Seventh Read online

  Seventh

  by Heath Pfaff

  Edited by Andrea Brooks

  www.offoxsmind.com

  Seventh is ©2012 by Heath Pfaff

  All rights reserved.

  ODYSSEY Patient Log: Wright, James

  Identification: 0291743

  File: Tether Project

  Classification: S; Project Personnel Only

  BEGIN LOG

  The insides of my eyelids were painted red by the light flashing in the darkness of my room. The burning beacon of danger pierced through my dreamless, dark sleep and I awoke with a ragged gasp of frozen air. I coughed the cold inhalation back out and pushed myself groggily to my feet, shaking my head to clear the fog of sleep away. I couldn't see anything in my dark little cabin. That is to say, I couldn't see anything until the red emergency light in the corner once again flashed on, remaining lit for a full second before going out again. For that brief moment my familiar little space had been bathed in an ominous shade of deep rose.

  "Odyssey, why are we at condition red?" I addressed the ship-board Artificial Intelligence, my heart thumping heavily in my chest. My voice was ragged from sleep, and my head was pounding as though my brain had just been hammered into shape from scraps of rusty metal. Red alerts were reserved for life threatening situations, and were generally accompanied by a ship-wide announcement bulletin describing the nature of the situation. That was standard military protocol, as I well knew; I was in my final year of training as a shipboard security officer. Technical protocol I was well versed in, but my stint aboard the Odyssey, which had only started some three weeks before, hadn't given me nearly enough time to familiarize myself with actual starship procedures. What the book indicated and what was actually practiced aboard a working vessel hardly ever coincided.

  A familiar female voice, smooth and young, chimed into the communicator that had been surgically implanted into my inner ears. The effect took some time to get used to; her voice seemed to come from all around me. I'd selected her tone and vocal patterns from millions of possibilities, but somehow I still wasn't completely comfortable with her. Had she always sounded so aggressive? When she replied, her voice, no matter how well constructed, still didn't feel quite alive. It lacked warmth in some indistinguishable but important way. I almost felt as though it actively disliked me, or at the very least like its words were spoken by someone who held a grudge against me. Of course, machines didn't hold grudges.

  "There has been a severe hull breach and all crew members have been confined to quarters until repairs can be made." She answered, the mechanical voice calm despite the severity of the news.

  "What caused the breach?" I asked, knowing she would still be listening even though I had not directly addressed her, since I'd initiated the conversation already.

  "A research subsystem has suffered a fault. No further information has been declassified."

  I sighed and rubbed the sleep from my eyes. Great.

  "What's the ETA on repairs?"

  "No estimated time for the completion of repairs has been registered by the engineering department."

  Frustration intermingled with my fear of the unknown. How could a research subsystem fault result in a hull breach, and what sort of flight crew didn't keep the ship's crew informed in this kind of emergency? A hull breach was virtually unheard of outside of combat, and in combat a breach was generally cause to run for the escape pods as fast as possible.

  "Is there ANY news to report since the hull breach?"

  "No public entries have been made since the initial incident was filed." The female voice of the AI was so conversationally pitched that the desolate lack of detail almost seemed run of the mill.

  "Can you turn on the lights, please?" I asked, slumping back onto my narrow bed.

  "I am currently running on emergency power. All non-essential power use is disabled, James."

  I fell back against my pillow, defeated. "Great, so I'm stuck in the dark with no idea of what is happening outside of this room."

  "Yes." The computer answered. Unfortunately, AI didn’t seem to be skilled in the art of sarcasm.

  Silence enveloped me. Each cabin was individually soundproofed, and while on emergency power there was no way to turn on any sort of background sound or white noise. Even the ventilation system operated soundlessly. The result was that the only sound in the room was my own breathing and subtle movements. The longer I lay in the dark watching the single red emergency beacon flash, the colder I began to feel. I'd been surprisingly chilled upon first waking, but now with no distractions the cold seemed to be sinking into my bones, rising up from the hollow of my stomach as though there were a void there generating pulling the heat right out of my body.

  "Odyssey, what is the temperature?" I asked after what felt like several hours of unbearable silence, though realistically it may have only been minutes. I was agitated. My head was still throbbing, and I felt a strange sense of disorientation. My quarters felt wrong in a way I simply couldn’t explain.

  "Would you like the cabin temperature, or the relative vacuum temperature on the vessel's hull?"

  "Cabin temperature is fine." I tried to keep the frustration from my voice. Why would I want to know how cold it was outside? It was space so I could only assume "very cold" was probably an accurate guess.

  "This cabin is currently maintaining a steady temperature of 21.1 degrees centigrade. Individual cabin climate control is disabled at this time."

  That was well within acceptable norms. In fact, that was generally considered ideal. Why was I freezing, then? Fear, maybe. I was willing to admit to myself that I was scared. It's wasn't the dark and the quiet that did it, though that didn't help. The fear that nagged at me greater than any other was the fear of the unknown. What was happening beyond my cabin door?

