by John Ayliff
Keldra sat next to the dais, cocooned in a bulky motorized wheelchair that looked like it had been cobbled together from spare ship parts. She was dressed in a stained white medical robe, but her feet were bare and hung awkwardly just off the wheelchair’s footrests. Her chair was parked against the side of the dais, and her hand rested lightly on the surface of the Sphere, only occasionally lifting to allow the servitors to work.
She looked at Jonas as he entered. Her expression was hard to read. She looked tired, and her aggression was gone, as if the operation had drained the vitality out of her body. There was a resentful sadness on her face, but she also looked more at peace than he had ever seen her before.
‘How are you doing?’ he asked.
She shrugged, as if she was trying to convince herself she didn’t care. ‘I told you not to come in here,’ she said. Her voice was flat, not hostile.
‘That was a long time ago,’ he said.
‘Yes, it was.’
He gestured to the Worldbreaker Sphere. ‘It doesn’t go with the rest of the plants,’ he said. ‘I don’t think it’ll grow.’
An evil hint of a smile curled up the edge of her mouth. He smiled in sympathy. Keldra’s outward aggression might be gone, but it looked as though her central knot of determination was still there.
‘The other plants will crowd it out,’ she said. ‘They were here first.’ She stroked the surface of the Sphere, tracing one of the grooves that covered its surface, and her eyes wandered to the painted clouds on the walls. ‘It doesn’t need to be here long, anyway,’ she said more softly. ‘Just until it blooms.’
Jonas moved up to Keldra’s side. Her chair was tall enough to bring her face almost level with his. He noticed a set of wires breaking through the skin at the back of her neck and running into the mechanism of the chair.
‘I’m paralysed from the waist down,’ she said, matter-of-factly. ‘The laser severed my spine.’
‘That could be fixed,’ he said.
‘In a city hospital, maybe. Not in my medbay.’
‘Are you in pain?’
Keldra winced for a moment, as if remembering. ‘Not anymore,’ she said. ‘It’s uncomfortable, though.’
‘Good. I’m glad.’
She made a movement that was something between a nod and a shrug. ‘I thought you would be.’
With her hand still stroking the Sphere, she looked around at her garden, with its plants in untidy rows and its painted cloudy skies. Jonas wondered if she was comparing her garden to the one on the Aurelian.
‘It was a brave thing you did, though,’ he said. ‘Putting yourself in front of the beam.’
‘It was stupid,’ she said dismissively. ‘I should have found a way without getting injured. Anyway, you’re the one who got us out. I guess I should thank you.’ She gave him a piercing look, as if trying to read him. Her expression contained a little gratitude, or admiration, but there was something else there: disdain, perhaps, or suspicion. ‘You talked the Aurelian into shutting down.’
‘I just wanted it to let us go. I didn’t mean it to shut down.’
She looked away. ‘I don’t know what you said. I wasn’t fully conscious at the time.’
Jonas sat down on the edge of the dais next to her. She didn’t look at him. Her eyes wandered from the mechanical chair beneath her arms, to the surface of the Sphere where her hand still rested on it, and then to the cloudscape on the ceiling.
‘I’m going all the way down,’ Keldra said after a few moments.
‘What do you mean?’
‘You know what I mean,’ she said. ‘We’ll be passing through Belt Two soon. I’ll stop at one of the free cities, probably Tannhäuser, to sell everything I don’t need and make modifications to the ship. That’s your chance to get off.’
He didn’t say anything. He looked up at the Sphere, still seeming to radiate power even though its faint internal glow was invisible beneath the bright sub-Belt Three sunlight. They had the Sphere now, and he knew what she intended to do with it. The prospect of getting off at Belt Two should have excited him, but when he thought about the idea he felt empty.
Keldra looked at him for a few seconds, as if probing for a reaction, then gave up. ‘I’m tired,’ she said. ‘I want to be alone now.’
Jonas left.
Chapter Nineteen
The ellipse of light from Jonas’s headset lamp trembled across arcane complexities of machinery as he pushed himself further into the crawl space. The clutter of grey metal boxes reminded him of a shanty town seen from above, as if he was a giant crawling through the middle of a city habitat chamber. There was a cloying scent of oil and ozone, and every time he touched a surface, his hand came away with a thin coating of graphite that had leaked from an ancient air scrubber.
