Black Torus Run

Fiction - by S. R. Brandt

Chapter 1: The Lemon Slice Nebula Classic 

The hull shrieked under the strain of gravitational forces as we pulled into the last stretch of the Lemon Slice Nebula Classic, the final event of the season for "skimming," or racing between colliding black holes.

As the gravitic compensators reactivated, the sensation of being stretched and compressed faded.

"Klahan, where'd that rock come from?" Jin shouted over the comm system.

None of us could see the others; each sat isolated in their capsules.

"I can't make predictions fast enough," I answered. "This trajectory's too hot."

The tidal forces skimmer pilots deal with aren't the gentle things that cause the rising and falling of a planet's ocean. Near a black hole, they are strong enough to crush and stretch a human body. Outside the protective field of the gravitic compensators, tidal forces were ripping apart planetoids.

Jin dodged again, and compensator warnings and hull stress messages popped up on my display.

"Give me an exit!" Jin shouted.

Ubon was in the back, where the compensators had been offline for nearly half a second. There was hull damage, and internal sensors were down. Right now, the woman in whose arms I'd slept for the past seven years might be nothing more than a red smear on the inside of the hull.

Regardless, I had to worry about the ship first. I bit my lip and used the pain to help me focus. Professionalism keeps teams alive and wins races.

"On it," I said.

I checked the sensors, modified the parameters for my next simulation, and started a new trajectory computation. As soon as it was running, I tried to re-establish a sensor link with the dark sections of the ship.

"I'm okay," Ubon panted.

My heart slowed, and I let out my breath.

"Stay strong, Ubon," Jin said. "How's the ship?"

"Holding together," she said, a gasp in her voice. Whatever had happened back there, she hadn't escaped it completely.

I took a moment to feel relieved she was still alive, then put my head back in the race.

Victory. Both Ubon and I took chances with our lives in every race. Winning was that important. Captain Jin, however, would outright sacrifice us. If he could win by coming across the finish line dead, he'd do it.

Numbers raced across my screen.

"We're waiting, Klahan," Jin said.

I typed rapidly, barely conscious of what keys I hit.

As I worked, a marker popped up with the label "Xing" next to it, a preprogrammed diagnostic like many others.

Based on his average race time over the course of his career, a simple A.I. made a prediction of where my father, Xing, would probably be if he were alive and in this race. As usual, he was way ahead. Maybe he wouldn't do as well as my calculation, but a part of me always hungered to know how I compared to the legendary hero of the sport.

COLLISION IMMINENT flashed on my screen. Ahead of us, two moon-sized rocks were about to slam together at near-light speed. Destructive forces of that magnitude could fry a planet. My simulation finished, and I had the course to safety.

"Trajectory alpha posted," I said.

"We'll lose if I deflect that much," Jin said. "Stop being so cautious, Klahan." 

I clenched my teeth and scanned the scrolling numbers. Each second could be critical, and Jin hadn't begun a course correction. Finally, I spotted something that seemed reasonable. "Alternate trajectory alpha dash one," I choked out. "But it has to be precise."

"Got it," Jin said.

He swung the ship onto a course just a little more aggressive than I'd called for.

Where would that land us? I punched keys, muttering curses on Jin's descendants under my breath, and adjusted for the newest scanner readings. The computer hummed to life.

Part of the problem with flying between colliding black holes is the speed with which those dead stars move, the rate at which spacetime ripples between them, and how fast those ripples move through you. That's the easy part. The hard part is the debris—and we were in a virtual hailstorm. 

"You're too close," I said. "We're going to get peppered. Pull up four point eight degrees and decrease thrust nine point two percent."

Debris isn't only small rocks and dust; debris includes the bones of planets, rock fragments of incredible size moving so fast you can see the blueshifts and redshifts with your eye. If the bluer ones even get close, they can cook you with X-rays. For modern computers and star drives, black hole runs aren't a challenge. Restrict your computers to petaflops scale machines, and calculation isn't enough. Replace the star drives with old-fashioned thrusters, and things get difficult even for the genetically modified pilot. Luck, intuition, and risk tolerance become determining factors in victory. That's when it becomes a sport.

"We can make it," Jin said. "Ready countermeasures."

Countermeasures were a last-ditch effort. Each ship had a small supply of rockets tipped with explosive warheads. They could save us from fast-approaching rocks—or make things messier.

Sweat dripped from my forehead.

Countermeasures were launched into the storm of plasma, dust, and meteors. Readouts of the damage scrolled by. In the depths of the void, when death is close, space and time feel different—as if they've opened up to something beyond—heavenly beings or ancestral spirits, maybe. I felt something was watching. Listening. I prayed.

Please, not yet. If I live, I'll do something more important than winning a race— 

And something between time and life, space and death answered.

Promise accepted.

I experienced a tingle, a moment of light-headedness, and a wave of euphoria. Suddenly, I believed I would live. Part of me wondered exactly what I'd just promised or to whom.

The hull shuddered, and I shook so badly in my harness that I had trouble reading the screens, but I could see that nearly all critical systems were green. I smiled. The countermeasures had worked. We were going to survive—better yet, we were going to win.

"Jin," I breathed. "You did it."

No response.

"Jin? Are you there?"

A jagged hole showed on the monitor where the command module should've been, as if the talons of some cosmic hand had torn it away.

"He's gone," Ubon said.

Something burned behind my eyes, but with an effort of will, I shoved the emotion aside. Like the damage to the ship, I'd deal with it after the race.

A black hole skimmer has three positions: pilot, engineer, and hacker—well, computation specialist. Most of the number crunching was already done, so I decided to switch to pilot. I took a last look at the trajectory on my screen, committed a few key parameters to memory, then unbuckled my safety harness and crawled through the narrow tubes toward the secondary cockpit.

But I wasn't just the pilot now; I was captain, and as bad as I felt about Jin, I'd wanted that role for a long time. I know how cold that sounds. I felt guilty for even thinking it, but guilt was merely another emotion to deal with after the race.

"We only need to coast," I said as I strapped into my new position. 

