Captain Lena Fang licked her slightly parted lips, wishing for luck, as she considered the rocketing dragon. It was not her destiny to fail forever. It could not be. This time would be different, she told herself.

This time was different. They faced a lone dragon, rather than thousands. They had a concrete goal -- securing the egg -- rather than a vague notion of scooping up a small dragon as if it were a guppy. Before she had felt alone. She glanced at Fisher. This time she had support.

That mattered more to her than she would have guessed.

She checked the vectors, the rates. The less massive dragon with its fusion rocket was faster and more maneuverable than the Karamojo's rail drive. While the starship's rail could accelerate its reaction pellets to very high velocity, the available reaction mass limited their thrust. They were a big ship and depended on the wormdrive to move appreciable distances at speed. Wormdrive was cheap, but potentially dangerous in such an uncertain situation.

She would use it, if she had to.

The shuttles, paired with their magnetic net and its burden that slowed them, coming to meet them part way helped only a little. Perhaps that little would be enough. Without another trick, the dragon would not reach them before the shuttles had entered the ship's maw. What would that mother do then?

What would they do then?

"Papa, investigate optimal activation of wormdrive given rendezvous with the egg-laden shuttles."

"Yes, daughter, but may we point out two immediate problem areas?"

"Go ahead."

"We will have to reorient from a disk-facing posture. We haven't the power to drive the singularities through the dense disk, and it would not be prudent to reverse the worm polarity for an ass-backwards launch."

When Papa said, 'It would not be prudent,' he meant that they would exceed safety parameters in several areas with a possibly catastrophic outcome. To be prudent, they would lose another twenty seconds. She preferred Papa speaking in his own voice than the phraseology forced upon him in technical, time-critical situations. "Fine," she said. "We have to take the time to reorient. What's the other problem?"

"Radiation and field fluxes. What tolerances do we permit for the egg?"

Fang raised an eyebrow at Fisher.

"It's got to be able to withstand at least a dwarf nova outburst near the outer radius of the disk. That's thirty thousand Kelvin, and we're not going to come close to that. The field flux is a potentially more serious problem. The disk fields don't vary nearly so quickly as our system. I suspect the egg is quite tough by our standards, but I'm not sure we should risk full charge."

"Okay," Fang said, "Low charge, low mass, and low acceleration should still outpace the dragon." If they went, they went. This current maneuver was costing them more of their reaction reserves than she was comfortable with. First the biologicals, now the mass. "Dr. Fisher, will our scientific goals be satisfied if we leave the system with only this egg?"

Fisher lifted his glowing hands to his face, hesitated, then placed his fingers to his temples and began rubbing.



Hurry up, Sam, Fang thought. You dissected about a million different scenarios in your dragon-obsessed months, didn't you? But not this one. Not this one. And you've got less than a minute before I decide for you.



His fingers ceased their rubbing and trailed down his cheeks, slowly, making Fang think that they represented the tears he could not shed because of his radical bodmod. "Yeah," he croaked. Then, sounding more certain, "A viable egg will be more than enough."



She knew what this meant to him, this closing point for a year of insane joy and calculated madness. He hadn't opposed her or tricked her out of maliciousness. To him, the very concept of a star dragon had been his surrogate child, and he had only been defending a piece of himself. But this was not the time or the place to tell him that she understood. This was the time for her to act.



"Okay Papa," she said, expelling the air completely from her lungs and refilling them before continuing, "Let's activate wormdrive upon rendezvous with the shuttles."



"Now you're talking, daughter," Papa agreed.



"We're leaving?" Henderson asked.



"We are," Fang asserted.



"Going to be crazy," Stearn said.



"I'm afraid it is, Mr. Stearn. That's why I'd like you visually inspecting the dock and egg acquisition. I want you on-site to troubleshoot anything that Papa can't handle. Can I count on you?"



"Absolutely Captain!" Stearn's teeth gleamed white against his dark skin.



"And take Henderson with you to supervise any biological emergencies."



