Specialist Ranger Vessel CTK Paver's Creek floated adrift in dire straights.
"Alright, that's another five minutes, everyone sound off!" Madame Ironclad's voice scratched over the comms. "Ironclad good!"
"Fiona." Fiona answered back. "I'm good." There was a strain and a smallness in her voice that they could all hear, and they could tell she was in pain.
"Yamazaki." Yamazaki called, in a voice just as strained. "Good."
"Sam. Good." He wasn't much better at hiding it.
"Djin. Good." They were all hurting.
"Lebanon. Good." None of them were good.
One by one the knights on the squad called out their names, all 12 of them. They were going by order of seniority, so Romanova was last. She checked her suit's oxygen, and gave the safety tether on her belt a tug to make sure it was still secure. "Romanova." It didn't sound much like her own voice. "Good." She lied.
That was everyone. They were all still conscious and accounted for. They got back to work.
This grand task of theirs was progressing much too slowly. Few of them had much experience in null-gravity work to begin with, they'd couldn't access any proper EVA equipment, the only things holding them to the hull were their Van der Waals grip cleats, and since their warsuits were built with an airtight seal around the head only, their human limbs were exposed to vacuum, and had grown swollen and stiff inside the armor, which, needless to say, hurt quite badly. And finally, as if to add insult to injury, they had to do it all in near perfect darkness; there shone neither sun nor stars in the 5-dimensional abyss of underspace, and since the Ferryman said there was some enemy out there hunting them, they dared risk only very small work lights.
Above them, around the ship, the enormous arched shadow of the underdrive ring stood faintly out against the background. The broken members of its abused trusswork buckled and curved all around it, twisted like ivy or vines, crooked like warzone rebar. The drive ring was designed to bear the ship's weight in directions the human mind cannot visualize, and the hard drop to underspace had very nearly torn it loose in those same directions. Some of the metal was twisted so far into 5-space that it was no longer even visible; to human eyes, these members appeared to taper off into indistinct points. The ring itself was sitting lopsided, at an angle of some 12 degrees, and its power supply conduits were crimped dangerously.
Even now it seemed liable to snap loose completely at any moment, and take their last and only hope of escape with them, so minute by minute and hour by hour they toiled on in steady desperation. Romanova and three other knights were cranking on comealongs, trying to bend the trusswork back straight, (or, failing at straightness, at least close enough to weld the severed ends). Meanwhile all the other knights were busy with the welders themselves, doing their very best, although their very best was rather lacking in finesse. This is going to be one ugly jury-rigged butt-nugget of a ship when we come hobbling back to the universe. She shook her head. One ugly butt-nugget.
"Hey Romanova!" Ironclad's voice drew her back to the moment. "You copy?"
"Huh?" She paused for a second to look up at the ring; the madame was perched way up there, with a welder in hand. "Uh- yes ma'am. I copy."
"I think that's as far as you can pull it from this angle." She pointed to Romanova's cable. "Loosen it up a touch, I'll hook you back up over to the left."
"Copy." She gratefully hit the release on the ratchet mechanism, and took a moment to rest her weary, swollen arms. At first they'd only hurt when she bent them too far, but the longer she spent out here in the vacuum the worse they got, until now there was a baseline pain just holding them in place, which spiked when she moved at all. She could feel rashes forming, where every pad and every wire on the inside of her suit ground into her skin. Her fingers were so stiff that she could barely muster the strength to pull the controls for the suit's waldos. Cranking the comealong was a slowly building agony.
She took a deep breath, as deep as her lungs would allow, and the exhale when she released became frost on her visor. "I can't do this." She whispered to herself. "I can't I can't do this."
"Alright kid, you're good." Ironclad gave her cable a tug to make sure it would hold, then turned back to her own task. "Crank that down a meter or two and we'll see what that does for us."
"Just... Just a minute." She pleaded into her microphone. She knew the rest of the crew were waiting on the knights to conduct repairs, she knew there were people stranded in rooms inside with air running out, she knew what happened to ships that drifted too far down into underspace, there was nobody else who could do this thing, she knew, she knew all this, but how could she possibly remember it when her arms hurt so badly? "Please. Please just a minute."
"You okay?" Ironclad asked.
"No." It cut her to the heart to admit it.
"Are you bleeding? Bleeding is generally very very bad."
"I can't tell."
"You'd be able to tell. It boils out here, it would feel like bubbling."
"No, there's no bubbling."
"Kay, well, you'll be fine then." She could tell from the Madame's tone that she meant it as an encouragement, not dismissively; weren't they in the same boat, after all? But the Madame knew, and Romanova quickly realized too, that this wasn't the sort of pain that would go away with a moment's rest; indeed, it would just keep getting worse until the ship was fixed, until they were back inside, and on their way back home. This pain must last for hours yet, and certainly for longer if she didn't help. So with stiff and clumsy fingers she tightened the cable back down, and began cranking the ratchet again.
