‘It doesn’t sound very useful,’ Hector said.
‘On the face of it, no. But it’s fast and it knows the public side of Eunice’s life inside out, at a level of detail none of us could ever approach. It’s already proven its worth. I think there’s a chance we could still benefit from its input.’
‘I have the file,’Jumai said, tapping a finger against one of the displays. ‘It looks watertight, subject to the usual filters. I can assign it to the proxy that brought me to the medical suite, if you’d like?’
‘We’re confident it came from Sunday?’ Geoffrey asked. ‘That sounded like my sister, and the tags placed her back in Africa. But with the Pans involved, and knowing what they can do with quangle paths, I’m not sure I trust anything any more.’
‘I see your point,’ Hector said. ‘If they faked the tags, there could be anything in that file – including an assassination programme, ready to be loaded into the proxy.’
‘I said it looked watertight,’ Jumai said, as if she hadn’t been heard the first time. ‘We can bounce it back to Sunday if you’re in any doubt.’
‘And wait ten hours for her to reply? And then be faced with the same qualms that the Pans might be hijacking the signal?’ Geoffrey shook his head. ‘That was Sunday. I’d put my life on it. Who else would bother telling me the elephants were fine?’
‘You may be right,’ Hector said. But he softened the remark with a smile. ‘Do it, Jumai. Assign the construct to the proxy. If the Pans are that intent on killing us, that resourceful, they’ll find a way to do it eventually. May as well save them the bother.’
Jumai tapped commands into the console. ‘Assigning . . . done.’ Almost immediately she added, ‘The proxy’s moving. It’s on its way up to us.’
‘Doesn’t hang around,’ Geoffrey said, pushing aside the ominous feeling in his belly.
‘It’s just a proxy. They can’t inflict lethal injuries, no matter what’s going on inside them,’ Jumai said. ‘Of course, I’ve never put that theory into practice—’
‘I still don’t know where Arethusa and the other Pans fit into all this,’ Geoffrey said. ‘Holroyd was the Pan Sunday met on Mars. I could imagine him betraying us. But I hope Sunday’s right about Chama and Gleb. They’re her friends. Hell, even I started liking them. I even liked Arethusa, although she scared the hell out of me.’
‘There’s a lot you need to tell me about,’ Hector said quietly.
‘We’ll get around to it,’ Geoffrey said.
Jumai muttered something under her breath. ‘Drawing a blank here. I’ve been pinging Lionheart on every channel the ship lets me access. Either our signal isn’t getting through, or they’re not answering.’
‘We can’t just sit here for the rest of eternity,’ Hector said. ‘The ship is stopped, and it won’t let us turn around and go home. It has power and supplies to keep us alive for a while, but it’s not a closed cycle.’ He nodded at the iceteroid. ‘At some point we’re going to have to deal with that. Like I said, we do have steering control. It would be enough to take us the rest of the way in.’
‘And then what?’ Geoffrey asked.
‘I’ve already identified a docking structure, near the main bore. If it’s anything like our other facilities, automated approach and capture should cut in once we’re near. We wouldn’t have to do anything – just sit tight.’
There was a knock at the door. The proxy had arrived. Geoffrey nodded at Hector to let it in. They had committed to a certain course of action the moment they assigned Sunday’s file to the proxy; there was no point having second thoughts now.
‘What name do you answer to?’ Geoffrey asked the blank-faced machine.
‘I’m Eunice. Who else were you expecting?’ The effect was unsettling. The proxy might not have looked like anything other than a robot, but it was adept at mimicking voices.
‘It’s a shame it doesn’t have her face,’ Hector said.
‘Be grateful,’ Geoffrey replied. ‘You might want to punch it.’
The proxy pushed itself into the room and came to a floating rest. It might have sounded like Eunice, but it still moved with the eerie precision of a machine. ‘Would someone like to bring me up to speed, or am I meant to guess what’s going on?’
‘Do you recognise that?’ Geoffrey asked, indicating the iceteroid. ‘You damn well should. It’s an Akinya asset, which you gave a name to. Lionheart.’
