by R. M. Meluch
Kerry obeyed, quickly, unquestioningly. Would have jumped off a cliff if he told her to. Probably just had.
With the thrusters shut down, engine readings fell briefly back to safe levels, but soon recommenced a climb toward the redlines.
The river of fire about them darkened, thickened, carrying the Spit boat along with it into a well of infinite depth and unimaginable density. The crash and scrape and searing rain grew loud as the distortion field monitors all flickered red. Kerry looked to the colonel. “What now?”
Those pale blue eyes met hers. She couldn’t remember him ever looking into her eyes. He always glared straight over her head, as if there was nothing in her face worth looking at. He had really amazing eyes. But she found no rescue there. All he had to offer was not to let her die alone.
He answered, “Semper fi.”
“SPT 1 sighted,” Tactical reported. “He’s spaceborne!”
“Yippee yo kay yay! Punch it, Kemo Sabe!” That was Cowboy. You could hear him yell from two levels down.
But SPT 1 had not achieved escape velocity so much as the planet Centro had been torn from under it.
The event horizon seemed to grow and approach, though truth was space was shrinking and the SPT boat was going into the singularity, Merrimack not far behind it.
Captain Farragut beheld the maelstrom through the viewports and the images on the monitors of an all consuming blackness, blotting out space and time. It looked like the end of the world.
God, who created such an unholy holocaust? It eats. It eats everything.
“He’s not going to make it,” Calli advised. “His field is losing integrity.”
Farragut turned to the sensor technician. “Do we have a res fix on him?”
“Sure do, sir. Not precise enough to displace him.”
“Then hook him!”
Calli barked orders to engineering. Merrimack heaved out a distortion field extension in the shape of a frog tongue to snag and surround the failing craft.
“Hook away,” Tactical reported. “And . . . Got him!”
As the event horizon swallowed SPT 1.
Captain Farragut had long since become accustomed to not seeing anything in normal space; still, he counted on having a visual image provided by the sensors. The monitors did not show the Spit boat. They showed a monstrous wall of oblivion, a titanic cascade of flaming gases falling into it and vanishing. Merrimack’s own distortion field showed on the screen like a vitreous thread in the inferno, extending for kilometers, breaking off at the maw of the bottomless pit.
“Engineering! Control Room. Status! Do we have him?”
“Got him, Mr. Carmel!” Engineering reported over the com. “Hook holding.”
To the sensor tech, “Can you get a reading beyond the event horizon?”
“Not exactly, sir. We can read inside our own distortion field. We can tell the Spit boat’s in there. Problem is we can’t use our exterior sensor array to read within our own field. But we got him. Can’t tell you too much else about him, but we got him.”
“Then get us the hell out of here,” said Farragut.
His XO, the navigator, tactical, chief engineer, and the helm were already conferring over escape coordinates. Conferring too long.
“Mr. Carmel, why aren’t we moving?”
Calli’s brown eyes lifted in a brief, dire glance, then back to the helm’s console, muttering over the readouts.
Merrimack maintained its distance from the event horizon, but that meager distance was not increasing. The thing out there was feeding, sucking in dust, with a horrific hiss and flash. And under it all, Merrimack’s six engines bellowed, the great ship straining at the edge of all her strength.
It fell to Calli to report, “Can’t, sir. We can maintain the integrity of our force field and our hook, and that’s a max. We cannot escape. We’ve got nothing else to give.”
Farragut turned to the viewport, astonished. Insulted.
That? That is going to defeat me?
He could not accept it. Said to his XO, “A black hole by definition is where escape velocity exceeds the speed of light. We regularly travel a thousand times that. What is the holdup?”
“It’s not the velocity, John. It’s the acceleration that’s always been the trick to FTL. We travel faster than light, but we never actually travel at light speed. Moving a mass at light speed takes infinite force, and that is exactly what it’s going to take to drag the Spit boat through the event horizon.”
“Break the hook off now,” said Colonel Oh. Might’ve been advice, but it came out a command. “Break off, or we’ll be sucked in with it.”
