The bridge fell silent, apart from the hum of the ship’s systems. Nobody moved. Consoles scrolled data that no longer meant what they should.

  Hale was aware of her own breathing, of the faint vibration of the deck beneath her, of the ship continuing exactly as it always had. Effectively, she thought. Outside. No longer advancing.

  “Impossible,” she unintentionally spoke the last word aloud.

  “Highly improbable,” ELIOT said into the silence. “But not impossible. As Sherlock Holmes observed, ‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’”

  “Have you eliminated the impossible?” Roarke said.

  “Negative. I have engaged fallback heuristics to speculate on the most probable solution given the available data, in accordance with protocol. Conclusions are epistemologically unsound to an unbounded degree.”

  “So you’re pulling it out of your backside,” Carrick said.

  “I possess no such anatomy,” ELIOT replied. “But otherwise it is an appropriate, if rather crude, metaphor.”

  “So the most advanced Enhanced Lane Interface and Operations Terminal in the galaxy is reduced to guesswork. “Chao ad ordo,” Carrick said.

  “Your phrase is syntactically invalid,” ELIOT replied. “The most accurate inversion would be Chaos ex ordine: chaos out of order.”

  “Elliot,” Roarke said, without raising his voice. “Enough. Park the aphorisms and stay on the problem.”

  Hale didn’t look up. “We don’t need philosophy. We need data.”

  The bridge door hissed open unexpectedly. All eyes turned toward the sound.

  The woman from pod six stood in the doorway, unsteady, one hand resting against the frame as if she wasn’t entirely sure it would hold her weight. Sensor leads dangled from her arms and chest. Her hair, long and unkempt, fell across her face in uneven strands.

  For a moment she simply stood there, breathing shallowly, surveying the bridge and its crew. Then her gaze drifted to the main view screen.

  Her eyes widened.

  She took a single step forward, as if pulled, and stopped. Her mouth opened, no sound at first, only a sharp intake of breath as the Rift filled her vision. The colour drained from her face. Something in her expression shifted, recognition arriving too fast to be understood.

  Then came the scream, raw and involuntary, torn from her. Before anyone could reach her, her knees buckled and she crumpled to the deck.

  Mavik was already on his feet, moving fast.

  “Rook, help me get her back to med-bay.”

  The security officer complied without a word, lifting her slight frame with ease before following Mavik down the corridor.

  Hale stood, staggered, and steadied herself on the back of the chair.

  “Cassie?” she mouthed in disbelief.

  Hale ran for the med-bay, but Rook stood in the doorway, his broad frame barring the way. Beyond him she could see Mavik struggling to calm the woman, who convulsed on the med-bay bed as lights flashed and alarms beeped and buzzed.

  She tried to push past, but Rook did not move.

  “Access denied,” he said. “Medical emergency in progress.”

  “Let me see her,” Hale insisted.

  “Negative,” Rook said.

  Roarke arrived then, placing a hand on Hale’s shoulder. “Let him do his job,” he said calmly.

  Hale rounded on him. “You don’t understand,” she sobbed. “She’s my sister.

  “Let me in!” she cried, She struck at Rook’s chest with desperate, futile blows.

  Rook caught her wrists, holding them gently but firmly.

  “Elliot, security override. Rook, Niner–Alpha–Bravo,” he said.

  “Voice print confirmed. Override accepted,” ELIOT replied.

  “Seal the med-bay.”

  “Confirmed.”

  The door slid shut behind him. A red NO ACCESS sign pulsed softly above the frame.

  Hale took a pace back, her breath ragged.

  “How long?” she asked. “How long before I can see her?”

  Roarke didn’t answer at once. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “We wait until Mavik says so. She’s in his hands now.” He turned away from the door. “For now, we need to get back to the bridge.”

  Hale didn’t move. She stood staring at the sealed hatch, as if searching for something beyond it.

  Roarke stopped, then spoke without turning. “Bridge. Now. That’s an order.”

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  After a moment, Hale exhaled and followed him down the corridor.

