“The Gods hate me.” Yohance muttered darkly as he walked down the seemingly endless passageway at Tannhauser Gate to the Academy Commandant’s Office. That morning during flight training a thruster had misfired, brushing his ship up against that of Judge Dragonmark while they were in a tight turn.
“Wasn’t like we actually touched or anything.” He further fumed “The shields brushed….brushed!!”
Then that afternoon during gunnery drill, his starboard batteries were misaligned almost a full degree off true. At 700 meters in what would have been a text book Immelmann loop he found that out when he fired at the target, missing completely and hitting square against Judge Wolf’s shields. Judge Wolf then asked very dryly if he was capable of hitting his own backside with a bat and someone shining a torch on it. It had been a very bad, bad day.
Now Yohance finally reached the door he was seeking at the end of this bad, bad day to face the one man he really did not want to see. He entered and the Yeoman at the desk looked up asking, “Yes cadet?”
Yohance snapped to attention “Cadet Yohance reporting to the Academy Commandant as ordered.”
The Yeoman touched a toggle at the desk and said “Cadet Yohance to see you sir.”
Yohance listened for the reply but could not quite catch it. A moment later the Yeoman said “You may go in cadet.” while motioning with his head towards the door of the inner office.
Yohance nodded and opened the office door, stepping smartly to the desk and snapped to attention, “Cadet Yohance reporting as ordered sir.”
The man behind the desk was reading a folder filled with papers. He wore the jet black high collar uniform of the Judges. Pinned to that collar on either side was a small golden wreath intersected by a sword and a quill, the insignia of the Judges. The collar top was also trimmed in gold edging, a Senior Judge.
The man continued to read from the folder as Yohance stood rigidly before him. Finally he put it down and looked up at him. Yohance had only seen the Commandant once before at the indoctrination briefing at the start of the Cadet year. He had been on the stage then and was scary to see. Up front and one on one made that much worse.
“Cadet Yohance” the man said “I am Senior Judge Logan. Please take a seat.”
Yohance immediately sat in one of the chairs facing the desk but maintained his rigid posture. He was convinced that life as he had know it was about to change. He was right.
Logan glanced at the folder and then up at Yohance, and then smiled, “A bad day cadet wasn’t it?”
“Yes sir.”
“I read the maintenance and ordinance reports on your ship. It seems a thruster tune up had been skipped and the armory had not done the primary weapons alignment checks after installation. The technicians responsible have been coached appropriately.”
Yohance took what he felt was the first breath since he had entered the room. Could it be a black hole was not going to swallow him? Why would the Commandant send for him just to tell him that? He quietly waited.
“I have been going over the academic transcripts of your achievements since you entered the Academy. It has been a, hmm…colorful time you have had. However, you seem to have survived a number of misadventures that would have done in other cadets.
Logan got up and started walking around the room, “So after a review of the file, it seemed to me that you were the perfect candidate for a mission tomorrow morning. At 0700 you and the rest of your year group will embark to space station Naha in the Sigma-13 system. There you will meet a fuel convoy and escort it back here to Tannhauser Gate. You Mr. Yohance will be in command of the flight. You will receive your official orders and flight plan immediately following evening meal. Have you any questions?”
Yohance blinked as his brain tried to register the words he had just heard. This was just too good to be true and even as he was trying to stop it he heard his mouth ask “Sir, I do not understand why you chose me?”
Logan smiled as he resumed his seat “Any cadet that can successfully sneak into the female barracks no less than eight times successfully without old man Quiggly finding out about it, is a very resourceful cadet indeed. It implies skill, determination, and the ability to think on your feet. These skill sets are going to be needed for the convoy run.”
Yohance cringed at the mention of the Master at Arms who was in charge of the cadet barracks. There had been a few close calls, one requiring him to spend the night in an air conditioning duct. Eight times! How did Logan even know about it let alone each time? He thought it best to be neutral.
“Yes sir.”
“Dismissed Mr. Yohance.”
As Yohance saluted and left. Logan smiled a moment remembering back to his cadet days and old man Quiggly, and a certain young lady he had visited a time or two after hours. Their romance was short but sweet and helped them both through the emotional stress the Academy created. He blinked a moment realizing that Quiggly then was the same age he was today. Now how had that happened?
Yohance quickly went back to the cadet common room to find some of his classmates by the door.
“So Yo” asked Cadet Sol, “The old man throwing you out or what?”
“Nope” Yohance replied, “You are never gonna to believe it.”
“What” said an older cadet reading a magazine at the common room table “You got invested as a Judge?”
