Early the next morning Keisha walked to the hangar bay with a slight hangover. Something Fiolas had said last night bothered her, so much so, she decided she needed help getting to sleep. "Morning sunshine." Zayd was a bit too chipper this morning. He had already begun the preflight checks on her ship.
"Mmmhmm." She said. Zayd walked down the boarding ramp and handed her a hot mug of coffee. Keisha nodded appreciatively and started sipping as she read the logs Zayd handed her.
"Late night Brakas?" He looked her up and down. "You look terrible. Fiolas should have let you go to sleep early."
"Don't start that. Not this early." She glared at him over the top of the holo-pad with all the ship's logs on it. "My bedtime routine is none of your business, and it's none of Lieutenant Fiolas' either. I had a rough time getting to sleep and decided maybe some whiskey would help."
He held his hands up in retreat. "Yes sir." It was this kind of banter that drove Keisha nuts when working with Zayd. He just knew how to get her riled up. She growled slightly under her breath and he moved on with the preflight checks.
"Do you know what we're chasing out there today?" She asked. "The mission file didn't say much and I'm not entirely sure I understood any of it."
"We're taking Dr. Trashente out to see if her mentor's idea of creating an O2 bubble in space could allow us to resupply ships tanks with it. There's no hardware out there for it, but if we can resupply the Thyella's extra air tank from this bubble thing, then we can start sending the bubbles out in space and send ships after them." He leaned casually with one hand holding him in the open door.
"So you know just about as much as I do then." She said.
"Yeah, pretty much." He laughed. The two of them went through the ship and completed inspection just as Dr. Trashente came in with two of her assistants behind her pushing carts overflowing with equipment. Both of them stopped for a moment and saw the commotion of trying to get everything from the carts to the right ship. The woman had clearly never been in the hangar bay since she arrived on the ship.
"Flip a coin to see who has to go tell her she can only bring half of that crap?" She said hopefully.
"Ha, sorry Brakas, I think that job goes to you today." He smiled, "Being your C.O. has to come with some perks doesn't it?" He went back to the final checklist and Keisha got up to go talk to the woman.
"Excuse me Dr. Trashente?" Keisha walked down the ramp but found she had to jump off the side due to the assistants blocking the end of the ramp with their gear. Dr. Trashente had white short hair, a medium build, and huge circular glasses that didn't seem to want to stay on her face.
"Oh yes, Shipmaster we need to get this loaded onto your vessel immediately." She practically threw a bag into Keisha's arms. Keisha looked at it and dropped it on the ground.
"Yeah, that's what we need to discuss ma'am." Keisha stepped over the bag she just dropped and walked around the carts to stand directly in front of the woman. "Perhaps you missed it in your mission file, but the Thyella has a restriction on how much equipment she can hold. In smaller vessels, we have to keep the weight distribution even and you were given an allotment that you should have weighed prior to boarding." The two assistants' faces drained while Dr. Trashente pulled up her mission file and began reading it.
She looked up at Keisha and decided to believe her. "I need everything here." She tilted her head towards the assistants, "How much do both of you weigh?" Keisha walked back into the ship while they figured it out. After a while, they had it all sorted and most of the equipment was loaded on and Dr. Trashente was boarded with one assistant.
Keisha and Zayd took off and headed towards the experiment. After a few hours of flying, they reached the coordinates, "So do you think we'll be able to see it from afar?" He asked.
Dr. Trashente called from the hold, "There will be a slight sheen from the liquid holding it together. Dr. Foravis formulated a liquid to act as a container for the O2 and it will slightly reflect light, but it will be very easy to miss it." She had gotten up from her seat as she talked and put her head between the two, trying to get as close to the window as possible.
All three of them leaned towards the window searching for the reflection, "It's not there." Dr. Trashente leaned back disappointed. "I gave up my whole life to see the results of his life's work and for what." Her temper was starting to ramp up and Keisha was worried she was going to start throwing things again.
