Back to the Bubble - Chapter 1 - Enter the Core
15 Nov 2019Smertkopf
It took the ship's computer about ten seconds to plot a route from Colonia to Sagittarius A, the supermassive black hole that lies at the center of our Galaxy and the object around which all of us revolve in a cycle spanning millions of years. When the calculations were complete, I saw that it would take the ship 301 jumps to reach the Great Annihilator, which is only about a third of the total jumps comprising my roundabout journey back home to the Bubble. It wouldn't be so bad, I reasoned, assuming that I didn't get myself killed along the way.I plunged into a region of the Galaxy that is rather ominously dubbed Odin's Hold, the starfield around me a mass of densely-clustered blues stretching out in every direction with the galactic disk dominating all of the sky ahead of me and then beginning to stretch around behind me as I entered its vast embrace. I know this will sound crazy, but it was as though I could feel the great singularity observing my approach from afar, and I was struck by my incredible presumption in wishing to bask in its entropic presence, it being an all-consuming monster older than eons and I being but a brief speck of motive matter given the tiniest instant of life in which to witness the awful majesty of the primeval devourer. With each jump into the engulfing light of the Core, I seemed to hear a voice growing in the back of my mind, a voice heavy with time and whose very nature was endless and eternal hunger. Stronger and stronger it grew, until at jump ninety-nine I arrived at a painfully bright blue-white star, and there the ancient and doom-laden voice spoke loudly enough to be heard clearly at last, speaking only a single word.
"Come," it whispered, and its intonation was like the blackness between the stars given voice, unfolding slowly and ponderously as if over an eternity, sending me into a fugue state in which I lingered for an uncertain period of time. When I finally woke, I was surrounded by the chaotic sounds of alarms blaring and Midnight's frantic calls to rouse me.
"Temperature critical," chimed Celeste with the infuriating trademark calm of all COVAS units, "taking heat damage."
I glanced dazedly at the gauge to see that we were indeed taking heat damage. Apparently, I had leaned a bit on the throttle during my hiatus from consciousness and we had drifted dangerously close to the blue star's exclusion zone, and now the ship's temperature gauge stood at 112%. Smoke was beginning to drift out of a number of the cockpit air vents, and various modules were beginning to send damage warnings. I pulled back hard on the stick and got plenty of open space in front of us before jamming the throttle forward and getting us clear of the star, all the while with the alarms blaring and sparks flying from various data panels. I was sweating profusely from the temperature inside the cockpit, and the blast of cool air that struck me when we escaped the star and the temperature controls kicked back in was among the most delightful experiences of my life.
"Midnight," I said, clearly hearing the jangling of nerves in my own voice, "give me a damage report."
There was a brief pause, and then in a businesslike fashion that nonetheless carried an edge of concern, Midnight replied, "Nothing major, sir, thankfully. Thrusters are at 90%, but that is well within acceptable limits at this stage of the journey. All other modules are at plus 90%...are you alright, Commander? You became unresponsive for ten seconds preceding the...emergency."
"Did you hear anything strange," I said reluctantly, "just before I...became unresponsive?"
Another brief pause. "No, sir," Midnight responded at last. "Nothing out of the ordinary. Did you hear something?"
"I did," I admitted. "Or at least I think I did. It was a voice. A bad voice."
"Bad in what way, sir?" Did I detect a patronizing tone in his question, or was I only imagining things, my paranoia a prelude to the onset of space-sickness?
"In every way," I replied. "But if you didn't hear it, then I'm not sure that there was anything to hear at all, and that probably means that I'm losing my mind."
There was another pause of a few seconds before Midnight said, "I don't believe that you are going mad, Commander."
"I appreciate the vote of confidence, my friend, truly. However, it is generally accepted that those who hear voices that no one else can hear and who suffer micro-periods of catatonia are not to be considered mentally fit to pilot starships. In fact, if I am not mistaken, those are some of the symptoms of space-sickness, are they not?"
"They are indeed, sir," the old man agreed, "but you have not spent nearly enough time yet in space and separated from human contact to be suffering from Astra Dementia, I assure you. Beyond that fact, there is also another variable of which you are unaware."
"Any good news would be welcome," I said warily.
"I couldn't say as yet whether or not it is good," Midnight replied, his tone as guarded and cautious as my own, "but it is most certainly news."
"Tell me," I sighed.
"At the moment you claim to have heard the voice," he said, his own voice taking on the pedantic cadence of the career academic, "there was an anomalous gravitonic disturbance detected emanating from the galactic core. I checked the graviton transmission levels against all previous known measurements in the Galnet databanks, and the results are quite simply...astounding."
"I flunked astrophysics, Professor," I said, doing little to conceal my annoyance, "so do tell me what the hell graviton transmission levels have to do with me hearing voices, passing out at the helm of my ship, and almost flying us into a star?"
"I've honestly no idea, Commander," Midnight said apologetically. "I only surmise that the two events might be connected, and thus that you might not simply be going mad."
"You'll forgive me if I don't take a great deal of comfort from that."
"I would forgive you more than that, my friend," he said kindly. I'll always appreciate that.
I decided I had no choice but to shake off the unsettling occurrence and get back to scanning. We'd hit a rich run of virgin systems by that point, and over the course of a total of 140 jumps leading up to the writing of this entry, I have logged not only three undiscovered Water Worlds, but my very first Earthlike as well. It's not the first one I've ever seen, but it's the first one I've ever discovered all on my own. If I can make it back to the Bubble and sell the data, I will have officially revealed another of these most rare and precious cartographic gems in the galactic tapestry:
Floating above an ice cap of an as-yet unknown Earthlike world about 6000ly from the Galactic Core...
We also discovered a neutron star, which we cautiously admired from a safe distance:
Beautiful and Deadly
As the day closed and I retired to my quarters for lights-out, the almost forgotten voice that had nearly caused me to kill myself back at jump ninety-nine gurgled up again from the bubbling tar-pit depths of my dreaming mind, promising me true immortality if I would only cross the event horizon and give my mortal flesh to the eater of stars.
"It will not hurt very much," the terrible dream-voice lied, "or even for very long. And when your pain is at an end, you will be down here, trapped deep within the gravity well, forever and Ever And EVER AND-"
I shot awake in a paroxysm of terror and with three hours still left in my sleep period. After such a harrowing dream I dared not attempt slumber again, instead losing myself in heavy exercise and historical holo-documentaries for a couple of hours before taking a shower hot enough to defoliate my top two layers of skin (or so it felt) and returning to the bridge to resume my journey to the galactic center.
"Good morning, Commander," said Midnight in his most professional tone. "Midnight, standing by."
"Good morning, Midnight," I replied with a good cheer I did not truly feel. "Maximum impulse, then lock in next system and engage hyperspace jump on my mark."
"Very good, sir."
As Celeste counted down to zero and we prepared for our next jump, a touch of cold terror pierced my heart as amidst the thrumming of the charging frame shift drive and the rumble of our entry into witchspace there came once more the voice from my dream, the voice of an ancient god of destruction that has awakened and gazes upon all the Galaxy with a ravenous and unfathomable hunger. I know the danger I am in, and yet I cannot help but move forward inexorably towards the call of infinity which pulls me, enthralled, into the maw of an ancient monster.
"Come..."
I cannot turn back...I must see the owner of the voice, or I must die.
And if this is madness, then perhaps I have always been mad...
o7
CMDR Smertkopf