Chapter Three - Void Space
Samuel White was caught in the blissful state between sleep
and death, a dreamless abyss, the wonderful void as they liked to call it. Not
that they were able to enjoy this state of nonbeing, as their brain ceased all
functions while their body was frozen, preserved in the life sustaining ice of
cryosleep. Samuel didn’t particularly consider themselves religious, but they
imagined that death was like spending time in a cryopod, with the only
difference being that you never got to wake up.
Their system was flooded with an almost dangerous amount of the cryogenic
reawakening formula as well as a hearty amount of adrenaline, this was joined
by a shock of electricity from an inbuilt defibrillator. White’s heart
started to beat for the first time in two years, as the temperature rose, blood
found itself able to return its regular flow around their body. As this
happened consciousness returned to their brain, and as the uncomfortable,
sickening, disorientating sensation of rapid defrosting washed over every part
of their body, Sam found themselves with a single thought. They started to
consider if the not having to wake up from cryo might have been a positive. Of
course it wasn’t. Life, however uncomfortable was always better than death. But
this feeling, right now, it was almost enough to make a person reconsider such
things.
White rubbed their eyes, which felt almost painfully cold to the touch, before
opening them and looking around at the bridge crew’s cryopod room. All eight
pods were arranged in a circle formation within the centre of the room. These
pods laid flat along the floor while the crew were on ice, but they rose to a vertical
ninety-degree angle when the crew had to get either in or out of them. This was
the position they were currently in. White could see the room’s wall from their
position, where they saw their pastel pink dressing gown waiting for them. The
daft thing had been a joke present from their husband back home on Ociea Prime.
White smiled to themselves as they remembered their husband. Then they
continued to search their surroundings. While the room was normally a beautiful
soft blue colour, right now it was alternating between a violently bright red,
back to complete darkness, then back to the violent red.
It was the red alert system. Shit. They pushed themselves free from the cryopod
and, using the wall as support for their shaky legs, they turned around to
check on the other members of the crew. Everyone seemed to be okay at first.
Each of them, from the grumpy head of security Valentine to the sweet as sugar
Daniels, were all slowly emerging from their cryopods. The strange disorientation
that White was suffering from seemed to also be affecting the rest of their
crewmates. Daniels looked at White and attempted to offer a gentle smile before
she bent over and unloaded the contents of her stomach onto the floor. Gross.
The sight made White want to do the same, but they managed to hold back. Then
Theo appeared in the centre of the room, his hologram fading between red and
white in time with the flashing alarm lights.
“Please follow the emergency lighting towards the bridge urgently.” Theo’s
voice seemed strained, and almost stressed, although as an AI White was unsure
if Theo could even feel stress like a human could.
“You heard the robot! Let’s get moving!” Valentine’s gruff voice sounded even
more rough than usual. This was most likely another side effect of the rapid
defrosting that they had all experienced. Valentine retrieved a phase pistol
from the small cargo compartment next to his cryopod, checked the plasma
reserves, and then started to move the crew out of the room.
“Wait, wait a minute. Where’s Tyler?” The question came from Smith, he
preferred to be called John, but it was Alliance Navy protocol to use last
names for all crew members during an active mission. White scanned the confused
group of discombobulated crewmates, and Smith was right, there was no Tyler.
“Yeah…” White began to ask the same question but as they started to talk their
sore throat caused them to start coughing.
“SHIT!” Smith screamed when he saw it. Tyler was still in her cryopod, but
despite the cocktail and defibrillation, she wasn’t moving. The display on the
front of the pod read simply; Subject unresponsive. Rapid defrosting was risky,
they all knew that, but everything had been so rushed that until now the
thought that one of them might not have survived the process had never even
crossed their mind. Smith ran over to the pod and began to try and force it
open with his bare hands. Protocol was to keep the body on ice until such time
that a proper funeral could be conducted. Right now, however, Smith was to
overcome with the death of his wife to care about any of the protocols.
Valentine made his way over to Smith, who had now started to punch the cryopod
glass to get inside.
“She’s gone. We still have a mission to do; we’re needed on the bridge.”
Valentine failed to see anything other than the mission, as usual.
“Help me get into this pod or fuck off!” Smith’s response was stifled by the
tears and sobs that erupted from his grieving body. Before Valentine could
respond the entire crew found themselves knocked to the floor as the ship
rolled in space and the artificial gravity struggled to keep up with the
manoeuvre. Each of them let out some kind of startled expletive as they slowly
got to their feet. Smith simply returned to Tyler’s cryopod. Valentine started
to make his way back there as well, but he was stopped by the level-headed
Peters.
