Jeffrey Carver - Eternity's End

A neutraser burst leaked through the field and spun weirdly around the ship. His viewscreen and console began to glow with St. Elmo’s fire. He couldn’t wait any longer. He slammed the maneuvering controls shut, drew a deep breath, and closed his eyes. At his silent command, the rigger-net billowed out into space, a shimmering sensory web. He caught some fragmentary words on the com: “ —Going under in the Zone—must be crazy—!

And then he reached out with his arms in the net like wings on a plane, and banked the ship down out of the fiery cauldron of normal-space and into the chaos of the Flux.

The star rigger’s Flux: a higher-dimensional realm where reality and fantasy became strangely merged, where landscapes of the mind intersected with the real fabric of space, where space itself flowed and surged with movement—and where a rigger’s skills could vault him across light-years, or send him spiraling to his death.

Legroeder was flying in a thunderstorm, wind shear and lightning buffeting and rocking him. His senses stretched through the net into the Flux, as though his head and torso were the bowsprit of the ship. His arms embraced the storm, mists of streaming air coiling through his fingers. He drew around him the only image he could think of: a stubby-winged airplane bouncing through cumulonimbus, stubbornly refusing to surrender.

The craft bucked violently. It was hard to keep a heading in the turbulence—but he had to, if he was going to get through the Dead Man’s Zone and out the other side. The raiders had sown mines throughout the Zone, which was almost redundant; the place itself was a natural minefield. Everything was distorted here, normal-space and the Flux alike. A fragmentary remnant of some ancient violence of creation, it was a perfect place of concealment for the raider base. Only a maniac would try what Legroeder was trying now…

He fought back a rush of fear as he skidded through the wind shear. Why had he thought he could do this? It’s impossible!

No sooner had he thought it than the turbulence grew worse. He realized why, and fought to control himself. His mere thoughts could reverberate disastrously into the Flux; he dared not allow panic or fear.

Stay calm!

He drew a long, slow breath and tried to refocus the image. Keep flying the ship. Whatever happens, we’re away, better off than before.

What lay ahead? Mines. Treacherous shoals. Dead ships. But where? Change the image: make it transparent . Sooner imagined than done; the energies swirling before him were too powerful to easily remap. He blinked once to alter the contrast, and now he could make out distant flecks of darkness against the glowing whirlwinds of the storm. Shipwrecks? He couldn’t tell.

WHOOM!

Something blazed off his port-side, a mine exploding. He veered hard, avoiding damage. His heart raced. The explosion had opened a path through the storm, a shadowy tunnel in the clouds. A way through? It wouldn’t last long. He circled back, scanning for pursuit. Nothing: maybe they’d given him up for dead. Fly, now— fly! The currents were tricky; he had to scull with his arms to bring the ship back.

As he banked into the tunnel, the winds seemed favorable—but at once he sensed his mistake. A trap . He banked hard the other way, back into the current. It was too strong now—it was pulling him into the passage. He cursed and hit the fusion motors—dangerous in the Flux!—and continued thrusting until he’d veered past the opening. At that instant the passage twisted closed, then erupted with a belch of fire. The blast caught his wingtip and snapped him head over heels.

The storm clouds spun around him. By the time he pulled the ship out of the tumble, he’d lost his bearings completely. He felt a rising panic.

And then he heard a voice softly, distantly, in his mind. You must keep your center… stay calm. Legroeder, you’ll find the way through. Aren’t you the one who showed me, after all?

His heart stopped as he recognized the voice-from-memory, his old shipmate Gev Carlyle, as clear as if Gev were right here looking over his shoulder. Keep your center… stay calm… how often had he said those things as the younger Carlyle had fought to master his instincts and fears?

Keep your center…

The storm clouds tossed the little vessel like a wood chip on a pounding sea. He again breathed deeply and focused inward, and then from his center focused outward—and as he did so, the clouds shimmered to transparency, just for an instant. He drew another breath. Center and clarify… illuminate …

For a moment, he felt the almost tangible presence of his old friend. The feeling was so powerful, it drove the fear back a little more, and the storm clouds grew pale. Through the twists and turns of the moving currents, he began to glimpse a path: a fold in the Flux, and a current slipping through…

The escape had happened so fast Legroeder had scarcely had time to think. For seven years since his capture, he’d looked for a chance to make a break. But the guard was too tight, the fortress impregnable and light-years from anywhere. No one had ever escaped alive; that was what they said. Everyone said it; everyone believed it. A few had tried: they were dead now, or being tortured, in solitary.

And yet… even as he’d piloted their raider ships for them, preying on innocent shipping in the wilds of Golen Space, even as he’d worked for the bloody pirates, to stay alive, he’d never stopped watching, planning, ready to bolt if the opportunity ever arose.

He never dared talk about it with the other prisoners. But he’d sensed that Maris was of like mind. He’d had a rough time among the pirates, but she’d had it worse. At least he hadn’t been raped and abused, in addition to being forced into labor. She was a tough woman and an angry one. He’d thought often of Maris as a friend he’d not really gotten to know.

When the chance finally came, he had just seconds to make up his mind. They were coming off a ship-maintenance detail in the outer docks—Jolly, Lumo, Maris, and Legroeder—when a Flux capacitor in the main docking room blew, spewing a jet of blazing plasma across the room. Two of the guards, caught in the discharge, went sprawling. Several other workers helped the injured out of the compartment, leaving two guards with four conscripts. Through the haze and confusion of the leaking plasma, Legroeder spotted a fallen handgun lying under a console. He glanced at Maris, who stiffened as she saw it, too.

Legroeder thought furiously. The remaining guards were occupied by the plasma leak, and behind Legroeder and the other prisoners, just down a short corridor, a small ship was docked, its airlock doors open. His crew had just finished checking it over; it was ready to fly.

Maris’s eyes met his; they both shifted to the far side of the compartment, where the guards were shouting, trying to cut off the plasma discharge. Maris gave a shrug that seemed to ask a question. Legroeder nodded. He looked at Jolly and Lumo, standing to one side watching the plasma jet. Neither was likely to be of help. When he glanced back, Maris was moving toward the gun.

One of the guards finally noticed. “Hey, what are you doing?” he shouted, unslinging his neutraser rifle. The plasma plume partially obscured his view, but it wouldn’t block his shot.

Legroeder barked a warning.

Maris came up with the gun.

A crackle of neutraser fire: Maris cried out and spun around, wounded. But not too wounded to fire back: from a crouch, she fired three times. A shriek of pain told Legroeder that she’d hit one of the guards. She dropped the gun, staggering.