Genesis World
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RyanKirkAuthor
When one considers the vast scales of the cosmos, one inevitably begins to wonder where mere chance ends and where fate begins.
Adrienne woke to the harsh flashing red lights of the general alarm, accompanied by the buzzing of a hundred angry bees. She rolled over and tangled the cotton sheets around her legs as she slapped at the comm panel embedded in the imitation wood-grain surface of her nightstand. Her first flailing attempt missed the appropriate part of the display, but her second silenced the alarm and opened a direct line to the bridge. Her voice was full of gravel as she asked, “What?”
“Sorry to wake you, Captain, but the ship detected an unusual anomaly along our charted course. I haven’t been able to make heads or tails of what I’m seeing.”
Jordan kept his voice even, but Adrienne wasn’t imagining the nervousness lurking behind his report.
She exhaled sharply and squeezed the bridge of her nose between thumb and forefinger. He was exactly the type of first mate she needed, but he was rarely the first mate she wanted. He served as an effective filter between her and the countless demands on her attention, and he could organize a duty roster faster than most shipboard computers, but the moment anything uncertain pressed gently against the edges of his comfort zone, he came running to her like a child crying for their parent. He wanted a shot a captain’s chair and would probably be happy to steal hers out from under her, but until he found his spine, she couldn’t in good conscience recommend him.
Given the events of the last few months, though, it probably wouldn’t be long before Fleet gave her the boot and gifted it to him for his years of cautious and considered service.
She extracted her legs from the covers, stood and stretched. A glance at the surface of her nightstand informed her she’d only slept half as long as she intended, but it would have to be enough. “I’ll be right there,” she said.
She entered the bridge less than two minutes later. The state of her uniform would have sent her last captain into a rage, and her hair hadn’t seen a brush in at least two days, but she hoped to have Jordan’s problem solved in less time than it took to brew a fresh pot of coffee. Several hours remained before her next duty shift, and she fully planned to surrender to her bed’s siren song within the hour.
The bridge lay safely ensconced in the center of the ship, but one would hardly know from looking around the room. Enormous displays made her feel as though she was an ancient sea captain standing at the bow of her ship, except her vessel sailed an endless ocean of stars. Her crew no longer feared scurvy, but the extinction of the human race. Every station was filled with attentive crew.
“Silence the alarm,” Adrienne said.
Jordan flipped the alarm off, rose smoothly from the captain’s chair, and took up position a few feet away.
“Tell me about the anomaly,” she asked.
Jordan cleared his throat like a student preparing to give a report to class. “Of course, Captain. It was first detected by the ship’s sensors about an hour ago.”
“So why am I only hearing about it now?”
His response was sharp. “It took that long for the computers to sound the alarm. The ship didn’t recognize the danger until just a few minutes ago. I sounded the general alert as soon as the warning crossed my display.”
She gestured for him to continue. She hadn’t meant to imply he hadn’t done his duty, but no apology of hers would ease his nerves.
“As near as we can tell, our sensors are presenting conflicting data. Gravitationally, there’s something straight ahead of us. Readings indicate there’s enough mass for a good-sized solar system within a light-hour, but every other sensor reports nothing but empty space.”
He anticipated her next question. “I’ve ordered scans of all internal and external sensors. Detailed reports are still incoming, but initial results are green across the board.”
Adrienne tapped her finger against her chair’s armrest, the beat to a song so old she was sure no one else on the bridge had ever heard it before. “Launch a scout drone and bring the ship to a stop. Point nine relativistic on the scout, please.”
Jordan grimaced, no doubt mentally listing all the procedures she was breaking and the expense she was recklessly racking up. “Captain—”
“It’s the fastest way, Jordan, and we’re not exactly in friendly space. If there’s something out there, we need to know now.”
Jordan acknowledged the order with a curt nod of his head. He either agreed or didn’t see the point in arguing, but Adrienne didn’t much care which. Knowing him, he’d have his own report ready within the hour, covering his ass from the accusations Fleet would level at her behavior.