"Wait," Keisha had a hunch. " Zayd we should be looking straight at it, correct?"
"Yeah, I piloted us right in front." He confirmed.
"Can you maneuver to an angle and let's shine the lights where it should be."
"Giving you a 30-degree angle in 3, 2, 1."
"Swiveling lights now." Keisha smiled. A large flat sphere shone back at them. It looked as though a sphere had been flattened like a pancake. It was a disc the size of the ship and the sheen was similar to a black pearl, they could have been flying out here for hours and if the lights hadn't hit it, they would have never seen it.
"It's beautiful." Keisha looked over and saw Dr. Trashente start to cry. She and the assistant began unpacking all the equipment to siphon the air out of the disc.
"Good work Keish." Zayd was looking at her with a big grin, "How did you know to try that?"
"Just a hunch really." Keisha smiled back. He squeezed her shoulder and they unclipped to help the doctor siphon the O2 into their extra air container. The liquid container was captured in its own separate container and they headed back to the Pytheas.
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When they landed they were still flying high from the successful mission and Dr. Trashente couldn't believe the liquid bubble had worked so well there was practically zero loss. She hadn't stopped talking about it the entire flight back. They touched down but before they had even fully turned off the ship the intercom clicked on, "Pilots Zayd Runslo and Keisha Brakas please report to High Command immediately." Keisha hadn't been called to High Command, ever. The last time the captain had spoken directly to her had been when she offered her a job. Zayd's face went from smiling and laughing to concern. Even though he was a commanding officer, he still didn't have much direct contact with the captain. She mostly communicated via the holo-pad with him.
"Any idea what this is about?" She asked him.
"No. It's usually not a good thing when they need two shipmasters though." He grabbed his bag from the ship and Keisha followed suit. Everyone congratulated them on their way out for finding the thinnest disc they've ever heard of. No doubt, by the time they came back the story would be even wilder.
The shiny white hallways lit up as they walked down towards the High Command center. It was a lot quieter in here and Zayd seemed tense. As they walked the gravity became heavier. "I hate going to the inner rings," Keisha mentioned.
"Why's that?" He asked.
"It gets too heavy. Especially after free-floating on the Thyella." They walked a few more paces. "Why does it get heavier the closer to the center? I've never heard of an artificial gravity well that works this way." Zayd didn't answer. "I mean, on the Excelsior we used a linear acceleration, and the waystation outside of Klokos used centripetal force and the outer rings had gravity. This place defies all of that." A few more paces of silence. "Have you never wondered about that?"
He pulled her into a doorway so quickly she thought something had gone terribly wrong. "Be careful who you ask those questions to Keisha. I made the mistake of asking once and I almost lost my position here. The artificial gravity is one of the best-kept secrets this ship has, and believe me it has a lot of secrets." He was whispering and holding her so close it made her nervous. She had never seen Zayd this serious before. "You are not on this manifest, the captain does not need to account for your whereabouts when we get back. If you go looking into this mystery she is not above throwing you out an airlock. Do you understand?" She simply nodded and he breathed a sigh of relief and took a step back.
Zayd looked her in the eye, "You're a breath of fresh air here Keisha and I don't want to lose that." His eyes softened.
"It's OK, I get it." She put her hand on his chest.
"OK, let's get to High Command." They returned to the hallway and Keisha let the silence fill the space between them. They both took a big breath as they opened the door and walked in together. They both stood at attention for the Captain. "Thank you, pilots, you may sit. We are still waiting for a few people." She nodded curtly and Keisha looked around the room and found a tired and disheveled Fiolas sitting at the end of the table. She automatically went to sit by him and found herself sitting in between Fiolas and Zayd.
"What's going on?" She whispered to Fiolas as some scientists she didn't recognize came in and took their seats.
"Last night after our talk, I discovered a problem. A big problem Keish." He looked furtively around the room, "I don't know why the captain has called these specific people here, but I do think..." He was cut off as the captain called the people to order. They sat up straight in their chairs and Fiolas rubbed the bridge of his nose. He tried to sit up straighter to match everyone else but couldn't manage it and settled for leaning on the arm of his wheelchair and propping his head up.
