Eon's Edge (A Time-warped space opera)

T-MINUS 10 MINUTES TO CRISIS-POINT

"Adjusting Heading to eleven-two-point-" Caldwell was interrupted as the entire ship rocked.

"Incoming laser fire! Targets A1-5!" Ndoka shouted. Caldwell grumbled rubbing the dimple in his chin.

"We should be outside their laser range!" the junior officer grated, biting his lip. Five of the defending SW battleships had speared the top left fusion conduit with a titanium-withering barrage of photons. The engines protested the abuse with a foreboding rumble.

"Their Vajra weapon doubled the normal range for beams," Bryce noted. "Not the only one in their fleet to get upgrades. Boost albedo fields!" again the rebels had surprised them. This Bull Run was no picnic.

"Sh-she did it!" Jean-Zhou gasped. "Xia, her new algorithm puts albedo at 104.8%!"

"I knew you were the best and brightest, now overclock the Hull Deflectors!" He ordered; raising his voice to emphasize the risky order.

"That will-" Caldwell began to protest but thought better of it. "Y-yes sir."

"That means we're fully committed." Bryce's voice icy.

Now's hardly the time to worry about wearing out the power grid...

"Th-that will require draining life-support!" Ndoka said. As Bryce anticipated.

"If it gets bad enough, our AB-exos have supplemental oxygen," he offered. "But make no mistake; we MUST reach the Singularity intact," he could already feel the railing beneath his gripping fingers cooling; or maybe that was paranoia.

"Enemy Battleships firing again!" Ndoka announced. Weaponized lasers were invisible in a vacuum, yet Bryce's imagination traced their deadly path to his weakened ship in his mind's eye. The Dutchman shuddered but damage was minimal, Xia's defense mods were holding.

"Get us out of here! Towards the – damn, thrusters are dead!" Bryce complained as he stabbed an unresponsive key. He pressed an icon to comm the engineering deck. "Damage Report!"

"First laser barrage took out sub-reactors 7 through 11. We've got plasma fires venting on decks four and five," responded Senior Chief Petty Officer Silas Grummond; the gloomy report delivered with his customary icy deadpan. "We're still moving, but the thrusters can't receive fuel - no attitude control," At this rate they would continue at their present velocity of 0.1 lightspeed on into interstellar space, Bryce knew. He also knew they had to course correct; somehow. "Second barrage was a glancing blow, minimal damage," Grummond added.

"But... there's a problem," Caldwell said. "We didn't make the heading we needed – we're off course!"

Bryce suppressed the urge to curse wickedly. "We're going to miss the Singularity?"

"Correction..." Caldwell's dimpled chin twitched as he checked a report screen from Astrometrics. "We are slightly off course, but... we won't miss the Singularity, the event horizon for the phenomenon is expanding!"

"The damn thing grew bigger?" Bryce worried.

"Affirmative. On our present course, we will still come into direct contact with it! Is... that what you really want?"

No, but it's what had to be done. He reminded himself

"Just within weapons range. I... I see why it's expanding," on the forward monitor the Vajra was visible, all five arms were firing magenta beams of theoretically impossible Neutron-star particles into the space-time contortion. Then the forward array of the ship began rotating. This created a spinning column of dizzying energy like a glow-in-the-dark novelty toy in giant hands. Bryce frowned. The ship did have rotational capability; but not in the crew-section; and not enough to simulate gravity. Choice more than oversight. The implications made him swallow hard. Not for long voyages. The singularity throbbed, swelled, and crackled with incandescent arcs of high-energy plasma.