Spinward Fringe Broadcast 7: Framework by Randolph Lalonde Page A

wasn't meant to be empty. She had
been built to house thousands of working men and women.
    After a week in the utter stillness, Larry
realised he wouldn't last much longer. He didn't even blame Ashley
for her rash act, or for leaving him fully exposed. He was
conscious and free before the Carthans found him, and his place was
with the Triton anyway.
    It was time for him to sit and watch
quietly, to wait. He tapped into the Triton's passive sensors, and
didn't attract notice from the port. They didn't need enough power
to register, since they were designed to operate while the ship was
cloaked.
    His direct connection to the sensors was
made in one of the officers' quarters, and he found the days he
spent there more comfortable. Avoiding the halls, the vault-like
central areas. and the all too silent concourses seemed to be the
key to maintaining sanity. After he was sure everyone was gone for
the long term, he tried sleeping in a bed. It was a fitful sleep,
and he woke with a start in the middle of the night, not knowing
why. When he replayed the recording taken by his comm unit, he
burst out laughing as he watched the slumbering image of himself
wake suddenly after a particularly deep snore. For reasons he
couldn't understand, the laughter became weeping. It had been seven
weeks since the crew of the Triton left the ship.
    "You're trained for this. Citadel agents
must thrive in isolation and civilisation alike,” he told himself.
“Contemplative and watchful while at peace. Cunning and swift in
war. We are Citadel - defenders of balance and enablers of the
righteous," he recited through tears. He buried his face in his
hands, noticing how rough his stubble was against his palms. "When
did I stop shaving? Was it last week? Two weeks ago?" he idly asked
himself.
    Larry leapt to his feet at the sound of his
command and control unit vibrating a warning signal against his
skin. He hurriedly activated the holoprojector, which transmitted
its images directly into his eyes. "A crush gate? Tainted with
temporal radiation? Why would the Victory Machine be coming
here?"
    His self-pity and loneliness lifted from him
as quickly as a flock of startled birds. In seconds he strapped on
his weapons and pack, and had his stealth suit sealed. He knew that
port control would pick up the stirrings of strange energy. He only
had a few minutes before the exit of the wormhole fully manifested,
and he ran as hard as he could towards the botanical gallery, where
the Sol Defence software he'd installed on his comm unit predicted
it would appear. He made surprisingly good time, but by the time he
ran through the heavy protective doors of the botanical gallery his
lungs and his leg muscles were burning.
    He ran across the long grass, down paths
that had already begun to become overgrown and finally into a
clearing near one of the large ponds. A spike in ambient energy
gave him just enough warning to cover his eyes and turn away from
the exit of the wormhole only metres away. A violent flash of light
announced the arrival of the crush gate traveller.
    Larry braced himself before turning around.
Crush gates were highly compressed wormholes that were severely
directional, forcing the traveller through it at speeds many people
failed to survive. It was still experimental when he left Mars
years before, and was being hailed as the future of travel. One
could travel dozens of light years in the space of a few days. To
the traveller it would seem like only seconds had passed. The
Victory Machine dumped most of its waste energy into a crush gate
generator the creators had built in, and there was a limit to how
much it could contain before the bearer had to create a gate and
travel.
    To Larry's relief, no temporal radiation was
leaking from the bearer's suit or the small box containing the
Victory Machine, and he turned around. "You, you're not supposed to
be here," rasped the man in the old, heavy containment suit. He was
face down, struggling to push himself