Wanderer - Origins

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

To Jess’s surprise they didn’t lose sight of the tunnel. The Wanderer continued to drift, but it slowed as it went. When he first noticed Jess grew excited, certain there must be something slowing them… and so something to push against.

There wasn’t. As best the Wanderer could tell the nothingness surrounding them simply drained away the momentum of their movement. And it hadn’t killed it fully. They were still drifting away, at what seemed to be a constant speed now. Every minute left them further from the tunnel, and from their only hope of safety.

Anger washed over Jess. He couldn’t believe he’d got this close to seeing the Wanderer’s home, only to fail. Worse than fail. To die! The Wanderer would be able to keep him alive for years, but what sort of life would it be with only Teeko and the ship for company?

He didn’t have to be lonely. The thought startled him. He wasn’t sure where it came from, but he couldn’t shake it off. He didn’t have to be lonely. Not with Ali, Dash and Ben on the ship. Even if they converted him, if the Taint took him over, would it really be so bad? They would be just as stuck as he was, but at least he wouldn’t be lonely.

He crushed the idea angrily. How did he know they would be as stuck as him? How did he know they wouldn’t be able to get free and continue to spread the Taint, using the Wanderer this time. It wasn’t a risk he could take. And it would be as good as admitting he would never get Ali, his Ali, back again.

He vented his anger by unleashing the Wanderer’s weapons, blasting randomly at space around the ship. The lasers faded out long before they should have, their energy sapped away by the nothingness that surrounded the Wanderer. So did the blasts of plasma.

The missiles behaved differently. They launched quickly, but as soon as they left the effect of the Wanderer’s shields they started to slow. Each missile ended up drifting like the Wanderer. When they exploded the shock wave was muted. Still, it proved he wasn’t in normal jump space. If he had been then the missiles would have disappeared from sight as soon as they left the Wanderer.

Jess glared at the nothingness around him, anger still burning in his chest. It wasn’t fair. After everything he’d been through, everything he’d lost, how could it end here? What else was there?

The jump space weapons! He’d used them before to destroy ships in jump space. Would they work here? The jump engines couldn’t get a grip but they worked differently. Jess charged the jump weapons, then unleashed them on the nothingness around the ship, focusing them into a narrow area.

There was no effect at all. He might as well not have fired them for all the difference it made. Jess screamed in frustration, giving the anger inside voice. It made no difference to the nothingness but it helped him. Sucking down a deep breath he let loose again, shouting his pain at the darkness.

The anger couldn’t last forever. Eventually Jess’s screams subsided. His throat hurt and his voice was cracking, but at least the worst of the anger was gone.

A roiling darkness threatened to replace it. Maybe this was for the best, the Wanderer lost forever and Jess shut away from any further pain and loss. Almost everyone he cared about was gone. Only Teeko remained, and the alien’s own path was full of pain. Teeko desperately wanted to find his own kind but Jess was becoming convinced it was a hopeless task.

What else was left? Saving Ali? Really? Was there any hope? Even if, somehow, Jess found a way to drive the Taint from Ali’s mind, would that really bring her back? Or would it leave an empty husk, a shell that resembled Ali without being her?

Jess’s sight blurred and tears started to flow down his cheeks. Longing burned in his heart at the thought of Ali. He’d gladly accept being trapped if he could just hold Ali one more time. His body shook as sobs wracked his body.

In the end it was thinking of Ali that forced Jess into seeking a way to escape. If he knew she was gone, that the Ali he knew was dead, he could have come to terms with it. Or if he knew she was somewhere else and safe, or as safe as anywhere seemed to be, then he could have accepted being trapped.

But he didn’t know. There was still a chance she was trapped by the Taint. The memories of his last encounter with her kept returning. Floating in the alternate world of the Wanderer’s systems, Jess had been dying. The Taint had already used Ali’s image time after time, tempting and taunting him.