Regardless of what happened to him, I knew Jin would want us to win, and that's what Ubon and I said afterward. We held up our trophy, and we gave the credit to Jin. It wasn't the first time I'd lost a team member on a skimmer, but that didn't make it easier.

I wanted to postpone my grief a little longer and enjoy the victory, but emotions aren't as easy to handle as space and time. My control, like the tidal compensators, had its limits. Jin was gone. I found a place to be alone with a bottle of Jin's favorite drink—gin, of course. I toasted his memory and let the pain in.

Chapter 2: Rough Landing 

We planned to put Jin's memorial on Lintong, the fourth planet of the Twelfth Star of Xuanyan, a binary system and one of the sponsors of our races.

Our transport ship was small, with just fifty passengers. We had a private cabin, but we were in the dining area atop the main hull for planetfall so we could take in the sights. A family at a nearby table recognized us. Their son ran over to get our autograph.

"Why can we see ourselves?" he asked as I marked his pad.

I glanced up to see where he pointed. Hovering beyond the domed ceiling was our ship.

"The wormhole we're riding through has a long neck. In that direction, the universe curves back on itself after a few kilometers, guiding the light around and back to us."

He gave us a confused smile and ran off.

"Do you think you might want one of those someday?" Ubon asked.

Her smiling face watched the boy as he ran to his parents.

Before I could answer, the ship jolted, drinks crashed to the floor, the boy screamed, and the cabin lights dimmed.

Ubon gripped my arm. As a skimmer engineer, she knew better than any of us that for a shock like that to get through the gravitic compensators, our vessel had to be hit hard. The question wasn't whether we were damaged but how badly.

"Sir?" A wispy-haired attendant with faceted eyes leaned over my seat, startling me. "Ma'am?" She was a Mintakan, a member of a race artificially created by crime families in Orion's Belt. 

"Yes."

"Are you the skimmer crew?"

"We are," Ubon said.

"This flight is using an automatic pilot, but our situation is a bit outside the programming. We could use your help. Both of you."

I nodded and followed the attendant forward. Ubon headed back toward the engines.

I strapped into the empty pilot's seat and studied the readouts. Three of the five engines were offline, as were external communications. Not as bad as I feared. Then I noticed the damage to the computer system: ten percent functional. "Outside the programming" stated things backward. Most of the programming was outside the ship—as in floating outside the ship in the form of debris.

"What's the situation?" Ubon said over the internal link.

There was a fleet of spindle-shaped ships and a lot of fresh wreckage on the long-range scan. A few lonely, Nezha class planetary defenders fought to save the system.

"Combat," I said. "Cornicals, I think."

I tried to plot a course away from the battle and toward the planet, but with the state of our computers, that was iffy. I started the engines and hoped. A sensor alert chimed.

"We've got life signs in the wreckage of a Nezha class ship to starboard," I said.

"Let's get them," Ubon said.

I studied the trajectories. "I'm not sure it's a good idea."

There were many reasons not to attempt the rescue. First, we had more than fifty passengers on board. Second, we had no weapons. Third, we had no combat experience. Amateur black hole skimmers are a menace to everyone, especially themselves; my guess was that civilians in a combat situation are even more of a problem.

On the other hand, I had no experience with leaving someone to die. Besides, flying through the debris to save a life sounded like fun.

"On second thought," I said. "Let's."

I flew quickly through the debris.

I pressed the call button, and the flight attendant appeared in seconds. She was as calm and professional as any combat vet.

"We're going to pick up a hitchhiker. I'd appreciate it if you could help our guest board safely."

The attendant clicked her tongue in affirmation and left.

As we drew closer, I saw the wrecked ship was leaking plasma. Detonation of the antimatter drive was possible. I clenched my jaw.

The wink of laser light flashed. It blinked a standard signal, telling me to hold my position. A moment later, I saw an exhaust contrail from the same location. Our lone survivor was mobile. I smiled and killed the engines. Whoever it was could come to me, and I could focus on figuring out a new flight path.

I returned to the computer—what was left of it—and tried to calculate a new course. The computer had lost so many nodes that it had less numerical power than a skimmer. Maybe it didn't matter. The way the Cornical ships were swarming toward us, there might not be a safe path.

"Docking seal closed," the flight attendant said.

I hit the thrust, flying by intuition.

"This is Computation Specialist Da-Xia of Nezha class starship Nova Eight. I'm requesting priority access to the ship's computer and sensor arrays."

Our rescuee wanted to help. Good. Although I doubted she'd coax any more results from our machines than I did, having the equivalent of a complete skimmer team made me more confident.

"Access granted," I said, unlocking security.

Almost at once, a new system attached to the grid. Computation Specialist Da-Xia had brought her own hardware—a tactical compute array.

I slowly steered the ship toward the planet, waiting for a course from Da-Xia. It didn't take long, but the new trajectory was insane—a complicated spiral through the enemy fleet followed by a high-speed dive into Lintong's atmosphere. It was beautiful in a way.

"What's the purpose of this crazy dance?" I asked.

"We'll catch the Cornicals' attention, lead them toward a trap near one of the dwarf planets, then fly into the protective net of orbital defenses."

I blinked. "You know that we have no weapons, I have no combat experience, and we have fifty passengers, right?"

"If the Cornicals win this battle, there may be orbital bombardment. There are over three billion people down there. Stop being so cautious."

My flesh tingled at the familiar words. How many times had Jin said that to me?

"Crazy combat maneuver it is," I said.

I jettisoned the cargo to reduce mass and revved the engines.

The beautiful trajectory lasted until we first entered the combat zone, at which point I changed course to evade a missile swarm. Da-Xia corrected with a newer, crazier flight plan, which also lasted seconds. A vessel exploded in our path, forcing us to change plans again. Da-Xia kept pace with events, feeding me course corrections, and I found myself enjoying the ride. This felt like a skimmer race.

Just as we entered the atmosphere, a Cornical got past orbital defenses and singed us. We went into an uncontrolled spiral. Ubon somehow kept the inertial compensators running, coaxed one of the engines back on, and I got the ship under control.

Da-Xia gave me landing coordinates, and I wrestled the ship on course. We had taken two hits, and aerodynamics were way off.

