BD-6 1339 was a dwarf star known as Red Devil to the corsairs of The March, just over ten lightyears from Zeta Leporis. It was a traditional escape point for pursued Rift Pirates, uninhabited, close-by and it possessed a roaster world rich in hydrogen to refuel from. It was also extremely difficult to get to due to local navigation hazards. If we had five minutes, Julian thought. If we had another ten-thousand kilometers on them, if we’d seen the cloaked satellite . . . Pointless. The mood on the ship five days ago was one of jubilation. After such an amazingly successful venture how could it not be. They had made it home, almost.
All eight freighters had been taken or destroyed in the Federation ambush and the Spartacus never emerged from hyperspace. They all detected the streamer as they shunted, he hoped everyone would manage to avoid it but that didn’t make it so. Forty hours of silence throughout the ship. He kept them on-station at Red Devil for another ten hours before he had to face the unavoidable truth. Spartacus would not be seen again.
Julian got up and left the bridge without a word. Repair crews were still all over the ship but everyone he passed remained silent and looked away. Word of Spartacus’s fate had spread quickly and no one wanted to come under Julian’s notice. He entered the quarters he had shared with Natasha before her move to the Blue. She was there now, sitting quietly on the bed, tears running down her face.
“Julian . . . ” she said but he snapped at her right away.
“Get out!” he bellowed, his voice nearly hysterical. Natasha was shocked still for a moment, instinctively covering her swollen stomach with her arms.
“Please,” he said now suddenly calm and she arose, walking to the doorway, touching his shoulder as she passed. He said nothing, gave no indication he even noticed her now. He just stood there staring out their cabin’s porthole. She had taken the Blue’s shuttle over not long after they arrived, leaving her first officer in command for the shunt to New Antigua, Floyd already had the wing moving out of the system.
Soon, at least, they would be home. Julian could take the time to get some much needed rest and she could join him at the Viceroy and get ready for the baby to arrive. She knew the loss would leave a scar on Julian that would never be gone but she was sure it would be mitigated somewhat once he had his daughter in his arms.
They had discussed names for the child a few weeks earlier and decided on Julian’s suggestion of Hypatia, the name of one of the ancient world’s greatest scientific minds and the last curator of the Great Library at Alexandria in Egypt. “She must have been quite remarkable to ascend to such a lofty position under the deeply patriarchal society of Rome,” Julian had said, looking like he was far away, “but none of her many reported works survived the fire set by the christian mob that came to destroy it, after mutilating and killing her in the street during broad daylight. A person such as that deserves whatever small recognition she can get.” She could not help but agree, strange as the name was.
Julian set on the edge of the bed and stared out the oblong porthole behind a model of the Queen Anne’s Revenge, Black Beard’s forty-four gun frigate. Julian and Billy had made it when they were kids. He nearly smashed it into a thousand pieces now but stopped himself, knowing he’d regret it later. He looked around the room in silence, felt mocked by it. The whole cabin had been paneled in fine stained oak before they left The Expanse for home. That seemed like someone else’s life now, something he’d heard or read about, only vaguely familiar. A great framed map of the earth, made centuries before the Long Night, hung on the wall over a fine oak dresser. A glass-faced box atop it held the ornate compass, sextant, and spyglass Billy had given him the day Julian took command of his first ship, Crazy Horse. Harpoons, nets, assorted themed memorabilia littered the densely ornamented room. His tricorner and dress coat on a tall stand, swords and old black powder weapons on the walls. The wheel from an ancient ocean schooner was mounted on the wall at the head of the bed. That at least was practical. His own private Neverland.
He went to the desk beneath the map and punched some keys. “New Antigua: ETA 136 hours: 47 minutes” it told him. “Just enough time for a proper bender,” Julian said, procuring two glasses and a bottle of rhye from a lower drawer.
“Somevone has to go in dare,” Natasha insisted. They heard another sharp crack. Bonesaw pulled her back by the arm as she made to enter. Julian hadn’t emerged from his cabin in almost four days now and everyone was getting worried. He wouldn’t answer his com and he had even locked Natasha out, forcing her to stay with Ursula and Kitty.
“I’ll talk to him,” he said, though his voice clearly said he didn’t want to. He opened his black bag and prepped a hypo full of something. I’ll talk to him long enough to put him out like a damned light, he thought.
