Bringer of Light (44 page)

Fortunately, he knew the
Heart of Glass
inside out; he could fly her blind, if he had to. He ignored the warning display – he already knew they were close to operational parameters, thanks very much; some of the crap the shields were pushing aside was large enough to send faint judders through the ship. Instead, he concentrated on the sensors, hardly daring to blink, constantly assessing the debris cloud, tweaking the ship’s course second by second, trying to keep as close to his planned vector as he could; if he strayed too far off, the comp projections he’d so painstakingly programmed would no longer be accurate, and he was likely to find himself in the path of something big enough to cut right through the shields and take them out in one hit.

More juddering, more flashing lights, more verbal warnings but nothing more serious, thank Christos.

As they cleared the cloud he let himself exhale. He could feel the eyes of his two companions focused on him.

‘You might want to suit up,’ he said, failing to sound quite as casual as he’d intended.

‘V-suits?’ asked Taro. ‘We really in that much shit?’

‘Hopefully not, but . . . just do it, all right?’ He didn’t have the energy for complicated explanations, not while he was still glued to his sensor readouts.

‘We only have two suits,’ said Nual quietly, ‘yours, and the one Taro acquired at Aleph.’

‘Yeah, so you two suit up—’

‘What about you?’ said Taro.

‘As I was saying, you two suit up and find the patch-kit. It’s in the engineering locker.’ When they didn’t respond, he added, ‘Please, just do it. If we do get a breach, you’re going to have to fix it, ideally quickly enough that I don’t regret not being in a suit.’ Despite his years in space, Jarek sometimes forgot how dangerous hard vacuum was; having grav-tech that kept you pinned to the floor and dealt with most minor hazards lulled you into a false sense of security. He made a mental note to invest in another suit as soon as they got back to human-space. Assuming they got back to human-space.

‘We’re on it,’ said Taro, following Nual down.

Just after they’d left the bridge, the comp announced, ‘You have deviated from the calculated course into a high-hazard area.’

‘No shit,’ he muttered, and made a hurried sensor-sweep: the comp was right, of course. He cut his speed slightly; it might throw the original calculations, which would mean more work for the comp, but it would also give him more time to react. Following Jarek’s order, the comp grabbed the incoming data and went to work on a new vector to get them back on their original heading without hitting anything big.

Taro’s voice came over the com, ‘Er, sorry to disturb you, but we’ve got the kit. Where d’you want us?’

‘The rec-room’s fine for now.’ From the heart of the ship they’d be ready to go in any direction . . . maybe not so useful if the bridge took a hit, but in that case he’d most likely be fucked anyway.

The comp stated: ‘Unable to calculate course.’

‘You
what
?’

‘Please restate query.’

‘Fuck it,’ murmured Jarek, and interrogated the comp via the manual controls.
Never a machine empath around when you need one
—

Ah, that was it: there was no course that wouldn’t bring them dangerously close to something that could kill them. Fucking marvellous. Right then, time to work out the least bad option. Dodging the big stuff had to be the priority, and if that meant hitting more clouds of motes – so be it.

He cut across the comp’s attempts to make him pay attention to its warnings, and selected the least scary-looking option.

‘Things might be about to get a bit hairy,’ he said over the com.

‘We’re standing by,’ said Taro, his voice terse.

No point trying to scrub more speed; by the time he’d decelerated enough to make any difference they’d be through. Or not. If he still believed in God, he’d be praying right now.

A series of small vibrations shook the ship. Sweat prickled over Jarek’s forehead as the shields went amber. A fraction of a second later, the comp, sounding totally unconcerned, stated: ‘Warning. Hull has been breached.’

‘Fuck! Where? How badly?’ he shouted.

‘Please restate query,’ said the comp calmly.

Jarek forced himself to speak slowly and carefully: ‘What is the location of the hull breach? How big is it?’ He couldn’t hear the rush of escaping air – but then, he couldn’t hear much at all over his pounding heart.

‘A double breach has occurred,’ the comp advised him. ‘The entry and egress points are between two and three millimetres in size. Both are located in the cargo-hold.’

Taro’s voice came over the com. ‘D’you need us to—?’

‘No, we’ll leave them for now – just don’t open the door to the cargo-hold!’ He gave silent thanks to the nameless ship designer who’d decided to wrap the ship’s cargo-hold around the living quarters and provide inner pressure-doors.

The sensors were showing them nearing the edge of the current cloud. Though the comp wasn’t indicating any large hazards ahead, there was always the exciting possibility of more motes he’d not spotted yet.

As his breathing began to return to normal, Jarek realised why there was so much debris – the Sidhe ship must have chosen the same course he had, so when it got blown up, that’s where most of its remains had stayed. Blindingly obvious, once he stopped to think about it. He’d know better next time.

They were decelerating hard now, ready to match velocity with the beanstalk and as Jarek watched, the planet moved slowly back into view. The surface below was dark, though the beanstalk’s counterweight was still in sunlight. He called Nual and Taro back to the bridge.

‘Sorry to be a bit short with you earlier,’ he said as Taro flew up through the hatch.

‘No worries. Thinking I’m gonna die makes me tetchy too,’ Taro said with a grin. ‘How’re we doing?’

‘We’re coming into the area of space protected by the point-defences,’ He didn’t see any point in mentioning that someone – Damaru, maybe
accidentally
– might have messed with the settings on the beanstalk’s defences, possibly even nullifying the approach corridor he was about to fly them down. They weren’t going to turn back, whatever happened.

In some ways, this last section was the easiest: once inside the point-defences, they shouldn’t have to worry about running into debris. Jarek still hunched over the console, ready to take evasive action if the lasers did fire on them.

