by Ken MacLeod
Light and heat burst into Lanoe’s cockpit. Sweat burst out all over his skin. His suit automatically wicked it away but it couldn’t catch all the beads of sweat popping out on his forehead. He swiped a virtual panel near his elbow and his viewports polarized, switching down to near-opaque blackness. It still wasn’t enough.
There was a very good reason you didn’t shoot out of a wormhole throat at this kind of speed. Wormhole throats tended to be very close to very big stars.
He could barely see—afterimages flickered in his vision, blocking out all the displays on his boards. He had a sense of a massive planet dead ahead but he couldn’t make out any details. He tapped at display after display, trying to get some telemetry data, desperate for any information about where he was.
Then he saw the Hexus floating right in front of him. Fifty kilometers across, a vast hexagonal structure of concrete and foamsteel, like a colossal dirty benzene ring. Geryon, he thought. The Hexus orbited the planet Geryon, a bloated gas giant that circled a red giant star. That explained all the light and heat, at least.
He tried to raise Thom again with his comms laser but the green pearl wouldn’t show up in his peripheral vision. Little flashes of green came from his other eye and he realized he was being pinged by the Hexus. He thumbed a panel to send them his identifying codes but didn’t waste any time talking to them directly.
The Hexus was getting bigger, growing at an alarming rate. “Thom,” he called, whether the kid could hear him or not, “you need to break off. You can’t fly through that thing. Thom! Don’t do it!”
His vision had cleared enough that he could just see the yacht, a dark spot visible against the brighter skin of the station. Thom was going to fly straight through the Hexus. At first glance it looked like there was plenty of room—the hexagon was wide open in its middle—but that space was full of freighters and liners and countless drones, a bewilderingly complex interchange of ships jockeying for position, heading to or away from docking facilities, ships being refueled by tenders, drones checking heat shields or scraping carbon out of thruster cones. If Thom went through there it would be like firing a pistol into a crowd.
Lanoe cursed under his breath and brought up his weapon controls.
Centrocor freight hauler 4519 requesting berth at Vairside docks.
Vairside docks report full. Redirect incoming traffic until 18:22.
Valk ignored the whispering voices. He had a much bigger problem.
In twenty-nine seconds the two unidentified craft were going to streak right through the center of the Hexus, moving fast enough to obliterate anything in their way. If there was a collision the resulting debris would have enough energy to tear the entire station apart. Hundreds of thousands of people would die.
Valk worked fast, moving from one virtual panel to the next, dismissing displays and opening new ones. His biggest display showed the trajectory of the two newcomers, superimposed on a diagram of every moving thing inside the Hexus. Tags on each object showed relative velocities, mass and inertia quantities, collision probabilities.
Those last showed up in burning red. Valk had to find a way to get each of them to turn amber or green before the newcomers blazed right through the Hexus. That meant moving every ship, every tiny drone, one by one—computing a new flight path for each craft that wouldn’t intersect with any of the others.
The autonomic systems just weren’t smart enough to do it themselves. This was exactly why they still had a human being working Valk’s job.
If he moved this liner here—redirected this drone swarm to the far side of the Hexus—if he ordered this freighter to make a correction burn of fourteen milliseconds—if he swung this dismantler ship around on its long axis—
One of the newcomers finally responded to his identification requests, but he didn’t have time to look. He swiped that display away even while he used his other hand to order a freighter to fire its positioning jets.
Civilian drone entering protected space. Redirecting.
Centrocor freight hauler 4519 requesting berth at Vairside docks.
The synthetic voices were like flies buzzing around inside Valk’s skull. That freight hauler was a serious pain in the ass—it was by far the largest object still inside the ring of the Hexus, the craft most likely to get in the way of the incoming yacht.
Valk would gladly have sent the thing burning hard for a distant parking orbit. It was a purely autonomic vessel, without even a pilot onboard, basically a giant drone. Who cared if a little cargo didn’t make it to its destination in time? But for some reason its onboard computers refused to obey his commands. It kept demanding to be routed to a set of docks that weren’t even classified for freight craft.
He pulled open a new control pad and started sending override codes.
The freighter responded instantly.
Instructed course will result in distress to passengers. Advise?
Wait. Passengers?
Up ahead the traffic inside the ring of the Hexus scattered like pigeons from a cat, but still there were just too many ships and drones in there, too many chances for a collision. Thom hadn’t deviated even a fraction of a degree from his course. In a second or two it would be too late for him to break off—at this speed he wouldn’t be able to burn hard enough to get away.
On Lanoe’s weapons screen a firing solution popped up. He could hit the yacht with a disruptor. One hit and the yacht would be reduced to tiny debris, too small to do much damage when it rained down on the Hexus. His thumb hovered over the firing key—but even as he steeled himself to do it, a second firing solution popped up.
A ponderous freighter hung there, right in the middle of the ring. Right in the middle of Thom’s course.
It was an ugly ship, just a bunch of cargo containers clamped to a central boom like grapes on a vine. It had thruster packages on either end but nothing even resembling a crew capsule.
Lanoe had enough weaponry to take that thing to pieces.
He opened a new communications panel and pinged the Hexus. “Traffic control, you need to move that freighter right now.”
