First Transition

by Clyde Andrews

Part 1 appears
in this issue.

conclusion

“Coming, sir,” the commander snapped back, he then glared at the navigation officer.

Everything comes from the top, and this was a perfect example of this motion in practice. The navigation officer then turned his attention to Tom. Tom had only just approached the illuminated chart-table, crystals in hand and a grin that would require a tragedy to erase.

“We need to verify the readouts!” the officer said with equal urgency and force that the captain had laid on him and with a click of his fingers at Tom.

“Yes, sir.” Tom handed him the crystals, but was almost reluctant to do so. After all, to give them up meant the reason of his being here no longer existed. The lower decks would call him back again, and again he would have to suffer Mr. Pritchard and his pathetic mind games. He’d have to return once more to mopping the floors or cleaning the mess hall.

“You are now excused,” the officer of the watch shouted over the din of the Control Room.

Tom, with a sigh, turned to leave.

“Hold on just a minute ... Tom, isn’t it?” The navigation officer smiled, for he must have recognised Tom from the mess hall and his friendship with Xavier.

“Yes, sir.” Tom’s eyes sparked.

“Stay a moment. Experience the transition from the best place possible.”

“Yes, sir.”

Tom returned immediately with a spring in his step and a sense of relief that the navigation officer had seen his interest in the Control Room goings on. Xavier must have mentioned it to him.

Tom sat and watched the goings and coming with his mouth agape.

The activity in the room was reaching fever pitch. Bodies seemed to meld in the blur of movement, and even people’s voices became one in the din.

“Three minutes to transition,” the Captain boomed above the commotion, his voice cutting through the noise, rising above everything else without effort, just as a butter knife would through the ships issue meat loaf.

Every nanosecond in the Control Room was an achievement for Tom, and to watch, to be a bystander as the ship approached transition, was almost an honour. His smile was now permanently etched onto his face. He just had to sit down before he became overcome and fainted.

* * *

The Seeker, now completely through the Kuiper belt, went into first transition. The ship wobbled as though it were material in a breeze. Then it disappeared into hyperspace: the force of this manoeuvre pressing against all the crew. To Tom it felt like all his internal organs wanted to occupy his feet. He felt woozy, he felt sick, and he felt queasy all at the same time. His equilibrium was playing havoc with his body and he physically felt like he was going to hurl his breakfast into his lap. Then, suddenly, it stopped just as quickly as it started. Stars returned in the view screen as the Seeker entered normal space once more.

The activity, even after transition, continued unabated until the navigation officer suddenly drained white. Tom was the first to see this, and his stomach turned.

Something was wrong.

“This isn’t the first transition point, Mr Halloway! My God, where are we, man?”

“What’s the problem, Mr. Jones?” the Captain said, clearly unimpressed as he pressed buttons. “I hope you checked those figures carefully. You know just as well as I that one miscalculation and we could be lost forever. No chance of rescue.”

“Darn it,” Mr. Jones muttered under his breath. He turned to Tom, his eyes wide. “Tom, do go down to engineering as quick as you can, we need confirmation of these readings. I’ve lost communications with the lower decks for some reason. From here it looks like we’ve jumped to Wolf 359 instead of Epsilon Eridani and-”

But before he could finish the sentence Tom was already on the run. Enthusiastically he barged past the officer of the watch and headed for the Control Room hatch. Tom, if nothing else wanted to impress.

He left the Control Room and was running down the hall and passing through the mess within an instant. Running so hard and fast that his lungs felt like they’d burst from the exertion. But he kept up a frantic pace to achieve what he had been instructed to. The first order he had ever received from someone other than Mr. Pritchard. It was thrilling in a way.

Tom ran until sweat poured from every pore and his muscles screamed for oxygen. Finally he made it. He gasped and panted and supported himself on the door frame of engineering when he got there. He felt a sense of victory course through him, but it was a short-lived victory. Tom saw something that made his blood freeze.

He saw Mr. Pritchard standing over what he could only guess to be the engineering crew: the now dead engineering crew. All twenty of them. What confirmed the fact for Tom that Mr. Pritchard had murdered them was the pistol he was holding, still smoking. The grin on the old man’s face was frightening. He looked kind of sinister and kind of mad all at the same time. Tom, without thinking, quickly slid back into the hall, keeping his back to the wall.

Thankfully Mr. Pritchard hadn’t seen him — well, he hoped Mr. Pritchard hadn’t seen him.

“Why?” Tom gasped. He then decided, whether out of courage or stupidity, to rush in and try to at least disarm Mr. Pritchard. Or, if anything, to delay him until some senior officers arrived to sort all this out. “You bastard!” Tom added with a scream as he pushed himself off the hall wall and entered engineering.

