Belt Three Read online

‘You can’t beat the Worldbreakers. I did some calculations. From what my ship was carrying, you couldn’t have enriched enough weapons-grade uranium for a warhead that size. I don’t know if you got it all from mining ships or bought it on the black market, but that missile must have burned through your loot from a dozen kills.’ Keldra didn’t say anything, but she wasn’t good at bluffing; Jonas could tell he was right. ‘You can’t even attack until they’ve finished eating, so you couldn’t defend a city from one. You’ve killed six Worldbreakers. Do you know how many there are?’

  ‘That’s not the point.’

  ‘There are tens of thousands, and for all we know they’re making more of themselves, down beneath the veil. Even if every city used all its resources to build nukes to fight them, they would still keep coming. This isn’t a war you can win. This isn’t a war at all, and if it ever was then the Worldbreakers won it a long time ago.’

  Keldra grabbed the front of his shirt and pushed him into the wall, just as she had in the shuttle bay. ‘You don’t talk to me like that.’

  Jonas looked into her eyes, not blinking, not even raising his voice. ‘You killed my crew and God knows how many other people. You can wipe me, or I’ll talk to you howsoever I like.’

  ‘They should have fought.’

  ‘They didn’t fight because they couldn’t win, and they knew that. Do you really think you’re justified in murdering people because they won’t join in with your futile gesture of defiance?’

  ‘I don’t care what you think of me.’

  ‘I think you do. Otherwise why do you want me around?’

  ‘Shut up and follow me. I’ll give you the tour.’

  Chapter Four

  Olzan strapped himself into the transit module and gestured for the new recruit to join him. ‘I’ll give you the tour.’

  The girl hesitated, still in the docking airlock. She had a rectangular face and a frizz of blonde hair, tied back but with a few strands floating out at odd angles. She’d come dressed in an engineering jumpsuit and had an overnight bag floating over her shoulder, just as Olzan had asked. She held herself a little awkwardly, keeping her body stiff rather than letting it float naturally. Olzan knew she’d been a worker in the city’s spine, so she’d have microgravity experience; he guessed her awkwardness was due to nerves. When she entered the module and strapped herself into a seat she did so competently enough.

  Olzan put on a cocky smile and rolled into his normal half-ironic introductory speech as the transit module started to move.

  ‘Welcome to the Thousand Names. Most reliable ship in the Cygnus Group, maybe in the whole of Belt Three. She’s 20 years old, built in the Cassiopeia shipyard, though we’ve made a few tweaks of our own since then. The cargo bay holds 10,000 tonnes, and we run the grav-rings at a breezy 0.67 gee. Owner’s a guy named Wendell Taylor Glass, but he leaves us to pick our own routes and cargoes.’ The transit module settled in to the forward ring’s transit hub, and the door opened. Vazoya was leaning against the far wall, arms folded. Her facial tattoos were neon-blue today. ‘We go where the solar wind takes us, my friend,’ Olzan concluded with a flourish, as he and Keldra disembarked. ‘It’s a life of freedom and adventure.’

  Vazoya glared critically at the module’s occupants. ‘You’re full of crap, Olzan.’

  He beamed. ‘And this is my charming first mate. How are things, Vazoya?’

  Vazoya ignored him. ‘Keldra, right? Don’t believe a word our captain says. Ship’s a junk heap barely holding together. Owner’s a scumbag who’d kill us all if he found a way to make money out of it.’

  ‘Vazoya, my dear! You could be a little more positive while we have a new recruit on board.’

  ‘She’ll come with us. You’ll come with us, won’t you, Keldra? Anything beats rotting on Pandora.’

  Keldra’s voice was guarded; she looked deeply uncomfortable with being on a strange ship. ‘I’m not sure yet.’

  ‘I saw your engineering test scores. You’re coming with us.’

  Olzan ignored his first mate and strode off along the central corridor with Keldra half-jogging after him. ‘And this is the forward ring, where we keep the crew quarters, kitchen, recreation area, medical bay, and most importantly …’ he swung the door wide, ‘the bridge! How’s it going, Brenn?’

  Brenn looked up from the pilot console blearily, as if Olzan had pulled him out of a daydream. ‘We’re fuelled up and the cargo’s stowed. Our window for the spin to Xanadu lasts another twelve hours. We can set sail as soon as the new recruit’s on board.’