Adrienne rubbed at her temple. The probe would take at least a half hour to reach whatever strangeness lurked ahead, so she had little choice but to ignore her bed’s siren’s call.
For something as empty as space, it seemed as though there was always something eager to steal her sleep.
She sighed and settled deeper into her chair. The materials within shifted subtly under the change in her weight to provide the most possible support. She yawned.
“Coffee, Captain?” Jordan asked.
“Please and thank you.” She’d just been considering ordering him to do so, and so was grateful he’d taken the initiative. He slipped away like a helpful elf while Adrienne examined the sensor data more carefully.
He’d summed up the situation well. Their gravitational sensors swore there was something up ahead, but they were alone in their claim. She couldn’t spot anything unusual in the electromagnetic spectrum or beyond.
“Nav, how close are we to our destination?”
Lieutenant Hwang grimaced.
“Best guess, Lieutenant. I’m well aware of all the disclaimers.”
“In the neighborhood, Captain. I was projecting another twenty to thirty light years, but…”
She trailed off, not needing to add to the long litany of uncertainty that had dogged their mission since it had landed in Adrienne’s lap.
Adrienne squeezed her armrests as her heart pounded just a bit harder and faster. She hated the expectation in her own voice. “But there’s a chance?”
Hwang shrugged, unwilling to commit.
For months, now, she’d been swearing silently at Fleet command. She could be scouting the front lines and supporting warships. Or she could have been helping with the seeding and colonization efforts on any of two dozen potential habitable worlds. But instead, high command had sent her out here, chasing a myth that some ancient tribe of humans had told their children to help them sleep at night.
But the possibilities…a new home for humanity. A place the monsters couldn’t find, a place where for the first time in generations, children might know peace. Even she sometimes lost herself in the dreams of what could be.
She dug a fingernail into her palm to focus her attention on the hard problems ahead. Daydreaming was nearly as fatal as incompetence.
“Sensors, any sign of the enemy?”
Lieutenant Mitchell responded as though he’d been waiting for the question. “No, ma’am. Scopes are clean.”
That was something, at least. There was never any telling when or where they’d show up, which meant she carried a tension in her shoulders that never really faded.
She shook her head and dug her fingernails in deeper. Focus.
Figure out the nature of the anomaly.
Run a full sensor sweep of the area designated by High Command.
Avoid causing too much trouble, then return to Fleet and demand a mission that actually mattered.
The probe launched without fanfare and quickly accelerated out of sight. Adrienne caught herself checking its telemetry every few seconds, so to distract herself, she stood and walked the slow circuit around her tiny bridge. Her first circuit confirmed that every station on her ship reported green across the board. On her second circuit she tried to judge the mood of her crew.
Under her gaze they were nothing short of professional, but she caught the excited looks they cast to one another when they thought her attention was elsewhere.
Jordan returned with her coffee, which she accepted gratefully. By the time she reached the bottom of the mug she felt halfway human again. She kept walking slow circles around the bridge. Her crew probably thought she was excited, but in truth anything was preferable to sitting and counting down the minutes until the probe reported anything useful.
“Anything yet?” she asked.
“Probe’s reporting the same readings as the ship so far,” Jordan answered.
A minute later the probe exploded. Adrienne was watching the forward viewscreen when it happened. The probe was out of unmagnified visual range, but the engine’s uncontrolled eruption sent swirling vortexes of superheated plasma in every direction, spreading out like a rapidly blooming flower.
Adrienne returned to her seat and pulled up reports. “What just happened?”
Jordan shook his head as data streamed through his feeds. “Everything was green up until the moment it wasn’t.”
“Can anyone explain why it exploded like that?”
“Finishing processing our own data now,” said Mitchell. “I’ll have it on main screen in a moment.”
He was as good as his word, and a few seconds later Adrienne watched a replay of the event. Sensor data from multiple inputs were combined by the ship to display a recreation of the explosion. The probe raced toward empty space, already close to the speed of light. Then the recreation slowed as the impact began. Adrienne’s eyes narrowed. The space around the probe rippled and bent, as though they’d thrown the probe into a still pool of water.
