Ghost
Chapter 1
Spoiler
Maria touched the wall. It had to be here somewhere. She splayed out her fingers and went on, sliding her hand across the solid metal, feeling the fine, grainy structure. She was glad that she could still feel it, it was hers. Most of the ship was hers, not everyone had been so lucky. Some had drifted off too far, drifted through the bulkheads and frames, screaming without making a sound. Others went without fear, suffocating in their sleep.
Taking her left hand to her waist-belt, Maria gently stroked the adjustment panel of her coil. The device weighted heavy on her back, but after all these years she hardly noticed it, it had become part of her body. All these years it had kept her safe.
She stopped when she heard footsteps coming down the corridor ahead of her. They were weird noises, a faint slurping, a muffled splashing. Maria was used to them. She gently stroked Cidro’s hair. “Don’t be afraid, that is just the old Garkey. He won’t harm you, he can’t harm you.” Cidro just looked at her, blinking his wide blue eyes. A man came around the corner, his head lowered, his back bowed deep. His boots were stumbling across the floor, sinking through it, sometimes up to his ankles. He did not seem to care; he sluggishly pulled them out again as if he was walking through mud, not hardened steel. As he approached a wide grin appeared on Maria's face. She always had to grin at people now, she could not help it, she stopped fighting it a long time ago. He passed Maria without taking any notice.
Sometimes Maria wondered if it was just their minds that were disturbed, or if they could really not see her. Maybe it was one way for some, the other way for the rest. They had been a crew of fifteen, brave man and woman, eager to do their duty for the Domain. Now there was nobody left to her, nobody but Cidro. She looked at the boy; his thick black hair shadowed the lines and marks of exhaustion on his face. They were long past anything duty could ever demand.
Maria continued to walk and re-assumed her probing of the wall. She knew it had to be here. If she could not find the hole in time, it would cost her another part of her ever shrinking ship. Already her air was leaking out, ever so slowly, passing through patches of metal and fabric that did not mean a hindrance to it anymore. It was her air, like it was her protein paste coming out of her dispenser, her water in her purifier cycle. She took great care to not let hers go away from her, to let it not become a sacrifice for it, there was already enough of that. So she had to find the hole.
When they first realized their situation, everybody was very professional. Captain Mendez ordered the construction of a great transmitter, sending a distress signal light-years wide through p-space, or whatever the equivalent of light-years was here. Nicholson could have told her, but Nicholson had not been hers for a very long time. Then they turned for the approximate direction of the next civilized system, Exar. Unable to go to Hyperspace, they burned up most of the fuel to accelerate to near light-speed. The hope was that another phase ship would pick up their signal along the road. It was already slim back then, but at least there was still hope.
One year later, the captain was found banging his head against an airlock, again and again, splashing blood across the room. Nobody could stop him, because nobody could touch him. He was the first to die, the first toll.
Chapter 2
Spoiler
Without warning, her fingertips slipped through. Here it was! Maria pulled her fingers out of the wall, they were tingling. In this fresh cavities there were always some molecules swinging around in her personal layer of p-space, causing unpleasant sensations. At least that made them easier to find. Now she took a rusty bolt, her bolt, and scratched wide circles around the gape, searching for its edges. Then she spread a thin layer of metallic foil across the region and started melting it into the wall, like she had done a thousand times before. “Did I get everything?” she asked Cidro. The boy nodded solemnly. She didn't know what she’d do without him, where she would be now. She could never lose him, never. After giving the patch a last smack Maria turned back to make her way to the camp. It was time to feed Pavlov.
They had made their camp besides the starboard phase coil. It was barely operational, but it was all that kept the ship from disintegrating into a cloud of molecules. Maria looked at the wide cracks and fissures that covered the huge, tubular machine before her and gulped. “You mustn't blame yourself” said Cidro softly “it could have happened to anyone. “But I do”, thought Maria, “but it happened to me”.
She had missed her shot. Maria had once been the weapons officer on board, specialized on the delicate handling of the two huge antimatter blasters that made up the main weaponry of the Eurydice. Their mission was to follow hints about illegal weapon deals. A local branch manager of one of the major corporations, Tri-Tachyon, was rumored to make business with some separatist faction.
Everything went well at the beginning. They had tailed the convoy across two systems. Their frigate was no worthy opponent for the Apogee-class cruiser that protected the two Buffalo-class freighters, but their mission was only to observe, to find proof for the black market trading that was supposedly going on. Their phase system and the superior navigation skills of the crew allowed them to follow unnoticed, watching from afar. They were hidden in a nebula, laying still as the convoy finally came to a hold, seemingly waiting for something. The bridge crew was silently celebrating their success after a small fleet of rugged frigates and freighters jumped into the system.