Merrimack maintained, steadfast within the torrent of matter raging into the abyss. The atomized debris spilling round the ship might have been the planet Centro with its 900,000 lives. Dead long before they went in, but Lord Almighty, 900,000 of them.
“Did you hear me, Captain?” Lu cried over the swelling din. “Break off!”
“Not without my men.”
“You’ve already lost them! They’re inside the singularity!”
Farragut consulted the specialists at the tactical station. “Can Steele possibly be alive in there?”
“Not exactly charted territory, sir,” Mr. Vincent answered apologetically. Oldest man on deck. Forty-two. Unflinching. “Theory says the laws of physics break down inside a singularity, but the colonel is not exactly in the singularity. He’s inside the Mack’s distortion field.”
“But it’s going to take infinite power to pull him out of it,” said Colonel Oh. “So here you sit like the boy with his fist stuck in the candy jar. The little idiot can’t figure out that the only way to get his hand out of the jar is to let go of the candy. Let go of the candy, sir, or we’ll die in this jar!”
“We’re not talking about candy, Mr. Oh,” said Captain Farragut.
“No. No, we’re not. We’re talking about a corpse! Let go!”
Merrimack’s six engines groaned. Farragut addressed the personnel on his command deck, “Someone—someone besides Colonel Oh—plot me the shape of this monstrosity.”
The suns at the core of the Myriad had been rotating when they collapsed into the singularity, dragging bent space-time around them, spinning. The event horizon had to describe a moving torus.
“Compute any point that might be more vulnerable to escape than any other point. Black holes give off X rays. Get us out the way the X rays are getting out.”
“Aye, sir!” Calli responded for everyone, her vehemence directed toward the spindly CIA spook.
“Your Marines are dead,” said Lu.
Farragut faced her. Made her look him right in the eyes. “Do you know that, Colonel, or is that an opinion?”
“It is obvious,” said Lu, staring back, unwavering.
“Not to me,” said Farragut.
Mr. Vincent at the tactical station sang out. “We have company. Roman point is on the grid.”
Farragut moved to the tactical station, looked over Vincent’s shoulder to survey the monitors. “What is he?”
“Striker,” Mr. Vincent answered. Small craft. Wickedly fast. Toting some heavy weaponry. “Approaching on the eights at threshold velocity.”
Lu Oh vibrated reedy indignation. “This is an inappropriate risk to take to recover a pair of corpses, Captain Farragut. The singularity is as good a grave as any. Let go.”
“Striker in range,” said Mr. Vincent.
Calli called Fire Control. “Icky, what can you give me?”
“Nothing, sir. We have no weapons. We can’t breach the distortion field without breaking up. Gunports are capped fast and barrels secured inboard. We keep sealed or we are string.”
“Do we have beam weapons?”
“Not really, sir. Moment they leave the barrels, they’ll torque round the event horizon. Might even shoot ourselves in the foot.”
Tactical: “Roman showing gunports.”
Com: “Roman signaling. Says he’s ready to accept our surrender.”<
br />
“Tell him to call back later,” Farragut told the com. “Tell him I’m busy.”
“Those words, sir?”
“Sure. Fine.”
Lu cried, “Cut hook and hit him!”
None of the command deck officers moved without a word from the captain or the exec, so John Farragut did not bother to countermand Colonel Oh.
“Sir!” Lu insisted—and crouched down at the sound of the Roman Striker rushing past. You could actually hear him, so close he came, so thick were the gases surrounding the ship.
The Striker shot by on a near tangent, swirling the dying gases behind it.
An explosion, muffled, reverberated low through the decks.
“Report!” Farragut demanded. “What was that?”
“Distortion bomb,” said Mr. Vincent.
“Penetrate our field?”
“Apparently not.”
Without calibrating the distortion precisely to Merrimack ’s ever-shifting phases, penetration was a trillion-to-one chance. But that shot was not meant to penetrate. “Target finder,” Vincent clarified. “He took a sounding. He’s got a map of our field now. Depth. Orientation. Right now he’s studying it to find if we’re open to a fatal blow.”