“Velocity went from point nine to zero instantly,” Jordan said. His voice was filled with awe, as though he’d discovered a new god.
And maybe he had. The amount of energy required to accomplish what they’d just witnessed was far beyond anything humans were capable of. But she was just as fascinated by what happened after. As the probe disintegrated and exploded, the energy and debris didn’t expand spherically, but along a defined two-dimensional space, as though someone had painted the explosion on a transparent display.
She froze the image and sent it to the main screen. “It almost looks like something is bending space.”
They watched the scene unfold several times more, but no one had a better explanation. It was as if the probe had run into a solid wall, undetected by any of their sensors.
She watched the explosion and dared to hope. They were in the right place, and this was far beyond their ability. The legends couldn’t be true, and yet maybe, just maybe, they were.
“Captain, we’ve got another problem, too.”
Mitchell’s voice trembled over at sensors, his professionalism crumpling under the strain. Considering what the crew had been though together, that didn’t bode well.
“What?” Adrienne asked.
“One of them, ma’am, behemoth class. Heading our direction at full speed.”
Adrienne’s blood froze in her veins, and for a second, she couldn’t speak. She licked her lips, cleared her throat, and stared at the screen where the probe’s disintegration replayed again.
It couldn’t be now. Not if there was the slightest chance they’d discovered sanctuary. “Has it spotted us?”
“Sending over probability spheres along with sensor data, but I don’t think so. We’re running too quietly. If I had to put money on it, I’d guess it sensed the probe’s explosion.”
“How long before it hits fifty percent probability?”
Mitchell checked his screen. “Two hours, give or take.”
Jordan stood close to her shoulder and spoke quietly, as though he could somehow hide what he was saying from every ear in the room. “Captain, fifty percent is well above acceptable margins.”
Adrienne rested the back of her head against her chair and closed her eyes. A behemoth class would swap her ship out the firmament, quite literally, as though it were swatting a fly. And Jordan was right. Fleet didn’t want scouts allowing enemy within a twenty percent sphere unless under combat conditions. They would be furious if she let it close to fifty.
“If we leave, do we have any idea if it will sense the anomaly?”
Mitchell swiped his hands across the screens, then shrugged. “As of this moment, the barrier is showing up on thermal scanners. That explosion is lingering. I can’t say how warm it will be in three hours, or if the behemoth will be sensitive enough to notice it. Obviously, nothing like this is in our databases.”
Adrienne swore silently. Everything they knew about their enemy was a guess, interpolated from data from hundreds, if not thousands, of individual encounters. It was the best they could do, and it wasn’t nearly good enough. On a day like today, with a wholly unique situation, they had no way of knowing how their enemy would react.
“Bring the ship in close, as quiet and as fast as you can. Park us twenty kilometers from the boundary. I want every sensor at maximum sensitivity. We have two hours to safely figure that thing out, and we can’t waste a second of that time.”
+++
An hour passed, and it felt as though they’d wasted every second of their rapidly diminishing time. The behemoth advanced relentlessly, and the sweat dripping down the back of Adrienne’s neck reminded her they didn’t have long to flee. There was some small chance they had already been discovered, but she preferred not to think about that.
The boundary stubbornly refused to give up its secrets. It still radiated some of the residual warmth from the explosion, but they had no idea if the behemoth would sense it or not. Further sensor scans implied Adrienne’s gut instinct had been right—some incredible power bent spacetime into a wall through which their sensors couldn’t penetrate. There was something on the other side of that wall, but they had no way of knowing what.
And it just so happened to be in the one place their scholars believed an ancient civilization had once thrived.
She was nearly close enough to hop in a vacsuit and touch it, but as far as access was concerned, it might as well be on the other side of the universe.
Jordan sidled up to her as she stared blankly at one of the main displays. He spoke quietly, but the room was so small everyone heard anyway. “Captain, should we give the order to leave?”
