Chapter Text
Prologue
(part I)
I CAN FEEL A CHANGE IN THE WIND
RIGHT NOW
“No bio-signs. I’m reading several bodies aboard.”
Cmdr. T’Pol
Enterprise, 4.15
“Any bio-signs?”
“One.”
Captain Jonathan Archer looked with a hard focus at the image projected on the bridge’s view screen. A thing he never would have imagined himself privileged to witness; the gravitational collapse of what failed to stabilize into a neutron star.
A newborn singularity.
By every right it shouldn’t have been the second most interesting thing happening outside.
There was an alien ship caught skating the edge of the event horizon.
Well-within the debris field as the collapsing star cannibalized its own primordial planets; pulling apart crust and mantel, liquid magma glowing like a flurry of embers in the super-heated vacuum.
A spectacular sight.
A deadly drift.
Ensign Hoshi Sato said, “Still no response to our hails, sir.”
“I doubt they received them,” offered his first officer, pulling her eyes from her scope. “The vessel is located within the outer edge of the singularity’s time dilation.”
Archer dragged his attention from the screen, his quick mind already turning over decision and consequence, probability, decades of experience lending a solid foundation to his years of command.
That was hell out there.
A point in space, like the period on a page, where gravity had collapsed in on itself; dragging space-time in its wake. The deadliest thing in the universe. Where God divided by zero. A black hole . . . and there was someone alive in there . . .
The decision was made for him.
“Captain,” said T’Pol, her dispassionate voice breaking through a terse silence. “The bio-sign is human.”
Commander Tucker, who until then had been listening, though not watching, from his position at the engineering station, rotated around in his seat.
“There are no humans this far out.”
“Apparently,” T’Pol said, coolly “there’s one.”
Archer met the eyes of his Vulcan science officer – . . . hers as still as deep water. Her expression impassive. Once, that dispassion would have irritated him. Now? He’d learned to appreciate her, depend on her.
Trust her.
Her calm a balm, she steadied him.
He’d never been able to decide if she knew this or not.
“How close can we get to the singularity without falling in?”
“Twelve million kilometers.”
“Can we use the grappler to pull them free?” – this, directed at his tactical officer.
“There’s considerable debris, sir, and we need to account for the gravitational shear,” Malcolm responded, strong hands moving over the command consol.
He’d already begun making adjustments to the ship’s sensors, having anticipated the captain’s decision. The bridge fell silent, save for the ambient hum of its systems.
Thirty seconds. A minute . . . a minute-thirty . . .
“Lieutenant.”
Malcolm’s mouth compressed into a tight line. “We can reach them, hold them for awhile, sir, but I don’t think we can pull them free.” He glanced up, delivering an honest answer though not the one anyone wanted to hear. “The tether would break.”
Tucker added, “And with their engines down, cap’n, even if we could talk to them, coordinate, they couldn’t assist.”
A deadweight. That ship . . .
Archer looked to Hoshi, who shook her head – still no response.
On screen, the accretion disk rotated at a deceptively sluggish rate. The extreme heat causing it to glow brilliantly in the dark of deep space.
But then perception, like time, was relative.
The speed with which the debris orbited the singularity could peel the hull off a ship’s frame.
He let his gaze travel past that ring of fire and an eeriness crept up the centre of his back, trailing icy fingers over his skin. The core a marble of perfect darkness . . . consciously, he understood the science. He knew what it was, out there . . .
What he felt was a bone-deep aversion.
There was a ringing in his ears.
“Mr. Mayweather,” he said “bring us to within grappling range.”
His helmsman grinned. A wide, eager smile that lit his face. His people were on-board; they’d all just been waiting on his order.
To Malcolm he said, “As soon as you’re able, grab a hold but don’t try and reel them in. Just keep ‘em from sinking further,” – for however long the metal cable could withstand the tensile force . . .
Again, he met his first officer’s unwavering stare.
“There’s a human bio-sign out there,” he told her. “If nothing else, I want to know how.”
XxXxXx
Captain Archer piloted the shuttlepod himself.
Carefully maneuvering the small craft through invisible eddies, currents, and rips. Idly, he thought it felt more like sailing then flying though he wouldn’t remember having that thought until later. Moments like these really made him question his sanity.
Who the hell plays chicken with a black hole?
“Hull temp two-thousand four-hundred degrees Fahrenheit,” Trip alerted. Adding, dryly, “And rising.”
