They faded in and out, chattering, snarling at each other. Sam seemed certain that Joshua had picked something up. He listened
to it in a waking daze as the
Madeeir
drifted past. Slowly, it was all happening in time stretched thin.
A lump of clear ice coasted past, as broad as his hand. There was a turquoise and orange fish inside, three eyes around a
triangular beaklike mouth, staring ahead, as if it was somehow aware of its surroundings, swimming along its eternal migration
path. He watched it dwindle away, too numb to try and collect it—gone for ever now.
He had virtually fallen asleep when the inertial-guidance program warned him he was now falling behind the
Madeeir
. The manoeuvring-pack jets began to fire in a long, elaborate pattern, reducing his velocity and altitude again, sending
him curving down behind the
Madeeir
.
Sam’s datavise: “… response from the flight computer… photonic interface point… ”
Octal’s datavise: “… fission blade won’t work, the fucking hatch is monobonded carbon, I’m telling you… Why don’t you listen,
arsehole… ”
Sam’s datavise: “… little shit… find his body… chew on his bones… ”
The manoeuvring pack took Joshua behind the
Madeeir
, the ship a fuzzed pink outline a kilometre ahead of him. He could catch an intermittent view of it through the swirl of
particles. Then he lowered his orbit again, a few hundred metres this time, and orbital mechanics reeled him in towards it
with painful slowness.
His approach was conducted solely within its blind spot, a cone extending backwards from its reaction drive. All he had to
do was keep the bulk of the engine bay between himself and the sensors protruding from the life-support module, and he would
remain undetected, especially in the clutter of the Ruin Ring. He also had the advantage that they thought he was dead. They
wouldn’t be looking, not for anything as small as a suit.
The last hundred metres were the worst. A quick burst of speed, rushing headlong into the twin pits of the reaction-drive
nozzles. If they started up now…
Joshua slid between the two fat bell-shapes, and anchored himself on the maze of thrust-distribution struts. The rockets were
similar in principle to the engines in his spaceplane, though he didn’t know the marque. A working fluid (usually a hydrocarbon)
was pumped into an energizer chamber where it was heated to about seventy-five thousand degrees Kelvin by a colossal discharge
from the power cells. It was a simple system, with few moving parts, little to go wrong, and cheap to maintain. Scavengers
didn’t need anything more, the delta-V you needed to travel between Tranquillity and the Ruin Ring was small. Joshua couldn’t
think of anyone who used a fusion drive.
He began to move around the gimbals, going hand over hand, careful not to jar his feet against anything. The power leads were
easy to find, superconductor cables as thick as his arm. He fished round his belt for the fission knife. The ten-centimetre
blade glowed a spectral yellow, unusually bright in the shade-soaked engine bay. It made short work of the cables.
Another quick climb brought him up against the hulking tanks. They were covered by a quilt of nultherm insulation blanket.
He settled himself at the bottom of one tank, and stripped a patch of the insulation away. The tank itself was a smooth dull
silver, merging seamlessly into the turbopump casing at its base. He jammed the thermal inducer into a support-strut joint,
squirted on some epoxy to make sure it wouldn’t slip, and datavised a series of orders into its processor.
Ten minutes later, the processor switched on the thermal-induction field. Joshua had programmed it to produce a narrow beam,
ten centimetres wide, three metres long. Three-quarters of it was actually projected inside the tank, where it started to
vaporize the hydrocarbon liquid. Frenzied currents churned, carrying more fluid into the field. Pressure built swiftly, rising
to dangerous levels.
The metal shell of the tank wasn’t quite so susceptible to the field. Its molecular structure retained cohesion for almost
twenty seconds before the sheer quantity of heat concentrated into such a small area disrupted the valency bonds. The metal
turned malleable and began to bulge outwards, impelled by the irresistible pressure mounting inside the tank.
In the
Madeeir
’s cramped cabin, Sam Neeves widened his eyes in horror as datavised alarms shrilled in his brain. Complex ship schematics
unfurled across his consciousness, fuel sections a frantic red. Emergency safety programs sent a torrent of binary pulses
into the engine bay. None of it made any difference to the rising pressure.