  ‘New recruit’s here, Brenn.’

  ‘Oh! Hello.’ Brenn looked startled, even though Keldra had been in the doorway for several seconds. He could sense everything that happened to the ship, but a lot of the time he only seemed half-aware of his own surroundings. But he was a good kid, and Olzan had never met a pilot who was quite all there in the head.

  ‘That’s nearly everyone,’ said Olzan. ‘Just got to introduce you to our engineer.’

  Keldra had moved into the bridge and was peering at the captain’s console, or maybe at the hash of wiring beneath it. It looked as though her interest in ship engineering had overcome her nervousness, and from the way she was looking at the wiring, Olzan could easily believe she was the genius engineer her scores showed. She looked up at him with a puzzled expression.

  ‘There’s just the four of you? How do you manage without a full crew?’

  Olzan grinned. ‘We’re just that good. Anyway, it’s five of us now we’ve found you.’

  ‘Still not sure I’m joining,’ she said.

  Olzan ignored her. ‘Tarraso will be in the other ring. Come on.’

  The second ring housed storage for grav-dependent cargo, the ship’s own stores, and Tarraso’s workshops. Olzan could hear the sound of his tinkering as soon as the transit module opened. He followed the sound, with Keldra still in tow.

  Tarraso had one of the air scrubbers laid out on a workbench. The scrubber had stopped working a week ago, coughing graphite across the corridor, but Pandora’s markets didn’t have a replacement for a price they could afford. Olzan had cursed his bad luck and told Tarraso to extend its lifespan as much as he could. Despite the messy nature of the work, the room was spotlessly clean, with a dozen tools laid out on a side table and everything else tucked away in neatly hand-labelled cupboards. Tarraso didn’t look up as Olzan and Keldra entered.

  ‘Tarraso,’ said Olzan. ‘This is Keldra. She’s our new second engineer.’

  Tarraso acknowledged Olzan with a tiny nod, but finished the adjustment he was making and carefully laid down his tool before turning around. He looked Keldra up and down, his expression just the same as if he were inspecting some flawed and dirty piece of machinery.

  ‘No,’ he said.

  Olzan moved closer to his old friend and spoke more softly. ‘We’ve been through this. We’re half-falling apart here.’ He gestured to the other damaged ship components resting in a line against the wall. ‘You need another pair of hands.’

  Tarraso wiped his hands on a cloth and walked up to Keldra. ‘You ever been assistant engineer on a Salamander before?’

  ‘No,’ she said. It was a simple statement, devoid of emotion.

  ‘Ever served on a freighter?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ever even flown inter-city?’

  ‘No.’

  Tarraso turned his gaze to Olzan. ‘No,’ he said. He went back to his work.

  Olzan gave Keldra a frustrated look. ‘Come on, sell yourself some more!’ To Tarraso he said, ‘Keldra’s worked in city habitat maintenance, and you saw her test scores. We’re not going to find a better assistant in the cluster.’

  ‘I’m engineer here. I don’t need an assistant.’

  ‘I’m the captain, and I’m telling you, you do.’

  Tarraso fumed, but relented. He turned his critical gaze onto Keldra again.

  ‘You. Look at this air scrubber. What would you do to fix it?’

 
; She peered into the dusty guts of the machine. Her hand floated above it, almost but not quite touching the components.

  ‘Get the whole module replaced,’ she said after a few seconds. ‘It’s well past the end of its life. You can fix individual problems but the whole thing’s going to keep failing in different ways.’

  Tarraso snorted. ‘We’re not living in a perfect world, girl.’

  Keldra looked as if she was about to say something, but then stopped. She seemed surprised, offended even. It was the first time she’d shown a definite emotion since she came aboard.

  ‘We can’t replace the module,’ Olzan prompted. ‘What do you do?’

  She examined the machine again, this time bending down to peer at its innards and feeling some of them with her fingertips. When she straightened up her face and hands bore thin smears of graphite dust and oil.

  ‘Take out these catalyst fins,’ she said, pointing. ‘Run the module at three-fifths capacity. You’ll get a few more months out of it. You can afford to run life support below capacity since you don’t have a full crew.’

  Olzan glanced at the workings of the machine – he barely understood them – and then at Tarraso. ‘Would it work?’