‘After Senge Dongma, the lion-faced one,’ the construct answered. ‘It was one of our mining facilities. I also selected it as my refuelling point on my last voyage. Winter Queen was to set down here, refill its tanks and continue into deep Trans-Neptunian space.’
‘We’ve been dragged here,’ Hector said. ‘This ship isn’t Winter Queen: it looks similar enough but under the skin it’s something much newer and faster. You must have known about it.’
‘I know that there was a plan, and that Sunday followed some of the clues.’
‘And the point of that plan was to lead us back to the Moon?’ Geoffrey asked.
‘Not solely,’ Eunice said. ‘There was more to it than that. Do you think it was accidental that I showed Chakra’s Folly to Sunday, or asked her that question about the colours of the jewels?’
‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,’ Geoffrey said.
‘For the sake of transparency, you should know what I am. There is more to me than just the construct you’ve already met.’
‘Delete it,’ Jumai said. ‘It’s obviously got screwed up in the transmission.’
‘Listen,’ Eunice said sharply, making the word a command rather than an invitation. ‘I am what I am. Sunday found my old helmet on Mars. I . . . the living me . . . had installed a low-level interactive persona inside the helmet. This persona, because it had been shaped by me, had the possibility of containing knowledge that the more sophisticated construct couldn’t know. Sunday brought the helmet back to Earth. With care, she was able to bypass the sphinxware and integrate the two versions of me into a single construct – one with the personality of the original construct plus the additional information known only to the helmet version.’
‘And that’s what we’re talking to now?’ Jumai said.
‘No,’ Eunice answered patiently, ‘because there simply wouldn’t have been time to upload that version into the ship. Sunday whittled me down to the essentials as best she could.’
‘There were two of you once,’ Geoffrey said, ‘one haunting me, the other haunting Sunday. Now there are . . . what, three of you? Four?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Eunice snapped dismissively ‘You only get to talk to this one, and if I ever make it back to the aug, all my existing facets can be reintegrated into a single working model. For the moment, the only thing that matters is my immediate usefulness. So tell me what you’ve been doing since you arrived around Lionheart.’
‘Trying to work out our next move,’ Hector said. ‘According to the files, this ship originated here. Now it’s returned home. But we’re at stalemate. We’re just sitting here, and Lionheart won’t respond to our transmissions. What do you know about this place?’
The construct appeared to weigh up its options. ‘All our facilities carry a degree of fortification against other commercial interests. In the case of Lionheart, I would have amplified those defences. But it should have recognised Winter Queen . . . or whatever this ship is . . . by now.’
‘There’s no sign that it has,’ Geoffrey said.
‘Have you considered a slow approach, trusting that the automated docking systems will cut in?’
‘That was going to be our next move,’ Geoffrey said. ‘Provided no one talked us out of it first.’
The proxy swivelled its head to look at the display schematics showing the relative orientation of the vehicle and the iceteroid. ‘The ship may have suffered directional comms damage during its escape from the Winter Palace, something that isn’t showing up on the system overview. Or there may have been some unanticipated fail
ure in the watchdog systems I installed in Lionheart, something that’s preventing a correct reply protocol. Until contact is established, or the counter-intrusion defences are turned offline, there would be an element of risk in continuing with an approach.’
Hector looked incredulous. ‘That’s all you’ve got? An “element of risk”? That’s like saying there’s an “element of risk” in Russian roulette.’
Eunice hesitated before answering. ‘There’ll be a master security override in the airlock at the surface docking facility, but someone will need to disarm it first.’
‘Before we dock?’ Jumai asked.
‘Preferably.’
‘Send the proxy,’ Hector said. ‘It can cope with vacuum.’
‘The airlock may block control signals,’ Eunice cautioned. ‘The system’s designed to dissuade machine intruders. Anyway, the master override may require a human presence, maybe even an Akinya. It would depend on how I configured it.’
‘And you don’t remember?’ Hector asked.
‘If I did, I’d tell you.’
