Steven McDonald - Event Horizon

Justin was aware of light. There was no sound.

Then the power, a force beyond reckoning that reached around him, intruded into his universe, enveloping him without pause for consent or complaint.

The void rose up around him, embracing.

Unresisting, Justin fell into the space between the worlds and was gone.

Reality began to tremble around the Core.

Cooper was not in the mood for this, not in the slightest. Baby Bear, you’d better be kidding me….

Justin’s safety line was unreeling at an insane, impossible rate. Cooper had tracked the line usage from the start, watched it pay out fast and slow.

Now it was paying out at a rate the counter had problems tracking.

“Three-fifty meters, four hundred meters,” he read off. He grabbed his helmet, got it on, the adrenaline starting to pump now. Justin was in trouble.

DJ helped Cooper seal the helmet down. A quick suit check, a thumbs-up.

“I’m gone!” Cooper yelled, slapping the control to open the inner airlock door. His heart was pounding and he felt crazy. He hated this more than anything. When it was over, all he would want to do was throw up and shake.

Right now there was no time to think.

The inner airlock door closed behind him. The outer door hissed open.

Shutting his mind off, he dove into the umbilicus.

Hold on, Baby Bear, he thought frantically, Papa Bear’s coming to get you.

Like a nightmare, the Event Horizon loomed up ahead of him.

He plunged into the airlock.

Darkness rolled out, folded in upon itself. The safety line going into the Core tightened, then rippled, as though refracted through water.

Space contracted, expanded.

Reality warped, a wave traveling silently out from the Core. Light bent.

The wave passed through the Second Containment walls as though they were air.

Swept into the antechamber, pushing coolant away and into the walls, the console. Debris erupted, slammed into walls, floor, ceiling, ricocheted away as the wave passed.

Swept outward, down the main corridor. Windows vibrated as it passed.

The safety line tightened again, sang, twanged, relaxed.

Cooper shot down the corridor. The wave caught him in midair, spun him, sent him flat against the wall, swearing, the wind knocked out of him for a moment as he caromed away toward the opposite wall. He managed to roll before he hit, hitting the wall feet-first, kicking off again.

The wave ripped down the main corridor. Debris swirled before it, flotsam that had been equipment or component parts of human beings.

The Event Horizon was beginning to resonate now, the superstructure sounding with a deepening roar that suggested that the ship was about to tear apart.

The hatchway to the medical bay slammed open, the door buckling and a hinge tearing. A wave of medical debris swirled up before the wave.

Miller grabbed the edge of the computer station he had been working on, ducking as debris pelted him. The wave pulled him up from his haven, wrenched him away from the console, and slammed him into the bulkhead. Medical equipment peppered him, bounced from the wall, went spinning crazily away. His trajectory away from the wall took him back into the console, winding him, but giving him something to hold onto.

The wave swept on into the bridge, shoving the dead man up against the bridge windows and causing Peters to bounce helplessly from the deck. She caught the back of one of the flight seats, holding on for dear life as momentum spun her around.

The wave swept on outward.

Starck, Smith, and Weir were startled as Justin’s point-of-view monitor tried to clear for a moment, a vague image rolling amongst the static. Weir blinked, trying to clear his vision—he would have sworn that the image was of a man’s face, screaming.

It couldn’t have been, he told himself.

Justin’s monitor cleared to static again. Starck opened her mouth to say something.

Miller’s and Peters’ monitors suddenly filled with static as well. The radio link hissed and went silent.

“What—” Smith started to say.

The Lewis and Clark began to rumble, a freight train sound that was incongruous out here in deep space.

The ship began to shudder and rattle. To Weir it felt as though reality was trying to twist.

The wave struck, ripping through the bridge. Metal was screaming somewhere in the ship, the superstructure stressing as the gravity wave passed through.

Starck turned and ducked as a console flashed and sparked next to her.

Behind Weir there was a loud bang as something shorted out, and he smelled ozone and burning insulation. The bridge lights flickered and dimmed.

Deeper in the ship, he could hear the sound of systems failing and metal tearing. Absurdly, he wondered if Peters’ vid unit would be okay. It would tear her up to lose the recording of her son.

There was another sound too, shockingly familiar because he had spent so much time unconsciously on alert for it: the sound of air escaping into vacuum.

“The fuck was that?” Smith yelled.

His question did not receive an answer. A Klaxon was sounding now, emergency lights flashing. They were losing atmosphere. Starck had turned to her boards, getting answers from those that still worked. The bridge was filled with smoke that drifted lazily towards the hatch.

“We lost the starboard baffle,” Starck said. She looked up, her face holding an urgency that bordered on panic. “The hull’s been breached!”

The main pressure door to the bridge was closing, ready to seal them off.

DJ would have to take his chances in the airlock bay, or wherever he was.

With a low grinding sound, the pressure door stopped, half-closed. Smoke drifted around it.

Smith was frantically checking a console, trying to get the door moving again. After a few moments he looked up, shaking his head. “The safety circuit’s failed.”

Weir stared at the drifting smoke, the stuck door. “We’re losing atmosphere….”

“There are pressure suits in the airlock,” Starck snapped. “Go!”

They sprinted for the hatchway.

The smoke followed, a lazy snake.

Dark, dark, deep in the dark. He was Within, suspended, the dark passing through him, stripping him naked, peeling out the contents of his mind, pouring the pieces of his soul into a pool that floated in Nothing.

I touch all things.

Who are you?

I am.

Another answer that made no sense.

The darkness had no end.

Innocence.

The concept seemed almost a curse. What was wrong with purity?

You know too well where the line is drawn.

Points of light pierced the darkness. There was a sound of pain, of anguish.

A circle of light, like fire breathed into the air. The darkness was not driven back.

You are not the one I need.

The points of light fell into the circle.

What am I, then?

Dangerous.

Lines of light fell from point to point.

Because of this?

Yes. We cannot suffer the innocent to live. It profits us nothing.

A five-pointed star within a circle. A shield, a hope.

Without knowing how he did it, he brought it close, trying to reintegrate himself in the warm soul-glow. Lady be with me—Pfagh!

The darkness struck him, crushing, overpowering. All that remained of his consciousness fell away from him.

Silent and cold, Justin spun away through the darkness.

Cooper shot through the opening into the First Containment, slowing long enough to get his bearings as he approached the whirling tube. The sight sickened him, but it did not slow him down. Oriented, he kicked off again, sailing through the microgravity like an underpowered version of Superman, one arm flung out ahead.