Embarkment 2577 (23 page)

I didn’t even have to stand on my toes to kiss him.
“Well, this is when you take it all off…”

“Hold that thought.” He reached for the console by the
door and his fingers danced over it. “There… peace and quiet…”

His arms around me were pure heaven.

Eventually, Adam found it prudent to get dressed and
return to work. I did not agree. I let him have the pants and tank top, but I
grabbed the shirt and ran through the rooms, making him chase me. He played
along for a bit and pretended catching me was quite an ordeal, but eventually
he scooped me up and carried me to the sofa. “You’re a wanton little nymphet,
but I need my clothes.”

I cradled the shirt to my chest. “No.”

He laughed softly and kissed me.

“What’s that noise?”

My husband frowned. “Someone’s banging on the door.”

“If we don’t answer, maybe they’ll go away.”

The person outside knocked again. Hard.
This wasn’t a soft rapping of knuckles; someone beat on the door with a fist. A
voice called out, muffled and barely audible, “Commander, I know you’re in
there. Please open, it’s an emergency.”

Adam sighed and I bounced to my feet,
swept his shirt around me, and fled to the bedroom. He, at least, wore two
thirds of the uniform.

Standing with my back pressed against
the bedroom wall, I heard the door open. “What?”

He sounded impatient, and it was easy to
imagine a stern look on his face, meant to put fear of superiors into the heart
of any young ensign bold enough to disturb the peace.

A young voice answered, “I’m sorry to
disturb you, Sir, but it’s an emergency.”

Adam sounded indifferent, “Everything is
always an emergency. The ship is filled with competent people; surely someone
else can handle it.”

“No, Sir. The Captain wishes to see you
in his ready room right now.”

I jumped into a sweater and a pair of
jeans, and went into the living room with Adam’s shirt. He took it and kissed
me on the cheek, buttoning it as he walked through the door.

The young man didn’t follow; he stared
at me. Had I forgotten something important when dressing? Were my boobs hanging
out?

Adam turned back and frowned. “What?”

“She, I mean you, ma’am, must come too.
The Captain said to bring you both. It concerns both of you.”

Oh, that couldn’t be good.

“Really?” My husband didn’t sound
impressed.

We followed the young man through the
corridors and Adam looked calm as ever. My insides were frozen over. It had
been such a good day, how could it go so wrong so quickly? Not even Adam’s hand
on my back in the elevator could soothe my fears. He bent forward and whispered
in my ear, “I had a great morning.”

That made me smile in spite of all and I
snuggled an arm around his waist. Screw protocol.

The Captain’s office was nearly empty.
Jia’Lyn, Anya, and Ima sat around a table. When we entered, Blake leaned back
in his chair and stared at Adam. “I think I’ll have to get a tamper-proof
communications’ system.”

“Maybe it’s broken.” Adam pulled a chair
out for me. He seemed completely unfazed.

“We’ve been monitoring a black hole
through the night, testing the new time sphere.”

Those words were clearly meant for me.
Time sphere? Oh, the TDD. Full scale testing. I nodded to show I heard and
understood, but it was a mystery how it could be an emergency.

Blake met Adam’s eyes. “An hour ago,
Ensign Bates miscalculated and manoeuvred too close to the singularity. We are
unable to break free.”

The words hovered over the table and I
had plenty of time to think of what it might mean. “I’m sorry, did you say
we’re teetering on the edge of a black hole?”

Adam touched something on the table and
a holographic terminal appeared. Data rolled by so quickly the numbers blurred,
and he nodded to himself. “Bates rounded the third decimal.”

Jia’Lyn nodded. “It’s such a minor
mistake, but enough.”

Poor Bates, whoever he or she was. If we
lived through this, getting a new nickname would be the least of their
problems.

When Blake spoke again, he had my full
attention. “We think we can launch one shuttle without pushing us too far in.”

Why couldn’t we just radio for help?
There must be a way to tow even something as big as the Bell. Anya fixed her
eyes on me and said, “No Alex, we’re too far in. All signals are diverted into
the singularity. A shuttle might be able to get out and send a distress call.”

Normally, I’d tell her not to read my
mind, but at the moment, privacy seemed a smaller problem.

Adam’s fingers danced over the computer.
“You know a shuttle can’t get out on its own. It would be possible to give a
little shove with a tractor beam, but it needs to be just right.”

Jia’Lyn leaned towards me. “The smallest
push in the wrong direction will make us fall into the gravity well.”

My husband leaned back in the chair. “I
checked last known positions of Confederacy ships in this sector. None of them can
reach us before we drift too far in to be salvageable.”

Anya looked down at the table and
twirled a lock of her dark hair between her fingers. “John is still in this
sector. He has a tractor beam. He could help hold us until more help gets
here.”

My mind spun with questions. The engines
of the Bell were incredibly powerful. Something able to hold her was beyond my
comprehension.

Adam murmured, “Any energy released by
us will be swallowed by the gravity well and make it that much larger. Right
now, we’re able to maintain equilibrium, but sooner or later, we will be pulled
in. It might be possible for us to get free if we got just a little pull from
the outside.”

When he put it like that, it made sense.
“Thank you.”

Adam entered his calculations into the computer.
Blake seemed to come to a conclusion. “Very well.
John
isn’t a close
friend of the Confederacy. He might need some persuading to lend a hand. Anya
must go.”

Ima interrupted, “Anya staying on the
ship might be a better incentive to help.”

Jia’Lyn’s snakes snickered. “Yes, let’s
irritate the nice criminal who might save us.”

“Ladies.” Blake rarely sounded
impatient, and the edge in his tone stressed our danger. “Anya will go on the
shuttle. Adam is the only one able to make the necessary calculations quickly
enough.”

