by Jaine Fenn
‘That’s why we’re here,’ Jarek said. ‘Now, let’s work out what we can do, shall we? Personally, I’d risk the defences and come in to check out the status of the beanstalk, but this isn’t just up to me; I’ll only do it if my companions agree.’
‘Of course,’ said Kerin.
Taro looked at Nual, who said slowly, ‘If Kerin wishes it, we should help. We are fighting the same enemy.’
‘I’m in too,’ said Taro.
‘So that’s a “yes” then. Right, Kerin, we’ll speak again when I’m closer – assuming those weapons really are inactive! I’ll keep the channel open so you can call me if you need to.’
‘I will be here.’
Jarek minimised the call and swivelled his couch. ‘You two can stay on the bridge if you like, but only if one of you gets me a caf first. I think I’m going to need it.’
While Jarek plotted their approach, Taro and Nual carried on going through the Sidhe files. They’d have been more comfortable in the rec-room, but if everything did go to shit, there was an unspoken agreement that they’d see it coming and go out together.
Finally Jarek said over his shoulder, ‘We’re going in.’
Though Taro caught his breath, there wasn’t much to see – just space, big and black outside the dome, and Jarek’s hands, flying across the controls in here.
When the planet itself came into view, a distant bright half-circle, he watched it for a while, but after several minutes had passed and they still hadn’t been blown up, Taro risked speaking. ‘Er, I notice we’re not dead.’
‘Well spotted. If the defence grid was going to fire on us, it would have done so by now.’
‘Top prime.’
‘Yeah, but that’s not our only problem. I need to show you something.’ The holocube display changed as Taro and Nual approached, to show Serenein at the bottom and the beanstalk growing up from it; the lump of the counterweight was at the top, with another lump, presumably the transfer-station, a little way below it. ‘That’s a real-time projection, magnified and enhanced so you can see everything. We’ll actually be coming in on the planet’s nightside. Now, watch this.’
A blinding barrage of flashes went off in the space around the beanstalk.
‘Shit!’ said Taro, ‘is that the point-defences?’
‘Sort of – they’re currently firing about once every hour or so. What you just saw is a sim: I asked the comp to light up everything in the debris cloud that will, at some point in the next year, be in range of the beanstalk lasers. The cloud’s smearing, spreading out to orbit the planet, so the calculations aren’t perfect, but it gives you an idea. And that’s just the big stuff; we’re still too far out to pick up any micro-sized motes.’
‘And we gotta fly through all that shit?’ Taro breathed.
‘Yeah, we do.’
‘So we’re gonna take it easy, yeah?’ In Taro’s experience, Jarek wasn’t always one for taking the slow and steady course.
‘We’d have to go really slowly to significantly reduce the risk of taking a hit. If the point-defences are starting to fire selectively, we need to get in there quickly and fix them – they’ve only got to screw up once for something to get through and take out the beanstalk.’
Taro had a sudden thought. ‘Aren’t the point-defences gonna fire on us when we get close? I mean, won’t we look like a big lump of debris heading straight for the beanstalk? ’
‘Fortunately there’s an approach corridor,’ said Jarek. ‘Provided we come in under power, on precisely the course from the Setting Sun’s comp, the defences will register us as a friendly ship, and not fire. But I’ll need to run some more sims, to make sure none of that debris out there’s going to trigger the lasers near us when we make our final approach . . . Or hit us before we even get that far, for that matter. And yes, I could use another drink.’
‘I’ll fix a round,’ said Taro. This situation was way beyond his own meagre piloting abilities.
By the time he got back, he could see the central habitable area of green and brown between Serenein’s massive ice-caps. Jarek was hard at work at the comp, but he paused long enough to give Taro a smile when he put the caf down. ‘Thanks, mate. This is where it gets really tricky.’