"Thank you all for coming," The captain of course looked as though she wasn't stressed or tired at all.
"It has come to my attention that our mission to retrieve and inspect current scientific experiments in Dark Space has gone off course and cannot be recorrected." She let the realization sink in.
"That's not what any of my projections say." A scientist with blue accents said a little too loudly toward Fiolas. "We are poised to meet with the next group on our list right on schedule." Fiolas simply started shaking his head and Keisha could see the man getting more upset. He pointed at Fiolas, "You just got here, what do you know?" The man was standing now and yelling at Fiolas. On instinct Keisha found herself standing and leaning in a way as to shield Fiolas, Zayd was halfway out of his chair as if to stop her.
Before she could retaliate and protect him, Fiolas gently touched her arm, "It's ok Keish." he whispered to her and she slowly sat back down. "Doctor Sturletto, I am not doubting your calculations or projections. The integrity of your work out here in Dark Space has been exceptional. Please sit and listen to the captain." He waved his hand towards the captain who simply nodded and resumed as though nothing had happened.
She continued, "As you are all aware, Dark Space is named so due to the once brightest star in the sector going supernova and forming a black hole at the center. The very first of the scientific experiments sent here was the Icarus and it was sent to observe the phenomena and gather data. It was, at the time, the largest most concerted space effort of our home planet Earth. We lost communication with them right before the star went supernova. Since then Earth, Chronos, and Klokos have all sent expeditions here. The ones going deeper into Dark Space are never heard of again. Our main objective out here is to discover why and to see what we could salvage from those missions. Navigator James Fiolas has now discovered why and I will let him explain it to you."
With that, every eye turned to Fiolas who by now was having difficulty staying upright. Keisha looked at him slightly hurt, Why didn't he tell me first?
"Thank you, Captain," Fiolas pushed a button that brought up a large screen behind him showing the current trajectory and time stamps for the ship. "As some of you may know, I've been working on a navigation program as a backup plan should the Artificial Intelligence of the ship ever stop working. Let's call it a Plan B, and at first, I thought it would be a simple thing, you chart the stars and you use known coordinates to triangulate your position. Earth once had a lot of data on this sector, but it was lost in the great purge shortly after Chronos was founded. The small amount of data we do have is old, but should still be relatively reliable.
"The problem is of course Rigel's collapse. The star went supernova and changed the entire sector. When it went out, Earth was able to see it go, but the flash hid everything around it for a long time. We didn't find out that it had taken out multiple planets and changed the trajectories of other systems for a number of years later."
"We all know this." Dr. Sturletto called out, "This is all the basics of Dark Space. I'm sorry Captain, but I don't have time to listen to a first-year navigator explain the most basic concept of this sector to me." He got up and started gathering his things while his colleagues debated on following him.
"Sit down now." Captain Katopodis beat him to it. "That is a direct order, and if you interrupt this first-year navigator, who caught something you should have, I will have you court-martialed for the entirety of this trip. Is that clear?" Her sharp eyes chilled everyone in the room. Doctor Sturletto nodded and sat back down. She waited for everyone to turn their attention back on Fiolas. "Please continue."
"Right. I'll skip ahead a bit. My formulations for creating a Plan B were never working out and I kept going back to where the black hole should be. That's when I noticed the slight shifting of stars." he looked directly at Keisha and she thought she noticed the slightest shake of his head. Andromeda noticed the shift, not him. Typically Fiolas was a humble guy, never trying to take credit for others' work. "What could account for this shift and why did my calculations make more sense if Rigel was actually in a different location?" He looked around the room, Keisha had no idea but some of the other scientists seemed to get very nervous around the room. She looked at Zayd who looked just as confused as she was.
"You see, we're not off course in space, Doctor Sturletto, we're off course in time."