by B. V. Larson
With the waypoint dwindling in the rear-viewing screen. “My shift on watch,” Chiara said. “It’s your turn to rest.”
Later when he woke from a deep, refreshing sleep, he wished Chiara was there with him. Unfortunately, they didn’t have an extra pilot, and Hell’s Reach was no place to leave the ship on autopilot. He took a sponge bath in the tiny sink. Even that was a luxury compared to what the crew in the back had. He should probably let them rotate through and wash up during the next leg of the journey.
In the cockpit he checked Chiara’s mood. She seemed completely at peace, in contrast to her earlier emotional confusion—and natural grief at her cousin’s death. She smiled up at him and seemed happy to receive his kiss with that familiar herbal aroma she carried.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” she replied. “Next waypoint is a red giant.”
“Red giant star? Among all these proto-stars? I thought red giants were old, even for stars.”
“They are, usually billions of years old. Maybe it was here before the nebula formed. Or maybe it and the nebula intersected long ago and it got stuck in here, like everything else.”
“Maybe. I’m no brainiac.”
“We’re supposed to fly right through it, but I don’t know... ”
Loco gaped. “Right through a star? You got to be kidding me.”
“Not through the solid core, just the corona. Our route seems to assume a warship that can handle the 4000 C of a red giant.”
“Only 4000 C? That’s not very hot in stellar terms. Isn’t a yellow star’s corona over a million degrees?”
“Yes, but red giants are big enough to swallow the inner planets of a solar system, and they’re made of relatively thin glowing gas. A warship would be able to run low shields for the twenty minutes or so the route tells us to pass through the edge of the thing, but I don’t see why we should. We’ll stay away and go around. It’ll mean an extra hour, but I don’t think we can take that kind of thermal stress.”
“You seem to be asking, not telling.”
Chiara smiled, displaying that unnatural calm serenity again. “You’re my partner, Loco. I want us to agree. What do you think?”
How did she do it? Change from Crabby Chiara to Chill Chiara from one hour to the next? He didn’t get it, but hell, he might as well enjoy this agreeable Chiara while she was here. “I do agree. Crazy to fly through a star. Carry on, Captain Jilani.”
“Aye aye, Lieutenant Paloco.” She hummed as she steered, swooping gently up and down, left and right. It was as if she were a little drunk. Maybe she was. Loco could hardly blame her for downing a drink or two after almost getting killed, and she didn’t seem seriously impaired.
The rocks surrounding them drifted outward as well, away from the hot surface of the red giant. “Look at the size of that thing,” Loco said as they cruised in a vast majestic curve. “Its diameter is the size of a planetary orbit! It’s like a... ”
“Big red balloon? Big red beachball? Big red candy gumdrop?”
“Chiara, are you all right?”
“I’m fine. How you doin’?”
“Not feeling as good as you. How much did you have to drink…?”
“Too much, I guess. Sorry. You’d better take over.” She stood, unsteady, and held onto the headrest. “I’m gonna go lie down.”
“Yeah... good idea.” He watched her, shaking his head. She’d never had a problem holding her liquor. In fact, he’d never seen her this affected, even when she hit the bottle hard.
Then again, he’d never seen her starting to crumble and fall apart from stress.
What could he do, other than going on a bender together, to drink it all off? Do what he’d do with any buddy, any comrade, any friend—let her get over it, get through it, sleep a lot, and hope for the best.
Be there for her. Yeah. It’d all work out.
Sure.
As the ship rounded the massive star, the sensors reported something ahead—another asteroid storm, it looked like, a big one, far larger than the one near the exoplanet. He altered course to go around, but... the asteroids shifted to intercept the ship.
Oh, shit. Were they hostile Lithoids?
He thought of calling Chiara back in, but she’d be dead asleep by now. He comlinked, “Brock, you there?”
“Here, sir.”
“Come to the cockpit.”
The badger reported within seconds.
“Sit down,” Loco ordered. “Can you work the weapons and countermeasures?”
