But I’d never really forgiven him for his betrayal aboard the Caleuche.
We met only periodically; each time I noticed an incremental increase in Norquinco’s cockiness. At first, it had been easy to dismiss. The work was proceeding apace, Norquinco’s reports detailing each layer of safeguards which he had breached. I had demanded demonstrations to show that the work had really been done, and Norquinco had obliged. I had had no doubt that the task would be completed to my satisfaction by the time I needed it.
But there had been a glitch.
Four months earlier, after the last layer of safeguard machinery had been bypassed, the work, to all intents and purposes, was complete. And suddenly I understood why Norquinco had been so obliging.
“The technical term for the arrangement I am about to propose,” Norquinco said, “is, I believe, blackmail.”
“You’re not serious.”
We had met alone along the spine corridor, near node seven, during one of our inspection tours. “Oh, I’m very serious, Sky. You realise that now, don’t you?”
“I’m getting the picture.” I looked along the corridor. I thought I could see a pulsing orange glow somewhere down it. “What exactly is it you want, Norquinco?”
“Influence, Sky. The audit squad isn’t enough now. It’s a dead-end job for computer geeks. Technical work just doesn’t interest me any more. I’ve been aboard an alien spacecraft. That changes one’s expectations. I want something more challenging. You promised me glories when we were aboard the Caleuche; I haven’t forgotten. Now I want some of that power and responsibility.”
I chose my words carefully. “There’s a world of difference between hacking some software and running a ship, Norquinco.”
“Oh, don’t patronise me. I do realise that, you arrogant bastard. That’s what I said about wanting a challenge. And don’t think I want your job either—not yet, anyway. I’ll let the law of natural succession work for me there. No; I want a senior officer’s position—one echelon below you will do nicely. A cushy position with excellent prospects for when we make landfall. I’ll carve up a little fiefdom for myself on Journey’s End, I think.”
“I think you’re reaching, Norquinco.”
“Reaching? Yes, of course I’m reaching. Otherwise blackmail wouldn’t have to come into it.”
The orange glow down the corridor had grown closer, accompanied by a faint rumbling. “Getting you onto the audit team was one thing, Norquinco. You at least had the right background. But there’s no way I can get you into any officer’s position—no matter how many strings I pull.”
“That’s not my problem. You’re always telling me how clever you are, Sky. Now all you have to do is use some of that cleverness; use your skill and judgement to find a way to get me into an officer’s uniform.”
“Some things just aren’t possible.”
“Not for you, Sky. Not for you. Or are you going to disappoint me?”
“If I can’t find a way . . .”
“Then everyone else will find out about your little plan for the sleepers. Not to mention what happened with Ramirez. Or Balcazar, for that matter. And I haven’t even mentioned the grub.”
“You’ll be implicated too.”
“I’ll say I was only following orders. It was only recently that I realised what you had in mind.”
“You knew all along.”
“But no one will know that, will they?”
I was about to answer, but the noise of the approaching freight transport would have forced me to raise my voice. The string of pods was rumbling towards us along its rail, returning from the engine section. Wordlessly, the two of us walked backwards until we had reached one of the recesses which allowed us to stand aside as the train slid by. The trains, like much else on the Santiago, were old and not particularly well cared-for. They functioned, but much non-essential equipment had been removed from them for use elsewhere, or not fixed when it malfunctioned.
We stood silently shoulder to shoulder as the train neared us, filling the corridor completely except for a narrow gap either side of its blunt body. I wondered what was going through Norquinco’s mind at that exact moment. Did he seriously imagine that I would take his blackmail proposal seriously?
When the rumbling string of pods was only three or four metres away, I pushed Norquinco forward, so that he went sprawling onto the rail.
I saw the man’s body get pushed violently forward until I could no longer see it. The train continued for a few moments and then slowed down, but not with any great urgency. By rights the transport should have stopped the instant it detected an obstacle in its path, but that was undoubtedly one of the functions which had stopped working years ago.
There was a hum of labouring motors and the smell of ozone.
I squeezed out of the recess. It was difficult, and would have been impossible had the train been in motion, but there was just enough room for me to push past the string of pods until I reached the front. I hoped that my actions would not dislodge something and allow the train to continue, or I would certainly be crushed.
I reached the front, expecting to see Norquinco’s mangled remains squashed between the train and its rail.
But Norquinco was lying beside the rail. His toolkit lay crumpled under the front of the train.
I knelt down to examine the man. He had received a glancing impact to the head which had broken the skin, blood pouring out copiously, but the skull did not seem to be fractured. He was still breathing, though unconscious.
I had an idea. Norquinco was now inconvenient to me, and would have to die at some point—probably sooner rather than later—but what I had just thought of was too tempting, too poetic, to ignore. It would be dangerous, however, and I would need not to be disturbed for some time—at least thirty minutes, I judged. By then the lateness of the shipment would be all too obvious. But would anyone do anything about it immediately? I doubted it; from what I had gathered, the trains were no longer very reliable at the best of times. It made me smile. I had become emperor of this miniature state, but the one thing I had not done was make the trains run on time.
