Supernova

by C. A. Higgins

  “I’ll send another message in confirmation of our success,” she said at last. She played the recording back to see if she could hear that hesitation, but she heard nothing in her own voice but certainty.

  Good enough. Constance encrypted it and tied it up with the howling of hounds and then sent the message on its way.

  The men were waiting for her in the den. As soon as she stepped out of her room, she could hear them talking, their words incomprehensible. Constance wondered what they were talking about without her there.

  It was a stupid wonder to have; Ivan and Mattie had many things that they could talk about when she was not there. They had a whole relationship that did not include her. But it didn’t matter: Mattie would never know Ivan as long or as truly as he had known Constance, and Ivan would never look at Mattie the way he looked at her.

  Just as she reached the den, Ivan said, “Run through it with me again.”

  Mattie was already dressed like a System mechanic in a baggy gray jumpsuit and a hat that served to hide his distinctly nonregulation hair. He nodded to Constance when she entered, then went back to humoring Ivan.

  “I get on the refueling ship Julian pointed out to us,” Mattie said. “The Hertzsprung. The bombs are already all loaded on board. The crew of the Hertzsprung is all Julian’s people, or else they’re used to smuggling and don’t know anything about the cargo. The Hertzsprung takes off from the moon and waits between the Earth and Luna, just as the System tells it to do. The Hertzsprung is a refueling ship, so when Julian’s ship and three other ships working with him run out of fuel in the Hertzsprung’s range, the Hertzsprung will go to refuel them and I will make sure that our special cargo ends up on the right ships with the right people. Meanwhile, you two will be at the dispatch center, making sure that the Hertzsprung gets dispatched to refuel the right ships. After that it’s Julian’s problem, and I come back here.”

  Ivan was nodding. He was sitting on the couch in the cramped den of the Annwn, where the boxes of displaced cargo had been partially reloaded into the ship’s newly empty holding bays. This had served less to make the den more spacious and more to make it more untidy, which meant that Mattie had been the one in charge of unloading the boxes and had lost interest midway through. Constance nudged one fallen box out of sight beneath her chair so that it no longer choked the narrow pathway leading to the door.

  Ivan said, “I should be the one going.”

  He was looking at Constance, and she started shaking her head before she even heard his sentence in its entirety.

  “Ivan, I’ll be fine,” Mattie said.

  “You’re too recognizable,” Constance said to Ivan. “If anyone knew you, we’d be done. Besides, I need you here with dispatch.”

  Ivan didn’t respond, which was as good an indication as any that he knew she was right. Mattie was bouncing his leg up and down, a ball of loose energy, ready to go, but he was watching Ivan with the sort of serious attention that Constance rarely saw him give to anyone.

  “I should go,” Mattie said, and rose to his feet. Constance nodded at him. Ivan made no response. Mattie came forward and pressed his clenched fist against the place where Ivan’s shoulder met his chest, over his heart. Ivan still didn’t look at him, but it was clear that Mattie had his attention.

  “I’ll be fine,” Mattie said again. “Like if they caught me they could hold me, Ivan.” He grinned, and Ivan gave him a faintly exasperated look.

  That seemed to be enough permission for Mattie to leave. He pulled away from Ivan and stuck his hands in his pockets. “Good luck,” Constance said as he passed, and he tipped his hat at her. She and Ivan sat and listened to the sound of him climbing down the Annwn’s circular hall and out the front door.

  Ivan said, “If Mattie or I was in danger, which would you choose? Your revolution or your family?”

  It was a cruel question, the kind of cruel question that Ivan liked to throw at her, as if to check if she would bleed. “You know the answer to that,” Constance said.

  “Do I?” said Ivan. “Does Mattie?”

  Mattie had always known, just as Anji and Christoph knew. It was only Ivan who questioned it.

  “Let’s go,” Constance said, and moved to leave. Ivan didn’t ask again.