  ‘Yeah, it would work,’ Tarraso said grudgingly. He turned to Keldra, looking now as if he was assessing a broken machine’s value as a source of spare parts. ‘You do what I say, all right? You give your opinion when I ask for it, and only then. Your main job’s going to be cleaning up. There’s a lot of that, and you’re going to take the time to do it right. Understand?’

  ‘I’ve got some other ships interested in me,’ Keldra said. ‘I need to think about it. I’ll let you know.’

  ‘No, you’re coming with us,’ Olzan said. He subvocalized the command that would put his implant in touch with the bridge. ‘Brenn, release docking clamps. Get us under way.’

  ‘You can’t do that!’ That anger was the second emotion Olzan had seen Keldra show. ‘I haven’t signed anything. I was here for an interview.’

  Tarraso laughed. ‘Hah. Girl from a perfect world.’

  ‘Sorry, kid. We can’t risk losing someone with your skills. You’ll get your cut, don’t worry, but you’re not getting off. You’ve just joined the noble ranks of inter-city traders.’

  Keldra looked as though she was about to argue, but then seemed to think better of it. She stood sullenly, saying nothing.

  ‘Come on. I’ll show you to your quarters.’

  ‘Jonas! What are you doing?’

  His head swam, as if he were being shaken awake from a dream. It took him a few seconds to become aware of his surroundings. He was still in the corridor of the first ring on the Remembrance of Clouds. Keldra was yelling at him, but he ignored her, closed his eyes again, and tried to work out what was going on.

  That had been a memory playback. The implant Keldra had put into him must have been an admin implant with memory-recording functionality, belonging to this Captain Olzan. Keldra might well be the genius engineer that Olzan had believed her to be, but according to the memory her training was in habitat engineering. That would transfer easily enough to other ship systems, but less well to the arcane mix of electronics, software engineering, and neurobiology required to hack an implant. Keldra must have made a mistake when she turned the implant into a control device, causing it to push one of Olzan’s recorded memories into his head, unbidden.

  ‘What happened?’ Keldra demanded. ‘Talk to me!’

  Jonas thought for a short while before answering. It looked as though only a few seconds had passed in the real world. Memory-playback implants didn’t play back experiences in real time; they just inserted the memory image of having just experienced the scene, adding minutes or hours of subjective time that the brain couldn’t tell from the real thing. If Keldra didn’t know that Jonas’s implant was malfunctioning, he didn’t need to tell her.

  ‘I blacked out for a moment. I’m tired.’

  Keldra seemed to believe him. She gave him an unsympathetic sneer. ‘You can sleep when we’re done with the tour. Try to keep up.’

  The tour confirmed what Jonas had suspected: the Remembrance of Clouds was the same ship as the Thousand Names, the ship from Olzan’s memory. Keldra had modified it, added the armaments he’d seen earlier, and done a decent job of repairing several years of wear, but underneath it was still the same ageing tramp freighter, held together by duct tape and bloody-mindedness.

  The tour Olzan had given Keldra had been about meeting the crew. There was no free-willed crew on the ship, but Jonas suspected that, even if there had been, they would have been a side-point, at best, on Keldra’s tour. She took him through the ship section by section, from nose to tail, pointing out her modifications and explaining its technical specifications in more detail than he understood. He couldn’t see much use in giving such a detailed tour to a non-engineer, especially an untrustworthy prisoner, but he suspected that it wasn’t entirely for his benefit. Now that she’d decided to keep him around, it seemed that she was enjoying having someone to talk at. A few times, when pointing out some particularly clever modification, she forgot to be aggressive and Jonas detected some honest pride entering her voice.

  The tour began in the ship’s nose, a bulbous structure consisting of the forward observation blister, the docking airlock and umbilicals, and the extendible gantry that housed the sail bud. Right now the sail was unfurled, and the kilometres-wide plane of ultra-thin nanomaterial dwarfed the rest of the ship. The sail was perfectly flat, possessing an eerie mathematical beauty, as if it were an intruder into normal space from a universe of pure geometry. From inside the observation blister Jonas could see his gold-tinted reflection looking down at him, at the nose of a vertiginous duplicate of the Remembrance of Clouds.

