The Heartless Void

7: Proximity Alert

Starbuck did not know which was his blood and which was Ahab's. It covered his uniform, torn and seared beyond all rescue in places. He could feel the scalding of boiling steam and super-heated metal tearing apart the skin of his arm and neck. He had to stop, had to run to medical, but he could not. The blaring alarms drove him on down the chaotic access corridor.

"Strut malfunction," the artificial voice of the Rosebud announced. "Cannot jump to FTL travel. Strut malfunction. Cannot jump to FTL travel."

Starbuck groped his way through the red-bathed mess. Ahead, the hatch to the dropship module kept opening and shutting on a fallen computer module, thrown loose in the Rosebud's mad attempt to escape. He kicked it out of the way and squeezed through the gap, staggering to the ladder down. As he got his unsteady feet on the rungs, the Rosebud gave a lurch and he nearly lost his grip.

"Strut malfunction," the voice continued. "Cannot jump to FTL travel. Strut malfunction. Cannot―"

"I'm going!" Starbuck shouted without thought, clinging once more to the ladder.

"Where are you?"

An equally heartless voice rasped in Starbuck's headset. His stomach swooped. How in the name of God was Ahab still awake in his agony?

"I'm nearly there," Starbuck managed.

The clanking and the scraping was louder in the dropship control room; it tore Starbuck's last nerves to shreds. He tried to ignore it as he rushed to the central hub, but the relentless bangs shuddered through his legs. There were people on the end of those collisions – people in mortal peril.

He looked from the control panel and to the ten-inch thick glass that looked down over the dropships. Two were safe, their crews back inside the Rosebud. The other, containing twenty men and women, careened and yawed, as if caught in a rip-current. One strut had re-connected to the Rosebud. The other kept extracting and retracting, slamming where the connection should have been. Starbuck frantically scrolled the outputs and felt nausea roll over him. Should have been, he repeated.

"Starbuck!" Ahab snapped in his ear again. "Where are you?!"

"The strut connection is gone," Starbuck panted. "There's only one. It must have – must have come off in the collision."

Ahab said nothing. Starbuck put his hands to his face. Pain electrified him as his wounds screamed.

"I can try and make it work with one strut," he said frantically. "Or get them to spacewalk. Or..."

Another alarm suddenly interrupted the cold AI voice. Starbuck jerked, trembling. His eyes shot to the forward windows, gazing along the underside of the Rosebud. Parts of the hull had been breached and a halo of debris floated about the trawler. Through the detritus, lights penetrated the gloom. They approached too fast.

"Proximity alert," the Rosebud said. "Proximity alert. Proximity alert."

"Oh God, it's coming around again," Starbuck garbled. "It's coming around again!"

He awoke with a start. Fragments of the past shattered around him and pricked his skin. He immediately, instinctively, reached for a lever that wasn't there: a lever that had scarred him and so many others. But it was all over now. All consigned to history, and there was nothing he could do to change it.

Feeling confined by his bed and the nightmares that kept haunting it, Starbuck threw back the covers and stepped out. He tried to ground himself in the wretched familiarity of the Pequod: the cold floor beneath his bare feet, the whooshing of recycled air, the distant hiss and whir of the generators and refineries. Again and again, he breathed in, out, in, out, in, but the terrified rattle would not cease gripping his throat.