This Day All Gods Die by Stephen R. Donaldson

something he had very much wanted to know. Now he took his revenge, although it gave him no pleasure. Warden wouldn't thank him for revealing what he guessed. And her sorrow would only be increased.
    "My dear Koina, if I answer you, you will believe that we have both lost our minds."
    So that she would not pursue the matter, he disengaged his arm and walked away from her. Whatever happened, he meant to keep his own emotions as private as Warden's.
    The Amnion had committed an act of war.
    The director of the UMCP had chosen a terrible moment to stake all their lives against the Dragon.

ANGUS
He didn't scream; could not
    have screamed if he'd
    wanted to. But for a time that might have been long or short his body screamed for him.
    Asteroids and static crashed in mad ecstasy through the dark void, shattering against each other and recoiling in their rush to answer the singularity's hunger. The black hole sucked down energy in jagged bolts like lightning; swallowed matter lurid with Doppler shifts. Forces which he'd unleashed with his own hand seemed to tear him apart.
    Dehydration. Intolerable g. Strange concussions of all kinds. EM violence intense enough to fry every circuit in his head. He was trapped in a crib of weight and pain so extreme that they crushed out every flicker or spasm of awareness. All his nerves became one long voiceless and unanswerable shriek.
    There was no escape as long as the belt of his suit remained anchored to the ship—
    and no escape if it failed. Mor-
    tal bone and tissue couldn't survive the weird translations of the singularity's event horizon. Like the stars and the gap, so much gravity transcended human existence.
    Infinite loss. Complete extinction. Every cell in his body wailed at the nearness of ultimate things. Perhaps he tried to twist against the strain, ease it somehow. He didn't know: his body understood only screaming.
    But then his hurts began to shut down like systems going off-line. Behind its shields, his datacore registered the scale of his distress and engaged its last prewritten defense: the one protection which might keep him alive—
    if not sane—
    when he
    suffered this much damage. It put him into stasis. Every iota of energy which his body and his power cells could supply was focused on sustaining his autonomic functions: pulse and respiration. Everything else was canceled.
    His flesh stopped its screaming because it was no longer accessible to pain. He was neither conscious nor unconscious: his mind occupied a place where such concepts had no meaning; a place beyond change or interpretation. If g crushed him to a bloody smear inside his EVA suit, he didn't know it. If the pressure released him entirely, he couldn't tell the difference.
    Time and space passed him by.
    And there was no one who could command his zone implants to release him.
    Pulse.
    Respiration.
    Stasis.
    Nothing else.
    If he could have identified where he was, he might have considered it Heaven.
    At some indefinable point—
    after instants or aeons of interven-
    ing peace—
    vestiges of recognition returned. On some level which seemed to have nothing to do with his mind, he understood that he was no longer outside the ship. His head wasn't confined by a helmet. Perhaps he knew that he was alive. The knowledge had no significance, however. It conveyed nothing; required nothing.
    When the DA medtechs had put him into stasis during the days and weeks of his welding, he'd been able to hear what they said in his presence. When Warden Dios had switched his datacore, the UMCP director's words had reached him clearly.
    Technically, we've done you a favor. That's obvious.
    You're stronger now, faster, more capable, effectively more intelligent. Not to mention the fact that you're still alive—
    In some sense he'd been aware of what he heard.
    In every other way, we've committed a crime against you.
    We've committed a crime against your soul.
    But he could not have reacted. Comprehension and recognition were