Gray stared out into a thickly clotted starscape wreathed with tangled filaments and clouds of plasma. Astern, six black holeswith searingly hot accretion disks orbited a common center of gravity where once six blue giants had formed the Rosette ofSix Suns. To port, a few thousand kilometers distant, was a seventh black hole, its unimaginable gravity twisting the lightfrom the stars beyond into a dazzling ring encircling the object. This one had no accretion disk, he saw. Under highest magnification,he could just make out the sphere of impenetrable darkness at the center of the optical distortion. Konstantin Junior estimatedthe diameter of the object’s event horizon to be 206 kilometers. The math suggested the black hole possessed a mass of approximatelyseventy times that of Earth’s sun.
Where the hell had that come from?
“What now, Admiral?” Mackey asked him.
He didn’t answer immediately. They were here to find the fleeing Sh’daar fleet, and they at least had a vague idea of wherethey’d been going: roughly in that direction.
But finding them was going to be like finding one particular grain of sand somewhere on a very, very large beach.
“We wait for Birmingham and Arlington to come through the Rosette,” he said at last. “And then, I guess we’ll just have to see.”
After another moment, he thoughtclicked an in-head channel. “Colonel McDevitt, this is Admiral Gray. We need to talk.”
Flag Bridge
CIS CV Moskva
Omega Centauri
1545 hours, GMT
“Sir! The enemy has escaped into the Rosette!”
Oreshkin scowled at the screen. The information had come too late for him to do a damned thing about it. The two Americanships—a destroyer and a cruiser—were passing into the tortured space at the heart of the Rosette . . . and in an eye’s blink,they were gone.
Chort poberi! Damn it to hell! This mission was fast becoming what the Americans referred to as a complete clusterfuck. The prey had escaped,leaving Oreshkin with an impossible choice. He could give up, turn around, and return to Earth, but there was no way theywere going to manage to thread the TRGA needle with it spinning like that. Returning to Earth using Alcubierre Drive, putt-puttingalong at fifteen light years per day, would take them almost three years, and that was quite unacceptable.
The alternative was to follow the Americans through the Rosette.
That choice was dangerous almost beyond belief. Moskva’s AI had navigational tables that should let them reach the N’gai galaxy in the remote past—the Americans’ presumed destination—butOreshkin had never attempted that trick. Even the slightest error would end with the Russian carrier inextricably lost inboth space and in time and quite possibly drop them out of the universe entirely and into someplace horribly other. To make matters worse, Moskva had suffered considerable damage during the fighter attack, losing several vacuum energy taps and a number of point-defenseweapons.
And even if they did succeed, despite damage, despite navigational uncertainties, there was every possibility that they wouldfind the America battlegroup waiting for them. The enemy had been caught off guard at the Thorne TRGA when the Russian destroyers had comethrough scattered by the gate’s rotation.
There would be no rotation of the N’gai Rosette to scatter the squadron as it emerged, and the Americans would be foolishto assume the Moskva would not come through in pursuit. No, they would be waiting.
Which meant Oreshkin had to think of a way to catch them off guard again.
A thought occurred to him. “Nal Tok,” he said, opening a comm channel with both audio and visual feeds.
At the other end of that electronic link, something stirred in darkness—large, black, powerful . . . and in no way human.“I am here, Oreshkin.”
“Nal Tok, we may be under attack by USNA forces soon. Will you and your forces fight with us against them?”
“Put us where we can fight, and we will fight.” Mouth parts moved uneasily in an unreadable expression. “We like killing humans.”
It was as positive an answer as Oreshkin could hope for.
He just wondered if he could trust the massive beings.
USNA CVS America
Admiral’s Office
N’gai Cluster
1552 hours, FST
Gray floated into his office, catching a handhold to arrest his forward movement. The office bulkheads were set to display the outside panorama. Above and on every side, the glory of the tiny galaxy’s core burned with a piercing radiance. Millions of stars, each one brighter than Venus seen at its brightest in the morning skies of Earth, were crammed into a wall surrounding the innermost core. He made his way to his seat and strapped in.
He’d already sent a call requesting that Captain Rand meet him there.
While waiting, he connected with Lieutenant Colonel McDevitt, who was down on the Number One flight deck with several hundredof his men. “Do you think your people can pull this off, Colonel?” he asked.
“Sir. C’mon, this is the Three-Deuce-Five we’re talking about. Give the order and we’ll storm the gates of hell for you.”
“I don’t think it will be quite that bad, Colonel. If the bad guys are going to come through, though, it will be pretty soon. Are you ready to launch?”
“We’re loading into capsules now, Admiral. We’ll be ready when you need us.”
“That’s good, Terry. With any luck, the bad guys won’t see you coming. We’re counting on you.”
“Hooyah, sir!”
Gray cut the link just as Captain Rand accessed the door announcer. “Enter.”
The man drifted into the office and clung to a handhold in front of Gray’s high-tech desk. “Sir! You wanted to see me.”
“Yes, Jason. We need to talk.”
“Sir.”
“I didn’t like relieving you out there. I regret the necessity.” He would not say that he was sorry.
“Command prerogative, sir.”
Gray sighed. Rand was not making this easier with his stiff, by-the-book attitude. “Command responsibility. I will not have one of my officers questioning my authority or my orders, not in front of the bridge crew, and not when we’re in action.In private, you can question me all you want, just so you remember that I am
