This Day all Gods Die: The Gap into Ruin

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  “He’ll be killed!” the captain protested. “We might as well murder him.”

  The cruelty of being asked to defend Ciro’s decision turned some of Mikka’s grief to anger. “He volunteered,” she snapped. “It was his idea.”

  “Then it’s suicide,” the deep voice countered.

  Abruptly she started to yell. “No, it’s not!” She hardly knew what had ignited in her, but it exploded like the impact of Calm Horizons’ guns. She seemed to fling a lifetime of pain and anger into the intercom pickup. “It’s heroism, you self-righteous sonofabitch! If he were a cop, you would call it valor above and beyond the call off ucking duty!”

  Shaken by her own fury, she stopped.

  Dolph didn’t respond directly. He may have understood her; guessed the implications of a life spent as an illegal. Or he may have realized that no answer of his would help her.

  “Christ!” he muttered. “This must be what he had in mind from the beginning. He’s been talking about it for days.

  “How long ago did you realize—? No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.

  “God, Mikka,” he finished, “I just hope you aren’t feeling that valorous. I’m still not ready to die.”

  Mikka Vasaczk sank her teeth into her lower lip until she tasted blood. Damn it, Ciro! she groaned. Do you have any idea what all this valor is costing me?

  She was not a gentle woman. Under other circumstances she might have asked her brother that question aloud—and demanded a reply. But she didn’t have time.

  Suddenly Dolph reported, “Here they come! And they’re moving fast. Too fast. That’s one hell of a decompression blast. If they don’t brake, they’ll—”

  Events had begun to accelerate out of control. A rush of expelled atmosphere carried them headlong toward the brink of success or disaster.

  “Yes!” the captain crowed. “One of them is using his jets. Now they all are. Braking. Adjusting to reach us. Shit, that was close. A few more seconds at that velocity, and they would have hit too hard to live through it.”

  Mikka rested her hands on the command board. She’d already planned her vector away from the locus of g, at an angle to the grenade so that centrifugal force would help the small ships win free. And she’d programmed everything to two keys: one for thrust and helm; one for the dispersion field. All she had to do was wait—

  Angus and the others must have covered the distance at an insane rate. Sooner than she would have believed possible, she heard his voice from the intercom, gasping with urgency and relief. “We’re in! We made it!”

  But he didn’t pause to savor his survival. Instead he panted, “Now or never, Mikka! Get your brother back. Or leave him. Just make up your mind!”

  He understood Ciro’s condition as well as she did. Nevertheless he passed the decision to her as if it belonged to her; as if she’d ever had any say in the matter.

  She swallowed blood to reply; but Dolph answered for her. “We can’t do that, Angus.” Trying to spare her. “If we stay near enough to use our guns we won’t escape the black hole. And we’re losing position. Calm Horizons is pulling away. Even if we burn, we’re going to cross her fire horizon before Ciro pan get here.”

  Yet Angus insisted, “Mikka?” Apparently he wanted to hear it from her. “He’s your brother.”

  Somehow Mikka mustered the instinct for action with which she’d earned her place as Nick’s command second. “I’ll tell him.” That talent may have been the only part of herself she’d ever truly respected.

  “Secure for hard g. This is going to be rough.”

  “She’s right,” Captain Ubikwe rumbled in confirmation. “I’m initiating reorientation now.” Then he added, “Welcome aboard, Director.”

  She heard an unfamiliar voice in a hurry respond, “Thank you, Captain. This is turning into a real thrill ride.”

  Dolph snorted a laugh; and at once inertia pushed Mikka against her armrest as he fired maneuvering thrust, turning the command module and Trumpet to align the gap scout’s tubes.

  While the two vessels swung to their new attitude, she keyed her pickup to Ciro’s frequency. “Ciro, can you hear me?” Her voice glowered like a threat despite her grief. “It’s time.”

  To her surprise, he answered immediately.

  “I hear you, Mikka.”

  Across the static of Calm Horizons’ barrage he sounded distant and frail; utterly alone.

  “They’re back,” she said. “All except Vector. The Amnion killed him.” Ciro had loved Vector. Quickly she continued, “But we got Dios. We’re on our way.”

