Darkness of Space and Time
Now
Chunks of metal, shiny jigsaw pieces reflecting rainbows against the dark, tumbled through space. Tearing off of the spaceship’s hull, shivering in fear as they shed themselves from its silver skin.
The Colossus pounded back and forth against the anomaly like a stuttering piston - stuck in place, stuck in time. A juggernaut caught in a simple cosmic glue trap.
All around, the spectrum broke into fragments - elements of light and time splitting and twisting. Reality broke apart around the vessel as its ion drives screamed their impotent fury into the soundless vacuum.
A rupture. A blast of pure white light. A ripple in the emptiness of being.
Silence.
The same moment - ten minutes ago
Captain Conrad Howlett leaned forward on his knee, doing his best not to squint at the viewscreen in front of him.
His eye doctor said he needed glasses, but Howlett had convinced the woman not to report this fact to the navy. He hated the way he looked in glasses.
Yes, it was very vain of him. And yes, he was regretting that decision right now.
“What do you see?” Perhaps if he phrased it this way, his crew wouldn’t realize he legitimately couldn’t make out the details on the screen.
“Same thing you do sir.” Ensign Gomez kept his voice even and professional, though the slight quizzical expression as he half-turned back to his captain revealed his curiosity. “A Minkowski hole, sir. Opened up out of nowhere.”
Beside Howlett, his pretty but cold Executive Officer, Commander Gladys Johnson, allowed a frown to touch the carved onyx of her face. She said nothing, however, and the captain continued as though nothing had occurred.
“Reverse course.”
With a slight shrug, Gomez punched some buttons at his station off to Howlett’s left. Sighed to himself. “No good, sir. Standard theta drive insufficient to escape the gravity well.”
Johnson’s grim face turned to Howlett once more. “Don’t even think about it,” she warned her captain.
He scowled at his XO. Gods, he hated that woman sometimes. “No choice.” Their cargo of unstable dioxymethinate wouldn’t hold out much longer.
They had to get through here.
“Ensign--”
What was that?
On the verge of giving his order, Captain Howlett was distracted by a soft movement of black over his right shoulder. Turning, he saw - there, in the shadows by a disused terminal - a robed figure.
Black. Dark as the the endless space without the walls of this vessel. Like the outline of a man, cut out of reality, showing simply the void of nothingness through its own absence.
Only two piercing silver eyes peering from the cowl of a robe gave away the fact that this was a living being.
Howlett leapt to his feet, heart gripped by an icy fist within his chest. “Security!” His pulse throbbed at his neck, his hands trembling like reeds in the breeze. “Target…”
Nothing. There was nothing there.
Not like the nothingness in the shape of a man he had seen a mere second earlier. No, this time there was only the dusty grime of a section of this useless hunk of spacegoing trash, an unoccupied portion of the dim and dilapidated bridge.
“Sir?” Johnson’s elegant face appeared almost concerned.
He continued to stare at the corner of the room for some time, then shook his head clear.
Turning back to his skeleton screw, he ordered: “Engage the Heisenberg Drive.”
His XO stood to her feet beside him, her carved expression determined. “Sir--”
“Do it!”
Somewhere within the bowels of the creaking juggernaut, a quantum field activated. Turbines churning, gears whirling, sparks spraying.
Then all hell broke loose.
The same moment, ten years later
“Conrad, take the baby. Something came up on C-deck.”
Howlett turned to Gladys Johnson - his beautiful wife of six years now - and smiled at the intensity burned onto her features.
Until the incident, he had never gotten to really know his former XO. Never wanted to. Those stern features, that glacial composure. Now he knew what they hid underneath, and it was amazing.
“Come here, sweet cheeks,” Howlett called to his daughter, taking the two-year-old from her mother’s arms. “Mommy always calls you a baby, doesn’t she? But you’re not a baby. You’re a big girl, aren’t you? Yes, yes you are!”
Abby giggled as her dad rubbed his graying whiskers at her puckish face, wrapping her little arms around him as he took her from Gladys.
"Stop, Daddy!”
But the laughter continued, and Howlett didn’t stop tickling the gorgeous girl with his scraggly beard. He never would, if he could help it.
Gladys glared at the two of them, but Howlett could see in her stony eyes the real warmth within. The love she felt for her family, the fondness that threatened to overwhelm her and even now break through her icy armor.
He knew she didn’t like talking about it. About her feelings. And he’d never ask her to.
“What’s happening on C-deck?” Howlett kept his voice level as he hoisted the kid into the crook of his right arm, both of them turning to look at Gladys as she hesitated on her way to the door.
“It…” The woman’s eyes flicked to their daughter, then back to Howlett. Something she didn’t want to say in front of the child? “Probably nothing. I’ll be back.”
“Gladys.” He was worried. She could tell.
Actually smiling for once, Gladys stepped back toward Howlett and kissed him gently on his whiskered cheek. “Don’t worry. I’m sure it’s nothing serious.”
The smile seemed to last at least until she headed out the door to their quarters. Something about that made Howlett feel even more apprehensive.
