New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

---

Apollonia felt hollow as she looked out the window.

For days now, she’d tried to work herself up to walking back onto that medical station.

But every day, she’d turned back.

Jaya’s words still echoed in her mind, and she wanted to hate the woman for saying something so stupid and basic and right.

She’d been on the margins her whole life.  Surviving, but not living.

That wasn’t something she was going to get past easily, maybe never.  But she had a choice if she lived in fear or took what control she could.

She felt the presence of Kell as he arrived in the lounge, but she wasn’t alarmed.  The tension rose in the room, as everyone else sensed his arrival.  Even if they didn’t see him, they felt it.

The Ambassador walked up next to her, staring out at the stars in silence.

And they stayed that way, for ten minutes.

The lounge had partially emptied by now, as the patrons – many still not realizing the source of their discomfort – went home or to another lounge.

Kell was slightly amused by it, she thought.  As dour as he acted, he had emotions lurking beneath the surface, and when she wasn’t so keyed up inside she could get hints of them, even if his face gave away nothing.

Apollonia was the first to break the silence.

“Something big is happening,” she said.

The being nodded.

“If it is not dealt with, then drastic actions will have to be taken,” Kell commented.

She turned to look at him.  “You mean you’ll have to take care of it.”

Kell gave only the barest hint of a nod.  “No one will like this outcome.”

“Can you stop it?”

Kell shrugged.  “Perhaps not.  But it does not matter, as one way or another the events that follow will not bother me.”

“You mean – either you win or you’re dead,” Apollonia guessed.

Kell did not answer this time, but she felt that it was what he meant.

“I have to go back on there,” she said.

“But you are afraid,” Kell noted.

She hated that he could read her so well, glaring at him.

“I am frightened as well, on some level,” Kell said softly.

And it shocked her to realize he meant it.  She could feel it now, an inkling of fear in the being.

“What do you think will happen if . . .” she asked, unable to give voice to the rest of the sentence.  If they failed.  If they did nothing.

“Something new will be born . . . beyond that, I do not know,” Kell replied.  “And that is what frightens me.  When it comes to times of action . . . rarely have they come quickly for my kind.  We act on our own timetables.”  He frowned, his eyes going down to stare not out at the stars, but at the floor.  “We are not used to acting in haste.  Our age can make such actions fall outside of our own consideration.”

“You contacted people, right?  That was kind of a quick move, wasn’t it?” Apollonia said.  “I mean, we’ve not really been that impressive for very long.  Going into space for only like a thousand years.”

“And we were pondering the question of your people for a thousand before that,” Kell said, glancing at her.  “Nearly two thousand years . . . and that was still a quick decision among my kind.”

Apollonia got a sense from Kell that she could not even quite understand; the closest she could equate it to was a certainty, a conviction so strong that it was more akin to the most intense emotions of people – like love or hate.

“After all,” Kell said, his voice tinged with bitterness.  “Why should we usually care?”

Apollonia had little to say to that, turning back to look at the stars.  These stars were a stranger to her; all her life, she’d seen them from her own system, and now they were deep in the void between them, lightyears from where she’d come from.  Their positions were all wrong.

“It was good talking to you, Ambassador,” she said.  “But I think I have to go.”

“I wish you fortune,” Kell said.  “And I hope that I will not have to follow in your wake.”

---

< Ep 3 Part 51 | Ep 3 Part 53 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

---

“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 . . .”

---

< Ep 3 Part 49 | Ep 3 Part 51 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

---

Nalen Kress wasn’t hard to follow.  Even with his headstart, the man was screaming as he ran, crashing into walls.  Before long, Pirra found blood splattered on a corner he’d hit, and from then on it had been even simpler.

Still, she did not let her guard down.  Already she’d had a gun disappear from her hands, and she couldn’t rule out that Kress couldn’t do something similar.

The image and words of the man he’d shot dead wouldn’t get out of her mind.  Even now it felt like his words were still whispering in her ear.

I will be reborn.

Did he mean that when the bizarre cycle this station was stuck in reset, he’d be alive again?

She couldn’t possibly know, didn’t understand any of this or possibly predict it, but his words felt more ominous even than that.

He’d known things, and she felt vulnerable in her ignorance.

As she moved swiftly after Kress, she began to hear him running.  His pace had fallen as exhaustion and his injuries caught up with him.

She could hear him around the bend.  They were back near the airlocks, where the gunman had shot at her, where she’d seen the three men kill themselves.

She stepped out, aiming.

“Step away from the panel!” she said.

He was at the control panel for the airlock, and looked up at her, sweat running down his forehead.  Panic and exhaustion competed with each other on his face, but he then smiled, a bitterwseet, hateful smile.

“You’re too late,” he said.  “I didn’t need much time.  This place will be destroyed, and I’ll be freed.”

“That’s not true.  My compatriot is undoing what you’ve done.  And when our ship comes, you can leave, too,” she told him.  “If you’ll just stop and listen to me, there wouldn’t have been a need for any violence at all.”

“He’s a fool if he tries to stop it.  But next time – next time it won’t matter.  I’ve been practicing and getting better at this.  Even if I come back, even if it starts over, next time I’ll succeed in destroying this place.”