All of a sudden something appeared next to her. It was stark black, ever-so-slightly visible against the dim grey hull. It startled her, but she momentarily recognized it as a cluster of the Ferryman's thinner tentacles. They drifted in and out of 3-space along their lengths, like ovular humps of a sea monster revealing above the water, and as she watched, the tentacle contorted into shapes: the shapes of letter. They spelled: "MADAME"
"Uhhm HEY MA'AM!" Romanova called up. "Down here! I think it's for you."
"Huh? Oh yeah, hey Ferryman, glad to see you're still kicking." Ironclad began making sign language into empty space, which Romanova was too far away to make out.
The Ferryman's tentacles rearranged. "I AM FINE. THANKS FOR CONCERN." They spelled. He seemed to be keeping them close to the hull, as the contrast was the only thing letting them be visible. "I WAS SCOUTING THE WAY AHEAD THESE PAST HOURS."
Ironclad did some other signs, and gestured to the ring, and the other knights with their welders.
"YOU ALL HAVE MADE GOOD PROGRESS." The Ferryman replied. "IGNORE SMALLER BRACING FOR NOW. WORK AT CIRCUMFERENCE CHORDS. THEY HAVE NO STRENGTH WHILE BENT INTO 5-SPACE."
Some more signs.
"NO, FULL REPAIRS WILL NOT BE NECESSARY." The Ferryman reassured her. "I ESTIMATE WE CANNOT ACHIEVE MORE THAN 3% STRENGTH WITH SUCH TOOLS. HOPEFULLY IT WILL BE ENOUGH."
Ironclad turned briefly to regard the breadth of work that still needed doing, then sighed and nodded. "Copy that. Oh well. Take it easy F-Man."
"MERRY CHRISTMAS." The Ferryman spelled back.
Ironclad managed a laugh. "Merry Christmas bro."
"...What was that about?" Romanova asked when the bearing beast was gone.
"Good news and bad news." Ironclad resigned herself to her welder and bent back down. "Not as much work as I was afraid of, but more than I hoped. Much more than I hoped."
"No I mean... The Christmas thing. Time barely works in underspace. And even back in the 'verse it's like... September. In 1400 B.C."
"Ohhhh that. Yeah, that's just a running gag F-Man's got with the command crew. Just uhhhh I guess it's his way of telling us that he knows how hard it is for the lower-dimensional midgets like us, and wished he could do more to help."
"He does enough, doesn't he?"
"Heroes never know that they've done enough."
"Oh..." Romanova took a moment to flex her fingers, then went back to work. "I suppose not, ma'am."
"Ha. Yeah, you know, you can just call me I.C." Ironclad said. "Everyone does."
"Icy?"
"Yeaaaah, the whole 'Madame Ironclad' thing is pretty much just for strangers I want to intimidate, and 'Ma'am' will do during battle or when you're in trouble, but otherwise we're all chill here."
"Copy... Icy."
"I'm guessing Romanova is your real name?" I.C. asked.
"No. Well. It's my grandpa's last name. It's Russian. The Librarian told me not to use my full name."
"Sage advice. He told all of us the same." I.C. agreed. "Why do you think we go around calling ourselves 'Ironclad' and 'Ferryman' and 'Captain Quiet' like a bunch of pro-wrestlers? The empire has eyes everywhere. Best if they can't track us down as babies or something."
"Ha. Yeah."
"I'm full serious, if they CAN, they WILL. When Djin was a toddler we had to spring him from some creepy brainwashing facility trying to turn him into a sleeper agent. A Hate Engine showed up to Fiona's wedding. Yamazaki uses her real surname, and her whole family, all 23 generations of the name, got on an imperial watch list. As did the rock band 'Iron Maiden', which I think is because of me."
"Ha. Wow."
"You know what, you got too many syllables up your name." I.C. decided outloud. "You're 'Rome' now."
"Rome?"
"Yeah! You like that?"
"Uh... Yeah. Sure. I like it."
She remembered that the Librarian had greeted her as 'Rome' too.
"U-uh Icy?"
"'Sup dawg?"
"Have you seen the future?"
"...You're asking a sergeant of the Time Knights whether she's seen the future."
"Well! Y-yeah, but, I mean... Wait, so we'll survive this?" She waved a hand at the blackness. "We'll escape? We'll be okay?"
"Probably." I.C. nodded confidently. "We're halfway done welding the starboard side already, must be... Pffff we must be almost a third of the way done. Keep cranking that thing though, we need to get the inner chord close enough to reconnect." She waved her welder at the brace attached to Rome's cable.
