Wing Commander (novelization) Chapter 4
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| Book | Wing Commander |
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Dramatis Personae
Text
REQUISITIONED
MERCHANTMAN
DILIGENT
MARCH 15, 2654
2150 HOURS
ZULU TIME
ENROUTE TO
BEACON 147
Taggart's hatch stood ajar, and Blair peeked through the crack. If a
man's quarters say a lot about the man, then this place isn't talking.
Taggart kept only the bare essentials: cot, night-stand, and wide, battered
desk. Even the old gray walls were bare, sans the pinups or family photos
that hung in the majority of pilot berths. Taggart sat at the desk, poring
over a collection of ancient star charts printed on real paper. A half-dozen
of them lay rolled up and bound by rubber bands at his elbow. Still more
of the scrolls sat in a pile on the floor. Amid the charts lay an unwrapped
and half-eaten sandwich and Taggart's coffee mug. Lifting a knuckle, Blair
prepared to knock. "Come in," Taggart said.
Grinning slightly over the man's keen senses, Blair entered and
suddenly felt awkward at standing in this most personal of places. He
blurted out, "We're holding steady on the beacon. Marshall has the helm."
He neared the desk and ran his finger over one of the charts. "These must
be antiques."
"Yeah," Taggart said. "They were made by the first explorers in the
sector. Pilgrims."
"How did you get them?"
Taggart rolled up one of the maps. "Now that's a story too long to
hear."
"I, uh, before… I couldn't help noticing the tattoo on your neck."
Smiling wanly, Taggart looked to an empty wall. Blair could only
imagine what ghosts the captain saw there. "What about the Pilgrim cross
you hide under your shirt?"
Retreating a step, Blair's hand went instinctively for the cross. Then,
realizing he had betrayed himself, he thrust the hand to his side and
waited for the inevitable.
"Don't worry. We all have pasts. And secrets."
Blair gave a slight sigh. "It was my mother's."
"May I see it?"
After hesitating, Blair lifted the chain over his head and withdrew the
cross. He handed it to Taggart, who ran his fingers slowly, reverently over
the semicircle. The glimmer in his eyes grew brighter, and his face
tightened into the countenance of a priest staring at a recovered relic. He
pressed the center symbol. A seven-inch blade telescoped from the cross's
bottom.
As he traced the blade with his index finger, he smiled wanly again and
said, "There was a time long ago when people looked up to the Pilgrims.
They were at the forefront of space exploration. When I was a boy, I knew
there was some kind of connection between God and the stars. I think the
Pilgrims found that connection." He touched the plate again, retracting
the blade, then returned it to Blair.
"You know," Taggart continued, "since the Pilgrims were defeated, not
a single new quasar has been charted."
"It's so strange hearing someone talk like this. The word Pilgrim has
always been… I don't know… a curse."
Without warning, a sudden surge of acceleration sent Blair reaching for
the desk. He caught the edge and balanced himself as Taggart's coffee
mug fell and broke.
"That idiot!" Taggart screamed. He shot to his feet and stormed out of
the cabin.
Blair followed close behind, only then realizing what Marshall had done.
As Taggart entered the bridge, he shouted, "Get up!"
Marshall's face grew thin and pale as he quickly vacated the captain's
chair and moved to the co-pilot's seat. "That caffeine's killing your
attitude, man."
"Shut up. Did you change course?"
"You told me to shut up."
"Answer the question!"
"No. Just boosted the power. Why dog it when we can be at the beacon
in an hour? Unless, of course, you want us to be delayed."
Blair watched Marshall's hand drift toward the sidearm concealed at
his calf.
"That beacon is marking a gravity well," Taggart said through clenched
teeth.
Marshall gave Blair a nervous look and mouthed, "Holy shit."
Swinging the navigation computer in front of him, Taggart's fingers
danced over the touchpad until a Heads Up Display lit before them. A
green, flat grid rotated and glowed as data bars on each side filled with
coordinates. The grid began folding inward, creating a strange, swirling,
elliptical spike in the concave surface.
Blair stood transfixed, knowing all too well what a gravity well could do
to a Confed capital ship, let alone a rusty old transport.
Something sparkled near the floor, and Blair turned as Merlin
self-activated and began pacing. "I told you this ship wasn't up to the job.
My sensors indicate that there are a number of structural flaws—"
"What the hell is that?" Taggart asked with a lopsided grin.
"That's Merlin," Blair answered. "He's the interface for my PPC."
Taggart resumed his gaze on the HUD. "Well, get into his face and tell
him to shut up."
Blair cocked his head to give the order, but Merlin had already
switched to standby mode.
Shoving the navigation computer back on its swingarm, Taggart slid
another display forward, one that offered multiple views of space via the
Diligent's external cameras. He chose the image from the centerline unit
and adjusted the telescopic lens to bring a dim object, the gravity well,
into focus. Blair spotted asteroids and space debris being sucked into the
well, as though into a whirlpool, and disappearing. The Diligent screamed
toward the same future.