He punched another button on the airlock.

She aimed above his head and fired.  The shot hit the bulkhead above him, making sparks rain down as the bullet disintegrated.

“I said no more,” she said.  “I will shoot you if I have to.”

“Go ahead,” he said.  And then he hit one last button.

The airlock doors opened – on both sides.

Air howled out, and Pirra was pulled forward, crashing to the deck and sliding towards the door.

She looked up in time to see Nalen Kress close his eyes and let go, being taken out the airlock.

Emergency doors began to slam shut, sensing the vacuum.

And one of them was above her.

If she let go, she’d be trapped on the airless side, but if she held on she’d be cut in half.

Digging her fingers into the grating, she pulled with all her strength, curling her legs-

The door slammed shut, and she shivered, waiting for the pain.

But it didn’t come.

Slowly, she opened her eyes and looked.

Her feet were inches from the closed door, and even her wing drapes were mostly safe.  A bottom edge of one was caught in the door, and she cursed, grabbing clumsily for the knife she’d taken earlier.

There was no choice but to cut off some of her feathers.  As long as she did it carefully, it wouldn’t hurt.

It’d be ugly – hideous, even.

But better that than to be dead.

Standing up, she moved to a monitor and activated the external cameras.

Nalen Kress was a speck now, drifting out into the void.

Pirra couldn’t condone what he had done, but she hoped that the man had at least some measure of peace now.

---

< Ep 3 Part 48 | Ep 3 Part 50 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

---

As Pirra left, Tred stared at the screen readouts.  The system thought it was running an unmanned test and wouldn’t accept external inputs to tell it to shut off.  Kress had disabled that option.

He could still manipulate the system that the man had thrown off, though.  Normally a plasma coil alignment took hours and a team of six.

But that was procedure, and this was his specialty.  He could not manually set the alignment, it was far too fine a work for a human to do.

He watched the stability rating of the generator.  It was just starting, and while it was already beginning a dangerous oscillation, the magnetic fields were able to withstand it for now.

He knew some tricks that could help him speed this.  He didn’t need to perfectly align it all right now – well, he needed it nearly perfect, but there was some wiggle room.  At least enough to make it not destroy itself . . .

Some of the magnetic fields were set right.  He just needed to give the others the appropriately mirrored settings.  It wasn’t a procedure you should ever do, eyeball the numbers, flip them, and force the system to implement them.  Normally you’d plot them all by calculations and then let the AI finagle the little details.

But the AI wasn’t working right now.  He had no other way.

His hands shook as he put in the numbers.  He did the math in his head; it wasn’t hard, but he’d never had to do it under pressure like this.

Even a glance told him that there were thirty-six of the magnetic field generators out of alignment.

And in some of them, Nalen Kress had anticipated his plan, he realized.  Four of the most critical magnetic plates that mirrored each other were all out of alignment.  He had no base numbers to work with to flip.

Quickly he finished the others.  The oscillations in the system were still growing, and alarms were beginning to increase in number, but the more of the system he had functioning properly, the slower the problem would grow.

But those last four – he had no simple tricks to fix them.  He was going to need to figure out a proper alignment to them that would function, with just a calculator.

Panic overtook him, and he froze.  The instability readings increased, and he knew that soon it’d be too late.  His problem would be solved by no longer mattering.

No one would ever even know he’d panicked.  They’d just know he’d failed.

But he’d been trained well.  He couldn’t think, but he could still act.

His fingers flew and input numbers.  He couldn’t be sure where he was pulling them from – memory?  He had looked at these numbers, and though the angles were absurdly precise, down to the twentieth decimal point, did he really remember them?

One more aligned.  His mind felt like it was a blank again, and he was second-guessing his own numbers.

“Fusion reaction destabilizing,” the computer said.  “Reactor breach imminent.”

“I know,” he muttered.

If he was wrong on his first number, then it would kill them.  But inaction was a guaranteed failure.  He just had to run with it.

The stress on the system was beginning to set off even more warnings.  He had so little time left . . .

“Reactor breach in ten seconds,” the computer said.

“I know, I know!” he snapped.

Taking the number he’d just input, he adjusted the last three magnetic fields to match.

His eyes went to the readout.  The oscillations wouldn’t immediately stop, but if he’d done his job anywhere close to right they’d begin to . . .

“Fusion reaction stabilizing,” the computer said.

“Oh thank god!” Tred burst out, his knees giving way.

Slumping against the console, he gave thanks to his teachers, both in mathematics and speed-typing, and whoever had made a keyboard that was proof against fat-fingered inputs.

“Simulation successfully completed,” the computer continued.

It still believed that it had only been a test.  For a moment, Tred was worried that maybe it had been, that he’d gotten this scared over nothing.

He looked through the readouts again.

But it had been a real threat.  He’d averted disaster.

“Computer,” he said, feeling exhausted.  “Get communications back online.”

---

< Ep 3 Part 47 | Ep 3 Part 49 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

---

The engine room seemed dimmer than before.  The main lights had gone out, and the only source left was a dim red emergency light that a human would see easier in than she would.

That meant that Tred hadn’t succeeded as she had hoped.  No power, no hope for contacting the team.  Maybe even no chance for the team to even escape this system.

