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alternate path, perhaps, one that would bring them out someplaceother than where they needed to go. But that was a recipe for disaster as well, since a blind TRGA jump could bring you out at another TRGA on the far side of the galaxy.

No, they would try the path they knew and hope the drones had just been delayed.

“All fighters are back on board, Admiral.”

“Very well, Captain.”

“All ships report ready for gating, Admiral,” Janice West told him.

“Thank you, Lieutenant.” He opened a squadron command frequency in his mind, feeling the touch of each of the other captains.“All ships!” he said over the link. “Stay tight and close. Accelerate to one kilometer per second relative. Try to stay together.”

The squadron began drifting slowly ahead. Russian fighters were beginning to pass again, this time coming from forward. They’ddecelerated to a relative halt, then reversed their acceleration to make the return. America took a hit on her shield cap . . . and another . . .

The only weapon she had that would bear directly forward was her pair of magnetic accelerators, launch tubes for fighters that could double as mag-lev cannons. Aiming them at something as small and fast as a fighter was an exercise in futility.

Faster, now. The mouth of the TRGA yawned directly ahead, the space around it slightly blurred by the twisting, relativisticmasses inside. Through the opening, he could see stars.

Here we go.

And then, as America dropped into the groove of her precisely calculated trajectory through the lumen of the spinning tube, Gray realized witha cold shock that something was terribly, terribly wrong . . .

“Hold it!” Admiral Gray yelled. “Damn it, hold her on course!”

America bucked and shuddered as she moved down the length of the TRGA.

The stars—the stars visible straight ahead down the length of the TRGA cylinder—the stars were moving!

The only possible explanation for that was that Omega, the TRGA at the other end of this transit, was in motion, tumblingend-for-end, and that was starkly impossible.

America was tightly gripped by the gravitational forces inside the cylinder, and those forces were now creating a considerable pressurepushing Gray back against his seat. Centrifugal force, he thought. From the TRGA’s spin . . .

There was also a rapidly building vibration, sharp enough to rattle his teeth. The circle of light ahead filled with whirlingstars grew larger . . . larger. . . .

Emergence.

Light exploded around the America as she shot from the maw of the titanic cylinder. “My God . . .” Gray said, his voice an awed whisper.

America had been within the heart of the Omega Centauri Cluster more than once before.

Omega Centauri now was a seething ocean of light, its heart filled with an anomalous blue nebula, its encircling walls a tangle of millions of stars as bright as Venus seen from Earth, crowded together so closely they averaged one to two tenths of a light year between each.

Directly ahead, six searingly brilliant disks were arranged in an unnatural circle. Beams of lightning-sharp light lancedfrom each disk, two of them extending ninety degrees from the planes of the disks’ rotation. Gray could see where each beamhad burned through the surrounding nebula, evaporating it with a blowtorch kiss.

Gray was having trouble piecing together what he was seeing.

He dragged himself away from the awe-filled sky and checked the flag bridge screen showing the view aft.

The Omega TRGA had been constructed within a few hundred thousand AU of the black hole Rosette. Its official designation wasDunlop, after the Scottish astronomer who in 1826 had first identified Omega Centauri as a globular star cluster, not simplya fuzzy star. No one called it that, however. Human stellar navigators had always called it simply “Omega,” a name that somehowseemed more fitting in this spectacular setting.

Whatever its name, the TRGA, as he’d guessed, was in a slow tumble end-over-end, and as he watched, the Birmingham emerged, flung by centrifugal force added to her own speed into space. A moment later, Arlington emerged . . . followed by the Acadia. The four ships were moving in four different directions, but all appeared to be in one piece. A cluster of signals alertedGray to other Earth assets here: several hundred tiny smartdrones. They’d emerged safely from the spinning TRGA but had beenunable to get back in, and now they were requesting retrieval.

“Have the others form up on us,” he told Lieutenant West. “Captain Rand, please bring us to a halt relative to the TRGA.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

Gray turned his attention back to the glowing cloud filling the surrounding space. “God . . . but this place has changed!”

 

VFA-198 Hellfuries

Penrose TRGA

79 light years from Earth

1325 hours, FST

Adams struggled back to full consciousness. She’d been . . . dreaming, she thought, dreaming of falling and falling and neverhitting bottom. Then she opened her eyes and by the dim glow of the cockpit lights she could make out the close, almost formfittingembrace of her fighter around her.

She remembered a flash . . . a shock . . .

Adams wasted no time in running through a quick assessment of her condition. Her left arm hurt—a lot—and she thought it wasbroken. Her flight suit had already injected her with anodyne nano and frozen into a rigid support for her arm. Her in-headswere operational, but most of the sensors in her Starblade were off-line, as was the ship’s AI. Power was on battery, andlife support was down. She had, she estimated, enough air remaining in her cockpit reserves to last her perhaps ten hours,before CO2 levels would rise enough to put her to sleep again . . . this time permanently.

She needed to see out. If America was still in the area, she might be able to attract their attention somehow. The fighter had manually operated flare launchers.

She began searching for a working external camera. Most ship systems were off-line, but there were some emergency supportsystems that should be . . .

Ah! There. A window opened in her mind, giving her a view of space outside the hulk of her crippled fighter. Fragments ofthe Seare drifted close by. Beyond, a massive black shape blotted out the stars.

At first, she felt a prickle of excitement . . . until she realized that the shape was only superficially like America, or any of the squadron’s capital ships. Using the camera’s