No longer a mysterious star

The weave jump to the mysterious star was a tense affair aboard Sola. Despite all Rye’s reassurances and Dustin’s confidence, more than one of their lovers took the time to head to engineering to sit with Defia as if they could prevent anything bad from happening just by their mere presence.

Sola’s countdown to real space was thus met with a collective sigh of relief once they dropped out of the weave intact and without their lover disappearing in transit. Unfortunately, the relief didn’t last long; no sooner had Sola arrived than her alarms began to sound.

On the bridge, Dustin stared at the system in front of him. The Arof research station hung close to the jump point, looking as commercial as all their buildings did. But the star, the thing they’d travelled to visit… that was gone. In it’s place, a swirling void that seemed to warp the light of the galaxy around it, busily consuming the dust of the system in a swirl of energized particles.

“Meli… they did say this was a stable star, didn’t they?” Dustin asked in a half-whisper, hands gripping the armrests as he stared at the black hole in front of them while Sammie threw Sola’s engines into reverse to ensure they weren’t drawn any closer to the void.

The Velca nodded, her ears locked down into fear. “I… I don’t understand how it could have formed without destroying the station - and the weave route; the gravity alone should have twisted the weave! We flew on an automated path, it should have thrown errors when we tried to leave and forced you or Sammie to manually drop us in…”

The officer managing Emely’s station looked up from her console. “The Arof are hailing us, asking for emergency evacuation. They say…” she paused, eyes opening like saucers. “They say the star literally just turned into that. In the last few minutes.”

Dustin stared at the darkness that seemed even now to be reaching out to his ship. “Get us to the station. Call ahead, tell them to prepare for evac. Sammie, how well can we fight the gravity of that thing?”

The pilot pushed her controls to one side, banking them towards the station as she replied. “Alright, I think. It’s not got that much mass to it, and the flight sensors aren’t showing too many riptides from the gravity it’s putting out at this distance. Probably explains why the station’s barely moving in, but I don’t want to hang around. Looks like it’s growing, and god only knows what it’s doing to the jump points.”

As they flew towards the station, the officer in Emely’s seat kept an eye on the communications array. Not that it would be needed, asides from the station there shouldn’t be any life in this system to worry about… until a sudden ping had her straighten up and double check before raising her hand. “C…captain? I’m getting a distress call…”

Dustin glanced at the junior comms officer. “You mentioned that already, is there an update from the station?” He asked, then frowned as she shook her head.

“No sir…” the woman swallowed, then gestured towards the screen. “Not the station, it’s coming from a shuttlecraft. Not an Arof one either, the message is coming through in… well, in English sir. And the source is much closer to that thing.”

The fact that the unknown shuttle was using English made Dustin sit up. “One of ours?” he asked, then frowned again as the comms officer was unable to confirm it. “Meli? Can you get a lock on them with the sensors? Are they reachable in time?”

His wife tapped her console and winced. “Just about, husband. We’ll need to burn hard to get there, and harder to get back out, but we’ve got a few minutes worth of window if Sammie can handle the waves that close to the event horizon.”

The pilot didn’t even bother to look up, her hands already flying over the controls. “We’re going in, right Dusty? Hold on everyone, this is gonna get bumpy…”

To say the flight was bumpy was an understatement. As Defia, Naera and Yaerwen made their way from engineering up to the bridge, Sola bucked and weaved so much it felt almost as if the grav-plating had been disabled. More than once, the rogue Fractal was forced to shift her form to cushion the other women from being thrown into a bulkhead.

Arriving on deck, the trio emerged through the door into a scene of controlled chaos. Sammie’s hands strained against the controls, Meli was calling out sensor readings, the main screen was a distorted mess. Sound seemed to be travelling slowly as well, and Sola was making some unpleasant creaking noises as the pilot banked them close to the shuttle they were aiming to rescue. “G…o…n…n…a… g…r…a…v…i…t…y… t…u…r…n…” Sammie said, her words coming out like treacle as the shuttle loomed on the view-screen.

Sola’s hull opened as they approached; there was no time for a delicate docking. The shuttle slammed into the back wall of the bay, the crash half-tearing one of it’s engines off as the doors closed behind it, then they were away. Breaking the gravitational pull of the black hole at this distance would be a challenge even for Sola’s engines - but Sammie was an expert. Pushing the throttle to the maximum, she skimmed her craft around, the gravity acting like a slingshot to throw them back out towards the waiting station.

As they rocketed away from the black hole, time seemed to speed back up. “We lost two hours to time dilation near the event horizon” Meli observed, the voices of the crew returning to normal as Sammie threw the engines into reverse to bleed off speed so that they could safely dock with the Arof outpost. “Our other guests are hopefully all packed and ready to go.”

Evacuating the space station was a tense affair. Despite watching the heroic rescue Sola had just conducted, the long line of Arof scientists were rightly nervous as they embarked, both Sola and the station slowly drifting back into the growing gravity well as the queue progressed. Eventually, however, the last of the canids made their way across and Sammie throttled up the engines.

“Can we even weave-jump that close to a black hole?” Dustin asked as they shot back towards the outer system.

Meli shook her head. “Not safely. The bubble won’t hold near a gravity source that strong. We’ll need to get outside the system to do it, which means jumping in the dark. You and Sammie will have to look for a thread to follow together, without being near a node they’ll be near-invisible and a real challenge to find even for you two.”

The pilot groaned as she heard that. “We’ll get far enough away that I can take a shower and a nap safely first, then. I am literally swimming in my flight-suit after how much effort keeping us from nose-diving into a singularity has taken, and I don’t really want to do a dual-jump when I’m this exhausted.”

Dustin nodded at that. “Agreed. Get us far enough away that the gravity won’t be able to drag us back into the system, then let one of your juniors take over - flying straight out into the void between systems doesn’t take much skill after all.”

Leaving the bridge a short time later and pausing only to kiss Sammie briefly as she headed for the ambassadorial suite and a power nap, Dustin made his way down to the lower levels. He still needed to check in on the Arof - and there was the matter of the shuttle crew. The crash had apparently sealed the craft’s airlocks tight, and despite Bleu and Rye’s best efforts the vessel remained unopened.

Communications were thankfully still working - the occupants had been able to let their rescuers know that they were alive, unharmed thanks to their harnesses and while they were naturally unhappy about the inability to disembark, the shuttle’s life support was running fine so there was no rush.

That last point struck Dustin as odd as he approached the shuttlebay they’d used to scoop up the vessel before it could get swallowed by the fallen star. No rush to escape a damaged shuttle seemed weird in the scheme of things. Entering into the bay, he saw Rye and her team hard at work, plasma cutters sending showers of sparks up into the air as they tried to remove the door. A door that, the instant Dustin approached, slowly shimmered and vanished as if it had never been there at all.