Would their ship begin to ride the waves as this station was?  Oscillate through reality until it became stuck in an endless loop . . .

Moving from cover to cover, she kept watch and moved towards the primary engineering room.  It was a secure chamber just beyond the main room.  Maybe Tred hadn’t entirely failed.  If he had succeeded in even just resetting the system, the generator might be simply awaiting a manual input to get everything back online.

She’d risked contacting him, but the ship’s system informed her that the communication system was down.  She’d been keeping silent, and couldn’t know when that had happened, but it wasn’t a good sign.

Moving towards the door, she suddenly heard a noise from beyond and cursed, sidling up to the wall next to the entry.

It was unlikely to be Tred.  She’d given him orders, and the man was at least good at following those.

Readying herself, she slammed the door open button and took aim.

“Don’t move!” she cried, her sights on the man.

The man froze.  His back was to her, and she could not see his face, but both his hands were visible.  And on a console nearby was his pistol.

“Don’t even think of going for it,” she said.  “I won’t miss.”

He turned just enough to peer at her over his shoulder.  “You’ve got the wrong idea.  I’m not your enemy.”

Pirra ignored that.  “Step towards the main screen.”  Away from the gun.  The room was big enough she could herd him away and get it.

“No,” the man replied, his voice curiously blank.

“I will shoot,” Pirra hissed.

“With what gun?” the man asked.

And Pirra realized that her hands were now empty.

“What the hell-”  She moved to lunge for his gun.

“Don’t try it!” the man said, grabbing the weapon and pointing it at her.

“It works in ways you don’t understand, Lieutenant Pirra.  Sometimes it even listens to me.  Sometimes, I can reset the things I want, when I want,” he said.  “Except for the living . . . you I can’t reset . . . at least not yet.”

“How do you know my name?” she asked.

The man’s eyes glittered like a maniac.  “Do you really think this is the first time around for this?  For any of this?”

She didn’t have a response for that.  “Where did you get the gun?”

“From Dr. Crube.  She was wise, in a way, to sneak it on board.  She’s seen enough of the results of messing with Leviathans to know that sometimes a bullet is the best way out.  Too bad she realized it too late.”

Pirra kept her hands visible, trying to plan.  If she dove back, she might be able to close the door on him, but he was in the main engineering room . . .

“To be honest,” the man said.  “I don’t want to hurt you.  Or anyone.”

“You shot at me.  You were chasing the other man,” Pirra replied.

“I was scared.  You were new, at one time,” he replied.  “It’s been a long time and I saw someone new and I . . . panicked.  I wanted you away from me.  You have no idea how delicate it all is, how important it is that I don’t die yet.”

“You’re not in any danger from us, and we’re not trapped,” she said, forcing her voice to be calm while her stomach went into knots.  “We can still get out.  If we can contact my ship, we can leave.”

“You wouldn’t know if you were trapped,” the man said.  “And you need to listen to me.  The fusion reactor’s been sabotaged.  But I’m just a Nav officer.  I don’t know how to fix it.”

“Sabotaged?  How?”  Pirra demanded.

“The magnetic fields have been unblanaced, and the system set to run an emergency drill that it believes is a test.  So it’ll go full power in ten minutes unless we stop it.  And if it does . . .”

“Then the plasma will rip out the side of the reactor,” she breathed.

“Yes,” the man replied.  “It will destroy the station and kill us all.”

He looked back to the console.  “I can’t die.  Not, yet.  I’ve still got more to do.”  He brought up a screen.

“Look,” he said.  “You can see it’s true.”

She approached cautiously.  The man still held the gun, but he was not pointing it at her.

The screen showed exactly what he had said.  A test was warming up, noting the ‘scenario’, but on another window she could see that the magnetic rings had been tampered with, put out of alignment.  Alerts were going off, but the system had been blinded to itself.

This scenario had been locked in . . . well, it said days ago.  That seemed unlikely, but given how time was making no sense, it didn’t mean much.

It also meant that she couldn’t know who did it.  The three men who had spaced themselves might have set it before committing group suicide.  Or even Dr. Crube.

And them taking other ways out did make sense; a rupturing fusion reactor was not necessarily quick or painless, depending on just how it ripped the station apart.

“I don’t know how to fix it,” the man said again.  “But I can’t die yet.  I can’t.”

Pirra glanced to him.  “I don’t know how to fix it either.  It would take a highly skilled fusion engineer to do this . . .  The other man with me can do it,” she said.  “We have to get him.  If we can find him in time, he might be able to avert this-“

“Pirra!” she heard called from outside the room.

The man snapped his gun up to aim at the door, but Pirra held out her hands.  “That’s him!” she said.  “Trust me!”

The man hesitated, his finger on the trigger.  She saw the fear in his eyes as he watched her.  It was more than fear of what would happen, she felt.  It was a true fear of her.

“I promise you we won’t hurt you.  We want to live, too.  This station needs to live.”

The man hesitated.  “I want to trust you, but I don’t think I can.”

“I’m a Response officer,” she told him.  “I’ve taken an oath to serve the Sapient Union, like you did.  But I also swore to protect and save who I can.  Please . . . let me help you to live.”