Sensing his feelings, the girl in Howlett’s arms asked, “Something wrong, Daddy?”
He did his best to shake off the feeling of impending disaster that hung around him all of a sudden. “Nothing, sweetie. I think Tom and Henry probably got in another fight, is all.”
“I love Unca Tom and Unca Henny.”
That cherubic face seemed to erase Howlett’s fears in an instant.
“I know you do, muffin. They love each other too, I promise. That’s the reason they fight so often, you know.”
“Like you and Mommy?”
Uh-oh. He and Gladys always tried to keep their conflicts from little Abby’s ears, but he supposed children were more perceptive than he gave them credit for.
Unwilling to address the issue she had brought up, Howlett stepped over to the window, switching the girl to his other arm as he did so. Gods, she was getting heavy. She’d be eighteen before he knew it, maybe getting married to the Bradford boy down the hall.
Like Hespa, she would. Abby would always be his little girl. She was going to stay this age forever, if he had any say in the matter.
“Look.” Howlett pointed out at the kaleidoscope on the other side of the glass. “Kind of a purple day today, isn’t it? I know you like purple.”
Abby contradicted him in a matter-of-fact tone. “I like red now.”
“Oh.” They changed so quickly at this age. He wished he could freeze her in time, stop her from growing.
Speaking of: the anomaly that howled outside the window was even fiercer than it had been of late. As he had stated to his daughter, the streaks and whirls were more violet in shade today than usual, but the fervor of the storm that seemed to be silently whipping around them made Howlett shiver in foreboding.
Ten years. Near as they could tell, they’d been stuck on this ship for ten years. Here, in the middle of no-space. Nothing they could do with the ship’s engines would cause it to budge, and the Colossus had soon been consumed by the tempest.
It had only taken them four or five years to fully give up on the idea of escaping. Now, they dedicated their research to using the engines to sustain their lives for the rest of their stay… here.
Wherever ‘here’ was.
With a start, Howlett spun round in place.
“What is it Daddy?”
Abby could sense his worry, but although he raked his gaze across every hidden corner of the shadowy room, he could see no sign of the figure he had glimpsed in the reflection.
That shape again. The slender robed form, black as midnight, eyes like silver stars.
It had been there, by the bed. Howlett was sure of it. No sign of him now, however.
Who was it? What was it? And where did it come from, go to?
Abby hugged Howlett’s neck, lost in his own fear.
And then the ship shook, an ominous grinding noise resounding throughout its every beam and girder.
Not good. Whatever that was, it wasn’t good.
Was this what Gladys was investigating on C-deck?
Gods, he hoped she wasn’t hurt. He hoped this was nothing--
Howlett stumbled, fell, Abby crashing from his grip and rolling in tears across the grated floor, as the Colossus shook - tore apart.
Was this the end?
The same moment - nine years, eleven months ago
They’d been stuck in this thing for days. People were starting to go crazy.
Howlett reached up to rub his jaw in thought, felt the harsh stubble around his mouth, like sandpaper made from millions of tiny diamonds. He’d have to shave this sooner or later. Gods, he hated facial hair. But there was no time for personal hygiene right now. Not when all of their lives were at stake.
Though somehow his XO remained looking remarkably fresh. Her hair was frizzier than she would normally allow, and she had stopped applying make-up after their first day caught in this maelstrom, but somehow Gladys Johnson still maintained her poise and her aura of beauty.
Howlett needed an hour in front of the mirror every day to look as good as he usually did. Damn this woman and her secret magic.
“What’s going on, Paswaters?”
At the helm station over on Howlett’s left today was a young man on his first ever mission, Gods help him. Bet this wasn’t what he expected when he signed up for the navy, eh?
“Um.” The lad punched some buttons on his console, accidentally tripping three switches that in an ordinary scenario would have left the Colossus lurching off its trajectory and possibly flattening all of them against the starboard wall.
Luckily for everyone, that damn anomaly swirling its blues and greens on the other side of the thick hull had them in its vise-like clutches and wouldn’t let go for love nor money.
“It, uh, isn’t responding. Sir.”
Howlett tried to calm himself, wiping his palm slowly down his face. Past Johnson who sat by his side, the captain saw Lieutenant Peterson at the tactical station shake his head and hide a grin.
Patiently, Howlett explained, “We haven’t activated it yet, Ensign. That’s what all of us are waiting for.”
“Oh.” He flushed red as he struggled to find the sequence of button presses needed to accomplish his task. “Sorry sir. Uh, captain.”
This was gonna be a long day. In a series of long days.
Howlett lifted the receiver from the side of his squealing chair and spoke into it. “Mr Teschner, those ion drives ready?”
No response.
Howlett rolled his eyes, glancing over at his XO who seemed to be singularly unimpressed with current events. Looking over at Howlett as if all of this were his fault.
He really hated that woman.
“Mr Teschler?”
Still nothing.
With a sigh, he replaced the receiver in its holster. Whatever, he was sure the engine room had their part under control.
“Ensign Paswaters, we’re waiting for you.”