  An hour later found them in position, right on schedule. Certain minor System facilities offered highly controlled tours to tourists as little more than a way to show off the System’s might and terror. Constance walked down a hall of metal and glass with screens embedded into the walls at even intervals, each one of them showing with triumph the slow destruction of the rioting citizens on Triton.

  If Constance’s heart had needed any more hardening, the looping footage of shattering greenhouse glass would have done it. It had been hours since Anji had sent the message Constance had received that morning. What if Anji or Christoph had been there, in that shattered section of greenhouse, and now Constance was watching their dying?

  “And this,” said their guide, gesturing to a room branching off from the hall, “is where our dispatch station for the refueling ships is located. The System runs an excellent program to rescue stranded craft in Earth orbit. Because of the high civilian traffic in this area, there are frequent instances of mechanical problems in orbit around Earth or en route to the moon, but it has been decades since a single ship was lost due to malfunctioning equipment…”

  “Ah,” said Ivan, and veered off from the group, only to be stopped short by System soldiers standing guard at the door. They eyed him with an unfriendly look. The man inside the room—the dispatcher—looked up with mild interest at the near interruption.

  “Hello,” Ivan said with a smile, his accent crisp and reassuringly Terran. “I hope I’m not intruding. It’s just, I’ve been fascinated by the complexity of near-Earth dispatch since I was a child. There’s so many ships in orbit, and so much space junk around, that coordinating it all—”

  “You’re not allowed in here,” one of the guards said.

  “Well, couldn’t I just ask a few questions?”

  The guard opened his mouth, but the man inside the room said, “I don’t see any harm in it. You’ll have to stay outside the door, though.”

  Ivan smiled, his charming, cocky smile, the one that said he could talk anyone into anything. “Of course,” he said.

  AFTER THE FALL OF EARTH

  1.65 x 1014 kilograms.

  1.65 x 1014 kilograms, or very nearly so. That was the mass of the black hole at the center of the Ananke.

  1.65 x 1014 kilograms was about ten orders of magnitude less massive than the mass of the Earth itself, about the mass of a large asteroid or a very tiny moon. There were moons around Saturn and Jupiter, Althea knew, that were about the same mass as the Ananke’s core, though those moons were much larger; the Schwarzschild radius of an object the mass of the Ananke’s core was around 10–13 meters, and so that was the size of the core. It was smaller than the radius of the smallest atom, hydrogen, which made up the bodies of the stars; it was too small to be seen.

  The rest of the Ananke added mass, of course—all her carbon and plastic and glass and steel—but the total mass of all those parts was insignificant compared with the vast and impossible weight of the infinite and infinitesimal object at her core. The mass of the core had been decided on the basis of a series of considerations that Althea could tick off on her fingers: concern for the strength of the tidal forces, desire for Earth-like gravity on the living levels of the ship, enough mass (energy) to power and propel the ship. She remembered every calculation, every bureaucratic debate. The more massive the black hole, the greater the engineering difficulties in creating it and the greater the price attached. Gagnon, Althea remembered, had been particularly in favor of it being as massive as was feasible.

  Gagnon, who in the end had increased the mass of the black hole with the mass of his own body and with whatever mysterious energy the destruction of a life added as well.

  Far away from the core of the sh
ip where Gagnon had died, Althea lay on her bed and did the math in her head. Too dangerous to use a calculator. Too dangerous to write it down.

  Black holes evaporated. The small ones did, at least, the ones in which the effective temperature was lower than the background temperature of the universe, the cosmic microwave background radiation; those black holes radiated away and shrank, and the Ananke’s core was certainly small enough to radiate—that was how the ship propelled itself, with the reflected radiation providing impulse, momentum, energy. The smaller a black hole was, the faster it radiated. The very smallest black holes would have a lifetime of seconds and would radiate so fast that it truthfully would entail an explosion more powerful than an atomic bomb, an explosion like a supernova.

