Experiment

“This,” Captain Ryan said, “seems like a terrible idea. When exactly do we start?”

The Vulcan on our main view screen raised one long eyebrow. Weird how they all could do that. Genetics, right? “Arrangements will be finalized on the other end of the route in approximately thirty minutes,” he said. “We will begin shortly thereafter. Can you please confirm that you understand your ship’s role in the experiment?”

“Yes,” Ryan said.

The Vulcan waited.

“Oh, you want me to say it?”

“Simply to ensure that you have every detail,” the Vulcan said, not smiling. Because Vulcan.

“Okay,” Ryan said. “Basically, we’re going to navigate at warp 3 to the specific coordinates you gave us. Before we engage the warp drive, we’re to activate whatever that equipment is you’ve loaded into our salvage bay.”

“Correct,” said the Vulcan, as if Ryan had just completed a tridimensional quadratic equation.

“And,” First Officer Stevenson said, “this is going to somehow create a permanent wormhole between the endpoint you’ve constructed on this end, and the endpoint you’ve presumably constructed on the other end?”

“Correct,” said the Vulcan, raising his eyebrow again. Gold star for Shan. “It is our hope that this wormhole technology can eventually provide more efficient faster-than-light travel for commercial traffic, without the expense of equipping each ship with a warp drive.”

“And Troll is doing this because why, again, exactly?” she asked. We’d been through this before.

“A warp-capable ship is required,” the Vulcan reiterated, “but as you have seen, the wormhole equipment is quite large. It must be fully contained within a structure, and so a warp tug is unsuitable. And, Starfleet prefers to use a civilian ship for this experiment, rather than tying up valuable fleet resources.”

“Because, like, a Constellation class ship could easily have fit this thing into its shuttle bay,” she noted.

“Agreed,” the Vulcan said. I detected a note of irritation that was almost certainly my imagination. Because, Vulcan. “However, the equipment would have to be scaled up significantly to work inside the mass of such a large ship. Icelandic Troll provides an excellent power-to-mass ratio, enabling a smaller-scale experiment.”

“Plus, tacos!” Ryan cried out, pumping a fist in the air. Troll’s revenues were always measured in the number of cheap tacos the money would buy, and Buzz had cheerfully informed us that we’d be making over a million tacos on this run.

“Indeed,” the Vulcan said, not sighing in exasperation. “Are there any other questions before we begin?”

Ah, I’d been waiting for that. I raised my hand. “I have questions,” I said. Mathematical ones, to be specific, because this all smelled like horseshit.

“No questions!” Buzz cried out. “Tacos!” He cut the view screen.

“I had questions,” I groused.

“You’d only have gotten answers you wouldn’t have liked,” he chided me. “Plot the course and standby to engage.”

“Course plotted,” I muttered. “We’re all going to die.”

“Shan, maneuver us into the starting gate, please,” Buzz said, ignoring me.

“Aye,” she said. “You’re right,” she muttered to me under her breath. She nudged the Troll into our designated starting position, coasting slowly toward an enormous ring-like structure. We were to engage warp just as we crossed through the ring, and we’d allegedly disengage warp as we passed through its twin on the other end of our route. “Engage warp in five… four… three… two… engage!”

I pushed the warp button and the Troll leapt into warp. Well, I say “leapt;” the Troll wasn’t so much a leaper as she was a heaver. He heaved into warp like a drunk person who’s just discovered that the sidewalk curb he’d just tripped over didn’t actually exist. I’d already rigged the warp controls to simultaneously activate whatever was lodged into our salvage bay.

Flying in warp is usually peaceful, and somewhat beautiful. The stars form colorful streaks, and you definitely get a visual sense of speeding. This was not like that: the stars looked angry, and the streaks of light seemed determined to get the hell out of our way. We didn’t so much glide through warp as we screamed through it like a madman on a mission. I shut off the forward view screen to spare our brains the sight, but kept a close eye on the warp engines and our nav plot.

“How’re we doing?” Ryan asked. I glanced back, and he was perched eagerly on the edge of his chair.

