by Paul McAuley
But as far as day-to-day survival was concerned, Hira was the least of their problems. A crew led by Ulua cut down the wrecked hangar and sealed the gaping hole with foam, but discarding so much mass at the leading edge of The Eye of the Righteous had altered its trim, and because of the damage its crew couldn’t alter its configuration to correct for the imbalance, so it flew with an eccentric corkscrewing list that limited its speed and at every moment threatened to become uncontrollably chaotic. They were short of water because more than half the ship’s supply had been lost when the impact of the falling star had ruptured tanks and pipework; one of the air-recycling plants had been lost, too, so the surviving plant had to be run at maximum capacity and watched carefully; food was rationed; and because almost every system had to be rerouted around the damage caused by the falling star and the growth of the seed it had carried, nothing worked as well as it should.
In short, they would have been in deep trouble even if they weren’t caught in the middle of a planet-wide battle. So when the ranging crew reported that a steady blip that appeared on the long-range radar was definitely a pelagic station, it took a long time to decide what to do. They couldn’t inspect the intruder remotely because most of the drones had been destroyed by the enemy, and the rest had been garaged in the forward hangar and lost with everything else. A sizeable minority of the crew wanted to avoid the intruder by tacking south, but for once Ori and Hira were in agreement: they both hoped that the station and its crew had survived or avoided contact with the enemy. Ori and her supporters hoped that it would be a useful ally, and might even have news of the progress of the battle for control of Cthuga; even if it was damaged or deserted, it might have supplies of water and food and air, and equipment that they could salvage. Hira hoped that Trues were aboard, that they would take charge and eradicate all uncertainties. So after several hours the crew voted to turn towards the blip, and within a day it was finally in optical range.
It hung in silhouette against the sunrise that banded the broad horizon, a few degrees north of the bright point of Fomalhaut. A stack of circular platforms each about three hundred metres across, set around a central shaft and hung beneath a cluster of tall balloons: one of the chain of resupply stations that girdled the planet, with hydroponic farms on the upper decks that supplied fresh food, and manufactories below. It should have been much deeper down, trawling the depths for carbon and other essential elements, but here it was in the upper air.
As The Eye of the Righteous drew nearer, its crew saw that the winches for the station’s dew-catcher nets and much of its lower deck had been torn away. Infrared imaging revealed that none of its decks were significantly warmer than the freezing atmosphere. If anyone was alive, they must be huddled in pressure suits or an emergency capsule and either weren’t keeping watch or were scared that The Eye of the Righteous had been converted by the enemy. None of the signals sent by radio or microwave were answered. It hung there in the sky under its cluster of silvery balloons, quiet and serene, slowly revolving. One of the hatches of the garages was open, and there was the truncated wreckage of its lower deck, but no sign of the kind of growths that had sprung from the enemy seed that had struck The Eye of the Righteous.
At last, with less than ten kilometres separating it from the resupply station, The Eye of the Righteous’ motors were turned off. Ori found the absence of their vibration alarming. They were adrift again. Beginning to turn as the resupply station was turning, caught in a gyre in the atmosphere.
Ori plugged into one of the maintenance bots and walked it to the edge of the sheared-off hangar and studied the station as it moved past. After a little while, a bot ridden by Hereata came across the deck and stood beside Ori’s.
‘Well, here we are,’ Hereata said. ‘What do we do now?’
‘It certainly looks deserted. If no one answers our signals, I suppose we’ll have to go aboard and find out what happened to them.’
‘It looks like something took a bite out of it. As if they ran into the same kind of trouble we had.’
‘I was wondering about that.’
‘My passenger is quiet, if it means anything.’
‘Mine too,’ Ori said. ‘And I don’t think it means anything.’
‘So anything could be inside.’
‘Anything we can imagine. Not to mention a few things we can’t.’
‘And it won’t be easy, getting aboard.’
‘I have an idea about that,’ Ori said, and explained her plan.
Hereata was silent for a little while. The resupply station revolved into view once more. The Eye of the Righteous hung a kilometre away, its upper deck at about the same level as the station’s smashed lower deck.
‘I suppose we should put it to the democratic process,’ Hereata said. ‘I know one thing: Hira won’t like it.’
‘Hira is the least of our problems.’
As soon as the meeting was convened, Hira took the floor, claiming that because the resupply station was most likely a trap set by the enemy. They should use the railguns to punch holes in its balloons, send it straight down, and sail on.
‘Either there’s no one on the station, or they don’t want to make themselves known,’ she said. ‘And that means they can’t be friends, for they must know who we are. Either way, we must destroy it. If it’s unoccupied, we’ll have made sure that it doesn’t fall into the hands of the enemy. If it’s a trap, then we’ll have saved ourselves.’
Several members of the environmental crew chipped in, pointing out what had been pointed out many times before: they were critically low on food and water and the other station was their first and perhaps only chance at resupply. This devolved into a long and unfocused discussion about what they lacked and what they needed to do, if they were going to complete their voyage around the world. Finally, Ori lost the last of her patience and stood up.