They were contingencies for malfunctions, he realized. This was something else, the tank was being subjected to a tremendous
energy input. The trouble was external. Deliberate.
“Joshua!” he roared in helpless fury.
After operating for twenty-five seconds at maximum expenditure the thermal inducer’s electron matrix was exhausted. The field
shut down. But the damage had been done.
The protuberance swelling from the tank was glowing a brilliant coral-pink. Its apex burst open. A fountain of boiling gas
streaked out, playing across the engine bay. Thermal blankets took flight, whirling away; composite structures and delicate
electronics modules melted, sending out spumes of incendiary droplets.
Madeeir
lurched forward, slewing slowly around its long axis as the rocketlike thrust of the erupting tank shoved against the hull.
“Holy shit,” Sam Neeves spat. “Octal! Octal, for Christ’s sake get back here!”
“What’s happening?”
“It’s Joshua, he’s fucked us. Get back here. The reaction control can’t keep her stable.”
Even as he said it the guidance data pouring into his mind showed the thruster clusters losing the battle to hold the ship
level. He tried to activate the main drive, the only engines with the strength to compensate for the rogue impulse of the
ruptured fuel tank. Dead.
A neural nanonic medical monitor program overrode his pacemaker, calming his frightened heart. Adrenalin buzzed in his head.
Sensors and control linkages from the engine bay were failing at an unbelievable rate. Large areas of the schematic in his
mind were an ominous black. The shell section loomed large in the forward sensors.
Joshua watched from behind the relative safety of a boulder three hundred metres away. The
Madeeir
was starting to tumble like the universe’s largest drumstick. Sparkly gas spewed out of one end, tracing a wavering arc through
space.
“We’re going to hit!” Sam Neeves datavised.
The
Madeeir
had already wobbled past the spaceplane, giving Joshua a nasty moment. Now it was careering towards the shell section. He
held his breath.
It should have hit, he thought, it really should. But the rotation it had picked up saved it.
Madeeir
flipped over the edge of the polyp cliff as if it was on pivots, its life-support module no more than five metres from the
surface. At that speed it would have been split open as though it was made of glass.
Joshua sighed as the gritty tension contracting every tendon drained away. They deserved death, but it would just have to
wait now. He had other priorities. Like making sure he lived. At the back of his mind there was a phantom throbbing from his
feet. His neural nanonics were reporting his blood was laced with toxins, probably some contamination from the burned flesh,
too.
Madeeir
raced onwards, deeper into the Ruin Ring. Already two hundred metres beyond the shell section. The plume of gas was visibly
weaker.
A small pearl-white mote curved over the edge of the shell section, chasing after the ship. Octal, desperate not to be stranded
alone with a spaceplane he couldn’t open. If he’d stopped to think, he might have sabotaged Joshua’s craft.
Be thankful for small mercies, Joshua told himself.
The manoeuvring pack lifted him from his hiding place behind the boulder. Its gas reserve was down to five per cent. Just
enough to get back to the spaceplane. Although he would have found a way even if it was empty. Somehow. Today he was fortune’s
child.
Like a fool Quinn Dexter had been waiting for the jolt, a blink of cold emptiness which would tell him the voyage had actually
taken place. It hadn’t happened, of course. The crewman had tugged him into the coffin-sized zero-tau pod, one of thousands
arranged in a three-dimensional lattice within the colonist-carrier starship’s vast life-support capsule. Unfamiliar with
free fall, and hating the disorientating giddiness every motion brought, Quinn had meekly allowed himself to be shoved about
like he was so much cargo. The cortical-suppressor collar pinching his neck made any thoughts of escape a pitiful fantasy.
Right up until the moment the pod cover had hinged smoothly over him he refused to believe it was happening, clinging to the
notion that Banneth would pull strings and get him off. Banneth was plugged into Govcentral’s State of Canada administration
as deep as a high magus in a virgin. One word, one nod of her head, and he would be free once more. But no. It hadn’t happened.
