared at Adam as if
he wondered whether to approach or just sink through the floor. “Sir, we’ve
been looking for you for hours. No one knows how to override the Logg
encryption of…”

“I’ve been busy.”

The young man seemed confused by the
answer. “We’ve been trying your communicator, but…”

“I turned it off.”

By now, I was sure Adam teased him on
purpose. The communicators did not turn off.

“Oh. Well… Sir, could you come help us
now?”

“No. I’m still busy. Ask Commander
Jia’Lyn.”

Adam squeezed my fingers and walked
towards the lifts. The young man made one more valiant effort. Most people
would have given up by now, and with persistency like this, he might go far.
“Bur Sir, she told me to ask you. If I could find you…”

I struggled not to laugh. Adam waved one
hand in the air and wrapped the other around me. “Well, I guess you’ll have to
search a little harder.”

“But…”

“I have important things to do. I need
to take my girl to lunch.”

“Wow. This is a big empty room.” One of
my big talents: stating the obvious.

Adam gave a slight shrug. “The place
comes with the job. I never needed it for anything.”

I lived in a set of guest quarters, and
it was nice, but impersonal. The furniture, lamps, and decorations might not be
mine, but they still existed, and reminded me of an upscale hotel. Looking
around in my boyfriend’s quarters, the rooms were huge, and contained one large
desk filled with tools and gadgets.

“Why…?” I closed my mouth around the
question. He
was
an android and normal human logic wouldn’t apply.

He smirked. “You wanted to see it, here
it is.”

“It’s awesome. Let’s go home.”

No wonder we always stayed at my place.
He crossed his arms over his chest and glanced into my eyes. “I have to go to
work. You know that.”

Damn. His sense of duty was admirable,
but couldn’t it slip just a little, just once?

Adam tilted his head to the side.
“You’re disappointed.”

“No… Well, maybe a little. I thought
there would be more of
you
here.”

He put a hand on my back and pushed me
out of the living room, back into what would have been a study in a normal
person’s world. “There is something of me here. There’s the desk, and my chair,
and your broken iPod I’ve been trying to fix.”

I couldn’t even recognize the fragmented
pieces. The poor thing must have been hit by a bullet. What a shame. It would
have contained all sorts of entertainment and memories.

“C’mon, I’ll walk you home.”

My rooms were almost right under his,
just a couple of floors down. Going there would normally be completely
uneventful, but after an alien species called the Logg stole the ship and I
played an involuntary part in getting it back, people I didn’t know stopped and
stared wherever I went. I hated all the whispering behind my back.

Some of the junior officers treated me
with the same awe they normally reserved for the senior staff, and it freaked
me out. It was traumatic enough to arrive dead from another time, I didn’t need
any additional attention.

We didn’t meet anyone on Adam’s floor
and the lift was empty. Close to my door, two young men pushed a broken
cleaning robot down the corridor. They stopped and stared. “Look, it’s them.
Told you she lives here.”

“She’s shorter than I expected.”

Adam rolled his eyes and walked over to
them. “Is there a problem?”

“No, sir.”

“Then, move along, will you.”

I shuffled over to my door. “Will this
never end?”

Adam ran a hand over my back. “Sure. As
soon as something more interesting happens.”

The young men were out of sight, and for
all practical purposes, we were alone. I pressed my palms against his chest and
gave him my best bedroom look. “Are you sure you can’t come in?”

“Not unless you’re comfortable with
Laura adjusting the starboard radiation shield.”

The annoyingly perky nineteen year old
ensign was probably quite able to do it, but he had a point. When it came to
matters like keeping cosmic radiation from frying my brain, I’d be more
comfortable with Adam handling it.

He winked. “I’ll hurry back.”

The ship rocked. I stood on the tip of
my toes, wanting to steal a kiss, completely unprepared for the floor shifting
underneath me. My face was about to come in close contact with the carpet when
Adam caught me.

“Well, that’s new.” He didn’t sound
bothered, but I was. Anything able to move the ship like
that
would have
to be dangerous.

The computer’s voice echoed in the
corridor. “All senior officers, please report to the bridge.”

I was barely aware of clinging to him
until he took my hands in his and loosened my grip around his neck.

“Don’t worry. I’ll be back.”

I watched him jog towards the lifts.
Would they really be safe to use? What if he got stuck, or the thing fell all
the way down to the bottom floor? I should stop fretting and go inside. Unless
I was
extremely
lucky, there would be crushed decorations all over the
floor, waiting for me to initiate some serious clean-up.

My rooms were a bit jumbled, but not as
bad as I expected. To be honest, more of it came from my being disorganized
than things falling off the shelves. After visiting Adam’s desolate quarters I
appreciated the chaos. It might not technically be
my
stuff, but it was
there for me to use, and I was grateful.

Putting a lamp back up on a table, I
muttered, “Someone needs to invent a force field or something to keep things in
place.”