‘We are here,’ she said. Her mouth was dry and her heart was beating quickly, but she felt quite calm. Looking around at the others all packed together, looking at her. Like children, waiting for their orders. Was this how Trues felt? Probably not. They were used to giving orders, and expected them to be obeyed because the Quicks were, to them, a lower order. Slaves. But these were her sisters. She wanted to help them. To save them from themselves. Even if it meant taking charge and breaking her promise to herself.
‘We are here,’ she said again. ‘And we have only two real choices. To leave at once, or to go aboard the resupply station. Well, I can see that we have not left, so I think that we must do the other thing.’
Some laughed at this. Hira and Lani did not. Lani was staring hard at Ori, and Ori stared back until Lani looked away, a flush rising in her face.
Ori said, ‘Are we agreed?’
Hira stood up, not bothering to hide her anger. ‘What is there to agree about? You have decided.’
Tane, the senior member of the maker crew, said, ‘It’s easy to decide to go aboard. But how are we going to do it?’
‘And who will go?’ Hira said. ‘You’ve all decided that Ori will decide for us. By your silence if not by spoken assent. Will you let her choose who to send? Will you agree to go if she chooses you?’
‘If I have to choose anyone, I choose myself,’ Ori said.
Hereata, who rarely spoke during the debates, stood now, and said that she would go too. One by one, the other Quicks stood and volunteered, until only Hira, Lani, and a handful of their supporters were left.
Ori was glad and unhappy. Glad that the others had backed her, that they knew they had to risk everything to save themselves. Unhappy because she was by no means sure that her plan would work. That she might well have condemned herself to the long drop.
Hira looked all around, her face set in a grim and angry expression. ‘You’re all of you fools,’ she said. ‘If you go ahead with this thing you put everyone’s lives at risk. I will ready the railguns and do my best to defend you from your foolishness, but if it is not enough you have only yourselves to blame.
’
She turned and pushed through the little crowd, and Lani and the rest of her supporters followed, a few with embarrassed and backwards glances.
‘Someone should stop her,’ Tane said. ‘In case she gets it into her head to fire on that station before we can take a proper look at it.’
Wirimu, the senior member of the environmental crew, flourished her slate and said that she could make sure there and then that the railguns didn’t get any power until Ori allowed it. There was a murmur of assent.
Ori said, ‘One railgun will have to remain operational. How else am I going to cross to the other station?’
Tane took charge of manufacturing several kilometres of monofilament cable and balls of strong but resilient plastic that exfoliated thousands of microscopic filaments and hooks when it struck any surface. Bunched into a holdfast, these would grip with enough tensile strength to hold the weight of the cable and of a Quick combined, Tane said, but would in no way provide a permanent anchor. If the resupply station and The Eye of the Righteous started to revolve in different directions or to pull apart, the holdfast would shear.
‘That’s why we’ll have to fit a collar of polarised explosive behind it,’ Tane said. ‘Also, why we’ll have to make more than one rig. If there’s any kind of problem after you ride across, we can cut the cable and fire off another one to bring you back.’
‘Just don’t cut it while I’m halfway across,’ Ori said.
‘We’ll do our best. But if the worst comes to the worst, the sling’s brakes should be able to clamp you fast, and we’ll reel you in.’
Everyone worked through the night. Soon after dawn, The Eye of the Righteous began to judder and sway as the program rigged by the motor crew began to fire short bursts to correct the ship’s rotation and match it as closely as possible with that of the resupply station, using lasers aimed at a specific part of the station’s superstructure as a guidance system. It would work as long as no significant turbulence was encountered, the motor crew said. If that happened, all bets were off.
Ori and Hereata pulled on unfamiliar skinsuits and helmets and rebreathers, checking each other’s equipment before passing through an airlock to the upper surface of the station. It was the first time Ori had been outside since a safety drill more than a year ago, on the Whale. The padding of the helmet chafed the half-healed wound in her cheek. Strange and frightening to stand under the open sky, to feel gusts of wind plucking at her as she and Hereata clomped across to the comb of railguns, where half a dozen bots were working with speed and precision, dancing around each other as they loaded the coiled ball of monofilament cable on to the sled of the single operational railgun. Two bots stood off in the distance, ridden by Hira’s supporters, watching everything. It occurred to Ori that she was especially vulnerable out here: a bot could run her down or scoop her up and throw her off the edge before she could begin to react.
At last, the final checks were made and she and Hereata hunkered down with the bots. The railgun was aimed at the lower deck of the resupply station, which swung to and fro in short arcs as The Eye of the Righteous struggled to keep orientated towards it in the capricious wind. The railgun fired with a sharp crack and the sled rebounded on its stop as the ball soared out into empty air, trailing unravelling loops of cable, and struck a bulkhead at the back of the truncated remains of a big room. The holdfast at the end of the cable held firm, and there was a long delay while Tane and her crew checked its attachment, fitted the cable to a winch and reeled in excess length, and then mounted a simple cradle. When everything was ready, The Eye of the Righteous rose a little way so that the tethered cable slanted down at an angle of some thirty degrees, the winch running backwards and forward as the crew attempted to keep it as taut as possible.
