Black Hull (24 page)

“There’s always
something
to
upset my games. Sera!” XJ called.

“She’s not here anymore XJ. Don’t you at
least remember that much?” GR said from across the bay. A wrenching sound
reverberated from the engine room. Mick shouted but they couldn’t hear what he
said.

“What do you mean, she’s
not here
anymore
?” XJ said.

“She died, she died when she boarded the
Fogstar. She was so good to you and you can’t even remember that she’s gone,”
GR said.

“GR—I must unstrap myself. You are
getting out of hand.”

“Do not unstrap—he ordered us to
stabilize ourselves, didn’t he?”

“Your alzeimagnetism is progressing
faster than I thought. Sera will need to tinker with your central processor.”
The queen rolled past, hit the bay door, popped up into the air and disappeared
behind some crates. “Oh dear!”

The entire ship vibrated.

“Spacequake,” shouted XJ. Large cargo
boxes tumbled, rose into the air. XJ’s bindings ripped. He flew across the
room, smacking into a stairwell, bending its banister.

“Are you okay?” GR said after the
shaking had stopped. “XJ?”

“Quite alright. Now, to set this board
up again.”

A voice crackled throughout
The Great
Auk:
“This is UCA Captain Greiz. This is your one and only warning: turn
off your engines and surrender. If you do not comply, you will be blown out of
the sky. I repeat, if you do not comply, we will shoot you down.”

“Want to test him?” Mick joked through
the com.

“Are you in the engine room?” asked FOD.

“Yea. Talk to me.”

“This ship has a manual control panel
for near-field disintegrators. I need you to find it.”

“Tell me where to look.”

“Look at the ceiling, follow the blue
pipe shaped like an L.”

Near-field disintegrators?
Mick saw the
piping, followed it.

“Here,” he replied.

“See the yellow knobs? There should be
three of them.”

“Yea.”

“Press them.”

Mick punched the tiny buttons. A panel
door shot open. Inside was a large cylindrical lever.

“The lever should be in the off
position. Flip it now.”

In this age, why the fuck is this
manual?

“Because near-field disintegrators
aren’t stable Mick. You can’t leave them on. You don’t want them accidentally
tripping either.”

“Alright, lever is up.”

“Good. You better get back here and bolt
yourself down.”

“There is no other way,” repeated
General Sirma.

“But sir, there
has
to be
something else.”

“Captain Greiz, you are directly ordered
to release your grade 4 Q-charge. Would you rather save yourself so your family
dies tomorrow?” Sirma replied.

“Sir...”

He was unable to decide: to suicide the
whole battalion was unthinkable—but if it really was FOD, if the story was
true, then the General was right.

A G10 quantum black hole—the unfathomable.
A universe killer. A reset switch for the entire human race, and everything it
had spread to consume.

A scuffle sounded through the com.

“What the hell is going on? Captain!”
Sirma yelled.

“General Sirma, this is your lieutenant.
The Captain is relieved. He wasn’t prepared to follow your order.”

“Good job, Lieutenant. Your family will
know about this. I promise. Now blow that fucker to hell.”

“Roger that. We are go for grade 4
Q-drop.”

The general thought of the calls he
would make:
Poor lot. All of that life, a waste. All for the sake of
stopping a vigilante, an extremist, a terrorist. It must be done. There is no
other choice.

“So what’s your name?” Axa asked in the
cabin of the Fogstar as it lifted off Organ World.

“Name? I’m a number. AY512.3.”

“I can’t believe we’re leaving—we’re
going to get killed.”

“Better than what we had, right?”

“I’d never thought about it before. I
never questioned it like you do.”

“Well it’s time to start. We only have a
little bit of time before everything ends. And here’s what we’ve got to do.”

“What do you mean
everything ends
?”

“I told you—the Force of Darkness—the
most wanted terrorist in the history of the UCA?”

“Never heard of him. You know there’s no
news on Organ World.”

“I know—well—I didn’t either. Until I
met him.”

“What?”

“He sought me out. Bribed his way in.
Needs me to hunt down some Joe in the Bessel system while he works on this G10
black hole.”

“G10 black hole?”

“An everything ender.”

“What’s he want with you? You’re just
meat for some off-rock oligarch.”

“He said I have a completely moddable
circ system, something to do with how they make organ bodies.”

“So that you can nab this guy for him?”

“Yea—only we’re not going to nab
him—we’re going to kill him, steal what he’s got, and go to Utopia.”

“You’re going to screw most wanted
terrorist?”

“Yea.”

“Doesn’t sound bright.”

“He’s going to succeed whether I help
him or not. It’s hard to explain. He could read my mind. He turned it on,
filled it up. I went inside his head.”

“This is all too fucking crazy. Turn
around. I’m not going on a death run.”

“I need you.”

“No you don’t.”

“Organs don’t have zone permits. FOD
said that no sexbot would protest leaving Organ World, to pick any one. I
picked you.”

“You believe Utopia is a real, and we
can get in?”

“If this—Mick, I think—and his
partner—have the money FOD says they do, then yes. We’ll get in.”

“What’s FOD want with him?”

