minute before impact. Cease thruster burn immediately. Over.”
Molly turned to look at Cole. They were pushing over sixteen Gs, and she could really feel it through her flightsuit and in her neck. Cole’s visor remained up, those hazel eyes of his wide with trust, awaiting an answer.
“Release chaff pod number one,” she commanded.
Cole thumbed the defense controls. The new and untested chaff module in the rear of their ship popped open and ejected the decoy. It showed up on SADAR as a second ship with the same signature and mass as
It stayed on its original vector, homing in on the chaff pod.
“How long before the second impact?” Molly asked.
Cole was already working on it. “Under two minutes—damn! Contact. Three more missiles incoming.”
Molly saw them on her SADAR screen. Things were getting ugly.
“They’re gonna reach us after we slingshot,” Cole said, confirmed what her mental calculations already suggested. “If they vector around the star after us, they’re gonna get the same boost we will. They’ll track us down before we get to clear space for a jump.”
Molly looked up from the nav screen and had to lower her visor. Her new course had them heading right for the star. The automatic filters in the carboglass handled most of the direct light and all the harmful radiation; the visor in her helmet took care of the rest, allowing her to gaze upon its surface. For a brief moment, she became lost in the sight of the fiery orb, transfixed by the hundreds of black spots on its surface, the “cooler” areas where magnetic disturbances prevented the plasma from mixing properly.
She followed the wide trail of fire that streamed out from the star to the black hole. They were approaching from above, but getting so close that the overall shape and beauty of the spiral had become lost.
Now it was just the massive, deadly, intoxicating details.
“Release chaff pod number two,” she said.
Cole thumbed the controls while she altered course, heading toward one edge of the star. The missile behind them jogged slightly, following
“We’ve got a problem,” Cole said.
“I see it.” That was their last chaff pod, and the missile wasn’t fooled. Molly started composing their surrender in her head, losing herself in the beauty of the star and the long, curving river of plasma coursing off the surface. A solar flare had erupted recently, its smaller stream of hot matter jetting out tens of thousands of kilometers, curving close to their current heading.
Cole’s gift had become a threat, but Molly saw that it could also be their savior.
“Hold on,” she said, altering course slightly toward the thick column of plasma that made up the solar flare. Even the gradual change in direction could be felt at their high rate of acceleration. Molly glanced at the three crew members strapped in on the cargo cam. They were awfully still; she hoped that meant they were doing okay.
After a moment, Cole seemed to get the plan. “How close are you going to try and get to that mess?”
“Not too close. Shouldn’t have to. The heat radiating out from the plasma will detonate the warhead from a distance. Those things can’t carry the shielding we do and still be that fast.”
Cole worked some numbers through the nav computer, his glove fixed to the panel by his side. Molly watched the results crawl across her own screen.
“I hope you’re right,” he said, “because that missile is gonna get to us before we get to that flare.”
She glanced at his calculations and started to agree. His results had them a thousand kilometers short of the solar flare when the missile struck, further away than she had hoped. Then she saw he hadn’t factored in the difference in mass between
“It’s going to be close,” she admitted.
“We’ve still got three more missiles behind this guy, and the fleet is closing in pretty fast. What happened to surrendering?”
It was a lot to think about at once. Even if the plume of plasma set off the first missile, they were going too fast to come to a complete stop and let the heat take out the other three. Besides, any decrease in speed would just bring them in range of the fleet’s lasers. Molly felt completely cornered, as powerless as the coil of fire being sucked off of the star’s surface, rolling across space into the black hole.
“The what?” Cole asked.
Molly must’ve said it out loud.
“Do I get two vetoes per day? ’Cause I’m against hiding in the black hole as well.”
She didn’t have time to explain herself. The missile was half a minute from impact, and the wide column of fire streaking off the star and joining the spiraling river was close enough to see its features. Smaller arcs of plasma leapt up and crashed back into the main body like fiery fish breaking the surface of a lava lake and diving back in.
Cole updated the situation: “Fifteen seconds to impact.”
Molly couldn’t just hold her breath and see if the gambit with the missile would work; she needed to calculate her next dumb idea. She keyed the ridiculously large numbers into the nav calculator with one hand while she gradually altered course with the flight controls. The key was to keep assuming everything would work, like during the Tchung simulation when she’d moved from one audacious move to the next. Only this time, with very real consequences.
She moved
He counted down the second missile’s impact over their private channel:
“Six…”
Molly concentrated on the nav computer, waiting on it to spit out an answer.
“Five…”
She remembered, all of a sudden, that her mother was in there somewhere.
“Four…”
Hopefully the grueling load on the CPU eased her boredom, slowing down her sense of time—
“Three…”
Molly shook the thought out of her head, amazed her brain would even go there right then.
“Two…”
The calculation finally popped up. Molly was impressed to see how close the answer was to her rough estimate.
“Detonation!”
The missile behind them expanded into a miniature version of the nearby star. Cole felt a change in his flightsuit as the explosion slewed the back of the ship slightly. He tried to pump his fist in celebration, but they were moving at a blistering pace. The suit could keep his flesh from being crushed—and the gravity panels in the dash could make it easier for his hands to work the controls—but nothing could help him wave his limbs in jubilation.
Then he realized there wasn’t anything to celebrate. Molly had altered their heading, giving up on the slingshot maneuver. Even if the other three missiles exploded from the heat, the fleet was going to catch up to them, engaging them while they were trapped in this crazy system. A red warning indicator flashed on the SADAR screen. It finally struck Cole that Molly’s new vector had problems. Whatever celebratory mood he had felt quickly drained away.
“Why’re we heading toward the black hole, Molly?”
He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
“We aren’t. We’re heading for the L1 in this system.”
“This system doesn’t have an L1, it’s—” Cole realized he was wrong just as he voiced his complaint. It was