"Right, right." Rome gave the comealong another pull. "But you know what I mean, right?"
"Mmmmmm yeah, I know what you mean. But knowing the future? THAT is a dangerous business, Rome." I.C. warned her. "There's a reason the Librarian doesn't just hand it out. To know it is to let it influence you. To let it influence you is to solidify it in the timeline. So if you see something bad, nothing you can do with that knowledge will help. Personally, I lucked out; my death is a duel with some monster at the ripe old age of thirty-eight."
"Wh-you-REALLY?"
"Oh yeah. And it's no secret either, it's been seen and confirmed by tons of folks, and oddly enough, that means it can't be changed: I'm immortal until that duel. Shoot me in the head and the gun will misfire, I'm not even joking."
"That's crazy... Thirty eight is young though! How are you-? Wha-? What do you mean you 'lucked out'?"
"How's twelve more years not lucky? It's a lifetime. And besides, a lot of people have it worse. Some who learn the future learn of terrible fates, of dreams wasted, loves lost. Some have learned of wars lost, and have been forced to kill themselves, to keep such knowledge from dooming the war. Some have seen false futures, futures changed before somebody changed them back. Causality is a cruel mistress. There is only one true future as surely as there is only one true past, but it lies in a cloud of many dark and different visions, at the terminus of many dark and different paths. Many wish to learn of it, few who do are glad they did."
"I think I understand."
"Not yet."
"B-but you yourself? You chose to learn it all?"
"More than most. I've known the broad strokes since I was young. But as I get older, I wonder if even the broad strokes were too much. I knew all along how I was gonna die, what jobs I would have, who I was gonna date and marry, who I was gonna befriend, which things are worth believing, what I ought to fear, what I ought to not. But as for the little things, like what's going to happen to us today? Right now? No, I haven't a clue. Maybe we'll power through the repairs, or maybe we'll be rescued, or maybe I'm the only one who'll survive. Or maybe all my 'broad strokes' were bogus bean buns and we're doomed after all? But we'll find out soon enough, won't we?"
"Yeah. I guess so." Romanova gave the comealong another pull. Her hands were almost numb from the cold, which would be a blessing in disguise if it actually made the pain go away, which strangely enough it did not. She could hear the creaking of her suit's joints echoing up the frame into her helmet, could feel its artificial muscles flexing over top of her own. Its movements were shaky and hesitant; the joint lubricant must be nearly all evaporated by now. "We'll find out soon enough."
"Hey look, that's another five minutes!" I.C. called, swapping to the public comm channel. "Sound off! Ironclad, good!"
"Fiona. Good."
"Yamazaki good."
"Sam. Still good."
"Djin. I'm good."
"Lebanon. Good."
"Cinderella good."
"Perry. Good."
"00110111 00100000 01100111 01101111 01101111 01100100 00101110"
"Wulf, good."
"Xena, good."
"...Rome. I'm good."
With Rome's armor seizing and her hands numb and her attention elsewhere, she didn't have any reliable way to gauge how much force the suit's arms were putting out, aside from the visual cue of how far the truss was bending. As it turned out, the truss was a lot stiffer than anticipated, and she'd exceeded the comealong's rated capacity by about three times over. One final tug, and the steel cable snapped.
The stretched metal had been storing enough energy to flip a car, and as it snapped it came whipping back at incredible speeds, and caught Rome across the face and arms. Her armor stopped the worst of it, but it sliced clean through her safety tether, and the impact propelled her backwards. Her grip cleats lost contact with the hull, and she was sent spinning away.
"NOT ON YOUR FIRST MISSION YOU DON'T!" I.C. leapt off the ring into the blackness, trailing her tether behind. "YO F-MAN, GIVE ME A HAND IF THIS DOESN'T WORK!" A section of her tether became occluded by darkness, as the Ferryman's tentacle wrapped around it, ready to pull her back. "ROME, COME IN! PUT OUT YOUR ARMS TO SPIN SLOWER!"
Rome couldn't hear her; they were using hardline comms instead of radio, so with her tether gone, there was no way to reach her. None, at least, without giving away their ship's position to the enemy.
They were already 40 meters from the ship, and I.C. could hardly see the girl by anything but a faint and fading shadow; she didn't have a long enough tether, or good enough night vision, to make a second jump if she missed now. Unfortunately she did miss; she passed by Rome about 4 meters to the left. The Ferryman noticed them pass, and gave I.C.'s tether a tug off to the right, so that they came back toward each other. But still not close enough; their outstretched waldos brushed and clattered together, fingers tightened too late. At the last second before losing her forever, on desperate instinct, I.C. kicked out with one of her suit's extending mechanical feet, and the grip cleat on her toe touched Rome's shoulder, and stuck. Rome felt it touch, and frantically grabbed her and climbed up on to her, until the two of them were face to face in the perfect dark, fingers gripped desperately into seams in armor. The ferryman pulled their tether, dragging them back to the ship.