The ship jumped a heartbeat before touching down. I thrusted to correct, and we landed with a crunching of metal. Before I released my breath, the landing pad was swarming with emergency drones.

Was everyone okay?

I unstrapped and walked into the passenger section. Everyone applauded, including Ubon and a uniformed soldier with a thin nose, mahogany skin, and eyes that slanted like a hawk's wings in flight. She looked familiar.

"I'm Da-Xia," she said, extending her hand. "Jin's sister. We flew in for the funeral. The Cornicals must have followed our hypertrail."

Chapter 3: A New Computational Specialist 

Jin got the burial he always wanted—well, not a burial exactly since there was no body. He got a spot in my father's garden.

My father, Xing, was a collector of alien antiquities, artifacts from intelligent races gone extinct. His garden, as it was called, consisted of hundreds of square kilometers of space dedicated to the dead. Some compared it to the Taj Mahal or the pyramids of ancient Earth.

Ubon put the Lemon Slice Nebula trophy, a golden fist shining from within a holographic circle of light, inside our ship's ripped and twisted nose, which served as Jin's memorial. The trophy blazed like a punch of defiance rising through the torn hull—Jin striking back from the grave.

Da-Xia stared at it, the muscles near her eyes and mouth tensing.

"Thank you," she said. "This captures his spirit."

"If there's anything else we can do—"

"There is. I'm finishing my tour of duty in a month. After that, I'd like to join your crew."

I glanced at Ubon.

She shrugged. "We made a great team against the Cornicals."

"It's settled then. Welcome aboard." I offered my hand.

She hesitated. "I'm a better pilot than a computation specialist, but if it's okay with you, I'd like to stick with computation."

"Sure." That was more than fine by me.

"Why aren't you serving as a pilot in the military?" Ubon asked.

"I take too many risks and don't follow computational advice. I'm too dangerous in the cockpit, and I know it." She touched Jin's memorial.

"Must run in the family," I said.

She tried to smile, failed, then took my hand and shook it.

"Have you wanted to be on a skimmer crew for a long time?" Ubon asked.

"Not long. Ever since I heard there's going to be a second Black Torus."

I blinked. For a moment, I couldn't breathe.

A Black Torus—three black holes coming together in perfect symmetry. It should never have happened once, much less twice. For the barest fraction of a microsecond, there would be an event horizon shaped like a doughnut. With proper timing, a skimmer could fly through the center. The Black Torus couldn't be a race because there wasn't room for multiple ships to pass through. Instead, attempting the run would be an honor bestowed upon the best of skimmer teams.

"My father tried to fly the previous one," I said.

"And failed. I know," Da-Xia replied. "Jin told me the story about a hundred times."

My father's ship, the Jadestar, had been too slow. The torus closed, and he flew straight into the event horizon of a single spheroidal hole. He had to use the emergency wormhole to escape.

The horizon of a black hole shielded the universe from the singularity, a thing that caused time, space, and the laws of physics to twist into knots. Entering that realm sometimes did strange things to people. The crew of the Jadestar saw three of them. They came out safely, if a bit addled.

"Did your father and his crew really speak to ancestral spirits?" Da-Xia asked.

I shook my head. I didn't know, and it didn't matter. If I could make it through the Black Torus, I'd finally surpass my old man. Maybe then I could quit. Maybe I'd even settle down and have children of my own. Anything would be possible.

Chapter 4: The Sagittarius A Cup 

We rechristened our ship The Celestial Phoenix, and entered the new racing season. Unfortunately, our team wasn't as effective without Jin, and we suffered a depressing string of losses.

The Sagittarius A Cup Race was our last chance. The debris field between the black holes consisted of ruined starships and antiquated machinery. We would race through a graveyard of once mighty war vessels, brave exploratory probes, and proud treasure ships. A nostalgic sorrow permeated the atmosphere of the race.

We needed to place fourth to make it to the finals.

"Trajectory at zero point three by seven five," Da-Xia said as we dove. "A wrecked skimmer named Ice Ring's Promise is drifting to our left."

Ice Ring had a few holes in her, not unlike the one that took Jin. A shudder passed through me at the memory.

"I've increased engine efficiency by over forty percent," Ubon announced. "We've got plenty of burn."

That was past the theoretical efficiency of the engine. Curious as I was about how she did it, I had a race to run.

"I'm doubling thrust," I said. Too much speed could cost maneuverability at a critical moment. Not enough meant coming in last. We'd had too much experience with the latter.

Sagittarius A is several million times the mass of the sun. Larger black holes like this one generate small tidal forces and pose little risk. The other black hole, however, was tiny, weighing in at nine solar masses. Its tidal forces would be extreme.

For the next several hours, we avoided obstacles and edged through the pack until we were in fourth place—but I didn't say that aloud. Everything could change in a fraction of a second.

We moved to third place. To my surprise, we weren't too far behind the calculated position of my father's ship for this event.

"Explosion to starboard, nineteen by ninety-three degrees," Da-Xia said. The third-place ship, the Shining Hawk, was out of the race.

It was as if that same cosmic hand that had torn Jin from us had taken away our competitor. I almost cheered but stopped myself. It wasn't clear from my readouts whether they'd ejected in time.

A cold wave tingled across my skin. I'd promised to do something more important with my life than winning.

I tried to tell myself it was ridiculous to think that words whispered in the dark meant anything, but skimmer crews, myself included, are a superstitious lot.

"Give me an evasion trajectory," I called, but too late.

A piece of the Shining Hawk struck us. Our ship lurched, and my head thumped the wall. Despite the efforts of the compensators, the blow was hard enough to make my ears ring. For a moment, I couldn't focus on the readouts—but I could see a lot of red lights.

"Starboard's going to blow!" Ubon called.

Underneath the ringing in my ears, I heard Jin shouting to stop being so cautious. I didn't listen. Instead, I cut plasma flow to the starboard engine.

With just the port engine, we couldn't win. Worse, we couldn't even escape the gravitational pull of Sagittarius A. I didn't want my last race of the season to be such a spectacular failure that we had to bail out using the wormhole generator.

"Ubon, can you repair it?" I asked.

"Find me a spare engine and maybe."

"Da-Xia, is there anything left of the Shining Hawk we could use?"

