"If it's not an artifact, sir, then what is it?"
"It's a living god."
Hobbes swallowed. Had the old man gone daft?
"That doesn't mean we can't kill it, Captain."
He smiled.
"No, indeed. We have the power to destroy it. But our solution must be absolute. Not mere energy, but a tear in the fabric of space-time. A black hole. Self-destruction is the only honorable choice." "Captain, I have other options--"
"Silence, Hobbes. It's time."
Zai brushed past her, tersely ordering the blister to fold when they vere out. Hobbes realized it was pointless to argue. The man was fix-ited on death. That was why he had returned here to the blister, to esume his mordant meditation on his own doom.
Poor Laurent, she thought. His failure to take the blade had con-iumed all his strength; his finest moment had broken him inside. And he Vadan man's lost honor was now embodied in the object, within each again: one final chance to die for the Risen Emperor.
As she followed her captain up to the bridge, Katherie Hobbes felt the flechette pistol strapped to her wrist, and wondered if it had been a mistake to save Zai from the mutineers.
"Ten minutes, sir."
A thousand seconds, and the Rix would be in range again. Hobbes shook her head. Having survived one pass by the vastly superior warship, it seemed insane to face another. But it was too late for these thoughts. Even at maximum gee, the frigate could no longer put itself out of harm's way.
"What's the light-speed delay?" Zai asked.
"Sir?"
"Between ourselves and the battlecruiser."
Hobbes changed her scale markers to light-seconds. Was the captain thinking of communicating with the enemy? "Nine seconds round-trip, sir."
"Then we wait," Zai said.
For what? Hobbes wondered.
A hundred seconds ticked by. The Rix craft approached, decelerating now, as the object writhed before them.
Hobbes focused her mind. She tried to recall the way she had seen Zai ten days ago: a paragon of honor and competence. She would have died for him without question. Why were there doubts in her mind now?
She reviewed the situation. The Lynx's orders were clear: to prevent contact between the compound mind and the battlecruiser. This was the only way to be absolutely sure. Perhaps self-destruction was the honorable choice. But Laurent seemed to relish the thought of death. And he had been blind to other options, even when there had been time.
Of course, the time for options had run out.
Katherie wondered if her doubts stemmed from the foolish affec-Mions she had allowed herself to develop for her captain. Had Zai's rejection lessened her loyalty? Hobbes tried to feel the sense of duty that had compelled her to join the Navy: The Utopian world she had left behind was an empty place of pleasure and safety. Here at the verge of death she should find meaning. That was the axiom of Imperial service: The Old Enemy gave life value.
But facing suicide, there was nothing inside Katherie Hobbes but regret and fear. And a desire to find a way out.
She checked the time.
"They'll be in range in fifty-odd seconds, sir. The round-trip delay is now five seconds."
"Take us in, First Pilot. I want collision with the object in forty seconds. Smooth acceleration."
This was it.
First Pilot Maradonna's anxious eyes glanced toward Hobbes. Katherie's mind whirled. What did Maradonna want from her? Hobbes nodded confirmation to the pilot, with an expression that she hoped said, Trust me.
Trust me to what?
The frigate jolted a bit as the two-gee acceleration began, a gravity ghost wrenching a metal shriek from around them. The captain raised no protest.
"Frick?" Zai said. The engineer was here on the bridge, ready to control the singularity generator from under the captain's gaze. The hole could go critical only with the first engineer's approval. He could stop this if he wanted. Hobbes wondered if Watson Frick had mutiny in him. She doubted it.
Why was she speculating like this? The bridge had once seemed sanctified to Hobbes, a place of order and faith. But that surety had been stripped, undermined by her doubts. And perhaps by her foolish feelings for Laurent Zai. She wondered if she would be thinking of mutiny if Laurent hadn't told her about his lover on Home. The red battle lights seemed menacing now; the bridge had become a twilight place.
"Build the generator on an exponential curve, Frick. Self-destruct to occur on contact."
"Yes, sir," said the first engineer without emotion. "Fail-safe in twenty seconds."
This was the end, then. In moments, they would all be destined for death, absolute and irrecoverable, at the maw of an event horizon.
Unless Katherie Hobbes acted. She put aside her doubts about her own motivations. There were more than three hundred surviving crew to consider.
What if now, with only second left, she were to take the bridge? She was the only one here who was armed.
The pilots would side with her, she knew already. Pilots generally came from aristocracy, and possessed a certain sense of entitlement; Third Pilot Magus, still in the brig, had been part of the first mutiny. With the self-destruct process already started, however, Hobbes would have to turn Frick. And for that, she realized, she had waited too long. The Rix were almost upon them. There was no chance that the Lynx could survive another pass from the battlecruiser. The captain was right about one thing: Suicide was the only sure way of destroying the object.
She let all the mutinous thoughts exit her mind. It was a pointless exercise; they were all dead whatever she did.
But Katherie cursed herself for not deciding. Honorable death or mutiny, she could have made a choice when the Rix were still distant. Instead, she had waited for time to run down. Laurent Zai and Watson Frick--they had chosen their deaths. Katherie Hobbes had merely stumbled into hers.
"Fail-safe in ten," Frick said.
"Collision in twenty," a pilot added.
This was it. Just a countdown remained.
And there was no meaning in it for Hobbes.
"Captain," cried Ensign Tyre. "The Rix!"
"Cut our acceleration, Pilot," Zai snapped. "Stand by, Frick."
The captain waved his hand, and the Rix battlecruiser filled the big airscreen. It was coming alight. A storm of explosions ran up and down the length of its hull. Bright arms of white energy burst from its sides, curving around to strike back at the vessel like arcing solar flares. The ship's main drive continued to-fire, but it was free of its \ structural supports, spinning like a fire hose gone wild within the mighty ship. The blazing shaft cut the battlecruiser's aft section to pieces, then the drive tore itself free from the ship and jetted whirling into the void. The kilometer-long bow spar of the battlecruiser vanished into a nuclear blast, perfectly spherical and absolutely white.