“Point Vector Nominal”

 

The numbers told the way of hyperspace, flashing digits scrolling down a multitude of screens. An untold distance crossed every second. During these trips, Lukas Strickland lived and breathed the numbers. In his ears, the computer assistant whispered in his ears, a voice sounding a million miles away.

 

“Point Vector Nominal”

 

He blinked. Good, good. Those three words were a navigator’s lifeline, keeping them from delving too far from the real. The hyperspace field danced on the screen - for all it counted the world outside did not exist. Focus, focus. Strickland and his junior were driving the damn thing, matching nodes and keeping the field up. The captain, the XO, all of the bridge officers - even the whole of the ISS ETHEREAL - all only existed in a vague periphery, a distant husk, a shadow. The feel of his chair, the chill on his desk; all distant worries compared to the lines on the screen.

 

“Point Vector Nominal”

 

But those three words kept him from falling further into the screen, from falling to a point where the hyperspace lines and readouts held no distinction from the real. The field swayed like spiderwebs stretched thin and spun out; a thousand points of light flew by with every second of ship-time. Strickland’s eyes melted away, lost in the screen, lost in the hyperspace world. He bobbed his head with the music of the stars.

 

“Point Vector Nominal.”

 

The juice was flowing through his blood, into his brain - Strickland saw the hyperlight patterns, saw the numbers swirling into coherent points and dazzling equations. Warmth spread up and down his neck where the contact points stuck in. This was it! This was what he was made for, numbers and shapes and tripping through hyperspace.

 

“Point Vector Error.”

 

This was what it meant to be a Strickland, they said. His father and his father’s father and his father - going back all the generations - were all spacers. Navigation, shipbuilding, captaining, it was all there, in the geneline. Or so they said.

 

“Point Vector Error.”

 

Right in front of him, some hyperlight lines twisted and weaved together. Strickland’s eyes pulled back wide, head still nodding. He felt like he could reach out and touch them, as if he should take his hands off the field controls and manipulate the field directly. That’s a new one, he thought, but the juice flowed and he was back - dancing to those numbers.

 

“Point Vector Error.”

 

In the corner of his eyes, something gray and fuzzy splotted out a particularly beautiful set of folded lines and numbers. What was that? Behind himself, he felt the muscles in his face twitch down (was he in control of that? He didn’t know). On one of his armrests, he twisted a dial - more juice, more juice! The contact points blazed hot and his vision flared, but the fuzz did not dissipate. For a brief moment, he could move the field. But just like that, he was floating.

 

“Point Vector Error.”

 

More splotches, more fuzz - floating across the space, fucking up his numbers! He twisted the dial more; the juice flowed and his vision burned but the equations were not reforming into coherence. The hyperlight shifted from a brilliant white to a sickly yellow. His seat fell out below him and for a moment he felt weightless - formless, scared of falling away into nothingness.

 

“Point Vector Error.”

 

The seat caught him and he exhaled. This was not good. This was not supposed to happen. Where were his numbers, dammit! The music had long stopped and that awful feeling of utter isolation convulsed on him. The juice ran cold, bricking up in his veins. Fuck, fuck! Fingers clenched on the armrests, the air tasted wrong - of doom. Where was the light, where were the numbers? What he saw was a flat surface of confusion, not a brilliant tunnel of hyperlight lines and equations. Vision pulled back, he finally saw what was beyond the screen.

 

“Point Vector Error.”

 

“Carter, Carter!” Somehow, Strickland managed to reach over to the junior navigator and shake the man’s arm. His screens, too, were a mess of yellow lines and gray fuzz. The juice contacts on Carter’s neck and the lines coiling down were still running, ominous red spreading out on the skin.

 

“Point Vector Error.”

 

Carter did not respond. Ahead on the captain’s platform, Strickland saw the XO - turned away and facing a screen of errors. He could almost picture the look. Eyes held firm, yet lips curled - a sign of stress, anxiety, and fear. Back on his screen, the yellow lines became a flat plane, existing only within a patch of gray fuzz. The numbers had long vanished, the equations bleeding off the screen in that fuzz. The taste of blood-iron stung on his lips.

 

“Point Vector Drop.”

 

There was no time for the alarms. All the screens, all the lights, went black. All sounds of the ship ceased. This was it! The edge, the end of something - rushed forward fast, faster than even his rushed breathing. A cliff, a cliff! The cords and belts and his uniform on his chest pushed back on his lungs. They burned.

 

The ship fell away beneath him. Someone - it might have been himself - screamed.

 

* * *

 

In an otherwise unremarkable system, the vault of hyperspace collided with realspace in a wedge of soundless fury. For light-hours, ships tore out of the vault, ripping hulls apart like dandelion fuzz snatched away by a hurricane. Hyperspace residue fizzled away in the real, until all that was left was the scattered line of the 21st Reserve Battlegroup - nearly fifty independent-capable combat ships and hundreds of support craft. Hulls, plates, and clouds of debris covered almost a parsec long.

 

The whole ordeal - from point vector drop to realspace - took less than six seconds.