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“Observation platform, this is Response Team. Was that a body that just went out the airlock? Are you there?”
Power had come back to the station minutes before, and Bascet had halted their ship at a safe distance. Even with power back, the signatures had been wrong, unstable.
For awhile, it seemed like the station was going to rip itself apart.
“We’re here!” he suddenly heard. It was Tred. “We’re alive, we’re okay!”
“Report status. What happened, Ensign?” Bascet demanded.
“Um, well. A lot of stuff? But we’ve got it under control. Er, but that body float by, that’s . . . that’s part of the problem that was solved.”
“A body? Who is it? Where’s Lt. Pirra?!” Bascet demanded.
“I’m here,” Pirra’s voice came on. “It’s a long story, sergeant. We had intruders . . . of a sort. But where is Lt. Commander Caraval?”
“He’s been . . . relieved of duty, Lt. I’m acting-commander. Is the situation safe to dock?”
Pirra was quiet a long moment. “Docking bay is working. You can connect any time.”
Bascet felt like something was wrong, but he didn’t know what else to do.
“Begin docking procedure,” he ordered.
Pirra had been worried about what was going on with the team, but after conferring with Bascet, she understood. It was horrible to think of Caraval being affected like that, and she’d spoken to him briefly, but he seemed all right.
Still. That wouldn’t be enough to let him take back command, not without a more thorough check-up.
It meant it was all on her.
It took Bascet a little while longer to understand what had occurred on the station, and she knew he was still nervous about her and Tred.
That she could not even really explain what had happened didn’t help. But ultimately, the man had accepted her taking command. And the first thing she’d done was order their evacuation.
“It’s unsafe to be on here,” she ordered. “We’re leaving immediately, we’ll operate the zerogate and comms remotely.”
“Er . . . all right,” Bascet said. She could tell he was worried he’d made the wrong decision handing power over to her.
She was the last off, letting the rest of the team get on – including Tred – before her.
Before she boarded, she took just a moment to glance back.
She’d felt no tremors, felt nothing from the station, for awhile now. Were they still skimming through time? Through dimensions?
As was usual with this sort of thing, she had no idea. There was not a neat ending for her.
She turned and boarded, wondering what she might be leaving behind.
Once they detached and drifted the ship away, she felt a little better.
“Activate the remote comms and connect me to the Craton,” she ordered. “And prepare immediately for a zerojump out of here as soon as we can.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Bascet said. That she was getting them out of Terris seemed to strengthen his belief in her.
While the communications were set up, she looked to Tred.
“Are you all right?” she asked him.
“Huh? Oh . . . uh, yeah,” he replied. “I didn’t get hurt. Well, some bruises, but that’s all . . .”
She nodded, and put her hand on his shoulder. “You did well, Tred. You came through when we needed it.”
The man’s face went into an expression she could not even decipher.
“Th-thank you, Lieutenant. You, um, you did good, too.”
“Connection to Captain Brooks coming through,” Bascet told her.
“Captain, this is Lt. Pirra, acting-commander of the mission,” she said.
This wasn’t a real-time transmission, and so she’d just have to tell him and then wait half an hour for a response. Communications were fast, but still not instant unless one wanted to use more power than the station could even produce.
“We’ve run into difficulties, but the mission has been completed. Lt. Commander Caraval located the Sunspot and we are including all relevant, safe data. Potentially unsafe data will have to wait until our return.”
She hesitated. “In the process, Caraval was potentially contaminated by a memetic infection. Please have medical resources standing by.
“Here on the station, we encountered our own problems . . .”
Other Terrestrial 