Sonya Gomez stepped through, onto the bridge of the da Vinci, before the lift doors had fully whisked open. Bart Faulwell and Carol Abramowitz met her on the upper landing. Both of them threw protocol out the airlock and folded her into an awkward three-way hug. “Welcome home,” Bart whispered. His breath was warm against the side of her face, and smelled of apples.

Sonya smiled thinly. “Good to be back,” she told them both. Even if this wasn’t over, it did feel good to have the familiar feel of the da Vinci around her again. A swaying feeling of vertigo washed over her, but she held her footing. “You might want to clear the bridge,” she said.

“We were on our way out,” Carol told her. She broke away first, headed for the lift. Bart followed after a final, brotherly squeeze on both arms.

The bridge felt tense, but together in a way Sonya had never felt on the station, with warring factions and secrets being kept. Joanne Piotrowski nodded a greeting from tactical. Even Tev’s natural surliness seemed light by comparison to what she had lived through, though he did not welcome her back with the same enthusiasm that her friends had. He merely grunted at her arrival.

David Gold was no more forthcoming with his feelings. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Of course, with the main viewer open onto the bridge of the Dutiful Burden, she expected her captain to maintain a respectful distance. The three-way alliance he’d put together was built on intimidation and the threat of imminent death for all concerned. He did shift around in his seat, looking back at her. “Keep it smooth, Gomez,” he said, sotto voce. “Not too many bumps.” And he tipped her a casual wink.

The confidence in his gaze, regardless of what he might feel inside, warmed her. “Yes, sir.”

She moved to the main panel, pulled up readings on the Resaurian station, the Dutiful Burden, and the da Vinci’s position within the black hole. A small, green candy sat on the edge of her lower panel, still in its twist of wrapper. From the side, a hand covered in coarse, brown hair crept in to pluck the candy from its resting spot.

“That’s not exactly regulation,” she said, seeing in her peripheral vision that the Tellarite still stood there.

“Faulwell,” Tev said, as if that explained everything. In a way, it did. “He rode across the photon sphere on the bridge.”

She glanced sidelong at Tev. Most times, the stodgy engineer would have demanded nonessential personnel to stand clear of the work areas. Then again, there had likely been a great deal more to worry about than a quiet cryptographer and a cultural specialist standing nearby. “What was it like?” she asked. She did not need to specify, Sonya knew. Not with Tev.

“Magnificent.” He nearly let it rest with that, then, “You should have been here to see it.”

Sonya nodded, sensing that the Tellarite had just offered her a very left-handed compliment. “I’ll see it on the way out,” she told him. “Ready?”

“Always, Commander.” He moved back to the science station, unwrapped his candy, and popped it into his mouth.

Sonya checked in with Stevens, who continued to monitor the power systems aboard the station, and Pattie, standing by aboard the station bridge. Both reported they were as ready as they could be. “All hands report ready to go, Captain.”

“Can we pull anyone else off first?” Gold asked, a measure of concern laced into the request.

“Fabian can’t leave the reactor distribution venues, in case new calibrations become necessary. Pattie insisted on staying behind as well. This three-way anchor is our weak link, especially given the station’s sheer bulk. She’ll make it work, sir.” She didn’t bother to tell Gold that Corsi was unlikely to leave the team unattended on a station surrounded by potential hostiles without anything short of a direct order, and perhaps not even then, and Rennan was backing up his superior.

“Make it happen, Gomez.”

Sonya passed along her orders, and Tev loosened the da Vinci’s grasp on the station just enough to allow the vessel to climb against the Demon’s intense gravitational pull. Using his “bootstrapping” technique, he punched one dekyon beam into the curved wall of space-time, then another farther up, and slowly merged the two. The extra pull allowed the da Vinci to struggle along several dozen kilometers.

“Hang on, Tev. Dutiful Burden, go.”

The Resaurian vessel performed the exact same wall-climbing maneuver while the da Vinci anchored the station in place. Once they were at an equal position, the anchor was tightened and the station slowly dredged up from the Demon’s maw.

It was working!