"Well hey, that wasn't very OSHA of us!" I.C. laughed. "You all right, kid?" She realized that Rome couldn't hear her. The kid was shaking, and clinging tightly to her, with the fiercely tight grip that only power armor can deliver. "Ha ha, yeah... You're alright. You're alright. "
They were now close enough to the ship for the Ferryman to reach them. Black serpentine limbs encircled them, and when they retreated seconds later, they found themselves back standing on the hull. I.C. let Rome go, and gave her a slap on the back. "How you doing?" She asked in sign language. "I'll go find you another tether."
Rome didn't immediately respond. As she stood there trembling, I.C. noticed a long scratch diagonal across her suit, where the cable had caught her. The armor itself hadn't been damaged in the least, so at first she thought it was nothing more than scratched paint. But as she opened her mouth to say so, she noticed that the line happened to pass right over the flexible ribbing on Rome's left elbow joint. The impact must have violently pinched the softer material into her human elbow beneath, because from the gouge, a tiny pulsing jet of red vapor was blowing. "Bubbles." Rome signed, with stiff and clumsy hands. She pointing to her elbow. "I feel bubbles."
"Alright, I daisy-chained you onto my tether. Can you hear me? You should be able to hear me."
"I h-hear you." Rome could feel her heart thundering in her chest, could feel her wound venting to the same rhythm. She wondered how long until she died of blood loss, for although it couldn't be a large wound, the vacuum caused the liquid to leave that opening at the speed of sound. It was a terrible thought, a terrible feeling, and her heart beat ever faster as she panicked.
"Cool cool, well, you better listen to me: you're gonna be fine. Because you know what time it is?"
"Uh! I...! No?" I.C. had a waldo hooked around Rome's shoulder joint, and was more or less dragging her across the hull, toward the forward emergency airlock. Rome tried to shove her own suit's waldo underneath her elbow ribbing to put pressure on the wound, but the tool was a bit clumsy for the task, and just ended up wrinkling the ribbing and hurting a lot. "W-what time is it...?"
"Heck if I know, time barely works down here. Wait no, do you know what time it actually is?
"What time is it actually...?"
"Time for you to get a watch HA wait no what I was meaning to say is that it's Christmas time! Merry Christmas."
"W-what does that mean? That doesn't mean anything!"
"Doesn't mean anything?" They reached the forward emergency airlock. It was one of those not-actually-real airlocks that was essentially just a hatch in the hull with an inflatable tent stretched over top of it. I.C. pulled the latch on the cover and the tiny canvas room began to expand. "What's wrong with you?" She gave Rome a playful slap across the helmet. "You don't know the true meaning of Christmas?"
"No...? Well, I..." She blinked. "I feel like I'm getting dizzy. I just want to go home."
"Who doesn't?" She didn't. "Anyway, maybe I'll hold off explaining until you're not dying quite so hard."
"Dying..." Rome watched as the older knight zipped up the tent around them, and tucked a fold around the flap into a gasket. The jet coming from her elbow was spray-painting a small patch of the yellow canvas red.
"Yeaaaaaah dying real hard." I.C. gave the flap a satisfied pat, then pulled a lever on the hatch below them. "Terminal late-stage blood-sucked-all-out-itis." A green light flashed, and a vent began to silently howl. "Not to worry though, I know all the tricks; my uncle was a v-"
Now, I hope I have not given you readers any impression that the great heroic Time Knight are somehow privy to some special and endless wells of bravery and determination and strength, merely by virtue of the herculean destinies imposed on them. Quite the opposite, in fact; it can be seen that such destinies may at times bring out both the best and the worst in their sufferers. And while there are some souls like the Madame's which are quite accustomed to hardship and danger and violences, there are some others who are not, and never will be. As for Romanova, a girl not yet 17, owner of a gentle and humble spirit, whose membership with the knights had been earned by intellect and virtue and a fake ID rather than by bravery or might, after such an afternoon as she had so far had, I hope you will forgive her that, at the mere sight of her blood and the mere mention of death by her clairvoyant commander, she fainted away then and there, and knew no more.
The fog cleared slowly.
Her head was still fuzzy and her limbs were still sore, but the gouge in her elbow had been bandaged up, she'd been freed from her armor, and tied to a wall inside a couple of blankets. As she came back to herself she slowly realized all these things.
She opened her mouth to say something inane to the tune of "what happened, where am I?" when she realized that she remembered quite clearly what happened, and, judging by a dozen officers bent over consoles, she was very evidently in the bridge of the Paver's Creek. She was next going to ask why she was tied to the wall, then realized that the bridge officers probably hadn't wanted an unconscious body floating around the room. Her next question was going to be about why the blankets, and that's when the cold hit her.
