Network Effect

Amena’s drone squad watched her eyes narrow in disbelief. That really looks like it’s counting down to a wormhole exit but that can’t be right.

I was somewhat desperate for it not to be right. Wake Eletra and ask her how long the ship was in the wormhole, how long it took them to get from the system where they were captured to Preservation territory.

Amena scooted around to touch Eletra’s shoulder. After long seconds Eletra stirred. Amena asked the question. Eletra blinked, more aware, and her expression turned puzzled. “We never left the system. We’ve been here the whole time.”

“No, you came through a wormhole to Preservation where we were captured. Now we’re going somewhere else. Remember the gray person said we were in the bridge-transit?” Amena tried to persist, but Eletra’s eyelids were drooping and she didn’t respond. Amena sent to me, She’s still really confused. Earlier they both thought we’d been captured before they were, and they didn’t believe me when I tried to tell them we weren’t.

I told her, This thing on the engine housing is an alien remnant. I think it’s taking us through the wormhole at a much faster rate. Much faster. Not hours instead of cycles, but minutes instead of cycles. ART’s engines had been compromised by a device that was using the wormhole in a completely different way, allowing travel faster than any transport technology that I’d seen in media, or heard about on the newsfeeds. Faster than any human transport technology. I think we’re about to come out into normal space.

Amena shook her head. No, that’s bonkos. The timer must be damaged. We’ve only been in the wormhole for a few hours, we can’t be anywhere yet. The closest inhabited system outside Preservation territory is fifteen days from Station at least—

And then the engines made a noise somewhere between a groan and a clunk. A new display sprung up in front of Scout One: a view of normal space. We had just come out of the wormhole.

Amena froze, staring at the feed view of the new display. Her eyes widened in alarm. Then she said, What should we do?

That was a really good question.

My first thought was to try to destroy the alien remnant. Fortunately instead of doing that I went on to the next thought. (I don’t know anything about transport engines but I know you shouldn’t shoot at them, okay? They’re near the top of the long list of things it’s just obviously not a good idea to shoot at.) I needed more intel before I could do anything about this. I didn’t like the idea of saying “I don’t know” to Amena because humans panic and I almost don’t blame them because right now I feel like panicking and I was not in control of this situation and I could see at least ten instances now where I’d made wrong decisions and being in control of the situation was really important because otherwise it was in control of me and that felt like a short step to being back in the company’s control. And maybe I just had to trust Amena, who had tackled a much larger human because she had thought she needed to save me. I told her, I don’t know.

Amena sat up straight, biting her lip. Then she whispered to herself, “All right, all right. Let’s think.” On the feed, sounding much calmer than she looked, she said, Can you make that drone in the control area move around? If we can see a display that will tell us where we are, or if there’s a station or someplace we can try to send a distress signal …