They filled the three-seat car and Schrope punched in their destination. The car took them down the spine at a slower-than-normal rate, easing to a crawl as it navigated the area where the worst damage had occurred. Then it picked up speed, passing the ruined mid-spine workshop and sinking between the four looming cylinders of the fuel tanks.
Bagley sat in the rear seat of the teardrop-shaped capsule. She said nothing during the entire journey.
As expected, another car was already on the line at the sweatbox end. Bella’s car slowed to a walking pace and nudged the other car forward until her vehicle was aligned with the airlock and they were able to disembark onto the titanium flooring. They were a kilometre nearer Rockhopper’s stern than in Bella’s office, with a good deal less shock-absorbing insulation between them and the engine. The floor rumbled, as if intense drilling work was taking place just a few metres below. Once more, Bella had that almost palpable feeling of the engine working ferociously.
Schrope opened the inner airlock door to find that the sweatbox was already lit and warm. Two figures turned around, surprised at the arrival of anyone else. Bella recognised them: Robert Ungless and Gabriela Ramos, long-serving crew members — in a crisis their loyalty would lie with Svetlana.
“Robert, Gabriela,” she said by way of greeting. “I’m really sorry, but something’s come up. We’re going to have to ask you to leave the sweatbox for a few minutes.”
They looked at her with obvious affront. Their equipment spooled entrails of fibre-optic line into the walls. Their flexies, spread out on the floor and folding tables, showed mind-numbing three-dimensional fuel-flow diagrams: schematics that would have given Escher a headache.
“It’ll only take a few minutes,” Bella insisted.
“You’ve been given an order,” Schrope said. “Put aside whatever you’re doing and leave. There’s a car outside. You can wait in it until we call you back in.”
Ungless and Ramos knew better than to argue. They left their equipment where it was, still plugged in, and slid past Bella into the airlock. When the inner door had sealed itself, she said to Schrope, “I don’t think they’ll wait. I think they’ll ride back to the hab and wake up Svieta.”
“They’ll be contravening an order.”
“They’ll say they misunderstood. They’ll say they didn’t know you had authority to give orders.”
Schrope snapped his fingers at Bagley. “I need a dump of the fuel-pressure data in the memory buffer. You can do that, can’t you?”
“Yes,” Bagley said warily.
“Then get on it. Load the data into a clean partition on your flexy, then give the captain and me read-only privileges.”
“I’m on it,” Bagley said, fiddling with the flexy’s data line. Bella was glad that the woman knew what she had to do. She wanted to get this whole tawdry business out of the way as quickly as possible.
She felt a momentary increase in the rumble through the floor, a shuddering reminder of the engine instabilities that occasionally shook the ship. “What was that?”
“That was the car disengaging from the lock,” Schrope said. “They’re on their way up.”
* * *
Svetlana splashed water on her face, sponged herself into some state of cleanliness and slipped on her jogging pants. She fastened on her bra and reached for a fresh T-shirt. The one at the top of the pile was mud-brown, with a cheaply printed copy of the Rockhopper mascot on the front: that toothsome, grinning, drill-toting penguin that had now been censored from the hull of the ship. Her hand dithered, about to reach for another shirt. Then she said “fuck it” and put on the penguin anyway. She pushed her hair into shape and exited her quarters, leaving Parry room to wash and dress.
Ungless was still waiting outside. “Five minutes ago, you said?” she asked.
“More like six or seven by now,” he said.
“Did you ride the last car up the spine?”
“No,” Ungless said, “there’s another one down there.”
Svetlana jogged around the curve of the corridor until she reached a viewing window set into what was currently the floor. She slid back the glare shield, exposing a pane of scuffed and ablation-mottled glass. She looked down along the length of the ship. A car was ascending the spine.
Parry crouched next to her, his trademark cap already jammed into place. “Are you ready to tell me what’s happening?”
“What do you think?” she asked snidely. “We took our fears to Bella. This is the response.”
“But you trust Bella.”