“Are we?”
“Yes, sir,” Mr. Vincent said, as Mr. Emerson at the sensors nodded emphatic agreement. “Singularity has pulled us thin fore and aft. A hit anywhere in the stern takes us right out.”
“Then figure out how to reel in my Spit boat before this Striker shoots me in the ass.”
“Let go of SPT 1,” Lu answered.
“Not an option.”
“I remind the captain it is not just your ass about to be shot. It’s our collective ass.”
Below the rising crash and thunder, the helm could be heard muttering into his board, “Thank you, Colonel. I am sure he forgot that.”
Farragut spoke over him, “Did someone pull the colors off that Striker?”
“Red and black,” Emerson consulted the sensors. “And his sail is peppered with kill badges.”
“Red and black. What gens is that?”
Before Emerson could look it up, Calli answered directly, “Flavian.”
Tactical: “Roman turning wide.”
“Flavian,” Farragut echoed. “Is that Republican or Imperialist? Where do the Flavians stand on the Peace?”
“Imperial,” said Calli. “Right, honor, and the glory of Rome. Hawk to the bone.”
“Good,” said Farragut.
“Oh, hell,” said Lu.
Tactical: “Striker lining up a kill run.” Mr. Vincent turned from his board, earnest. “Sir. We can take this guy. Awaiting your orders.”
“You have my orders.”
Vincent turned back to his console, scarlet flush creeping back to his distant hairline.
“Steele is dead!” Lu shouted, fists clenched.
Again: “Do you know this, Lu?” Farragut asked quietly, right in the enormous eyes, not an argument, a solemn question.
“Yes!”
At the same time, the com tech sang out, “Res message on our harmonic.” And he put it on the speaker:
“Merrimack. Merrimack. Merrimack. This is SPT 1. Do you read?”
Calli stepped out of the way of the captain’s lunge for the res caller. “TR! Status!”
“SPT 1 here. We are intact and shouldn’t be. I can’t tell what’s holding us together. I think we’re inside the black hole. Instruments read garbage.”
Unmanned probes sent into black holes gave back the same result. The old saying remained true—black holes have no hair.
“I shut down the thrusters,” Steele continued. “I have power enough now to bring the thrusters back on-line, but I don’t know which way to fly. Advise.”
“I’ve got you, TR. Do NOT activate your thrusters. You are inside Merrimack’s field.”
“And sucking us down with you.”
“Colonel Oh, shut up,” Calli ordered.
Colonel Oh ignored her. “Captain, the Roman has us! We are sitting ducks!”
“Not much sport in it, is there?” Farragut murmured.
Lu wailed heavenward. “Oh, God. We are acting according to John Farragut’s sense of fair play against a goddamn Roman point man with a high score and an easy shot—”
Tactical: “Here he comes.”
Calli advised, very low and personal, “John, if you’re counting on the Roman’s sense of honor not to shoot you in the back, I should tell you that honor regularly only extends to other Romans. It’s dangerous to second-guess the Wolf Star.”
Farragut nodded. Murmured back, “I know that wolves kill what runs.”
“Yes, sir.” Calli assumed a posture of cool readiness, hands clasped behind her back, head imperially high.
Tactical: “Striker charging up his disrupters!”
Exec: “Thank you, Mr. Vincent.”
Flashes from the Striker’s ports drew red, severely arcing lines through the storming gases around Merrimack, bounced off her field.
Tactical: “Tracers! Dead on.”
Lu shrieking: “Let go of the Spit!”
Tactical: “Roman firing.”
18
DID NOT HEAR the shot. Disrupters were point specific. Whether they hit or missed, you never heard the shot.
Did feel the deck heave.
He missed!
The Striker’s shot must have hit the singularity, because the black hole’s tidal warp dipped and undulated. And, in the trough in the event horizon, SPT 1 appeared—
And instantly catapulted free to tumble end over end with Merrimack like a lopsided bolo, with a force that might have jumped them FTL were they in normal space.
“We’re loose!”