“Well, we’re literally tearing a giant tunnel through space-time, and I’m guessing space-time isn’t enjoying the experience. We’re probably going to go on some kind of space-time offenders’ list,” I answered.

“Engineering!” he shouted, because the intercom system on Troll didn’t care if you shouted or not, so why not? “How’s it looking back there?”

“Well,” Adam yelled back, because based on the background noise coming over the intercom, it was loud back there, “we’re probably going to die.”

“Told you,” I muttered.

“What’s wrong?” Ryan asked, some concern finally entering his voice.

“The warp engine is having trouble settling on an exact velocity, and the structural integrity of the nacelles isn’t looking too good,” Adam replied.

“Can you fix it?” Ryan asked.

“How long have you not owned this ship that you don’t know what ‘structural integrity’ means?” came the reply.

“Will it hold together?”

“I’ve always been amazed that it holds together at all, so I dunno.”

“Energy readings are starting to fluctuate,” I said, staring at my console. “Shan, does this look like–”

“Yeah, the equipment in the bay is drawing off the warp field,” she said, looking intently at her own console. “I think it’s on purpose, but we’re definitely going to crack the dilithium crystals when we come out of warp,” she added.

“What’s that cost?” Ryan asked.

“A few thousand tacos,” I muttered. “Hey, look, it’s stabilizing.”

“Um, no,” she said. “Look again.”

I looked again. “That’s impossible.”

“What’re you guys doing up there?” Adam asked over the intercom.

“Nothing,” I said. “It’s impossible.”

“What’s impossible?” Ryan asked.

“We’ve stopped,” I said. I activated the view screen. Nothing was moving. It was like we’d taken a photo of the angry, twisty, get-the-hell-out-of-its-way loops of light. They were absolutely still. “Our power consumption is absolutely steady,” I said. “Which is impossible. Even in normal warp flight there are minor fluctuations due to gravitational fields and whatnot. We’ve stopped, but we’re somehow still in warp.”

Everyone thought about that for a moment.

“Can we get out?” Ryan asked.

“I don’t even know how this happened,” I said. “Maybe not?”

“Can we disengage the warp drive?” he asked.

“The pointy-eared guy said that we can’t do that before reaching the endpoint, or the wormhole will have an unstable terminus and possible swallow the galaxy or something. I wasn’t paying close attention because none of the math on this made sense,” I said.

“Swallowing the whole galaxy seems unlikely,” Shandra said.

“Probably just the ship itself,” I acknowledged.

“Probably,” she agreed.

“Wait, what?” Ryan asked.

“We’re all going to die,” Shandra said.

“Really?”

“Oh, you believe her,” I said.

I caught a piece of popcorn in my mouth. “That was excellent,” I said, hitting stop on my console’s media player. I’d just finished watching a Chris Hemsworth movie called Thor. It was the second movie I’d had a chance to watch in the six hours we’d been sitting still, waiting for something to happen. Shandra had gone aft to engineering to consult with Adam, and Captain Ryan had stayed on the bridge attempting to make me become interested in doing something productive.

“Can you please go help them, now?” he asked for the fortieth time.

“The only thing I can think of,” I said, “after having had some time to carefully go over the math in my head, is to pulse the impulse engine a couple of times to see if that kicks us out of this.”

“Can we do that?”

“Normally, you can’t run impulse engines when you’re in warp. It’s an oxymoron. They’re powered by a fusion reactor, not the warp drive, and they do an entirely different thing.”

“So how would it help?”

“I didn’t say it would. I said it was the only thing I can think of.”

“Can we try it?”

“Well,” I said, “we’d have to do some reprogramming, because normally impulse is locked out of the helm in warp. And we’d have to make some changes to the EPS relays since they normally do a safety lockout in warp, too. That’ll take some time.”

“How long?”

“About two movies. Shan,” I said, activating the intercom back to engineering. “You guys about ready?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Just now. You reprogram the interlocks?”

“Yeah, during the second act of Bad Times at the El Royale,” I replied. “You want to come up here for this, or stay back there?”

“We’re all going to die anyway,” she said, “so I’ll stay back here with Adam.”