Ensuring that the toolkit was still blocking the train, I picked up Norquinco and carried him upship towards node six. It was hard work, but at sixty I had the physique of a thirty-year-old man and Norquinco had lost much of his youthful weight.
Six sleeper rings were connected to this node: sixty sleepers, some of them dead. I racked my memory, recalling as best as I could the ages and sexes of the passengers. There were, I felt sure, at least three amongst those sixty who could pass as Norquinco—especially if the accident was restaged in such a way that the man’s facial features were crushed beyond recognition by the train.
I worked my way towards the skin of the ship. I was sweating and short of breath by the time I reached the berth where I judged the best candidate to lie. This was one of the frozen living, I saw, and that suited my plans excellently. With Norquinco still unconscious, I accessed the casket controls and set about warming the passenger. Normally the process would have taken several hours, but I had no interest in limiting cellular damage. No one would autopsy the corpse when it was found under the train, and there would be no reason to think that I had swapped the body.
My personal comm bracelet chimed. “Yes?”
“Captain Haussmann? Sir, we have a report of a possible technical malfunction with a train in spine corridor three, near node six. Should we send a breakdown team along to check it out?”
“No, no need for that,” I said, with what I hoped was not undue haste. “I’ll check it out myself. I’m near enough.”
“You sure about that, sir?”
“Yes, yes . . . no sense in wasting effort is there?”
When the passenger was warm—but now brain dead—I lifted him from the casket. Yes; he was passably close in build to Norquinco, with the same hair colour and skin tone. To the best of my knowledge, Norquinco had no romantic connections with anyone else on the Santiago—but
even if he had, his lover was not going to be able to tell them apart once I was done.
I lifted Norquinco and placed him in the casket. The man was still breathing—once or twice he had even moaned before slipping back into unconsciousness. I stripped him naked and then arranged the web of biomonitors across his body. The inputs adhered automatically to his skin, adjusting themselves minutely. Some would burrow neatly beneath his skin, worming towards internal organs.
A series of lights flicked to green across the fascia of the casket, signifying that the unit had accepted Norquinco. The lid closed.
I studied the main status panel.
Programmed sleep time was another four years. By then the Santiago would have already made orbit around Journey’s End and it would be time for the sleepers to warm and step onto their new Eden.
Four years suited my plans, too.
Satisfied, I readied myself for the difficult task of lugging the other passenger back to the spine corridor. First, however, I had to dress the barely warm corpse in the clothes I had just taken from Norquinco.
When I reached the spine I positioned the man ten metres ahead of the train, which was still straining against its obstruction, filling the air with the smell of burning armatures. Then I found a heavy, long-handled wrench from a recessed stores locker. I used the wrench to pulp the man’s face into un recognisability, feeling the bones crack like lacquer beneath each blow. Then I went back to the train and delivered a series of swiping strikes to the jammed toolkit, until it sprang free.
The train, no longer obstructed, began to pick up speed immediately. I had to run ahead of it to avoid being pulped against the wall. I stepped gingerly over the dead man and then retired to a safety alcove, watching with detached fascination as the string of freight pods gathered speed. It hit the man and snowploughed him along, mangling him in the process.
Finally, some distance down the corridor, the train came to a standstill.
I crept behind it. I had been through this before, half an hour earlier, and had been mildly surprised when I had found that Norquinco was only knocked out. That had, of course, been a blessing in disguise . . . but now there was to be no disappointment. The train had done its work creditably. Now, rather than the crushed toolkit, what made it stop was some sluggishly responding safety-mode . . . but it had been much too late to save the passenger.
I lifted my sleeve and spoke into my comms bracelet. “Sky Haussmann here. I’m afraid there’s been a terrible, terrible accident.”
That had all been four months ago; a regrettable coda to our relationship, but Norquinco had, ultimately, not let me down. I assumed so, at least—and would know for sure in a few moments.
On the main viewscreen was a view looking down the spine of the Santiago from a vantage point a few metres above the hull. It was an exercise in vanishing points, crisp perspectives that would have thrilled a Renaissance artist. The sixteen sleeper rings containing the dead marched away, diminishing in size, foreshortened towards ellipses.
And now the first and closest of them began to move, kicked loose by a series of pyrotechnic charges studded around the ring. The ring uncoupled from the hull and drifted lazily away from it, tipping slowly to one side as it moved. Umbilicals stretched between ship and ring to breaking point and then snapped cleanly, whiplashing back. Frozen gases trapped in severed pipes erupted in crystal clouds. Somewhere, alarms began to sound. I heard them only dimly, though they seemed to be causing considerable consternation amongst my crew.
Behind the first ring, the second was breaking loose as well. The third trembled and shucked itself loose from its moorings. All along the spine the pattern was repeated. I had arranged it well. I had thought to have all the rings blow their separation charges at once, so that they would drift away in clean, parallel lines, but there was no poetry in that. It pleased me instead to stagger the releases, so that the rings seemed to follow each other, as if obeying some buried migratory instinct.
