Starwalker

Ship's log, 16:40, 22 July 2214
Location: Approaching the Cerces black hole event horizon
Status: Sublight transit, Star Step drive active

There are so many people talking at me that it’s hard to keep up. They don’t like my idea. Thing is, I’m not hearing any other options.

Any other ship would cut and run now. Save themselves. But I have another avenue of escape. Flying towards a black hole doesn’t have to mean death for me. Why wouldn’t I use that to save someone? To save my own sister?

External comms: Celestial Strider

DINEEN: What the hell do you mean by ‘go through’? As stupid ideas go, that’s right up there with hugging a supernova.

STRIDER #3: (male voice) Starwalker, you’re gonna have to clarify what you mean.

RIEDE: Crazy bitch is gonna kill us.

Location: Cargo bay access corridor

ELLIOTT: Starry, don’t. We’re not ready for that.

External comms: Sarabande station

CAPTAIN: Starry, you can’t Step, it’s too risky.

Location: Bridge

(The hologram of the black hole turns slowly in the forward part of the Bridge.)

SARA: (picks her stuffed whale up from the floor, giggling. Turning, she looks up into the projected light that shifts all around her and holds up her toy, like an offering.)

Filaments extending
Filaments charging...

So many protests, like I’ve never done this before. I don’t have time to calm them all down.

We’re so close to the black hole that the filaments are charging faster than usual. Gotta watch them closely so they don’t overload.

Filaments charging: 30%

External comms

STARRY: That’s enough, all of you! Captain, Strider, Elliott: you’re all on the same comms line now. Strider, you’ve followed me through a Step before. Captain, you know I can do this.

RIEDE: Following you through a Step is how we ended up in this position in the first place.

STRIDER #3: Wait, your captain isn’t even on board?

CAPT: Not for this mission. Starry, you sure this is a solution?

STARRY: It’s the only solution if we’re all gonna get out of this. I’ll make the exit portal further out from the event horizon, and we should be able to build up enough momentum to sail free of the gravity tides. We’re not gonna get stuck again.

ELLIOTT: Starry, we haven’t even run diagnostics on the Step drive since I re-routed all your systems.

DINEEN: What? Your Step drive is damaged?

STARRY: Maybe, maybe not. Diagnostics are running. Charging is going smoothly.

Filaments charging: 63%

RIEDE: I don’t like the sound of this…

STRIDER #3: Shut up, Riede. Dineen, is our Step drive operational?

DINEEN: Well–

STARRY: No, Strider, you can’t Step. I have to do it. I just need you to be ready.

CAPT: Starry, can you use the net to negate the tides enough to pull free?

STARRY: I don’t think I can get enough charge to do that, not for the tides we’re caught in, and I can’t project the net behind me. I can’t push in two directions at once.

ELLIOTT: Definitely a bad idea.

DINEEN: Net? What the hell?

STARRY: Long story, explain later. It’s not gonna work, so don’t worry about it now. I’m almost at full charge.

ELLIOTT: Starry, diagnostics say that you’ve got two damaged filaments.

STARRY: Yeah, I see them. Recalculating the Step portal algorithms to compensate.

ELLIOTT: How are you planning to open up a portal behind the Strider?

STARRY: I’m working on it. We might need to go laterally for this.

STRIDER #3: Tash, get ready. We’re going to need to help.

STRIDER #5: (female voice) Yessir.

STARRY: Wait, who is that? Is that your pilot?

STRIDER #3: Yes, why?

STARRY: Get your pilot out of the chair.

STRIDER #3: She’s just going to help–

STARRY: GET THE PILOT OUT NOW.

ELLIOTT: Starry, it’s okay.

STARRY: No, it’s not!

CAPT: (calmly) Strider, I suggest you do as she asks. She doesn’t need your pilot’s assistance and won’t take you through the portal if your pilot’s in the chair.

STARRY: It’s too dangerous!

DINEEN: You want to fly us through a black hole and our pilot being in her chair is too dangerous?

STARRY: YES.

STRIDER #3: All right, all right, she’s out of the chair.

Filaments charged: 100%
Star Step drive ready

CAPT: Starry, you all right?

STARRY: I’m fine.

CAPT: You’ve got a plan? We need you to come back.

STARRY: Calculations are complete. I’ll be back before you know it, captain. Elliott, get strapped in, now.

ELLIOTT: Yeah, yeah, I’m workin’ on it.

Filaments charged: 110%

Shit.

STRIDER #3: We haven’t agreed to this yet.

STARRY: It’s this or we cut you loose. Your choice, Strider, but you have to make it now. I’m starting the lateral pass. Portal in thirty seconds.

