The two roadbuilder torpedos streaked away in the direction of the black hole. Kinnit bit her lip, watching them.
Digger continued picking up speed as the black hole drew the little shuttle closer to its endless depth. The speed meter was pegged at 9,999 km/s.
Kinnit was a little annoyed by the limit, but she supposed it made sense. If you were in a utility shuttle and you were going over 10k klicks per second, the only other information that could useful would be a little indicator light reading "You're Hosed."
The roadbuilders flared sharp blue, and a small tear appeared in the fabric of spacetime between them, though the tear was only visible to her sensors. She adjusted the shuttle's heading to make sure she would hit it.
Now, if only it would stabilize before she got there.
She watched the readout of the sensors on her display. The stabilization factors were orange, but the powerful gravity of the black hole was accelerating the stabilization. Kinnit clenched her teeth as she watched the readings. The edges of the wormhole were already beginning to fray, losing cohesion.
"Hold together," she said quietly. She didn't need it for long. Just for a minute. It just had to last for a minute.
The numbers on the sensors rapidly rose. Just before Digger got to the anomaly, the numbers stabilized and turned green.
"Yes!" she cried, then she hit the jumphole.
She'd never before been so happy to plunge into the uncontrolled madness of jumpspace.
As reality unbound around her, her tiny shuttle whipped through unspace and untime. The shuttle was completely unbuffered, giving her the same sensations as when she'd traveled a jumphole tied up in the back of a Vylar fighter.
There was no telling how much time was passing outside. Time in jumpspace bore no relation to time in real space.
After an interminable journey, Digger rocketed out of jumphole back into real space.
And then Kinnit slowly realized her next problem.
Under normal circumstances, jumphole routes were meticulously calculated. Figures were checked and rechecked for months, validated through a grindingly slow and thorough bureaucracy, and the recalculated and signed off on by a small army of jumphole engineers.
Kinnit had just opened a jumphole to... somewhere. Without the calculations, there was no telling where she'd ended up. Theoretically, she could have ended up flying into a star or a nebula or something, but realistically, the chances of that were literally astronomically small.
On the other hand-- there was no link between jumphole length and real space distance. She didn't even know if she was in the same galaxy.
The nearest sentient being could literally be on the other side of the universe. It dawned on her that she might have just traded a quick death by crushing for a slow death by starvation.
She felt very small and lonely.
She scanned the sector. Strangely, the exit jumphole had also appeared near a black hole. Perhaps there was some kind of affinity between the two holes?
Fortunately, Digger was screaming away from it at a sizable fraction of the speed of light.
Kinnit ran a scan of the local star system through Digger's database. It was a long shot, she knew, but if Digger could match the stars it could see against a known starmap, it could triangulate her location.
But nothing came of the search.
She sat on the floor and buried her face in her knees. It was all so overwhelming. She wanted to go home. She wanted to fall into the warmth and fellowship of the Clamber. She wanted to talk to all her friends on the Swordheart.
She wanted to see Grimthorn again.
Her face set with determination. She would see Grimthorn again.
She sniffed, wiped her nose, and stood. Already today, she'd escaped a deadly conspiracy and a black hole. She could escape a vast, cold, indifferent universe, too.
----------------------------------------
Before long, Kinnit had worked out her plan.
What she really needed to do was to get back to the sector she'd come out of. And there was a handy jumphole right there.
Problem was, that exit was going to be close to another black hole.
Escaping a black hole was easy, conceptually speaking. All you had to do was be moving faster than escape velocity. It was getting up to that speed that was the problem.
So she was going to slingshot the black hole in her current system and fly back through jumphole.
She'd have to depend on her calculations to figure out her speed, since the poor speed meter in the shuttle stayed stuck at its upper limit. And she would hit the jumphole from behind. Fortunately, stabilized disruptions in the spacetime continuum did not have a specific plane of entry. You could hit them from any direction and end up in jumpspace.
She entered her calculations into Digger's console. Digger turned and began its burn to periapsis.
----------------------------------------
The slingshot maneuver worked perfectly. It whipped her around the far side of the black hole and slung her into the jumphole at a ridiculous speed.
If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
She endured yet another unbuffered trip through jumpspace. She decided that after all this was over, she'd take a little break from jumphole travel.
Digger blasted out of the exit jumphole. The forces of the black hole pulled at the brave little shuttle, but the speed imparted by the slingshot maneuver finally broke the black hole's deadly grip.
Digger and Kinnit flew free for the first time since leaving the Astral.
She aimed for the jumphole to Devaris and brought Digger's engines up to full power.
----------------------------------------
A heavy meaty thwap resounded through the brig. Long pause. Another thwap.
The young prison tech looked sick.
The worst part was the steadiness. This was not the frantic, furious violence born of rage. This was a cold, methodical, repetition. Spaced out to conserve energy.
The trembling young man ventured out into the hall. He looked up at the Marines in their exosuits.
"Shouldn't somebody stop him?" he quavered.
"I don't care who the Admiral kills," Charr said. "Especially that scum."
"B-but it's not right!"
"So go in there and stop him."
The prison tech swallowed heavily. He walked back to his post.
Thwap.
Thwap.
Taking a deep breath he walked down to the cell.
"S-sir?"
Thwap.
"Sir, I think you should stop."
Thwap.
Admiral Stonefist didn't even look human any more. He looked like a zombie. He raised his arm mechanically.
Thwap.
"Sir, please, stop!" the tech cried. "This is not right!"