  From a distance, a sail clipper looked like an insect, or a jewel, suspended from its sail by hundreds of gossamer nanotech threads. The sail was Earth-tech, of course; a forgotten technology, invented in the last flush of learning of the Planetary Age. The belt-dwellers could produce it in semi-automated factories, and even maintain it in a rote way, but could never have invented it.

  Behind the nose were the two grav-rings, rotating in opposite directions for stability. Keldra ran them faster than Olzan had, fast enough to provide one gee of centrifugal pseudo-gravity. Jonas wondered why, before he remembered where the ancient measurement had come from: one gee had been the surface gravity of Earth.

  Looking down from the blister he could see the inner surface of the first ring as it rotated around him. The repairs were more extensive than they had looked from the Coriolis Dancer; he could see a great swathe of the ring where the surface had been replaced with mismatched sheets of scrap metal.

  Keldra dragged Jonas around the orbital corridors of each ring, showing him each room. Besides modifying the bridge to suit her one-person control, it looked as if she had changed little from Jonas’s second-hand memory of the Thousand Names. She had also painted murals on various walls and ceilings: images of the Earth from space, or scenes of its surface as she imagined it to have looked, in big, messy brush-strokes of green and blue. Every image included the white scrawls of clouds across the sky.

  It looked as if Keldra had made more changes to the second ring. The engineering workshops were still there, but the rest of the ring was packed with servitors and all the support machinery needed to sustain so many of them, as well as the prison cells where Jonas had been kept. Now that the ship was underway the servitors shambled through a simple daily routine, feeding and exercising themselves. A few performed maintenance tasks, replacing worn-out pipes or cleaning the graphite from the air scrubbers. Besides generally being physically fit, there was no pattern to the servitors’ appearance, and Keldra hadn’t given them the uniforms or liveries that most servitor-owners used.

  The door of one of the store rooms in the second ring was locked with a heavy bar, linked to an iris-recognition lock screwed to the wall next to it. It looked as though the lock had been
installed recently, while Keldra had left Jonas locked in his cabin. She hauled him up to the door, seemingly just to point it out.

  ‘That’s off-limits,’ she said. ‘If I catch you so much as looking at that door, you’re wiped. Understand?’

  ‘I’ve already seen your stolen goods and illegal servitors. What could be worse than…oww!’

  Keldra jabbed the nerve gun into his side and sent a shock running through his body. ‘It’s off-limits. Do you understand?’

  ‘All right! I understand.’

  Aft of the grav-rings was the cargo bay. Keldra didn’t take Jonas into it, but she showed it to him through the grimy windows of the docking control room that looked out on the interior of the bay, turning on the floodlights to bathe the brightly-coloured shipping containers in a sterile white light. Like the Dancer’s, the bay was non-rotating and without air, little more than a radiation shield wrapped around a volume of vacuum, with the ship’s spine running down the centre. Half of the outer surface was a door that could open to space, and it was on this that Keldra had painted the huge Earth-and-clouds mural that Jonas had seen on the Coriolis Dancer’s bridge screen.

  Beyond the cargo bay were the main heat radiation fins, although, Keldra explained proudly, most of the ship’s surface could act as a radiation system in an emergency. Behind the fins was the reaction drive and its fuel tanks. Despite its size, this was a secondary drive, intended for close city approaches where a sail couldn’t be used, and as a backup, in case the sail failed. It could provide more acceleration than the sail, but not for long before the fuel tanks were exhausted.

  To Jonas’s relief, Keldra didn’t take him into the unpressurized maintenance crawl-spaces that ran through it, but she described it to him in the loading control room. Most of the technical details washed past him, but he didn’t think she was showing off, as such, she just wasn’t used to translating her Engineer-caste language for the benefit of a layperson.

  Keldra didn’t go into detail about the ship’s weapons, but Jonas didn’t think there was more to them than he’d seen. The main armaments were a dozen missile turrets, spaced around the ship’s hull to provide a near-complete firing sphere, but unable to concentrate much fire on any one target. There were also the Worldbreaker-killing nukes, but each one was a massive investment of time and money, and he didn’t think she would want to use one except against a Worldbreaker. The small missile turrets might be used to shoot down incoming missiles, but the Remembrance had almost no armour. It could hold unescorted mining haulers to ransom, but it wouldn’t last long against a city patrol boat, still less a Solar Authority cruiser.