Stephen Baxter: Exultant

“I didn’t screw up, Pilot,” Bilson said miserably. “I gave you the best I could.”

“I know,” Pirius said wearily. He believed him. But he knew that Bilson would blame himself for this for the rest of his life. “We still have work to do. We have six more chances, six more ships. The others will need our help. Keep your heads up. All right?”

“Yes, sir,” Cabel said blankly.

“Navigator?”

“Sir.”

The mood among the remaining crews, at their station high above the plain of the accretion disc, was bleak.

Torec tried to make the best of it. “Whoever went in first was almost bound to fail. But we learned a lot.”

Bilson remained very down. “We didn’t know about that mesh. We can’t see through it, and our starbreakers are distorted by it somehow, so we can’t aim. And we haven’t got time to rewrite the attack plan.”

“He’s right,” said Pirius Blue. “Those flak batteries didn’t see you coming in, but they chased you back out, Red. And the ops room say there are nightfighters on the way.”

“We have to go back in,” said Pirius Red. “Now, before it gets any worse.”

“I’ll go,” said Jees abruptly. It was the first time she had spoken since Pirius’s return.

Pirius Red said, “But your ship’s configured to carry the grav shield.”

“We don’t need it on the way back. We’ll just be running for home.”

“No, but your bird will wallow even more than the rest.”

“Then I’m expendable. And I’m your best pilot,” she said simply. “If anybody can make this work, I can.”

Torec pointed out: “Pirius. She has a Silver Ghost on board.”

“That’s irrelevant,” Jees snapped. “Its presence doesn’t affect the operation of the weapon. And now that we’re done with the shield, its usefulness is at an end. The Ghost is just cargo now; it has no say.”

“She has a point,” Pirius Blue said.

But, Pirius Red thought, the Ghost was probably listening to every word.

He called his second flight commander. “Burden? What’s your recommendation?” But, though his comm channel was clearly open, Burden didn’t reply. Again Pirius felt a flicker of unease.

“Come on, Pirius,” Jees said evenly. “We need a decision.”

Enough. “Go,” he said.

Jees had evidently been waiting for the go-ahead. Her ship immediately looped out of formation and streaked down toward the accretion disc.

She got about as far as Pirius had. Then starbreaker beams from those Sugar Lump flak stations, four of them probed for her. She held her position, got her own range-finding starbreakers working, and reported doing a little more damage to the net. But her green spark winked out before she even launched her bombs.

When it was over, just minutes after Jees had left the formation, Pirius forced himself to speak.

“Okay. Okay. Maybe there’s another way.”

Enduring Hope was still on the balcony with Nilis, Kimmer, Luru Parz.

When the news of the second failure, and the loss of Jees and her crew, filtered through to the ops room, Nilis was distraught. He wandered along the walkway, wringing his hands and wiping the soft flesh of his face. “Oh no,” he said, over and over. “Oh no, oh no. It’s my fault. We are failing, and their lives are burning up like sparks, and all for nothing…” It was a distressing sight. But Enduring Hope reminded himself that Nilis was, at heart, a civilian, with a civilian’s lack of understanding of war.

Marshal Kimmer did not react, either to the bad news from the target or to Nilis’s loss of control. There was little he could do to shape the course of events, but in this difficult time he was a pillar of rectitude, Enduring Hope thought, a model of strength and determination. Hope had never thought much of Kimmer as a commander, what little he had seen of him; but this dark moment seemed to be bringing out the best in him.

Pila came hurrying along the walkway. She whispered to the Commissary, something about results concerning the nature of Chandra. Nilis looked shocked, and immediately followed her off the walkway and out of the ops room.

Enduring Hope was simply baffled. What in the universe could be more important than to be here, in these next few crucial minutes? But he felt relieved Nilis and his emotional turmoil were gone.

Luru Parz watched suspiciously.

The Marshal himself tapped Hope on the shoulder. “Engineer. Look. Your friend is going back in — Pirius.”

Hope was a bit overwhelmed to be prompted by a Marshal. But he asked: “Which one? Sir.”

“Both of them.”

“This time we send two ships in,” Pirius Red said. “Not just one at a time. I’ll go first.”

Torec said, “You’ve used up your weapon.”

“I know. I’ll go in to guide. Bilson, you’ve been there. We know we’ve breached that netting; maybe Jees managed to make the hole bigger. What if we could pass the starbreakers through that breach? We’d have a short time of free flight, not blocked by the net. We might see enough to hit the event horizon. What do you think?”

Bilson was very subdued. “It’s possible. It would be a very short time. Less than a second—”

“All right. Which is why whoever is going in will need a spotter.”

Torec said, “So who makes the bomb run?”

Pirius took a breath. He wondered how long he could keep making these decisions; he felt as if he was sentencing another crew to death. But he had to make a choice. “Burden — are you ready?”

There was no reply. And as the seconds ticked by, Pirius suddenly understood that there would be none. He brought up a Virtual image of Burden’s face. Behind his skinsuit visor Burden’s face was ghost pale, as if drained of blood.

Burden’s navigator whispered, “He’s been like this since we passed SO-2. I didn’t want to sav—”

Pirius Blue said, “Burden. Burden. Quero!”

Burden’s eyes flickered. He licked his lips, and forced a smile. “I’m sorry.” His voice was a hoarse croak, his throat evidently closed up.

Red said, “ He’s frozen. Lethe. Blue, did you know about this?”

Blue sighed. “No. But I wondered… It happened before, didn’t it, Burden?”

Burden seemed to be loosening a little. “Yes. It happened before.”

“And that’s why you got busted down to the penal divisions on Quin. Cohl was right to be suspicious of you.”

“I never lied to you—”

“But you never told me the full truth, did you? It was nothing to do with your unorthodoxy.”

“That didn’t help. But, yes. I froze up. Just like this. People died, you know. Because of me, because I froze. I don’t understand it. I can fight on a Rock. I can fight my way out of those blood-soaked trenches. I can save lives. But up here, in a greenship—”

“And that’s why you kept busting your balls in combat missions? You were punishing yourself.”

“Lethe,” Torec snarled. “And that garbage about timelike infinity — did you mean any of it?”

“I gave hope,” he said quietly. “And it gave me hope. That some day it will all be put right. People died because of me.”

Blue said, “Down on the Rocks, you saved far more.”

“The arithmetic of death doesn’t work like that,” Burden said.

“No, it doesn’t,” Torec said.

“I let you down, Squadron Leader.”

“Yes,” Red said with feeling. “Yes, you did.”

“When you asked me to join you, and then to be a flight commander, I couldn’t refuse. It was such a noble thing to attempt, such a right thing. I wanted to be part of it. I just hoped I’d be able to get through it.”

“Well, you haven’t,” Torec said bitterly.