The first ion blast that splattered through the hull was a real surprise.
Chapter 3
Spoiler
“Open wide!” Maria demanded, guiding a spoon with protein mass in the old man’s mouth wile a grin was frozen in her face. Pavlov had been the second tribute to the p-space. They had have flux-fluctuations in the remaining phase coil for days and he was just beginning another maintenance check when the ground suddenly gave way. He had sunk trough the deck floor, screaming in pain, aghast at his sudden distress. Back then they had known no other option than to amputate. After he had lost his legs, it took not long before his mind was going, too.
Maybe it was his constant closeness to the phase coil where he laid down from that day on that prevented further shifting. More than slurping up the renewable foot rations and shitting them out again, filling up the bio-molecule storage, was beyond him now, though.
Later Nicholson, the ship’s p-space technician, came up with the portable phase coils that everybody carried around henceforth. Parts of the hull continued to slowly drift into other layers of p-space, but the portable coils were capable to match the exact frequency a hull part was swinging in and tie a person tightly to it. One could walk around the ship as if it were still whole and connected, as long as there was atmosphere and the coils had no malfunction. And malfunctions they had.
Finishing the meal Maria went to go to the captain’s quarters, one of the few places on the ship that had external windows. The p-space was dark, empty to the human eye except for a faint violet shimmer that seemed to come from nowhere particular. The ship’s doctor, Cayce, had claimed to see hazy beings floating in the outside darkness before he disappeared without a trace. While she could neither see nor really believe in them, the possibility that she was not as alone here gave her some consolidation. It was even worth it to put on a space suit, necessary as the captains quarters were not part of her ship anymore and held no air that her lungs could breathe. If they maybe had a sensor beacon that she could send out, phasing deeper into p-space than any human eye had ever seen, there might be answers to find. But someone of the crew, she had forgotten who, had destroyed all sensor beacons years ago in a fit of mad rage, making "those things" in general responsible for their demise. She could not even blame him, he had good reason to feel that way.
Chapter 4
Spoiler
It was a sensor drone the Tri-Tachyon cruiser had deployed, armed with an Ion Cannon, which spelled their doom. After they were discovered, the incoming ships of the convoy’s trade partners, some hypocritical anti-technological cult, closed in from all sides. Captain Mendez quickly formed a bold plan to stall the enemy and allow their escape. If they could just blind the Tri-Tachyon cruisers advanced sensors for a minute, they could feint an escape route, phase out and get out of range before their pursuers realized that they had changed course again. All depended on the one antimatter blast that had to hit the sensor bank. The Eurydice maneuvered around the cruiser and managed to approach it from the rear. After their target had slowly turned it shields towards its attacker, the captain ordered phasing. The ionized phase coils wailed, but the ship slipped through its opponent, swiftly turning to face it again when emerging. Maria aimed at the unprotected sensors and fired the blaster. But the ionization had made the controls sluggish; it wasn't until seconds later that the blasters finally gave away their deadly payload. By then the cruiser was out of range. Maria still screamed and pounded at her weapons console when a blazing plasma bolt smashed through the phase coil that was on the edge of shifting them to safety. Instead, it had trapped them in p-space for good.
When Maria got to the wall that sealed off her destination, she began turning the switches on her waist-belt. Over time, Maria had discovered another use for her heavy backpack. If she fine-tuned the coils just right, she could de-sync herself far enough to slip through some parts of the hull while not losing grip with the overall ship. She just had to find the frequency, the exact frequency. It was like finding the signal in one of those trendy retro-style analog radios. Except, now she was the signal, Maria was the program, sending herself trough solid matter. When she finished her adjustments, Cidro stretched his little arms out to her. She took him firmly by the hands and together they stepped through the wall.
They sat side by side on the metal bank that stood in front of the window. Watching it, the never changing emptiness, Maria, as she had done countless times before, contemplated her mistakes and the unlikely fate that had led her to this moment. “You know,” Cidro began, “this ship will still float through space long after we are dead. It will keep sliding on; there is nothing that could stop it. No stars or planets to catch it in their gravity wells, no asteroids it could collide with. It will go on and on towards the edge of space.” Maria watched his face, trying to decide if the thought was troubling him or giving him solace. “I know” she said finally, “there’s nothing out there, but at least we have each other in here, until the end”. Then a violent shudder ran through the hull. They had collided with something.
Hope you liked it
I have the next part outlined, but would like some feedback before writing. I haven't written anything fictional in years, and doing it in English made it really hard.
So, corrections of grammar, formulation, word choice and spelling are very welcome. Style and content comments even more.
