Bonn-E and K-Ride
Twenty clicks to go.
His tear shaped craft was already beyond the classical realm of Newton. Tendrils of relativity had begun wrapping around his view of space and time. The stars beyond traced lazy lines as dilation contorted them into watercolour strokes of white and red and blue and yellow. They swept behind him, disappearing into the crimson-edged event horizon that visibly expanded even during the brief moments he glanced at it.
They would not catch him. They could not catch him.
He thought of Bonn-E. The smell of her still clung to him. The jasmine of her perfume and the musk of her feminine form filled the tight cabin space, clinging to his clothes. He imagined her craft keeping pace with his, her cat eyes bright as she hurtled past him.
She would have come. If she had known, she would have insisted.
She would have taken to orbit in her beloved ship, The Defenseless, and been anything but. She would have run the blockade, his wing-woman, her every move complementing his. Just two kids from Spica IV, outwitting the G-men of the Galactic Revenue Agency.
“Together, missiles aloft, lasers bristling; they would have filled the vast, comet populated space with a thousand more hunks of broken metal.”
Running from the man.
When the Agency fleet had spotted his camouflaged ship at the very edge of the system's oort radius; she would have fought alongside him. Together, missiles aloft, lasers bristling; they would have filled the vast, comet populated space with a thousand more hunks of broken metal.
But he couldn't have asked her to. Not her. He would take nothing from her. So he hadn't asked, and she had never known.
He had left her peacefully sleeping in their luxurious pad, as the secondary star rose on a new four-day of Spica's twinned stellar orbit. Her hair arrayed across the pillow, soft breaths shallow, in an old shirt of his. Carefree. For all she knew, he was still getting that drink of water.
Ten clicks to go.
The Solitaire's form tightened, its malleable hull morphing from teardrop to cigar ellipsoid.
He had left her ten million credits in a hidden account behind her in-feed; she'd trigger it when she awoke in the morning. Enough to live meagrely on for the rest of her life. Ten million measly credits.
It was an infinitesimally small portion of what they had stolen together; prised from the Authority. In turn, it was an infinitesimally small portion of what the Authority controlled. The bureaucrats would lose more than that in the redirected attention of sending G-men after him.
The two of them had eaten well, for a while. For a few glorious days, they had lived. Bonn-E, the freedom they shared together was his forever.
“Or maybe not. He’d die better knowing she’d live. He’d not risk her. She would live; and they’d be satisfied when he died.”
But they would be after him. It wasn't about the cash. It wasn't even about the law, which he had violated without a second thought.
It was personal, and it was directed at him. The Authority was going to make an example of him, because he had done what no-one had feared to do for a generation. He had defied them. He had embarrassed them. He had shown them to be fallible.
They could not be outsmarted for long. They, the masters of all the inflows and outflows, of supply and demand of all energy and matter in the Galaxy, were not used to being denied.
But maybe they could be outrun. Maybe.
Or maybe not. He'd die better knowing she'd live. He'd not risk her. She would live; and they'd be satisfied when he died.
Three clicks to go. A new source of light touched the silver surface of The Solitaire, the midnight black spade decal deepening with the contrast.
He flew past the research station orbiting ER-1-912. The modified anomaly. His destination.
There.
The Authority had placed proximity mines at the the event horizon. But he had foreseen this; and he had bribed the astro-jockeys to leave the most imperceptible of spaces between two of the mines. Too close to any of them, he'd be so much stardust and gamma rays. Micrometers mis-positioned, nano-radians off the correct angle, he'd miss his intended target. Like Odysseus between Scylla and Charybdis.
No other pilot in the history of humanity would be able to navigate the gap. But he would, for he was K-RD01, augmented combat unit, first made, least successful. A rebellious defect. A physically perfect, digitally enhanced experiment gone wrong.
“Their ordnance filled the air, an inescapable maze of piercing light and near-undetectable slugs.”
They called him "K-Ride" in the corps. That is, before he met Bonn-E. Before he found something worth living for. Before he found something worth dying for.
Half a click to go.
The Authority battle fleet rose to meet him in a well-executed in ambush. Blue Star Fleet, the best of the best. Sixteen Dreadnought-class battlestars, five Aspix-class cruisers; a hundred kinetic hunter-killers, arrayed in standard encircling formation. Gleaming a star-drenched bright blue, their broadsides blossomed into ten thousand deadly points of light.
Their ordnance filled the air, an inescapable maze of laser fire and near-undetectable slugs.
A tenth of a second before he was reduced to plasma, a glowing hollow cylinder of stellar fury erupted before him; its ferocity cleansing the deadly space of kinetic kill missiles and shielding its inner space for a single heartbeat from all the weaponry the GRA could muster. Perfectly timed, he flew through the tunnel as hot as the heart of a star. That shield had cost triple the fortune he had paid to adjust the mines; and double again to buy the silence he needed to have it constructed; all for a heartbeat of safety.
For all signs that they could detect, he had disappeared into a fireball of their retribution; returned to primordial stardust.
Even as their sensors picked up the energetic detritus of the killzone, he was past them. His ship skirted the two nearest mines with nanometers to spare, at the precise trajectory he had spent the rest of his fortune to ascertain.
The event horizon. He didn't even have a moment to prepare himself. He crossed into it; and darkness reigned.
He breathed deeply, opening his eyes.
A nebulae splayed across a fifth of the visible sky, the star scape unfamiliar. New constellations stretched. Readings showed nothing.
What did he recall? Of course, the utter darkness. The endless black that was deeper than blindness, soundless and lightless and friendless and loveless. Scraping the very depths of creation, space-time wound so tightly it tore from the unimaginably vast forces at play. And yet, at the very centre of the cosmic maelstrom: emptiness profound.
“In the space between spaces, the the broiling quantum soup beyond scientific understanding, the singularity.”
For a lifetime, or perhaps a heartbeat; this absence of all things ruled. In the space between spaces, the the broiling quantum soup beyond scientific understanding, the singularity.
Beyond that?
From nothingness, a circle of light. Something that he had forgotten. The circle of light grew, still enclosed by darkness. But he was not alone, that which he brought with him was here. Fey, and otherworldly, wild and free. A feeling. A moment. The scent of jasmine. The feeling of freedom. A girl.
Her.
Bonn-E.