“I, uh, almost have it sir.”
An obnoxious error horn blared out of the young man’s console, and he ‘whoops’ed as he continued raking his fingers across the switches.
Howlett leaned sideways, taking it all as it came. This just wasn’t going to be his day.
Suddenly, the storms outside changed frequency, the waves of kaleidoscope patterns on the viewscreen shivering and condensing. Shifting to a reddish tint.
A chill shot down Howlett’s spine, and he just knew that if he looked starboard he would see the shadowy shape of a cowled figure. He didn’t want to look; didn’t want to see.
But he had to.
Slowly the captain turned, looking in trepidation past the confused face of Commander Johnson at his side who gave him one of her trademark disapproving scowls.
He leaned forward, ignoring her icy glare. Knowing what he would see; terrified to confirm it.
Peterson was gone somehow. In his place, but standing beside the lieutenant’s empty seat, was Him.
The shape. The robed man who stood like a cut-out from reality, two piercing silver eyes the only sign of life. On the bridge, the temperature dropped several degrees, and Howlett felt his breath slip away. His brain pulsed like the blood was endeavoring to escape the vessels within it.
Who was he? What was happening?
“Got it!”
Paswaters completed his assignment, and the ion drives shifted modes.
The Colossus lurched, a trill scream whining from the intercom system, a shower of sparks erupting from one of their outdated terminals.
Peterson was back where he belonged, the shadowy figure was gone once again.
But that was the least of Howlett’s fears now.
The viewscreen shattered, the bulkhead screeched, and chaos erupted on all sides.
The same moment - thirty years later
Former captain Conrad Howlett stood by the launch tubes, his face a grim mask.
By now the grey beard he wore reached down to his sternum, his having long since lost any concern regarding his looks.
Only three of them remained aboard the Colossus now. In this tube before him, inside a former torpedo capsule, lay the corpse of his late wife: Gladys Johnson.
He had called her his ‘wife’. There had been no one to officiate, but as the small crew had begun their new life aboard this ship in the middle of a rainbow storm, such technicalities had seemed minor.
She was his wife, in every sense that mattered. And now she wasn’t.
There weren’t any more tears left to shed. To be honest, he had barely cried when Gladys died. All of his tears had dried up years earlier, when their beautiful daughter had died of a wasting disease at the tender age of nine.
Tom Eckhorn stood by Conrad’s side, one heavy hand laid in sympathy on the man’s shoulder. He knew what the captain was going through; his own husband, Henry, had died in that accident ten years ago. The one that nearly lost them the ship and everyone on board.
They were all lost now. Only Howlett, Tom, and Len Paswaters remained.
Paswaters. Godsdammit, of all the people Howlett would have expected to still be around, the snot-nosed kid on his first mission would not have been one of them.
Twenty years down the line, that little kid was a skilled engineer who had kept the Colossus together almost single-handedly these last couple of years. After both of the remaining crewmembers in that department had been blown out of the hull into the howling depths of the anomaly.
Howlett shuddered just thinking about it.
And here he was about to send another crewmember out into the colorful void. Previously his executive officer, lately his wife and the mother of their child. A woman he had been surprised to love, but happy for the revelation.
“Do you…” Paswaters puckered as though swallowing a lemon. “Are there any… words?”
Totally unlike the skinny kid Howlett had shaken his head at that day. Now Paswaters was a man of forty, buff and confident.
Not that Howlett had a thing for men that way, but a few more years together on this Godsforsaken ship and who knows what might happen?
Did he want to say a few words? What words could sum up Gladys’ life? Her beauty, her strength, her dedication. Her love for Abby, her love for him. An eternity of unending puzzles, of unsolvable mysteries, of depthless compassion and unshakable resolution.
No. No few words could even begin to touch on what made Gladys special, and he would not insult her memory by endeavoring to do so.
With a simple shake of the head, Howlett said to the man on his left: “Light it up.”
Understanding in his eyes, the muscular man scratched a hefty match against the rusted console and lowered the resultant orange flame into the receptacle before him. The flickering glow sank into the metal runner, catching a trough of flammable liquid alight.
In turn, this liquid ignited the propellant that launched the torpedo capsule out into the tube, out into the heavy emptiness that swirled around the ship.
As the torpedo shot out of sight, Howlett caught a glimpse of the face within it. But it was not Gladys, not his wife. Instead, two beady glints of silver light shone from within a shadowed cowl.
Shaken, Howlett lunged at the now vacant torpedo tube. “Gladys!”
What did it mean? His wife, dead, replaced, launched.
The other men by his side mistook his fear for grief, gently pried at him to drag him back from the entranceway to certain death. Howlett fought them, flailing in terror and anger as he sought to dive into the tube after his wife’s body. To find it, make sure it was her after all.
Her, and not that chilling creature.
Suddenly silent, Howlett felt his friends let him go as he scoured the room for any sign of that shadowed creature lurking.
Was it here? Was it watching him? Now?