  Back on the bridge, Carrick was seated cross-legged on a chair, leaning over a console. He didn’t look up.

  “Just so you know,” he said. “All engineering and drive systems are fully functional. I’ve bored myself stupid running diagnostics. There’s nothing wrong with the ship.”

  Roarke took his seat. “Including FTL?”

  Carrick nodded. “Drive’s pristine. If we could give it a solution, it would execute it perfectly.”

  “But we don’t have a solution,” Hale said.

  “I know, the question is why?” Roarke said.

  “It has to be the Rift, Tiamat,” Carrick said.

  “Don’t call it that.” Hale said.

  “It’s the Rift, but what is it doing exactly? How is it stopping us?” Roarke said.

  “And why is it moving,” Hale added. “Rifts don’t move.”

  “This one does. It’s following us,” Carrick said.

  “It isn’t following us,” she said. “It’s maintaining a fixed spatial relationship.”

  “That’s what following means.”

  “Stop arguing you two. We’re in some kind of temporal anomaly—”

  “Caused by the Rift,” Carrick said. “What else could it be?”

  Roarke gave Carrick a sharp glance and continued.

  “The end result is that our charts are no longer up to date and we cannot plot a safe FTL solution.”

  “And the Rift wouldn’t let us, even if we could,” Carrick said.

  “Captain,” Hale interjected. “I’ve been rechecking our initial trajectory, the one that brought us here, and I’ve noticed something.”

  “On screen,” Roarke said.

  There was a palpable sense of relief when the image of the ominous Rift on the main viewer was replaced by a star chart with navigational overlays.

  “Whoever plotted the course made us pass closer to the Rift than necessary. Still well outside of critical distance, but it’s as if they were deliberately pushing the margins.”

  Roarke’s eyes narrowed. “Didn’t you check the mission trajectory before we jumped?”

  “Of course I did. As I said, it’s well within normal parameters. We just didn’t need to get that close. A slight deviation, minimal measurable delta on the trajectory. It had virtually no impact.”

  “But it did have an impact.”

  Hale hesitated. “Only because the Rift—”

  She stopped herself.

  “They expected it to move.”

  “They stranded us here on purpose.” Carrick growled.

  “That’s one hell of an assumption, Carrick,” Roarke said. “If INA know that Rifts move, how could they cover it up? Once that comes out it could bring down the whole Directorate.”

  “What if they didn’t know for certain?” Carrick said. “What if we’re guinea pigs?”

  “But ships pass closer to Rifts all the time, when their trajectory requires it,” Hale said. “It’s just that we didn’t need to.”

  Roarke didn’t respond at once. His gaze lingered on the chart, on the thin arc of their original course that bent imperceptibly too near the Rift. He drummed his fingers on the console.

  “Who signed off on the trajectory?” he asked.

  Hale shook her head. “Standard routing authority. It was included in the mission upload as normal.”

  “Think how many people signed off on it. How many levels of INA that implicates,” Carrick said.

  “And nobody could have altered after it was uploaded?”

  “I was on the bridge all the time we were in dock. I would have noticed,” Hale said.

  Rook stepped forward.

  “I can confirm. Navigator Hale was on the bridge for the entire pre-departure window,” he said. “Biometric logs, access records, visuals all confirm. Systems logs show no unscheduled personnel movements and no post-upload amendments to the mission package.”

  Roarke took a deep breath. “Elliot, shut down all outgoing communications. Security override. Roarke, Six–Sigma–Nine,” he said.

  “Voice print confirmed. Override accepted,” ELIOT replied.

  “Why did you do that?” Hale asked. “Our signals are meaningless. They’re arriving in the past, if they arrive at all.”

  “Our past, yes, but they still might be arriving. If, and I repeat if, there is a conspiracy, I don’t want them knowing that we suspect anything until we know more.”

  Mavik entered the bridge. “Who’s died,” he said, noting the crew’s gaunt expressions. “Anyway, she’s stabilised but I’m keeping her sedated. She’s in a bad way, muscles atrophied, blood chemistry is all over the place, and she hasn’t had a shower in a long time.”