“I trust her. I don’t trust Schrope. Schrope wins.”
She stood up and barefoot — she hadn’t even had time to slip on her trainers — padded further along the corridor. Parry followed her, pushing his arms into the frayed sleeves of an old denim shirt.
“This could be anything,” he said.
“Behind my back? I don’t think so.”
“Svieta, will you stop? You’re acting as if this has already turned into a mutiny.”
“My judgement has been questioned. Doubted. That’s good enough for me.
The car was just arriving when they reached the line. No one else was waiting at the airlock. Svetlana stationed herself by the inner door, arms folded as if she were the one about to dispense summary justice. Behind the inner door’s dark window, the car slid up through the floor. Figures bustled into the lock. With no pressure to be equalised, there was no delay between the closing of the outer door and the opening of the inner one.
“Svieta,” Bella said, as their eyes met. To her credit, she barely blinked.
“Bella. Nice to see you. Been anywhere I ought to know about?”
“You know where we’ve been,” Craig Schrope said. “That’s why you’re here. I take it Ungless and Ramos tipped you off?”
“No one tipped anyone off. And if I find that you’ve even looked at Robert or Gabriela —”
“You’ll what?” He looked amused. “Come on, I want to hear it. What will you do?”
“Never mind,” Bella said, positioning herself between Svetlana and Schrope. “Let’s keep this civil, shall we?”
“Can I go now?” Meredith Bagley asked timidly.
“Yes,” Bella said. “Thank you, Meredith.”
“Whatever it is, you shouldn’t have dragged her into it,” Svetlana said. “You shouldn’t have used her against me.”
“I didn’t drag her into anything. I asked her to do a job for me.” Bella glanced around. “Look, we can’t talk here. Let’s take this to my office.”
“All of us?” Parry asked.
“No, not you,” Schrope said. “This is between us and Svetlana.”
“Then it’s between you and me.”
Schrope looked at him warningly. “Don’t clean out your options box, Boyce.”
“Or what?” Parry asked.
“Come on,” Bella said. “My office. Parry, too — and let’s all try to behave like professionals, shall we?
In Bella’s room they faced each other across the desk: Bella and Schrope on one side, Parry and Svetlana on the other. Bella slipped her flexy from her zip-up jacket and flattened it on the table, turning it to face Parry and Svetlana.
“You know what this is about, I think, Svieta.”
“I have a pretty good idea.”
“You brought an issue to me,” Bella said. “I listened to your argument and I consulted headquarters about it.”
“And they fed you a bullshit explanation.”
“So you said. That’s why I decided I needed more help from home.”
“Oh, no,” Svetlana said, with a sudden sinking feeling in her gut, as if the engine had just skipped a beat. “You didn’t send it to them, did you? After everything I told you?”
“What else was I supposed to do?”
“You could have acted on it. You could have trusted me.”
“And scrubbed the most important mission in the entire history of spaceflight? A mission with UEE backing? A mission t
hat the entire system is counting on to succeed? A mission that cannot be repeated? Give me a break, Svieta. This was never going to be an easy call.”
“I can’t believe you sent it to them. Of all the things you shouldn’t have done —”
Bella’s tone turned strident. “I took action on the basis of what you told me. I could have just dismissed it.”
“What did they say?” Parry asked, still maintaining a semblance of calm.
“They said…” But Bella trailed off, unable to continue.
Craig Schrope tapped his pen against the flexy. “They said the data was faked.”
“That’s what Svieta was telling you,” Parry said.
“No,” Schrope said. “What they said was that Svetlana faked the evidence. There never was any smoking gun.”
“That can’t be true,” Parry said, looking to Svetlana for confirmation. “Can it?”
“It is now,” she said.
“You can see it here,” Schrope said, directing Parry’s attention to the flexy. “There’s no difference between the two sets of pressure data. The information in the buffer matches the information on ShipNet.”
“But I saw it for myself,” Parry said.