The man’s hand slowly, hesitantly, lowered the gun.  He said nothing, only watching her.

She took a careful, slow step forward.  He didn’t move.

“Let me take it, and I promise I won’t hurt you,” she said.

His shoulders slumped, shuddering as something seemed to loosen in him.  Carefully, she took the gun from his hand.

Putting it on her belt, she called out.

“Tred!” she called.  “We’re in the Main Engineering Compartment!”

“We?” Tred came back.

“It’s under control,” she said.

The man was no longer looking at her, his eyes cast downward.  He didn’t even seem to be aware as Tred came into the doorway.  “I had to come tell you about the sabotage,” he said.

“I just found out, glad you could make it,” she said.  “Do you think you can fix it?”

Another man appeared beside him, the man who had appeared and run so many times.

“This is Nalen Kress, I met him coming down here and- oh god!” Tred realized the other man was there and visibly recoiled.

“It’s okay-” Pirra began.

“Shoot him!” Kress screamed, pointing at the disarmed gunman.  “Shoot him while you can!”

“No,” Pirra said, trying to calm him.  “He’s not armed, and we-“

Kress came towards her.  “You’ve got to protect me from him!  He’s the cause of all of this!  He’s the reason we’re stuck!”

His panic was almost infectious, and she saw terror spreading to Tred’s face.  It encroached upon her almost like an animal, and she held up a hand to try and push him back.  “Stay back-“

The room was too cramped, and as he moved towards her, she grabbed for the pistol on her belt.

But she couldn’t shoot the man just for being panicked.  He was raving, coming closer, and she prepared to give him a kick to the leg that might knock him back-

“Give it back!” the gunman cried, lunging for her.  “I can’t let him kill me!”

“Calm down!” she yelled, as authoritatively as she could.  But both men were rushing her-

Kress got his hand on hers, struggling for the pistol.  Then the gunman had as well.  They fought, Pirra throwing her elbows and knees into the men to fend them off.

With her training and enhanced muscles she was a match for them, but it didn’t mean it was easy.  The grasping hands were threatening to accidentally-

The gun fired.

The once-gunman gasped, his eyes widening.

“No,” he said, stumbling back.

Pirra threw a hard blow into Kress, sending him onto his back.

A bloody flower blossomed on the once-gunman’s chest, and he slumped against the wall.

“Finally,” Kress whispered fiercely.  “Finally!  You can’t stop it this time!”

Pirra aimed the gun at him.  “Stay on the ground!”

The whole room shook.  The fusion engine had just reactivated.

She stumbled, the gun almost slipping from her grip.

She managed to hold onto it, but the newcomer threw himself out of the room, clawing his way back to his feet and sprinting off.

“The magnetic coils are unbalanced!” Tred yelled in horror.

“Get on it!” Pirra said.  “Can you fix it?”

“I don’t know!  We’ve got one, maybe two minutes before it rips apart!” Tred replied, getting on the console and frantically beginning to work.

Pirra hurried to the shot man.  He was staring upwards, his eyes open.  Blood covered most of his front.

His pulse was thready, and even as she applied a closing bandage she knew it was too little too late.

She still didn’t even know his name.

His mouth moved, and the barest of sounds came out.

She leaned in to hear his last words.

“I will be reborn,” he whispered.

Then his pulse stopped.

Rising, Pirra looked out the door after the man who fled.

“He’s the one who sabotaged us,” Tred said.  “He’s an engineer – I think he’s trying to end all this.”

“What?” Pirra demanded.

“There was only one engineer stationed here.  Only an engineer could have set the reactor into this death spiral,” Tred replied, talking quickly.  “It has to have been him!  You need to get him, Lieutenant, if he gets away there’s all kinds of other things he can do to destroy this place!”

Pirra took a deep breath.  “Lock the door behind me,” she said, and charged out after the man.

---

< Ep 3 Part 46 | Ep 3 Part 48 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

---

“So . . . you’re Nalen Kress, a member of the crew who evacuated, but somehow you’re still here?” Tred asked.

Kress nodded.  “In a sense, I never left.  I got on a ship, I boarded and flew home, but this station . . . or rather, this system, it keeps a hold of you.  I don’t think the real me even knows that part of him is here.  He . . .  he may be just living the rest of his life like normal.  While another copy of himself is here.”

Since he had grabbed Tred, the man had been trying to calm him.  It took longer for him to go out of his panic than Tred cared to admit.  But eventually, he had realized that this man wasn’t the one with the gun – and wasn’t out to harm him.

The man had his head buried in his hands.  “And that stranger – I don’t know his name, or even how he got the pistol, he’s been here.  He corrupted the others.  I saw signs early on, but they ignored what I said.  By the time the man appeared to them, they didn’t even question him.  They just accepted him and he slowly turned them.”

“Turned them to what?” Tred asked.

“I don’t know.  But they went mad.  Three of them spaced themselves – and they smiled as they did it.  I was asleep at the time, but . . .  I saw the recordings.”

“So you’ve just been in an empty station with that gunman this whole time?” Tred asked.

“No.  It’s like we’re repeating periods of time over and over again.  I’ve identified at least three sections, each lasting just a few days.  I can’t keep track of anything more specific than that.  It starts the same, but it can end different.  Sometimes I can even get a message out, but . . . no one ever responds.”

