Dark Energy Supernova - An Anthology of SF SD Shorts

White Rabbit

A/N: Entry for round 6 of the SF SD, genre: Lost World, Prompts are quotes marked in bold. 

A soft sound chimed near my ear, and I shifted in the darkness.

"I thought I left instructions not to be disturbed, Kaleb," I quietly said into that darkness.

"You did, doctor.  However, we have reached the target coordinates.  And the captain thought you'd like to see the approach yourself," the ship's AI replied in its soft, masculine baritone and I sighed.

"I really don't know what all the fuss is about a spatial invagination," I grumbled, shifting on my cot to put my feet on the cold deck.  "If you've seen one perforation in the fabric of space and time, you've seen them all!"  I heaved another sigh.

"Lights!"

Captain Vaughn looked up as a slightly disheveled version of me strode onto the bridge.  Career military, Ellen Vaughn looked like she had stepped off a recruiting poster, her cobalt blue uniform immaculate and perfectly fitted, her black hair cut short so it fit neatly under her officer's cap.  In contrast, in my baggy slacks, oversized tunic and slippers, I looked like I had crawled out of a garbage dumpster.

"Ah, Doctor!  Thank you for joining us.  Now that you're here, we can start our little show."  Vaughn turned to face the main part of the semi-circular bridge spreading away from her.  "Put the doorway on the main viewer, please!"

I frowned as I looked at the main viewer, which dominated the curving wall marking the bridge's forward edge.  As I had muttered to myself in my cabin, if you had seen one spatial anomaly,...  Then I found any further thought swept away as the screen cleared to show what we were aiming at, the vision all-consuming.  

For lack of a better description, it was a hole in space.  Not a wormhole, or a black hole, or any of the standard perforations in space/time.  No, this was a hole, where the fabric of space was bent inward to form a portal without the graviometric shifting of a wormhole's event horizon.  And it simply hung there, waiting.

But by no means was it alone.

The debris of the ages since its creation floated around the hole.  Asteroids, dust and gas along with what looked like the wreckage of a number of starships.  As if sensing that was what I was looking at, Vaughn began to explain in a low voice.

"We first spotted the anomaly maybe four or five months ago on deep patrol.  Since this is contested space with the Rekii, we try to pass through as often as we can.  Anyway, the heavy cruiser Hyperion and her escort found it and sent scans back to the nearest outpost.  Which immediately sent waves through the egghead clan."  She paused to look over at me.  "No offense."

I shrugged.

"None taken."

"A visible hole through the fabric of space without an event horizon?  High Command instantly deemed it classified and worthy of investigation.  Which meant we had to keep the riffraff out."  She pointed to the wreckage.  "Rekii light cruisers; they tried to come and see what we were looking at and got their noses bloodied.  If they're smart, they'll stay away and let us do our thing.  And our thing included getting the best mind in the sector on the investigating team."  Again she paused to look at me.  "That's where you came in, doctor."

"Fair enough," I conceded, barely resisting the impulse to look at the hole again as our ship drew closer and it grew larger on the view screen.  "I've done a number of excursions into uncharted sectors to examine new worlds.  But I must say, holes in space aren't really my thing.  You should've selected an astrophysicist.  Jess Thorne out of the University of New Bridgetown on Epsilon Eridani.  She's very talented."

"Oh we've had your friend Thorne and a dozen more just like her combing the hole, which they're calling a 'quantum bridge' for anything and everything they could find.  And I think we got as many answers as we can out of it."  She smiled.  "No, doctor, you're here for what's inside!"

A massive blue-white giant star appeared over the holo-projection table normally used for generating three-dimensional tactical maps of battles in progress.  It shimmered for a moment before shrinking to half size to allow for four magnified planets to appear, one pair in exact opposite locations in an ecliptic plane orbit, and the second pair also opposite each other, but orbiting perpendicular to the plane.

"The pocket space accessed by the quantum bridge has only a single system.  One of the initial eggheads on the scene called it the Wu Xing Configuration," Vaughn began from where she stood on the table's opposite side from me.  "Ancient Chinese for the four elements.  And it fit.  One world was all volcanoes and fire, another completely covered in a global ocean.  A third was nothing but high peak mountains and wind, and the last mostly land mass, with small seas and large lakes being the only source of water."

"Water?" I repeated, tearing my eyes off the impossible system to look over at Vaughn.  "Are you telling me, captain, that these four worlds, as impossible as their orbits are, exist in that blue-white giant's life zone?"

Vaughn's smile was amused.

"Not only am I telling you that, doctor, but I'm saying the initial survey team found structures on each of the four worlds.  Something, or someone was living down there."

My heart skipped a beat as my eyes were instantly drawn back to the planets.  A newly discovered alien civilization?  As a paleo-exo-sociologist, ancient alien societies were my field of study!  And if this truly was a first time discovery, I would be the first PES to examine what these aliens had left behind!  It was almost enough to make my head swim as I considered the possibilities.

Vaughn chuckled as she caught the expression on my face.

"I see I've piqued your interest, doctor.  Excellent.  It was the structures that we brought you here to examine."  She paused to glance at a wrist chrono.  "Time to get your gear together," she said as a massive and heavily fortified space station abruptly loomed into view from behind a cluster of gigantic asteroids.  

"The next shuttle traveling through the hole into Wu Xing space leaves in about fifteen minutes!"