"It will give us a bit of cover. And I've an idea," she said, distant, working.
Flood frowned. He didn't enjoy it when this determined side of his daughter showed itself; it made her seem too strong, too independent—he couldn't protect her any more. But she had called the black-hole missile manoeuvre correctly. He saw no better option than to accept her recommendation. He snapped out the orders.
The Freestar's GUTdrive kicked in. The acceleration mounted quickly, two, three, four gravities. Flood felt it in his bones, but he stood his ground, determined. Above his head, Jupiter slid with ponderous slowness across his field of view. "Come on," he said. "Come on ... "
Elsewhere, aboard the bridge of the Navy ship Facula, there was much cheering at the downing of half the rebel fleet—premature cheering, as far as Stillich was concerned.
"Status," he yelled at Pella, above the noise.
"Three down, three to go."
"But the three survivors aren't running."
"Not from Jovian space, no sir. They seem to be making for the Poole hub."
"Why there?"
Pella tapped a desk. "The war-game AIs have no idea. If they need cover they could run to one of the moons ... " She grinned. "Sir, who cares? We have twelve ships against three. We can shoot them out of the sky."
Stillich felt deeply uneasy, but he couldn't argue with that analysis. "Well, that's the idea, Number One. All right. Call the fleet; set up an attacking perimeter."
"Sir."
The GUTdrive surged smoothly.
Twelve ships against three. The decision to withdraw the Sol fleet to Jupiter had been a good one, Stillich thought. The hinterland of the giant planet was a dangerous, complex place, laced with strong gravitational fields, intense radiation and hazards like the Io flux tube. It was a battleground much more familiar to the defending Navy than to the attackers—and he had been impressed by the innovative thinking at a Navy college on Earth that had come up with the notion of using the black hole slingshot to pick off the rebels even before the ships had engaged.
But once he had accepted the stratagem, Stillich had argued for withdrawing all of Earth's fleet to Jupiter or its environs, not to leave half of it mounting a futile picket fence at the incoming relativistic wave. Twelve against three. It was more reassuring than twelve against six had been, but Stillich was in no mood for anything less than a complete victory, an annihilation, the security of the system demanded it, and the more overwhelming the odds the better.
On the Freestar, the Poole hub was already approaching, a cluster of Interface portals hurtling over the horizon towards the surviving rebel ships, a tangle of electric blue.
"Lethe," Beya breathed. "I didn't know how beautiful it was."
Flood said softly, "The wormholes are gateways to other times, other places. They should be beautiful, like all great engineering."
Alarms chimed once more.
Beya studied her data desk. "They're closing in, dad, a dozen Navy cruisers."
"Then this is it." He clenched his fists. "Let's at least back up against the wormhole hub. Have the AIs war-game an optimal configuration—"
Beya kissed him on the cheek, a lingering gesture that still felt too brief. "Cover me."
"What?"
She turned and ran, faster than he could hope to catch her. "I told you I have an idea." And she ducked out of sight, through a hatch to the ship's spine.
A missile soared past the lifedome, and the crew ducked, involuntarily. Then there was a speckle of laser light, and the dome blister blacked itself out. Grey Morus, Flood's second in command, yelled across, "They've got our range, Flood. We're shooting back but—"
Flood's data desk chimed. The AIs had come up with a defensive configuration for the ships, lifedomes together, tails out, backed up against the Poole hub, using superhot GUTdrive exhaust for defence. "Copy this and implement," he snapped at Grey. He punched his data desk. "Beya! Where are you?"
In Beya's flitter, her father's voice was as clear as if he was riding alongside her. Beya was determined to keep her voice level. "Can't you see me, dad? I'm up around your ten o'clock—oh, but your blister is blacked out."
"What the hell are you doing up there?"
The flitter ducked sideways, jolting her against her restraints. "I'm taking fire, that's what I'm doing. Dad, if you've got a spare laser, cover me!"
Now the flitter swept around. She was heading straight for the Poole hub, a tangle of wormhole mouths, powder blue. She saw the three ships of the invasion fleet backing up, pirouetting clumsily into their defensive position. But the Navy ships swept across her view, soulless, mechanical, spitting missiles at the rebels, bathing them with laser light. There were so many of them, a dozen against three.
And as she watched a Navy missile got through, hammering into the GUTdrive pod of the Mercy and Tolerance. Slowly the great ship began to drift out of position. But even as she did so she spat fire in Beya's direction, and picked a Navy missile out of the sky.
"Thanks, Mercy/' she whispered.
"You're welcome/' came a reply.
"Beya, what are you doing?"
"Dad, do you trust me?"
"I—You know I do. What kind of question is that?"
"Well enough to gamble your life on my say-so?"
"I may not have a choice. If you'd just tell me—"
"Just another bit of Sol system history, dad. Something I read, an incident at a planet called Pluto, long ago ... " She stared out at the dazzling sky-blue of the nearest portal's exotic-matter tetrahedral frame. The faces were like semitransparent panes of silvered glass; she could make out the watercolour oceans of Jupiter, swirled around in a fashion the eye could not quite track, like visions in a dream. "So beautiful."
"Beya?"
The flitter turned its nose straight towards the Interface. She ran a quick calculation on her data desk.
"Five seconds, dad."
"Until what?"
"Fire up on my mark, and get out of there with everything you have."
She passed through the glimmering face as if it did not exist, and now she was inside the blue frame of the Interface.
Her father's voice was distorted. "Beya, please—"
"This is for you, for mum, for Alpha. Remember me. Mark!" And she stabbed down her finger at her data desk.
The flitter's engine exploded. Something slammed into her back. Electric-blue light flared all around her.
Remarkably, she was still alive.
She was jammed up in the little ship's cabin, which had been ejected from the wreck. She made herself look around. She gasped with the pain of broken bones.
There was something wrong with space. A ball of light, unearthly, swelled up behind her, and an irregular patch of darkness ahead was like a rip in space. Tidal forces plucked at her belly and limbs. Nobody had had a ride like this in a thousand years.
And she saw Navy ships scattered like bits of straw in a wind.
The tides faded. The darkness before her healed, to reveal the brilliance of Sol. And the flitter cabin imploded, without fuss.
It took long minutes before the crew got the tumbling of the Facula under control.
Pella came to Stillich, her brow bloodied. "Damage report—"
"Never mind that. What just happened?"
"An Alcubierre wave."
"A what?"
Pella dragged her fingers trough mussed hair. "Captain, a wormhole is a flaw in space. It's inherently unstable. The throat and mouths are kept open by active feedback loops involving threads of exotic matter. That's matter with a negative energy density, a sort of antigravity which—"