The stars showed through the viewport as solid lines as the ship whirled round and round, the kind of spin that would splatter all hands through the bulks if not for Merrimack’s force field.
“Stabilize ship,” Calli ordered.
Helm: “Stabilizing, aye.”
Tactical: “Striker tracking us.”
“Open fire on Striker,” said Farragut. “Shoot from the hip.”
“Without acquiring target?” Lu was appalled. “The singularity will foul any attempt—”
Calli: “Fire Control. Full broadside at the Striker. Fire. Fire now.”
The ship’s power coiled. You felt it coming up through the deck. The battleship unleashed a storm like a solar flare in the vague direction of the Roman point.
Tactical: “Clean miss.”
“Line up another round,” Farragut ordered.
“Striker wearing off.”
Lu Oh scoffed. “You don’t get a second shot! You weren’t even close! Like he’s going to wait around with Merrimack at full strength! What an e-jack!”
“Colonel Oh, remove yourself from the control room,” Captain Farragut said evenly.
“Fine.” Colonel Oh jerked off her headset. “Next time you feel the need to play chicken with a Roman, let me out of the car.”
Farragut murmured after her, “You break the jar.”
Calli cocked her head the better to hear. “Sir?”
“Talkin’ to myself.”
A crew of erks locked down SPT 1 upon the boat’s docking in Merrimack’s port wing.
Cowboy’s whoop rang off the metal bulks, his boot-falls clanging on the deck grates with his charge to greet the Spit’s return.
Kerry Blue tottered down the ramp like a fragile drunk.
“Ho! Doll!” Cowboy bowled her off her feet into his arms. “Sheeps, I thought you bought the bowling alley back there!” Cowboy stuck a yard of tongue down her throat, then broke off to crow, “You should have seen your rescue! Captain did balls with the Roman point! He’s a wild man! And you!” over Kerry’s head to the spit boat’s hatchway. “Old Man! And they call me cowboy! You are crazed! Fly right into a black hole! You’re the Man of Steel for sure!” Winked at Kerry, “At least part of him is!” He grabbed his own part in case anyo
ne missed the reference.
Steele spoke with arctic reserve. “Flight Sergeant Carver. Last I was aware, we had a Roman Legion converging on this position. Has that situation changed?”
“No, sir. They’re coming.”
“Then get back to your station.”
Cowboy gave Kerry a wink and pinch on the ass in parting.
“Captain on deck!”
Steele snapped to along with everyone else.
Farragut waved down the salutes. The maintenance crew returned to their work on the Spit boat. Kerry Blue slumped from attention.
“Welcome aboard, Flight Sergeant Blue,” said Farragut with some irony, but mostly it was a real welcome.
“Thank you, sir,” Kerry said, breathless.
“And you.” The captain gave Steele an unconvincing scowl. He did not finish. The rest could be said later.
“Situation?” Steele requested.
“We’re about to get lousy with Romans. I set your Wing to back up the Battery. I’m not launching anybody with that out there.”
“Yes, sir.” Steele was in no mood to take on the black hole ever again.
“You two get your butts to sick bay,” Farragut dismissed Steele and Blue.
“Sir,” Steele stiffened, at attention. “Permission to obey that order after we take care of the Romans.”
Farragut looked at both of them critically. Looked pretty good for having been crushed by infinite gravity. “If you know you’re up to it, I can use you.”
Steele immediately sent Kerry Blue to join the gunners. Then he said to the captain, “Thank you, sir. How are we going to play this?”
Farragut shook his head. “Let’s see what the Romans throw at us before we swing.”
“Hey, chica linda, I saved a place for you.” Carly patted the seat next to her as Kerry ducked into her gun turret. “What’s it like inside a black hole?”
Kerry hunkered down next to her gun. “For something that’s supposed to have no hair, it was hairy.”
“Glad you could join us,” Reg muttered. Not like Reg to gush, but she sounded actually angry. “You got any idea what went on in this barge to get you back?”
“Not really,” Kerry said uneasily. She was getting terrible inklings.