“You saw… something,” Schrope said. “It wasn’t what you thought you were seeing.”
“Bella screwed up.‘ Svetlana said. She felt faint, drained, knowing that nothing she could say now would make any real difference. ”Bella screwed up by sending them the buffer data.“
“Don’t be silly,” Schrope said firmly.
“It must have been difficult for them to doctor those numbers,” Svetlana said, “but when I found the differences between the two data sets, they had no choice but to find a way.
And you let them, Bella. You showed them the numbers. You drew their attention to the buffer.“
“You think DeepShaft tampered with the buffer data as well?” Bella asked.
“They’d have found a way if it mattered enough.”
“She has a point,” Parry said. “If it made enough of a difference —”
“I think this has gone far enough,” Schrope said, clicking his pen with judicial finality. “For the record, Svetlana, DeepShaft has already recommended your removal from duties. We could have acted on that recommendation immediately, but we thought we’d at least give you the benefit of the doubt.”
“Thanks, guy.”
“We checked their story,” Schrope continued. “We checked their story because our instinct was to believe you. But you betrayed that trust, Svetlana. You let us down.”
“Oh, please.”
“Can’t you see she’s been set up?” Parry said. “She’s done nothing wrong — Bella, you know Svieta better than this. You know she’d never betray you.”
Bella’s discomfort was obvious. “I’m sorry it has to come to this,” she said, “but I have to take the evidence at face value.” She looked at Svetlana pleadingly. “I have to remove you from duty, Svieta. If I do anything other than that I’ll be in dereliction of my own duty as commander of this mission.”
“You don’t have to justify your actions,” Schrope said.
“Craig,” Bella said, “shut the fuck up. This is between me and Svieta.”
“Don’t do this,” Svetlana said. “Listen to me. Listen to me or we will all die.”
“I can’t. I have no choice.”
“Then we’re fucked. All of us.”
“When we get back home,” Bella said, “you have my word that there’ll be a thorough inquiry. No stone will be left unturned. If the company has done this, then we’ll find that evidence. We’ll find someone who’ll talk, someone who’ll vindicate you.”
“Don’t you understand?” Svetlana said. “If I’m right, we will never get back home.”
Bella closed her eyes. “We’ll get back home,” she said. “Whatever happens, that’s a promise.”
* * *
“Don’t hate me for this,” Bella said, when they were alone. “Do anything but that.”
Svetlana looked at her from across the table. What she saw in Svetlana’s eyes was much closer to stunned incomprehension than the self-righteous fury she had been expecting. “Then don’t do this,” she said softly. “If our friendship means anything, don’t do it.”
“I have no choice,” Bella said unhappily. “I can only go by the evidence. The evidence couldn’t look much worse.” Bella stared hard into Svetlana’s eyes, trying to make some final connection that would salvage their friendship. “But I meant what I said — when we get home —”
“It won’t happen.”
“I’m going to talk to Ryan Axford,” Bella said, brightening, suddenly seeing a solution. “You had a bad accident out there. It’s my understanding that you left Ryan’s care before he authorised your discharge. Really, you should still be in the medical centre. The last few days shouldn’t have happened. I don’t think it’ll be difficult for us to say that they never did.” She waited, hoping Svetlana would see the sense in her proposal.
But Svetlana just shook her head with stubborn defiance. “My accident had nothing to do with this. You know that, so why pretend otherwise?”
“I’m only trying to help.”
With maddening calm, Svetlana said, “If you remove me from duty, it still won’t alter the fact that we don’t have enough fuel to make it back home.”
“I don’t doubt for a minute that you believe that. The problem is that I can’t have you going around telling everyone else. I have a ship to run, Svieta. I have a mission to complete. I’ve got planet fucking Earth looking over my shoulder, waiting for me to screw up.”
“This is the screw-up.”
