Blasphemy (part 2)
I stared out at the billowing pastel terrain of hyperspace waiting for me and the Vortex of Chaos to map. Vortex was projecting the gradients onto the viewport, complex Carpenter Field contours carefully recorded for posterity.
"Are we having fun yet?"
"You chose this job, Maggie. I'm just here for the ride." Vortex's voice was merry and jesting. She was a good companion to have on a long and dull trip. She was also a fabulous ship, and I was fortunate to be her partner.
"You're doing the driving." I looked at the navigation display, which showed a fine helical spiral starting from the edge of the Blift Sector. It wasn't our first spiral outward from known terrain, and it wouldn't be the last on this job. "And you're right on course, as always."
"Are you bored, Maggie?"
"Nahh. Well, maybe a little. We'll be paid well for mapping this region, and who knows - there might even be something interesting out here. I just haven't seen it yet."
Like many regions of space, the map was boring, with few low-energy paths to follow. Vortex, being a small ship with strong engines, can travel to a lot of places, capable of pushing herself up the steeper hyperspatial gradients. Bigger ships couldn't follow us; they needed easier routes, all due to the mathematical limitations of faster-than-light travel. The station and F'nordalp'leen's are at the nexus of several efficient paths through hyperspace, which is why so many people end up there.
"How long until we reach the end of this leg?"
"Another ninety hourcycles." That was typical for a scouting job - long hourcycles of determined wandering into the unknown, followed by more hours of the same, but in a different direction.
"I think I'm going down to the gym. Call me if you see something interesting."
"Aye, aye, captain!"
As I walked down the corridor past the library and the galley, I could hear soft sounds coming from Vortex's speakers. She was humming again, the latest symphonic thrash from M'k'y'u'g. She'd deny it, of course, but she always hummed when she was happily flying along.
Vortex isn't a big ship, but she's got enough volume to haul a fair sized survey team across the Coterie. When we're planning our trips, we always lay in some cargo for trading, but we also make sure to leave enough space so that I can work off some steam. Without a regimen of exercise and study, long explorations have been known to reduce a pilot to an immense mass of gibbering flab.
I'd just started working up a sweat when Vortex's symphonic thrash cut out. It was replaced by a warbling high-pitched tone. A second tone joined it, a piercing buzz rising in volume. Blips and clicks joined into the mix, discordant and dissonant. I was about to ask Vortex where she'd picked up a taste for whatever it was when a new sound entered the mix - Vortex's emergency klaxon.
"Maggie, you'd better get up here right away!" There was fear in her voice, something I'd never heard from my ship before. I grabbed my towel and ran back towards the bridge.
Whatever it was, I didn't want to interrupt her concentration, so I didn't stop to ask. Vortex is smart, capable of handling most emergencies. I trusted her - and we both knew I'd get a better view of the situation from where she could show me all the details.
I was almost to the galley when she shouted at me. "Froahbortlen, Maggie, grab something and hang on!"
I didn't stop to wonder where Vortex had picked up that kind of language until after I'd grabbed one of the hallway stanchions. Then the gravity rolled along the floor, a wave racing towards the front of the ship, and all I could do was think about hanging on. It felt like we were tipping into an abyss, a small boat sailing over the edge of a waterfall.
More alarm sounds went off, bells, gongs, voices in several different languages with alerts, warnings, and something that sounded suspiciously like a prayer. I'd never heard any of them before. The gravity cut out everywhere but in front of me and I floated, with the sense that the way to the bridge was down, and I was falling. The lights switched into emergency mode, mostly red, with a strobing pattern of yellow and orange that was trying to tell me that the gravity wasn't working.
"Brace for transition to normal space." Vortex was hard to hear over the din. "It may be rough."
Rough? Going from hyperspace to normal space wasn't ever rough. You just fired up the Corrado Field Inverters, pumped in enough energy to break the energy field around the ship and you were done. If you weren't throwing the switch yourself, you might not even notice the change.
Vortex rang like a bell struck by an immense clapper. She cried out, in pain. I fell, jarred loose from my grip, tumbling down the hall towards the bridge. The sound echoed and reverberated through the ship, drowning out all the other alarms, until I hit something and everything stopped.
There was blood on the floor when I woke, groggy, with all sorts of internal alarm bells going off in my body. The rest of the ship was blissfully quiet, which was worrisome. I hoped that it was only Vortex having enough control to shut off the alarms, or that we weren't still in danger.
Most of the blood seemed to be coming from a nasty gash on my arm, where I must have struck the edge of the bulkhead. My towel was on the floor, close enough that I could reach it. It made a fine temporary bandage.
"Vortex?" My voice didn't sound right, and it hurt to talk.
"Yes." Her voice didn't sound much better. "Are you all right?"
"No. How about you?"
"I've been better. We are in normal space, at just under nine-tenths lightspeed, with a clear vector. I am intact, with no detectable environmental leaks or damage." I struggled to my knees, and the hall swirled. "There are several systems failures, none that are immediate cause for alarm. Can you make it to the bridge?"
"I think so." The wall was moving in an unlikely way, but it was solid enough to pull myself up. "Give me a few minutes." Now that I was on my feet, I wished I wasn't. I slid myself along the wall, using it for support, edging towards the bridge.
"Vortex, can you tell me what happened?"
"Maggie, I'll let you look at the instruments, because the readings make no sense to me. I cannot explain it."
Twenty minutes later, I was resting in my captain's chair, an injection from the medikit beginning to take the edge off the pain. Vortex had the hyperfield mapping data spread out in a holographic display in front of me. She was right - the data made no sense. It was like hyperspace just ended, and poor Vortex had beached herself on the shore of some mathematical allegory.
"OK, why don't you save this display for later. Let's see where we're at, just to make sure we're not about to run into something else." Vortex replaced the mysterious data with a map of local space. She highlighted our path with a bright blue line. Our vector was clear, with nothing dangerous in our way. There was a star about three weeks away at our current speed, with a family of planets. We would pass through the outer regions of that system if we didn't do anything. There was no need to change our course.
"Next, let's see what shape you're in." Vortex switched to a diagnostic display of her status. She was already hard at work on repairs, with mechbots and internal repair systems working on crucial systems. As usual, there was little to suggest that might improve her efforts.
The hyperspace engines were offline, but they weren't immediately necessary. Some of the readings were a bit anomalous, but I wasn't surprised given that we seemed to have crashed out of hyperspace like a drunken Goshan Imperial Marine.