“We can get you out,” Tred told him.  “We just have to get the generators back online so we can talk to our ship.”

The man looked unsure.  “How do I know that if I get off, I won’t just wake back up here?  How do you know you won’t?”

Tred blanched.  “I . . . I guess I don’t.  But if we don’t try . . . we have to try, right?”

His words sounded weak even in his own ears.

Kress nodded.  “Okay.  You’re right.  We have to try.  We have to try and get out of here . . .”

Tred stood up slowly, hoping the man wouldn’t tackle him again.  He offered his hand.  “Let’s head to the engineering department and try to get the generator started again, okay?”

Kress took his hand and rose, sniffing.  A trickle of blood was still coming from his nostril.

“And, um, sorry again about hitting you in the face,” Tred mumbled.

“It’s all right,” Kress mumbled, adjusting his collar.  There was an emblem there, and Tred had to squint to see it.

It was an engineer’s cog, like his.

*******

“Dr. Crube, how are you here?” Pirra asked.  “You’ve . . . you’ve been working off this station for years!”

The woman wasn’t that old, she realized; at least, she was not abnormally aged compared to how she looked on the training films.  But she was aged in the sense of worn down; her hair was broken and twisted, its color dull.  Her face was a mess, covered in dirt and sweat.  Her eyes were all that remained the same; brown, bright, and alert.

“So it’s as I guessed,” she said.  “I did leave.”

“Yes, but if so – how did you get back here?”

The woman was studying her.  “Who are you?”

“Lieutenant Pirra of the SUC Craton,” she said.  “We’re in the Terris system on a special mission.”

“You should never have come here,” the woman said.  “This area is forbidden, how and why did you come in?”

“We were ordered to under a special command,” Pirra said.  “We knew the risks when we came in.”

“No, you did not,” Crube replied.  “Because no one would wish for this.  It is an endless hell, Lieutenant.  You should leave – if you still can.  At least part of you will escape.”

“If I can, I will – and we’ll take you with us.  It might stick this time,” Pirra replied.  “But I need to know what’s going on.  I found the logs of another crew member, and he said in them that you had a theory about this.”

The woman was quiet again for a minute, her eyes unfocusing, gazing off into nothing.  “It just happened again.  Another shift.  Did you feel it?”

Pirra blinked.  She had felt nothing.

“Felt what?”

The woman raised a hand, holding it out flat.  “We exist within a narrow boundary of space and time.  But that is not all that exists.  There are higher and lower spaces as well.  We used to think we could calculate them mathematically, but we were wrong.  Our concepts of reality only function within this narrow band and . . . outside it, they begin to behave differently.”

“By spaces, you mean dimensions?” Pirra asked.

“Yes.  Do you know what happened to the Leviathan of Terris after the battle?” the doctor asked her.

“No, honestly I . . . they say it moved inwards towards the system, but not much else . . .”

“It entered into Terris Prime, the star of the system.  We don’t know why – we don’t even know why it was not ripped apart in the nuclear fires.  But it wasn’t.  It went into the star.  And that . . . that was what truly ended the Terris system.

“Its entrance into the star caused a series of rapidly-collapsing shockwaves in spacetime itself.  These waves expended their energy in a way we could not calculate, but I believe now much of it went into higher and lower dimensional space.  What effect it had, we don’t know.”

She locked eyes with Pirra.  “This station was meant to be positioned outside the point of those waves being a danger.  But our numbers were wrong.  Everything that’s been happening here, the shifts and jumps, the collision of past and present – these are the result of the station being hit by those waves.  Hit by . . . and altered.  It is slowly becoming more and more in tune with the oscillations of these waves, if it is not already.”

“Then why does it appear fine on the outside?  We saw no indication of any of this!” Pirra said.  “And why only here?”

“Because they work how they will.  In all honesty, the inner system is likely safer than the outer.  It makes no sense, but I have begun to learn more through every cycle, and in the ways of the warping of spacetime it does make sense.  Just as a black hole curves spacetime, these waves are curving higher and lower dimensions until this region has become a trap for them, oscillating back and forth, up and down.”

The woman smiled sadly.  “The station you saw appeared normal because in our plane of existence it still is.  But now that you’ve been here, you, too, are slowly being brought into alignment with the oscillations.  That is what happened with me, with the other crew, and with this . . . stranger.  If you come fully in line with the waves, then you will never leave.”

Pirra felt panic rise in her, threatening to overcome her senses, but she fought through it.  “Who is this stranger?  He seems key to all of this.”

“I don’t know,” the doctor replied.  She seemed almost annoyed by the question.  “He’s an echo in his own right.  Less real and more real than we are.  He carries between every cycle, he knows without trouble.  And he’s desperate.  For what, I don’t know.  Even if he was a real man once, his insignia puts him as a member of a starship’s crew, not on a station like this.”

“How do you know all this?” Pirra asked.  “I know you’re an expert in the topic, but you’re . . .” Pirra looked around the filthy room that had clearly been the woman’s abode for days if not weeks.  “You stay in here.”