It was the decision he would have made, and it should have been hers. Ships were too precious to waste, and their window to flee grew smaller with every passing second.
But if this was what she barely dared to hope it might be, she couldn’t. Uncovering its secrets might be worth far more than her ship. It might be worth most of the ships in the fleet. “No. Prepare the shuttle for launch. Mitchell, you’re with me.”
“Captain?” Jordan sounded as though she’d ordered him to believe fairies were real.
She didn’t waste the time explaining herself. He wouldn’t have found her arguments compelling, anyhow. But the longer they sat just outside the barrier, the more convinced she became they weren’t yet close enough. Perhaps her thoughts had finally been twisted into something resembling madness, but she swore she felt the barrier pulling her closer, like a friend gently tugging on her wrist.
Confessing that would have been little different than wrapping a bow around the captain’s chair as she gave it to Jordan, though. So all she said was, “You have the ship, Commander. We’ll be back shortly.”
If Mitchell had any reservations about the orders, he had the good sense not to share them. He followed Adrienne down the hall, then down the ladder that led to the ship’s cramped shuttle bay. Adrienne was already running through the shuttle’s automated launch checklist by the time he climbed aboard.
“Suits on?” Mitchell asked.
“Probably not a bad idea. Why don’t you get ready now? Once we’re out of the bay I’ll do the same.”
Mitchell threw on his suit as the shuttle slid silently out of the bay. Adrienne programmed in a slow burn to a point five kilometers from the boundary. Mitchell squeezed into his seat beside her, and Adrienne traded off the controls. “Keep it steady and run every test you can think of. Once I’m back, I’ll bring us in even closer. You still believe it has a hard edge, right?”
Mitchell shook his head. “That’s what the sensors indicate. Felt a lot more comfortable saying that, though, when it wasn’t my life on the line.”
By the time Adrienne finished slipping into her own suit, the shuttle had drifted to its programmed stop. She returned to the pilot’s seat and pulled up a handful of screens. “Anything useful yet?”
Mitchell shook his head, eyes reflecting the light of the screens. “Nothing we haven’t seen before.”
Adrienne bit her lower lip. This close to the barrier the pull was even stronger than before. She applied a bit of thrust. “I’m taking us in closer.”
“Why?”
It was the first time he’d asked the question, though she suspected it had been on his mind since she’d first ordered him off the bridge.
“Partially a gut feeling. Partially desperation. If this is it, we can’t leave without trying everything, right? Maybe we can pick up something close we weren’t able to far away.”
Mitchell didn’t say anything against her, but his expression said enough. Adrienne bit back her retort. He was right to doubt her, but she couldn’t imagine leaving without having tried everything possible.
The shuttle glided forward. The barrier was only two kilometers away, then one. Adrienne kept pushing them forward, until they were only a hundred meters away. Her breaths came in short gulps and Mitchell’s eyes were so wide she thought they might pop out.
“Anything?” she asked.
He tore his eyes away from the view of the darkness ahead of him and checked his screens. “Nothing.”
Adrienne clenched her jaw shut and nudged the shuttle forward. A hundred meters became fifty, then twenty-five. She slowed but didn’t stop.
“Captain?”
Mitchell’s hands flew across the console and the shuttle ground to a halt. “Captain, we can’t get any closer. This is already stupid.”
She couldn’t stop. Not this close. She was out of her chair and walking to the hatch before she’d even realized she’d made the decision.
“Captain! Adrienne!” Mitchell called out after her, but she stepped into the airlock and cycled the lock. Mitchell cursed in her ears, then switched over to the frequency shared with the ship. She ignored him as he reported events to Jordan.
The airlock opened and she pushed herself into space. The barrier couldn’t be more than a few dozen meters away. A few gentle puffs of propellant sent her toward it.
Jordan’s voice filled her helmet, and it sounded as though he was close to having a breakdown. “Captain, what are you doing? Get back on the shuttle so Mitchell can return, and we can all leave.”
How could she explain to him? It wasn’t just that the barrier pulled her. It called to her. In a few seconds, she would know why.