It was so very cold inside.
The only thing between them and the absolute zero of underspace was a couple blast shields that had slammed shut over the shattered windows, and the same battle which had shattered them had blown out their primary life support too. This had happened seven hours ago now, and was not news to her.
Everyone knew, and so did she, that it would only get colder.
"How you feeling?" She turned to behold a small, wiry man in a deep jacket, stooped over a console near the back of the bridge. A shaggy mop of floating hair and an unshaven chin framed a lined and tired face that looked about forty, but old for forty. A thin pair of mittens covered a thin pair of hands. She could see no insignia or ribbons past his jacket, and so could not guess his rank, job, or honors, though she thought she could make out an underspace map on his screen, so maybe he was a navigator. His eyes were locked with hers. "Can you speak?" In such cold as this, the words on his breath formed a pale and swirling cloud of condensation that whirled and flurried about his face.
"Uh. Yes? Yes." Hers did too.
"Good." He turned back to the console. "They say it depends on luck alone whether a vacuum wound is instantly deadly or completely inconsequential. It stretches the damaged blood vessels all out, sometimes too far for liquid to quickly re-fill once you get back to pressure. And gas bubbles in the blood vessels arrrrrrrrreeeeee..." Trying to multitask between the conversation and his work momentarily robbed him of his train of thought. "Blood air. Bubbles air blood: Bad News, not something I'm quite equipped to deal with here and now. If you can talk and everything you probably don't have a stroke, so thaaaaaaaat's..." A needlessly long pause as he studied a diagram. "Nice News. Either you're lucky, or I'm more competent at binding wounds than I thought. Either way, yay."
"Oh... I see." She fished her arm out of the blanket to inspect the bandage. It was tied extremely tight, painfully tight, which was, of course, so it would still fit once her vacuum swelling had gone down. Judging by the pristine white color of the binding, her little wound hadn't even bled much once they got back indoors. Such a small thing to have caused such panic. "Thanks."
"You're welcome."
"Uh... Where's Madame Ironclad?"
"The who? Oh. Her... Yes. She left you with me and went back outside." The man paused in his work to gaze across the room at the airlock's inner door. "She..." He searched for the words. "She said, and I quote 'it's going great and fine and we'll be done in flat zip jack zero no time,' and to 'quit worrying old man,'..."
"She would." Rome agreed.
"From your condition, and from how long it's taking, I infer her words were poisoned by optimism." The man glanced hard at her. "How true were they?"
"...Not true at all."
"How's it really going out there?"
"Slow." She said. Dying while we walk. She thought. Cranking and welding and cranking and welding, and for what? It's an enormous ship, damaged in ways we cannot comprehend, you could barely see a difference between where we started and where we are, and all this grave work fell upon the shoulders of but twelve brave knights. Now only eleven. Eleven brave and hapless knights, standing on the prow of a wreckage and scoffing at the darkness, struggling, struggling against fate, and the clock, and... "I need to go back out there." She struggled her other arm free and began untying the blankets. "They need help. Where's my suit, doc?"
"I'm not a doctor." The man frowned. "Well, no, I am a doctor, but I'm NOT the type of doctor who knows how to bind a wound so the vacuum doesn't tear it back open, so you're staying here. An-" He caught himself. "Madame's orders, and doctor's orders too."
"...Oh."
"She told me to tell you that it 'ain't your fault' and that 'crappens', which I infer to be entirely true. So don't beat yourself up."
She'd finished untying herself from the blankets, and now floated free in the cold air. She wished she were wearing the suit; for some reason it hadn't been quite so cold out there, when she'd been working. "I should still be out there..."
"NONE of you should be out there." The navigator scoffed. "We've got two more squads of knights combing the ship's interior, patching leaks and looking for intact EVA equipment. If all goes right, we should have properly-equipped workers out there to relieve them in an hour or two. That you were ever even out there in the first place is a testament to your devotion."
"...The madame treated it like there was no alternative. Like it was the least we could do."
"Heroes never know when they've done enough." The navigator agreed. "...Well, sometimes they're also complete morons, but I like giving them the benefit of the doubt... So perhaps it was the least you could do. It was probably the most you could do too. Anyway, it was what you did."
"Hmm." She nodded. "And anyway, I'm in here now."
"I'm glad you are."
"Is there anything I can do?"
"Well..." He blinked at his screen. "How many dimensions can you think in? I know some of you kids can get up to four or five."
"Only three." She floated over to his console to give it a closer look. "Sam tried to get me into Meigakure the other week but it didn't stick."
"Okay. Uh... You ever seen a chart like this before?"
"Once or twice... What are all these moving lines?"