“Who are you?” Howlett yelled this at the empty parts of the room, Len Paswaters and Tom Bradshaw giving each other concerned looks at his outburst.
The ex-captain didn’t care. What did it matter if the men thought he was crazy? He had no one to lead now, no one to love.
There was only him, and his loneliness.
He sank to his knees, feeling the metal jar against his aged kneecaps. Maybe he would not be able to get back up again.
Maybe he didn’t care.
The same moment - thirty years ago
Minkowski space was folding in.
Panic gripped Captain Howlett’s heart as the fractured waves flowed outward and began to envelop the Colossus.
The minute he had engaged the Heisenberg drive, something had reacted badly to the crumpled space of the anomaly, and expanded it around the ship.
Of course, his XO had immediately demanded the engines be cut - and rightly so. He may have been infuriated by the woman, but she was a good officer to have at his side in a pinch. Her reaction times were the best of any officer he had ever seen, and he wouldn’t have any other person as his number two.
Regardless of his official complaint to the navy board the day they had announced her appointment to the position…
But silencing the drives had done no good. The damage was done; the hungry beast had been given its morsel and was now opening its jaws wider to devour the entire meal.
“Engage ion drives!” he snapped at Ensign Gomez at the port station. “Full reverse.”
The young man was already on it, of course. He knew how many beans made five, and before Howlett had spoken a word was already flicking a series of switches to activate the back-up engines.
With any luck, the cruder horse-power of those traditional turbines would work against the pull of this voracious spatial anomaly and allow the Colossus to break free.
A high-pitched whine could be heard even up here on the bridge as the ion drives engaged, but the only effect was a rapid back-and-forth movement that shook the crew around like ragdolls.
Even those solid, slow and steady engines could not free the Colossus from her enemy.
They would be stuck here for life.
There it was again. The figure, swaddled in robes as dark as the emptiness of space. Two pinpoints like starlight beneath its hood. Staring, it seemed, directly at Howlett.
Into the depths of his soul.
“Randomize the frequency,” Johnson said sternly, standing over Gomez’s shoulder as he worked.
Howlett shivered, turning back to see the cloaked figure missing again.
From the viewscreen, ripples of light like those from a swimming pool bathed the dank bridge in colorful waves. That dancing dapple continued to ebb and flow, lulling Howlett then almost into a standing sleep.
Until it all stopped.
The tweak Commander Johnson had made to the ion drive control program had done the trick. Whatever it was, the oomph it gave the ship was enough to allow it to break free from the four-dimensional grip the Colossus had been held in.
Howlett, on his feet, lurched and nearly fell as the vessel eased its way back from the anomaly’s mouth, the play of varicolored light already receding from the bridge. The usual dusty shadows creeping back into their customary locations, the grime hidden once again by their dark blanket.
And then they were free.
Unbidden, Gomez turned the ship to port and hauled them and their precious yet unstable cargo away from the lurking anomaly. They could take the long way around this time; Howlett was okay with that.
“Astounding work,” he complimented his XO. Her usual blank expression was unmoved by the praise, but nevertheless Howlett moved in for a hug.
Taking the woman by surprise, he wrapped his arms around her, patting her slender back in obnoxious relief.
“You saved the day.” His voice was muffled by her shoulder, but she heard him. Atypically, she even reciprocated for a moment, one of her hands tapping his own back in a remarkable show of emotion.
Remarkable for her, at any rate.
Pulling himself back off of her, he began to realize the unprofessional nature of his act, and proceeded to apologize. “Sorry. Life or death, you know. Hope my beard didn’t scratch your cheek too bad.” And he grinned in nervous joy.
Johnson’s face registered her confusion. “Captain… you don’t have a beard.”
It was true. Howlett reached his hand up to confirm it, rubbing it over the smoothness of his jaw. He never wore a beard; even stubble itched his skin like crazy.
Wonder where that thought had come from?
“Are you…”
Was that concern? For a second, Gladys Johnson appeared to be genuinely worried for her captain’s wellbeing. It was not at all like her usual manner, but Howlett thought he could become accustomed to such compassion.
“Just fine, Gladys. Just fine.”
His XO scowled at the unbidden use of her given name, but Howlett didn’t care. Despite his relief and ebullience at their salvation, something in his chest froze like ice.
A sadness hung behind the celebration. A loss.
What it was, he didn’t know. But it felt as if… as if he had lost a parent. So far, both his mom and dad were still alive - back on the colony. He believed so, anyway.
But this grief, this sorrow… It was a deep-set heartache that stunned and surprised Howlett.
Johnson appeared to sense something inside of her captain, but he tried to wave it off and resume his seat.
Somehow, though, he knew he would never be the same again.
A few moments later
The man behind the planet laughed.
As he frantically clutched at his flesh to keep the laugh within, to stop it seeping and oozing out of his flesh to melt all across the floor, his shadow took hold of the levers for him.
Pulled them, pushed them. Kept the world in motion. Maintained the order, and the chaos, and the balance.
Once the laughter was back inside where it belonged, the man behind the planet would regain control of the levers himself.
And then, oh then, they would have themselves a time.
