On the Steel Breeze (49 page)

As if she needed to be told twice.

She yanked the controls. There was nothing expert or considered about her inputs – a child could have achieved the same finesse. But the shuttle responded, dutifully obeying its heavy-handed mistress, and through the windows the stars jerked and tumbled, over and over. Alarms sounded. Unsecured items crashed around in storage bins. An arm flapped out like a salute, hinged with bruising force back into the side of its body.

‘Release authority,’ Noah said. ‘Let the shuttle sort itself out. You did well.’

‘Thanks. Be even better if I knew what I just did.’

‘We think they’d stretched something between the two locks – a tether or grappling line, or maybe some kind of monomolecular filament, like spiderfibre. That was why they were moving as a pair. We didn’t get a good view of the second shuttle, but we think there was probably a man in each lock, ready to release the line as the two ships pulled further apart.’

The shuttle had corrected the damage she had done, silencing its alarms, restabilising itself and resuming the original vector.

‘Our relative speed would have been pretty high, wouldn’t it?’ she asked.

‘Oh yes – kilometres per second. More than sufficient.’

‘For what?’

‘Let’s assume there were weights at either end of the line, to give it some tension as it started cutting. It would have gone through you
like a laser. Nice piece of improvised space weaponry.’

‘Could you possibly sound a bit less warmly appreciative?’

‘Sorry. But you did well – once the tether was released, they couldn’t alter its course. You threw enough randomness into your trajectory to avoid being sliced.’

‘Why did we have to wait until the last moment?’

‘Couldn’t be sure when they’d release. Seemed safer not to give them any warning that you had a trick up your sleeve.’

‘It was up your sleeve, not mine. Are we safe now? What about
Icebreaker?’

‘Transmitting warnings now – they have more delta vee to play with than you, so they should be able to give those shuttles the run-around.’

‘Just as long as I can still catch up. Do you think they’ll try the same thing twice?’

‘I think that was their one shot – they’d have to come almost close enough together to dock to stretch out another line between them, and that’d cost them time, which is as much of a problem for them as it is for us. They appear to be pulling back towards
Zanzibar
now – our problem, not yours.’

‘Thank you, Noah.’ But if he intended his comment to elevate her spirits, it had exactly the opposite effect. Whatever happened to
Zanzibar,
Ndege and Mposi would be part of it. She hoped for their sakes that diplomacy would find a solution, a path that avoided bloodshed. Collectively they had come so far, done so much – the holoships were a triumph of cooperation and common purpose, emblems of a better way of being human. Whatever differences now existed, whatever enmities and grudges, it would be unforgivable to throw away so much that was good. ‘Let them in, if they insist,’ she said. ‘Roll out the red carpets, make them feel at home. We’ll gain nothing by fighting them, not if they want to take control by force. Most of our citizens had no knowledge of
Icebreaker
– we can’t punish our own people by turning this into a civil war.’

‘There’ll be no armed resistance,’ Noah avowed. ‘They’ve committed the first violent act, even if it didn’t succeed. We won’t stoop to their level.’

‘It’s easy to say that now. But we have to hold to it, no matter how difficult it becomes—’

‘I know that,’ Noah said, talking over her. ‘But you have to let us go now, Chiku – let us face this alone. You have your own challenges. Leave
Zanzibar
to the rest of us. We’ll rise to the occasion.’

‘You’re not alone. Remember that.’

‘I shall,’ Noah said.

After the failed attack, the rest of the crossing was almost anticlimactic. The shuttle made rendevous with
Icebreaker
and they transferred aboard the much larger vehicle without fuss. The shuttle was nearly out of fuel, so the best they could do was abandon it. Someone might decide it was worth the bother of reclaiming as it drifted further and further ahead of the holoship. It was certainly of no use to the expedition, adding dead mass where none was needed.