"They're contours denoting the shape of spacetime. It behaves like a fluid down here. These three knobs let you look at different cross sections of it, since it's only a 2-dimensional screen; generally you have to scroll them pretty fast to get a good feel for it."
She knew she wouldn't be any help at all. "You could rubber duck it to me? If that would help?"
"This isn't that type of problem." He shook his head. "A creativity issue, rather than troubleshooting... There's a thousand ever-changing directions to take, and a thousand more at the end of each of those, and even if we find the universe again, we have to find a point on its volume that's close to our relative energy level, so we don't have to push the drive past 3% to rejoin... And whatever route we take, it can't take more than a couple days, because our life support won't last."
"Couldn't we use the gravity drive to slow down time around the ship?"
"We're already dilated up to eight hours per hour, and it can't take much higher than that..."
"Can you use the ship's computer to brute-force a solution?"
"At these speeds, the computers are giving all they've got just to show us this picture."
Rome stared at the image. The contours were all swirling and moving, some fast, some slow, but overall much more turbulent than the under-maps she'd seen before. But despite the turbulence, nothing of interest. No landmarks, no ships, no mass signatures, no matter, no energy, nothing at all. Nothing but the tiny dot in the center that was they themselves, drifting in and out of the slowly turning chaos, like a boat in a stormy sea with no surface. The only thing down here besides them was the Ferryman, shown as a slightly wider dot right on top of theirs.
She noticed the scale on one side of the map; each of the map's tiny contours was supposed to denote a distance of around 500 billion kilometers, which was just on the upper bound of distances she was able to comprehend.
And in that moment, the full magnitude of their peril became apparent to her. She felt the awesome breadth of their isolation before the blackness of the void. She felt the cold settling on her bones with murderous intent. She heard a distant groaning from the ship's frame as they passed a discontinuity on the map. She heard the desperation in the voices of the other bridge officers, as they talked in hushed tones. But more than anything she could feel her utter helplessness in the face of it all, helpless even to lend the least assistance, so she turned away, in silence and shame and fear. She knew it was foolish to ask questions such as "is there any hope?", for who could truly know? But she longed for the answer anyway.
In the corner of her eye, the navigator stepped back from his console and began to rub his eyes. And he kept rubbing. As if by rubbing he might wake himself from some hidden stupor, or give himself some new idea, buy back all the sleep and time he had lost in his many journeys, or summon the memory of a dark night.
"There is hope, Rome." Not only did he answer her question, but he also called her by name, though she hadn't told him her name, and Rome had not been her name before today.
"What hope?" She whispered, so that nobody else, especially not the Madame, or the Captain, or the Ferryman, nor anybody else who was strong and heroic, could hear her doubt.
"A Christmas hope." The navigator said, and he said it very matter-of-factly.
"What does that mean?" She whispered again. "That doesn't mean anything..."
"It does mean something. Something important. You're uhhh, you're from Earth, right? You have winter?"
"...Russia. We have winter."
"Yeah. I'm from America, we had winter there too. So you and I know, as does anyone else on this ship who comes from a planet with axial tilt, that a year happens every year. Summer and winter both have to come. Summer is... Well, you know summer, it's magic. Trees and flowers and sun on the water, love and life, I..." The navigator's mind and eyes wandered and his words trailed off for a moment, as he remembered. "I used to love summer. I waited for it all year, but it always ends."
Rome nodded, and in this terrible cold and dark, she remembered warmth.
"Winter is vindictive." The navigator glanced back at his screen, and saw the condensation on the screen. "It's endlessly cruel, bitterly hateful. It torments, it abuses, it remembers, it will kill if it can... But... But Earth is blessed, because no matter what, the winter can't last forever." He wiped a sleeve across the screen to clear it off. "And that's where Christmas comes in. It falls just a couple days after the solstice, when the nights are darkest, when the cold is harshest, when everything that can die is dead, everything that can freeze has frozen... Seems odd that humankind would pick the height of December's wrath as the time to celebrate their biggest holiday, but when else would they need it more, and what time could be better? If the nights are as dark as they can be, then what can possibly happen next, but that they must get lighter again? You'll hear the Ferryman tell people 'Merry Christmas' every once in awhile, any old time of year, and it's not just because his brain doesn't understand dates and linear time, (which he doesn't) but what he means is the promise that the sun is always shining somewhere, and anywhere it has shown, it will shine again. Peace must follow war, stillness must follow storm, life... Life must follow death... And spring must always follow winter."
"But how do you know...?" Rome whispered. "We're not on a planet. There's no axial tilt. There's no stillness, this is underspace, and underspace is cold. There's... There's no spring for us."