“Sure, boss.”
“Good, because we’ve got something in our way.” Loco pointed at the screens.
Brock took a moment to strap in. Quickly and efficiently, he configured the displays and brought up specific sensor info. “The things ahead—they’re not rocks. They’re ice crystals—of a sort. Lithium, water, some other exotic stuff. Cold.”
“How can there be ice crystals this close to a star?”
“A cool star, but you’re right to ask. I think it’s because of these.” Brock made icons flash. “There are several planets close to the red giant, tidally locked so their back sides are actually cold, really cold. Their trajectories show these things came from those planets. They must live there. Maybe they fly out and forage for what they need, like communal insects, and bring what they find back to the hive.”
“And we’re their next target. Great.” Loco examined the ship’s course. “We’re not quite going to be able to avoid them.”
“Our rocks should send them packing.”
“Cross your fingers.”
Brock held up a clawed hand. “What?”
“It means, we need some luck.”
“I’ve always made my own luck, boss.”
“Then make some now.” Something occurred to Loco. “I think I know why we were supposed to fly through the star. These things. They probably aren’t interested in hot objects, like a warship with a residual hull temperature of thousands of degrees.”
“I think you’re right.” Brock rubbed his muzzle. “Drive plasma’s pretty hot. Maybe that’ll scare them off.”
“I’ll turn directly away when we get close and give them a face-full, but we can’t get too far off course or we’ll burn too much fuel. The rocks will have to defend us again.”
The rocks did. When the edge of the ice cloud got close, and Loco turned the ship away, the rocks zapped the swarming comets with hot lightning bolts. After a few moments, they withdrew and headed home to the cold side of their planets.
“Without our friends, we’d be dead several times over,” Loco said.
“Kinda like real life, huh, boss?”
Loco chuckled. “You know what, Brock? The Breakers could use guys like you. You got any buddies who’d like to enlist?”
“Several, and I could find more. Mellivor are famous mercs.”
“You have a home planet?”
Brock’s eyes unfocused. “Not anymore. Couple hundred years ago we had a war with the Vulps that we lost. They took our homeworld and kept it as a hunting ground. They left enough of our people alive and feral, out in the wilderness, so they can hunt us for sport. When all hope was gone, our remaining ships evacuated a few habs and ran far away. Now, our males hire ourselves out.”
“And your females? Families?”
“Hidden, when they can be. It’s a problem. Someday we’ll reclaim our real home.”
Loco sighed. “Then we have something in common.”
“Guess so,” Brock said.
“God, the Middle Reach sucks.”
“Sucks donkeys,” he agreed.
Loco turned to him in amusement. “That’s a pretty good language chip you got. Do you even know what a donkey is?”
“Some kind of animal. Why do Earthans suck them?”
Loco chuckled. “They don’t. That’s the point.”
Three hours passed in companionable conversation, exchanging insights on humans and Mellivor. The next waypoint was fifteen minutes away when Loco dec
ided to call Chiara. “You awake?”
“I am now,” she said crossly.
“I could use a pilot.”
“You’re a pilot.”
“I’m a mech pilot,” he pointed out. “You’re the hotshot sloop pilot, and she’s your ship. Drink some of your strong tea and wake up.”
A pause. “Yeah, no. I’ll get caff.” The intercom clicked off. Brock departed with a sympathetic grimace.
A couple minutes later Chiara stepped into the cockpit, handed him a mug of caff, and plopped down in her seat, already sipping from her own. “Here I come to save the day,” she said sourly.
Loco decided not replying directly was the only safe response. When she got like this, she wanted to pick a fight. He refused to give it to her.
Instead, he reported what had happened with the ice crystals, and then said, “The next waypoint—the last one before we arrive—is a weird one. The info says it’s a wormhole, and we’re supposed to pass through it.”
“Yeah, I read that.”
“And?”
“And what?”
