Rosaria vaguely heard Abby leave their suite only a few hours after they’d gone to bed. It couldn’t be later than nine, but when she cracked open an eye to check, she saw that it was nearly noon. She groaned and closed her eyes again, wondering what the hell had been in that ‘fruit punch’ Sven had brought. She’d known better, but it had been so damn good that she couldn’t stop drinking it. Abby had half-carried her back to their suite, with Emmabeth’s help.

Closing her eyes again, Rosaria vainly wished away the throbbing migraine attempting to sledgehammer her brain to death. She gave it up at last and slowly sat up, hand on her stomach to keep it in place if possible. When it seemed as though she’d succeeded, Rosaria stood and felt her way to the bathroom, with her eyes open just enough to find her way.

The large bathroom was sound-shielded, though she wasn’t sure why. Maybe people got rowdy in the bathroom more than she thought. All she cared about right then was that it kept out the growing noise from outside the suite, whatever it was. It sounded like a mob and she had no fortitude to deal with mobs.

She found the hangover remedy that Abby had stocked up on and took four instead of the recommended two, washing them down with tiny sips of water. Making sure of her balance, Rosaria stood from the toilet seat and had just headed toward the door when the floor went out from under her. She fell into the massive tub and struck her head on the porcelain so forcefully that the world disappeared in a flash of black. 

***

Martha growled at the darkened lift, her hackles raised to their tips, and struck at the control panel yet again. She hit it a little too hard and dented it, sparks flying from the metal that collapsed with a shriek.

The ship… spun… there was no other word for it. Martha sank her claws into the nearest wall, front and hind, and gripped tightly as the ship moved in a circle fast enough for gravity to fluctuate. Being from a planet with a greater mass than Earth, it was likely that only Martha felt the changes in that way. The humans would probably just get nauseous and dizzy, but she actually felt the changes… the fluctuations, she amended with dark humor.

It took several minutes and three full rotations before the ship stopped… upside-down. They were completely dead in the water, as the saying went. She couldn’t feel any residual hum of power, not even emergency power, and wondered how long it would be until the backup power went out and the shields deactivated.

***

Evan clung to the support beam with all his strength… the ceiling support beam onto which he’d fallen when the ship had gone crazy. It didn’t look like the ship was going to start moving again; he couldn’t hear the power vibrations that had been a constant since he’d arrived in the hold.

Whatever had happened, the Connemara had somehow capsized in space, because she wasn’t righting herself. Ceiling was now floor and Evan didn’t know how the hell he’d manage to climb up to the floor to get to the door that would free him.

It was a bizarre sight. The crates and containers were so firmly locked down that they looked like square, artificial stalactites. Dread slithered through his entire body as he realized that no one knew he was there. No one would be looking for him. No rescue would be mounted. He was completely on his own.

And then something that seemed even worse penetrated the fog of his panic… he couldn’t hear the leak anymore. He didn’t know what that meant, but it couldn’t be good. 

***

The captain ran at top speed down the ceiling of the corridor. He couldn’t afford to be cautious; there was no time. He had to get all the passengers into lifeboats and out of the Fluctuation ASAP. There was no telling how long the shielding would last without emergency power to maintain it. If the Connemara suddenly righted herself, he’d get a cracked skull, but that was preferable to wasting time that they simply did not have.

About two minutes later that was exactly what happened as something, a solar wind perhaps, rolled the Connemara right-side up. Dazed from the fall, it took too many seconds for him to regain his senses and his feet. Stephen reached the helm several minutes later, unsure if the ship was still tilted, or if he was.

He found his First helping an injured crewwoman to her feet, the younger man himself bleeding from the forehead. “Status!”

The Lieutenant propped the injured woman against the comm station and reported, “All systems dead, sir. We must abandon ship before the shielding fails.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing, sir.”

“Excuse me?”

His First looked frustrated as he said, “Nothing! There was nothing in our way. Nothing on telemetry. We didn’t get hit by a comet or asteroids or debris. At 1148, the Connemara’s engines seized for no apparent reason.”

That explained the first jarring impact. Even in space, a dead stop would cause the forces of inertia to fling people and things willy-nilly.

“Engineering?”

“Sir, we must abandon…”

“Report, Lieutenant! What the hell is going on?”

Stephen’s sharp tone cut through the Lieutenant’s emotions and he took a deep, calming breath before continuing. “Comm went down two minutes after the engine shutdown, but Engineering reported that there was no sabotage, no apparent reason for the failure. As far as I know, they’re still working on getting her up and running.”

“And the power failure?”

“I sent a runner to engineering to have someone concentrate on that, but they were already on it. Again, no sabotage, no explanation, sir.”

Stephen’s mind raced with possibilities and scenarios, but if they couldn’t fix the Connemara, if they didn’t even know how it had happened in the first place, they really would have to abandon ship. Shields were the biggest problem. The residual power reserves in the shield system would only hold for so long with no replenishment. After shields, of course, was life support. The oxygen on board would last for twenty-four hours after a catastrophic failure, so he relegated that down the immediate Must Do list.

“How long before the shields go down?”

“No way to tell, sir,” his First said. “There’s just nothing to guide us.”

Stephen nodded, expecting as much at that point. “Very well, Lieutenant. I would say sound the alarms, but I think people have that under advisement already. See to the evacuation, it’s time to abandon ship.”