"There is spring for us, Rome, because there's more than just the cold out here; there's us. Same reason there's spring for Earth, because there's more than just Earth out there; there's the sun. Why do you think they named Christmas after Christ? Because that little baby was born in that barn at the height of the cruelty of the Roman empire, when mankind needed a cure for their sin as badly as ever they would, but there was more than just sin out there; there was a God who cared. Everybody on this boat is working their asses off because we care. You're gonna see spring follow this winter with your own two eyes, Rome, because of that care. And you are destined to become a valued and respected member of the Madame's squad, in days yet to come, because you care too."
His words sounded good to her. They sounded very good, because they were true: she did care. She cared very much. Even if nothing else, there was that indeed. "Thanks Doctor."
He nodded.
She opened her mouth to say "Alright then, I'm gonna do something about this cold," but then realized she probably shouldn't make guarantees for something as grand as that, especially now before she had any idea how she would do it. So instead she closed her mouth, and nodded, and hurried out of the bridge.
The hallway leading aft wasn't pressurized very far. It seems the bridge itself had been plated with some extra armor that had held up well in the attack, but beyond the armor plates, the hallways were perforated; she could see so through a little window in the emergency hatch. As a result, all she had to explore was the bridge itself, a restroom, an executive meeting room, and a utility closet that contained life support and plumbing systems for all the previous.
Among the parts and supplies in the closet was a small roll of thin rubber pneumatic hose, and a spare in-line electric water heater. It wasn't much, and wouldn't be nearly enough wattage to heat up the whole bridge, but it did give her an idea.
The life support systems contained an access valve to the local water bladder, which was the first half of the idea.
A brief look through the meeting room revealed that it was meant to double as a break lounge for officers, complete with food and snacks. They kept bulk ingredients in a compartment in the ceiling, and among them, she found the second half of the idea.
Half an hour later, and everyone on the bridge was sipping on a ziplock bag filled with some warm drink. Hot chocolate for the humans, tea for the Nortusk since they couldn't digest chocolate, and sugar with water in it for the fairies.
An hour or so after that, when the second and third squads returned from their explorations through the ship, with survivors and supplies in tow, they were all given the same.
When Ironclad's squad returned from the outer hull, to be spelled by workers in patched-up EVA suits, they were grateful for a while at least to just sit and rest and cry, and then after that, they were glad for warm drinks too. And as the spirits rose and the quiet ended, and the number of sweaty warm-blooded bodies crowded into the bridge increased, the cold gradually went away as well.
After many long hours of nothing, one of the navigators called out in an excited voice. "I've got something!" Rome's head jerked up, startled at first then intrigued. "Bearing 175.4 by 30.6 by 7.8 by 129.1, possible route to Shannon's Belt U-Port. Can somebody confirm?!"
The bridge seemed to spring to life around Rome, as everyone on navigation team jumped at this new hope. They all rushed to scan the region he'd indicated, and noticed what he had; that the metaspatial storm several light-years to their port approximately matched one logged with Shannon's Belt U-Port at around this same period in history. The port had been midway down their list of likely targets for awhile now, but they hadn't known how close they really were. "Confirmed! Bearing 175.4 by 30.6 by 7.8 by 129.1, coordinates two and four confirmed!"
"Coordinates one, three, and five confirmed!"
"Coord lock confirmed!
"Requesting switch to wayfinding mode!"
"Granted!" Captain Quiet barked. "Switch computers to wayfinding mode."
Their nav screens all froze as the computer stopped running fluid simulations, and started working at routes. Rome had returned to her friend's shoulder to watch as vectors and lists of numbers began crawling across his map.
"Option!" Somebody sounded out. "237-hour transit time using slingshot with spectral cloud 47-alpha and 23-charlie. 600 meter per second delta-victor required in next 120 minutes, drive shock 4.6%!" 237 hours was more than a week; impossible for many of them to survive the journey.
"Option!" Somebody else called out. "178-hour transit using slingshot with 47-alpha, 124-tango, 8-foxtrot. Delta-victor 300 in 40 minutes, drive shock 7.2%!" This option was marginally better on transit, but their rendezvous with the universe would push the drive ring as high as 7%, and they knew it couldn't take it.
"Option!" Somebody from the far end of the bridge. "95-hour transit using slingshot with 47-alpha, 126-lima, 45-hotel, 58-bravo and 784-kilo. Delta-victor 1200 in 250 minutes, drive shock 6.3%!" This was a riskier route, requiring five separate slingshots, but it could make the journey in only four days! They might be able to survive four days!
"Iterate that option!" The Captain ordered. "Try to get the drive shock down below 3%, but I'll settle for 4!"
Everyone began running variations of that one option.
"Option, 89-hour transit, drive shock 6.1%!"
"Option, 95-hour transit, drive shock 5.9%!"
"Option, 98-hour transit, drive shock 5.7%!"