Chunks of metal, shiny jigsaw pieces reflecting rainbows against the dark, tumbled through space. Tearing off of the spaceship’s hull, shivering in fear as they shed themselves from its silver skin.
The Colossus pounded back and forth against the anomaly like a stuttering piston - stuck in place, stuck in time. A juggernaut caught in a simple cosmic glue trap.
All around, the spectrum broke into fragments - elements of light and time splitting and twisting. Reality broke apart around the vessel as its ion drives screamed their impotent fury into the soundless vacuum.
A rupture. A blast of pure white light. A ripple in the emptiness of being.
Silence.
The same moment - ten minutes ago
Captain Conrad Howlett leaned forward on his knee, doing his best not to squint at the viewscreen in front of him.
His eye doctor said he needed glasses, but Howlett had convinced the woman not to report this fact to the navy. He hated the way he looked in glasses.
Yes, it was very vain of him. And yes, he was regretting that decision right now.
“What do you see?” Perhaps if he phrased it this way, his crew wouldn’t realize he legitimately couldn’t make out the details on the screen.
“Same thing you do sir.” Ensign Gomez kept his voice even and professional, though the slight quizzical expression as he half-turned back to his captain revealed his curiosity. “A Minkowski hole, sir. Opened up out of nowhere.”
Beside Howlett, his pretty but cold Executive Officer, Commander Gladys Johnson, allowed a frown to touch the carved onyx of her face. She said nothing, however, and the captain continued as though nothing had occurred.
“Reverse course.”
With a slight shrug, Gomez punched some buttons at his station off to Howlett’s left. Sighed to himself. “No good, sir. Standard theta drive insufficient to escape the gravity well.”
Johnson’s grim face turned to Howlett once more. “Don’t even think about it,” she warned her captain.
He scowled at his XO. Gods, he hated that woman sometimes. “No choice.” Their cargo of unstable dioxymethinate wouldn’t hold out much longer.
They had to get through here.
“Ensign--”
What was that?
On the verge of giving his order, Captain Howlett was distracted by a soft movement of black over his right shoulder. Turning, he saw - there, in the shadows by a disused terminal - a robed figure.
Black. Dark as the the endless space without the walls of this vessel. Like the outline of a man, cut out of reality, showing simply the void of nothingness through its own absence.
Only two piercing silver eyes peering from the cowl of a robe gave away the fact that this was a living being.
Howlett leapt to his feet, heart gripped by an icy fist within his chest. “Security!” His pulse throbbed at his neck, his hands trembling like reeds in the breeze. “Target…”
Nothing. There was nothing there.
Not like the nothingness in the shape of a man he had seen a mere second earlier. No, this time there was only the dusty grime of a section of this useless hunk of spacegoing trash, an unoccupied portion of the dim and dilapidated bridge.
“Sir?” Johnson’s elegant face appeared almost concerned.
He continued to stare at the corner of the room for some time, then shook his head clear.
Turning back to his skeleton screw, he ordered: “Engage the Heisenberg Drive.”
His XO stood to her feet beside him, her carved expression determined. “Sir--”
“Do it!”
Somewhere within the bowels of the creaking juggernaut, a quantum field activated. Turbines churning, gears whirling, sparks spraying.
Then all hell broke loose.
The same moment, ten years later
“Conrad, take the baby. Something came up on C-deck.”
Howlett turned to Gladys Johnson - his beautiful wife of six years now - and smiled at the intensity burned onto her features.
Until the incident, he had never gotten to really know his former XO. Never wanted to. Those stern features, that glacial composure. Now he knew what they hid underneath, and it was amazing.
“Come here, sweet cheeks,” Howlett called to his daughter, taking the two-year-old from her mother’s arms. “Mommy always calls you a baby, doesn’t she? But you’re not a baby. You’re a big girl, aren’t you? Yes, yes you are!”
Abby giggled as her dad rubbed his graying whiskers at her puckish face, wrapping her little arms around him as he took her from Gladys.
"Stop, Daddy!”
But the laughter continued, and Howlett didn’t stop tickling the gorgeous girl with his scraggly beard. He never would, if he could help it.
Gladys glared at the two of them, but Howlett could see in her stony eyes the real warmth within. The love she felt for her family, the fondness that threatened to overwhelm her and even now break through her icy armor.
He knew she didn’t like talking about it. About her feelings. And he’d never ask her to.
“What’s happening on C-deck?” Howlett kept his voice level as he hoisted the kid into the crook of his right arm, both of them turning to look at Gladys as she hesitated on her way to the door.
“It…” The woman’s eyes flicked to their daughter, then back to Howlett. Something she didn’t want to say in front of the child? “Probably nothing. I’ll be back.”
“Gladys.” He was worried. She could tell.
Actually smiling for once, Gladys stepped back toward Howlett and kissed him gently on his whiskered cheek. “Don’t worry. I’m sure it’s nothing serious.”
The smile seemed to last at least until she headed out the door to their quarters. Something about that made Howlett feel even more apprehensive.
