22: Luna, We Have A Problem

Kyle Carter sat up on the cot, his shirt stained black with blood. Completely disoriented, he tried to stand up, but his knees buckled under his weight, sending him sprawling to the ground with a moan. An image of a gleaming white ship flying through black ash flittered through his mind. When he looked up from the floor, he saw a man in a white suit studying him thoughtfully, always thoughtfully. The man smiled suddenly, snapping out of some trance. “Ah!” he said, smiling brightly, as if Kyle’s presence was a delightful surprise. “I see our guest has finally woken.” The man in the white suit stood up and fingered something on his collar. “Bring some breakfast down. He’s probably starving,” he muttered.

Kyle stared on from the floor, barely registering anything. Then he slumped over on the ground and everything went black.

“So, where were we?” The man in the white suit crossed his legs and laid one hand in his lap. In the other was a drink. Kyle had the same drink, but he couldn’t reach it. He didn’t know what it was either, but it couldn’t be poison since he was already hooked up to maybe half a dozen lines.

“Spoken as if we were having a light conversation,” Kyle remarked. He squirmed in his seat in frustration, tangling the tubes that pushed and pulled fluids through his body.

“What could it be that isn’t light conversation?” The man in the white suit inquired with a smirk. Kyle wanted to punch it off his face, but his wrists were buckled.

“Why would light conversators need to drug and restrain fellow light conversators?” Kyle asked.

“Conversators isn’t a word, my dear boy,” the man said, smiling like it was his job. “But back to the topic: you were telling me about your little voyage to the big treaty convention!” He said those last four words like they were a figment of Kyle’s imagination, always smiling.

Kyle pulled and fought against the shackles over his wrists for a moment. He swore under his breath, and closed his eyes. A beat. “Fine, then. I’ll continue.”

“Hey guys,” Kyle said, arriving at the bridge of the ship. Commander Piott sat at his chair attached to a rail on the ground. Since the dashboard was just so freaking huge, he had to install a super-fast way to get from end to end. Kenny was sitting nearby, reading a book on his tablet. Bradley was fiddling with some gadget without even really looking at it.

“Hey,” muttered Kenny without even looking up.

“Kyle, glad you came up,” said Piott, turning around. “It seems the portal to Lightsyphon may be malfunctioning.”

“What, you want me to float out there and fix it?” Kyle said incredulously.

“No, but I want you to keep the ship from killing me while I float out there and fix it,” Piott said. “Look here, this –” he started, but Kyle interrupted him. “– that would be the Vector Monitor control, yes, Commander, I took a basics on piloting in the future.”

Piott smiled. “Well, that makes my job much easier. Anyway, we’re only a day away, even though without this portal it would be a million years going at the speed of light.”

“How does it work, exactly?” Kyle asked.

“It is an atomic copy of the portal at Lightsyphon. A portal is an area of space that occupies two different places at once. Depending on where you are, you will fly into one copy, occupy both for an infinitesimal moment, and then fly out the other.”

“I see,” Kyle said. He didn’t see.

Just to be clear, the Omniscient Narrator might possibly be the only one in the history of the entire galaxy who actually completely understands this concept. But it doesn’t matter. All you, the Glorious Reader, needs to know is that it gets you from Here to There in literally no time flat.

“That’s good,” said Piott. “Now, I need to suit up and float out there before we go flying through a Void portal and get trapped forever in paradox space.”

“That would be awfully nice, not being trapped forever in paradox space,” Kyle said.

Piott left the bridge, and, after a few minutes, became visible through the glass on the front wall of the ship, carrying a large cable connected to the ship. He floated over to a box the general shape and size of a refrigerator, cracked it open, hooked it up to the ship, and moments later, a large clear bubble flickered into existence around Piott. It was the color and texture of bubblegum. Just as the nose of the ship entered the light pink bubble, a colossal orange desert planet seemed to yawn into vision in the distance, directly in front of them. Lightsyphon hung in the vastness of space, silent and majestic.

Piott grabbed ahold of a handle on the side of the ship and rode alongside, waiting to be completely clear of the portal before reentering. Then he pulled on the cable, disconnecting it from the refrigerator. The portal flickered away again. Behind the portal was an even bigger red sun.

Kyle watched all of this from the bridge. He hadn’t really needed to do anything, really. But as soon as the cable came out of the fridge, the entire ship went black. Kenny and Bradley moaned. Power outage. Crap.

Kyle looked out the window. Piott was looking up at him questioningly, then pointed to his oxygen tank. Kyle got the message immediately: Running low! Hurry up!

Double crap.

“Bradley!” Kyle turned around. “I need to know where the back-up generator is, quick!”

“Storage 3B,” Bradley said. Kenny spoke up. “Where’s the commander?”

“Piott is trapped outside. His oxygen tank is low. Can we get another on outside to him?”

“Yeah,” Bradley said. “Except the door needs power to open and send it outside.”

Triple crap.

Kyle ran out of the bridge and headed for the basement, but his feet slipped out from underneath him and he started floating off into the air. The gravity must’ve lost power. Quadruple crap. He wiggled his way to the ceiling and pushed off for the stairwell door, then pulled himself along the spiral railing down into the basement. Finally he found the third level. When he opened the door, he saw it: a small red generator. Hopefully it was the really efficient kind. He grabbed it and tossed it up to the ground floor, but something got jarred loose from underneath it and struck him on the back of the head. He grabbed whatever it was and looked at what looked like small black marble in his hand. But it was uneven: there was a small flat patch that stuck out like a button. He stuck it into his pocket and floated up after the generator.

Bradley was there at the bridge, and took it from Kyle. Then Bradley connected it to the door of the airlock. Kenney jumped over and worked the outer door open. Piott spilled in, and Kenny reversed the process. Piott waited for the hiss of the inner door opening, then pulled his helmet off, gasping for breath.

“Blackout?” He asked, standing there.

Kenny nodded. Kyle unplugged the backup generator from the door, then went to the bridge. Bradley, Kenny, and Piott followed. Bradley took it and took off the panel on the underside of the dashboard. There was a moment of silence, then the lights flickered back on. Machines hummed to life.

“What caused the blackout?” Kenny asked.

“The portal is damaged. It needed all the energy it could get, so when I started to unplug it, it must have been programmed to steal extra energy to keep itself open as long as possible.”

“Who would program it like that?” Kyle asked.

“Someone who wanted to board the ship without our knowledge,” Piott responded simply. “Portals are usually susceptible to pirates, both as traps and black-out devices.”

“That’s wonderful.”

There was a beep on the large console. Piott leaned forward and pressed a button. Someone had exited the ship. Kyle could tell, since the inner door opened first, followed by the outer. But who was on the ship that they didn’t know about? He fingered the marble in his pocket, deep in thought.