The reply came back instantly. At least somebody was talking to him. “FA.2, this is Hexus Control. Can’t be done. Are you in contact with the unidentified yacht? Tell that idiot to change his trajectory.”
“He’s not listening,” Lanoe called back. Damn it. Thom was maybe five seconds from splattering himself all over that ugly ship. “Control, move that freighter—or I’ll move it for you.”
“Negative! Negative, FA.2—there are people on that thing!”
What? That made no sense. A freight hauler like that would be controlled purely by autonomics. It wasn’t classified for human occupation—it wouldn’t even have rudimentary life support onboard.
There couldn’t possibly be people on that thing. Yet he had no reason to think that traffic control would lie about that. And then—
In Lanoe’s head the moral calculus was already working itself out. People, control had said—meaning more than one person.
If he killed Thom, who he knew was a murderer, it would save multiple innocent lives.
He reached again for the firing key.
There had to be an answer. There had to be.
Instructed course would result in distress to passengers. Advise?
Valk could see six different ways to move the freighter. Every single one of them meant firing its main thrusters for a hard burn. Accelerating it at multiple g’s.
If he did that, anybody inside the freighter would be reduced to red jelly. Unlike passenger ships, the cargo ship didn’t carry an inertial sink. The people in it would have no protection from the sudden acceleration.
Centrocor freight hauler 4519 requesting berth at Vairside docks.
The ship was too stupid to know it was about to be smashed to pieces. Not for the first time he wished he could switch off the synthetic voices that reeled off pointless information all around him. He opened a new screen and studied the freighter’s
schematics. There were maneuvering thrusters here, and positioning jets near the nose, but they wouldn’t be able to move the ship fast enough, there were emergency retros in six different locations, and explosive bolts on the cargo containers—
Yes! He had it. “FA.2,” he called, even as he opened a new control pad. “FA.2, do not fire!” He tapped away at the pad, his fingers aching as he moved them so quickly.
Instructed action may cause damage to Centrocor property. Advise?
“I advise you to shut up and do what I say,” Valk told the freighter. That wasn’t what it was looking for, though. He looked down, saw a green virtual key hovering in front of him, and stabbed at it.
Out in the middle of the ring, the freight hauler triggered the explosive bolts on all of its port side cargo containers at once. The long boxes went tumbling away with aching slowness, blue and yellow and red oblongs dancing outward on their own trajectories. Some smashed into passing drones, creating whole new clouds of debris. Some bounced off the arms of the Hexus, obliterating against its concrete, the goods inside thrown free in multicolored sprays.
On Valk’s screens a visual display popped up showing him the chaos. The yacht was a tiny dark needle lost in the welter of colorful boxes and smashed goods, moving so fast Valk could barely track it. But this was going to work, a gap was opening where the yacht could pass through safely, this was going to—
There was no sound but Valk could almost feel the crunch as one of the cargo containers just clipped one of the yacht’s airfoils. The cargo container tore open, its steel skin splitting like it was a piece of overripe fruit. Barrels spilled out in a broad cloud of wild trajectories. The yacht was thrown into a violent spin as it shot through the Hexus and out the other side.
A split second later the FA.2 jinked around a flying barrel and burned hard to follow the yacht on its new course, straight down toward Geryon.
Chapter Two
Lanoe had to lean over hard into a tight bank to avoid the swirl of cargo in the Hexus but he almost laughed as he worked his controls, throwing his stick to the left and then the right. Whoever was running traffic control back there was a genius.
He sobered up again almost instantly when he saw where he was headed next. Thom had been thrown for a loop by a grazing collision and now he was falling out of the sky. Up ahead lay the broad disk of Geryon, a boiling hell cauldron of a planet. Out of control and spinning, Thom couldn’t fight the pull of its gravity. He was going to fall right into that mess.
Geryon was a gas giant, a world with no surface, just a near-endless atmosphere. From a distance it looked like it was tearing itself apart from the inside out. It was banded with dark storms, nearly black, that hid an inner layer of incandescent neon. The buzzing red light streaked outward through every crack and gap in the cloud layer, rays of baleful effulgence spearing outward at the void.
Lanoe barely had time to get a look at the planet before the yacht pitched nose first into its atmosphere. He burned after it, down into the topmost clouds. He tried to paint the kid again with the communications laser, not expecting a result. He didn’t get one.
As he tore through the dark haze of the clouds he lost track of Thom altogether. Then suddenly the fighter burst through the bottom of a wisp of cirrus and Lanoe wasn’t in space anymore.
On every side, tortured clouds piled up around him in enormous thunderheads, whole towers and fortresses of cloud with ramparts and battlements that melted away into mist every time he tried to make out details. Rivers of dark blue methane coiled and bent around waves of atmospheric pressure.
The sheer scale of it was lost on him until he saw the yacht, a tiny dot well ahead of him. It shot through a streamer of mist that arched high overhead, but the streamer was just one tiny arm of a vast storm as big as an ocean on Earth. And that was just what Lanoe could see from inside the fighter, a tiny fragment of a colossal world of clouds.