Ori clambered into the L-shaped sling. Hereata buckled her in and leaned in and touched helmets and wished her luck and then stepped back.
With a sudden jolt, Ori was lifted into the air and was suddenly sliding down, swinging out across a gulf of air, rocking to and fro as she shot towards the resupply station, her whole skin tingling, cold air hissing against her face inside the helmet, a metallic taste in her mouth. Hands and feet freezing. A sudden jolt of panic as the sling jerked to a halt, Hereata’s voice in her ear, saying that they were taking up slack, she’d be moving again in a moment.
Ori felt the cable jerk upward, clung tight to the frame of the sling as it rocked from side to side. A glimpse of the cloud deck far, far below. If she fell, she wouldn’t climb off her couch and try to shrug it off as best she could. This was this. If she fell, she fell. All the way down until velocity ripped open her skinsuit or heat and pressure fried her.
Then she was moving again. The curved flank of the resupply station slammed towards her and she passed beneath a ragged arch torn in it and on into shadow, using a squeeze-grip control to brake herself, coming down towards the shell of the hangar, a strong wave of relief washing through her as her boots touched the deck. She hit the release clip of the harness and fell to her hands and knees, and after a moment was able to push up and tell Hereata that she was all right, she was down.
She followed the taut cable past empty maintenance frames to the edge of the ruin, where wind roared past a bulkhead cleanly sliced in half, and looked up at The Eye of the Righteous, a small island in a big sky, and semaphored with her arms.
Hereata said, ‘We’re waving back. I’m ready to join you.’
‘I’m going to look for a way in first. Wait until I find something.’
As Ori plodded back into the room, something stirred in the shadows at the far end and she felt her heart freeze in a moment of fright. But it was only tools, swinging to and fro on their rack. Beyond them was a short stairway with an access hatch at the top. Ori asked the hatch to open, and it dilated at once and lights came on inside a short length of tubular passageway that was stopped by another door at the far end.
She reported what she’d found. ‘It’s a rough-and-ready airlock. Shut the access hatch, ask the inner door to open, and we’re inside.’
‘Don’t go in until I’m down,’ Hereata said in her ear.
‘I won’t.’
‘I’m about ready to go.’
‘It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.’
‘If it’s only half as bad as I think it will be, it’ll still be the worst thing I’ve ever done,’ Hereata said.
Ori shut the access hatch and walked to the edge of the truncated room. The cable had slackened and fallen on the floor; now it rose up, curving away towards the top of The Eye of the Righteous. The helmet’s visor had a magnification feature, and she could just make out bots at the edge of the upper deck, fussing around a small figure. After a few moments, something dropped away in a long swoop: Hereata riding a sling chair down, pausing about halfway because the cable had slackened again, forming a U-shape in the air.
Hereata was caught in the dip of the U. She asked what was going on, sounding calm and unflustered.
Ulua cut in and said there was a minor comms problem with the motor crew.
‘I thought the stability system was automatic.’
‘That’s why I’m trying to talk to them,’ Ulua said. ‘We appear to be sinking relative to the station. Don’t worry. If we keep falling it will take up the slack and you’ll run back down to us.’
‘I’d rather you let me get to where I’m supposed to be. I don’t fancy trying this twice.’
Ori could see that The Eye of the Righteous was definitely sinking. When she’d touched down, its keel had been level with the balloons from which the resupply station hung. Now it was about level with her viewpoint, and the cable running through the room had dropped to the floor and was sliding sideways, bending sharply against the cut bulkhead. The Eye of the Righteous was not only sinking; it had lost synchrony with the resupply station and was beginning to turn in the opposite direction.
Hereata said, ‘I’d like to join Ori before nightfall.’
Silence.
Ori said, ‘Ulua, tell me what’s happening with the motor crew.’
No one replied. The link was down.
Ori braced herself against a chopped cable duct and leaned out into the wind as far as she dared, trying to spot Hereata. The U of slack cable was bending sideways and Hereata was still stranded in the middle of the dip. She was only five hundred metres away, but might as well have been on another planet.
Ori told Hereata that she could see her, told her to hold on. No reply. All the comms channels were down now. Ori searched the menu for a line-of-sight-option, and there was a bang behind her and the cable snaked across the floor and its end whipped out past her and was gone. Someone had cut it at the anchor point, and the other end was falling away from The Eye of the Righteous, writhing like something mortally wounded. As it dwindled away towards the cloud deck, Ori screamed Hereata’s name. But her friend was gone.
The Eye of the Righteous was turning faster now, and beginning to move away. Ori could see its upper deck, where bots were working around the railguns. Then its motor lit with a flare of white light, and it began to accelerate. Ori watched, heartsick. Her suit was still scanning channels, trying to pick up live comms. Finally, one channel lit up and Hira leaned into the little window in Ori’s visor.
Saying, ‘It was a trap. You led us into a trap.’
‘You killed Hereata.’
‘To save the rest of us. The station is a trap. Set to lure fools like you. We’re under attack right now. Look.’
The window cut to a view of sky stretching away to the horizon. Something small and black slanted across it, skipping and shuddering through the air. The view zoomed in, showed a flattened oval with swept-back wings.