Adrienne ignored Jordan’s pleas. The barrier was so close she could touch it, but as she reached out to it, the space in front of her bent, opening before her outstretched hand. She continued to drift forward, and it opened wider.
“Mitchell, follow me through. Trust me.”
The silence on the line stretched far into eternity, and when Mitchell did respond, his voice sounded distant. “Yes, ma’am.”
The shuttle drifted forward, as though she pulled it forward on an invisible leash.
“Captain!” Jordan’s voice was so high-pitched it sounded as though it might crack soon.
“What?”
“What’s happening? What we’re seeing on our sensors is impossible.”
Adrienne took a long, slow breath as she let her gaze travel across the vista. There wasn’t much to see with the naked eye, but she could guess what was before her. “If it’s a whole new star system where there wasn’t one a minute ago, I think it is.”
Jordan didn’t answer.
Adrienne turned around. Mitchell and the shuttle were at the boundary, and just before the shuttle was about to impact, the boundary opened wide enough for the shuttle to fly through.
The boundary welcomed humanity to their new home.
Jordan’s voice was tight and strained. “Impressive as it is, we need to leave. The behemoth will be at fifty percent probability in minutes.”
Adrienne looked at the open expanse before her. “We’re not leaving. Not anymore.”
+++
She charged through the door to the bridge, still dressed in her vacsuit. Jordan barely had time to jump out of her chair before she sat down. “Take us in, nice and slow.”
The whole bridge was silent.
She pointed ahead. “That’s the only place in the galaxy where we’re safe from them. Take us in.”
“Captain, we don’t know how it’s going to respond,” Jordan observed.
“I do. Helm, let’s get moving.”
Silent looks passed between the crewmembers on the bridge, and for a moment Adrienne worried today would be the day Jordan finally found his spine.
Fortunately, he remained too cautious. It was always easier to follow orders than to give them, and he caved today, too, the same as he did every other day. “You heard the captain, Helm. Nice and slow.”
Adrienne felt the slightest shift under her feet as the ship started forward. The nose of their ship was within ten meters of the barrier before space bent open again. It irised open wider this time, allowing the ship to pass without problem.
Then they were on the other side, and it closed behind them.
They drifted deeper and Adrienne watched the monitors as the data came in. An entire solar system hid behind the bend in spacetime. A bright star and several planets. The one farthest out was a gas giant, but the first five were all rocky.
“Any signs of life?” she asked Mitchell.
“No, but all the rocky planets seem capable of supporting life. They’re right in the middle of this system’s habitable zone.”
“Can we see the behemoth?” Adrienne asked, fully expecting the answer to be “no.”
“Uh, yes,” said Mitchell.
She turned sharply, and at her look, he said, “Somehow our sensors are working normally. I can’t explain it either, but the laws of physics haven’t been behaving normally today. When we get back to Fleet, we’re going to drive physicists mad with our data.”
For now, there was no point in worrying about Fleet physicists. They all sat, glued to their screens, as they watched the behemoth approach.
Had they been on the other side of the barrier, there was little doubt it would have noticed them, but it gave no sign of it now. It slowed when it was still several light-minutes away.
The whole bridge held its breath. Time existed, but somewhere far away, a dimension Adrienne couldn’t reach. The behemoth remained outside of visual range, but the ship’s sensors had it locked. It drifted back and forth, and then, in a blink, turned around.
Adrienne’s body went weak in her chair, as though she might melt and slide right off. For a moment, she imagined she was back in her bed, enjoying the fruits of a long night of rest. She closed her eyes and basked in their success. Whatever this place was, it remained hidden from the behemoth’s sight.
Now the real work began. She felt the eyes of the crew on her. The doubt they’d known vanished. Madness became brilliance, if proven correct. None of that mattered now, though. There could be no doubt as to her next orders. She pointed at the displays, now showing a new sun and the planets that orbited it.
“Set a course deeper into the system. Let’s find what kind of new Eden we’ve found.”