I ventured over to the window. Last time
the ship rocked and I peeked out we were in a horrific battle. This time, I saw
nothing but darkness. We no longer moved, but I couldn’t see anyone or anything
close. Could there be invisible attackers?

I normally kept my windows covered.
Seeing space fly by outside gave me a headache.
Each
time I tried to imagine hundreds of billions of stars and all the possibilities
of planets, alien life, and civilizations my mind wanted to fold in on itself.

The vacuum of space was one of my biggest
fears. Adam reasoned it would soothe me to know a human would have at least ten
seconds of clear thinking before brain asphyxiation set in. He also said a
human could still be rescued after 90 seconds in space. Knowing these things
didn’t help at all; these figures made everything worse. Before he told me, I
imagined it painful but quick. Now I saw it as painful and slow.

“Computer, what’s happening?”

“There is a problem with the artificial
gravity containment field.”

Say what? I understood the ship wasn’t
big enough to create its own gravity, but I never wondered why down was down
and up remained up. “Is that bad? How does it work?”

“Do you wish to run a learning program
for galaxy class starships?”

“I guess.” I didn’t have anything better
to do, and I probably wouldn’t understand a straight answer. Maybe the program
could distract me enough not to see the blackness outside.

The faceless voice pulled up a hologram
of the ship and zoomed in on a red dot at the bottom. “This is a singularity
with two micron’s width.”

“It’s a what and a what? English,
please.”

“It is a black hole, 0.002 millimeters
wide. It is held in place and controlled by a magnetic containment field. The
disturbance in the ship was created by a failure in the containment field, and
for a moment, the hole expanded to 0.0022 millimeters.”

I still struggled to figure out how many
millimeters were in an inch. The measurement seemed too small to be
significant. “What happens if the field fails?”

The computer sounded unemotional as
always. “The singularity will consume the ship and grow proportionately
stronger.”

Oh goodie, we used a lethal
self-destruct mechanism to be able to keep our feet on the deck. Who invented
these things? Cartoon villains?

The computer kept talking, and I ignored
it until it said, “…and the black hole also provides our warp drive engines
with power.”

Really? That little thing powered the
ship? “I don’t believe you.”

I expected the machine to tell me it
didn’t matter whether I believed it or not since the facts would still be true.
I didn’t get to hear its answer; the door slid open and Adam stepped in. He
eyed the holograms, but didn’t seem surprised. “I can’t stay. I just need to
pick up my Tokamak Alpha particle restrictor.”

A Toyota Avensis? I had one of those for
a few years. Wouldn’t have expected Adam to hide one in the nightstand though…

He pressed his palm against the wall,
and a hatch opened. I didn’t know we had hidden shelves. Truly a day filled
with surprises.

“What else you got in there?”

He flashed a smile. “Just tools. Want to
come with me?”

I most certainly did. This black hole
was worthy of investigation. Especially if it was on the verge of breaking free
and eating me.

I played cool through the corridor,
putting up a face of, “I’m on my way to do something important.” When we
reached the lift and it was empty, I dropped the act and tucked my hands around
Adam’s arm. “Is this dangerous?”

“No. If it was dangerous I wouldn’t
bring you. I just thought you wanted to see it.”

*****

My friend Jia’Lyn, second in command and
head of Engineering, met us right outside the door. She was the first alien I
met who didn’t freak me out, even though she was tall, blue, beautiful, and
sported silvery snakes for hair. The first time I saw her, I thought she must
be the mythical Medusa.

“I don’t know what’s going on in there,
but it seems to be okay now. Weird.”

I shifted my weight from foot to foot
and tried to peek around Adam as the door slid open. I expected a glittering
transparent bubble with a tiny dot in the center. In my imagination, the
containment field would look like a giant soap bubble, shimmering with mystery
and hinted colours. The device on the other side of the door wasn’t anything
like that.

A large metal sphere stood in the middle
of the room. It was surrounded by pylons, and there were tubes and wires
everywhere. I couldn’t hold back a sigh of disappointment. “Oh. You don’t get
to see it.”

Jia’Lyn watched a computer screen, but
her snakes peeked over towards me. “You’re not missing anything. It’s darkness,
surrounded by whirling plasma.”

“How…” I trailed off and made a
dismissive gesture. They could explain how that metal construction worked and
how the black hole generated enough energy to propel the enormous ship until I
fell over dead from old age. I still wouldn’t get it.

Adam held up the Toyota Avensis that
wasn’t anything like a Toyota. Green numbers flew over a black screen. It
resembled a miniature version of an Earth computer from 1973. “Nothing out of
the ordinary.”

Jia’Lyn nodded and lifted her radio.
“Bridge, power up.”

Was this really such a good idea? I
imagined I could feel the sphere suck me closer. Were we moving? We must be,
but I couldn’t feel it.

The Captain’s voice sounded on the
radio. “Are you ready to try warp?”