The woman reached up, slowly, and tapped her head.  “Every time we go around I am less me and more something else.  I am changing.  Some day, I might even be more.  It began with the eyes . . .”

Pirra puzzled over that, but the woman spoke again.

“It will soon be time.  There’s a pattern, you see, and if certain things don’t occur then I won’t remember everything I’ve learned as well.”

“Things like what?” Pirra asked.

Dr. Crube smiled at her, and pulled a gun from under her blanket.

“Death,” she said.  She put the gun to the side of her head and pulled the trigger.

Pirra tried to lunge and grab it, but the woman was too fast.  The round punched out the other side of her head, splattering Pirra and the wall.

Dr. Crube’s body slumped to the floor.

Pirra let out a creak of shock, falling onto her back and scrambling away.

She was shivering uncontrollably, staring at the woman’s corpse that still had upon its lips a slight smile.

She couldn’t tear her eyes away..  She had seen the aftermath of suicides before, but never . . . up close.  Or in real time.

Training, more than anything, let her push through the shock.

Crawling over, she checked the woman’s body for a pulse, as she knew she should.  But there was no pulse, and frankly she’d have been terrified to find one.

The gun was still in the woman’s hand.  Pirra knew that she was going to need it.

Taking it, she wiped off the blood and stood up.

She still didn’t know what was going on, not really.  Just the words of a woman who might have been insane.

But she was more determined than ever to get the generator back online and get the hell out of here.

---

< Ep 3 Part 44 | Ep 3 Part 46 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

---

“Commander Caraval, we’ve got something on radar,” Bascet said.

Iago turned in his seat, the stiffness of his muscles making it uncomfortable.  “Is it debris?”

“No, sir . . . I think it’s a ship.  Its size and markings match those of the Sunspot.”

Taking a deep breath, Caraval steadied himself mentally.  They’d been travelling for days, searching for hours, trying to find some trace of the lost ship . . . and they’d finally succeeded.  He didn’t know if he was happy, but he had some sense of relief that was quickly swallowed by a worse dread at what they’d have to do next.

“Move us closer so we can get more information.  Everyone, take a quick rotation and limber up.  Use muscle stims if you need to.”

As the ship began to alter course, someone else looked to him.  “Are we going to have to board her, sir?”

“I don’t know,” he replied.  “We might.”

They moved closer.  They’d been in the ship for forty hours already, and they were all weary.  Sleeping was hard in full kit, unable to lay down.  None of them had hoped they’d actually find the Sunspot, the ship lost years ago at the battle here.

It was where they had predicted, based on its last known trajectory.

The doomed ship had been lost with all hands, as far as Caraval knew.  Why the Captain thought it was worth investigating, he couldn’t know.  He could just act.

An hour passed.  Streams of data were recorded, committed to nigh-industructible nano-diamonds, and ejected in a beacon out the back.  It was the safest way to make sure, if something happened to them, that their data could be still be recovered.

“Ship seems fully intact, sir.  We detect minimal changes to it.”

“Are there any?” Iago asked.

“I . . . I don’t see any.  Records are spotty on just what disabled the ship, sir.”

They didn’t have all the information, unfortunately.  Half the data taken from that battle had been locked away, too dangerous to ever see the light of day.  Rumor had it that people who saw too much grew tentacles where their eyes should be and started speaking in tongues.

He knew enough to know that those were just stories, but that the reality was worse still.

Memetic disease, they had coined it.  Knowledge that, when taken in, altered a person more subtly.

“Sir, I’m picking up krahteon emissions from the ship,” Bascet said.  “She’s contaminated all right . . . the rate is tremendous.”

“Are we at a safe distance?”

“Yes, sir.  I don’t think we can even get the ship in close, though.  Should I send in a drone?”

Iago considered a moment.  “Yes, do that.  Pipe the info feed to my systems only, bypass the main computer bank.”

The man hesitated, but Iago gave him a soft nod of encouragement, and Bascet complied.

It was a dangerous move.  And why he wished he had Pirra here with him; if he was . . . changed by what he saw, then Sgt. Bascet would be in command.  He’d prefer it be Pirra, but . . .

Well, at least she was safe on the monitoring station.  Someone on the team would go home alive.

“Live feed starting, sir.”

The feed was filtered through a number of dumb systems that tried to take out anything too harmful.  Certain shapes, that people had called before unnatural were known to cause long-term hallucinations.  Those were blocked out.  As well as certain forms of mutation of objects or even people that . . .

Well, he didn’t know all the words that had been made up to describe their effects.  He always just called them traumatic and counted his lucky stars he’d never had to see them.

He saw an image.  The Sunspot was still an enormous distance away, but the drone was basically one big camera and suite of sensors.

At the time, the Sunspot had been top of the line.  She would still be a good ship today, and her lines remained beautiful.

The drone was slowly orbiting the Sunspot, and he saw that debris travelled with the ship.  After years he’d have thought that would have dispersed as minor heading differences led them astray.  But no, they were there, and they were . . . orbiting the ship.  Just like the drone.

At this distance, the ship was still fuzzy enough to be relatively safe to look at.  Details were just lost, and he realized that the orbital debris was moving in a strange way, in lockstep.  As if it was connected to the ship and not just free-floating.