  Hale rose.

  “And no,” he said meeting her eyes. “She isn’t entertaining visitors for the moment. It’s best if you all leave her in peace for the time being.

  “Now what’s been going on here? You look like you’ve all seen a ghost.”

  “We’ve been reviewing the mission profile,” Roarke said. “The trajectory that brought us here.”

  Mavik’s expression shifted. “And?”

  “And maybe it wasn’t accidental,” Roarke said. “We were brought closer to the Rift than necessary. Close enough that when it moved, we were already committed.”

  Mavik frowned. “But nobody knew Rifts moved until we got stuck here…” he trailed off.

  “They did know.”

  Mavik glanced from one face to another, then back to Roarke. “You’re saying this was planned.”

  “I’m saying maybe, maybe someone planned for us to end up right where we are,” Roarke replied.

  “It’s not possible. It’s ridiculous. The size of the cover-up required to keep that under wraps would have to be enormous.”

  “Really? I thought you’d be right on board,” Carrick said. “You’re the one that’s always going on about aliens and conspiracies.”

  “Well, they could be true, obviously. But INA? If you can’t trust them, who can you trust?”

  “And what about her?” Carrick said;, pointing in the direction of the med-bay.

  “Cassie. Her name is Cassandra,” Hale said sharply.

  “Why is Cassandra onboard if they just wanted to test a theory? Why not just send a crew of dupes? Or a fully briefed technical team who knew what to expect, for that matter,” Carrick said.

  “We’re expendable,” Rook said.

  “Right now, it doesn’t matter why we’re here”, Roarke said. "What matters is that we are and we need to find a way out.”

  “Hale,” Mavik said gently, “You should tell him.”

  “Hale?” Roarke turned to her. “What’s he talking about?”

  “She went to a Rift,” she blurted out.

  All except Mavik stared at her in disbelief.

  “It was unauthorised. The records say she never returned. I thought she lost until now.”

  Silence settled over the bridge.

  Carrick let out a slow breath. “So let me get this straight,” he said. “A supposedly dead woman turns up alive in a sealed pod, guarded like a state secret. Our route just happens to skim closer to a Rift than it needs to. And now time’s gone sideways. And nobody on this ship knew anything about any of it.”

  He looked around. “That about right?”

  Rook’s expression didn’t change. “The mission package did not list Cassandra Hale as crew or cargo. Her presence was compartmentalised above your clearance.”

  “Above yours?” Carrick asked.

  Rook didn’t answer.

  Carrick turned back to the captain. “And Captain Roarke. You get briefings the rest of us don’t. Anything you’re not telling us?”

  “Careful,” Roarke said.

  “Why?” Carrick shot back. “Because I might say something classified? I don’t know anything classified, but someone here does. Maybe more than one.”

  Roarke’s voice remained level. “Because you’re drifting from suspicion into accusation. And once you cross that line, it stops being useful.”

  Carrick snorted. “Useful to who?”

  “To all of us,” Roarke said. “Including you.”

  The captain straightened slightly. “I receive command-level briefings. That’s not a secret. I did not receive any briefing that mentioned Cassandra Hale, a sealed pod, or a deviation from standard routing beyond what was already in the mission upload.”

  “And you expect us to just take that on trust?” Carrick said.

  “Yes,” Roarke replied. “I expect you to trust your captain.”

  “Speculation is irrelevant,” Rook said.

  Carrick barked a laugh. “What’s the matter, big guy? Am I getting too close?”

  “You’re getting too paranoid,” Mavik cut in. “Would you like me to give you something to help you calm down?”

  “Keep away from me,” Carrick snapped.

  Rook turned his head slightly. “Would you like me to restrain him, Doctor?”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Mavik said. “But thank you for the offer. I’ll keep it in mind.”

  Carrick looked at them, his eyes were manic.

  “It’s all of you, isn’t it?” he said.

  He turned and fled the bridge.

  on my Substack

  The Chronicles of Heraldria, is available on Amazon