Keldra’s voice cracked in his earpiece. ‘Can you see it yet?’
‘Not yet.’
‘It should be right in front of you.’
Jonas squeezed further in, continuing to scan for the component she had described to him. He was in a barely human-sized space above the orbital corridor of the first ring, in the innards of the ring’s habitat system.
‘Useless bloody administrator,’ Keldra grumbled. ‘It’s always the engineers who do the work.’
It had taken Jonas finding Keldra sprawled on the corridor floor, angrily guiding a servitor to help her back into her wheelchair, before she had agreed to let him help with the modifications to the cooling system. Now she would supervise him, which meant sitting in the corridor nearby, guiding him through his headset, and shouting abuse when he was too slow for her liking.
The Remembrance of Clouds had been built to function in Belt Three; now that they were taking it closer to the sun they would have to modify it to cope with the increased level of solar radiation. A part of this meant overloading the cooling subsystem, essentially refrigerating the inhabited areas of the ship, pumping the heat into the external heat-radiation fins that Keldra was also expanding.
Jonas spotted a likely-looking component. He squeezed close to it, resisting the urge to sneeze as the graphite dust he disturbed got up his nose, and read the serial number out to Keldra.
‘That’s the one.’
He managed to get his fingers around the component and slowly teased it away from the larger system. He stuffed it into his bag and brought out the bulkier, modified replacement that Keldra had constructed in her lab.
‘Fuck,’ she said suddenly.
‘What?’ he asked. ‘Was that the wrong one?’
Her pilot implant allowed her to sense changes to the ship’s systems, registering them as damage, so she would know if Jonas had removed the wrong component.
‘Not you. There’s a ship on an intercept course,’ she said. ‘Get out of there and get to the bridge.’
He heard her wheelchair trundle away along the corridor. He pushed the replacement module into place then crawled back out of the hab system and dropped down to the floor.
He reached the bridge as Keldra was rolling up into her control nest. With help from him and a gang of servitors, she had removed the battered captain’s chair at the heart of the nest and repositioned some of the control boards around the space it had left. Her wheelchair now fitted snugly into the nest, putting all the controls within reach of her hands. Docked with the nest, surrounded on all sides by electronics and with cables snaking from the back of her neck and into the mass, she looked more than ever as if she was built into the ship.
The sun was large on the bridge screen, dimmed by automatic filters. Belt Two was close enough now for it to be visible, like a faint pencil line traced across the bronze disc. In response to Keldra’s silent command the view swung around starward, where Belt Three had receded to a barely visible silver thread. She zoomed the view and a blue-white reaction drive flame resolved in the middle of the screen, flaring counter-orbit. At its apex was a dark grey cylinder.
She slammed her palm on her control panel and scowled at Jonas. ‘I th
ought you said you’d got rid of them.’
He stared at the image, puzzled. ‘I thought I had.’
She brought up a belt chart on the bridge screen and traced the Iron Dragon’s likely course backwards. It looked as if it had passed close to the Aurelian, close enough to come inside the Earth ship’s weapon range, if its weapons had still been active. There was another ship, whose course had passed close to the Dragon’s, and which was now climbing back up to Belt Three. It was built like a cargo hauler, but it bore the Solar Authority logo.
Keldra stared at the screen, lips pursed. Her right hand was slowly clenching into a fist. Jonas expected her to turn and rant at him for ruining everything, maybe even physically attack him. Instead, she said quietly, ‘We can still beat him.’
‘How?’
‘This is a sail clipper,’ she said. ‘The closer we get to the sun, the more acceleration we have to work with.’
‘You think that’ll be enough?’
‘Just about.’ She sounded uncertain. ‘We’ll have to go straight through Belt Two. I’d been hoping to stop at Tannhäuser, buy new components, and complete the modifications, but I’ll have to do without.’ She looked at him, probingly. ‘I can still let you off. You can take a shuttle as we pass through, make your own way to Tannhäuser.’
‘You’d still have to slow in order to do that, or my shuttle would just fall out of the belt. Could you do that without the Dragon catching you?’