The yacht was out of place in that vast cloudspace. A mote of dust on the storm. It was still tumbling, end over end—the kid hadn’t regained control. Tiny shards of debris were still pouring off its shattered airfoil, like thin smoke that traced out the yacht’s spinning, tumbling path. Damn it.
At least atmospheric resistance had slowed them right down—maybe Lanoe could actually catch the kid now.
The green pearl in Lanoe’s vision blinked back into existence, surprising him. The comms laser had reestablished contact.
“Thom,” Lanoe called. “Thom, are you there? Are you okay?”
The kid sounded terrified when he replied. Breathing hard, his voice pitched too high. “I’m…I’m still alive.”
“Damn it, Thom,” Lanoe said. “What were you thinking back there? There were people on that freighter. You could have killed them.”
It took a long while for Thom to reply. Maybe he was just struggling to pull out of his spin. Lanoe could see his attitude thrusters firing, jets of vapor that were lost instantly in the dark cloudscape.
When Thom did come back on the line he sounded calmer, but chastened. “I didn’t know that.”
Lanoe couldn’t help but feel for Thom. When the kid had made a break for it, when he’d stolen the yacht and run for the nearest wormhole, Lanoe had followed because he thought maybe, somehow, he could help. To the kid it must have looked like there was a hellhound on his tail. “Get control of your ship,” Lanoe told him. Though honestly it looked like Thom had already done just that. The yacht had stabilized its flight, even with one damaged airfoil. The kid had skill, Lanoe thought. He had the makings of a great pilot. If he didn’t die right here. “You all right?”
“I’m fine.”
“Then let’s think about how to keep you that way. Slow down and let’s talk about this. Okay? First things first, we need to get out of this atmosphere. Let’s head back to the Hexus. I can’t promise people there will be happy to see you, but—”
“I’m not going back,” Thom replied. “I’m never going back.”
It should have been over by now.
It should have been quick and painless. He should have hit that freighter dead-on and that would have been that.
Thom realized his eyes were closed. That was stupid. You never closed your eyes when you were flying—you needed to be constantly aware of everything around you. He opened his eyes and laughed.
There was nothing to see out there. Black mist writhed across his viewports. His displays were all turning red, but who cared? That was kind of the point, wasn’t it?
Just fade to black.
If only Lanoe would shut up and let him get on with it.
“There’s no way forward here, Thom. If I have to shoot you to stop this idiotic chase, I will. Turn back now.”
“Why would I do that?” Thom asked.
“Because right now I’m the only friend you have.”
“You were my father’s puppet. I know you’ll take me back there if I give you the chance.”
“You’re wrong, Thom. I just want to help.”
Thom leaned back in his crash seat and tried to just breathe.
He was surrounded by expensive wooden fittings. His seat was upholstered in real leather. He couldn’t help thinking the yacht would make a luxurious coffin.
Thom was—had been—the son of the planetary governor of Xibalba. He was used to a certain degree of luxury. He understood now how much of that he’d taken for granted. Nothing had ever been denied to him his whole life.
No one had ever bullied him in school—his father’s bodyguards had seen to that. No one had ever said no to him as long as he could remember. But now Lanoe wouldn’t just give up. Wouldn’t just let him go.
It was infuriating.
Thom wondered why he didn’t just switch off his comms panel. Block Lanoe’s transmission. Maybe, he thought, he just wanted to hear another human voice before he ended this.
Even if he didn’t want to hear what Lanoe had to say.
“I was just your father’s escort pilot, Thom. I’m not here to a
venge him. The Navy assigned me to work for him, but it was just a job. I never even liked him.”
“I hated him,” Thom replied, unable to resist. Maybe he wanted to justify what he’d done. “I always hated him.”
“Well, that’s in the past now,” Lanoe said. “As is my job—I don’t owe him anything now that he’s dead. I came after you because believe it or not, I do like you. That’s all. Please believe me.”
“I can’t,” Thom said. “Lanoe, I’m sorry, but I can’t trust anyone right now.”
Over the line he could hear Lanoe sigh in frustration. “Why’d you even do it?” Lanoe asked. “Why kill him? In a year you would have been away at university. Away from him.”
“You think so?” Thom said. “You don’t know anything, Lanoe.”
“So enlighten me.”
Thom smiled at the black mist that surrounded him. He couldn’t think of a good reason to lie, not now. “I wasn’t going to Uni. I wasn’t going anywhere. He was sick. All that stress of his high-powered job just ate away at his heart. You know what they do, when your body gives out like that? They give you a new one.”
“So he would have lived a little longer—”
“You still don’t understand, do you? I wasn’t born to be his heir.”
When you were rich and powerful, you didn’t have to worry about getting sick. You didn’t have to make do with an artificial pump ticking away in your chest, or taking immunosuppressive drugs for the rest of your life. You didn’t even have to worry about getting old.
No, not if you had a little forethought. Not if you could afford to have children. Kids whose neurology was a perfect match for your own.
The old man could have arranged for Thom to have an accident that left him brain dead. Then he could have his own consciousness transferred into Thom’s young, healthy body. It happened all the time in the halls of power. The legality was questionable but a lot of rules didn’t apply to planetary governors.