  A thought occurred to me. "Can you connect me to the Engineering Department?" If anyone knew what was happening, it had to be the guys in Engineering. I half expected the channel to be full or on lock-out because of too many people calling to ferret out details, but to my surprise I heard the distinctive two tone trill of my connection going through almost immediately after making my request.

  "Connected to Chief Fuller." The AI stated.

  "Wright," an older, shaky male voice answered, sounding tired and maybe as scared as I felt. There was an odd nasal quality to the man's tone. "Do you know what's happening? Have you talked to the bridge crew?" He'd addressed me by name because the computer had given it to him when he answered the call, not because we knew each other. It was standard protocol for the AI to identify an incoming caller, especially when rank was to be properly addressed. His wavering voice, as well as the fact that he'd immediately asked me if I knew what was happening, was enough to add a fresh spike of panic to my already troubled state.

  "No, Sir, I don't know what's happening and I haven't spoken with the bridge crew." I tried to sound calm, but fear was gnawing away at my gut. How bad was the situation if Engineering was in the dark? "I was hoping you could tell me. I took a nap, and when I woke up, the reds were flashing."

  "Dammit, dammit, dammit!" The chief cursed over the channel. There was a moment of quiet, and when he spoke again it seemed he'd made an effort to calm his voice to some degree. "Sir? Whatever, I don't know what's going on. I was working at my terminal in the central office when the alert came up, and we received an order to monitor the core for a tactical slipspace jump, level 4. I brought up my monitors just in time to see the energy output increase for jump, stable as ever. Odyssey cut through levels one through three without taking any hits to her output, and then as we were settling into four, the power levels peaked on the core, and the secondary core switched on, which shouldn't have happened. I opened my mouth to call the bridge and tell them what had happened, an
d then… nothing."

  "I woke up in a pool of my own blood. I think my nose is broken. I smashed it on my console, but I don't remember how. The others in the office aren't at their terminals, and the bulkhead is sealed tight and I can’t override it. Can you send help?"

  I couldn't figure out why he was asking me to send help. I ignored him and pushed on. "Sir, do you know what's wrong with Odyssey? Why we're on lockdown?" I pressed, looking for some useful information.

  "There is a hull breach in the… Tether. Wright, are you alright?" He sounded confused as he answered.

  "Of course I'm alright. Is there any word on the extent of the damage? Have we dispatched crews to fix it?" I pressed again, ignoring his statement of the obvious, and neglecting my honorific. I already knew there was a damn hull breach.

  "No, there is no word from anyone. I don't think you understand. You are the only person who has called me since I woke up. I had one missed message from the bridge, but when I tried to open it, there was only static. I've tried calling the bridge, and second command, but the computer says that there’s no connection. I could understand if the channels were busy, or if incoming calls were being denied, but there should never be 'no connection.' The ship board communication is a high level wireless broadcast, and it is designed to work as long as at least five repeaters can stay in contact. There are 1000 repeaters on our ship, so while communication could be slowed down, it should never have ‘no connection’. Do you understand?"

  "On top of that, I can't reach any other department either. I can't even reach the other offices in Engineering, which has its own repeater as well as an emergency hard line. We are a forty man crew, on duty twenty-four seven. There is no way I should be the only one here, and the Tether is at the other end of the damn ship, so why..." His voice was slowly increasing in volume, and I could hear the panic creeping back into his voice.

  I broke in over him, trying to calm him down. "Have you tried leaving your office and looking for the others in your department?"

  "Lockdown." He answered quickly. "I'm locked in the central office. As I said, the bulkhead is sealed tight and none of the overrides are working to disengage it. There are four others who work here with me, but they're gone. Worse, there is another problem. According to the power readings, the primary core has been ejected and the secondary core is shut down and I can't get it to come back online. I don't have the security clearance to perform a reset. Odyssey is running on her battery system."

  I knew little about the technical running of slipspace ships, but I was aware that they consumed a great deal of power, even just in maintaining life support and crew systems.

  "How long do those batteries last?" I almost didn't ask. Some part of me screamed that it didn't want to know the answer.

  "They're designed to last for five years in conservation mode, with a minimal crew."

  I breathed an audible sigh of relief. "Then we're alright."

  "No, that's the problem. We're in conservation mode, but - and I'm only guessing here because the energy diagnostics for the ship are giving me some very confusing readings - the ship is maintaining stasis fields over some very large holes in the hull. I don't know how bad the damage is. I don't have access to structural diagnostics from my terminal, it's not my department. My training is in power maintenance and energy preservation, but with the amount of power drain I'm seeing, I'd have to guess the shields are covering devastating damage. At our current consumption rate, we have about seven hours of power left before the ship shuts down all services except life support. We might have a few more days after that, but if the hull damage is as bad as it would need to be to draw this much power for stasis shields, the ship may well rip itself apart when those fields come down."

  A deep silence fell between us. I don't know how long it lasted because my mind was racing in circles, trying to make sense of what was happening. It didn't feel real. I felt as though I was still dreaming and that at any minute I would wake up on my bunk in a cold sweat, and this would all have been nothing more than a delusion caused by a dinner that had been too spicy.