‘Maybe. I don’t know. It’ll be tight.’
‘You won’t be able to make the rest of the modifications without my help, anyway. You won’t make it all the way down.’
‘I’ll find a way.’ She was trying to sound confident, but Jonas knew she was unsure. She had never been much of a liar.
A few hours later, Jonas got back to his cabin and noticed a quiet chime sounding from his desk where he’d stashed Lance Cooper’s Earth-tech business card. It lit up to his thumbprint and a message scrolled across its face.
‘ATTENTION JONAS ’77-ATHENS. SITUATION HAS CHANGED RE SOLAR AUTHORITY AND YOU. MY ORDERS NOW TO CAPTURE WORLDBREAKER ARTEFACT. IF YOU DELIVER IT, IN RETURN I CAN GRANT AMNESTY AND SPECIAL TRUE-BORN STATUS. PLEASE ACKNOWLEDGE.’
Jonas stared at the message for a minute or two. The Solar Authority would know about the Sphere, and he could easily believe that they’d want to get their hands on it. For the Solar Authority to grant special true-born status to a tank-born was unusual but not unheard of, and it was certainly possible that Cooper’s offer was genuine.
He began to compose a reply, then cleared it, pocketed the business card, and headed for the bridge.
The bridge was empty. Keldra was probably in her garden. She had taken to spending much of her time there when she wasn’t working on the ship. She would sit next to the Worldbreaker Sphere for hours, sometimes resting her hand on its surface or casually stroking its grooves, staring at the white and blue swirls of her painted sky, surrounded by the scents of the plants and the trickle of the irrigation channels. On a few occasions, Jonas had found her sleeping in that room.
Of course, Keldra’s awareness wasn’t confined to a single room. Now more than ever it was the ship that was her real body, the crippled form in the chair merely its nucleus. She would be aware of everything he did, and even if she was asleep now, her pilot implant would alert her to any unusual activity when she woke. He decided he didn’t care.
He trained the Remembrance’s communications laser on the Iron Dragon and transmitted a handshake signal. After a few moments the response appeared on the bridge screen. Captain Cooper appeared at once this time, not making Jonas go through a communications officer first. He looked a little surprised to get Jonas’s reply through the communications laser rather than the secure business card, but he didn’t mention it.
‘Jonas ’77-Athens,’ he said.
‘Captain Cooper,’ Jonas replied. ‘You gave me your word you wouldn’t follow us.’
‘I offered you my word,’ Cooper said. ‘You refused it. I vented my fuel as you asked, and there our agreement ended. Then I called for a fuel tanker to be launched by rail gun from the nearest Authority fortress. Your lack of trust has led to this.’
Jonas rolled his eyes. Cooper seemed genuinely smug about following the letter of his code of honour. ‘What is it you want?’ he asked.
‘I want the Worldbreaker artefact, and anything else you took from the Aurelian,’ Cooper said. ‘Since the Solar Authority is descended from the Earth Authority, anything you found in the Aurelian rightfully belongs to us.’
Coming from anyone else, Jonas would have taken that argument for a joke, but Cooper might really believe it had some moral weight. ‘Why are you trying to make a deal?’ he asked. ‘Last time we met, you thought I was the worst kind of murderer.’
Cooper’s mouth curled as if he was tasting something bitter. ‘I have…reconsidered what I learned from the memory probe,’ he said. ‘I believe now that what I saw was a true representation of events. Your relationship with Gabriel Reinhardt was inappropriate, and your assuming his identity was still a crime, according to the Solar Authority’s treaties, but I do not believe that you murdered him.’
Jonas raised an eyebrow. ‘Was that an apology?’
‘It was the closest you’re going to get to one, tank-born. I told you because I want you to know that my offer is genuine. If you hand over the Worldbreaker artefact, I will call off all pursuit. I have arranged for the Solar Authority to grant you special dispensation to live as a true-born. You have been entered into the Authority databases as Jonas Reinhardt, the only surviving member of an offshoot of the Reinhardt family. As Jonas Reinhardt, you have five million credits at the Gemini Distributed Bank. Providing you do not attempt to contaminate the gene-pool by fathering children, you will be left to live as you please. It has been done before, more often than you probably realize.’