“Leave him man, we’re needed, he’s not, he needs to grieve.” Valentine took a
moment to reflect on this, then he made a noise that reminded White of a bull
huffing through its nose and turned towards the doorway out of the room. The
rest of the crew simply followed him; White was the last to leave as they
watched Smith desperately punch the reinforced glass over and over, until his
fists were bleeding. White wanted so badly to be able to help Smith, to be able
to say or do anything, but after a while of thinking they realised that there
was nothing to be done. Suddenly the ship shuddered as all the lights turned
off, even the readout on the front of Tyler’s cryopod disappeared. That was an
EMP, which meant they were under attack. White left the room, leaving Smith on
his own.
As White entered the hallway that led towards the bridge, they felt the ship
shift once again, as the artificial gravity struggled to align itself with the
motion. This time White, and the rest of the crew further up the hallway were
pushed violently into the floor as the ship aggressively arched upwards. As
they were forced onto the floor, White felt a dreadful vibration reverberate
through the ship. They had been a pilot long enough to know that sensation
well. Their entire body went cold as the shock overtook them. As soon as the
artificial gravity returned, they forced themselves to their feet and began to
push their aching, disoriented body into a run towards the bridge.
“What was that?” The soft, scared, question came from Daniels.
“It was a collision.” White answered as they reached the rest of the crew.
“Something hit us?” The question was a stupid one, but White forgave Daniels’
ignorance, it was born of shock, not stupidity. Despite that, they didn’t
bother to answer her, they just continued to run towards the bridge.
As they reached the door into the bridge they pressed their hand against the
cold glass of the entry panel. The door in front of them slid open to reveal
the deck. Captain Ellison was sat within her captain’s chair, with Theo in
front of her. Below her, on the lower level sat the control panels for
navigation, weapons, drone control, and ship management. In front of all of
them, against the far wall of the bridge was the holoscreen that was currently
displaying a ship of some kind. Power management, drone control, and
surveillance had their control panels behind the captain’s chair, recessed into
the same wall as the door that White was now standing within. The soft blue of
the controls felt out of place against the background of chaos. White listened
to what Theo was saying.
“Twenty metres to impact ma’am. Crew decks thirty-four, thirty-five,
thirty-six, and thirty-seven are venting atmo. Engineering deck eighty-one
completely depresser…”
The entire ship shook with enough force to knock White, and the rest of the
crew back onto the floor. The holoscreen was consumed with flames as the
strange ship on screen collided with something. The explosion was loud enough
to be heard from down the hallway, before it was suddenly cut off in an
instant. This was most likely because the explosion had consumed all the
oxygen, cutting off the sound.
White pushed themselves up, panic overwhelming them, but years of training
pushing them forward. They moved past the captain without addressing her,
jumped down the stairs to the lower section and took their position at the
navigation control panel.
“Shield generator destroyed.” Theo’s voice was calm and collected in a way that
would have been impossible for a human given the impact of what his words
meant. “Shield generator two overwhelmed at one-hundred and twenty-five percent
capacity.” The rest of the crew moved into the room and took their positions as
quickly as possible, their training taking control. “Orders ma’am?” Although
Theo had been the one to ask the question, the entire crew, now at their
control panels, waited for the order with bated breath. The seconds that the
captain took to think of an order felt like an eternity.
“Move all power from shields and weapons into engines, navigation, plot us a
series of blind jumps through voidspace. Let’s try and shake these bastards!”
The captain’s voice was sure and strong, but White picked up on the desperation
in her plan. This was tantamount to suicide, but then again, so was staying
put.
“Aye ma’am.” Daniels’ soft voice answered from somewhere above and behind the
captain. Seconds later White’s own panels lit up as they informed them of the
additional power.
“Engines and VSD running at two-hundred percent Captain.” White confirmed out
loud as they tapped away on the holographic keyboard in front of them. They
plotted blind jump after blind jump, checking each one only briefly to make
sure they wouldn’t collide with a planet or blackhole. The ship shook once
again, less violently than last time but enough to push White into working
faster.
“Shields down ma’am.” White may have been imagining it but even Theo’s voice
seemed to sound nervous at that news.
“Are we ready to jump Mx White?” The urgency within the captain’s voice was
obvious.
“I’ve checked these jumps as best as I can given the situation ma’am, but I
can’t guarantee we won’t end up inside a blackhole or colliding with the
surface of a gravistar.” The attempt at humour was misplaced, but if they were
about to die, then why not go out with a joke?
“Good enough, engage the VSD Mx White!” The captain seemed to at least
acknowledge the joke.