Grimthorn paused and looked at the young man. It was so like something Kinnit would have said that it caught his heart for a moment.
He paused.
He looked at Denth. He held the captain by the lapel in one fist. The traitor's body hung limply. Grimthorn's fist ached.
There was a commotion at the entrance to the prison block. And from behind the young prison tech emerged Kinnit.
Her face was painted with horror.
"Grimthorn... what are you doing?" she said.
His overloaded brain struggled to comprehend what he was seeing. His fists loosened and Denth collapsed bonelessly to the floor.
"You're dead," he said stupidly.
Big tears filled her eyes as she took in the fulness of the scene.
"Grimthorn..." she said, shaking her head. "I'm not dead. I'm here."
She looked at the still form lying on the floor.
"Grimthorn, don't do this. Don't let them turn you into something you're not." Tears began to fall. "This is not you. Don't let them take you from me."
"Kinnit, I--" He reached out to her, only now noticing his hand was covered in blood. She recoiled.
"Kinnit, I... I'm sorry..."
She broke and ran out of the prison block, only pausing to yell at the Marines, "And you should have stopped him!"
Grimthorn was left alone in shock and filled with shame.
----------------------------------------
Grimthorn sat behind his desk, his head hanging. He'd cleaned up and gotten a brief debrief about Kinnit's escape.
Denth was in the biopod, and the medics said he would make a full recovery, eventually.
Kinnit stormed back and forth in front of his desk, seething. Tears stood in the corners of her eyes.
"I just can't believe you would do that!" she said. "I don't care what you thought happened! That was wrong!"
"I know," he said quietly.
"You have to promise me, sir! I need you to, to swear that you will never try to hurt a prisoner just because you're angry."
"I'm sorry," he said. "But he almost killed you. When I thought you'd-- I never thought I'd see you again-- I just wanted to hurt him."
"And that's what he did to me!" Kinnit shrieked. "You're not like him! I need you to not be like him!"
Grimthorn recoiled. The full weight of her words settled on him, and he felt very, very small.
How wide was the gap between the good guys and the bad guys?
He stood suddenly, startling her. He saluted carefully.
"You are right. And now Arcturus is no longer my greatest shame. A greater now I twofold bear: both that I have acted to hurt and tried kill a helpless prisoner, and that you witnessed it. I swear that I will never again hurt a helpless prisoner. I swear this on my life, on my Admiralty, and on the Imperium itself."
Kinnit stood in rooted in shock.
And I swear it on my love for you, he added silently.
"I will be better," he said. "You will see."
----------------------------------------
There was a party, later, in the mess hall. The tables had been cleared away, and several people were dancing to something modern. A moderate quantity of Terran alcohol had even been procured for the event.
Ostensibly, the celebration was for the victory at Devaris, but people kept getting up and giving speeches about how thankful they were that Kinnit had returned safely, and how much she meant to the Ninth Fleet. This kept happening until she buried her face in her hands in embarrassment.
"That's our Kinnit! She can beat a black hole, but she can't take the praise!" shouted the speaker, and a round of good-natured laughter filled the room. Then they desisted.
Even Charr's Marines, the four not on active guard duty, came to apologize to Kinnit, and to ask if they could join the festivities.
The story of her escape from from the grip of the black hole had already circled the ship, and was told and told again at the party, growing with each telling.
Admiral Stonefist stood to one side quietly, listening. He'd been so wrapped up in himself and the problems of the Imperium lately, he hadn't realized how much of an impact the little Kobold had had across his crew. Her upbeat attitude, infectious smile and guileless charm had captured the ship. She listened to people's problems and their stories, took an interest in them.
Just like Grimthorn used to do.
The Ninth Fleet had long had a deep respect and pride in the office of the Admiral. With Kinnit, now they also had something to love in the office of the Admiral.
Uncomfortable with the spotlight, Kinnit meekly got a cup of punch and joined Grimthorn on the wall.
"Quite a party, don't you think?" Grimthorn said.
"I don't know why everybody's being like this," she said quietly. "I only did what anyone else would have done."
Grimthorn barked a laugh.
"You did what nobody else could have done. The Imperial Science Academy has already contacted me," he told her. "They're anxious to get the data from your adventures. Apparently, the possibility of jumphole exits having affinity with black holes has gotten them very excited. That's never been done before."
"Well, they're welcome to the data, I suppose," she said, sipping her punch. She paused. "What do you think will happen to Digger?"
"The shuttle? It will be returned to the Fifth Fleet. Technically, it's not even an independent vessel, it's registered as equipment on the Astral. The Astral will be refitted. The ion array cooked everything useful out of her. The shuttle will be mothballed until she's ready for service again. Probably a couple years."
"Oh," Kinnit said, her face downcast. "I-- I know it's silly, but I'd kind of hoped we could keep Digger. It's a good shuttle."
Grimthorn winced. Inter-fleet ship and equipment transfers were famously complicated. Admirals tended to get very prickly about their budgeted equipment ending up in somebody else's fleet. It usually ended up in a political knife fight.
"I'll see what I can do," he said.
Her face lit up. The sight of her smile loosened something in his chest.
"That would be wonderful, sir!"
He laid a hand on her shoulder. She looked up at him.
"Kinnit. More than anyone else in this fleet, I'm glad you're back safe. You mean a great deal to me."
He removed his hand and shut his mouth before he said more. Because he wanted to say so much more.
She slid a hand around his waist and leaned against him.
"And I'm so happy to be back here with you, Grimthorn."