“Aye, sir.”

The Lieutenant helped the crewwoman off the bridge and Stephen took one last look around the control center of his shortest command ever: probably the shortest command of anyone, in any fleet, ever. He’d only been the Connemara’s captain since before the week of the cruise; the Lieutenant had been her acting captain before that.

Regretfully he rested a hand on the panel and said, “I’ll miss you, grand lady. Good luck and Godspeed.”

Stephen left the bridge and ran to the main deck, where guests milled in chaos. Taking a breath, he bellowed, “All quiet on deck!” at top volume. It had worked on unruly cadets in the Navy and worked now, stopping everyone in their tracks. He thought about the quickest way to calm everyone down and decided the Connemara’s emergency specs would do it. Loudly, but not quite his original volume, he continued, “We have lifeboats for every person on board, plus fifty, as well as a dozen spare lifepods if any of those malfunction. Do not rush. Do not panic. Proceed in a calm and collected manner to a lifeboat and wait your turn to get aboard. If you have questions or know someone is missing, find a crewmember and tell them: do not go looking yourself. Go!”

People hastily went back to entering the lifeboats, but the chaos was much more controlled this time, without the pushing and shoving that would result in a trampling death.

Stephen spotted Bob #39 and motioned the robot to him. When it wheeled to a stop, he said, “Make sure every passenger is accounted for before you join your fellow robots. I’m entrusting you with this, Bob: don’t let me down.”

The robot seemed to puff up with pride and saluted him. “I won’t, sir! You can rely on me.”

Stephen had his doubts about that, but there was no more time. He ran down to the far end of the deck, repeating his instructions to each new group he encountered. The next twenty-three minutes went by with excruciating slowness, and he was sure that he saw the shields flicker more than once.

Adrenaline kept him going--his chest tight with it--and a light trickle of sweat was dripping down the back of his shirt. It was easy to ignore the pain in his back and neck from when he’d struck the ceiling on the Connemara’s first rotation; it wasn’t as easy to ignore the flashing pain in his hip from the second rotation, which had sent him flying onto a metal rail. Thankfully, he’d been able to hang onto that for the final spin.

The deck finally cleared and he limped down to his First as fast as he could. “All accounted for?”

“No, sir, but Bob’s still searching.”

“Who’s missing?”

“A Ms. Rosaria Serrano--her companion is quite hysterical about it--and the alien, sir, Martha.”

Stephen hesitated, but only a minute. Two lives against hundreds was a very unequal equation. As much as he hated to do it, he said, “Launch the lifeboats and then join the crew, Lieutenant. I’ll be right behind you.”

Face drawn into a grim expression, the young man nodded and saluted, then turned sharply and ran down to the final lifeboat. With the comm down, Stephen simply bellowed, “Bob! Front and center, ASAP!”

A crackling noise sent a new jolt of adrenaline through him, but it was only the first of the lifeboats escaping the shield, not the dropping of the shield itself. A few seconds later, Bob sped toward him on wheeled feet, skidding to a halt in front of him.

“Reporting, Captain!”

Stephen almost smiled at the robot’s proud tone even under such dire circumstances and said, “Bob, I have a difficult task for you, but you’re the only one who can do it. Two passengers are missing. I need you to find them and get them aboard the individual lifepods, then take one for yourself. You can’t leave until you either have them, or have ascertained their deaths and relayed the information. Will you accept this mission?”

Bob’s eye-lights seemed to brighten, though whether in pride at being ‘chosen’ for such a difficult mission or outright fear at getting left behind, Stephen had no idea.

“You can count on me, sir! I will find them or terminate functions doing so,” Bob said firmly.

Clapping the robot on the shoulder, Stephen said, “Good man. Take care of the Connemara for me, Bob, and good luck.”

Stephen jogged to the lifeboat that would hopefully bring him and his crew to safety, his hip on fire the whole way. He paused for only moments outside the lifeboat to take a last look around the Connemara, and then stepped to safety, leaving her behind. 

***

Even though he knew there wasn’t a lot of time to waste, Bob watched the crew’s lifeboat launch into space. It followed the same path as the others toward the border of the Fluctuation, the line of smallish ships like so many breadcrumbs leading the way home. The lifeboats were basically oversized lifepods; they put everyone aboard into stasis and revved up shielding until they were intercepted by a manned craft or reached the programmed destination.

Abruptly depressed, Bob sighed mournfully and said to the universe at large, “Abandoned again,” and then went in search of his missing passengers.

***

The view of the Connemara from space was majestic. She displaced ten kilometers of pure, black nothingness. Even her now-darkened hull shone as a stark relief to her surroundings. The nearest star cast plenty of light upon her, almost a heavenly spotlight. With her navigation systems offline, she spun in a slow circle, lengthwise now instead of up and over. She could have been any satellite in search of a gravitational center.

Unfortunately for the Connemara, a gravitational center took up a nearby portion of space. It was a dense dwarf star that was plenty powerful enough to pull the cruise ship in and it did so, subtly, deceptively. Its orbit wasn’t fast, as stars went, but still fast enough to gently take hold of the Connemara and draw her in.

It wouldn’t be long before the dwarf star decided to stop playing coy and resorted to brute strength, destroying the Connemara in its fiery center as it did everything within reach.