Jonas Reinhardt. The name made him feel dizzy, as if momentarily in free fall. ‘How do I know you’ll do it?’ he asked.
‘It is already done,’ Cooper said. ‘The Solar Authority true-born database is freely available. You can direct your communications laser at any Authority fortress and query it.’
‘What about Keldra?’
‘I was never interested in Keldra. She’s free to go. She can be a true-born too, if you make sure she can pass as one.’
‘Doesn’t Wendell Glass still want me taken in?’
‘Wendell Taylor Glass is not a client of the Solar Authority. After examining both cases, I recommended that the Solar Authority not aid him.’ Cooper smiled thinly. ‘He has you to thank for that, as a matter of fact. Some things you said in Wendell Glass’s vault prompted me to do more checking into his family’s history, and I learned that he once very nearly allowed his daughter to marry a tank-born freighter captain. That wouldn’t in itself disqualify him, but his keeping it from me cannot be forgiven.’
Jonas felt a pang of sympathy for Emily Taylor Glass. ‘Do you think Glass will try to fight Gouveia without your help?’ he asked.
‘I doubt it. He’s still posturing, but my agents report that he’s also preparing his ringship to leave Santesteban. He will most likely surrender the city to Gouveia before the situation turns violent, and relocate with his family to a neutral city. He won’t have the resources to hunt you down.’
‘Is that why you’re being so generous?’ Jonas asked. ‘Because I tipped you off to the Glass family history?’
‘Partly, but also because the Solar Authority is in your debt,’ Cooper said. ‘You’ve helped us to reclaim a treasure trove of Planetary Age artefacts. Auctioning them off to collectors will help to fund our peacekeeping work for decades to come. Think of my offer as a finder’s fee.’
‘And if I refuse?’
‘Then the boarding party will have orders to shoot to kill. As I said, the Authority is no longer interested in bringing you in for trial.’
‘You’ve got to catch us first.’
Cooper g
ave a patronizing look, but Jonas could tell it was a bluff. ‘You’re really going to try to outrun me?’
‘Credit me with some intelligence, Captain. This is a sail clipper and we’re heading sunward.’
‘The Iron Dragon can wait in a higher orbit and catch you when you come back up.’
‘Who said anything about coming back?’
Cooper paused. When he spoke again his voice was softer, as if he was no longer speaking true-born to tank-born or Solar Authority officer to outlaw, but human being to human being. ‘Why are you doing this, Jonas? Wendell Glass has the sense not to fight a battle he can’t win.’
‘It’s not about winning,’ he said, then stopped abruptly, surprised at the passion in his own voice. He had sounded just like Keldra when he had said it. He realized that his fist was clenched.
Lance Cooper was looking at him with a probing, expectant expression, head slightly to one side.
He stabbed the control to end the transmission and then stalked out of the bridge.
Jonas walked briskly along the first ring’s orbital corridor, eyes down, with no plan where he was going. It was the ship’s night-time, and the corridor lights were dimmed. He paused briefly at his cabin but didn’t touch the door. There was nothing for him in there.
He strapped himself into a transit module and went up to the ship’s spine. He found himself trembling as the weight drained from his body. He was angry, and he didn’t know why. Not angry at Cooper, or Keldra; not angry at anything, but angry.
He found himself climbing along the tunnel to the observation blister. Keldra’d had her servitors fix patches over the bullet holes in the inner hull, and weld up the arc that she’d cut in the blister’s door. Jonas closed the door behind him and then rested against it, feeling the ship’s acceleration push him back. He breathed in and out deeply, forcing himself to relax.
The mirrored golden plane of the sail filled half the universe. He could see the Remembrance of Clouds reflected in it, as if floating in a golden haze. The sail was at an angle to the ship, so the whole length of the ship was visible in reflection. The two grav-rings, whirling past one another, one with the great patch where the debris from Konrad’s Hope had punched through; the wide featureless tube that was the mouth of Keldra’s nuke-launcher; the spindly shapes of the smaller missile turrets scattered across the spine and cargo bay. The Earth mural, worn and peeling; flecks of ship-hull grey visible through the swirls of blue and white and green.