Far From Home: The Complete Series (7 page)

“No use! Port engines going into overload!” the helmsman reported.

Sepix growled in frustration. “Shut it down you fool!”

The helmsman’s claws clattered against the metal of the helm as he scrambled to reduce the engines to nominal thrust.

Sepix glared at the forward screen, at the
Defiant
. His whole body shook with rage. “Lock on weapons and fire at that ship! I’ll be damned if I’ll follow a pink skin down to hell!”

* * *

“They’re locking weapons,” Chang reported.

“Transfer all power to the hull plating. Concentrate it to the rear, where we’re exposed,” King ordered. “All hands brace for impact.”

They waited for what seemed an age. King shot Chang a look. “I thought you said they were locking weapons?” she asked.

Chang looked baffled. “They
were
. I don’t understand it …”

Ensign Boi spoke up. King knew he was a highly educated science officer in his own right, as well as being a fine communications specialist. He’d gone from Cadet to Ensign in no time at all. “If I may, Captain, they might not be able to fire. The intense gravity from the black hole could be affecting their weapons. If it’s having an effect on ours then it will be doing the same to theirs,” he said.

“Commander, test our weapons systems. Try to fire,” King said.

Greene tried the different systems. Nothing worked. “He’s right. Dead as a door-post.”

King grinned. “Well that gives me something to smile about. They’re stuck in this mess with us, and there’s literally nothing they can do. It’s going to upset his lordship no end to think he can’t even shoot us out of the way.”

A few of them laughed, more from nerves than amusement.

“Well spotted Ensign,” King said to Boi. “Please open a line to the
Inflictor
.”

Boi nodded and within seconds the swirling chaos of the Koenig-Prime singularity was replaced by the fierce face of Prince Sepix.

“Hello again,” King said. “It’s been a little while.”

“Luckily for you, Captain, we are unable to blast you to smithereens or we would not be having this conversation,” Sepix said.

“How sad,” King said. “Well, have a good trip won’t you? I believe we’re going the same direction?”

Sepix turned to one of his bridge crew, swiped a hand across his throat. The communications cut dead.

King laughed. She couldn’t help it. The others joined her. It was hilarious, in it’s own way.

However, one look at the black hole before them sobered any laughter. The bridge fell eerily silent again as they all regarded their fate.

Commander Greene broke the silence. “Any ideas?”

King stared ahead. He face became hard, serious. “Nothing, Commander. That’s the point. There isn’t anything we
can
do.”

12.

“What’s going to happen once we cross the event horizon, Ensign?” King asked Ensign Boi as they neared closer and closer to the black hole.

“We should experience no real change in time. However to witnesses away from the black hole it would appear we are taking forever to reach travel across it, when in fact it might already be over and done with. Time has a tendency to slow down, sir,” Boi explained. “But not for us.”

“Will we be destroyed before we reach the centre of that thing?” Lisa Chang asked him.

“Maybe,” was all that Boi could say.

“There’s no way of surviving a black hole, is there?” King asked Boi.

He shook his head but didn’t voice the obvious. That they were going to die. They’d be crushed by the extreme gravity, pulverised to nothing.

“So what do we do?” Greene asked.

King shrugged. “Sit and wait.”

“Do we tell the crew?”

“No,” King said with a shake of her head. “No, we leave it. Why panic them? It’s going to happen. Why should we make their final moments one of suffering?”

Greene admitted that she was right.

“Crossing the point of no return,” Chang reported, her voice shaky.

“Banks, shut down the engines. Shut down all manoeuvring systems. Everything apart from the hull plating and the forward repulsor array.”

The repulsors were located beneath the nose of the ship. They nudged particle matter and debris out of the Defiant’s way when travelling at substantial speeds, as they were now.

“What’re you thinking?” Greene asked her.

“I don’t know. Something. Anything that might give us a chance of some kind. I’m thinking pump every ounce of power to the hull and the repulsors, see if it helps us survive a few seconds longer.”