“It seems she got no lifepods off,” Bascet said.  “We’re registering all of them still on the hull.”

“Okay,” Iago muttered.  “Can you feed a three-dimensional view of the krahteonic emissions into this?  Use a subsystem we can jettison if it gets corrupted.  I just . . . have a feeling here.”

Bascet turned in his seat, grabbing the back of it to turn himself around enough to look into Caraval’s eyes.

“Sir, are you sure that’s a good idea?”

Iago wasn’t sure.  But he nodded.

“Do it, Sergeant.”

“Yes, sir . . .”

The feed came in.

Projected over his view, with the spinning of the drone he saw that his suspicions were correct.  The peaks of the krahteon emissions matched the debris field itself.  It was not the Sunspot that was contaminated but the junk!

“Take us back 30,000 kilometers,” he ordered.  “The debris field around the ship is heavily contaminated.  I don’t want any of that to drift near us.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ll keep monitoring the feed until we go out of range.”

He put his eyes back on the scans.  Something told him that he should cut the feed himself.  They had, by the loosest bounds of their mission, completed their job.  The Sunspot was still there and intact.  Close contact was out of the question.  Over the last two days they had deployed drones through their whole path that would monitor the system as best they could.  But already their sensors had confirmed that nothing had substantially changed about the system itself.

The star shone dimly, dimmer than it should, but it had been that way since the aftermath of the battle.  It wasn’t deviating enough to even make Tred worry.  The planets . . . well, they still existed.  Their drones would approach and send out their data over the next few months, but that was all he could do.

They should turn around, burn their one-time use dashdrive to get back to the monitoring station, and leave this place.

But he kept watching the feed.

The drone was still orbiting the ship, and the three-dimensional representation of the krahteon emissions was slowly growing fuzzier.  It aggravated him, as he could see that there was something to them; they weren’t orbiting like a normal debris field, there was a pattern.

He wanted to see what it was; it was important.  It was not a normal shape, there was meaning in that shape.  It reminded him of something, but he couldn’t quite place his finger on what.  When he figured it out, he knew it would be important.

The formation was growing dimmer, in fact he could no longer even make out the debris itself, just the field of emissions as they moved from the drone’s signal and data was lost.

His face moved closer to the screen.  The worst part was, he realized, that the shape of the field didn’t move as he expected as the drone rotated to give him a better view.  It was shifting in odd ways, but combined they meant something.  They formed a grander shape, and only if he could see the whole thing would it make sense.

“Computer, forget the feed.  Compile the krahteon emission scan into a three-dimensional image and show me that.”  He spoke quietly; there was no need to worry anyone else with this.  “Hide the data sifting behind my command clearances.”

He didn’t want Bascet to realize what he was doing and stop him.  This was bigger than him, bigger than their mission, understanding this.

As the imagine began to slowly take shape, he smelled something.  He couldn’t quite place it, but it tickled his memory in an odd way.  It was a stressful but happy event, and he wanted to understand why.

The shape coalesced, and he remembered the scent; it was from the hospital room the day his son had been born.

Why was he smelling that now?  Oh, well.  It didn’t matter.  It just meant new life.

And that’s what he was seeing.  The shape before him, it was an egg.  Or that was as near as he could call it.

But that word was so offensively inadequate that he hated it.  He squinted at the image, telling the computer to rotate through a dry mouth, blinking away tears that left his vision pink.

This was . . . greater than him.  Greater than all of them.

He was witnessing the first steps of something momentous.

“Sir!” he heard the scream.

“Turn the ship around and go back!” he realized he was screaming.  His throat felt raw, his eyes burned, and his body ached as he thrashed in his seat.

“I’m taking command!” Sergeant Bascet said.  “Secure the Lt. Commander and get us the hell out of here!””Take us back!  I have to see!  I have to see!” Iago screamed.

---

< Ep 3 Part 43 | Ep 3 Part 45 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

---

The files opened, and she saw a long chronological list.  The station had still been manned for months, and so there were dozens of entries, roughly one every day.

She glanced over the first one.  It was fairly standard; settling in, getting to know the peculiarities of this particular station.

“Scan the logs for anomalous activity on the station,” Pirra ordered her system.

It hummed for a second, then showed her a selection of dates.

There was a pattern to them.  They started intermittently, but slowly grew closer together.  Just like what she and Tred had experienced, but stretched over months instead of hours . . .

Near the end, they were all recording as anomalous.  A solid month of logs, with multiple entries a day, all of them had pinged her search for anomalies.

She opened the first.

“The strangest thing happened today.  I had left my coffee in the break room before I went onto bridge shift.  Stenni didn’t mind letting me go to get it.  Ten minutes after I got back, though, I couldn’t find it . . . and when I went back to the break room later, it was in there.  I know it was mine because it was in my mug that dad gave me.  Had I forgotten it?  I felt certain I had it with me both times.  Guess it’s the new station jitters, huh?”

The next entry opened.

“Today I heard someone shout in the hall.  I don’t know why I woke up, but I couldn’t get back to sleep so I took a short walk.  But then I heard a voice; it was a yell or scream, and it scared the crap out of me.  The system said no one else was even in that section with me, though.  I checked in anyway, asked if anyone had heard anything.  They heard nothing.”