“Do you see what I’m doing?” I asked.
“I see it well enough,” the other Captain said. “And it sickens me.”
“They’re dead, you fool! What do they care now, if they’re buried in space or carried with us to Journey’s End?”
“They’re human beings. They deserve to be treated with dignity, even if they’re dead. You can’t just throw them overboard.”
“Ah, but I can, and I have. Besides—the sleepers hardly matter. What they mass is inconsequential compared to the mass of the machines that accompany them. We have a real advantage now. That’s why we’ll stay in cruise mode longer than you.”
“One quarter of your sleepers isn’t much of an edge, Haussmann.” The other Captain had obviously been doing his homework. The kind of calculations I had run could not have been far from his own thoughts. “What kind of lead does that give you over us when you make orbit around Journey’s End? A few weeks at best?”
“It’ll be enough,” I said. “Enough to select the plum landing sites and get our people down there and dug in.”
“If you have anyone left. You killed a lot of those dead, didn’t you? Oh, we know what kind of losses you should have run, Haussmann. Your death-rate should not have been much higher than our own. We had intelligence, remember? But we’ve only lost one hundred and twenty sleepers ourselves. The same goes for the other ships. How did you become so careless, Haussmann? Was it that you wanted them to die?”
“Don’t be silly. If it suited my purposes to have them die, why wouldn’t I have killed more of them?”
“And try and settle a planet with a handful of survivors? Don’t you know anything about genetics, Haussmann? Or incest?”
I started to say that I had thought of that as well, but what was the point of letting the bastard know all my plans? If his intelligence was as good as he claimed, let him find these things out for himself.
“I’ll cross that bridge when I reach it,” I said.
Zamudio was the one who finally gave the others a temporary edge—even if it probably wasn’t in quite the way he would have planned. But the Palestine’s Captain must have thought he stood a very good chance of damping his antimatter flow, or else he would not have tried stopping his engine.
The explosion had been as hard and radiantly white as I remembered from the day in the nursery when the Islamabad had gone up.
But the next day, something unexpected happened.
In the instants before Zamudio’s ship had blown up, it had still been transmitting technical data to its two allies, both locked in the same deceleration burn that Zamudio had tried unsuccessfully to abort. I could guess that much myself, even though I was not directly privy to that flow of information. That was the other odd thing. The rest of the Flotilla had become grudgingly united against me. I hadn’t really expected that, but in hindsight I should have realised that it would happen. I had given the bastards a common enemy. In a way, it was to my credit. There was only one of me, yet I had raised such fear in the other Captains that they had thought it best to amalgamate against me, despite all that had happened between them.
And now this—Zamudio clawing back from the grave.
“That technical data was more useful than he realised,” Armesto said.
“It didn’t do Zamudio much good,” I said.
By now there was an appreciable redshift between my ship and the other two Flotilla craft, beginning to fall behind me as they decelerated. But the communications software effortlessly removed all distortion, save for the increasing timelag which accompanied the break-up of the Flotilla.
“No,” Armesto said. “But in their sacrifice they gave us something tremendously valuable. Shall I explain?”
“If it pleases you,” I said, with what I hoped was a convincing show of boredom.
But rather than being bored, I was actually a little scared.
Armesto told me about the technical data, squirted across from the Palestine until the last nanosecond before it detonated. It concerned the attempts th
at had been made to shut down the flow of antimatter. It had always been known that the procedure was almost bound to be fatal, but until then the precise failure mode had been unclear, glimpsed only fleetingly in computer simulations. There had been speculation that if the failure mode could be understood sufficiently well, it might even be possible to counteract it by subtle manipulation of the fuel-flow. It was nothing that could be tested in advance. Now, however, a kind of test had been made for them. The telemetry from the ship had ended just after the failure mode had begun to arise, but it still probed closer into that instability régime than any carefully harnessed laboratory test or computer simulation.
And it had taught them well.
Enough information could be extracted from those numbers to guess how the failure mode must have evolved. The numbers, fed into the on-board simulations devised by the propulsion teams, hinted at a strategy for containing the imbalance. Tweak the magnetic bottle topology slightly and the injection stream could be neatly curtailed with no risk of normal-matter blowback or antimatter leakage. It was still, of course, hell ishly risky.
Which did not stop them trying it.
My ship was falling ahead of the Brazilia and the Baghdad, and those latter two ships had flipped over to bring their engines forward for the deceleration phase. The bright spikes of those antimatter torches pin-pricked the minutely redshifted hemisphere of sky to the rear of the Santiago, like a pair of hot blue sibling suns. The thrust beams of the two deceleration ships were not to be underestimated as potential weapons, but neither Armesto or Omdurman would have the nerve to sweep their torches over my ship. Their argument was with me, not with the many viable colonists I still carried. Equally, I could consider igniting my own engine and dousing one of the two laggard ships with the Santiago’s exhaust—but the other vessel would almost certainly take that as a incitement to kill me, whether or not I still carried passengers. My simulations showed that I would not be able to realign my own flame before the other ship took me out in a single baptism of hellfire.