Chapter 73

  The jog from the hanger to the bridge wasn’t far. Dalexia didn’t even have to use the super speed from her personal armor. Pelp had trouble keeping up, though. He wasn’t made for sprinting.

  Parts of the E7 had been heavily damaged by both saboteurs and the fire exchanged with other ships in the enemy fleet. Some of the hallways were exposed to space, but a malfunctioning forcefield kept most of the atmosphere inside. Dalexia had to jump across a hole in the floor that kept going until it reached the stars. Pelp needed some help getting past that obstacle. The hole unnerved both of them. Could they drop out of the belly of the ship and end up in space?

  Despite the obstacles, Dalexia and Pelp entered the bridge of the E7 a few minutes after exiting the wrecked starmech. Seventh was waiting for them. He gave Pelp a studying look and then turned to Dalexia.

  “Did you forget your heavy armor has its own personal air supply?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “The super heavy armor was venting atmosphere, but your own supply would last you at least forty-eight hours.”

  Dalexia stared at him for a second. “Oh. Right. Then there was no danger after all.” She glanced at Pelp. “Well, he would have run out of air pretty soon.”

  “That wasn’t the most significant danger,” Seventh said. “You were approximately two minutes from being pulled across the event horizon of the black hole.”

  “Oh damn,” Dalexia said, feeling a chill run down her spine. “Well, good work saving us from that.”

  “I have only delayed your descent into the gravity well,” Seventh said. “The E7 sustained extensive damage during the battle. While you scuttled the unknown faction flagship, its fleet converged on my position. Thanks to the flagship’s destruction, I believe I was able to eliminate all enemy vessels, but I do not think the outcome can be considered a victory. The E7’s engines no longer have the strength to escape the black hole’s pull.”

  “I don’t like the sound of whatever this black hole thing is,” Pelp said.

  “Right,” Dalexia said, “if you didn’t know you were in the heart of a starship back there, you probably didn’t know about the black hole, either.”

  “There is no time for an explanation,” Seventh said. “Traversal of black hole space beyond its event horizon is only possible with the appropriate power and equipment, neither of which we have. If we approach too close, the E7 will be destroyed. Dalexia, I am incapable of formulating a strategy for escape. All of my plans have a one hundred percent chance of failure. You must produce a plan of your own.”

  “Um, okay,” Dalexia said. She snapped her fingers. “What if we made more engines? Or built another ship to escape in?” She assumed the E7 could put a destroyer or stealth frigate together lickety-split.

  “We have no benefine with which to create these things,” Seventh said.

  “Okay. I’ve seen enough sci-fi movies about spaceships to come up with another way out of this. What about a slingshot maneuver? We could use the black holes gravity to fling ourselves out of here.”

  “Were I not prohibited from harming my human operator, I would slap you,” Seventh said.

  Dalexia took a step back from him and looked at him sideways. “That was uncalled for.”

  “We are too close to the black hole,” Seventh said. “The moment I divert engine power in any way other than directly away from the singularity’s gravity well, we will be pulled straight in. Such maneuvers are impossible and functionally useless in our circumstances.”

  “You could have just said that.” But Dalexia was already thinking of other options. Her mind was struggling to come up with anything. “What if we got rid of some weight? Would one engine and a small compartment with air be enough to escape?”

  “There is no quick way to detach one of the E7’s engines and create a smaller ship. We will be consumed by the black hole before work can be completed. Further, control of such an improvised craft would be difficult. We would likely fall back into the black hole’s influence within a few hours.”

  “Come on, Seventh,” Dalexia said. “You have to give me something to work with here. We don’t have any escape pods?”

  “None that would escape the singularity’s pull.”

  Dalexia let out an exasperated sigh. “I think we’re just going to have to die, then.”

  Seventh stared at her. He opened his mouth as if to say something, then closed it. She noticed one of his fists was clenched tightly. Was he actually feeling something? Frustration? Anger? Fear?

  The sound of a fingernail tapping on plastic drew their attention. Pelp was pressed up against one of the bridge’s view screens.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  Dalexia looked past him through the view screen. There was the black hole, pulling in light and getting gradually larger as the ship came closer.

  “That’s the black hole,” Dalexia said.

  “It’s beautiful.”

  Dalexia stared for a moment at the singularity’s swirling glow. It seemed in motion, but she wasn’t sure if that was a trick of perspective or if it really was a roiling storm in space. At its heart was complete blackness. Were it not for the whirlwind of light being sucked into its dark core, it would have just looked like starless night, but darker.

  “Yeah, I guess it is beautiful,” Dalexia said. “I think I see why people go nuts for this stuff.”