  The mass of the black hole at the center of the Ananke was 1.65 x 1014 kilograms—

  (Hawking radiation; what was the equation? It had been years since she’d calculated it; Althea could hardly remember—)

  The equation for the evaporation time of a black hole was t = G2m3/ħc4, with some constants out front—the order of magnitude was something like 104—

  Gravitational constant = 6.67 x 10–11 Nm2/kg2

  Reduced Planck constant, about 10–34 Js

  Speed of light = 3 x 108 m/s

  Calculated together:

  1026 seconds

  Which was 1019 years

  Which was 1010 billion years until the core of the Ananke evaporated away.

  1010 billion. Ten to the ten billion. That was older than the age of the universe now. That was nine orders of magnitude older than the universe’s age. It was near enough to forever to justly be called forever.

  The black hole would not evaporate on its own on a reasonable time scale. It could be artificially induced to evaporate more rapidly, though. As a consequence of the particular methods required to engineer a manufactured black hole, Althea could drain the energy from the black hole more rapidly, which would cause it to evaporate faster. She could do it by destroying the equipment that kept the artificial black hole contained, but that equipment was situated deep inside the ship’s central cavity.

  Althea wouldn’t be able to do it, anyway. It would take a good deal of time and effort to dismantle the equipment. If she had an explosive on hand, a powerful explosive, she probably could destroy the equipment from a distance, but the Ananke carried no bombs. Althea could build one with the materials on board, of course, but Ananke would notice that very quickly.

  Not that Ananke had spoken to her since Althea’s outburst, since Jupiter and Julian’s dead fleet. The holographic terminals had remained dark. The ship had proceeded on its course toward the sun without a word. But Althea knew that Ananke was watching. When she found Ivan and Mattie and forced them to come on board, Ananke would have no use for Althea anymore.

  Ivan and Mattie—the thought of them reminded Althea that their old ship, the Annwn, was still abandoned in the Ananke’s docking bay. The Annwn probably had a self-destruct. Althea had dismantled it so long ago for fear of that very possibility. If the Annwn self-destructed in the Ananke’s hold, she could destroy the black hole containment.

  But if she did manage to destroy it, the evaporation of the black hole would produce an explosion, and that would completely destroy the ship—

  Destroy her ship? With her own hands kill Ananke?

  She didn’t intend to set off the self-destruct, Althea told herself. It was just something she should know.

  It was something she needed to know.

  Althea left her quarters and headed down the long, silent hall of the Ananke for the docking bay.

  —

  Altais’s city fell, of course. It hadn’t stood a chance.

  “And his fleet?” Constance asked as she walked down the empty streets with Arawn at her side and Rayet at her back.

  Men and women, captive Venereans, lined either side of the road. Constance’s people stood behind them with their guns at the ready in case any of them decided to rescind his or her surrender.

  “Destroyed,” Arawn said. He had come down to the surface once the battle had ended to report to Constance. “No casualties on our end. There weren’t a lot of ships; he overextended himself.”

  “Good,” said Constance. Venus’s thick cloud cover caused light to bounce between the surface and the clouds and filled the air with a constant glow that had no particular source but was a little too bright for Constance’s eyes anyway. That, along with the thickness of the atmosphere and the heat on the surface, was enough to make her head swim. Altais’s town was all sulfurous stone and flickering heat and long, winding, silent roads filled with sullenly watchful eyes. “Send forces out to Greene’s old cities. Altais’s men will surrender; they’re too spread out to resist us. But if they don’t, destroy them. Is Doctor Ivanov still on the Wild Hunt?”

  “Yes, Huntress. And under guard.”

  “Does she know she’s under guard?”

  “I didn’t tell her,” Arawn said.

  “Then she knows, but don’t tell her anyway,” Constance said to Arawn. “Marisol,” she said, spotting the girl heading toward her. “Where is Henry? He hasn’t reported back in yet.”

  The bombs had gone off in Henry’s section early. If Altais’s forces had provided the slightest bit more resistance, the attack could have failed. Constance wanted an explanation.