Loco sighed. “And you’re the boss. I’ve never heard of a functioning transit wormhole, only theory. Maybe it’s a trap, disinformation.”
“Why lead us through all the other waypoints just to kill us here?”
Loco had no answer.
Chiara continued, “Let’s see what it looks like. You were the one arguing that we can’t quit.”
“I know. But what about our escort? Will they risk it too?”
That seemed to startle her. “Oh, yeah. I forgot about them.”
He only raised his eyebrows. How could she forget about the rocks? But a lot of her behavior lately wasn’t making sense to him.
“There it is,” he said as he brought up a synthesized sensor picture of the waypoint. A spherical black region of space loomed ahead of them. Off to one side, a small black hole hovered, connected to the wormhole by a cone of twisted spacetime. At least, that’s what the sensors saw. Zaxby could have provided a better explanation.
“And we’re supposed to fly straight into it,” she mused. “Through it. And at the other end, assuming we survive, is our destination... where in all likelihood we’ll be facing odds of at least a hundred to one.”
“I know we’re not a military force,” Loco said. “If we get spotted and we can’t handle what we see, we turn around and go back through. Go straight to Utopia and bring the entire Breaker military. If that doesn’t look to be enough, we can tell the Conglomerate, or try to get some other races together—maybe broadcast the information throughout the Middle Reach.”
“That’s what we should’ve done when we got the info from the Daughters,” Chiara muttered.
“Like I said,” Loco said, “you’re the boss. It’s up to you.”
“I don’t want it to be up to me,” Chiara said, shaking her head. “I’m sick of making these life-and-death decisions for other people.”
“Welcome to the club. You know, someone once said to command well, you must love your troops—and be willing to kill what you love.”
“You’re not helping,” she said.
“I don’t know how to help.”
“Take over, then. Please. They’re Breakers in captivity, and mostly Breakers aboard this ship. It should be your decision, not mine.”
Loco thought about it again. “That’s actually a cogent argument. I think you’ll regret it in the long run, but you’re a grown woman and you have the right to abdicate if you want to. If you step down, I’ll take over. But you have to take responsibility for deciding that, not me.”
Chiara bit her lip and whispered to him. “I... I have to. For now. I’m not fit to command. Not right now. And you need to know why.”
While Loco watched, she reached inside her tunic. She took out a tiny dispenser tube, and touched it to her tongue.
Chapter 25
Hell’s Reach, SBS Trollheim.
“Fire!” Captain Salishan’s order rang out across the bridge as the advancing wormhole came near.
The weapons officer stabbed at his board and the lights dimmed with the maximum power draw of the great particle cannon.
The beam slammed into the edge of the wormhole. That boundary disrupted the beam’s laser-straight course, or perhaps the beam disrupted the boundary. The two interacted spectacularly—but though it wavered, the wormhole held its shape and still reached for the ship.
Salishan gritted her teeth against a pointless order. The shipkillers were already programmed and should be detonating—
The forward screen whited out as the two warheads exploded with maximum yield. Megatons of energy plucked at the opposite side of the wormhole, and at its center, the first to destabilize the space-tunnel, the second to blank the control beam with its optimized electromagnetic pulse.
The ship’s SAI, under precise instructions, dropped the particle beam and simultaneously snapped on maximum shielding, maximum armor reinforcement—and the grav-blocker. The defenses deflected the wave of EMP, radiation and blast effects with a shudder felt deep in the soles of every pair of boots on the deck.
The wormhole wobbled, deformed and popped like a soap bubble—and the singularity behind it came apart with an enormous explosion. Alarms shrieked as the damage control board lit up with yellow and red lights. Gravity dropped briefly to zero before backup systems took over and increased it gently to half on the bridge. In other areas, suited parties of spacers would already be springing into action to manage the chaos.
“Report,” Salishan said as she picked herself up off the deck. She should’ve strapped herself into the chair as per protocol.