“Aye, ma’am.” White flipped the cover over the VSD button and then pressed the
button down, hoping that this wasn’t the last thing they ever did. The view
from the holoscreen vanished into nothing. While the screen remained pitch
black, White knew that even this was an artistic approximation to what the
cameras were actually seeing. The VSD stood for the Void Shift Drive, it was a
system that allowed ships to slip under the veil of the physical universe into
what was known as Void Space. This Void Space was just that, nothing, in its
most basic form, not an inky darkness, not the vacuum of space, truly, nothing.
That’s why White knew that it wasn’t black outside, it wasn’t any colour,
because it wasn’t anything. The human brain couldn’t understand that lack of
anything. It was a confusing thing to try and conceptualise, because thinking
was something, and therefore it was literally impossible to think of nothing. The
cameras showed the next best thing, darkness.
Then, just as quickly, the void space was replaced by the view of a beautiful
gas giant, the many elements of its surface all melding together in a kaleidoscope of
interesting shapes and colours. Then that too was gone, replaced once more with
void space. They were within the second jump of thirty. Each time they left
void space, there was a chance they ended up within the crust of some planet,
or at the centre of a star, which would instantly kill them. After the eleventh
jump from regular space to void space White noticed the haunting silence that
accompanied their time within the strange nothingness. It was very unsettling.
The VSD was only supposed to be used in extreme situations, and even then, a
single jump was dangerous. The simple truth was that void space was just not
understood. There were far too many stories of ships engaging their VSD and
then just never reappearing. Noone knew what happened to these poor souls.
After the twenty-fourth jump into void space White began to wonder what else
lurked out there, within the nothing. It stood to reason that if the scientists
of the Alliance and Brotherhood could slip into this strange void, then
theoretically so could something else. The Brotherhood believed that void space
was the home to their dark god, Interitus. While it was a ridiculous notion, as
White stared into the centre of the black void displayed on the holoscreen,
they couldn’t help but wonder, what if they were right?
This thought sat uneasily with White until the last jump from void space to
regular space left them within the upper atmosphere of an unknown planet.
“Where are we?” The captain asked what everyone was wondering. White looked at
their system maps, but they were millions of light years away from the nearest
known star.
“Unknown ma’am.” White delivered the news to the captain.
“Theo, can you do better?” The captain’s remark stung, but White knew she was
right. Theo was essentially twenty supercomputers all acting as one, he would
be able to process data much faster than White could.
“Above a planet. Ma’am.” The pause between the answer, and the ma’am was not
lost on White or the captain, but right now they had bigger problems. The ship
began to violently shake as the forces of re-entry took effect. The UAV-Abyss
was built in space, it was designed to navigate space, it was never supposed to
enter the atmosphere of a planet.
“Can someone update me of the situation?” The captain seemed desperate, like
she was losing control. This was very unlike her.
“We’re experiencing the stresses of entering the planets atmosphere, which was
something the Abyss wasn’t designed for, ma’am.” White put it as simply as they
could without being too blunt.
“What Mx White means, ma’am, is we’re crashing!” Theo put it the blunt way.
“Is Theo correct Mx White?”
“Yes ma’am.” White was scanning their controls, engaging as many of the engines
as possible to try and slow down their descent. It was working, but slowly.
“Can we regain control?” The captain didn’t seem to understand the severity of
this situation, so White said what they knew needed to be said.
“It’s no matter of, if, we crash ma’am, it’s a matter of how hard
we hit the floor.” White turned to Peters, who was sat on the control panel
next to White. “Peters, what physical weapon’s do we have that can be fired
directly in front of us?” Peters took a second to snap themselves back
together, away from the fear that had overtaken them.
“We have the four rail guns.” Their voice was trembling as they spoke.
“Good, charge them, then fire them all at once when I give the order, okay?”
White had taken control, bypassing the usual chain of command, but since the
captain didn’t intercept their orders, they assumed they were doing the right
thing.
“Charging now…” Peters informed them, as White watched the power get diverted
from their engines. They reacted to this by shutting down all the engines unable
to slow their descent. White glanced up at the holoscreen and just saw that
every camera was blinded by a myriad of flames. White continued to push the
Abyss as much as possible, her speed slowly began to decrease but so did her
altitude. When they dipped below fifteen-thousand feet they ordered Peters to
fire the railguns. The bridge was bathed in darkness as the weapons unleashed
their projectiles, but it worked, their speed dropped drastically. All White
could do now was hope that it was enough as the ground rapidly approached. They
prepared for the moment of truth as they screamed, what could possibly be the
last thing they would ever say.
“BRACE FOR IMPACT!”
© Robyn Timmons, 2025