Julian heard the beeping from the door that let him know someone was bypassing the lock. He refused to even look and just kept jamming away with the ram rod. I’ll try a triple load this time, he decided.
“Hey, Jules,” the doctor said casually. Shapiro observed him quizzically, curious as to what he was doing but guessing he’d be happier not knowing. “What are you doing?” he asked at last, sniffing at the air which was full of strange smelling smoke.
“Experimenting,” Julian told him as he leveled the black powder dueling pistol at the window and fired. The projectile exploded against the porthole with a loud bang. “I’m getting nowhere with this,” he said with a sigh, tossing the ancient weapon onto the bed. “I should try the blunderbuss, can I get you a drink?”
“Oi,” the doctor said.
Cygnus X-1 was nearly eight-thousand lightyears from Zeta Leporis, how Spartacus arrived there in under a hundred hours was as miraculous as how she could have endured it, especially with a large piece of her torn away. It was a big one, thirty-five solar masses, and it was feeding. With luck, it was large enough the event horizon’s gravity would be sufficiently dispersed, allowing Spartacus to cross more or less intact, if not gently. HD 226868, a blue super giant, circled the hungry monster for untold eons, and was at the closest point of its orbit. A stream of hot gas trailed away from the great star into the brilliant whirling disk of the event horizon. Great plumes rose from each axis of the dark center, matter being expelled by the incredible magnetic field generated by the singularity, the space all around warped and twisted. A spectacular show to put it mildly, and Billy DeVells had the best seat in the galaxy. He laughed to think how jealous Julian would be, if he knew the amazingly dramatic death his brother was about to pull-off. I hope there’s an afterlife just so I can rub his face in it, he thought with a smile.
At least a day had past since Kiku succumb to the radiation, sitting next to him at the operations console where she remained even now. How he was still alive was a mystery in its own right, but he held on and was determined to do so a little longer now. This was a death worth living for. His vision was blurred and his flesh burned under his vacc suit. Dried blood formed tiny specs on the inside of his visor and the stench of bile filled his nostrils. It bothered him that his ship was crippled, if there were some way to guide her he could ensure reaching the black hole before his injuries took him. He was nearly paralyzed however, so it really wouldn’t have mattered. And so, utterly helpless, he sat and waited to see what would come.
Time might not be a problem, Billy thought, as Spartacus began accelerating, the whole craft shaking and disintegrating from the inside-out all around him. He hadn’t noticed when the return to normal space had occurred, he vaguely remembered the great streamer opening wide, like he was emerging from the end of a tuba. The sudden loss of energy must have caused the ship to drop below lightspeed and terminate the deadly shunt.
It scarcely mattered now, Spartacus was drawn down to the plain of the disk and tumbled into it. The violence increased many fold inside the bridge of the disabled starship. Equipment and bodies were thrown about, and again Billy felt the strange distortions present in the graviton streamer that had carried him here. Everything stretched, warped. He forced his hand to the latch of his visor once more, worried that he would throw-up again, but didn’t have the dexterity left to attempt another power blow. It turned out to be unnecessary in any case, he had long since emptied the contents of his stomach and endured a short but painful bout of dry heaves. His eardrums had ruptured in a previous episode and he was now completely deaf, without even his own breathing for company.
The Spartacus, its inertia grid holding fast, bobbed like a cork in the whirlpool of tightening matter, tossed about and skidding along its surface. Light flooding into the bridge from the whirlwind of super-heated gas made Billy closed his eyes tightly but it was still painful, he could feel the skin on his face burning. Suddenly, the sensation was gone, and as he opened his eyes everything started to spin, becoming a tightening spiral of colors. Then a moment of deep stillness. Everything floating about the bridge began to leave trails, not only where they just were, but where they were about to be. Disturbing, but uber-trippy. A strength returned to him and he began to laugh.
She made it to the gravity well, he realized. He could just make-out a faint point of light through the forward windows. The sensation of being drawn like taffy returned as the great log-jam of trapped energy and light at the inner horizon filled his view. Billy howled like a delighted child as he and his ship were rendered into a stream of subatomic particles in the final moments of their journey. |
Submission Name: Iceni Queen 10--Critical Mass