When yet another image of Ali appeared he’d expected more of the same. But this image was different. This was more than an image. This was Ali, the real Ali, and she had saved him from destruction. And in doing so she might well have been destroyed herself. Jess didn’t know.

It was that uncertainty that pulled him out of the black lethargy that had taken hold. He had to know. He had to keep trying. If Ali was still alive then he had to save her, or die trying. And if not… well, at least he would know. Maybe he wouldn’t be able to keep going, but at least he would know.

Jess studied the situation. The Wanderer had drifted further. The tunnel was still visible but it was much smaller than before. Jess connected to the Wanderer, hoping it had struck upon a way to get clear. The roiling uncertainty he felt from the ship killed off that hope.

It didn’t dent Jess’s determination. There must be a way out of the situation and he was going to find it. He started experimenting, stretching out with the jump engines to examine the nothingness around them. Working with the Wanderer to try using the engines in different ways, to tune them differently.

Idea after idea came to nothing. Jess tried to use basic physics, ejecting heavy lumps of damaged material at high speed in the opposite direction to the tunnel. He felt hope flare as it worked, shifting the ship slightly. In normal space that would have been enough. Once moving the ship wouldn’t have slowed, and he could have boosted the speed by ejecting more mass.

This wasn’t normal space. The Wanderer soon slowed to a stop, then reversed direction as the slow flow away from the tunnel continued. Still, it had worked. They weren’t stuck!

For a moment hope flared inside Jess, but it was crushed when he had the Wanderer run the numbers. Even if they ejected every atom of the Wanderer to get Jess moving he still wouldn’t make it halfway to the tunnel, and he’d be left without a ship.

Jess felt despair coiling in his stomach once more but he pushed it aside. It might not be enough but the idea showed the Wanderer wasn’t completely helpless. There would be a way out. He was certain. He just needed to find it.

With every other idea exhausted Jess returned to the jump engines. They couldn’t find any purchase in the nothingness, he’d kept them trying while experimenting with other ideas. The tunnel shimmered tantalisingly. The jump engines could get traction there, but it was far beyond their range. Just a single jump engine would be enough to get the Wanderer moving in the right direction, and keep it doing so.

Maybe that was it. Could the Wanderer modify one of the jump engines to reach that far? Jess asked the question. The Wanderer wasn’t certain, but it was keen to try. Jess and the ship got to work, modifying a handful of jump engines each in different ways.

The results were mixed. Some didn’t work at all. Some worked less well than normal. Two not only worked but they had their range increased. Not by a dramatic amount, but enough to give Jess hope.

They worked on, tweaking and experimenting. Working out what changes were needed to increase the range. They managed to double the normal range. Then triple it. There was a long way to go, though. The Wanderer estimated the distance to the tunnel was at least one hundred and eighty times a normal jump engine’s range, and it was slowly increasing all the time.

The next test gave a range of almost ten times normal. Jess worked feverishly, afraid of the Wanderer drifting just too far away to reach the tunnel while they experimented.

The next test managed more than twenty times the normal range. While still a long way short of the target of one hundred and eighty, it was still massive progress.

But the next was only twenty-three times normal range. And the one after that wasn’t even twenty-four. Several more attempts didn’t extend the range at all. Jess and the Wanderer continued to experiment, trying ever wilder changes, but none increased the range and most decreased it.

Two hours later Jess finally accepted defeat. The range of jump engines was topping out at about twenty-four times the normal range. Nothing he or the Wanderer could come up with could extend that. That left them massively short of the target they needed, which was now over one hundred and ninety times the normal range.

Tears blurred his eyes as the situation sank in. It wasn’t the fact he was going to die. It was the loneliness. The realisation that he was cut off from every other human being. Jess felt strong affection for Teeko and the Wanderer, but the thought of drifting through the nothingness with only them to speak to was crushing his soul.

He wondered how long he would last. How long before death seemed the only option. Or worse, how long before he freed Ali in his desperation and so unleashed the Taint upon the Wanderer. The temptation was already building, and it would only grow worse over time.