Bella bridled, but by an immense effort of will she kept her temper. “If only it was that easy. I’m a fifty-five-year-old woman, Svieta. I’m the commander of fifty thousand metric tonnes of mining spacecraft. There are one hundred and forty-five people on this ship —”
“One hundred and forty-four,” Svetlana said icily, “unless you think Mike Takahashi still counts.”
“One hundred and forty-four, then. Of whom a lot fewer than seventy-two are women. Things are better than they’ve ever been, Svieta, but we’re still a minority. And as commander of this ship I cannot for one second be seen to show the slightest leniency with anyone: most especially not someone who happens to be another woman — let alone a close personal friend.”
“So you make an example of me, just to show that you can be as tough and stubborn as any man?”
“Spare me the piety, Svieta: in my shoes you’d do exactly the same.”
There was the tiniest flicker of agreement in Svetlana’s face: an unguarded reaction that nonetheless said that, yes, in that regard Bella was right. But that did not make the thing itself right, the same look said.
“Please reconsider, Bella. Give me time to prove this is real. Let me drill a pressure tap into one of the fuel tanks, get a direct measurement… anything.”
“I wish I could. I wish I believed you, but right now I don’t. I don’t think you’re lying, either. I think you’re just —”
“Deluded.”
“I burnt out once, Svieta. I know how it happens. One minute you’re just sailing along, the next you’re in pieces. There’s no shame in it. It doesn’t make you a bad person.”
Bella dared to think, for a moment, that her words had hit home; that Svetlana had realised that she was taking no pleasure in this and that she felt a compassionate concern for her friend’s wellbeing.
Then Svetlana said, “This isn’t about you and me, is it? It’s about Powell Cagan.”
“I’m sorry?” Bella responded mildly.
“We all know what happened with you and Cagan, Bella.
We all know you fucked him. We all know it’s more than just business with the two of you.“
Bella’s face stung. In all their years of friendship, she had never once spoken of the affair with Cagan. She had assumed, with absolute certainty, that Svetlana knew nothi
ng of it. But she now realised it had been there all along, like a weapon waiting to be drawn and used.
“That was twenty-five years ago,” she said, on the edge of tears.
“But old habits die hard, right? You might not be fucking him now, but Powell still only has to say jump and you say how high —”
“Don’t say another word. Please, don’t say one more word.”
“After all this time, you just can’t face it, can you?”
“Face what?”
“The possibility that Cagan might not be the man you looked up to back then.”
Bella moved to slap Svetlana across the cheek. But at the last moment she stayed her hand, even as Svetlana held up her own hand in defence.
“You shouldn’t have said that,” Bella said. “You really, really, shouldn’t have said that.”
EIGHT
The great barrel of the mass driver swung slowly through space until it was brought to a halt by the free-fliers. Tiny pulses of micro-thrust finessed the aim.
Denise Nadis sat wearing a headset and wraparound mike combo, dreadlocks tied back, tapping a shiny purple fingernail against the mike as she talked to the AI of the newly deployed driver.
“We’re okay?” Bella asked.
“She’s all yours.”
Bella opened a channel to the Shenzhou Five using the reply protocols that the Chinese had already specified.
“This is Captain Bella Lind,” she said. “I am commander of the UEE exploration vehicle Rockhopper. Thirty minutes ago our sensors detected the Shenzhou Five’s penetration into our exclusion volume. We are entitled — even obliged — to take defensive action against any possible threat.”
Bella halted and made a conscious effort to sound reasonable and conciliatory. “We have the means to defend ourselves. We have deployed a steerable mass driver loaded with a free-flier robot equipped with a nuclear demolition device, the kind we use for comet reshaping. I can put that nuke close enough to hurt you; it may fry your electronics or stress your shielding. I am hoping I will not have to do that, and that this message will be enough of a warning for you to apply reverse thrust and start exiting my airspace. If you do not, I will put that shot across your bows. If that does not deter you there will be no second warning: I will just keep loading up the mass drivers until you get the message. The closer you get, the better my aim. I am asking you to turn around now. I will give you five minutes to signal your intentions by altering your thrust and vector.”