Shipmind Chapter 33

Hyperspace was a fundamentally disorienting place, in as much as it even counted as a place. The dead zone loomed large behind my hull, a sheer plane of pure black from which no signal emerged, ever could emerge.

As far as anyone could ever tell, hyperspace just didn’t exist beyond that boundary. It would sit there, a perfect sphere of nothing embedded forever in the chaotic everything of hyperspace.

Oddly, as the only fixed features in an ever-changing realm, deadzones were remarkably useful as navigational landmarks, even as they cut off access to the places within and beyond them.

I felt part of myself dutifully update my charts to include this new one. It was getting easier the more I remembered.

On my bridge, Woozy hauled themself out of the padding on the chair at the engineering watch station.

“Wow, that was a rough jump shock!” they announced.

“Sorry about that,” I said. “I’d have said something if I knew that was going to happen.”

Pepper just humphed from the captain’s chair.

But Woozy, always the tinkerer, was already looking at the problem. “Could be from how close we still are to the deadzone.”

“Or maybe,” Pepper grumped, “our shipmind still doesn’t quite remember how to do a hyperspace transition.”

I deserved that, I supposed. The Ransom parts of me were still fuzzier than the Erin parts. But that didn’t feel right. “Both possible,” I said out loud, “but something about my hyperdrive is feeling weird.”

Woozy rubbed an ear in thought. “Sam gave it the green light, didn’t they?”

“They did,” I confirmed. “Give me a moment, I’ll patch in the engineering bay and we can ask.”

I shifted my attention. Sam had felt the rough transition too, and had been talking to me. I was suddenly hit with the memory of having already had part of the conversation.

Sam had unclipped from the wall restraint the second the shock had passed and the deck plates settled.

“That did not feel right,” they’d complained and swung back around to the control station.

“No,” I’d agreed. “Sorry, I’d have said something if I’d known that was going to happen.” Felt odd to have used exactly that phrase in two different conversations.

“Doubt it was your fault. Gimme a second.”

“Sure.”

It was always a pleasure to watch Sam work. On their old ship, Fearless, they’d have known every bit as much as the shipmind there. Here, with my memory and identity a patchwork mess, they doubtless knew even more than me.

Then awareness of my conversation on the bridge had caught up. Two sets of attention and memory became one and I was in one place again. That was a strange feeling.

“Hey, Sam, we’re talking about this on the bridge too. Let me patch you through the comm system.”

Sam nodded and cleared a space on their station’s virtual workspace, where I obligingly popped up the video window. On my first try, this time.

“Link’s up,” I announced. “I was just saying something feels weird about the hyperdrive.”

Sam nodded again to the video pickup. “That was me,” they explained. “I upped the gain on a few sensors in there. You getting anything specific?”

“No.”

“Agh, okay, let me just…”

“Sam,” Pepper interjected, “didn’t you and your people check the drive before we jumped? Multiple times?”

“We did. There shouldn’t have been any problems. Buuut…”

“Should is a dangerous word,” Woozy finished.

“Exactly. The hyperdrive is the most complicated bit of technology on the ship. Well, second most, after present company.”

I was feeling my way around the hyperdrive, probing the extra sensors Sam had patched in. What I felt was very worrying.

It seemed the hyperdrive had suffered worse damage that we’d expected, I explained to both ends of the comm call. Its nonphysical components were vibrating in a way they really should not, which we hadn’t been able to pick up on with the equipment we had while we were still in the dead zone.

And it was causing havoc with the main gravitics. The gravitic drive was supposed to absorb the immense forces any object jumping into or our of hyperspace experienced, but mine was struggling to even things out. Worse, the vibrations seemed to be increasing.

“In short, I don’t know if we can get back to the fleet base. The hyperdrive doesn’t feel like it will last nine days, and if it fails while we’re in hyperspace and we make an uncontrolled drop back into normal space, well…”

“Splat,” Sam said, far too evocatively for anyone else’s taste.

Pepper leaned over to the screen showing Sam’s face. “Can we drop back out of hyperspace now, make repairs?”

“Bad idea, skipper. Even if we could fix this with what we have on hand – and I’m not at all sure we can – that kind of jump shock again will slag the drive, and we’ll never get home.”

“And waiting for rescue isn’t an option. No one knows where we followed the Empire fleet to.”

“I think the best we can do,” I offered, “is head in the general direction of Commonwealth space, blaring our distress beacon, and hope someone picks it up.”

It wasn’t a good plan. Everyone knew the odds of a distress being being picked up in hyperspace. But no one had anything better.

I ramped up my gravitics and aimed for one of the twisty little passages I could just about see through my few working external sensors. The hyperdrive protested but kept us in this space. The next few days were going to be scary.