Decades of experience, that aforementioned foundation, kept him focused. His heart a steady beat, scarcely elevated.
One grappler held the alien ship as ordered, keeping it within reach. The other was locked to their shuttlepod; a lifeline, tying them to Enterprise. Open comm.. For all the good that did. If something were to happen, the intense gravitational waves this close to the singularity made it impossible to use the transporter.
Proximity alarm went off.
Fifty feet.
Forty.
Archer maneuvered their shuttlepod around with a patient, practiced hand. Bringing the roof of their shuttle parallel with the alien ship.
The tension was palpable. He could feel it on his skin, itching the back of his neck. Held breaths all around as his people trusted him not to collide with the midship, killing them all.
Thirty.
Twenty feet . . . fifteen . . .
He could feel the drag as gravity tore at the shuttle, pulling them not towards the singularity but into its orbit; and it was very much like being caught in a riptide. The trick, he knew, was to swim with the current – making only minor adjustments where necessary.
Debris like grains of sand shushed against the hull.
The chirp of the proximity alarm grated on nerves already stretched taut.
Not until they heard the k-chunk! of the docking clamps engaging did anyone dare to breathe.
“Good job, cap’n.” A firm, warm hand landed on his shoulder. Trip. “And here I was starting to think we wouldn’t make it.”
Archer blew out a sigh and only then did he take his hands off the controls. His palms were damp.
He switched off the proximity alarm still chirping just over his head. Behind him, his people were preparing to board the alien vessel. Adrift but they still had life support, and some power.
Not yet dead in space.
Phlox was speaking, “Remember, just because there we read only one bio-sign doesn’t mean there aren’t more. Any number of things could be interfering with our sensors this close to the singularity.”
“So keep your heads on a swivel,” Trip added. “Check your targets. Try not to shoot each other.”
His words were followed by a couple chuckles from the MACOs and one solemn promise not to open fire on their chief engineer.
“I appreciate that,” was Commander Tucker’s equally sarcastic response.
For the first time since they left the launch bay, Archer allowed himself enough distraction to actually look up and out through the window . . . straight into the black heart of fathomless eternity.
He felt it, then. The weight of primordial terror; like staring into the face of God. It was beautiful in a way horrors often were.
Something moved in that darkness. Liquid thick, eddying like ink beneath the surface of a membrane. He rubbed at his burning eyes; his first thought that the sight was only his eyes straining to focus when staring into an anchorless void.
“Archer to Enterprise.”
Malcolm’s strong voice came over the comm.. “Enterprise.”
Nausea knotted his stomach.
“Is there anything out here with us? Anything on sensors.”
A pause and in that pause, a memory surfaced. He was in college the first time he heard black holes described as the abysses of the universe.
It was odd. Decades later and he could still hear the sound of the rain beating at the windows of the lecture hall, feel the slight chill seeping through the glass. The smell of the carpet.
Black holes, his professor was saying, were not a stellar object but a region of space-time folded into an embrace so tight that even light is forever ensnared. And it’s this nihilism that poses a major problem for theoretical physics . . . a point where the pull of gravity is so great that escape velocity equaled the speed of light . . .
His professor’s eyes were brown, Archer remembered. Human, she’d burned with a passionate interest that none of his Vulcan lecturers possessed and he felt the thrum of it like static raising the hairs on his arms.
Flying into a black hole would reveal its mysteries, she’d said, and it was as if she were speaking only to him but you would never be able to reveal what you had learned, having crossed that forbidden threshold – its event horizon.
How cruel would it be if the universe insisted on this as the only way it would allow us to unlock its secrets . . .
. . . the ultimate deal with the devil . . .
She hadn’t followed through with the most obvious question: would it be worth it? How many of them; young, bright-eyed undergraduates – many of whom had already received their Starfleet acceptance letters – would accept that devil’s bargain?
Not to live, but to know.
“You’re alone out there, sir,” Malcolm reported “nothing but us and the alien vessel anywhere within sensor range.”
“Any anomalies?”
“No, sir.”
He cast a quick look back, over his shoulder.
He’d brought with him his friend, two MACOs and their Denobulan doctor, Phlox, eager to lend his services outside of the relative safety of Enterprise.
All four were waiting on him; a touch uneasily, as they wondered at his hesitation. A firm mental yank and he had his captain’s face back on.
When your people were looking to you to know how to feel . . . feeling off wasn’t an option . . .