Eidolon: Chapter 2, part 2

The data pad's readings were all over the place. All of the data Shiori had collected from the sensor array was wiped clean. None of it made any sense. It didn't make any sense: the pad's power source was entirely separate. Yes, it did use the ship's wireless network, but it wasn't exactly like they were vulnerable to hackers out here.

Shoriko pressed the comm button and selected Subramani. There was a moment of static and that whispering noise grew louder before the chief engineer responded to the page.

“Sir. Can you read me, Sir?,” Shoriko asked, hating how shrieky she sounded.

“Yes, Tanazaki,” Subramani's voice crackled over the comm.

Tanazaki breathed a sigh of relief. “We're experiencing power fluctuations down in telemetry. The emergency lights have gone out.”

“Then use your torch,” snapped Subramani, “Why are you interrupting me for this, Tanazaki.”

Tanazaki smiled and took a deep breath, “I just thought you should know, sir. Are you seeing the same thing in the engine room?”

There was an odd silence, “I...of course not. Don't be paranoid. That sort of thing doesn't happen.”

“Right. I don't know what I was thinking. I guess the quiet is just getting to me.” Tanazaki stopped mid sentence. Subramani had hung up.

**Idris Wilson wanted to cry. Or maybe to smash a computer terminal with a wrench. At this point, he could really take either option. Since receiving his orders and eliminating any obvious malfunctions, the power aboard ship had fluctuated three times. Granted, it was only for a few seconds, but those were the few seconds that kept undoing every bit of progress the technician had made in the past half hour on this ice cold bridge.

“What did you say, sir?” Idris asked, pulling himself out from underneath the console. “Sir?”

O'Bannion stood with his back to Idris, “Hmm?”

“Sir. You were talking.”

“Just... thinking aloud I guess,”

“Yeah, I was doing a lot of that just now myself.”

“I think you mean swearing, Idris.”

“That, too.” Idris paused, looking at his hands, “Sir, you got any thoughts about what's causing those readings yet?”

The commander shrugged, “Subramani's praobably right. We've been travelling between the stars for three hundred years now. Even the best AI starts getting glitchy after a while. Ahura's no exception. S'why we have a maintenance rotation in the first place.” O'Bannion's voice was carefully neutral. Which was not like him, Idris thought. If anything, O'Bannion was a little too pally. An American fault if ever there was one. This silence just didn't feel right. And where did this sudden reversal of position come from?

“And if Subramani's not right? Then what do you suspect could be going on? C'mon a physics wiz like you has got to have some interesting ideas.”

“There are... a lot of interesting ideas. Just not enough data to reach any kind of conclusion yet.”

“C'mon, Ian. I'm working on a scan of the nu-frame logic board. It's boring as hell, and I'm getting twitchy. Shoot me some wild cockamamie BS hypotheses. I need the distraction.”

O'Bannion looked over his shoulder, “Idris, for the love of mercy. I don't have anything yet. It could be 3k background radiation, or blackbody radiation, or we could have passed near a micro-black hole. Who the hell knows?”
“I was pretty sure we've never run into any of that stuff before,” Idris said.

“No,” O'Bannion replied tersely, “No we haven't. Like that means shit. How many ships did we loose in the early days before the communications relays were mastered? Hundreds. And before that? How many seed colonies were sent out? Thousands. In the thousand years humanity has been colonizing alien solar systems, we could have run into just about anything. We simply have no way of knowing.”