The other chuckled as Yohance replied “You wish Slenth. You’ve wanted my room since we got here. But, it’s almost as good.”
In the expectant silence that followed Yohance said “We are going on a convoy escort mission tomorrow to Sig-13 and the Commandant put me in command of the flight.”
“Get out of here” said an incredulous Vidius.
“No really. We get the orders right after dinner, speaking of which.”
The group hurriedly left the Commons chattering about the upcoming mission and Yohance’s incredible luck while the Dinner gong sounded over the PA system. Tomorrow was going to be an interesting day.
“Exactly what do you mean by “Lost” Senior Judge Logan?”
Logan stood in front of a not at all happy Supreme Judge Dallas “They left Altona on schedule and on course. They never arrived at Alster shipyard. When they were one hour overdue and no signal received, I sent a squadron to find them. They found ship debris at the Hamburg/Frankfurt jump hole, and two Unioner Hawks asking for a parlay. From the Unioners, we received three glass jars with the heads of Unioners who were part of an attack earlier in the day on eight cadet ships. The Unioners further provided full data and ships logs, which agreed with the data found on the destroyed ships at the jump hole.”
“Unioners” Dallas breathed it out like a curse word.
Logan could see where this was going so spoke up again. “The Bannerman of the Unioners said the attack was a mistake done by a renegade officer. Six Unioner Hawks were destroyed in the action by the cadets. The three survivors were the ones with their heads in glass jars. He then said that the cadet ships formed while under fire from ranged weapons and made the jump to Frankfurt.
“So they all jumped?” Dallas asked sharply.
“Yes sir. No mistake. The ship recorders were clear. A clean jump with no casualties.”
Dallas then leaned forward on his desk and with his face inches from Logan’s and asked quietly “Then tell me Senior Judge Logan, where are they?”
Yohance felt something sharp gouging into his left hand and moved slightly to remove the pressure. A moment later it occurred to him to find out what it was and he slowly opened one eye. Seeing nothing but dark all around him he concluded he was still in bed and shut the eye. As he drifted off his mind sort of wondered at the quiet. Always, there was the muted sound of blowers and here there was nothing. It was odd. Slowly his subconscious registered the lack of sound it had always heard and then suddenly remembered that “odd” meant “dangerous.” It fired off the panic wakeup alert to the conscious figuring that it would take care of it.
Yohance’s eyes snapped open. He was still in his ship but could barely see the interior by the light of the emergency chemical glow strips in the overhead. All panels and screens were dark. All power accumulators were dead. The fusion bottle was stone cold. Only the emergency batteries had anything in them and they were less than 5% charged. He clicked a few switches and got a complete lack of response from anything. Having no idea if 5% was enough to restart the fusion sequence, he toggled it to auto start and sat back to see what would happen. Some relays clicked and clacked behind him, and after a few minutes some panels flickered to life as the magnetic bottle squeezed hydrogen to fuse and the engines restarted. One after another systems came online, and then he heard the blowers start up moving fresh air through the flight deck.
Remembering his training, he kept his hands to himself and let the ship take care of its self. After several minutes engine power was at 30% providing not propulsion, but restoring power to the energy accumulators and charging the battery back up. In a few minutes everything was fully functional and the ships sensors located the rest of the flight around him. Yohance read the other ships as still dead on power, and told the computer to use power transfer beams and take master control of them to get them restarted.
After a good half hour Yohance had the computer send the panel alarms to the other ships. Minutes went by, until finally the rest of the flight checked in.
“What is that noise?”
“Will someone shut that thing off?”
“What happened?”
“Where are we?”
“Geeze I could use a drink.”
After listening and hearing all the voices, he figured that would do for a check in at the moment. “Guys, this is Yohance. I powered up your ships. I got no idea where we are, how we got here, or what’s going on. I do know we’re not in Frankfurt. So, all ships get into right echelon. Flintlock, figure out what happened. Vidius, figure out where we are. Sol, get a complete damage assessment for all ships. Slenth, full close scan. Venom, full deep scan. Vehmic and Swift, see if you can pick up a Dirac signal from somewhere. Sweep the side bands as well as the primary. Let’s make it happen gents.”
A series of confirmations came in while Yohance set his own scanners into direct computer feed. The others had a degree of confidence in their confirmations. It’s always a comfort when things look bad to have someone else giving the orders. Unfortunately that comfort did not extend to the one giving the orders and Yohance was not a happy camper.
“Yohance, Sol, No damage to any cadet ship. Power levels are overall at 15% and rising.
“Yohance, Vidius, The computers can make match no known star configurations yet. They are working on it, but there are a lot of stars in the sky. Will advise.”