"Not unless you can work with atoms, Klahan. But maybe—yes, I think there's a wrecked skimmer in the debris field ahead."

Ubon spoke up, "Even with the repairs, we won't make fourth place."

"We'll do what we can." I flew into the heart of a swirling mass of metal, earning a few more dings to the hull.

A skimmer is designed for quick disassembly. Mid-race repairs aren't uncommon, although I've never heard of anyone replacing an engine before.

As our lasers finished cutting an engine from a ship named the Razor Wing, I saw something that made me swallow. A lone figure remained on board the craft, a captain who'd gone down with his ship. The name tag on his suit read, "Laquan." Well, Laquan could ride to the finish with us. A few pounds of skeleton wouldn't slow us down, and my father taught me to always respect the dead. 

We got the Celestial Phoenix flying again and, for once, I didn't think about where my father would've been. I checked our standings, and my heart thundered.

"We're fifth!" I screamed and poured on the thrust.

"You have a clear path to the finish," Da-Xia said. "Burn all the juice you can."

"Keep her below eighty percent or we lose the new engine," Ubon warned.

But eighty percent of Ubon's enhanced engines was better than we'd ever had before. For a few seconds, we were hopeful, but number six was gaining on us.

"We're not going to make it," Da-Xia called.

"I'm increasing thrust. Let's hope the engine holds better than Ubon predicted," I said.

We climbed. I cheered when we achieved escape velocity from the system. There would be no need for the wormhole generators, whatever the outcome. In twenty minutes we drew in sight of the number four skimmer—then I heard the screech of metal tearing. I throttled back, but not in time. The new engine came free and sent us spinning. Tidal force compensators responded sluggishly, and our bodies were pulled and pushed as I fought to regain control.

After a few tense minutes and a dislocated shoulder, I straightened the ship and limped toward the finish. We placed fifth, despite everything. Unfortunately, we were out for the season.

"Sorry about the bumpy ride," Ubon said. "I got the engine efficiency by repurposing the tidal compensator to enhance fuel compression."

Now I understood. Well, partly. I mean, no one had ever managed to tune the compensator fields finely enough for use inside the engine before. We rarely needed their full protection anyway, but their alternate use meant less protection for the crew.

"No apology needed. We'd never have come that close without you."

But close wasn't good enough.

We had no sponsors, were low on funds, and the skimmer had one engine. Unless we found a new source of income, we'd never get a shot at the Black Torus.

Finally, I considered the unthinkable: a desperate wager of every crypto dollar I could lay my hands on, against one hundred-to-one odds of winning a black hole dive. Dives aren't races. A dive is a desperate plunge through the event horizon of a black hole toward the dangerous and unpredictable singularity at its center. The last to turn away wins. It's a game of chicken with the heart of a dead star and more like roulette than a sport.

Though some have tried, no one dives more than a dozen times.

Chapter 5: A Reckless Gamble 

I stood amidst the sapphire trees looking up at an artifact carved by a species with four arms and a beak. The Neeku were like us in many ways, despite their alien form. From their writings, we know that they had poets, artists, and musicians. Like humans, they sought fame, recognition, and desired their works to have lasting value. The Neeku never made it to the stars. Indeed, they'd barely entered the industrial age before their extinction, but millions of years later their sculpture remains. What would the four-limbed artist think if it knew their work would endure after its race had perished?

My hand traced the smooth rock, and I felt a kinship. Someday humanity would be gone as well. Intelligent races don't exist forever. Even the universe will someday go dark. At least the Neeku will be remembered as long as humanity lives. How long would anyone remember me or my crew? The universe might divulge the answer soon, as the event I'd entered our ship in was more dangerous than anything we'd attempted so far.

Ubon arrived, and I took her by the hand. I led her past crystal fossils, past a block of amber containing man-sized creatures locked in mortal combat, and into the sacred vault where my father's burial urn rested. There we sat in silence. Despite my efforts to focus on positive memories of my father, all I could do was picture the way his projected skimmer track beat ours in every race.

After several attempts to speak, I said, "I've entered the Celestial Phoenix in a black hole dive."

She jumped to her feet, eyes flashing like Orion's stars. "Have you lost your mind?"

"It's that or give up racing."

"Did you think to consult us before getting us involved in something so insane?"

I tried to sound reasonable. "Skimming is risky too."

"Not by comparison." She fisted her hands. "At least in skimming, we can count on our skill and intelligence to keep us alive."

Chance was a factor in both events, but I didn't say so. "It's only one time."

Ubon shook her head and stalked out. I gave her a few seconds to cool down then followed. I pursued her as far as the bronze-colored triangular ships of Eridani, and right after I caught up with her Ria Star intercepted us. Ria was the spokesperson for Xuanyan Drives, the sponsor for the event I had just entered.

Ria's face was dark and angular as if chiseled from basalt. Her eyes were a mesmeric pale blue and sparkled like gemstones. Technically, they weren't eyes at all but sophisticated psychological weapons developed during the Mintakan wars. I'd seen many interviews in which she'd driven her victims to tears.

"Pleased to meet you," Ria said. "Do you have time for an interview?"

Saying no wasn't an option. When you sign up to compete in a dive, one of the terms is a willingness to be interviewed. Besides, when Ria locks her eyes on yours, it's hard to look away.

My stomach clenched. "Sure."

"What would Xing think of what you've become? A desperate man betting his team's lives in a dive competition with a damaged ship?" Her eyes grew brighter. "A man who wagered his father's legacy."

My wager was not public knowledge.

"You bet the garden?" Ubon said, her voice a startled whisper.

Ria's hypnotic eyes darted to Ubon and then bored into me. Her irises shimmered, sparkled—were they actually spinning? I felt a tingle in the back of my head and knew I wouldn't be able to lie.

"My father's legacy isn't..." I stammered, but couldn't finish. "I don't plan..." Again, I couldn't speak. "If we win, everything will be fine."

The chiseled face smiled viciously. "If you win? What's the matter? Why so uncertain?"

"I don't...I don't..." I frowned. Why did I keep picturing our ship getting torn apart?

Ubon stared at me, her face darkening.