‘We’re ten kilometres from Lionheart,’ Geoffrey said. ‘It’s insane to think of crossing that kind of distance. Even if we had the suits.’
‘We do,’ Hector replied. ‘I saw them when I was scouting for bomb sites. There are also clip-on manoeuvring units for EVA operations. I’ve used them before – they’re fairly intuitive.’
‘It’s still insane.’
Hector swallowed. ‘And the alternative is . . . what? Trusting that this ship will hold up all the way in?’
‘You do have the aerobrake,’ Eunice said. ‘It’s built for punching through atmospheres at Mach fifty. It can take some serious crap.’
‘It’s taken crap already, when we broke out of the habitat,’ Geoffrey said.
‘Line it up between Lionheart and the ship, it should still provide some protection,’ Eunice replied.
‘And there’s no risk at all that it’ll look like a battering ram?’ Hector asked.
‘One you’ll have to accept. If you come in laterally, you’re wide open to a broadside attack. I’ll walk you through the turnaround. Do as I say, and then initiate a slow approach.’
‘We’re taking orders from a proxy now?’ Hector asked.
‘Looks that way,’Jumai said.
Geoffrey shook his head. ‘We’re not taking orders. We’re just running a piece of tactical-analysis software and listening to what it tells us.’
‘I’ll remind you that I’m still in the room,’ Eunice said.
‘We know.’ Geoffrey glanced at his cousin, seeing in his eyes that Hector was willing to accept the proxy’s intervention, for now.
Hector’s hands moved to the manual steering controls. ‘Thruster authority is ours. We’ll begin vehicle translation under Eunice’s guidance. Jumai – this could get messy.’
‘I can take messy.’
‘I mean, it might be an idea for all of us to get into suits at this point. Go down to the locker, fix yourself up with one of the units, then slave the other two to yours and bring all three back here.’
‘How do I slave suits?’
‘You ask them nicely,’ Hector said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
They really needed a name for the ship, Geoffrey thought. He was sick of calling it ‘the ship’, but didn’t feel comfortable about reverting to the name Winter Queen when it was so demonstrably not the same vessel Eunice had taken to the edge of the system. Given the affection he felt for it, Bitch or Murderess were looming as distinct possibilities. Perhaps they’d have time to debate the matter when they had docked with Lionheart.
They were turning. It was slow, agonisingly so. Spacecraft were not like aeroplanes, made for hairpin turns and acrobatics. They were more like skyscrapers or transmission masts, with a very narrow range of permissible stress loads. Apply too much torque and a ship as big as this one would snap like a stick of candy.
‘Two kilonewtons and hold,’ Eunice said. ‘Dorsal three, one kilonewton, five seconds.’ She was doling out commands like a stern instructress at a dance class. ‘Damn those centrifuge arms – they’re throwing off my calculations, too much angular momentum along our long axis. Why didn’t we stow them first?’
‘You didn’t suggest it,’ Hector said.
‘Dorsals four and six, one kilonewton each, three seconds. Aft: half a kilonewton, one second.’ She paused, studying the results. As in an aircraft, there was a deceptive lag between input and response. ‘That seems to be doing it.’
Eunice might have had the experience, but only Hector and Geoffrey were able to make the inputs. They were sitting next to each other, waiting on Eunice’s commands. Geoffrey could sense Hector’s tension, boiling off him like vapour. He’d spent half his life in space and had flown many different classes of commercial space vehicle. But nothing this big, this unfamiliar, or under such taxing circumstances.
By the time the ship had reorientated itself, Jumai was back from the suit locker. She was wearing everything but the helmet, her arm scooped through the open visor, and two other suits were shadowing her like zombies. She told them to stay put outside the command deck while she squeezed back into her seat.
‘They’re as modern as the hibernation units,’ Hector observed. ‘Give you credit, Eunice – you didn’t skimp on the essentials. Geoffrey – get into your suit. We’d best be ready for the worst.’
‘Anything from the iceteroid yet?’ Jumai asked.