“He said he didn’t have a plant.”

“Everyone has a plant, it’s in your
genes.”

“I know. I can’t explain. But he needs
him to finish off the black hole business. And I’m not going to Utopia so I can
enjoy it for a couple days and then get sucked into a black hole.”

“Why’s he want to make it so bad?”

“Don’t know, don’t care. I’ll tell you
what—I’m having the time of my life,” AY512.3 said, smiling.

“Yea,” Axa looked out the porthole
window: the vast beauty of open space, a sight she hadn’t seen in years,
engulfed her spirit. The scar of her past, Organ World, receded behind them.“Me
too.”

“Anyone asks, we’re husband and wife.”

“They still do that?”

“Marriage? Seems they do some places.
And it’s going to be our ticket through the zones.”

“Everything good?” Mick asked as he
strapped back into the cockpit chair next to FOD.

“Yes sir. None of their weapons can
breach a near-field disintegrator.”

“Tech’s changed since my time.”

“You have no idea,” FOD said with
disgust.

“Thought you enjoyed the tech—flying
this top-secret bird and all?”

“Enjoy? I’ll enjoy the quiet when it’s
here—nothing else.”

Strange one. Not the time to pick his
apocalypse-driven mind. Sera had an edge, but she had feeling. She was still
real. This guy—spouting poetry, a puzzle, detached. He’s lost his compassion
for humans.

“We can talk once we get out of this,”
FOD said, glancing at the radar. The UCA ships, a swarm of blips, crawled
closer.

“They’re moving in fast,” Mick said
anxiously. “You okay in the back?”

The com crackled: “We are fine Mick.” It
was XJ. “Had a little spill. Nothing so broken it can’t be fixed. Of course, I
can’t say the same for our chess pieces. Some are missing.”

“There’ll be plenty of time to find
them.”

He’ll have me in Utopia, won’t he? It
won’t be me, but it will: what’s the difference between a
me-projected-by-his-imagination and the actual me? Who’s to say? Why go home,
then? Karen will be the same in Utopia. The boys, Selby, identical. Never know
the difference. Hell—even Sera would be there.

“You don’t want to stay,” FOD said.
“It’s not the same. Utopia is a lie. Besides that, I’m going to destroy it.
Where you’re going, you’ll still have over a thousand years before the end
hits.”

“You really think you can end
everything?”

“End is inaccurate. Restart. I’m going
to restart the universe, and hope humans never rise into existence again.”

“How the hell do you get so bent that
you—” Mick froze, watching FOD whip around, frantically search the computer
terminal in front of him.

“This is no good,” FOD muttered.

“What?”

“Near-field is working, but they’re not
arming anything near-field can stop.”

“What do you mean?”

“They’re suiciding. With a grade 4 Q.”

“4 Q?”

“See that dot?” FOD said, pointing to a
slow-moving signature on the radar screen, drifting out from the mass of UCA
ships.

“Yea.”

“It’s a Q-bomb. It’s going to take us
and their entire fleet with it.”

“They’re sacrificing an entire fleet for
you?”

“They’ve figured out what I’m up to.”

“So what the fuck do we do?” Mick said.
“Is everything okay?” XJ said from the hull. No one answered him.

“We have a minute, then it explodes. We
have two options.”

“I don’t give a shit what they are—pick
the one that keeps us alive.”

“By alive, do you mean alive within
your
body
?”

So this is it. A long run at nothing. A
sustained balance of hope finally drawn out to emptiness.

“Bombs away, General,” spoke the
Lieutenant.

“You are a good man. Your family—and the
universe—will know of what you’ve done today.”

“We fired shots just to be sure—the
near-field disintegrators intercepted them as predicted.”

“One minute until detonation. I repeat,
one minute until detonation. If you have any last transmissions, recording of
yourselves to make, please do so now,” said the Lead Engineer of the
Lieutenant’s ship.

A gaunt intelligence officer walked into
General Sirma’s warm office suite. A window of exposed starplane shone through,
lighting their faces. The General looked out, imagining the explosion to come,
the aftermath, the families he would attempt to console.
Will they buy the
hero line? They’ll have to. There’s no other way to accept the cost. Will they
buy that FOD really had the capability to create a G10? Again, they’ll have
to—there’s no closure otherwise.
Despite certainty of the correctness of
his decision, the General wiped sweat from his brow.

“What is it Herek?” the General said,
not turning from the stars.

“There is another element
on
The
Great Auk
that might create a problem.”

“What the hell are you talking about
Colonel?”

“Entangled consciousness mapping.”

“Speak in god damn English.”

The General sensed the importance of
what was to be said.
He’s uncovered a loophole in my plan. A flaw in the
rationale for a mass-sacrifice. A reason to take my future as a hero away from
me before it even begins.

“What is it? Talk.”

“Entangled particles, as a
representation of a configuration of localized matter, instantly transferred
between a transmission location and a receiver.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Thirty seconds until detonation,” came
the wobbly voice of the Engineer through the General’s office com.

“It means, in short sir, that it is,
theoretically speaking, possible for them to transfer their .HUM files out of
the ship and to a safe location.”

“Where to?”