"We...we'll do..." I gasped. "We'll do our best. We...we'll...we'll..."

"If you're smart," Ubon said to Ria, "You won't bet against us."

I flashed her a grateful smile and got a glare in return. Ubon stalked off, leaving me to Ria. I was proud of Ubon though. At least one of us could stand up to Xuanyan's spokeswoman. Unfortunately for me, I had to stay and finish the interview.

Ria watched her go before asking anything else as if sensing that I'd be weaker without her.

She focused her eyes on me, and I wobbled. A prickling sensation buzzed beneath my scalp.

"Do you want to lose, Klahan?" Ria asked.

"Yes," I said before I could think. "I mean...I mean..." Why couldn't I say no?

Ria's smile turned cold. "Do you want to die?"

"I don't know, I...I don't think..."

I tried to close my eyes, but couldn't. Instead, tears made icy trails down my cheeks. I'd seen people break down during one of Ria's interviews. I never imagined I'd be one of them.

"This is crazy," I said, my voice catching. "Why would I want to die?"

"Most competitors in the dives want death," Ria said, her voice somewhere between a purr and a growl. "Most of them never know why. Too bad your father's not alive to witness your final plunge."

Something inside me twisted when she mentioned my dad. In my mind's eye, I saw my father's ship streaking toward victory as it had done in hundreds of races. Why couldn't that be me? Why couldn't he slow down so I could catch up?

"I wish he could see me too," I said, my voice a whisper.

Why did I say that? The last thing I wanted was for him to see the shameful creature I'd become.

Ria cocked an eyebrow, and her eyes flashed like lightning.

"Oh? Do you wish you could hurt him?"

A feverish chill washed over me.

"No—maybe a little—"

"Do you hate him?"

"No. He was the best in racing." 

I let out a long breath. For a moment, I feared I'd say something against him.

Ria frowned. "It seems you'll be one of those sad cases who perish without ever knowing why he wanted to die."

"I guess so," I said, hoping that was an end to the interview.

Ria left. I stood for a few seconds, unable to move. Finally, I flexed my limbs and looked for Ubon. I found her standing by the artwork of the Neeku.

"Ubon—" I began.

"Do you want to lose, Klahan?" she asked.

"Apparently, I do," I sighed. "I don't know why, though."

She nodded.

"You've always been obsessed with beating your father's record. It's helped us, drove us to compete harder—but now I think you're trying to defeat him by taking away his achievements. You want the garden to be lost."

Ubon's soft emerald eyes bored into me, more piercing in their way than Ria's. Something inside me twisted, that same pain I felt when Ria mentioned my father.

"I don't want that to be true," I said, but I felt cold inside.

I remembered how I'd almost cheered when the Shining Hawk exploded. Sometimes watching victory being taken away from someone else felt as good as winning.

If I live, I'll do something more important than winning... Promise accepted.

The memory of that exchange echoed in my mind, sending a tingling sensation along my limbs.

"You're right." I sniffed. "But I know that won't work. My dad won hundreds of races. Even if this garden gets sold off, he'll always be remembered for that."

I took a deep breath. Suddenly, not losing mattered more to me than anything. "I want to win."

Ubon nodded. "Good. This is the last black hole dive I'm ever participating in."

Her words held a note of finality that I was afraid to question. Would she leave me? If I knew she was going to, would I still try to win? Now, more than ever, I needed to put my emotions aside. I just wasn't sure I could.

Chapter 6: Sendoff 

Ubon, Da-Xia, and I stood together on the dais. Behind us lay the battered Celestial Phoenix with its single engine; before us a vast crowd of humanoids: rhino-like Cornicals, insectile Mintakans, and other races both natural and artificial. Some held candles aloft in tribute to those of us who'd die today. Many wore necklaces of rivets, wire, and broken circuit boards—relics of ships long since crushed. Most watched with hollow eyes and morbid expressions, as if eager to feed on the sight of our deaths.

In skimmer races, the crowds gathered to cheer the teams. Here, they celebrated the spectacle.

Even in this event, we were not favorites. A Cornical crew with a captain named Droximus was the local hero, having survived three competitions. Droximus was roughly the size and shape of an Earth rhino and had one glass eye. His ship, the Burning Rock, was scorched from its close encounters with singularities.

Prior to the drop, the crews assembled for the crowds so that Ria could torment us. She humiliated each crew, in turn, working her way down the line.

Ria stared up into Droximus' beady black eye.

"Will you redeem yourself today or show the cowardice you displayed in the war, soldier?" she asked.

Droximus screeched. I think it was a battle cry, but it reminded me more of the wailing heard outside a slaughterhouse. I shifted uncomfortably.

A large section of the crowd roared back with him, apparently in support. Good for him.

As she approached us, Ria glanced at Ubon and Da-Xia before fixing her gaze on me. Her irises sparkled, and I felt a wave of dizziness.

"Have you told your teammates about your death wish?"

"Yes," I said, then added, "Celestial Phoenix will rise from the ashes today. I swear on my father's grave."

It wasn't entirely what I meant to say, and Ria's eyes glinted and turned green. I think there was a small scattering of applause from the audience, but when Ria has you in her power, it's hard to be sure of what's going on.

"Daddy issues. How delicious. Does knowing that your death will lead to the selling off of your father's garden, the destruction of his life's work, give you satisfaction?"

It took all my will not to say, "Yes." Despite my newfound desire to win, there was truth in her statement. "I won't let my team down," I said.

"Klahan knows what he's doing," Ubon said. "We're going to win."

She gave Ria her own icy stare.

"Brave words," Ria said. She smiled a crocodile's smile then glanced at Droximus. "I think they're braver than you, soldier."

Droximus stomped and laughed, a sound not unlike a deflating bagpipe. "Hah. We braver. Never enter competition against Burning Rock," he bellowed. "Death not frighten us, and ship so strong it can land on white dwarf!"

That couldn't have been true, of course. It was just posturing. I tried not to cringe before his display, to hold on to what little dignity I had.

"Think you're too good for us, skimmer pilot?" Droximus asked.