  Through her teeth she added, “I told Angus I would give you the signal. I wanted a chance to say good-bye.”

  For a moment he didn’t say anything. If he felt Vector’s loss, he didn’t show it. Instead he offered simply, “Good-bye, Mikka.”

  The finality in his voice made her think that he was about to silence his transmitter.

  “Listen to me!” she rasped. “In a few seconds we’re going to burn. Watch our thrust torch.” Otherwise Trumpet would be hard to spot against the background of the battle. “And wait! We need distance. Wait until you see Calm Horizons open fire on us. Then kill that fucker.”

  Now he didn’t hesitate. “I’m on it.” Without transition his voice took on a new quality—a sound like the grip of his hands on his impact rifle. “Thanks, Mikka. I have to finish what Captain Chatelaine started. And pay them back for Vector. I’m glad I can try to save you at the same time.”

  His last words carried past the emission-roar of guns; the killing emptiness of the gap between them.

  “I love you.”

  Mikka said, “I love you, too, Ciro.” But she couldn’t hear herself. She’d already touched her first key; and the fierce thunder of Trumpet’s drive drowned her out.

  ANGUS

  He wanted to reach Trumpet. That was the only escape he’d been able to imagine for himself. Board the gap scout before Mikka started burning: close the airlocks connecting the two vessels. Then he might stand a chance. If Ciro’s grenade devoured Calm Horizons—and Trumpet’s thrust was powerful enough to break the grip of the black hole’s feral g—and Min Donner’s ships relaxed their guard when they saw the Amnioni die: then Angus might be able to take the gap scout and run.

  If he did all that, he would have to take Mikka with him. But the idea didn’t trouble him. She would be the best second he’d ever had. And he didn’t think she’d object. Ciro would be dead; no longer in need of her. On top of that, she might not like the uncertainty of her future in the cops’ hands. She might welcome the chance to get away from them.

  Angus had endured a lifetime of terror during the crossing between the defensive and the command module. The velocity of his expulsion from Calm Horizons had increased his usual fear of EVA by several orders of magnitude. Instinctively he believed that if his zone implants hadn’t protected him his own blood pressure would have burst his heart.

  Once the module’s airlock had cycled shut behind him, however, surrounding him with sweet, safe air so that he could breathe again, rip off his helmet, and really breathe, he forgot everything except escape. He needed a ship: needed to run. Nothing else could relieve his fury at the Amnion—or his dread at what Warden Dios and Hashi Lebwohl might do to him now.

  But Trumpet was denied to him. Dolph Ubikwe had already sealed his hatchesair—a predictable precaution in case the grapples failed and Trumpet’s power pulled the two small ships apart.

  And there was no time. Mikka hit thrust so hard, generated so much acceleration g, that even Angus’ reinforced strength might not have been enough to preserve him while he fought to gain Trumpet’s bridge. He was barely able to flip himself into one of the module’s g-seats and close the belts before the howl of the drive threatened to squeeze him unconscious.

  He couldn’t escape. He was a welded cyborg: the child of the crib. He’d spent his whole life fleeing; but he’d never escaped anything.

  Once he’d confirmed that Davies
and Dios had also reached the protection of the g-seats, he let his tired limbs settle into the cushions as if he were surrendering to his mother; to Warden Dios and despair.

  He didn’t see chaos erupt across the module’s scan as Trumpet’s dispersion field transformed matter cannon beams to boson madness. He wasn’t looking. But he felt the birth of the black hole. A terrible gravitic fist slammed against him when Ciro’s grenade bloomed into ravening and incalculable hunger.

  Then he knew absolutely that Dios had won. Ciro’s rifle had supplied enough energy to spark the grenade’s nascent singularity. The forces he’d unleashed had killed him nanoseconds ago—a quantum eternity within the discontinuities of the event horizon. Now those same forces fed on Calm Horizons— dragged the immense defensive down to the size of a pinpoint—

  —fed and grew stronger.