“Righty-ho,” I acknowledged. “Pulsing engines.”

“Wait!” Ryan said.

“What?”

“You guys did all this already?”

“Dude,” I replied. “Keep up.” I’d set up a control to pulse our impulse engines for one second exactly. I tapped it twice in slow succession. The bands of angry light in the view screen moved each time, paused, and then swirled around us. We were on our way. Troll was shuddering like a whore who’d just picked up a winning lottery scratcher from the pavement and was realizing that she was finally free of her pimp, if only she could get the hell out of the neighborhood before that scum ball found out.

“We didn’t die!” Ryan crowed.

“Give it a minute,” I said.

The shuddering got worse, as if Troll had consumed way too much caffeine, and was trying to compensate for it by taking a strong hit of methamphetamines cut with every gummy worm in the universe. I stared at our nav plot. We only needed to hold together for another thirty seconds to reach the planned terminus. Hopefully they hadn’t gotten bored waiting for us. “Thirty seconds,” I announced helpfully.

The Troll moved into a full-on grand mal seizure, something I could relate to given what was happening on our view screen.

“We’ve got about twenty seconds of this before something blows,” Adam yelled over the intercom.

“I hope there’s a margin of error, there,” I said.

“We’re all going to die,” Ryan whispered behind me.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I said. “Ten seconds.”

Troll was shimmying like a society that had just invented 24-hour cable news. “Eight.”

The bands and loops of light on the view screen had finally had enough of us, and seemed to be converging on the ship as if to smoosh it like a bug. “Six.”

“We’ve just lost an intercooler!” Shandra yelled.

“Four!” I yelled back.

“No, just the one,” she yelled back, “although we’ve–”

“Two!”

“Inertial damper failing!” Adam cried.

“DISENGAGING!” I screamed, slapping my console. The Troll normally slid out of warp with a sort of grateful sigh, the sound of a marathon runner with two artificial legs, whose limbs had begun to chafe at the flesh interface point a kilometer ago. This time, the Troll plopped out of warp space like a Hutt who’d somehow forgotten that it was a sessile creature, not meant at its advanced age to be practicing flips and turns on the uneven bars. I got a glimpse of the terminus ring as we blasted through it into normal space. I was thrown against my console, and Buzz was thrown against the back of my seat. “Inertial dampers are probably offline,” I said.

“Icelandic Troll, please respond,” came a calm, measured voice. The Vulcan appeared on our forward screen.

“Yo,” Ryan said.

“Please report your status. Your journey took you somewhat longer than expected.”

“Fork yourself, greenie,” I said. “Transmitting diagnostics logs. Analyze ‘em yourself.”

“Did it work?” Ryan asked.

“Regrettably, no,” the Vulcan said. “The wormhole appeared to be stable immediately after you exited warp, but one of the terminus rings failed to completely contain it, and it collapsed within point-seven seconds. However, we have gained valuable data, and will begin preparing for a second attempt.”

“Nope,” I said. “Not us.”

Shandra walked onto the bridge. “Yeah, I’ll second that,” she said. “We’re out.”

“Tacos?” Ryan asked quietly.

“No. Absolutely not,” said Adam, who’d followed Shandra. “The ship couldn’t take it. As-is, we’re going to need significant repairs.”

“We will allocate additional payment for your damages,” the Vulcan said. “And agreed. Based on the data you transmitted, we probably need to consider a purpose-built ship for the next phase in the experiment. However, this one was promising enough that funding for such a ship should be easier to secure.”

“Yay, you,” I said. “Troll out.” I cut the comms.

“We didn’t all die,” Ryan said, a smile in his voice.

“The day is young,” Shandra said. “So I’d watch your mouth. Adam, you want a drink?”

“Whiskey,” he said.

“Whiskey makes you sick,” she reminded him.

“That’s what I’m going for, right now.”

“Buzz has a great collection in his cabin,” she said, and the two of them walked off the bridge.

“Right behind you,” I said, standing from my console.

“What about me?” Ryan asked.

“I’ll bring up a taco in an hour or so,” I replied.