Now I understood why I had been called
to the meeting. This might very well be the last time I saw my husband. Our
Captain eyed me and said in a mild tone of voice, “You have to go with them,
Alex.”

There was equal danger in staying on the
ship and going on the shuttle. Blake wouldn’t separate us, we would live or die
together, and it was a great kindness. “Thank you.”

Adam said, “It will be days before we
come back. Shut down the TDD as soon as we’re off the ship. This close to the
singularity, it will seem as if time stopped.”

Blake nodded. “You leave now.
Dismissed.”

As soon as the door closed behind us,
Anya said, “I’ll catch up with you in a few.” She disappeared in thin air.

“Where did she go?”

“That was her ship hologram. She’s
probably uploading to a mobile emitter. She’ll meet us by the shuttle.” Adam
seemed about as upset with the situation as the average brick wall might be. At
times like this I envied him. I was so afraid my stomach wanted to trade places
with my brain.

The doors to the lift opened. My husband
leaned his back against the wall, crossed his arms over his chest, and sighed
ever so little. I leaned my forehead against his arm. “This is scary.”

“It will be alright.”

“You wouldn’t lie to me, would you?”

“No. See things from the bright side.
You get to see John much sooner than you thought.”

“Unless we’re sucked into the black hole
where we’ll die a gruesome death.”

He finally moved and wrapped his arms
around me. “That’s not going to happen. We’re taking the shuttle you and I
adjusted for the trees. I’ve double-checked my calculations, and I’m almost
never wrong.”

Almost never. At least he was honest.

I sat in the back of the shuttle,
watching Adam’s and Anya’s backs. The seat under me moved when they fired the
engines up. Adam glanced back at me. “Put your seatbelt on.”

The shuttles had seatbelts? I found it
with just a little fumbling.

As soon as we left the protection of the
Bell, a maelstrom of debris flooded past the windows. Our little ship flowed
with it, and I saw a long row of windows flash by as we passed almost the
entire length of the Bell in a split second. This was it. I would die crushed
to death by the most powerful force mankind ever encountered. It might be a
worthy end, but not one I looked forward to.

Adam slammed a control and the engines
screeched with strain. The ship shook, but didn’t fall further in. Now when we
no longer moved with the rubble it battered us.

A rock hurled towards my window. It grew
larger and larger. I wanted to look away, but the sight was hypnotizing. The
energy field averted it inches away from me, and I huffed out stale air from my
lungs. Would squeezing my eyes shut be cowardice?

A bright light surrounded us. Did I die?
Was this heaven? No, Adam’s voice said, “Hold on.” If I was dead I’d probably
hear something else, or nothing… Jia’Lyn caught us with the tractor beam and
flung us through space.

Even with this added momentum, the
singularity wanted to pull us back. I was sure it was more than physics and gravity;
this thing seemed to have a mind. It was hungry, and it wanted to eat us. There
would be no regret, and no mercy.

The ship stabilized and Adam glanced
back. “You okay back there?”

“Yes… I think so.” We were free.

I opened the seatbelt and hurried to the
rear windows. The black hole wasn’t really black; it was an absence of all
light. The endless stream of dust and debris seemed to circle slowly, but now I
knew from first-hand experience it only
looked
slow because of the mere
quantity.

The Bell balanced on the edge of all
this destruction. How close could she drift before being crushed?

“What would happen if the black hole was
to eat the Bell, and consume our black hole?”

Adam’s voice seemed much further away
than just the other end of the ship.

“They don’t merge. The forces are so
extreme one black hole is thrust away at a speed we can’t even measure. In a
fraction of a second, the smaller singularity would get enough of a kick to
send it right out of the galaxy. The larger black hole would receive a
tremendous amount of energy and the entire area would come ablaze with an X-ray
flare that might last for thousands of years.”

“Can’t we use that energy to push the
ship away?”

He shook his head. “No. The forces are
too big.

Why did I have to ask?

When I returned to my chair, Anya
already worked with the radio. John’s sardonic voice said, “So, Captain Jones
has gotten himself into trouble, and you want the person he hates the most to
come rescue him?”

She didn’t have time to answer. The
radio crackled to life again and he asked, “Alex and Adam okay?”

I wasn’t too surprised he asked for us,
but Adam lifted an eyebrow and Anya even
sounded
startled. “They’re
fine. They’re here in the shuttle with me.”

John chuckled, and I wondered just how
drunk he was when he suggested, “Why don’t we meet up, baby doll, and you all
run away with me?”

Adam reached out for the com and said in
a deceptively even voice, “How about we meet up and you help us rescue a
thousand people on the ship. I know the girls like you, so I don’t want to have
to break your neck.”

John laughed even more. “Fair enough.”

Anya disappeared off to talk to her
lover on the radio in private. I squeezed Adam’s shoulder. “I’m impressed.”

He shrugged. “Make yourself comfortable.
If nothing changes we have eighteen hours fifty four minutes to the rendezvous
point.”

I sank down in Anya’s chair and watched
him work. “You’re not in love with this plan, are you?”

“If it works, I guess it’s good.”

As communicative and emotional as only
an android, or possibly a cement slab, could be. He wouldn’t meet my eyes.
Whatever had gone wrong between us was still wrong, in spite of my best efforts
and impending doom. “Can we talk?”

“This isn’t a good time, Alex.” He got
to his feet and headed out of the tiny cockpit.

“Why not? You just said we have almost
nineteen hours before anything happens. It’s not like you have somewhere to
go.”

“I’m going to go check on the engines.
This was a lot of strain on the ship.”