by R. M. Meluch
Earth was still at war with Palatine. The Romans were as imperialistic as ever, still claiming the whole of the constellation Sagittarius as their sovereign space.
Marisa Johnson was still President. Farragut had kinda hoped that might have changed. He had not voted for her either time.
John Farragut’s sweet wife, Maryann was still dead. His wife’s suicide still weighed on him after seven years. God in heaven, couldn’t you have made that change, Sir?
Unchanged also were the Roman Legions closing implacably on the Myriad to challenge Merrimack for the right to flag the three inhabited worlds in the Sagittarian globular cluster.
Merrimack could not flag any of the three planets in the name of the United States, because the sapient beings who had come through that kzachin from the distant past had already claimed them. Merrimack had claimed them as LEN protectorates.
The messenger’s journey through the kzachin back ten billion years to tell the people of Origin of aliens and FTL travel had changed absolutely nothing.
I could have used some help here, Farragut silently suggested to God.
Rome wanted the planets. Rome wanted the kzachin. And only the Merrimack stood in Rome’s way. Great as Merrimack was, she was no match for two Legions.
Merrimack. His constant. Merrimack was still his, unchanged. Farragut was grateful for that.
Also unchanged was his exec, a diamond in a brilliant cut, Calli Carmel.
Calli was demanding of a technician, “Why aren’t those two sensor monitors on-line?”
The screen that ought to be showing the plot of all the kzachin in the Myriad was vacant of orange plots; and the low-band monitor, which was meant to register gravitational disturbances, showed only blank white.
“Both monitors are functioning normally,” the baby-faced tech attending the sensors protested.
“Then where is the Rim gate?” said Calli. “Where are all the rest of the kzachin?” She was pretty sure kzachin was what the locals called the wormholes that riddled the stellar cluster. “And what the hell is that?”
That was the blank white low-band monitor.
Impatient with young Mr. Emerson’s attempts at fine-tuning the instruments, Captain Farragut stalked to the errant monitor, and tuned the low-band screen his way, with the heel of his hand. Didn’t fix it.
“Please, sir, don’t hit the equipment. It’s not broken. The low band is working,” the tech labored to explain, making ineffectual efforts to place himself between these ham-handed command officers and his defense-less instruments. “The low band is registering overload. Happened when the messenger ship went through the kzachin. These readings are off the scale. That’s why the screen is full. There’s something big out there.”
“Then lower the sensitivity,” said Calli. “And get the kzachin map back on here.”
The tech’s ears were red as portside lights. A man that young could not bear for a woman that beautiful to think him inept. “Uhm . . . They’re not there. The kzachin. The wormholes. The gates. Whatever you call them. I can’t get them on the map because they’re not—”
A sudden surge overloaded the force field’s damper settings. The deck heaved, pitched the command deck over twenty-two degrees, rocking the specialists at their stations, throwing Calli Carmel into the monitors and knocking the little IO, Lu Oh, to the deck.
The inertial dampers quickly restored balance. Captain Farragut took Colonel Lu Oh’s tiny hands and helped her to her feet.
“Are you okay, Lu?” Farragut steadied the IO on her frail-looking legs, and guided a long, straight strand of black hair from her praying mantis face. To everyone else he barked: “What was that? I need a report. Mr. Carmel, what’s happening to my boat?”
Calli came up blank. Blank didn’t look right on her.
“Gentlemen,” Lu Oh announced, readjusting the low-band monitor for the technician. “We have a singularity.”
With the monitor’s sensitivity crushed down to utter numbness, the low band showed distortion lines running through the points where all the kzachin used to be. Farragut had seen such an image before, the Myriad looking like a string bag. Only now someone had pulled the strings.
The core of the Myriad was collapsing—almost fast enough to see. The stars smeared inward on the screen.
“Told you the kzachin were wormholes,” said Lu. “Sending a mass through a wormhole collapses the wormhole. Now whether there’s a threshold mass to these wormholes, or reality finally caught up with them with that last transit, there they go.”
“What’s happening?” said Farragut. “What am I looking at?”