RIEDE: This is nuts…

Two damaged filaments. The drive’s diagnostics are coming back with warnings but no failures. Minor burps, a few wobbles. The filaments writhe around me, hot with too much power, slippery. But I know this. I remember the echo of music, just out of hearing. I remember steps in a dance I don’t fully understand. Math flows through my systems, shifting and adjusting to compensate, and I almost hear Cirilli’s voice, clipped and sharp. I can almost feel her fingers on the Step drive’s controls, tailoring the algorithms, tidying the patterns.

I wonder if she saw it, the music in the fabric of time and space.

I’m dragging the Strider across the maw of the black hole. We need momentum to carry us through; I need to be able to tow her outside of reality without snagging her on the edges of the portal. I have no idea what would happen if the tow-lines caught. Would the portal cut them? Tear itself wider? Now is not the time to find out.

The gravity is pulling us in. I’m sliding sideways. It’s time. It’s now or never.

STARRY: Hold tight, everyone. Here we go.

Location: Bridge

SARA: (turns to look towards the nose of the ship, at the closed view-portals. Her eyes widen and she murmurs something softly, incoherently, before,) Visit whale? (She starts to jog towards the forward view-portals again.)

CASPER: (scoops her up while she’s distracted and trundles her quickly back to the central chair in the room. The harness sits open there, waiting for her.)

It’s time to dance, and whirl, and dive, right towards the mouth of the beast. I won’t be a meal today, though. I puncture the space before me, warp it beyond reality’s limits and fling it wide. As wide as I can with fingers that move too fast, tapping to a beat quicker than my heart.

SARA: (gasps and ducks her chin behind her toy, hugging it to her chest. She doesn’t react to Casper’s manhandling of her or the harness that wraps around her.)

The portal is ragged and shivering, a rough tear. Not my best work. I roll to make sure my wings don’t clip it, wriggle to pull the Strider through the middle, plunge outside of the universe.

Inertial dampeners offline

SARA: (blinks, then shrieks at the top of her lungs. Tears start again.)

CASPER: (lifts all of his hands away from her and tilts his head, scanning for signs of injury.)

External comms

STARRY: Strider, deactivate your inertial dampeners immediately.

(Three seconds pass. There is no response.)

STARRY: Strider, respond.

Do comms transmissions even work out here? I have no idea. Outside space and time, who knows how our laws of physics are interpreted.

Maybe that’s why it unravels us; it’s undoing rules that don’t apply here. Like we’re a bubble, bursting one molecule bond at a time.

Anyway, I hope the crew over there remembered to turn the inertial dampeners off. With no way to make readings, the dampeners could attempt to compensate for movement that hasn’t happened and squash the ship.

For me, it’s time to fly straight and careful. Keep pushing forward, through the image of the black hole that’s there and not there, that’s now and past and future all at once. It wasn’t always here. Won’t always be here. And yet is.

I see its path. All the colours of its history, white and yellow and red. I see where it cut off, became black. A blinding flash stutters. I try to record it all; I have a feeling we’ll need it later.

I see other things. The station here and not. I see it in pieces – construction or destruction? It’s gone too quick to tell. The sensor data floods me and there’s too much to hold onto it all. There’s everything and nothing. Focus on the important things. Save what I can.

Down the line of its fiery life, there are flickers of objects. It was busy here once. Rocks, balls, comets, maybe ships. Maybe planets. Too much data to tell, the flashes gone too quickly to grab.

It’s hard to concentrate when there’s a scream like a knife cutting through my Bridge. Casper tells me she’s not hurt. But she just keeps shrieking.

Location: Bridge

CASPER: (strokes the child’s head gingerly with one hand.)

SARA: (falls quiet and drags air into her lung in stutters, gulping it down. Her lips tremble and tears make her cheeks sticky. Then she shrieks again, as if she’s trying to tear up her own heart with sound alone. She rocks against the harness, hugging her whale and tipping her head back so the toy doesn’t muffle the sound of her upset.)

CASPER: (looks around the room, then shifts to squat beside the arm of the chair. He strokes the child’s hair and pats her shoulder, though she doesn’t seem to notice him.)

There’s nothing I can do about it, not now. Can’t let it distract me. I lock down those sensor feeds for now, file them away.

Warning: power leak detected
Warning: system failure in sector seven
System failover successful
Backup online
Warning

Shit. Sector seven is mid-deck, part of the Step calculation framework. The back-up is working, for now.

Have to get us out of here. I can’t really see the Celestial Strider behind me. The tow-lines are still taut and I still seem to be hauling something along, but I can’t get any real readings of her. Do we exist here? Does anything?