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Lining up with a transfer-station on a beanstalk wasn’t a straightforward manoeuvre at the best of times, let alone with the added dangers of crossfire and space debris. Though the comp would do the calculations, Jarek needed to provide the correct inputs, and monitor the Heart of Glass’s vector. He normally ran the comp on silent mode – its smug voice bugged him – but now he switched on voice activation: there were some alerts he couldn’t afford to miss.
It was a while before he had time to drink the caf Taro had brought him, but once the comp came back with the answer he’d been hoping for, he allowed himself a brief time out, thanking Taro for having the forethought to use a bulb rather than a mug, so the caf was still warm. He decided against telling his companions that he’d managed to plot a debris-free course, in case that jinxed it. He wasn’t going to say they were safe until he was sure they were. He kept an eye on his readouts, but as he drank, he found his mind recalling his first visit . . .
He’d slipstreamed the Setting Sun on spec, following a tip-off about this independent tradebird that allegedly disappeared from the shipping-lanes for up to three months every couple of decades. At the time he’d assumed it was a freetrader outfit who’d found a new – and possibly lucrative – transit-path. He already knew the Sidhe were still around, thanks to Nual, but he’d left her on Vellern nearly seven years before and his level of paranoia had dropped to wary caution.
Serenein’s orbital weapons hadn’t fired on him at once, and he’d been oblivious to the planet’s defence grid, too busy tailing the Setting Sun and waiting for them to spot him and ask what the fuck he thought he was up to . . . He remembered being puzzled that they hadn’t commed him yet.
Then the weapons had opened up – or rather, one lone platform had fired one single projectile, and his basic countermeasures had defeated what he’d thought at the time was a not-so-smart-missile. Afterwards, of course, he’d had to reassess his opinion of the defences; it was much more likely the Sidhe ship had overridden the weapons and then initiated that one ineffectual attack, which had been enough to disconcert and distract him, so when the human pilot of the ship had commed him, claiming his vessel had sustained damage and needed help, Jarek had taken the distress call at face value. He’d rushed in – and promptly been captured. And that’s when things turned really nasty . . .
‘Proximity alert.’ The comp’s synthesised voice startled him, and he dropped the bulb. ‘Where?’ he asked, scanning his console.
The comp obligingly maximised the source of the alarm: an extensive shower of debris motes.
The ship’s nav-shields were good, but there was a limit to how much they could push aside, and at this speed even objects too small to see could tear a hole right through the ship. He’d been banking on the wreckage being in large lumps. It looked like he’d been wrong.
Time for some emergency evasive tactics; the view changed from the sliver of Serenein’s globe currently in sunlight to the darkness of space.
Jarek looked back down at his display and ramped up the shield on the planet-ward side. They were definitely going to clip the edge of this debris cloud. In the clarity of cold panic he wondered if there might be something in Taro’s opinions on the advantages of neurolinked flying. Jarek had always maintained those extra milliseconds of reaction time wouldn’t make much difference to a freetrader . . . he hoped the next few minutes weren’t about to prove him wrong.
Fortunately, he knew the Heart of Glass inside out; he could fly her blind, if he had to. He ignored the warning display – he already knew they were close to operational parameters, thanks very much; some of the crap the shields were pushing aside was large enough to send faint judders through the ship. Instead, he concentrated on the sensors
, hardly daring to blink, constantly assessing the debris cloud, tweaking the ship’s course second by second, trying to keep as close to his planned vector as he could; if he strayed too far off, the comp projections he’d so painstakingly programmed would no longer be accurate, and he was likely to find himself in the path of something big enough to cut right through the shields and take them out in one hit.
More juddering, more flashing lights, more verbal warnings but nothing more serious, thank Christos.
As they cleared the cloud he let himself exhale. He could feel the eyes of his two companions focused on him.
‘You might want to suit up,’ he said, failing to sound quite as casual as he’d intended.
‘V-suits?’ asked Taro. ‘We really in that much shit?’
‘Hopefully not, but . . . just do it, all right?’ He didn’t have the energy for complicated explanations, not while he was still glued to his sensor readouts.