  "Hello?" The chief's voice broke through the silence like a pebble shattering glass.

  "I'm still here." I said. My voice sounded far away, even to me.

  "No, not you. Someone just knocked on my door. Someone’s out there, in the corridor. I'll call you back in a minute." As Fuller's voice cut off, two chirps sounded indicating he'd broken our communication link.

  I stood up from my bed and began to pace the small space of my cabin. The room was large enough for my bed, a desk, a steel chair, and a storage closet. Pacing in the open space between them was barely manageable, but I suddenly found that I didn't want to be sitting still. I felt like I was in a prison cell, and not merely the cabin of a ship. On a vessel the size of Odyssey, it seemed that the crew cabins should have been much larger. Not that it really mattered under the current circumstances.

  If Chief Fuller's information was correct, I was living what could be the last few hours of my life. I just kept telling myself over and over again that it wasn't possible. There were safety systems in place. Even if the hull had been severely damaged, there were still slipspace escape pods with entangled homing beacons. Space travel was incredibly safe. There were redundancies built into the redundancies!

  A heavy banging sounded at the bulkhead to my cabin. It struck three times, slowly, deliberate and heavy, and then there was silence.

  "Hello?" I called out, feeling stupid as the word left my lips. The cabin was sound proof. Whoever was outside wouldn't be able to hear me, but why could I hear them? Why had Chief Fuller been able to hear someone knocking on his door? Every cabin onboard the ship sealed the same way. It allowed for damage to be compartmentally sealed, to preserve as much functionality as possible in the event of a catastrophic hull breach.

  Another deep pounding sounded on the bulkhead.

  "Odyssey, connect me to Chief Fuller."

  "Connected to Chief Fuller."

  "It must be a rescue party of some sort." The chief said as our connection resumed. "I kept trying to call to them, but I just realized there is no way they can hear me through the walls." He chuckled, sounding relieved.

  "I've got a knocking here as well. It's real deep in the wall. Shouldn't the soundproofing block noise from outside?" I felt particularly ill at ease. My dark room with its constant red blinking light was becoming increasingly unnerving.

  "They probably have a way of signaling us to let us know they're out there. I'm sure everything is fine." He chuckled again, though it sounded forced this time. "There’s probably been some kind of glitch with the computer systems, and they're just getting everything patched and working. Maybe even the hull damage is just a false reading caused by… what was that?" The last three words came out in a gasp.

  "What was what?" I asked, the hairs on the back of my neck standing up.

  "I think there is someone else in here. Maybe one of the other Engineering guys, but where… Simons?" The com chirped twice and went silent.

  "Odyssey, please reconnect me to Chief Fuller." I was startled to hear an air of desperation in my own voice.

  "There is no connection available at this time."

  "But we were just connected, Odyssey, how can there be no connection?"

  "I'm afraid I cannot answer hypothetical questions."

  "Connect me to anyone… whoever is closest to this location." I asked, suddenly eager to have any human communication. I was afraid to be alone. That primal part of me that I'd buried in my childhood, the part that feared the dark and created monsters from shadows, was roaring to life, and I needed a voice to send it away.

  Odyssey didn't answer.

  "Odyssey? Please connect me to the closest crew member." I waited and only silence answered. Desperation pulsed through my veins with the pounding of my heart.

  "Odyssey, what's the cabin temperature right now?" I didn't want to know, I just wanted to hear the computer answer. Quietness.
<
br />   A hiss punctured the silence, like the sound of air slipping from a pressurized canister. The onset of the sound was so sudden that I jumped with a start of surprise and backed into the bulkhead at my back. My eyes searched the black of the room, unable to focus on anything in the darkness. The red warning light blared on, and I locked my eyes on the source of the hissing, just at the opposite end of my cramped cabin, near the corner of my bunk.

  There was a shadow hunched there, balled up in the corner, something so dark it seemed to turn the sharp red light away from it. The hissing sound was emanating from it. It moved with a jerk, just as the red light blinked off.

  I screamed. Nothing could possibly be in that small space with me, certainly nothing with the ability to move on its own. My terror crawled up the back of my throat and burst free from me in a shrill screech that might have embarrassed me under other circumstance. The hissing grew louder, bearing down on me.

  Forceful, clawing hands gripped me all over, cold as ice, pushing me back against the door to my room, and though I struggled against the binding grip, I couldn't break free. I knew that the red flash of the emergency lights would trigger any second, and then I would be face to face with my assailant, that impossible thing of darkness. Even the anticipation caused my entire being to quake with terror, and I screwed my eyes shut with all the force I could muster, I didn't want to know what had me. I was terrified to look into the darkness, terrified to see what matter of monster had torn itself from nightmares to attack me in the sanctity of my own room.

  "We're dead now, remember." A child's voice whispered through the black.

  A sharp pain bit into my neck, and an antiseptic smell wafted over me. The hiss of the monstrosity became a crackle, and then it broke into a stream of voices, a legion of whispers coming from across a great distance. I couldn't make them out, but they sounded agitated and angry. They grew louder, closer. I forced my eyes open, though a part of me still didn't want to see what was happening.