"Shit," Henderson opined.



Stearn paused by Devereaux and gave her a quick peck on her forehead just under her dreadlocks. She looked up from her console, surprised, but he was already dragging Henderson to his feet. The unlikely pair exited through the bridge's irising portal, the solid, compact black man slapping the bronze giant on the ass to hustle. Henderson jumped and did indeed hustle with clanging steps.



Devereaux giggled, then returned almost immediately to her work.



Fang allowed herself a slight smile and nod. The crew was working together, the ship seemed shipshape again, and it looked like they might escape the system with a prize worth at least a continuing captaincy. Perhaps this was a lucky day.



The Karamojo thrummed along as they approached their destiny.

Chapter 16

Never risk anything unless you're prepared to lose it completely -- remember that. -- Ernest Hemingway

"Isn't this exciting, Henderson? I mean, here we are seeing history. Hell, making history. I knew this was a step I was taking, but, man! This is the big game." Stearn swung his fist to punctuate his excitement.



Henderson jogged down the corridor in front of Stearn, hunched over slightly, conveying more apprehension than excitement. "It's madness that we do this. We're immortal, godlike. We can pleasure ourselves in any way we like, real or virtual, with no one to answer to as to how we spend our time. Why are we risking eternity here? Why?"



"Should have thought about that before signing up!" Stearn crowed. "Too late now. Forget about it and live the moment. Can't you feel it? This is what life is all about. Pushing yourself to the limits, taking great risks for great rewards."



"But what if the risks prove too great, and all is lost? What then?" At least the doom-sayer kept moving forward briskly.



"What then? I'll tell you 'what then.' " Stearn paused for dramatic effect. "You lose! That's what makes the game of life worth playing. Without the chance of losing, what's the point? A rigged game is no fun."



"I went on this trip on the promise it would help me rig the game."



"What do you mean?"



But Henderson would say no more on the subject.

Soon enough they reached the interior staging zone, where so long ago Stearn had helped Sylvia deploy the on-axis observatory. The double-ply diamond windows here were best suited to watching the Karamojo's innards independently of Papa's instruments, and, more importantly, to being able to act if the need arose. Stearn pressed his face against the window, steaming it up almost immediately. He smelled the fish he'd had for dinner on his breath and activated his mint gland. Wiping away the condensation with his sleeve, he said, "Got a good view, a real view, from right here. Live and uncensored. Papa, tell Fang we're in position."

"We've already told her."

"Right." Stearn realized that he sported a hard-on, tight and sweaty in his pants. Why not? He was excited in every way.

"It's stupid for us to be here," Henderson said. "Papa's got better monitors. We should be watching his displays."

Stearn grunted and ignored him. Was the man really an engineer?

Seconds dragged into minutes, and he watched the electric pulse of the rail system shooting charged pellets out into the SS Cygni system. Stearn asked Papa for a countdown, which abruptly started at thirty-nine. "Thanks for the warning," he muttered.

"What?" Henderson asked.

Stearn's face, suddenly slick with sweat, squeaked as it slid against the glass. Waiting tension was part of games: the ticking of the chess clock, holding for the last shot before the end of the period, the pitcher's glance toward first necessary to hold the runner, the half-held breath with the draw of the bow string, the flip of the hand of cards, the exquisitely slow but inexorable squeeze of the trigger of the gun locked on target. He could wait. Oh, yes, he could wait.

"Gravity ending," Papa announced when the count hit seven. "Maneuvers commencing. Secure yourselves."

"Shit," said Henderson.

Stearn braced himself and continued his watch. He expected the flare of chemical rockets rapidly braking the shuttles, but he didn't see that. Instead the microgravity shifted a barely perceptible amount; the incoming shuttles were braking against the rail's electric field. The pair floated through the Karamojo's maw, a blue-green crackling bundle suspended between them. A tiny point, not quite discernible at distance even though Stearn pushed his enhanced eyes for all they were worth. Just not enough lambda over diameter to resolve the thing. Did not matter. It was clear that that was it.