Lu Oh loved being the One with all the answers. But, in her fashion, she fed out only clues, “If nature abhors a vacuum, it loathes, abominates, and despises a naked singularity. This one is clothing itself.”
Clothed singularity. John Farragut had heard that term before. Remembered the more popular term. “Black hole.”
“As you see, the universe heals itself,” said Lu Oh. “Paradoxes are not allowed. And that is what happens when someone tries to go back ten billion years and change history. I told you nothing could change—historically speaking. This, of course, is new.” She nodded at the forming black hole.
Farragut stared at the stars’ blurry streaks. “Are we safe at this distance?”
“We are safe at any distance outside of the event horizon. Actually, the Merrimack’s force field might even protect us inside the event horizon, but we would be in there forever. Not where I care to retire.”
“Not exactly accurate,” Merrimack’s chief engineer, Kit Kittering, had entered the control room as Lu Oh was speaking. “Mack’s engines would have nowhere to vent if we got stuck in a black hole. We’d overheat in no time trying to maintain a distortion field against that. Colonel Oh’s retirement would be pretty brief.”
And maybe Merrimack could withstand the force inside a black hole—briefly—but her smaller craft definitely could not.
SPT 1 was still outboard.
“Centro!” Farragut cried.
“Is doomed,” Lu Oh finished for him.
Centro. That arid little outpost closest to the heart of the collapsing Myriad, where 900,000 alien beings lived. Where Captain Farragut had sent Colonel Steele, SPT 1, and a full squadron of Marines on recon.
Farragut shouted into the ship’s res com, “Colonel Steele! This is Merrimack! Get the hell out of the Centro system. Get all boats back inboard Merrimack, and do it yesterday!”
Steele acknowledged receiving the order. Reported that he still had Swifts on the planet’s surface.
“Evac, TR. The planet is slipping into a black hole.”
“Understood. How long have I got?”
Centro’s system pulled perilously toward the stellar cluster’s dying core. Uncertain, the captain looked to Lu Oh. “How long does he have?”
Lu Oh’s hairless brows lifted, dubious. “On the planet’s surface? Outside of a distortion field? Not long at all.”
“Won’t he have nine minutes after the sun dies at least? The light distance of Centro from its sun?”
“Oh,” the IO gave a nasty little smile as if the captain had just said something naive, “Light is not the issue. Gravity is. Gravity was once thought to be a force, but it’s not. It’s a fundamental property of space-time. The tides are stretching the planet and everyone on it apart even now. The tide will tear them apart before they know the light has died.”
Calli was on the com before Lu finished her explanation, “Colonel Steele, get your Swifts spaceborne. Evac. Evac. You are out of time.”
Steele acknowledged, and Merrimack heeled round to make all possible speed to the planet Centro for dust off.
The Swifts of Red Squadron lifted from the planet surface to dock with the orbiting SPT 1, covering it like an infestation of ticks. One dock remained free. Missing was Alpha Three.
Steele snarled over the link, “Flight Sergeant Blue, where the hell are you?”
“Too frogg
ing far from my frogging Swift, sir! But I got an LD here. Get me the frogs out of here.”
Steele swore. Growled at the Marine nearest the displacement controls, “Get her.”
In the long, long silence in which the Marine struggled to acquire a green line on the displacement chamber and the world continued to crumble below them, Kerry Blue transmitted again, “I’m three klicks from my Swift, okay? I’ll pay for the frogging Swift! Take it out of my lunch money! Can’t you displace me?”
Steele snapped around to the young stud fumbling at the displacement console. “Flight Sergeant Carver, you got a problem there?”
Cowboy Carver beat on the controls. “Something’s wrong. The sun’s uffed and I can’t get a green light on this fubared piece of Ganchar meat.” Cowboy kicked the console with his nonregulation snakeskin boot.
Little Reg Monroe, who fancied herself an engineer, elbowed herself in for a look at the displacement readouts. “What’s not happening for you, Cowboy?”
“The LD and the collar won’t jibe. I can get receiver confirmation on one or the other, but not both at the same frickin’ time, and the displacer won’t go without three reads!”