Quinn, it seemed, wasn’t important enough. There were hundreds of eager waster boys and girls in the Edmonton arcology who
even now would be vying to replace him, hungry for Banneth’s attention, her bed and her smile, a place in the Light Bringer
sect’s hierarchy. Youths with verve, with more style than Quinn. Youths who would strut rather than sweat when they were carrying
Banneth’s cargo of weird persona-sequestra-tor nanonics into Edmonton. Who wouldn’t be dumb enough to try and run when the
police stopped them at the vac train station.
Even the police had thought Quinn was crazy for doing that, laughing as they hauled his twitching stunned body back to Edmonton’s
Justice Hall. The carton had self-destructed, of course, an internecine energy flare reducing the nanonics to indecipherable
clusters of crumbling molecules. The police couldn’t prove he was carrying anything illegal. But the charge of resisting arrest
was good enough for the magistrate to slap an Involuntary Transport order on him.
Quinn had even tried giving the sect’s sign to the crewman, the inverted cross, fingers squeezing so tight his knuckles had
whitened.
Help me!
But the man hadn’t noticed, or understood. Did they even have Light Brother sects out amongst the stars?
The pod cover closed.
Banneth didn’t care about him, Quinn realized bitterly. God’s Brother, after the loyalty he’d shown her! The atrocious sex
she had demanded from him. “My little Sunchild,” she had crooned as he penetrated and was penetrated. The pain he had pridefully
endured at his initiation to become a sergeant acolyte. The weary hours spent on the most trivial sect business. Helping to
recruit his own friends, betraying them to Banneth. Even his silence after he was arrested; the beating the police had given
him. None of it meant shit to Banneth. He didn’t mean shit to Banneth. That was wrong.
After years bumming round as an ordinary waster kid, it had taken the sect to show him what he really was, an animal, pure
and simple. What they’d done to him, what they’d made him do to others, it was liberation, freeing the serpent beast which
lurked in the soul of every man. Knowing his true self was glorious. Knowing that he had the power to do what he wanted to
others, simply because he chose to. It was a magnificent way to live.
It made the lower ranks obey, out of fear, out of respect, out of adoration. He was more than their chapter leader, he was
their saviour. As Banneth was his.
But now Banneth had abandoned him, because Banneth thought him weak. Or perhaps because Banneth knew his true strength, the
conviction he had in himself. There were few in the sect who were as committed to worshipping the Night as Quinn. Had she
come to see him as a threat?
Yes. That was more likely. The true reason. Everyone feared him, his purity. And by God’s Brother they were right to do so.
The pod cover opened.
“I’ll get you,” Quinn Dexter whispered through clenched teeth. “Whatever it takes, I’m coming after you.” He could see it
then: Banneth violated with her own persona-sequestrator nanonics, the glittery black filaments worming their way through
her cortex, infiltrating naked synapses with obscene eagerness. And Quinn would have the command codes, reducing mighty Banneth
to a puppet made of flesh. But aware. Always aware of what she was being made to do. Yes!
“Oh, yeah?” a coarse voice sneered. “Well, cop this, pal.”
Quinn felt a red-hot needle jab up his spine pressing in hard. He yelped more with shock than pain, his back convulsing frantically,
pushing him out of the pod.
The laughing crewman grabbed him before he hit the mesh bulkhead three metres in front of the pod. It wasn’t the same man
that had put Quinn into the pod seconds before. Days before. Weeks…
God’s Brother, Quinn thought, how long has it been? He gripped the mesh with sweaty fingers, pressing his forehead against
the cool metal. They were still in free fall. His stomach oscillating like jelly.
“You going to put up a fight, Ivet?” the crewman asked.
Quinn shook his head weakly. “No.” His arms were trembling at the memory of the pain. God’s Brother, but it had hurt. He was
frightened the neural blitz had damaged his implants. That would have been the final irony, to have got this far only for
them to be broken. The two nanonic clusters the sect had given him were the best, high quality and very expensive. Both of
them had passed undetected in the standard body scan the police had given him back on Earth. They had to, possessing the biolectric
pattern-mimic cluster would have qualified him for immediate passage to a penal planet.
Being entrusted with it was another token of the sect’s faith in him, in his abilities. Copying someone’s biolectric pattern
so he could use their credit disk inevitably meant having to dispose of them afterwards. Weaker members might shirk from the
task. Not Quinn. He’d used it on over seventeen victims in the last five months.