  Seventh sighed and walked up behind the dwarf. The android explained quickly and efficiently what a black hole was and the danger the ship was in. Pelp listened attentively, soaking up the details without asking questions. The android did an excellent job of breaking things down so they were simple and easy for a person like Pelp to understand. If the dwarf was a native of the Gaia-BH1 system, he probably wasn’t used to these concepts, but the android helped him reach the point of understanding.

  Dalexia appreciated Seventh’s explanation, as well. She had always known science and astronomy were important, it had just never interested her. The real world wasn’t something she could invest herself in. And even in science fiction, most people did their best to bring in as much of the real world as possible. But the real world for Dalexia—then Owen Little—had been disease and death. She had preferred to escape into scenarios that weren’t possible.

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  But now, out here, staring at the vast and unbelievable power of so much matter compressed into so little space, she saw the appeal of knowing more about these things. The black hole was spectacular, even if it was about to kill her. In fact, it was spectacular because it was about to kill her.

  “There is truly nothing to do?” Seventh asked when he finished telling Pelp about the black hole, his voice somber.

  “Not that I can think of,” Dalexia said. “What about you, Pelp?”

  The black hole took up most of the screens on the bridge now. The ship was very close. Hard angles inside the bridge appeared as curves. Light was bending. Seventh had said that the most severe side effects of being near a black hole were still being counteracted by the E7’s forcefield, but that would only last so long. Eventually, the singularity would overpower the ship’s shields, and they would all be spaghettified.

  “We could try breaking through that ring of darklight,” Pelp suggested.

  “What?” Dalexia and Seventh asked in unison.

  “Right there, where the blackness meets the glow. Can you see it?”

  Dalexia squinted. “I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about.”

  “You refer to the event horizon?” Seventh asked.

  “No, just before that,” Pelp said, demonstrating his understanding of Seventh’s earlier lesson. “I can only see it at the edge there, but there’s probably a film of darklight all over the core. You see furrows there? It’s like waving silk.”

  After squinting a little harder, Dalexia shook her head and said, “I can’t see it.”

  “Neither can I,” Seventh said. “I only sense the normal characteristics of a black hole, which do not include what you are describing.”

  “It’s definitely there,” Pelp insisted. “I’ve seen enough darklight to say that for sure. If we break through it, we’ll probably end up on Gaia Omega.”

  Dalexia couldn’t tell if he was on to something or if he was talking out of his ass. “Break through it how?”

  The dwarf hefted his pickaxe. “With this.” He rubbed the tip of its leading edge. “This pick is publicized to be able to mine through darklight. And we use strangium in the tips. That’s a metal we found in Gaia Omega.”

  “What happens if we break the darklight?” Dalexia asked.

  Pelp shrugged. “We mine through it and end up somewhere else. They say it was like that when we dwarves were fleeing the purge. Someone found a patch of darklight and mined through it. They ended up in what’s now the colony. I don’t know where this patch will go, but it’s probably safer than being sucked into this black hole.”

  Dalexia studied the pickaxe and then looked back at the view screen and the fast approaching black hole. “Even if your pick can mine this darklight stuff, I don’t see how—”

  She was cut off when Seventh grabbed the pick out of Pelp’s hand.

  Pelp yelped and said, “Hey now, if you wanted to look at it, all you had to do was ask.”

  Seventh ran his hands over the pick’s head, feeling the metal. His eyes glazed over and then he said, “It is less complex than benefine.”

  “Do you know what metal he’s talking about?” Dalexia asked.

  “No, this is a new element.” Seventh looked at her. “Given the age of your benefactor’s civilization and their extensive exploration of the universe, that is extremely noteworthy.”

  “Does this help us?” Dalexia asked.

  Seventh handed the pickaxe back to Pelp. “It does. I will prepare the appropriate device. I will need you to install it, Dalexia.”

  “What device?” Dalexia asked.

  But Seventh just stood there.

  When he didn’t say anything, she pressed, “What are you thinking?”

  “Given the extreme nature of our situation, I am making a gamble. Pelp says that he came from a location that can be accessed through this darklight. My medical exams prove that he is sane and telling the truth, so the only remaining solution left to us is to assume we can trust his proposed method. I will direct you to the nearest airlock. From there, you will travel outside the ship to cargo bay two and retrieve the strangium drill-head I am currently synthesizing. Deliver it to the nose of the E7, where you must install it before we cross the black hole’s event horizon. Do you understand the plan I am proposing?”

  “I—” Dalexia said. She wanted to ask questions and poke holes, but she saw what he was driving at. “I do. Tell me where to go.”