‘Not a squeak,’ Geoffrey said. He eased out of his seat, selected one of the two remaining suits and spread his arms and legs wide, like a man waiting to be measured by a tailor. ‘Dress me,’ he told it, and the suit obeyed, clamming itself around his body until only his head remained uncovered. Grimacing – the suit had pinched a fold of skin around his thigh – he scooped up the helmet and returned to his seat, leaving Hector to repeat the process with the other suit.
‘Aerobrake is aligned,’ Eunice declared, when everyone was secured. ‘We’ll initiate the approach now. Laterals one, three, six: two kilonewtons, ten-second burst.’
Geoffrey felt the push of acceleration. Almost as soon as he’d counted to ten in his head, it was over. They were weightless again, drifting towards Lionheart.
‘Package launches continuing on schedule,’ Jumai said. ‘That’s a good sign, isn’t it?’
‘As long as they keep away from us,’ Hector said.
For all the countless billions of tonnes of ice still to be mined out of the iceteroid, its gravitational field was puny. They would not be landing on Lionheart, in any strict sense of the term; rather they would be docking with it. There was a part of Geoffrey’s mind that couldn’t really accept that, though. As the iceteroid swelled to dominate the displays, ominous as a bloodstained iceberg, blood that had coagulated to a dark, scabrous red, his brain began to insist that there was a definite up and down to the situation. It took a conscious effort to stop clutching his seat rests, as if he was in danger of falling ahead of the ship.
‘Nine kilometres to dock,’ Hector reported. ‘We’ll need slow-down thrust if approach control doesn’t kick in. Jumai: keep signalling. We may break through at the last moment.’
‘Do you have the faintest idea what we’re going to find in that thing?’ Geoffrey asked.
‘I was hoping you’d have all the answers, cousin.’
‘There are going to be a lot of people very interested in getting a closer look at this ship. Maybe Lionheart has something to do with that.’
‘I’ll remind you that this remains Akinya commercial property,’ Hector said. ‘People will get to look at it if and when we choose. I may have been wrong about wanting to keep Eunice’s legacy locked away, I’ll admit that much. But that doesn’t mean I’m about to neglect my obligations to the family.’
Under other circumstances, Geoffrey might have taken that for a goad. But all he heard in Hector’s words now were weariness and resignation, the drained convictions of a man surveying the grave he
’d just excavated for himself.
‘It really matters to you,’ he said, marvellingly.
‘Of course it does.’ Hector sounded surprised that it needed stating. ‘That doesn’t make me a monster, any more than rejecting the family makes you one.’
‘Seven kays,’ Jumai said.
They had always known that Lionheart had the means to strike at them without warning, but it was quite another thing to have that truth demonstrated with such spectacular indifference to their sensibilities. The ice package emerged on schedule, ninety seconds after the last, but as it boosted from the launcher the steering lasers pushed it through nearly ninety degrees. All this happened too quickly to analyse: the first they knew of any strike was when the ship shuddered violently, and then kept shuddering, pitching and yawing as if on a rolling sea. Geoffrey braced for decompression, or something worse, but the air held. His heart racing, he searched the schematics for signs of damage. But Hector was quicker.
‘We just lost a centrifuge arm – it wasn’t shielded by the aerobrake. The other arm’s still revolving – it’s acting like a counterweight.’
‘We should be able to stop it.’ Geoffrey sounded calmer than he felt. ‘Slow it, lock it down or something.’
The pitch and yaw were ebbing; they hadn’t done anything, so the ship must have sensed the damage and acted accordingly. Geoffrey glanced at the console chronometer, counting back in his head. How many seconds had it been?
Hector’s hands returned to the steering controls. ‘Arresting forward motion.’
‘You’ll need to do more than that,’ Eunice said sharply. ‘You’ve been sucker-punched. Ship’s still drifting off-axis. You’ll lose aerobrake protection in about thirty seconds. Dorsal three, two kilonewtons, three seconds. Hit that mark. Now.’
‘Overcorrecting,’ Hector said, when the input had had time to feed through.
‘You were slow. Laterals one and six, two kilonewtons, two seconds. Geoffrey: dorsal four, one kilonewton, one second: hit it.’