  Just for an instant Angus wondered whether Mikka had considered how the black hole’s power would increase as it consumed Calm Horizons. But after that he wondered nothing; thought nothing. In spite of his zone implants, the pressure of g drained the blood from his brain, and he fell from consciousness into his mother’s forlorn embrace.

  Finally fatal g faded to lightness like crossing the gap into death: a lifting evaporation so poignant that he didn’t think he could bear it. After aeons of cruel mass—ages which his computer measured in far smaller increments—the burden of his mortality dropped away, and he felt himself drift through relief and darkness as if in some nameless, essential form he’d been cut loose.

  Somehow during the past few days he’d learned how to access his datalink without thinking about it. His computer informed him coldly that he’d been unconscious for thirteen seconds. So apparently he wasn’t dead. A dead man might not have been able to extract an answer from the machine window in his head.

  Yet everything that had ever weighed him down was gone: mass; flesh; dread. Thirteen seconds had brought him to the far side of an inner abyss—a personal fissure like the cracks in his discarded faceplate.

  Deaner Beckmann had speculated that a human bred for g might be able to survive inside a black hole; might pass through it to an entirely different kind of life. When Angus remembered that, he began to wonder what had happened to him.

  He blinked his dry, sore eyes until they ran. Slowly the blackness dissipated as if it were being vented like waste from an overstressed scrubber; released to vacuum. With tears on his cheeks, he looked up at the command module’s display screens.

  Scan was clear. For some reason that surprised him: he’d expected the wild aftereffects of a boson storm—or the distorted spectrum inside the black hole’s event horizon, Dopplering backward toward extinction. Yet screens reported data he could recognize. A helm schematic marked the module’s position relative to UMCPHQ, Punisher, Dormer’s ships, and the vanished Amnioni. Status indicators reported that the grapples still held Trumpet; that the last traces of matter cannon emission had faded; that the pressure of g was gone; that the module retained structural integrity; that UMCPHQ, Punisher, and several other ships signaled for contact Instead of burning, Trumpet and the module now coasted gently along the rim of a planetary orbit. Mikka must have programmed helm to take over when she lost consciousness; to assume this heading and drop thrust once the danger of the black hole passed.

  But of course it made sense that scan was clear. Ciro’s singularity had gulped down the boson storm as easily as it had swallowed Calm Horizons. And since then the module’s instruments and computers had had plenty of time to reestablish their grasp on reality.

  Morn had feared the singularity’s hunger. A force powerful enough to crush Calm Horizons might also snag UMCPHQ from its orbit; suck down Punisher and the other ships; even threaten Earth. But Min Donner had assured her that wouldn’t happen. The ED Director seemed to know by heart every spec and capability of every weapon the UMCP designed. She’d told Morn small black holes burned hotter than large ones—and the hotter they burned, the faster they consumed themselves. A black hole with the mass of a star would remain cool enough to feed and grow. But a black hole with no more mass than a planet might well be less than a cm in diameter—a tiny thing, despite its vast g; hot as the core of a sun. And Ciro’s singularity had only Calm Horizons’ mass to sustain it.

  One of the module’s screens reported that the entire life span of this black hole had been 5.9 seconds.

  Long enough to transform every exercise of power in human space; every interaction between humankind and the Amnion from now on. And every connection in Angus’ head.

  He knew he’d lost his only chance to escape. If Dolph had sealed the module’s airlocks, Mikka must have done the same to Trumpet’s—for the same reason. By the time Angus reopened this hatch and coded his way aboard the gap scout, other people would regain consciousness. The fat man or Davies would start talking to Punisher: Dios would start talking to UMCPHQ. They would be able to warn Donner when Trumpet broke the module’s grapples—and her ships would have plenty of time to fix targ before Angus acquired the velocity for a gap crossing.

  He couldn’t run. Just for the moment, however, he didn’t mind. The lightness of his body seemed to fill his head, as if the black hole had eaten away everything that normally drove him, everything he recognized about himself, leaving him as weightless as a new soul.

  Entirely by coincidence, he’d belted himself into the module’s communications station. But the board lay lifeless in front of him: its functions had been routed to Dolph’s console. Demands for contact from UMCPHQ and Punisher blinked at Dolph’s face, not his. He felt free to ignore them.