When I said nothing, he came closer, reared up, and bellowed. The dais shook when his feet crashed down, Ubon cringed, and I backed away, afraid of being flattened. The assembled crowd yelled, "Drop the Rock! Drop the Burning Rock!"

Let me just say this wasn't the high point of my career.

Chapter 7: Black Hole Dive 

I started slowly. Speed isn't important in a dive. You have to achieve a certain minimum velocity to avoid being disqualified, but apart from that, you want to take your time. The Burning Rock, along with a few of the others, began aggressively. They plummeted through the event horizon, and toward the singularity, the place where infinity tears a hole in the fabric of spacetime.

As our ship edged through the horizon, everything shifted. We saw patterns of energy, a grid of blue lights, a pulsing splotch of red, and shooting white fire—each effect as beautiful as it was deadly. Before the advent of traversable wormholes, no one could see the wound in spacetime that was a singularity. The speed of light protected the universe from that beautiful but deadly sight.

"Look at that," Da-Xia breathed.

Even though the mysteries of quantum gravity have largely been unraveled, their effects near a tear in spacetime are difficult to predict. Blasts of energy, plasma, or matter can fly out, or ripples of spacetime can connect different places at random. Time doesn't work the same way either. I once heard about a ship that was destroyed by pieces of its own hull arriving from a future time. That would be an interesting way to die.

The Celestial Phoenix lurched and alarms flashed to life. Most of them were for equipment on the strut for our missing engine. That was lucky. Ubon already had the damage contained.

There was another flash, and the cockpit went dark as the glass became opaque to protect my eyes. What was going on? Two energy bursts shouldn't have hit us in such rapid succession, not as far out as we were.

Just as the glass cleared, the ship lurched again.

"That's half our hull plating," Ubon said in a high-pitched voice.

I gritted my teeth and moved sideways. The ship shuddered as a beam of energy singed a tumbling rock below us just as it eclipsed the Burning Rock.

Were they shooting at us? Was that why they dove so aggressively? So they could blame the tear in space for the energy emissions that damaged their opponents? I weaved, trying to get some angular separation between us and them. If they weren't in the line of sight between us and the rip in spacetime, they might not risk attacking.

"Da-Xia, load the combat simulation. I think the Burning Rock is firing on us."

"We didn't prep for combat."

While I was a decent pilot, I didn't relish the idea of improvising something like this.

"I do, however, have experience with combat and diving," Da-Xia said. "I know how to hit a time mirror and run a quantum cascade."

"Don't you have a tendency to become reckless when piloting?"

She sighed. "I switched positions because my hunger for danger made me a threat to myself and my fellow soldiers. Now I want to live, and my piloting might be our best chance."

Still, I hesitated.

"Klahan, forget about trying to fly better than your father. That's not who you are."

"What did Ubon tell you?" I asked.

"Nothing. I found the simulation program you used to compare our progress to Xing's previous races. You're an okay pilot, but you were great at computation."

My cheeks burned. She was right. It was foolish to hang on to the pilot position. The stakes were too high.

"Okay, let's trade."

Settling in before my screen felt familiar, and in a good way. I searched for the old code I had in mind, adjusted the parameter files, and started it up. The words "Cactus Computational Toolkit" scrolled by, followed by streams of numbers and a drawing of a Cactus using ASCII art. Cactus was an old code, dating to the beginning of the twenty-first century, before interstellar travel. But vintage codes were needed for vintage computers.

"Incoming energy pulse at fourteen by seventy-two degrees," I called out. Da-Xia spun, banked, and spun again. She was good.

An energy pulse flashed from the Burning Rock and one of the other ships vanished. If we both made it out alive, I'd have evidence against them.

In the meantime, the trick was to keep our distance and make ourselves more difficult targets. The ship shook, and the compensators screamed to keep up.

"What's happening?"

"I'm flying erratically," Da-Xia said. "Letting them think we're too damaged to maneuver properly." 

"Smart," Ubon commented. "Maybe they'll shoot at someone else."

I watched as three other ships got picked off. We were deep, close to the singularity by then, and five teams bailed. My next simulation predicted the formation of a time mirror.

"New trajectory posted," I said.

"That will take us in firing range of the Rock," Da-Xia said.

"Trust him," Ubon said.

The vote of confidence was surprising and welcome. Maybe after this, we could patch things up.

I watched as the cannons of the Burning Rock flashed, then struck the time mirror. Seconds later, energy signatures glanced across their hull. I let out a whoop. Cheering because the competition got hit is usually unsportsmanlike, but under the circumstances, I think it was excusable.

Two more ships bailed out through wormholes, and a third flashed out of existence as a plasma stream from the singularity washed over its hull.

In moments it was down to us and the Burning Rock, both ships plunging recklessly toward doom. I wiped my brow.

"We need to pull out," Da-Xia said.

"The wormhole generator won't work if we get much deeper," Ubon said.

"We can use folds in space to climb back up," I said.

The hull shuddered. We weren't hit by anything, but the tidal forces were becoming too strong for the compensators. Also, my estimate of the spacetime metric was a little off. It's hard to get that right near a singularity.

"We're past the range of the wormhole generator," Ubon said, her voice tense.

"Hold on." My fingers clicked over the keyboard. Where was a space fold when you needed one? I changed the parameters for the metric, restarted my simulation, and watched the numbers fly.

"There." I sent the coordinates to Da-Xia. "That's our ride home."

The Burning Rock charged. Da-Xia spun and evaded. Her movements were quick, sure, and intuitive. Much as I hated to admit it, she was better than me. As we swung closer, the scanners got a good look at the Rock. Not only had they lost their laser cannon, but also their wormhole generator. They were on a one-way trip.

I opened communications. "Burning Rock, do you read us?"

Droximus responded. "What you want, Klahan?"

"A fold is forming ahead. Dock with us, and we'll take you and your crew home."

"Come close and we smash," he snarled. "All die together."

"Don't be stupid. I'm trying to save your life."

Droximus narrowed his single small eye. "You put time mirror between us to destroy, now you want to save?"

"I just wanted to protect my crew."

Droximus roared. "Still think you better than us, skimmer pilot? Nobler?" Droximus said. "We come from long line of great warriors, do we. Heroes in war, not cowards like woman with eyes says."