Sensing his feelings, the girl in Howlett’s arms asked, “Something wrong, Daddy?”
He did his best to shake off the feeling of impending disaster that hung around him all of a sudden. “Nothing, sweetie. I think Tom and Henry probably got in another fight, is all.”
“I love Unca Tom and Unca Henny.”
That cherubic face seemed to erase Howlett’s fears in an instant.
“I know you do, muffin. They love each other too, I promise. That’s the reason they fight so often, you know.”
“Like you and Mommy?”
Uh-oh. He and Gladys always tried to keep their conflicts from little Abby’s ears, but he supposed children were more perceptive than he gave them credit for.
Unwilling to address the issue she had brought up, Howlett stepped over to the window, switching the girl to his other arm as he did so. Gods, she was getting heavy. She’d be eighteen before he knew it, maybe getting married to the Bradford boy down the hall.
Like Hespa, she would. Abby would always be his little girl. She was going to stay this age forever, if he had any say in the matter.
“Look.” Howlett pointed out at the kaleidoscope on the other side of the glass. “Kind of a purple day today, isn’t it? I know you like purple.”
Abby contradicted him in a matter-of-fact tone. “I like red now.”
“Oh.” They changed so quickly at this age. He wished he could freeze her in time, stop her from growing.
Speaking of: the anomaly that howled outside the window was even fiercer than it had been of late. As he had stated to his daughter, the streaks and whirls were more violet in shade today than usual, but the fervor of the storm that seemed to be silently whipping around them made Howlett shiver in foreboding.
Ten years. Near as they could tell, they’d been stuck on this ship for ten years. Here, in the middle of no-space. Nothing they could do with the ship’s engines would cause it to budge, and the Colossus had soon been consumed by the tempest.
It had only taken them four or five years to fully give up on the idea of escaping. Now, they dedicated their research to using the engines to sustain their lives for the rest of their stay… here.
Wherever ‘here’ was.
With a start, Howlett spun round in place.
“What is it Daddy?”
Abby could sense his worry, but although he raked his gaze across every hidden corner of the shadowy room, he could see no sign of the figure he had glimpsed in the reflection.
That shape again. The slender robed form, black as midnight, eyes like silver stars.
It had been there, by the bed. Howlett was sure of it. No sign of him now, however.
Who was it? What was it? And where did it come from, go to?
Abby hugged Howlett’s neck, lost in his own fear.
And then the ship shook, an ominous grinding noise resounding throughout its every beam and girder.
Not good. Whatever that was, it wasn’t good.
Was this what Gladys was investigating on C-deck?
Gods, he hoped she wasn’t hurt. He hoped this was nothing--
Howlett stumbled, fell, Abby crashing from his grip and rolling in tears across the grated floor, as the Colossus shook - tore apart.
Was this the end?
The same moment - nine years, eleven months ago
They’d been stuck in this thing for days. People were starting to go crazy.
Howlett reached up to rub his jaw in thought, felt the harsh stubble around his mouth, like sandpaper made from millions of tiny diamonds. He’d have to shave this sooner or later. Gods, he hated facial hair. But there was no time for personal hygiene right now. Not when all of their lives were at stake.
Though somehow his XO remained looking remarkably fresh. Her hair was frizzier than she would normally allow, and she had stopped applying make-up after their first day caught in this maelstrom, but somehow Gladys Johnson still maintained her poise and her aura of beauty.
Howlett needed an hour in front of the mirror every day to look as good as he usually did. Damn this woman and her secret magic.
“What’s going on, Paswaters?”
At the helm station over on Howlett’s left today was a young man on his first ever mission, Gods help him. Bet this wasn’t what he expected when he signed up for the navy, eh?
“Um.” The lad punched some buttons on his console, accidentally tripping three switches that in an ordinary scenario would have left the Colossus lurching off its trajectory and possibly flattening all of them against the starboard wall.
Luckily for everyone, that damn anomaly swirling its blues and greens on the other side of the thick hull had them in its vise-like clutches and wouldn’t let go for love nor money.
“It, uh, isn’t responding. Sir.”
Howlett tried to calm himself, wiping his palm slowly down his face. Past Johnson who sat by his side, the captain saw Lieutenant Peterson at the tactical station shake his head and hide a grin.
Patiently, Howlett explained, “We haven’t activated it yet, Ensign. That’s what all of us are waiting for.”
“Oh.” He flushed red as he struggled to find the sequence of button presses needed to accomplish his task. “Sorry sir. Uh, captain.”
This was gonna be a long day. In a series of long days.
Howlett lifted the receiver from the side of his squealing chair and spoke into it. “Mr Teschner, those ion drives ready?”
No response.
Howlett rolled his eyes, glancing over at his XO who seemed to be singularly unimpressed with current events. Looking over at Howlett as if all of this were his fault.
He really hated that woman.
“Mr Teschler?”
Still nothing.
With a sigh, he replaced the receiver in its holster. Whatever, he was sure the engine room had their part under control.
“Ensign Paswaters, we’re waiting for you.”