‘We only have two suits,’ said Nual quietly, ‘yours, and the one Taro acquired at Aleph.’
‘Yeah, so you two suit up—’
‘What about you?’ said Taro.
‘As I was saying, you two suit up and find the patch-kit. It’s in the engineering locker.’ When they didn’t respond, he added, ‘Please, just do it. If we do get a breach, you’re going to have to fix it, ideally quickly enough that I don’t regret not being in a suit.’ Despite his years in space, Jarek sometimes forgot how dangerous hard vacuum was; having grav-tech that kept you pinned to the floor and dealt with most minor hazards lulled you into a false sense of security. He made a mental note to invest in another suit as soon as they got back to human-space. Assuming they got back to human-space.
‘We’re on it,’ said Taro, following Nual down.
Just after they’d left the bridge, the comp announced, ‘You have deviated from the calculated course into a high-hazard area.’
‘No shit,’ he muttered, and made a hurried sensor-sweep: the comp was right, of course. He cut his speed slightly; it might throw the original calculations, which would mean more work for the comp, but it would also give him more time to react. Following Jarek’s order, the comp grabbed the incoming data and went to work on a new vector to get them back on their original heading without hitting anything big.
Taro’s voice came over the com, ‘Er, sorry to disturb you, but we’ve got the kit. Where d’you want us?’
‘The rec-room’s fine for now.’ From the heart of the ship they’d be ready to go in any direction . . . maybe not so useful if the bridge took a hit, but in that case he’d most likely be fucked anyway.
The comp stated: ‘Unable to calculate course.’
‘You what?’
‘Please restate query.’
‘Fuck it,’ murmured Jarek, and interrogated the comp via the manual controls. Never a machine empath around when you need one—
Ah, that was it: there was no course that wouldn’t bring them dangerously close to something that could kill them. Fucking marvellous. Right then, time to work out the least bad option. Dodging the big stuff had to be the priority, and if that meant hitting more clouds of motes – so be it.
He cut across the comp’s attempts to make him pay attention to its warnings, and selected the least scary-looking option.
‘Things might be about to get a bit hairy,’ he said over the com.
‘We’re standing by,’ said Taro, his voice terse.
No point trying to scrub more speed; by the time he’d decelerated enough to make any difference they’d be through. Or not. If he still believed in God, he’d be praying right now.
A series of small vibrations shook the ship. Sweat prickled over Jarek’s forehead as the shields went amber. A fraction of a second later, the comp, sounding totally unconcerned, stated: ‘Warning. Hull has been breached.’
‘Fuck! Where? How badly?’ he shouted.
‘Please restate query,’ said the comp calmly.
Jarek forced himself to speak slowly and carefully: ‘What is the location of the hull breach? How big is it?’ He couldn’t hear the rush of escaping air – but then, he couldn’t hear much at all over his pounding heart.
‘A double breach has occurred,’ the comp advised him. ‘The entry and egress points are between two and three millimetres in size. Both are located in the cargo-hold.’
Taro’s voice came over the com. ‘D’you need us to—?’
‘No, we’ll leave them for now – just don’t open the door to the cargo-hold!’ He gave silent thanks to the nameless ship designer who’d decided to wrap the ship’s cargo-hold around the living quarters and provide inner pressure-doors.
The sensors were showing them nearing the edge of the current cloud. Though the comp wasn’t indicating any large hazards ahead, there was always the exciting possibility of more motes he’d not spotted yet.
As his breathing began to return to normal, Jarek realised why there was so much debris – the Sidhe ship must have chosen the same course he had, so when it got blown up, that’s where most of its remains had stayed. Blindingly obvious, once he stopped to think about it. He’d know better next time.
They were decelerating hard now, ready to match velocity with the beanstalk and as Jarek watched, the planet moved slowly back into view. The surface below was dark, though the beanstalk’s counterweight was still in sunlight. He called Nual and Taro back to the bridge.
‘Sorry to be a bit short with you earlier,’ he said as Taro flew up through the hatch.