The next night was also flagged, and she read on.

“I can’t get that scream out of my mind.  I checked my system, but it recorded no audio activity at that moment, nor did the system log.  Was it just in my head?”

A week later, a short entry;

“I heard the scream again.  But it was saying something this time.  I can’t be sure what, but I think it said that we don’t belong here.  I’ve heard of weird sounds on ships and stations before, but never heard of voices.  I told Saltzmann, but he said it was probably just someone watching a film in their room.  It could be, but it just doesn’t sit right with me.  It sounded so real.”

She didn’t have time to read all of this.  She skipped ahead half a dozen entries.

“Today I saw the unknown man again.  I went past the service hallway leading to the airlock and I saw four people huddled in the hall.  I’m sure it was four – Saltzmann, Porthu, Stenni, and . . . someone.  It couldn’t have been Crube or Joon, they were on the bridge.  Who is this man?  And why were those three talking to him?

“I was too afraid to approach.  After the veiled threats Porthu had made the week before, I didn’t want to anger him again.  I watched, but several minutes later I blacked out.  I woke up with Stenni over me.  Dessei are hard to read, but he didn’t even seem concerned.  Just watching me.  Didn’t offer me a hand up or say anything.  Eventually he just walked away.”

She read the next journal entry.

“I saw him.  Clearly, this time.  Not just a flash out of the corner of my eyes.  Not just mixed among the others.  He was down the hall from me, staring at me as I walked by.  I nearly had a heart attack, and when I looked back, he was still there.  We just stood like that for what seemed like minutes, when he said to me that we don’t belong here and ran.  I tried to follow him, but I lost him.  The system couldn’t find him and said there were still only six of us on the station.  I even looked through the past logs at prior crews, but saw no one who looked like him.  I tried reporting it to Saltzmann again, but he refused to write up a report on my ‘mad ravings’.”

She skipped ahead more.  There had to be something useful here.

One of the later entries was marked as important.  She opened it.

“I cannot track time anymore, I don’t know how long we’ve been here.  My log says that it’s only been months, but I can’t be sure.  I feel like I’ve written and re-written this entry – a thousand entries – that don’t show up.  Some of them are even corrupting, as if I’m writing over the exact same data over and over again.

“I can’t trust anyone anymore, except maybe Crube.  But she’s locked herself in her room and won’t come out, says she doesn’t even care if she’s brought up on charges of dereliction.  I got in to see her, though, but it was no good.  She says she knows what’s going on, that she’s figured it out, but she won’t tell me.  I think she wanted to, I think she felt bad not telling me, but she said it was for the best.

“Saltzmann doesn’t even seem to notice our absence.  Just chatting with his new friend all the time, or with Porthu and Stenni.  Or all of them together.  They’re together most of the time, talking about something they won’t let me in on.  Acting like that stranger is part of the crew.  But he only ever says to me that we don’t belong here.

“I feel like I’m replaying the same days over and over again.  Some days I forget the man isn’t supposed to be here and just go about my business.  It’s impossible, though, I remember disembarking.  I have memories of getting on a ship and leaving, flying away from this place, of going home, of being home . . .

“They’re not just imaginings!  They’re not made up in my head!  These are memories, memories of leaving but I still wake up every day on this station!

“Am I insane?  I remember it a dozen different ways.

“Or . . .

“Or is a part of me stuck here?  Can I never truly leave?  A never-ending cycle of this hell, running over and over?

“Something happened.  Something has trapped a part of my mind, my soul, on this station.

“I’m alone, and I’m afraid.”

Pirra closed the log with trembling hands.

How long had she and Tred been here?  She tried to remember, but it felt like days, if not longer.  Were they supposed to have been here for days?

She wanted to ask her system, but she knew it was unreliable.  She had only her own sense of time to tell.

And she didn’t know.

“We have to get out of here,” she said out loud.

Because they didn’t belong here.

The logs had said that Dr. Crube had locked herself in her quarters, and there weren’t that many crew compartments on this station.  The one next to this room had been sealed, she wondered . . .

Creeping into the hall, she went to the door.  She hated not acting more directly, but she needed the information.  She needed to know so she could plan.

The door lock had been put into a looping cycle that would prevent it from responding to commands.  It was a basic and quick way to keep a door from responding, but she could simply reset it.  Surely the station commander, Saltzmann, could have done the same.

If, as the logs said, the man had stopped caring, though, then this would have stopped anyone with only a casual knowledge of these systems.

She ended the loop and the door opened on her command.

A stench came out to greet her, an organic smell that had been sitting for a long time.

Ignoring it, she went in, staying low.  Perhaps this was where one of their mystery people had been-

Something moved.  A shape, like a person.  Then, a voice spoke.

“You’re not Stenni,” a woman’s voice croaked.  “You’re . . . new.”

“Who are you?” Pirra demanded, watching the hunched figure and holding the knife ready.  “Identify yourself.”

The woman looked up, a smile splitting a face ravaged by stress.  She did not even need to speak for Pirra to recognize her.

“Dr. Crube?” Pirra breathed.

---

< Ep 3 Part 42 | Ep 3 Part 44 >