“It’s the tidal distortion,” said Reg. “This ain’t normal space. Kerry’s head’s too far from her feet here to get correspondence.”
Cowboy called over the link, “Hey, Blue, crouch!”
But Merrimack must have been monitoring the link, because Calli Carmel transmitted: “Do not displace. Do not attempt displacement of a human being.”
Colonel Steele swore purple maggots.
“We can’t leave Kerry behind!” Cowboy declared.
Steele stabbed him with a icy glare. Only because you say so, jack piss. Hated that man.
Colonel Steele ordered his squadron back into their Swifts. Once the Marines were secure in their cockpits, Steele dropped the Spit boat’s force field and ordered the Swifts, “Get off me. Return to Merrimack best speed, and don’t look back.”
The Swifts disconnected and shot away.
Merrimack raced to meet them. Received the spent fighters on her flight decks, and hauled them inboard. The fighters had used up all the antimatter in their reservoirs just to drag themselves out of the gravity well.
But the returned squadron was one Swift light. And where was the Spit boat? The com tech could not raise SPT 1 on the com.
“TR?” Captain Farragut tried. “Are you out there?” And to the com tech, “Is he out there?”
“Can’t tell, Captain.”
Marcander Vincent, at Tactical, answered for him, “Found him, sir. SPT 1 has descended into Centro’s atmosphere.”
“Oh, hell, he can’t,” Farragut breathed, reached over the com tech’s shoulder to transmit, “Steele, get out of there. Can he hear me? Is he flying that thing, or falling?”
“Flying, sir,” said Tactical. “Spit boats glide like rocks. SPT 1 is moving like it’s making descent using its distortion field.”
Farragut yelled into the caller, “TR, you answer me now or I will have you at my mast when you do get back here!”
The com link opened with a sound like static. There was no such thing as resonant static. The noise was the clattering of debris against SPT 1’s force field. “I’m here, Captain.”
“Where are you going, TR?”
“Retrieving a soldier separated from her ship.”
“The boffins are telling me you have to wear off right now—right now—if you are going to achieve escape velocity. And in case you forgot, we have a Roman Legion moving in here and due within the hour. Wear off. Acknowledge!”
Received nothing but clatter from the com.
“You are receiving me, TR! Get up here now.” Farragut slapped off the com and stalked away with a loud oath.
Colonel Oh presented the navigator with an optimum course to get Merrimack clear of the rapidly forming accretion disk and to use the black hole to cloak the battleship’s movement from the approaching Legion.
But instead of ordering Merrimack out of the Myriad, Farragut told his exec: “Take us to Centro.”
Calli relayed orders to navigation. Lu Oh squawked as the helm steered them straight toward a force that could suck Merrimack through the eye of a number six needle.
Kerry Blue ran for her Swift. Three klicks away. She could do that. Piece of cake. She could run three klicks carrying a twenty-five-kaygee field pack.
But she felt as if she were wearing fifty-kaygee shoes, and someone was pulling her head up on a noose. The sky—the sky was not. A lurid dark bruise of a storm sky. Purple light lanced off coagulated clouds. The ground poked up and hit her. Her head banged from within. She wanted to pull her own skin off, open her skull, and let her brain out.
She ran on, swearing. They left me. They left me. She was going to reach her Swift, by hell, make it back to the Mack and piss on Colonel Steele for leaving her here. Had to stay angry, else she would cry.
Semper fi. Oh, yeah, sure, semper frogging fi. That must be for somebody else. Nobody was fi to Kerry Blue. Why wouldn’t Steele displace her? She wasn’t the first Marine to lose a Swift.
Okay, so he was making her run to her Swift. She would run to her Swift. And just you see where I park it, sir!
It had to be just over the next hill. Hill? She didn’t remember a hill. She mounted the crest on all fours, clawing at the spongy weeds to pull herself up, gasping, throat raw. Squinted through the gritty wind, water spray, and tears. Heart dropped through the bedrock.
She had taken a wrong turn.