He made a bee-line for the traitor.

It was all a blur what happened next. Tom found himself on top of Mr. Pritchard, the gun he held careened across the highly polished floor of engineering. There was a struggle, a few chosen words from Mr. Pritchard, and a hell of a lot of screaming from Tom as he tried to keep the man pinned down. It was a hopeless struggle, but Tom kept on fighting valiantly.

Then Tom, from the corner of his eye saw more and more men pour into engineering like water coming from an open tap. In came officers, stewards, crew, and even kitchen hands. It must be some kind of mutiny in progress, and it seemed to Tom that Mr. Pritchard was the instigator, for he barked orders at these men.

There had been rumours the old man was planning such a thing, but Tom didn’t take them seriously. This proved, however, that it was more than speculation, it was really happening, and right in front of him, too.

Mr. Pritchard overpowered Tom easily and he flung him across the room as if he were a rag doll, causing him to slide flat on his back. Tom banged his head on a low control panel in the process, an action that stopped him from sliding all the way across the room and right into the engine bay. Something he was thankful for.

Wires and conduit poured out of the broken panel to cover Tom, and he writhed on the floor to try and free himself.

“You don’t know what you’re doing, boy,” Mr. Pritchard spat. He had a fire, a madness in his eyes that Tom had never seen. It was terrifying. “I’m the boss here.”

Mr. Pritchard then charged toward Tom. The anger he displayed openly on his face spilled over into the words he screamed, and the man spluttered phrases Tom hadn’t even heard at the docks.

Then there was a sudden silence in the room.

Everything went in slow motion, even the foul words Mr. Pritchard shrieked lost all their volume. Tom, in the tangle he had found himself, found something hard and cold behind his back.

It was the gun.

Without thinking, he raised it and instinctively fired. It was as if he watched himself fire the weapon from outside his own body, not really in control of his actions. A neat little black hole now marred Mr. Pritchard’s pristine white uniform right in the middle of his chest.

Tom gulped, stunned, yet not fully understanding what had just happened.

Mr. Pritchard slumped to his knees, gasped out something incoherent, and then silently but inevitably fell to the floor. Tom watched as the man fell, only to stare in shock, bewildered and trembling, as the man’s head fell inches from his feet.

He realised he had just killed a man.

Moments passed, and the silence melted away until Tom finally heard something. It was muffled at first. Then, as the seconds ticked by, became clearer and clearer.

It was Xavier standing over him, pulling away wires and broken panel to free him. “You’re a hero, Tom.”

Tom, helped up by his friend, couldn’t peel his gaze off Mr. Pritchard, whose eyes stared blankly up to the ceiling, sending shivers down Tom’s spine. What had happened was surreal and unbelievable.

The gun he had clung onto peeled away from his fingers and dropped so that it landed with a loud clank on the steel floor. The sound knocked him back to reality.

“I-I don’t feel like a hero.”

“From now on you’re working with me, you hear?”

Tom felt Xavier slap him on the back. He could now hear the rest of the crew cheering. But he couldn’t help but think of what he’d just done.

“Um... yeah, sure,” Tom said, as he was led out of the room. Not fully grasping what had transpired, or in complete control of his senses. “But how? Why?”

“When you came into the Control Room with those data crystals the Captain knew straight away that Mr. Pritchard was planning something. We’ve been watching him.”

“I don’t understand.”

“We don’t need data crystals, back-up or not, in the Control Room. Everything is computerised. Everything is right there where we need it. Mr. Pritchard wanted you out of the way. He only wanted those loyal to him on the lower decks so he could pull off this little mutiny of his. He wanted everything to go off just as he had planned,” Xavier explained.

“When he took engineering he must have had time to feed data into the main computer. Thankfully we locked him out just in time and no real harm was done. Other than missing our first transition point, that is.”

“But...”

“It’s just a bit of bad timing for him that you can run so darn fast, Tom. The Captain sent security as soon as you arrived in the Control Room, but you got here so quick.”

“Sorry, I’ll walk next time.”

“No you won’t,” Xavier added with another slap on Tom’s back. “We need enthusiastic trainee Control Room crew like you on board.”

“Did you say: Control Room crew?”

“You betcha.”

Tom walked out of engineering with Xavier, a smile upon his face that would be there for weeks to come. He just knew it.

“Hey, Xavier?”

“What?”

“I think I hate transitions, too,” Tom said with a quiet chuckle.

Proceed to Challenge 275...