  “He split the troops and sent me forward with the second group,” Marisol said. Her bulletproof vest was a too-large one that had been cut and wrapped down to fit her. Constance doubted its efficacy, but the girl seemed comfortable in it. “I came to report in to you—I thought he would be here.”

  “I haven’t heard from him, Huntress,” Arawn said.

  “Go,” she said to Arawn. “Send people to the other cities. No, stay.” Arawn halted. Constance had stopped in the middle of the street. The Venereans lined the road on either side, but Constance ignored them. “I want you with me,” she said to Arawn. “Send other people to do the cleanup. I want a conference with you and Henry and Milla after we’re done here.”

  “Yes, Huntress.”

  Marisol was still waiting beside her. There was a sort of serious attentiveness to her, and that and the way her hair was starting to fall over her forehead again made Constance say, “Henry isn’t here. You report. What happened?”

  “I came in from the west,” Marisol said. “I was to go in after the bombs had gone off. They went off early, so I held.” She spoke the words without hesitation but as if she expected to be reprimanded nonetheless. “We went in after we got word that you’d reached the city center, when the bombs should have gone off. It worked like you thought it would, Huntress.”

  “You led by yourself?” Arawn interjected.

  “There was trouble setting the bombs. Henry needed someone to go get everyone else into position for the assault while he led the troops setting the charges.”

  “So you weren’t supposed to go in yourself but you did.”

  Constance was not certain that Marisol understood that Arawn was impressed, because she said quickly, “Henry told me to lead it if he didn’t make it to our position on time. He didn’t, so I led it.”

  That was all very well, but it still left the question of what had happened with Henry and his bombs. His continuing absence brought darkening thoughts into Constance’s head.

  Marisol said, “I tried to do like you ordered, Huntress. I know it wasn’t directly what I was told to do, and I’m sorry.”

  She had her shoulders braced as if for a blow, and she was looking up at her with the same unspoken need that Constance sometimes had seen in Mattie’s face when he’d look at her, the unspoken need that she’d never answered and that at last had driven him away. Constance said to Marisol, “You did very well. You did perfectly. Thank you,” and watched that stiff and braced quality fade from her shoulders.

  Marisol said, “Some of the people surrendered to us. We have them on the other side of the city. What would you like—”

>   But while Marisol was speaking, one of the Venereans caught Constance’s eye. He was an old man with gray and white in his beard sitting on the side of the street like all his fellows. For a moment Constance looked back at him, caught up in his gaze. His eyes were blue. Constance could not say whether it was their color or the hatred that filled them that kept her looking back.

  Then, before Marisol could finish speaking, the man leaned forward slowly, deliberately, and spit on the street between him and Constance. It landed a good few feet away from her, but Constance was as shocked as if he had made contact with her skin.

  Arawn pulled his gun from his belt, lifted his arm in one smooth motion, and shot the man in the head.

  Chaos erupted on the street. Someone screamed. A few of the Venereans rose to their feet, and Constance’s people moved to stop them. Another gunshot rang out, but Constance did not see from where because suddenly Rayet was in front of her, around her, moving so fast that he might have been an enclosure and not a single man, trying to define where the threat would come from. He put his hands on her shoulder, to push her along and propel her away, but Constance shoved him off and stood her ground.

  Nearby, Marisol had forgotten herself. She was directly in front of Arawn, between him and the corpse, and she was half his age and half his size and she was shouting up at him, “You didn’t have to shoot him!” but although Constance was surprised by this fire she had not seen before, Arawn only looked amused.

  Someone was shouting something that reverberated oddly through the thick air; Constance could not quite hear it, or perhaps her ears were not ready to work. She said, “Enough!” and the street went still again.

  There was a mother with her daughter a few places away from where the man had died. The mother was weeping, curled up around the little girl, trying to shield her with her body. But the little girl, who could not have been more than three, kept worming her way out from under her mother’s restraining arms, looking with wide and curious eyes at the body bleeding on the stone.

  Arawn had shot him in the head. The man’s face was so much blood and mess; his blue eyes were gone.