The egg.

The prize for the winners of the big game.

"Shit," Henderson said again.

"You've got that right, man. The shit is here."

"Reorientation," Papa announced.

The world spun and Stearn's grip nearly gave. Shadows raced across the young gardens and the interior dimmed as the Karamojo shifted angular momentum among its flywheels to reorient itself away from the disk. The rotation provided significant and surprising gravity.

Henderson bumped into Stearn, hard. "Get a hold of something, man!" Stearn chided him.



Henderson clanged away from Stearn as he slipped further in the pseudo gravity. "I've been trying!"



Stearn turned away from the biotech -- he had a hard metal head now, after all, and could take a few bumps -- and resumed his visual inspection of the egg stowing. If they could hold off on the wormdrive until they had the egg stabilized inside their cage, inside which they had simulated the quiescent disk, the game would be over.



Victory.



But the shuttles, as fast as he knew they had to be going, seemed to crawl. The cage rested around midship, about a hundred meters aft and spanning an angle from thirty to sixty degrees from Stearn's position. Its jaws ratcheted open for the approaching shuttles like the doors to the forge of Hell. Magnetically confined plasma filled the chamber, making a warm and toasty incubator for their prize. The trick here would be to use the same fields to catch the egg, gently, without spilling the plasma onto anything nearby not equipped to take it. Papa and Fisher had assured Stearn it would go well, that the margins for error were quite broad.



They would soon see.



And then Stearn saw too much. Three things happened nearly all at once, and a fourth thing very shortly thereafter. The first thing was the release of the egg from the shuttles' net. There was a brief flare as fields were matched and canceled, and the egg was left on a free flight trajectory (which appeared to have an odd twist to Stearn -- the result of the rotating reference frame combined with whatever electric fields Papa had running on the cage doors and rail) shooting toward the open jaws. The shuttles continued on toward the open aft of the Karamojo, no doubt being abandoned rather than docked. Slowing them down would not take long, but this was a game of seconds now; they would end up in the disk reduced to their constituent elements, eventually ending their existence as degenerate matter on the white dwarf. This throw and run maneuver was the first thing he noticed because he expected it and he was watching for it.



The second thing was Papa announcing imminent wormdrive activation. This was clear enough given the warning claxon and the strobes on the tetrahedrally distributed collars of the Higgs generators. The invisible inflaton beams would be emitted any time, as soon as the power level was reached and the generators properly phased. 'Properly phased' usually required ten seconds or more, but under the current circumstances who knew what tolerance the captain would gamble on?



The third thing was terrible. Stearn knew that the dragon was coming, but he hadn't expected to see it with his own eyes. There came a near blinding flash from the Karamojo's maw (the worst wavelengths blocked by both the porthole and his own corneas), a massive fusion brake he was later told, that cast incredibly sharp shadows throughout the ship's interior. He had an odd thought that the garden was toast again despite its shields, which had been designed to pass quite a lot ultraviolet radiation. His heavily moded eyes, already restoring his sight, imaged the red-hot star dragon silhouetted against the indigo sky of SS Cygni.

The star dragon snaked inside the ship of its own fierce volition.

Emphasis on 'fierce.' Stearn had noted, on more than one occasion, that there was nothing like the ferocity of an opposing will. A smart AI will concede a lost game, acknowledging and expecting correct play by an opponent even when the stakes are great. Desperation will drive a living will to absurdity, permitting it to intuit the course of action most distasteful to its competition, the course of action that will introduce an element of chaos. The tiniest, most unlikely chance, will be seized by a living will.



While Stearn thought these thoughts he judged most profound, all in the moment the star dragon struck the pose of some ancient Chinese dragon of the sky, the Karamojo lurched and the fourth thing happened. In personal terms, the worst thing of the four.



All two hundred and fifty kilograms of Henderson crashed into Stearn, knocking his head brutally into the diamond port, and he saw no more.