“I’ll take those extra seconds sir,” Banks said as he shut down every non-essential function across the ship. The lighting dimmed to next to nothing around them.

“I thought you would Lieutenant,” King said.

Up ahead there was a huge flash of light. They all looked up in time to see a small planetoid tumbling over the rim at the black hole’s centre. It seemed to happen in slow motion, though King was aware it was happening quickly. The atmosphere and surface matter was stripped away first as the planetoid fell. Then it broke apart like a ball of dry dirt, down into the nothingness. There was an explosion from the crushing of its core, but it lasted a mere second before the energy of that, too, was swallowed by the singularity.

“My god,” Greene said.

“Not even
he
can help us now,” King quipped.

* * *

The
Defiant
slid sideways as the black hole pulled it in, as if it were reeling in a catch on a line. They could make out the centre of the black hole in detail now. The ship seemed to rattle around them with the forces pulling on it.

“Hold together baby,” King said, looking around.

“Hull is holding,” Chang said. “For now.”

“If I could get up from this chair, I’d get a wee stiff drink but I can’t move,” Lieutenant Banks said.

“I could use one too,” King admitted. “How long do you think, Ensign Rayne?”

Rayne did a quick calculation in her head. “About fifteen minutes until we arrive at the centre.”

His voice trembled with fear.

King swallowed. “Everyone, I’d like to say a few words, if I may.”

The bridge crew listened.

“It’s been a mad few days. A lot has happened. The death of Captain Singh, now this … but you know, even now we stand together. And that’s the important thing. We’ve pulled through. It may not mean much to you all now, but I am so proud of you all. I’m grateful for having the opportunity to serve alongside you.”

She looked from one crewman to the next.

“And I’ll miss you all.”

The black hole seemed impossibly close now. King’s body felt like it was weighed down with lead. She knew that if it weren’t for the artificial gravity on board the
Defiant
, they’d all be dead by now. The force of the black hole would have torn them free from their seats and crushed them against the far wall.

She had never been so frightened in her life. Or disappointed. After everything they’d survived, it had come to this. A slow and excruciating death. She feared the darkness at the black hole’s centre. She imagined it to be cold, empty. A nothingness that stretched on forever. She absently wondered what it would feel like to be crushed to death like that. Would she feel pain? Would it be so quick that she didn’t even know it was happening?

Her heart pounded in her chest. Jessica gripped the chair. She thought of Andrew. She thought of everyone she’d ever served with. She thought about the mystery regarding her own origins, the lack of parents in her life to guide her through her early years.

Andrew had been there for her. Had seen to it she followed the right path. Had seen the potential within her. Had been a Father to her.

“This is it people,” she said.

Nobody said anything. They were each concealed within their own cocoon of fear.

The
Defiant
went into a nosedive, down into the black hole. She saw Commander Greene clamp his eyes shut, his body braced for whatever was coming. She did the same. She covered her head with her arms, clutched herself, closed her eyes, and held her breath.

The
Defiant
was consumed by the singularity.

King felt herself get pulled in all directions at once. She would have screamed, but she had no mouth. No voice. She was nothing and everything all at once.

“We can give you a life, give you a purpose,” Singh was saying.

Jess shook her head. “I’m not good enough. I’ve tried already. I don’t have what it takes.”

Singh tilted her head up, his hand under her chin. “With my help you will have. If you’ll trust me …”

She was by his side as he perished.

Tears streamed down her face.

Her voice cracked as she spoke. “Please don’t go, please.”

Captain Singh shook his head slowly. Smiled. “Jess … We each have our time. My own is at an end …”

“No …” she managed to say.

Singh reached up, stroked the side of her face. “Now it is
your
turn to do as much as you can with the time you have …”

He smiled again, then his eyes seemed focus on something far away. The light in them faded. Singh’s hand fell away from hers and the sound of his last breath issued slowly from between his lips.