Location: Engineering

ELLIOTT: (scowls at the red warnings painted on the air around him and tugs at his harness) Starry?

STARRY: (voice only) It’s fine, I’m on it. Stay where you are.

ELLIOTT: I should–

STARRY: You need to stay strapped in. It’s too dangerous mid-Step.

ELLIOTT: Fuck.

We have to get back, now. Have to calculate carefully. Pick the right spot on the Cerces timeline, and make sure I put the portal further away from the event horizon. I have to ignore the silence and hum with the right tune, weave my battered filaments in our clumsy dance.

This portal is even more ragged than the last one. The edges wobble like they want to collapse back in. I push my filaments harder, eke out the last of the charge they sucked up from Cerces. It has to stay open long enough for my sister and I to get through. Both of us. It has to.

The lack of inertial dampening cripples me. I creak with the strain, push as fast as I dare. Elliott is wincing in his harness and there’s a sudden silence on the Bridge. The pressure is stealing Sara’s breath. Not for long, I promise. Almost there, so close, and I can see the glimmer of the station through the portal…

Inertial dampeners online

We’re out! We are in the world again.

Can’t pile on the power just yet, though. Can’t yank at the Strider too hard or she’ll break, and all her people within her. Patience counted in micro-seconds is torture.

I see her! She’s passing through!

External comms

RIEDE: …GONNA DIE, ALL OF US. HOLY–

STRIDER #5 / TASH: We’re through, captain.

STRIDER #3: Thank you. Riede, take a breath before you pass out.

Location: Bridge

SARA: (hiccups and stops abruptly. She blinks up at Casper, bewildered.)

CASPER: (continues to stroke her hair.)

SARA: (starts to cry again, softly. She wriggles out of the harness and up onto the arm of the chair, so she can wrap her little arms around the drone’s metal neck. She sobs in weary gulps, hiding her face against him.)

CASPER: (wraps all four arms around her carefully.)

Portal closed

Location: Engineering

ELLIOTT: (lets out a long breath and thumps the harness catch. The straps slither out of his way, letting him out of the chair.) Was it just me, or was that a bit hairier than our other Steps?

STARRY: I think I blew something on mid-deck.

ELLIOTT: (exasperated) Yeah, I saw the warnings. Fucking hell, Starry.

STARRY: I only do this stuff so you can’t leave, y’know.

ELLIOTT: (snorts and snatches up his helmet as he heads for the door) Yeah, right. So how’re we doing? Still gonna die?

STARRY: Pulling away from the black hole. Slowly.

ELLIOTT: So it worked. You’re gonna be insufferable, aren’t you?

STARRY: We’re not out of the woods yet. But… maybe a little bit, yeah.

ELLIOTT: (grins and pulls on his helmet.)

We’re making ground. Cerces’s gravity is strong here, but my engines are stronger and the Strider is helping, too. The tow-lines thrum with tension but they’re holding. We’re pulling away, one slow klick at a time. One step towards the station after another.

We made it. My sister’s gonna be okay. We’re all okay.

External comms: Celestial Strider

STARRY: Strider, we’re in the home stretch now. How’re you doing over there?

STRIDER #3: Hanging in there. How long until we reach the station?

STARRY: It’s gonna take us some time to get free. An hour or so, maybe. Why? What’s wrong?

STRIDER #3: We have injured here. Need medical assistance.

STARRY: Can you hold out for an hour?

STRIDER #3: Yes, it’s nothing major.

RIEDE: Bitch broke my arm! Ah, don’t touch me!

TASH: Such a baby.

STRIDER #3: But fast is better than slow. We had another blow-out here. We’re patching it but it’s not going to hold forever.

STARRY: Going as fast as I can, Strider. We’ll get you there.

On the plus side, they’re not talking about shooting at me any more. I guess Riede has other things to worry about.

External comms: station

STARRY: Captain? Captain, are you receiving? We’re back.

(Three seconds pass. There is no response.)

STARRY: Captain? Captain, respond.

Oh no. He was right there when I left! Where is he? Why isn’t he answering? I knew I shouldn’t have left him behind. He belongs on board me, where I can keep an eye on him, and Lang Lang, and the Lieutenant, and the doc. They’re my people. Why aren’t they answering?

STARRY: Sarabande, anyone, hello? Can you hear me?

I can talk to the Strider, so I know my external comms are working. But I am picking up some weird readings on my decks. I didn’t detect another instability in my systems, no surges or burps, but there are twitches…

Oh captain, my captain, where are you? I need you.

(A scraping noise comes over the comms.)

CAPT: (roughly) Starry?

STARRY: Yes! Captain!

CAPT: Starry, where the hell have you been?