"I'm sure you were," I said. "And will be again. Just let us help you."

"Help?" Droximus stomped and bellowed. "Help? See how we die, humans!"

He severed communication.

"He's accelerating," Da-Xia yelled. Instead of ramming us, however, Droximus flew between us and the singularity and was instantly consumed by a beam of antiparticles. I blinked in surprise. I hadn't seen that burst coming.

"He took a bullet for us," Da-Xia said.

Had Droximus sacrificed his life to prove he was better than me? 

"Okay," I said. "Stay on course to the fold."

Just a short distance, and we'd be out. Seconds remained. Fractions of a second.

As we approached the space fold, I thought of Droximus. He'd given his life to save ours. What had I done? I'd wagered my father's legacy and the life of the woman I loved just to keep racing. Maybe he was better than me. Or maybe we were equally stupid.

The tidal force compensators struggled as we climbed toward the space fold, then purred as we jumped high above the singularity in a single instant. Da-Xia opened the wormhole and we dove through. We'd won! Now anything was possible. We had the funds to repair the ship and re-enter the competition for the Black Torus.

"I'm leaving you, Klahan," Ubon said over the comms.

"Wait, what?"

"Risking our lives in a race was one thing, but this—" 

"Look, I'm sorry. I'll do anything you ask, just please stay on the team."

"No."

If she'd wanted to lob a singularity like this at me, couldn't she have let me collect the winnings first? Let me enjoy victory for a short time? My hands shook, and I took a breath.

"Okay, join another team, but please don't leave me. I'll do whatever you ask."

"Will you quit skimming?"

I almost said, "No." After everything I'd done, how could I let it go?

Ubon had never asked me before whether I cared more for her than for winning, it was one of the things I loved about her.

I considered it. I had enough money to quit. Maybe I could still be a hobbyist, make solo flights now and then. Would that be enough?

Until now, I'd thought winning was the only thing that mattered. Until she'd asked, I'd never had to choose.

"All right," I said.

My hands steadied. Giving up was a kind of relief. Part of me wondered, though how long would it last between us if I wasn't competing. Well, tomorrow would bring its own problems.

Ubon and Da-Xia stopped talking to me after that. They sent messages back and forth, though. I decided I was better off not knowing what they were saying.

We landed on the platform to tumultuous cheers. It sickened me that no one mourned the dead. Ria approached us, eyes flashing. My head tingled.

"How does it feel to win, Klahan? Will you join the diving circuit full-time?"

I stepped closer to her and stared into her gem-like eyes. "I want to take a minute to remember Droximus. Whatever his failings, his last act was to protect us. I plan to commission a statue in his honor in Xing's Garden."

Ria sneered. "You didn't answer my question."

"No, we will not join the diving circuit. In fact—" I took a breath. "In fact, I have a bigger change to announce than that. From this moment on—"

Ubon stepped forward and interrupted. "From this moment I'm taking the role of captain for the Celestial Phoenix. Klahan will be returning to computation and Da-Xia will be the pilot. Expect better from us next season. We're going to win the Black Torus, Ria. Just watch us."

I closed my mouth. Ubon took my hand and squeezed.

She whispered in my ear, "I want the Black Torus too, Klahan, but I had to know where we stood."

Chapter 8: Victory Lap 

The next season we stomped the competition like a Cornical smashing a grape. Da-Xia was the equal of Jin as a pilot, and whatever demons or ancestral spirits drove her to flirt with death were under control. I was far and away better at computation than she, and Ubon was superluminal in engineering. Our engines outperformed the competition handily. About halfway through the season, I was surprised to see our ship beat the projected path my father would've taken.

For a moment it bothered me that I wasn't the pilot, but then I realized Xing hadn't been any good at computation, and a good team needed a top-notch number cruncher to succeed.

And succeed we did. We won the season and the right to run the Black Torus. We had more sponsorships than we knew what to do with. It was everything I dreamed of—well, almost everything. The Black Torus itself remained.

The day of the Black Torus run didn't feel as exhilarating as I'd expected. Beating my dad's record wasn't as important to me now, and entering the Black Torus felt like going backward, as if I was returning to my former neurotic compulsion to prove myself. 

The night before the run I visited every corner of the ship. I wanted to remember the way things were before everything changed. One way or another, the run for the torus would be the end of a phase in my life. Rarely did I go to the aft section where Ubon worked, and what I found there made me cringe. My father's urn sat nestled behind the laser cutter, a dull bronze stowaway.

I felt a hand on my shoulder. "I took it from the garden display when we visited him just before the dive. He's been with us since then," Ubon said.

"And no one noticed?"

"I put a fake in its place."

I stared for several long seconds.

"Why?"

"I figured we needed something for luck." She shrugged. "Besides, I'm sure he would've wanted to be here."

"So he could win again?"

"No, idiot." She hit me gently on the head. "So he could be with his son."

We stood quietly, and I tried to understand what I was feeling. Part of me wished I didn't know he was here, but part of me was glad Ubon had brought him.

"I don't know what I'd do without you," I said.

She kissed me, long and hard. The scent of her, the warm physical presence of her body filled me, displacing an emptiness I'd not known I had. Maybe the reason I'd tried for so long and so hard to beat my father was because I missed him so badly. Competition made it feel as if he were still there. This was better, though, and I was grateful for what Ubon had done.

Chapter 9: The Black Torus 

We edged toward the place where the ring would form. Just as in my father's run, all three black holes had the same mass to within one part per million—approximately ten solar masses—and each was equally spaced. The unnaturalness of the arrangement gave me a chill. It had been eerie when it happened the first time. Now it was enough to give me goose flesh. Had some cosmic hand arranged it all?

When we pulled within range of the torus, I found myself suddenly back in time. Jin shouted that I should ignore the danger, stop being cautious, and go faster.

I blinked and I was back. A field of debris was closing on us rapidly. "Evasive pattern four," I shouted. Gee forces compressed us as the ship maneuvered abruptly. Why did I feel gee forces?

"Gravitational compensators are offline," Ubon called out. "We need to abort."

"You can fix them, Ubon."