  ***

  Seventh directed Dalexia through the ship toward an airlock, but she found a shortcut first. One of the holes in the hull was big enough for her to slip outside. Seventh manipulated the forcefields protecting the ship, giving her an exit from the E7 while still keeping the black hole’s influence somewhat at bay. As soon as Dalexia was outside the ship, she found herself subjected to null gravity. She floated uncontrolled for a moment until she activated her armor’s flight capabilities.

  It took her a moment to figure out how to fly in the direction she wanted to go, but that gave Seventh time to finish making his drill-head. While Dalexia dodged clumsily around the exterior of the E7, Seventh asked Pelp rapid fire questions about how drilling through the darklight worked. He used the answers to make a drill-head of suitable size to allow most of the E7 to travel through the hole they were about to make. Luckily, the drill-head did not have to be as big as the ship.

  As Dalexia slowly began to master flight, she navigated around the ship to a cargo bay near its nose. Just as she arrived, an enormous, fluted cone with a diamond-sharp tip floated out of the cargo bay. Dalexia flew around to the opposite side of it and stopped it from drifting too far into space. In null gravity, and with her armor’s strength-magnifying properties, she had no trouble maneuvering the giant piece of metal.

  As she pushed the drill-head to the front of the E7, Dalexia asked, “How did you manage to make such a huge item out of a metal you just discovered?”

  “As I said,” Seventh spoke in her ear, “Pelp’s strangium is not as complex an element as benefine, and benefine is the only element that I cannot synthesize from atomic composition. I analyzed the atomic composition of the strangium in the pickaxe and was able to assemble the correct number of protons, neutrons, and electrons in the appropriate configuration.”

  “You could make this, but you couldn’t make us a new ship?”

  “Correct.”

  Dalexia reached the nose of the ship and stopped the drill-head. “How do I attach this thing?”

  “Simply push the drill-head toward the front-most nose piece. The drill-head is equipped with an adhesive that will seal to the front of the ship. I am sending your armor instructions now.”

  The instructions were easy to follow. Dalexia’s armor guided her to the right spot on the drill-head and told her where to apply pressure so that it went where she wanted it to go. Her heads-up display even showed digital guiderails that told her if she was pushing the drill-head too far one way or another. She managed to quickly attach the device to the front of the ship, and the adhesive Seventh had mentioned activated with a puff of some sort of gas. When Dalexia pushed against the drill-head one last time to test the glue’s strength, it did not move. And then, a moment later, it began to spin.

  “Get back inside the ship,” Seventh told her. “We will cross the event horizon soon. Bear in mind that I will be flipping the E7 so that the drill-head is pointing toward the black hole.”

  Dalexia raced back over the hull of the ship, looking for another airlock or breach she could use to get back inside. At the same time, the E7 shifted under her. The black hole loomed large behind her. She decided she didn’t have time to hunt for an existing entry point.

  “Screw it,” Dalexia mumbled to herself. She raised her palm toward the hull of the ship and fired a laser beam into its side. The beam burned a new hole about Dalexia’s size, and she immediately flew inside. From there it was another quick jog back to the bridge.

  She walked back onto the bridge just as the spinning drill-head slammed into the event horizon of the black hole. The E7 slammed to a stop. Dalexia and Pelp were thrown across the bridge and into a suite of view screens. Whatever device had been controlling inertia and gravity inside the ship was not equipped to handle such a massive bump. Still, Seventh kept his feet, bracing himself with a handrail and sheer force of will.

  When Dalexia got back to her feet, the E7 had not yet been sucked past the event horizon, and there was a crack running up the face of the black hole.

  Seventh let out a sharp laugh. “That is impossible.”

  “That’s a breach!” Pelp shouted. “Keep drilling.”

  Seventh pushed the engines of the ship harder, forcing the drill against the black hole. The crack widened. Purple light spilled out of splinters in the pitch-black surface that should not have been a surface, but a threshold. The drill broke through something. A purple glow suffused the bridge. Dalexia felt warm. She felt afraid.

  And then the event horizon of the black hole shattered, creating a purple hole fifty kilometers across and another fifty kilometers tall. It was big enough for the E7 to slip through. And slip through it did. The ship moved forward but did not enter the deepest depths of the black hole. Instead, it went somewhere else, and when it was gone, the hole in the event horizon began to close. The cracks healed and the impossible fragmented surface of the black hole fused back together. Within minutes, all that remained was smooth blackness, and a hungry singularity denied its meal.

  But just before the seal was complete and the black hole was whole once more, something else slipped through the hole, following the Expedition 7 to its destination.

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