“Yohance, Slenth, close scan shows us at the edge of a debris field. The debris is very small, on the order of 3 cm or less. Debris is in a thin plane we are about 50 m above. No close threats to the flight.”
“Swift here, Vehmic and I are getting faint Dirac signals on a sub-band. It might be a House beacon signal. Lots of interference though. Trying to clean it up.”
On and on as reports went back and forth. Finally, Venom spoke up “Guys, the deep scan…you’re not gonna believe this.”
Slenth’s slow drawl came next “Well maybe not sunshine, but don’t hold us in suspense.”
“Well, according to deep scan readouts, we are in a tight orbit at the edge of an accretion disk around a Class 3 black hole.”
Yohance blinked and just listened.
“Orbital period is about sixty minutes and orbit diameter looks to me around 80 million kilometers, give or take a few. At this velocity it’s hard to get a good reading.”
Dead silence followed this as someone softly said over the speakers “There are no black holes in the Sirius cluster, or even near it.”
Vemic’s voice then came over the speakers, “Guys, I managed to do a dead reckoning on the Dirac signal. It’s the New Berlin beacon and from its period and signal strength, and what Venom just said, we are in orbit around BH-2361, about 3,500 parsecs from home.”
Yohance blinked again at this information. Over ten thousand light years, and no jump hole or gate in sight. They could not make the light year eating jumps their ships could do without them and to try to get home with conventional engines would take about 50,000 years. They had food and air for thirty days.
“Well” he began slowly, “Flintlock, any idea how this could have happened?”
While Slenth was the old man of the group, Flintlock was the brain. He had a degree in Jump Physics from Cambridge before joining the Cadet Corps.
“Near as I can tell” he began “We must have fallen into the Stradavinski paradox.”
“Well that’s sure clear” Venom chimed in “I do feel better already.”
“Explain please?” Yohance asked in a very flat voice.
“Well, Doctor Stradavinski was the guy who invented Jump Gates. He found that in Jump space, time stops. However, we all see the Einstein-Rosen Bridge when we make a jump. We should not perceive anything since there is no time. That’s the paradox, the perception of time and motion, when neither exists.”
“Keep going professor.”
After a pause Flintlock went on “Stradavinski said that jump holes operate at fixed quantum energy levels. However, it only jumps to an echo hole in the exact same quantum state. Since micro black holes create jump holes, they are usually over the eons are drawn into the orbit of a gravity well, like a star. He went on to then theorize, that we perceive the Einstein-Rosen Bridge during a jump, even when we cannot, because only in the bridge is time truly non-existent. Outside the bridge in open jump space, he thought there must be some time movement allowed. Since our brains do not work at fixed quantum levels, they can dimly perceive the Bridge as a tunnel of light. Therefore an “outside” of the Bridge in Jump space must exist.”
The dead silence after this one told Flintlock that no one was any closer to understanding than before. He went on. “When we jumped the Hamburg hole, just as we jumped a torpedo went off right behind us at the edge of the hole. Our jump engines for a split second, allowed the energy of the explosion into the hole with us and it combined with our de Broglie wave front. That hole was at a fixed energy state. Call it level A. With the explosion we had an energy state A plus a little. In quantum physics that is impossible, so the Bridge collapsed and our wave front was thrown into open Jump space. We sailed on until a gravity well of sufficient size pulled us out. The transition out would have been energy intensive, which is why our ships, and us for that matter were drained as our wave front collapsed into a matter state again when we re-entered normal space.”
“So we just zipped through this weird Jump space until a handy black hole happened to intersect our path?” Yohance asked.
“Well, in a nutshell..yes. We are lucky to still be in the same galaxy we started in.”
“Yohance, Flintlock here. The computer sees no solution. This monster is too big and any attempt to jump it would see us dead from tidal fracture long before we even get close to the event horizon. That is what created this dust field we are flying over now. Tidal forces smashed asteroids to dust over the eons.”
“Fine” Yohance said, “All cadets slave controls to my ship.”
“What are you doin?” came a puzzled Slenth voice over the speakers.
Yohance checked the vectors and had all ships extend scan to maximum range “Remember Douglas’ class in complex problem solving? If a problem has no solution, change the one of the variables and then re-examine the problem. I am increasing our orbital speed to shift us to a higher orbit. We will scan as we go, and see if we can find anything to help us out of here.”
“Are you nuts?” came Vehmic’s voice, “The odds of finding anything must be ten billion to one against.”
“What were the odds of us winding up here in the first place?” Yohance reasonably asked.