The damage control chief took a moment to examine his console and form an assessment. “Blast effects, ma’am, about two petajoules absorbed. We’ve lost the forward third of everything on the hull. The PPC clamshells held, but they’re fused for now. DC teams are on it.”
“Anything not repairable?” Salishan asked.
“Eight secondaries are down, but we only have two full replacement units. Depends on the actual level of damage to the eight. Everything else is replaceable, but that was costly, ma’am.”
“Understood. Carry on. Sensors, status of the phenomenon?”
“Gone, ma’am. No signs of... oh, shit.”
“Report properly, Lieutenant.”
“Pardon, ma’am. Singularity forming, eight thousand kilometers dead astern.”
Salishan slammed her palm on the holotank rail. “Helm, can we get away?”
“Ma’am… ” said the helmsman. “I have no idea where to get away to. This soup is so thick, we’re flying almost blind. I know our orientation because the gravity detectors plot the galactic center like a compass. The proto-stars nearby give me some reference points, but other than that, we’re in the fog.”
“Proto-stars... can we skim close to one, shake this thing off?”
“Possibly, ma’am.”
“Do it.”
The holotank showed the Trollheim turning toward the nearest proto-star, a mass of material much larger than a gas giant. It was in the process of aggregating more and more substance from the nebula, pulling in streamers of dust and chunks of rock the size of sand up to asteroids. The more it collected, the more its own gravity compressed it. With enough gravity, the heat and pressure increased and the proto-star glowed with energy. Eventually, spontaneous fusion began, which generated additional heat and pressure, inciting more fusion. Like a tiny campfire as its tinder glows under the breath of a woodsman, the proto-star would sputter and bubble, its fusion flickering out and being reborn as it crossed under and over the threshold.
At a certain point in the future—star formation could take millions of years—the proto-star would ignite and become stable, the gravity-driven fusion creating enough outward pressure and stellar wind to stop the infall of material. The rest of the matter swirling around the star’s gravity would form into a planetary system.
But not yet, not for a very long time he
re in Hell’s Reach. For now, proto-stars were unpredictable cauldrons, fraught with gravity waves, sudden spurts of hot plasma and fusion, electromagnetic squalls twisted into gusts like winds in a hurricane. Normally, nobody brought a ship near a proto-star, any more than they would fly an aircar into the grasp of a tornado.
“Ma’am, we lost forward shield emitters,” Engineering reported. “I can extend the shields to cover the nose, but at less than half strength until we replace the modules. And we’re using up power reserves fast.”
“Understood.” Salishan chewed at a knuckle for a moment. Straker had told her to do her job running the ship, but he was in overall charge of the mission, and she needed a decision. “Captain to Straker.”
“Straker here.”
“Sir, while our tactic dissipated the phenomenon, we took a lot of damage. We can’t afford to do that again. I’m running us close to a proto-star in hopes its gravity and radiation give us some cover, but that’s dangerous too. I need to know your intentions if we can’t get away.”
“What would you do, Captain?”
She cleared her throat, a show of reluctance. “As much as I hate to say it, if these things keep coming back, we can’t continue taking heavy damage just to delay the inevitable. Nobody died this time, but as we lose shield emitters and reinforcement busses it’ll get worse and worse. I’ll have to pull in the damage control teams farther and farther, then we’ll lose armor, then blast effects will get through the thin spots—not to mention the irreplaceable shipkillers already expended. Sir, this is a battle with no way to strike at our enemies and no indication we can outlast them.”
“You haven’t answered my question.”
Salishan sighed. “If it were my decision alone, I’d let them haul us through the wormhole and deal with whatever’s at the other end. If there’s overwhelming force there... sir, I’d rather take some of our enemies with us than be destroyed by some... phenomenon. And maybe, just maybe, as Zaxby said, the whatever-it-is isn’t intentionally hostile.”
Straker seemed to think it over for a moment. “I agree. Do what you can, but not at the expense of the ship. It makes no sense to get people killed until we know what we’re dealing with. Carry on, Captain.”