"New option, Captain!" Rome was startled again when her friend suddenly spoke up, in a yell uncomfortably close to her ear. He'd had the computer running a few more creative routes on a fluke, and it had turned up something promising. "23-hour transit using single slingshot with 37-kilo. Drive shock is only 1.7%, but it's straight back the way we came! Delta-victor is 1900 in 2 minutes"
The Captain froze to consider that. Only one slingshot, only two days, and a drive shock well within limits. It was the obvious best choice, if they could work it, the only problem was that it required them to accelerate by almost 2 kilometers per second in the next 2 minutes, which works out to about 1.6 Gs if they started right this second. Their underdrive, damaged as it was, climbed up spacetime ripples at only about 0.13 Gs. The only thing they had onboard for high-powered maneuvers was the gravity drive, but the gravity drive was useless in underspace. It worked on newton's 3rd law, and needed something nearby to 'push' against, be it a passing ship, or a nearby planet, or a gas cloud, it didn't matter what, it could use anything, but down here there was nothing. It needed traction. The Captain racked his brains for what on earth was big enough to toss overboard.
Suddenly, black limbs twisted together into words in front of the captain's face. "I'M LETTING GO!" The Ferryman spelled urgently. "I HAVE THE MASS! USE ME!"
"NEGATIVE!" Captain Quiet denied, then spun in his chair to snap back at navigation. "PINES! ITERATE THAT LAST OPTION! NOW!"
"Iterating!" Rome's friend called out. "UH! Delta-victor 1850 in 2.2 minutes! That's all it-"
"NO TIME!" The Ferryman's limbs spun back in front of the captain. "YOU NEED TO LIVE!"
"This crew has just ONE war to fight!" The Captain jabbed a finger at the bearing beast. "YOU have a thousand eons more!"
"I CAN LIVE OUT HERE FOR CENTURIES!"
"We're not leaving without you!"
The navigator called out again. "I got it down to 2100 in 3.1 minu-! HEY WAIT, FERRYMAN! THIS WILL LAUNCH YOU PAST PERSEUS! THAT'S NEAR EARTH! Find your way to Earth, it has an underspace pocket! We'll find you there!"
"It does?" Rome frowned.
"It does." Ironclad nodded.
"I WILL." The Ferryman agreed. "FAREWELL."
Captain Quiet opened his mouth to say something, but there was nothing more to say, and he knew they were right. "Merry Christmas." He said instead.
A great circle of tentacles, larger in diameter than the ship, reached out of the void to curl around the drive ring. For just a moment, nearly the whole of the Ferryman's body was exposed into 3-space, and the workers out on the hull could see, just barely against the background, the thousand pits of his black eyes, and the curling tongues of his sheet-like hair outlining his limbs, shining with all the terrible majesty of Cthulhu, awesome and mysterious as a Kraken of old. Using every ounce of strength left in him, the bearing beast turned the Paver's Creek around onto its new route toward home that only he could see clearly, and then, he let go.
Inside the ship, the helmsman punched the drive throttle. As the Ferryman drifted out past 500 meters from the hull, he crossed beyond the range of the engine's aft-facing compensator field, until only the drive field had him, and flung him backward, thus flinging them forward. He sailed away from the ship ever and ever faster, until they'd achieved their 2 kilometers per second, and were on their way for the safety of Shannon's Belt.
He himself had gained more than 5 kilometers per second, into the uncharted wilderness. And the ever-shifting ways of underspace multiplied that out ever more, until not many seconds later, they were traveling away from each other at nearly light speed. His eyes could see them until long after he had passed out of sight for them; still they glowed, a bright pinprick of light against the darkness, a burning hot hulk of metal full of life, daring bravely to live and be warm, fight and be fought, even in such infinite winter as this.
They would live; he knew it. He had heard it foretold. They would succeed in their war, win freedom for their lands, peace for their children, most of their children. He knew the great prophecies, knew that most of them were true, and it gave him joy to aid in the fulfillment of the noble ones.
There were those among the great powers of the universe who cared little for the concerns of small and fleeting creatures; there were even those who harvested amusement from their turmoil. But as for the Ferryman, (which is his name, as far as the meanings of names can stick) he held a love for them, even an admiration. After all, what meaning is there in the fleeting whims of powerful creatures, glorious and sweeping and monumental though they be? Surely no more meaning than the bravely devoted efforts of the weakest being, small in scope and lacking in reach though they be. Which is more noble? To have fought, and suffered, and fallen, and then yet served on in love, even in the face of death? Or to have set oneself adrift for a short vacation, as reward for saving a bucket of ants?
As the Paver's Creek passed out of sight, and as his cold flesh began to settle into the long condensation of this new migration, he thought of how small a thing he was.
After all, heroes never know when they have done enough.