“I, uh, almost have it sir.”
An obnoxious error horn blared out of the young man’s console, and he ‘whoops’ed as he continued raking his fingers across the switches.
Howlett leaned sideways, taking it all as it came. This just wasn’t going to be his day.
Suddenly, the storms outside changed frequency, the waves of kaleidoscope patterns on the viewscreen shivering and condensing. Shifting to a reddish tint.
A chill shot down Howlett’s spine, and he just knew that if he looked starboard he would see the shadowy shape of a cowled figure. He didn’t want to look; didn’t want to see.
But he had to.
Slowly the captain turned, looking in trepidation past the confused face of Commander Johnson at his side who gave him one of her trademark disapproving scowls.
He leaned forward, ignoring her icy glare. Knowing what he would see; terrified to confirm it.
Peterson was gone somehow. In his place, but standing beside the lieutenant’s empty seat, was Him.
The shape. The robed man who stood like a cut-out from reality, two piercing silver eyes the only sign of life. On the bridge, the temperature dropped several degrees, and Howlett felt his breath slip away. His brain pulsed like the blood was endeavoring to escape the vessels within it.
Who was he? What was happening?
“Got it!”
Paswaters completed his assignment, and the ion drives shifted modes.
The Colossus lurched, a trill scream whining from the intercom system, a shower of sparks erupting from one of their outdated terminals.
Peterson was back where he belonged, the shadowy figure was gone once again.
But that was the least of Howlett’s fears now.
The viewscreen shattered, the bulkhead screeched, and chaos erupted on all sides.
The same moment - thirty years later
Former captain Conrad Howlett stood by the launch tubes, his face a grim mask.
By now the grey beard he wore reached down to his sternum, his having long since lost any concern regarding his looks.
Only three of them remained aboard the Colossus now. In this tube before him, inside a former torpedo capsule, lay the corpse of his late wife: Gladys Johnson.
He had called her his ‘wife’. There had been no one to officiate, but as the small crew had begun their new life aboard this ship in the middle of a rainbow storm, such technicalities had seemed minor.
She was his wife, in every sense that mattered. And now she wasn’t.
There weren’t any more tears left to shed. To be honest, he had barely cried when Gladys died. All of his tears had dried up years earlier, when their beautiful daughter had died of a wasting disease at the tender age of nine.
Tom Eckhorn stood by Conrad’s side, one heavy hand laid in sympathy on the man’s shoulder. He knew what the captain was going through; his own husband, Henry, had died in that accident ten years ago. The one that nearly lost them the ship and everyone on board.
They were all lost now. Only Howlett, Tom, and Len Paswaters remained.
Paswaters. Godsdammit, of all the people Howlett would have expected to still be around, the snot-nosed kid on his first mission would not have been one of them.
Twenty years down the line, that little kid was a skilled engineer who had kept the Colossus together almost single-handedly these last couple of years. After both of the remaining crewmembers in that department had been blown out of the hull into the howling depths of the anomaly.
Howlett shuddered just thinking about it.
And here he was about to send another crewmember out into the colorful void. Previously his executive officer, lately his wife and the mother of their child. A woman he had been surprised to love, but happy for the revelation.
“Do you…” Paswaters puckered as though swallowing a lemon. “Are there any… words?”
Totally unlike the skinny kid Howlett had shaken his head at that day. Now Paswaters was a man of forty, buff and confident.
Not that Howlett had a thing for men that way, but a few more years together on this Godsforsaken ship and who knows what might happen?
Did he want to say a few words? What words could sum up Gladys’ life? Her beauty, her strength, her dedication. Her love for Abby, her love for him. An eternity of unending puzzles, of unsolvable mysteries, of depthless compassion and unshakable resolution.
No. No few words could even begin to touch on what made Gladys special, and he would not insult her memory by endeavoring to do so.
With a simple shake of the head, Howlett said to the man on his left: “Light it up.”
Understanding in his eyes, the muscular man scratched a hefty match against the rusted console and lowered the resultant orange flame into the receptacle before him. The flickering glow sank into the metal runner, catching a trough of flammable liquid alight.
In turn, this liquid ignited the propellant that launched the torpedo capsule out into the tube, out into the heavy emptiness that swirled around the ship.
As the torpedo shot out of sight, Howlett caught a glimpse of the face within it. But it was not Gladys, not his wife. Instead, two beady glints of silver light shone from within a shadowed cowl.
Shaken, Howlett lunged at the now vacant torpedo tube. “Gladys!”
What did it mean? His wife, dead, replaced, launched.
The other men by his side mistook his fear for grief, gently pried at him to drag him back from the entranceway to certain death. Howlett fought them, flailing in terror and anger as he sought to dive into the tube after his wife’s body. To find it, make sure it was her after all.
Her, and not that chilling creature.
Suddenly silent, Howlett felt his friends let him go as he scoured the room for any sign of that shadowed creature lurking.
Was it here? Was it watching him? Now?
“Who are you?” Howlett yelled this at the empty parts of the room, Len Paswaters and Tom Bradshaw giving each other concerned looks at his outburst.