This time she gave the Resaurian vessel the lead position, sending them scaling up the warped space-time ledge. Like a pair of rock climbers hauling an injured partner up a cliff face, first the Burden edged its way back toward normal space, then the da Vinci, and again the station levered itself up once both vessels had hammered in their dekyon pitons.

At one point during its turn at hauling, a gravimetric wave broke over the bow of the da Vinci. The small Saber-class vessel weathered it as though it had been a large sneaker wave crashing over the prow of an old ocean-going vessel; the ship gave a shake and a roll, and then burst forward with an extra kick from the engines.

At one-point-four-five Schwarzschild radii the raw gravitational force had lessened to the equivalent of twelve billion Earth-gravities. Lessened! Sonya almost laughed at such an idea. The gravitational tide between vessels and station was approximately two hundred million gravities. The da Vinci groaned and labored against the pull, but up the station came.

“Coming up on the photon sphere,” Tev called out.

Sonya spared her engineer’s curiosity only ten seconds, glancing between her monitors and the main viewscreen. She saw the Einstein Rings bulge out from the compacted starscape. The troika of vessels now hung on to the division between eternal night and a universe of possibilities.

Another gravimetric wave slammed into them, bucking the ship.

The Demon was reluctant to release its prey.

“Not my ship,” Gold muttered, his deep voice carrying across the bridge. “Not today.”

Slowly, painfully, the starscape crawled down toward the bottom of the viewscreen. Sonya watched, coordinated, and worried. The irony did not escape her. Starfaring vessels, each capable of traveling across light-years in short order, clawing and scrabbling for simple kilometers. Ten here. Twenty there.

At three complete Schwarzschild radii, an impressive nine hundred kilometers from the singularity’s center, she began to breathe easier. Tension eased from her shoulders, and she dry-swallowed some life back into her throat.

At five radii the ships had shed two orders of magnitude in gravitational pull, and she lengthened each leg of the journey, allowing the da Vinci and Dutiful Burden to eat away a full hundred kilometers on each stride, then a thousand. Soon they were able to drop the dekyon beams and proceed under normal propulsion, fighting their way past an orbit of one thousand kilometers, a simple fifteen thousand gravities. Gold passed the word to bring his own people back from the station, and then shifted screens aft.

A dark circle of night shrank from the da Vinci as stars reclaimed the sky. And from out of the Demon’s mouth came the Resaurian station.

“Gravitational pull falling past one hundred fifty G’s,” Sonya reported at three million kilometers’ distance from the Demon. Both vessels were under full impulse, racing away, the danger past. She used the back of her sleeve to pat the sweat from her brow. “Let’s not do that again anytime soon, please.”

“No promises,” Gold said, but he was grinning ear to ear. “Not in the S.C.E. Wong, put us in a very distant orbit around the Demon, please.” He thumbed open an all-hands circuit. “Stand down from alert, investigate all spaces and make damage control reports to the bridge.” To his main bridge crew he said, “Rest easy, everyone.”

Haznedl slapped Wong on the shoulder. Piotrowski kept to herself at first, though she whooped a moment later when Corsi led Konya and Stevens out of the turbolift.

“Everything’s in okay shape on the station,” Stevens reported. “A bit bouncy, but we made it through.”

“Lot of engineers and extra security crowding my bridge,” Gold complained with a smile. There was no mistaking the relief in the captain’s voice. “Why don’t some of you get cleaned up and rested?”

Sonya nodded wearily. “I volunteer for that duty.” She felt grubby and bone weary, but also a great deal of pride in a job well done against overwhelming odds. After a shower, she expected to feel even better.

Tony Shabalala entered the bridge, a small bandage on his head, but otherwise apparently fit for duty; he relieved Piotrowski, who followed Fabian and Rennan toward the lift. Sonya trailed, and was stopped briefly on the upper landing when Tev put a large hand on her shoulder. “Yes, Tev?”

The Tellarite paused, shuffled from one foot to the other, then snuffled a short laugh. “Good to have you back, Commander.”

Sonya smiled, felt it reaching up into her eyes. “Thank you.” She headed for the lift, still looking forward to that shower.

But she doubted it would make her feel any better than she did right now.