Burden’s eyes flickered. He licked his lips, and forced a smile. “I’m sorry.” His voice was a hoarse croak, his throat evidently closed up.
Red said, “He’s frozen. Lethe. Blue, did you know about this?”
Blue sighed. “No. But I wondered… It happened before, didn’t it, Burden?”
Burden seemed to be loosening a little. “Yes. It happened before.”
“And that’s why you got busted down to the penal divisions on Quin. Cohl was right to be suspicious of you.”
“I never lied to you—”
“But you never told me the full truth, did you? It was nothing to do with your unorthodoxy.”
“That didn’t help. But, yes. I froze up. Just like this. People died, you know. Because of me, because I froze. I don’t understand it. I can fight on a Rock. I can fight my way out of those blood-soaked trenches. I can save lives. But up here, in a greenship—”
“And that’s why you kept busting your balls in combat missions? You were punishing yourself.”
“Lethe,” Torec snarled. “And that garbage about timelike infinity — did you mean any of it?”
“I gave hope,” he said quietly. “And it gave me hope. That some day it will all be put right. People died because of me.”
Blue said, “Down on the Rocks, you saved far more.”
“The arithmetic of death doesn’t work like that,” Burden said.
“No, it doesn’t,” Torec said.
“I let you down, Squadron Leader.”
“Yes,” Red said with feeling. “Yes, you did.”
“When you asked me to join you, and then to be a flight commander, I couldn’t refuse. It was such a noble thing to attempt, such a right thing. I wanted to be part of it. I just hoped I’d be able to get through it.”
“Well, you haven’t,” Torec said bitterly.
Red said, “Guys, we don’t have time for this.”
“I’ll make the run,” said Blue immediately.
Red said, “Why? To save face for your buddy?”
“No. Because I’m the better choice for a two-ship run anyhow. Think about it, Red. We’re the same person. If we go in together, communication’s going to be essential. If we can’t understand each other, who can?”
Red said, “But—”
“I know what you intend to do,” Pirius Blue said. “While I drop my bombs, you’ll draw the flak. That’s what you’re really planning, isn’t it, Red? You see, I told you I understood you.”
Pirius sighed. “All right. Cabel. Bilson. Yes, I intend to draw the flak away from Blue. Maybe that way we’ll give him a chance of succeeding with the mission. But you’ve been down there already. If you don’t think you can do this again—”
“Count me in,” Cabel said immediately.
Bilson was clearly having a lot more difficulty. But the navigator sighed raggedly. “You did say that if we screwed up today we’d be back tomorrow. Let’s get it over.”
“Good man,” Pirius said warmly.
“Let’s do it,” Blue said. His ship broke immediately out of the formation.
Pirius grasped his controls, and the two ships settled side by side.
Burden said, “I just want to say—”
“Later,” Red snapped.
Torec whispered, “Godspeed.”
Blue asked, “What does that mean?”
“Something I learned on Earth. Very old, I think.”
“No good-byes,” Pirius Red said. “Ten minutes, we’ll be back.”
Torec forced a laugh. “Knowing my luck, both of you. Or neither…”
In formation, the two ships swept down through the great hollow toward the shining puddle of the accretion disc.
Once again Red found himself flying low over the accretion disc; once again the event horizon itself rose like a malevolent sun before him. But this time Blue’s ship was a green spark off his port bow.
Blue opened a private loop to Red. “Of course,” he said, “if we both get killed down here, then nothing will be left of me — of you.”
“That would be simpler,” Red said.
“That it would. Take care of Torec if—”
“And you,” Red called. “Good luck, brother.”
“Yes — Lethe! I’m in flak!”
Pirius Red glanced across. Two, three, four starbreaker beams were raking the sky, trying to triangulate on Blue’s ship. Red yanked his ship sideways, cutting between. To his satisfaction, two or three of the beams started to track him, while the others lost Blue, who ducked below his nominal course. But if one of those beams touched him, however briefly, he would be done.
Red began to weave back and forth, the CTC pulling the ship through a rapid evasion pattern faster than any human pilot could — faster than a Xeelee, Pirius thought. But the starbreakers tracked after him.
Cabel growled, “I think I’m going to lose my breakfast.”
Pirius shouted, “But it’s working. Bilson! Keep tracking — it’s your job to guide Blue in.”
“Understood, Pilot.”
“Coming up on that netting,” Pirius Blue reported. “Wow — I don’t think I believed it — a contiguous structure light-minutes across! The Xeelee have been busy… Red, I’m in flak again.”
Pirius, following his evasive course, had drifted too far from his temporal twin. No time to get back under sublight.
He punched his controls. The ship jumped, a big FTL jump of a light-second or so. He heard the blister hull creak, and his displays lit up with red flags; you weren’t supposed to make such jumps in spacetime this turbulent. But it had worked, and he had lodged himself just in front of Pirius Blue.
And once again the flak beams were focused on him. He laughed out loud. “Bring it on!”
Bilson said, “I lost the lock.”
“Then get it back,” Pirius shouted. “Come on, navigator, we’re almost there.”
“I have it. I have it!” A starbreaker speared out from the greenship’s weapons pod, and hit a stretch of netting some distance before the two fleeing ships.
“I’ve got it,” Blue called. “Good work, Bilson. But we need to have a word about your flying, Red.”
“Have you got the event horizon?”
Blue said quietly, “We have a fix.”
Pirius’s cabin flared with cherry-red light. The starbreakers were close. He ignored the glow, overrode the automatics, and held the ship to its line. “Only a few seconds more, crew—”
The blister shuddered around him, and a telltale blared. He had lost one nacelle, one crew blister: it was Cabel, probably the best engineer in the squadron, gone, burned away, a scrap of flesh in this tremendous tumult of energy. Regret stabbed, but he had no time now, no time. Still he stuck to his line. “Blue, drop the damn bombs—”
“Gone!” Blue called.
Pirius hurled the ship sideways. But the starbreakers tracked him, and still the ship shuddered.
Blue reported, “Gone and — Lethe!”
“What? Blue, I can’t see.”
“The black holes converged — we picked up the gravity wave pulse, right on the event horizon. And the Xeelee — Lethe, it’s working!… Oh.” He sounded oddly disappointed.
Pirius wrenched his ship around once more. “Blue! Report.”
“The flak has got me. I can’t maneuver — I’m wallowing like a hog—”
“Blue!”
“I always did want to be remembered,” Blue said.
“So did I.”
“Maybe we will be after all. Good-bye, brother. Tell Nilis…” But his voice winked out, and Pirius heard no more, nothing but Bilson’s quiet sobbing.
In the ops room the cheering was loud.
That netting around the event horizon looked as if it had been punched open by a vast fist. The surface beneath, a mist of sheets and threads of plasma falling into the event horizon, was awash with waves of density that flared brightly — some were so dense, the monitors said, that hydrogen fusion was briefly sparking. These waves were caused by oscillations of the event horizon itself, where it had been struck a mighty punch by the coalescing black holes of Blue’s cannon. All around this part of Chandra, intense pulses of gravitational waves were washing out, and it was those waves that were wreaking such damage on the netting structure, far overwhelming the feeble human efforts.