Dead silence replied to that one. Slowly the cadet flight enlarged their orbit and got further away from the immediate death of the black hole or the lingering death of low orbit around it.
“Got something.”
“Report Vidius.” Yohance snapped as he tried to move his own scanners to the sector Vidius was assigned to scan.
“Extreme range and in higher orbit. Lots of metal. That was it before I lost it. Could be an asteroid with a high nickel/iron content.
“Roger. Set up scanning parameters with Sol and Venom for a full spectral series on the next pass. I also want orbital parameters.”
“Roger”
As the time went by, the ships once more came into range of the body and multiple scanners painted it wresting every possible detail they could before their insane orbital speed whisked them past. The computers churned the data and cross correlated the various senor readings. After a few moments the results showed on all their screens.
“Well, look at that.” Yohance breathed as he read the data. It was a body some twenty kilometers across and it was made of metal. Further, its mass was way to low for a metal body that size. That meant, it had to be hollow.
While they shared this back and forth with mounting enthusiasm Flintlock who had been very quiet suddenly chimed in “Guys, we need to be real careful here.”
Yohance replied “You see a problem Flintlock?”
“Yeah” came the response “The mass and orbital speed is impossible for that body. The black hole would have pulled it into closer orbit eons ago. Whatever it is, it is under power.”
“That’s impossible” Swift snapped back “Thermal emissions are zero. Radiation is zero. There is no power emission anywhere across the spectrum.”
Yohance read the data and punched in their ships course and speed. In a few moments a result came up “Okay guys, we can match with it in five more orbits. Whatever it is, it has got to be better than what we have now. We will scan on each pass, and on pass five we will be in visual range and match orbits. After that, we can decide what to do.”
Coming up on their final pass, the cadet ships fired their maneuvering thrusters to match orbital velocities with the, whatever it was. Closer examination showed large amounts of metal, but also a fair amount of rock. Visual scans showed an asteroid body, but it had some very shiny parts here and there that looked artificial. The weird speed meant they had to slow down, but as soon as they did the black hole skewed their orbit. The only way to get to it was to come in hot and break hard at the last possible second to match velocities and land on it.
“Yohance to flight, this will be a hard landing and I am setting the computer to do it for us. Lock visors down and shift to internal life support.”
The had put on their spacesuits an hour earlier and now each slide the helmet visors down. When a hard landing was coming, procedure required each ship occupant be suited for it, in case the landing was harder than expected. Yohance slid his own visor down just as a bright light filled the flight deck. It was the last thing he saw.
“What do you think you were doing flitting about jump space without a containment or guide beacon? Have you any idea how much your wave front had already degraded before I pulled you back to normal space?”
Yohance clearly heard these words in his mind, but somehow not in his ear. His eyes were closed and he felt strangely good. Days in a flight couch tended to cramp muscles, but his body felt wonderful. In fact, he felt better than he remembered feeling in some time. He decided that perhaps it was time he opened his eyes.
Opening them, he saw he was in a large room floating about a foot above a silver grey deck of some sort. The room had various control panels on the walls with strange looking screens in them and various lights here and there. He was in his standard flight suit and saw the rest of the flight near him and various sets of eyes opening.
“All awake now?” the voice said in his head again. “Good. Now I will start the gravity so be ready for it.”
A few moments later Yohance felt weight and he slowly descended to the deck below him. As his feet made contact the weight increased until after a few moments he felt what sure seemed like standard gravity. He glanced at his watch and then glanced again. It was twelve hours since they had started their landing pass.
While they were all looking at each other and the curious room, a glow appeared on the floor in front of them. It grew and dimmed, until before them stood what appeared to be a very old man with a gray beard and dressed in a light blue jumpsuit. The figure frowned slightly “My research tells me your species needs a visual reference for proper communications. So, I made one. Here I am. Now then, what were you doing in jump space with no containment or guide?”
In the dead silence that followed Flintlock spoke up “It was an accident sir. We were jumping an Einstein-Rosen Bridge between two stars in the Sirius cluster when an energy surge on the jump kicked us into open jump space. The next thing we knew, we were in a tight orbit around a black hole.”
“And a good thing for it to” the figure querulously said. “Your energy state had leaked over to five separate quantum levels. Five! I had to use the black hole’s gravity well to knit your wave back together. That put you close to it, but not to close. These ships you are flying are not suitable for jump space.”
“You pulled us out of jump space?” Yohance asked.
“Well of course I did.” the old man replied “I already said that. You will need to listen better then that boy if you expect to become a Judge.”
That small item caused several heads to snap to him which had been examining the room. How could he possibly know that? For that matter who was he?