"Which of us knows the modifications I made and how much strain those devices have been under lately?" she said. "Which of us is captain?"

"I believe in you," I said, ignoring the questions.

She was quiet. I said, "We need more thrust if we're going to get back on track."

Da-Xia accelerated, and Ubon still said nothing. I watched as the black holes drew nearer. Soon it would be too late to abort, and we'd either die from tidal forces or Ubon would fix the compensators.

"Last chance in ten seconds," I said. "Nine, eight—"

"Compensators online," Ubon said. "Go for it."

We had to move quickly to make the run, too fast to get readings or adjust. Any small bit of debris could be the end of us. We closed to within seconds of the torus—and sailed through. It was a quiet moment.

Event horizons aren't visible or solid, they're mathematical entities defined by whether light can reach infinity. The only true evidence of our success was a string of numbers on my screen.

There are a few perfect moments in black hole skimming, a few instants where everything is quiet, when your skill, luck, and determination have all been spent and you glide. Time feels different in the still center of a gravitational storm.

It's not about being faster or better anymore, it's about touching eternity, about being a part of every moment that was or will be. It was why I'd become a skimmer, why my father had. Until that moment, I'd forgotten.

After a few seconds, I realized that neither Ubon nor Da-Xia knew we'd done it.

"We're through," I said, my voice just above a whisper. "We ran the torus."

In response, both ladies whooped loud enough to hurt my ears.

"Let's dive," I said.

"What?" Da-Xia asked.

"I want to see what's in there. See if what my father saw was real."

There was silence.

"We all have to agree," Ubon said.

"I'm in," Da-Xia replied.

"All right then," Ubon replied. "We do it."

This dive wasn't like the fateful one against Burning Rock. We weren't trying to get close to the center. We just wanted to look around. When we passed within the horizon we saw three singularities spiraling together inside a complex web of color and light. It was beautiful. Eerie.

"Time mirror approaching," I said.

I saw my father's ship, the Jadestar, fly across my sensors.

I opened a communications link. "Dad?" I called. "Are you there?"

No response. Another time mirror formed and he vanished. Then I saw something I can't fully describe. It was a field of energy, matter, light, and darkness. It was symmetry and structure; solid and ghostly. It was a castle of fire, and we were on a collision course.

I checked my instruments. "The path through the center is safe, trajectory gamma nine posted."

The hull shook.

"Ubon, are you there?" I called.

No response.

"Da-Xia?"

Again, no response. According to my screens, folds and mirrors filled the ship. If my crewmates had fallen through, there was little time remaining to save them.

I crawled along the tube, looking for Ubon, checking my wrist sensor for time mirrors as I went. The mirror found me first, moving too quickly to be evaded. It struck, and I dropped into darkness. I screamed, and suddenly there was light. Sunlight. Three suns, evenly spaced in the sky. Orange frothy oceans sprayed in the distance.

Ubon and Da-Xia were nearby, helmets off. Ubon held Dad's urn.

"The air's fine," Ubon said.

I removed my helmet.

"What is this place?" I asked.

We were in a garden that featured monuments to a dozen races, among them humans. It resembled my father's work in so many ways. The Burning Rock itself stood here beneath the crimson sky, and a live Neeku was recreating the ship's image in glittering rock.

Walking alone on a white stone path, the three of us passed over a hill and beneath red trees to where a monument stood, luminous, and white. On it were the words, "Xing. He honored the dead." Together, Ubon and I placed the urn on a shelf at the monument's center.

"This place must have been what he saw," I said.

An unfamiliar voice spoke from behind. "It's similar. This burial torus is for him. He honored the bones of many lost races, now they honor him."

We turned and saw a man of medium height and build with gray hair. A name tag on his uniform read, "Laquan," the same as the dead pilot whose engine we borrowed in the Sagittarius A Cup.

Time did such things near a singularity, it shouldn't surprise me to see him alive, but it did anyway.

"Burial torus?"

"For a great man," Laquan replied.

I thought of the pyramids of Earth, and the Taj Mahal. They were amazing in their time, costly and time-consuming to construct. A testimony to human engineering as much as the people they honored.

"Thank you for bringing me," Dad said, stepping out from behind a tree.

I leaped forward, arms outstretched.

"You're alive," I said.

It was impossible for me to be holding him again, but I was. Was this moment what I'd been racing toward all those years, what I'd really wanted? Not victory, but this reconnection? The thought felt true.

He pushed himself away from me, holding my shoulders.

"Now," he said. "Don't forget your promise."

"What promise?"

But as I asked the question I knew. It was the promise I'd made at the Lemon Slice Nebula Classic, to do something more important than winning. I'd just never known what, exactly, I was supposed to do.

In the next instant, I found myself back on the ship, dizzy and disoriented. What had I promised my father? I felt I could almost remember.

"Time to go," Da-Xia said.

"Wait!" I yelled.

But there was no time, not if we were going to survive. Da-Xia triggered the wormhole and nine billionths of a second later we were free.

The castle of fire was on the ship's sensor logs, but not the garden. My father's urn was gone.

Chapter 10: A Promise Kept 

Ubon and I gave up black hole skimming after that. For my part, I felt a completeness where before there was only a hunger. I spent more time in meditation in my father's garden, connecting with his memory, trying to find the part of me that knew the promise I was supposed to keep.

Ria ambushed Ubon and me some weeks later. "What's the real reason you've given up?" she hissed. "Was competing with your father your only motive for racing?"

I stared back into those diamond eyes. In them I saw my life, my skimmer races, my father shooting out ahead of me—I saw the moment he slowed down in time so I could catch him, and I finally remembered the promise I had made.

Moments of pure joy are as rare as those when time and space stand still in the middle of a race. This was one of them. Without knowing what my dad had wanted, I was already giving it to him.

"No," I said, laughing. "That's not it. I need a new challenge."

Ubon stepped up and took my hand. Then, she put her other hand on her belly. "We're going to have a kid."

I squeezed her hand.

Ria's eyes narrowed to burning slits, and her lips twisted in a serpentine frown, revealing crystal teeth that flashed like lost stars.

From some quiet, still corner of spacetime, my father watched us and laughed as we turned away from Ria and toward our future.