Taggart beat his knuckle upon a thruster control button, throwing Blair
and Marshall forward as retros violently kicked in. "One cubic inch of that
well exerts more gravitational force than Earth's sun," he barked at
Marshall.
"I screwed up. I get that. Stow the physics lesson," Marshall answered,
his eyes not leaving the external camera display.
Taggart pushed that display aside and slid back the navigation
computer. He frowned at the coordinates and tapped in new ones. "Come
on, come on," he said, driving himself harder. "If I don't realign our entry
vector, we won't make the jump."
"And if we don't make the jump…" Marshall began.
"We die," Taggart finished.
"Have we reached the entry vector's point of no return yet?" Blair
asked. Once they hit the PNR, course adjustment would be a fond
memory.
"Not yet," Taggart said, throwing a toggle to automatically stabilize the
now-groaning transport. "She's reaching out for us. Hear that?"
The Diligent's hull protested much louder now, and through the
viewport, the gravity well appeared in all of its gluttonous furor. The ship's
thrusters whined as they fought to obey Taggart's course corrections. Still,
the well grew larger, more ominous, and the space distortions now seemed
more like gelatinous hands reaching incessantly into the cosmos. Blair
repressed a shiver.
Taggart took one look at the viewport and raised a hand. "Well, ladies,
meet Scylla, bane to sailors and monster of myth."
Marshall frowned at Blair, then regarded Taggart, his frown deepening.
"What's a Scylla?"
But Blair answered for Taggart. "Ulysses sailed between the whirlpool
Charybdis and the island monster Scylla. She snatched six of his men and
ate them."
"I didn't need to know that," Marshall moaned.
Shaking a finger at Scylla, Taggart said, "This beauty's got an even
bigger appetite. Hold on."
Blair got to the navigator's seat behind Taggart and Marshall. The
captain threw a pair of toggles, and a bank of afterburners kicked the
Diligent onto her side. Blair clung to the arms of his seat as the ship
continued to yaw and tremble like a piece of Los Angeles real estate. Every
seam and conduit in the old transport begged for relief. Within a few
seconds the tremors became so violent that Blair fell from his chair and
crashed to the wall that now served as the deck. He rolled over and spotted
Merlin, whose image shook so hard that it blurred. Marshall lost his grip
as well, and thumped to the floor beside Blair.
Still glued to his seat, Taggart continued adjusting the Diligent's
course. The transport slowly rolled upright, sending Blair and Marshall
sliding toward the true deck. As the ship finally balanced and artificial
gravity readjusted, Blair looked over Taggart's shoulder at the Heads Up
Display, which now showed a digital glide path that took them along
Scylla's perimeter, the course steady and true.
"Broken your grip, old girl," Taggart said, regarding an external camera
display that tracked the gravity well. "Better luck next time."
Blair stood and watched Taggart steer the ship along the glide path.
The Diligent now skipped closer to Scylla, avoiding her maw, but
nonetheless doing some serious flirting. Space wavered along the
starboard quarter.
Clearly, Marshall had a rough time comprehending the gravity well. He
stared at the external camera image, at the space distortion through the
viewport, at the glide path. And he began shaking his head. "This isn't a
normal gravity well. What the hell is this thing?"
"This thing is a distortion in space-time," Taggart explained. "Pilgrims
were the first to chart it."
"So why is it off-limits?" Marshall asked.
"Because it's unstable."
"And we're going to jump it?" Marshall mouthed to Blair, having a hard
time keeping his jaw closed.
A warning light flashed on the navigation computer, accompanied by a
rapid beeping. The HUD winked out. The Diligent suddenly listed to
starboard.
"Nav computer's off-line," Blair observed.
"It's the magnetic fields," Taggart said. "Blair. Take the helm."
Normal functions like breathing suddenly escaped Blair. "I've never
made a jump before."
Taggart cocked a brow. "Now would be a good time to learn." He
rushed toward the hatchway.
"Guess we both know what he's about," Marshall said softly. "He's
about getting us killed."
Blair ignored that, focusing instead on the vortex as it now shifted to
the center viewport. Without the nav computer's assistance, the Diligent
would return to the previous course, and Blair, Marshall, and Taggart
would learn the mysteries of the afterlife, free of charge.
Near the hatchway, Taggart had pulled off a maintenance panel and
now considered the exposed intricacy of wires. He pulled out a pair of
protein processing chips, studied them a moment, then tossed them over
his shoulder. He opened another panel and withdrew fresh chips.
The gravity well now dominated all viewports, a malevolent queen at
her banquet table. A pair of discarded O2 canisters collided and exploded
on their way into her stomach. Asteroids spun and broke apart, leaving
trails of themselves across the whirlpool. Even a comet had strayed too
close to Scylla's amorous arms and now painted an even streak across the
watery blur of her physique.
A proximity alarm blared, and a digital countdown at Marshall's
station read 9, 8, 7—
"Uh, Captain?" Marshall called out.
"What?"
"Five seconds to jump."
"So?"
"So if you don't get the nav computer back on line, this unstable gravity
well is going to pull us in—one molecule at a time.