It was Slenth who figured it out first “You read our thoughts or are reading our thoughts.”
The ancient figure blinked “And damned difficult it was. I also read your computer memories. It took several hours to integrate the information and while I was doing that I put you all into stasis healers. I only brought you out a few moments ago. You each should be feeling very good.”
Yohance nodded, the twelve missing hours now explained. Now for the big one “Who are you sir?”
The figure faced Yohance and answered “I am Imperial Transmat Station Number 5.”
“You are a computer?” Vidius asked.
The figure blinked. “I am an Imperial Transmat Station. Calling me a computer is like calling you a carbon chain.”
“Sorry sir” Vidius replied “It’s just that we don’t know what an Imperial Transmat Station is.”
The figure paused and looked reflective a moment before saying “Fair enough, you don’t. I was the fifth Transmat Station built by the Empire. Their galaxy is in your nomenclature called NGC-2631 and was undergoing a collision with another galaxy. The Empire needed a new home. I Matted a research outpost to here. We found a fine star system and started to set up for colonization. Then they got a recall order to return to home world. I was left to protect the system until their return.”
This caused many puzzled looks among the cadets. Then Flintlock asked “When was this sir?”
The figure glanced at him “By your reckoning, just over nine billion years ago. About eight billion years back, the star exploded destroying the system. That black hole you were around was its core. A shame, it was a very nice solar system.”
“You mean you have been sitting here for nine billion years?”
“Hardly sitting.” the old man replied “I left the sensors on auto and went to sleep for most of it. Oh, I got woke up for the odd happening here and there, like the star exploding, or your own entering into my sensor net in jump space.”
“And they never returned or at least signaled?” Venom asked.
“Well not yet.” he replied.
“Nine billion years is a long time. What happened to them?”
The old man was silent a moment staring off into space, then he replied very slowly in a measured way “NGC-2631 was ripped apart by tidal forces in the collision. Millions of stars exploded and it became for a time what you call a quasar. I have not heard from or seen evidence of my makers since the day they left.”
“Why do you remain here then?” Vehmic asked.
The old man looked shocked a moment before saying “My final orders were to protect the system. You present no threat, hence you are here. A billion or so years back there was a race called the Dom’Kavash which became something of a nuisance and I had to deal with them. Rude and arrogant fools. The universe is better off without them.”
The stories of the first Nomad war, and a Dom’Kovash artifact leading to its end were of course very well known to the cadets. That mysterious race had built the Nomads, and later vanished without a trace. Several heads nodded slightly as pieces clicked into place.
“Sir.” Yohance slowly started, “There is no Empire left. If there were, your creators would have returned billions of years ago to complete their plan. At a minimum, they would never have left such a valuable device such as yourself when you would have been needed to help move their race.”
The old man positively huffed as he replied, “Do you think young man that none of this has crossed my mind? What is your point?”
“Well” Yohance went on still slowly as if he were feeling out each word as he spoke, “You are alone, truly alone with no past and no future, guarding the remains of a dead solar system as the eons tick by. It seems a terrible waste sir and a lonely end to come.”
“And what do you suggest?”
Yohance smiled slightly “Come back home with us sir. If you have read our minds as you stated you know we are not malicious people. You would have any number of people to talk to and opportunities to learn things you cannot get here.”
The old man just looked at Yohance and the others, and then very slowly a slight smile showed on his face. “I do believe your offer is sincere young man and for that I thank you. However, there is no decision to be made. I wait as ordered the return of my makers. I may not change this. Call it my “destiny” if you wish. However…..”
He smiled wider and then gently folded into a glowing sphere pulsating in soft colors. A split second later the room around Yohance vanished in a soft radiance. After a short time near as he could tell, form appeared in the radiance that took shape. The space looked suspiciously like the Commandants office and the form was one of shocked surprise on the face of Senior Judge Logan.
“Where have you been and how in blazes did you get back here like that?” he began as he got out of his chair and went around the desk to the eight cadets. Long habit had them all snap to attention. Next to them, Logan caught sight of the image of an old man.
“I believe Senior Judge Logan that these young men belong to you. They are returned to you now. Do be more careful in the future please. It’s an awfully big universe.”
Logan just stared as the old man turned to the stiff backed cadets “Good luck gentlemen. Thank you for the visit.”
With that the old man faded slowly away until not a hint that he was ever there existed. Logan turned to the cadets and looked at Yohance in straight in the eye, “Mr. Yohance” he softly said “You were in charge. Explain!”
Yohance suddenly smiled. He could not help himself as he replied “Sir…The Gods love me.”