“No …”

Everyone was around her, even Singh, then she was alone.

Floating in a sea of black. A never-ending night, devoid of stars. She saw the
Defiant
, no more than a foot long, and hundreds of little tiny people falling from it like confetti. She reached out to try and catch them. They fell through her fingers like grains of sand. She cried out, and everything split apart … then there was nothing at all, not even thought.

13.

Everything had been scattered. Blown apart like dust on the wind. Now it came back together. She felt herself becoming whole once more. Becoming herself.

A lot of different puzzle pieces that when whole made something called JESSICA KING moved toward one another. They connected. They became one thing, one being, one mind.

“Now it is
your
turn to do as much as you can with the time you have …”

His words, again, in the darkness.

” … with the time you have …”

She opened her eyes. “With the time you have,” she said.

14.

The bridge lay in darkness save for sparse pools of emergency lighting that fell in misty bars from the ceiling. Every console was dark. The front viewscreen dead. But the
Defiant
was in one piece. That much she was sure of.

Jessica tried to move. Her whole body felt as though it’d been beaten with a very hard stick. She groaned as she shifted in the captain’s chair. The rest of the crew were stirring now too. Lieutenant Banks lifted his head from the helm console, wiped drool from the side of his mouth. They all looked about, dazed and wide-eyed with disbelief. Jessica cleared her throat. “Everyone okay?”

They each reported back to her in turn, mostly in grunts and murmurs to let her know they were all still alive.

“Chang … patch into the emergency power grid. Get a status report from all departments. Injuries, death toll, damage to critical systems, the works,” King said groggily.

Chang nodded, said “Aye” and set to work, albeit slowly. She got down from her chair, and removed the panel beneath her console. It would take her a little bit of time to locate the emergency power, but once she had her station rerouted they’d at least know how the rest of the ship was feeling.

“What the bloody hell happened?” Commander Greene asked aloud. He rubbed the ball of his hand into his forehead, as if it were going to cave in.

“Did we go through the black hole, sir?” Ensign Rayne asked her.

King shrugged. “Olivia, your guess is as good as mine. Whatever happened, we’re obviously still alive.” She unclipped the safety harness around her waist and got up, stretched. She walked around the bridge slowly, easing the knots from her legs and the bottom of her back. “Ensign Boi, contact engineering,” she said.

Boi tried his panel. “No power, sir. Shall I access emergency power too?”

“No. I don’t want to overload it,” she said. She turned to Greene, “Commander, get to engineering for me and assist the Chief in getting us some power. Tell her that control and thrust are her priorities. Other functions will have to wait. We need to be able to move about and see where we’re going.”

He nodded, got up and left the bridge. The deck plating in the corridor clanged under his feet. That was how quiet and
lifeless
the
Defiant
was at that moment. A seemingly hollow shell with ants scurrying under its skin.

“I’ve made contact. It’s going to take a few minutes for department heads to assess, sir,” Chang said. She held an earpiece up to her ear with one hand and worked the controls at her station with the other.

“Okay. Everyone else, in the meantime let’s huddle together and try to come up with a game plan,” King said.

Ensign Boi, Ensign Rayne and Lieutenant Banks formed a group around the Captain. She leaned back against a lifeless console, her arms crossed and looked from one to the other. “It’s been a hell of a day, hasn’t it?”

“Could say that,” Banks said.

“But we’re still here. We’re still alive and kicking. We’re survivors, and we will survive
this
I promise you all.”

“What about the Draxx ship? What about Sepix? He has to be out here too …” Rayne said.

King nodded in agreement. “True. All the more reason to give this ship her heartbeat back, as quickly as possible.”

“You say
here
,” Ensign Boi said to Rayne, “But we don’t even know where
here
is.”

“Good point,” King said. “As soon as we have power, we must stabilise the ship. She’s no doubt adrift. Then I want you two to work together to ascertain our position. Our last location was the Koenig-Prime system … perhaps work from there.”