She was sure she had been running toward her Swift, but here she had ended up on the waterfront somehow. Shit. She swayed on the thundering ground, shaking. Savage voice within ordered: Get up.
Never say die. That’s what Captain Farragut always said. Unless it’s to the enemy, never say die. Get up and get to your damned Swift, Marine!
Which way was her Swift? She thought she’d left it at the end of this road. Wrong road. But there were no other roads.
Did not know where the hell she could be.
A long lightning flash. Froze a picture of hard blue clarity. The cracked road led into the jagged water. And in a trough between frozen gray waves: the peak of a silver fin blazoned red, white, and blue.
Her Swift. Washing away.
“No!” she tried to scream. Got out only a squeak.
The sky roared. A tearing sand wind pulled up the ground. A shadow fell across her with heat, thunder, and noise. She thought a house was falling on her.
The blocky structure fell hard, close, a scant five-meter miss. A hiss of air. A slash of light in the outline of a hatchway.
SPT 1 was here.
A gangway slapped down with a thunder crack.
Kerry pulled herself up, stagger-ran up the ramp, dove through the circle of light.
“Cowboy!” she cried, rolling on the deck under cool lights. He had come for her. She should have known Cowboy would come back for her. Steele would have his hide on the bulkhead for this.
The hatch’s shutting cuffed her eardrums. The activation of the ship’s distortion field brought instant relief, took the rack from her limbs, the bomb from her skull. Rejoined body to soul. She blinked gritty tears from her eyes to find her savior in the pilot’s seat.
Not Cowboy.
“Get your ass off the deck, and man the overrides, Marine.”
“Sir!”
Would it kill that man ever to use a normal tone of voice to her? It was always a snarl or a bark like she was a galactic fu. So she wondered bitterly why Steele wanted the likes of oh-so-stupid her at his right, then realized it was because there was absolutely no one else aboard.
Everyone else had gone ahead. It was she and Steele and no one else.
Kerry scrambled for the copilot’s chair. Couldn’t see anything out the front viewport but storming mud. The monitors looked worse.
The singularity. You couldn’t see it exactly. You saw what it consumed—whirling gases catching fire as they rushed and col
lided at speeds of millions of klicks per hour, all swirling into the vast void.
Kerry wrenched her attention away from the screens to her flight controls. Her instruments were telling that the power to achieve escape velocity from this little berg of a planetoid was a magnitude normally reserved for an FTL jump. Couldn’t be right.
She stole a glance to the man at her side. Colonel Steele breathed like a bull in a fight, his square jaw clenched.
The engine whined. The Spit boat waddled aloft. Climbed like a slug. A view out the port showed Kerry the buck and wallow that the force field would not let her feel. Heard a quiet grunt at her side. Stole another look.
The muscles in Steele’s arms stood out, tensed hard as stone, as if he were physically pulling the boat up.
“Are we going to make it, sir?”
“They tell me no.” Steele slapped the monitors off to conserve power, brought the life systems down to nominal, channeling all available power to the distortion field and the thrusters.
The blocky spacecraft tore clear of the atmosphere—or else the atmosphere ripped away from the Spit boat. Down below, the planet fell away; up above, the stars soared away. Kerry shut her eyes against the conflicting images. Opened her eyes to focus on the instruments. Always trust your instruments.
Her instruments said the Spit boat was not climbing. The spacecraft peaked, stalled. Hung on a breath—
Steele’s face was inexpressive as granite, those ice-chip eyes determinedly cold, his big hands steady. But a sweat sheen broke on his white skin. Kerry was not sure what that meant. She never could tell what that man was thinking or feeling.
Red lines striped Kerry’s board; the Spit boat’s force field had maxed. Velocity showed negative. They were slipping back toward the singularity.
“Punch overrides,” Steele commanded, and Kerry batted down the switches.
“Balk,” she reported, reading the red lights. The Spit boat would not let her push the engines without compromising the distortion field.
The engine screamed. Distortion field status monitor flickered red. One or the other had to give. “Kill thrusters!” Steele shouted.