Plans months in the drafting argued over to the last detail lay in tatters. There had never been any possibility of performing a full test of the Post-Chibesa engine within
Zanzibar,
not if secrecy were to be upheld. So they had tested components of it at near capacity, and the whole only at a very low energy regime, where the physics scarcely deviated from the standard Chibesa model. Enough to verify that things
should
work, but hardly enough to satisfy all qualms. They had intended, once
Icebreaker
was clear, to run a suite of tests at steadily higher energies. It was true that there had always been the expectation of other ships being launched from nearby holoships, but Chiku’s planners had never guessed that the launches would happen even before
Icebreaker
was released from
Zanzibar,
squeezing the margins down to minutes instead of hours.

All of a sudden, though, it struck Chiku that caution was now her enemy. If the PCP engine did not work exactly as predicted, they were all doomed anyway. Better to find that out now, in one clean gamble, then submit to a pointless agony of expectation.

She met with Travertine, expecting an argument.

‘No, I agree totally. You’ve staked everything on this, and so have I.’

‘I’m not sure what you’ve staked personally,’ Chiku said.

‘Only my entire reputation. Kappa dented my pride. I made an error, allowed my experiment to run beyond my immediate control. I’ve lived with my mistake, and with the ignominy of being paraded as an example to others, but I refuse to live with a second dose of failure. If the PCP engine doesn’t work, it probably won’t just stop. I think we’ll be looking at something much more . . .’

‘Catastrophic?’

‘I was going to say glorious, but catastrophic works just as well. If I’m wrong, we won’t live long enough to realise it, and I think I prefer it that way. We’ll make a very bright splash, whatever happens.’

‘Run the engine to maximum power. When we’re satisfied that we have a stable burn, we’ll dump the ballast.’

‘Make sure everyone’s strapped in, then – even with the ballast, it’s going to be a bit of a bumpy ride.’

Chiku checked on the rest of the crew as she returned to her seat. Most of them had remained in their sturdy acceleration couches after launch with the exception of those destined for skipover. The huge lander was already maintaining a gee of steady thrust, but if their simulations were on the mark, the PCP engine was capable of exceeding this acceleration by a factor of ten – more than a human body could tolerate over an extended period of time, even in a couch.

To counteract this, they had packed the lander with liquid water, thereby increasing
Icebreaker
’s effective mass by a factor of three. Theoretically, it would allow the engine to be run up to maximum capacity without imposing bone-crushing loads on the living crew. The engine would need to run for a hundred hours to bring
Icebreaker
up to its cruising velocity of one-quarter of the speed of light, and two hundred hours to achieve slowdown around Crucible – more than a week of continual thrust. As soon as they were happy that the engine was working as it should, they could begin to dump the ballast and selectively pressurise the evacuated hull spaces, giving the crew more room to move around when they emerged from skipover.

Once Chiku was satisfied that her volunteers were either strapped down or on their way into skipover, she reviewed the developing situation around
Zanzibar.

Already she felt the distance. Space between Chiku and her world, her children, Noah and her work, the good things in her life, her home and its simple pleasures, was dilating itself with spiteful haste, as if it held some deep personal grudge against her.
Icebreaker
had been on its way for only an hour (an hour that seemed longer than that, it was true) and in that time it had crossed two thirds of a million kilometres – enough distance to wrap the Earth eighteen times, or to ensure that a radio signal took more than four seconds to travel to
Zanzibar
and back. Already the events she witnessed on
Zanzibar
were pushed back into her personal past by entire heartbeats, entire moments.

Zanzibar
had made no efforts to resist the inspection parties, and now they were docking and boarding, taking turns to use the airlocks. The ships that had veered off to meet the shuttle and
Icebreake
r had by now returned to the main grouping, standing off until docking slots were available. Meanwhile, the second wave of vehicles was very close to arriving, and more were on the way. More than fifty ships, at the last count, each of which could easily contain a dozen or more constables.
Zanzibar
’s normal peacekeeping authority, even for a citizenship of millions, numbered much less than a thousand. They had simply never needed a strong police force. It would not take many more arriving ships to place their own constabulary in the minority.