So far, so good. He glanced up through the dome: the comp’s simulation indicated that spot there would light up, in three seconds, two, one—

—and there it was, a quick flash of silver.

‘What was that?’ asked Taro, sounding distinctly twitchy.

‘That was the most reassuring sight I’ve seen in a while,’ Jarek said with a smile. ‘The comp predicted the lasers would fire on some debris, and they just did.’

‘Thank fuck for that.’

‘You said it!’

The beanstalk was in shadow now. Ahead, the plain cube of the transfer-station was a dark lump, with the bulk of the
Setting Sun
a larger and less regular lump attached to one side. Neither showed any lights. The Sidhe ship was a top-of-the-range tradebird, half the age and ten times the size of the
Heart of Glass.
Last time he’d been here he’d only cared about getting away, but now he was looking at it, he reckoned they could really use a ship like that.

But first things first . . .

He took full manual control and brought them in, initially using a real-time projection in the holocube as a guide, overlaying a false-colour image on the display to avoid getting too close to the currently invisible beanstalk cable. The last few metres were reassuringly anti-climactic and he docked the
Heart of Glass
at the end of the
Setting Sun
’s command corridor without a hitch.

Once he had a green light on the airlock seal, Jarek put his hands on the pilot’s console, leaned forward and let out a long, loud sigh. As he straightened he caught sight of the time: that little episode had taken more than three hours. It had felt like a tenth of that – or possibly ten times as long.

When he stood up, Taro was already there with a fresh bulb of caf. ‘I knew I kept you around for something,’ he said with a smile.

Taro affected a look of mock hurt. ‘Actually, we’ve been making ourselves useful-like: we took our minds off being shit-scared by reading the
Setting Sun
’s files. We’ve dug up some real prime info.’

‘Tell me while I drink this and get ready.’

Taro and Nual followed him down to the rec-room, where he gathered together a few items.

Nual said, ‘We think we know how the incoming Sidhe ship dealt with the defence grid: there’s a way of completely shutting down the weapons, rather than overriding them, and until they’re reset the defence grid is totally inactive – it won’t accept
any
instructions, not from the Cariad, nor incoming ships.’

‘Any idea how to get it back online?’

‘You just have to enter a code – that’s the good news. The bad news is that you need to do it on the “cold-start console” – but what and where that console is . . . I’ll keep looking for information on it, but we were concentrating on the point-defences.’

‘Fair enough. And what’s the news there?’

‘You can access them from the transfer-station.’

‘That’s a good start.’ He led the way back into the rec-room.

‘And they’re solar-powered.’

‘Not so good. Solar is pretty low-output . . . but then, it’s also low-maintenance, and normally the lasers just have to pick off occasional dust motes. I guess solar makes sense, given how long this set-up gets left to its own devices. The problem is the debris from the ship Damaru blew up is going to orbit the planet until it either falls low enough to burn up in the atmosphere or else gets zapped down to nothing by the point-defences, and that’ll take
years
– and there’re other systems on the transfer-station that need that power too.’ He sighed. ‘I guess it’s no wonder the point-defences are running down.’

‘So what’re we gonna do?’ asked Taro.

‘I need to think about it. Right now I’ve just remembered I forgot to pick up my gun from my cabin,’ he said. ‘Back in a mo.’ He expected the
Setting Sun
to be completely locked down, just as he’d left it, but with the Sidhe, it paid to be paranoid.

He decided to take his needle-pistol, rather than just relying on tranq, and the answer came to him as he strapped on the holster. ‘We need to hook up an alternative power source,’ he announced as he re-emerged from his cabin. ‘A fusion plant would do it—’

‘—and there’s one of those on the
Setting Sun,
’ finished Nual.

‘Precisely.’

They made their way down the exit corridor into the
Heart of Glass
’s personnel airlock. As the door closed, Jarek said to Nual, ‘I’m guessing you’d have told me if there was anyone aboard.’

‘You’re correct: there are no conscious minds on the
Setting Sun
.’

‘Good. Then let’s go.’

The readouts were all glowing a cheery green. The door opened onto a familiar corridor, dimly lit by hazard lighting.

‘So, we gonna go check out the engine room?’ asked Taro.

‘Yeah . . .’

‘You don’t sound sure,’ said Nual.

Jarek had been thinking about his nascent plan to mesh two very different systems, one of them a fusion reactor. Having the full specs was a necessary starting point, but he was only a passable engineer, while Taro and Nual were total novices. And you only had to make one mistake with a fusion reactor . . .

‘I’m certain that connecting the
Setting Sun
’s power supply up to the point-defences is a good idea,’ he said, ‘but I think we might need some help to do it.’

Ifanna told Escori Garnon what she had experienced – or rather, not experienced – whilst in the Cariad’s presence, then
Gwas
Maelgyn asked her to wait outside the room while he spoke to his master. They had not said she should remain standing, so she sat on the top step, careful not to look at the man at the bottom of the stairs who lounged against the wall, his crossbow propped up beside him. She could not hear much through the thick wooden door. Just as her eyelids were beginning to droop, the door opened and she jumped to her feet as Maelgyn came out, looking serious.

‘Is all well,
Gwas
?’ she asked nervously.

He favoured her with a smile. ‘I believe it will be,
chilwar
.’ He led her out of the tavern and back to the shuttered house, and this time, though Ifanna tried to find the courage to ask him what he intended – and more specifically, how she fitted in with his plan – he walked in silence. He had the air of a man holding fast to a secret. But when they reached the house, he bade her goodnight with the same tenderness he had shown when he had first helped her in the alley, and she was glad she had not asked, for to do so would be to doubt him.

Before she went to bed, she dragged the crib from the bedroom into the smaller room. That night she slept soundly.