The ex-captain didn’t care. What did it matter if the men thought he was crazy? He had no one to lead now, no one to love.
There was only him, and his loneliness.
He sank to his knees, feeling the metal jar against his aged kneecaps. Maybe he would not be able to get back up again.
Maybe he didn’t care.
The same moment - thirty years ago
Minkowski space was folding in.
Panic gripped Captain Howlett’s heart as the fractured waves flowed outward and began to envelop the Colossus.
The minute he had engaged the Heisenberg drive, something had reacted badly to the crumpled space of the anomaly, and expanded it around the ship.
Of course, his XO had immediately demanded the engines be cut - and rightly so. He may have been infuriated by the woman, but she was a good officer to have at his side in a pinch. Her reaction times were the best of any officer he had ever seen, and he wouldn’t have any other person as his number two.
Regardless of his official complaint to the navy board the day they had announced her appointment to the position…
But silencing the drives had done no good. The damage was done; the hungry beast had been given its morsel and was now opening its jaws wider to devour the entire meal.
“Engage ion drives!” he snapped at Ensign Gomez at the port station. “Full reverse.”
The young man was already on it, of course. He knew how many beans made five, and before Howlett had spoken a word was already flicking a series of switches to activate the back-up engines.
With any luck, the cruder horse-power of those traditional turbines would work against the pull of this voracious spatial anomaly and allow the Colossus to break free.
A high-pitched whine could be heard even up here on the bridge as the ion drives engaged, but the only effect was a rapid back-and-forth movement that shook the crew around like ragdolls.
Even those solid, slow and steady engines could not free the Colossus from her enemy.
They would be stuck here for life.
There it was again. The figure, swaddled in robes as dark as the emptiness of space. Two pinpoints like starlight beneath its hood. Staring, it seemed, directly at Howlett.
Into the depths of his soul.
“Randomize the frequency,” Johnson said sternly, standing over Gomez’s shoulder as he worked.
Howlett shivered, turning back to see the cloaked figure missing again.
From the viewscreen, ripples of light like those from a swimming pool bathed the dank bridge in colorful waves. That dancing dapple continued to ebb and flow, lulling Howlett then almost into a standing sleep.
Until it all stopped.
The tweak Commander Johnson had made to the ion drive control program had done the trick. Whatever it was, the oomph it gave the ship was enough to allow it to break free from the four-dimensional grip the Colossus had been held in.
Howlett, on his feet, lurched and nearly fell as the vessel eased its way back from the anomaly’s mouth, the play of varicolored light already receding from the bridge. The usual dusty shadows creeping back into their customary locations, the grime hidden once again by their dark blanket.
And then they were free.
Unbidden, Gomez turned the ship to port and hauled them and their precious yet unstable cargo away from the lurking anomaly. They could take the long way around this time; Howlett was okay with that.
“Astounding work,” he complimented his XO. Her usual blank expression was unmoved by the praise, but nevertheless Howlett moved in for a hug.
Taking the woman by surprise, he wrapped his arms around her, patting her slender back in obnoxious relief.
“You saved the day.” His voice was muffled by her shoulder, but she heard him. Atypically, she even reciprocated for a moment, one of her hands tapping his own back in a remarkable show of emotion.
Remarkable for her, at any rate.
Pulling himself back off of her, he began to realize the unprofessional nature of his act, and proceeded to apologize. “Sorry. Life or death, you know. Hope my beard didn’t scratch your cheek too bad.” And he grinned in nervous joy.
Johnson’s face registered her confusion. “Captain… you don’t have a beard.”
It was true. Howlett reached his hand up to confirm it, rubbing it over the smoothness of his jaw. He never wore a beard; even stubble itched his skin like crazy.
Wonder where that thought had come from?
“Are you…”
Was that concern? For a second, Gladys Johnson appeared to be genuinely worried for her captain’s wellbeing. It was not at all like her usual manner, but Howlett thought he could become accustomed to such compassion.
“Just fine, Gladys. Just fine.”
His XO scowled at the unbidden use of her given name, but Howlett didn’t care. Despite his relief and ebullience at their salvation, something in his chest froze like ice.
A sadness hung behind the celebration. A loss.
What it was, he didn’t know. But it felt as if… as if he had lost a parent. So far, both his mom and dad were still alive - back on the colony. He believed so, anyway.
But this grief, this sorrow… It was a deep-set heartache that stunned and surprised Howlett.
Johnson appeared to sense something inside of her captain, but he tried to wave it off and resume his seat.
Somehow, though, he knew he would never be the same again.
A few moments later
The man behind the planet laughed.
As he frantically clutched at his flesh to keep the laugh within, to stop it seeping and oozing out of his flesh to melt all across the floor, his shadow took hold of the levers for him.
Pulled them, pushed them. Kept the world in motion. Maintained the order, and the chaos, and the balance.
Once the laughter was back inside where it belonged, the man behind the planet would regain control of the levers himself.
And then, oh then, they would have themselves a time.