‘No worries. Thinking I’m gonna die makes me tetchy too,’ Taro said with a grin. ‘How’re we doing?’
‘We’re coming into the area of space protected by the point-defences,’ He didn’t see any point in mentioning that someone – Damaru, maybe accidentally – might have messed with the settings on the beanstalk’s defences, possibly even nullifying the approach corridor he was about to fly them down. They weren’t going to turn back, whatever happened.
In some ways, this last section was the easiest: once inside the point-defences, they shouldn’t have to worry about running into debris. Jarek still hunched over the console, ready to take evasive action if the lasers did fire on them.
So far, so good. He glanced up through the dome: the comp’s simulation indicated that spot there would light up, in three seconds, two, one—
—and there it was, a quick flash of silver.
‘What was that?’ asked Taro, sounding distinctly twitchy.
‘That was the most reassuring sight I’ve seen in a while,’ Jarek said with a smile. ‘The comp predicted the lasers would fire on some debris, and they just did.’
‘Thank fuck for that.’
‘You said it!’
The beanstalk was in shadow now. Ahead, the plain cube of the transfer-station was a dark lump, with the bulk of the Setting Sun a larger and less regular lump attached to one side. Neither showed any lights. The Sidhe ship was a top-of-the-range tradebird, half the age and ten times the size of the Heart of Glass. Last time he’d been here he’d only cared about getting away, but now he was looking at it, he reckoned they could really use a ship like that.
But first things first . . .
He took full manual control and brought them in, initially using a real-time projection in the holocube as a guide, overlaying a false-colour image on the display to avoid getting too close to the currently invisible beanstalk cable. The last few metres were reassuringly anti-climactic and he docked the Heart of Glass at the end of the Setting Sun’s command corridor without a hitch.
Once he had a green light on the airlock seal, Jarek put his hands on the pilot’s console, leaned forward and let out a long, loud sigh. As he straightened he caught sight of the time: that little episode had taken more than three hours. It had felt like a tenth of that – or possibly ten times as long.
When he stood up, Taro was already there with a fresh bulb of caf. ‘I knew I kept you around for something,’ he said with a smile.
Taro affected a look of moc
k hurt. ‘Actually, we’ve been making ourselves useful-like: we took our minds off being shit-scared by reading the Setting Sun’s files. We’ve dug up some real prime info.’
‘Tell me while I drink this and get ready.’
Taro and Nual followed him down to the rec-room, where he gathered together a few items.
Nual said, ‘We think we know how the incoming Sidhe ship dealt with the defence grid: there’s a way of completely shutting down the weapons, rather than overriding them, and until they’re reset the defence grid is totally inactive – it won’t accept any instructions, not from the Cariad, nor incoming ships.’
‘Any idea how to get it back online?’
‘You just have to enter a code – that’s the good news. The bad news is that you need to do it on the “cold-start console” – but what and where that console is . . . I’ll keep looking for information on it, but we were concentrating on the point-defences.’
‘Fair enough. And what’s the news there?’
‘You can access them from the transfer-station.’
‘That’s a good start.’ He led the way back into the rec-room.
‘And they’re solar-powered.’
‘Not so good. Solar is pretty low-output . . . but then, it’s also low-maintenance, and normally the lasers just have to pick off occasional dust motes. I guess solar makes sense, given how long this set-up gets left to its own devices. The problem is the debris from the ship Damaru blew up is going to orbit the planet until it either falls low enough to burn up in the atmosphere or else gets zapped down to nothing by the point-defences, and that’ll take years – and there’re other systems on the transfer-station that need that power too.’ He sighed. ‘I guess it’s no wonder the point-defences are running down.’
‘So what’re we gonna do?’ asked Taro.
‘I need to think about it. Right now I’ve just remembered I forgot to pick up my gun from my cabin,’ he said. ‘Back in a mo.’ He expected the Setting Sun to be completely locked down, just as he’d left it, but with the Sidhe, it paid to be paranoid.