  While the sensation lasted, he let himself enjoy it.

  It lasted longer than he would have believed possible. Parts of it were still with him when Captain Ubikwe abruptly jerked against his belts, blinked his g-stressed eyes, and peered urgently at his command readouts.

  “Welcome back, fat man,” Angus drawled. “You’ve all been out so long I might have thought you were dead. If I hadn’t heard you breathing.”

  Dolph flinched a look toward the communications station. His heavy mouth hung open, but he couldn’t swallow enough moisture to speak.

  Piqued by an unfamiliar sense of affection, Angus added, “You snore, you know that? In fact you’re pretty damn good at it. On a scale of ten you rate at least eleven.”

  Dolph’s throat worked for a moment. At last he choked out, “How long—?”

  “Only about four minutes,” Angus answered. “You can relax. We aren’t in any trouble.” He bared his teeth in a predator’s smile. “But you missed the good part.”

  Punisher’s captain frowned in confusion. “The good part?”

  Angus gestured at the displays. “Calm Horizons doesn’t exist anymore. She fell into a black hole. Then I guess the black hole fell into itself.” He spread his arms expansively, stretched the muscles of his back until his spine popped. “I think this means we won, fat man.”

  With an effort Captain Ubikwe consulted his readouts again. Slowly he seemed to gather strength from his board; the screens; Punisher’s familiar bridge. Data and circumstances he understood restored him like a transfusion.

  He looked at Davies and Dios long enough to reassure himself that they were alive. Then he asked, “What about Mikka?”

  Angus shrugged. “If she’s awake, she hasn’t said anything. Since we survived, I assume she did, too.” He was obliquely worried about Mikka himself. In another minute or two the man he’d become would feel compelled to go check on her. “But we’re safe enough,” he continued. “We don’t need Trumpet’s thrust. We can coast like this for quite a while before we need to worry about anything.”

  Dolph considered the situation. “Well, by damn,” he muttered. His voice began to emerge from his chest more easily. “That’s amazing. Utterly—”

  By degrees his mouth spread into a wide grin. “Of course,” he told Angus, “I had complete confidence. You have that effect on people. You can’t help it. It just happens. Automatic t
rust. Sort of like snoring, only less benign.

  “I don’t know what Min’s going to do about you.” His eyes glittered humorously. “She’ll have to do something. You’re probably too dangerous to live. But if she decides to terminate you, I’m going to make sure you get a commendation before you die. That’s a promise.” He held up his hands as if to ward off thanks. “Anybody who accomplishes what you just did should have a commendation nailed to him somewhere, even if it has to be on your coffin instead of your chest.”

  “How nice,” Angus growled in the same spirit. “I wish I could tell you how good that makes me feel. But it doesn’t. I’m so pleased I could puke.”

  Because he knew Dolph was joking, he didn’t mention that he was prepared to fight for his right to go on living.

  The captain replied with a relaxed chuckle. “I know what you mean. Sometimes I think they really do nail those commendations into you. Drive them right through your heart. Some people never recover.”

  He might have gone on; but the UMCP director groaned suddenly. Warden made a convulsive effort to shift his hips as if he needed to adjust the vector of his suit jets. Then he jerked his eye open.

  “Angus,” he croaked hoarsely. “Dolph. Where are we? What’s going on? Where’s that Amnioni?”

  He could probably guess most of what Angus, Dolph, and Mikka had done. He’d seen it happen. But no one had told him about Ciro—

  Dolph couldn’t restrain a quick laugh. “Gone!” he crowed. “Eaten by a black hole.” And then flung outward in an evanescent hail of subatomic particles when the black hole died. “Mikka Vasaczk’s brother, Ciro, set off one of Trumpet’s singularity grenades. The briefings I’ve read say those things don’t have much tactical use, but I’m here to tell you they work like magic if you do it right.”

  Scowling, Dios rubbed his organic eye; slapped his face; straightened his back; pulled himself together by force of will. “Captain Ubikwe,” he ordered sharply, “start again. I didn’t understand a word you just said.”