Novak's Last Theory, Part 1: It Hurts Every Time

I wake up with a lurch, heart pounding hard as I try to focus my eyes and shake off the numbness of cold storage. Alarms are blaring in my ears, telling me what I already know: we're all going to die.

Mental ritual: increment the count.

We're up, and pulling on our uniforms. Carter, hopping with one leg in his jumpsuit, falls over, cursing. There are five of us in the crew, and twenty-five colonists down below that will never wake up.

We do this every day, but the crew never remembers. I'm alone in that.

Chiasa Mori, the engineer, is already at a terminal, her fingers racing over the screen. She says it for me: "My God... that's impossible! The fold drive..."

"—is compromised," I finish. "We need to dump the core immediately."

She knows what that means as well as I do. She doesn't argue, but goes sprinting down the hall. I chase after. She needs to see for herself.

The engine room is a wreck. Broken pipes and hoses spewing steam, the fold drive clearly ruptured and lighting up the whole room with the blue glow of cherenkov radiation.

She hesitates. It's an awful choice. But when you have to choose between dying now, and dying later, you buy the time. She initiates the override, we both voice confirm, and the core launches aft, catapulted out into space.

The room is suddenly quiet. We stand there, breathing hard from the run.

"How many rems do you think we absorbed?" she asks.

"Just over 127."

She gives me a sidelong look.

A new alert sounds: the core has detonated. We brace for impact, and the ship is hit hard by the blast, setting off more alarms. Lots of secondary damage.

***

We typically have just under twelve hours before we burn up in the atmosphere of Metari. It's our target planet, but one that we didn't want to hit quite so directly. The crew usually spends their time exhausting the standard recovery efforts. Today I divert Dr. Matiba to help run some tests against my current theory. We fire series of electromagnetic pulses at varying frequencies into our wake.

Later, we join the rest of the crew on the bridge for the closing ceremony. Elin Gomes, the pilot, is at the helm, still trying to work a miracle. "Buckle up everyone," she says.

Metari fills the forward screen. First comes the rumbling, then the shaking. Both increase steadily.

Carter is shouting incoherently above the roar. Matiba has his eyes squeezed shut. Mori's cheeks are wet, but she doesn't look away. I slip my hand into the front pocket of my uniform, covering the photo of Jess and the girls there, as though I could shield them from what's about to happen. The hull is really kicking now. We've got only seconds before the ship breaks apart in a rush. It happens fast, but it hurts every time.

Mental ritual: recite the count.

Here we go --


[Jump to part 2: Conjectures and Refutations.]