Public eyes showed the new constables emerging from the airlocks and moving out into
Zanzibar
’s civic spaces. They were not obviously armed or armoured, but some were accompanied by peacekeeping robots, striding black things like long-legged spiders. They unnerved Chiku, and she was momentarily glad of the widening distance. She had seen similar robots during her visits to other holoships, but they had never been considered necessary in
Zanzibar.

‘The mood is about as calm as you’d expect,’ Noah reported from a car taking him back to the Assembly Building. ‘We’ve issued general orders to all citizenry and constables – treat the visitors as honoured guests, obey all reasonable requests. It’s too soon to tell if there’ll be trouble – it’ll be hours before they establish a visible presence throughout
Zanzibar.
People are twitchy and confused. Most of them don’t even know what happened with
Icebreaker
!’

‘Issue a statement,’ Chiku said. ‘Give the citizenry the facts. Help them understand that what we’ve done could be considered a provocative act.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘It’s the only way. If they start feeling the constables have come barging in without justification, someone somewhere is going to do something stupid. Probably involving a shovel and a skull.’

‘We’re already fielding questions. People want to know if this is the start of an occupation.’

‘Just tell them the truth – which is that you don’t know and it isn’t in your power to decide. Say that
Zanzibar
will comply with the wishes of the Council of Worlds.’

‘Don’t you think our assurances are going to ring a bit hollow given that we’ve already gone against the Council by launching the ship?’

‘They can believe us or not, Noah, but
Icebreaker
is a fait accompli. We’re on our way now, and there’s no point in punishing those of you left behind. Most of had nothing to do with the expedition in the first place.’

‘I look forward to testing out that line of argument. We’re ahead of the constables now, but they’re moving in on the administrative core. They’ve demanded access to the Assembly Building.’

‘You’d better let them in – they’ll only make you if you don’t.’

‘No kidding. It’s going to be very difficult for the Assembly to have any kind of private discussion to decide on our next move. You’re right to dismiss armed resistance – but we don’t
have
to let the rest of the ships dock. We could seal off
Zanzibar,
declare unilateral independence from the Council.’

‘And what about the constables already inside?’

‘The numbers are marginal at the moment – we could take them, if we have to.’

‘And their robots?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘It’s not an option, Noah. We depend on the caravan for so much. We can’t pull up the drawbridge, expect to go it alone. At the very least we’d put our citizens – including
my
children – through hardships that they don’t deserve. At worst we’d invite a forced occupation. If we won’t give them access to our locks, they’ll tunnel their way in through our skin.’

‘We can’t just . . . concede.’

‘The work is done.
Icebreaker
is on its way. In that sense we’ve achieved what we wanted to.’

‘No,’ Noah corrected. ‘We’ve taken the first step, that’s all. Even if the engine works, we still need to scale it up for holoship use. If the Council can’t be made to see that, then perhaps we really do need to declare independence.’ She heard him thump part of the car’s interior in frustration. ‘Fuck! I don’t feel equipped for this. Maybe we have it all wrong, you know? Maybe we should just keep going, forget about Crucible.’

‘We must reach Crucible, Noah,’ she said. ‘Don’t start doubting that now.’

‘It was just a thought.’

‘Good – keep it that way. Look, we both know this is going to be difficult, but I trust you to make the right decisions – to hold the line, to do the right thing by our people.’

‘I’m nearly at the Assembly. The constables won’t be more than half an hour behind, if we’re lucky. I’m going to speak to Eunice.’ She smiled as he spoke the name – a daring thing, even now. ‘She needs to know what’s going on.’

‘I doubt she’s in the dark, but you’re right – talk to her now, before it gets more difficult. And tell the children not to worry. It’s all going to be all right.’

‘Do you really believe that?’

‘I want to,’ she said. ‘Very badly. And I think if we all try our hardest
not to do anything stupid,
all
of us – you, me, her, the rest of the caravan – we might have a chance.’

‘Just a chance?’

‘It’s better than no chance at all. We’re in a mess, Noah – cleverness got us into it, and more cleverness will have to dig us out of it. We have to be wise, like Eunice said, rise above ourselves.’