As the noise level rose Wilson’s men started to push their way out of their cabins. There were four more aside from Theo and Wilson, all men, all about Wilson’s own age of forty-nine, all illegals. They were all naked or dressed only in shorts, as Theo was. Other faces peered out of two of the cabins behind them, small, frightened, one boy, one girl, both about fourteen. Theo wasn’t sure of their names.
Jeb Holden pushed his way over to Theo. “What the fuck you doing, soldier boy? Why you turn the damn lights on?”
“Didn’t you hear the gunshot, asshole?”
“What gunshot?”
Theo heard a rumbling of voices, that distant chanting. “Break-out-break-out…” Not so distant anymore. He peered down through the mesh, and glimpsed some kind of group climbing up the fireman’s pole, around the dangling cabins, toward the barrier. Steel Antoniadi was in the lead. Some of them were just kids. There was Max Baker beside Steel. Theo knew Max’s twin sister was in Wilson’s bed right now.
“Break-out-break-out-”
Jeb snapped, “What the fuck?”
“Just kids,” Theo said, uneasy.
“Kids with fucking weapons. Steel’s got a gun.” Jeb lay flat on the floor and yelled through the mesh, his spittle splashing against the metal. “Steel, you fucking whore! This all because Wilson passed you over to the Pig, isn’t it? Steel, you worn-out slut, put that fucking gun down now!” A descendant of Iowans, Jeb had actually been born on a raft, but when he was fourteen he had fought his way onto dry land and joined a local militia to fight off those who might have followed him. Then luck had left him in the right place at the right time to steal a place on the Ark, when it launched from Gunnison.
Steel and the rest were only a couple of meters beneath the floor now. She pointed her weapon at the partition. “The game’s up, Jeb, you bastard. Open up the floor or it will be the worse for you.”
“Oh, will it?” He laughed, and he spat at her, but most of the gob of phlegm stuck to the mesh, and Theo could see his fear in the way he clung to the partition, his fingers locked in the holes. “Whore! Fucking whore.” He threw himself away from the partition and looked around. The others, including Dan Xavi who the catamites called “the Pig,” were pulling on their pants. “Where’s Wilson?”
“Right here.” Wilson came floating out of his own cabin. Theo stared, amazed. Wilson already wore a cooling garment, and he was pulling the heavy outer layers of a pressure suit around him. Behind him Terese Baker, fifteen, skinny, was wrapped in a blanket, looking around with wide eyes. “Shit,” Wilson said, “I don’t fit in this suit anymore. I’m a fat bastard.” He laughed.
Jeb’s jaw was slack. “Boss-where are you going?”
“To the shuttle. Ride out the storm. Best thing-remove the focus, take away the prime target-you can see that. I always saw this day coming, even if you didn’t. Call me when you’ve got the situation under control.”
Jeb’s fists bunched. “And how the fuck do we do that?”
Wilson reached back into his cabin and pulled out a sealed metal box.
He snapped, “Five seven four-open.” The lock opened with a click to reveal a set of handguns. “Been keeping these since the roundup after we launched. Not much ammo, however. And we’re one gun down. Probably stolen by that bitch Steel. Smarter than she looked.” He shoved the box toward Jeb; the guns spilled and drifted in the air, rotating slowly. “Deal with it. Minimum bloodshed. Remember we need those fuckers to keep the ship going. Make an example of Steel, however.” He had his suit intact now, his helmet over his head, his faceplate open. With a gloved hand he pulled a rug off the wall to reveal an airlock. He tapped at a pad, and the lock’s inner door swung open. Beyond, Theo saw the bare interior of one of the hull’s two shuttle gliders, lights snapping on.
“Break-out-break-out-”
Wilson paused at the lock and looked around. “I guess that’s it.” He glanced back at Terese, who stared at him wide-eyed. “Ah, the hell with it.” He grabbed her arm and shoved her through the lock into the shuttle, a tangle of bare limbs. Then he followed head first, wriggling a bit to get through the lock, until his booted feet disappeared. The lock door swung closed, and a red warning band lit up.
“I don’t believe it,” Jeb said. “He’s going to cast off! He could have taken us with him, the prick-”
“Not unless he wanted to lose the hull for good,” Theo said. “Here.” He plucked guns from the air and passed them around to Jeb, the others. He snapped a clip of ammunition into his own weapon. “I don’t know what they’ll try to do. Smoke us out, maybe.”
“Let’s shoot that bitch Steel through the head.”
Theo tried to think. “Yeah. It might deter the rest. But we can’t afford to go putting bullets through the hull. Suppose we spread around the rim of the floor. If we drop through the hatches, say three of us together-fire inwards at Steel-”
There was a roar like thunder. Theo glimpsed blinding light, billowing smoke. The floor opened up like a flower, metal panels hurled into the open space of the bridge. Dan Xavi was caught full in the chest by one panel and was flung back.
Theo heard screaming, like a child, but it was muffled. A ringing sound filled his head. He was stunned; he drifted, unable to move his legs, his head.
Then they came boiling up through the broken barrier, Steel, Max with his wrench, others. Eager hands grabbed Theo, pulled the gun from his hands, and dragged him down.
85
Under the silent stars, Venus was poised in space, inside the warm, clean bulk of her pressure suit, her booted feet strapped to the mobile servicing system, the manipulator arm. She’d been working on basic maintenance of the insulation blanket that, faded, pocked and worn, still coated the bulk of the hull.
She preferred to go EVA only during the night watch. During the day, when Wilson and his boys were awake and active, it paid to be inside the hull and alert. She sometimes thought that the only real purpose she and the other seniors served was to act as a buffer between Wilson and the rest.
Now she ordered the arm to lift her up and away from the ship. As she rose she took a good unencumbered look at the star field that slowly shifted around the ship, and the telescope platforms that still hovered around the hull, faithful companions. Even seventy light-years from Earth, twenty-seven years since the launch from Gunnison, the constellations hadn’t changed drastically. But you did get a sense of motion if you knew what to look for, that faint blueing of the stars ahead of the hull, and of course that eerie disc of emptiness that endlessly pursued them, which Zane creepily called the mouth of Ouroboros.
She surveyed the ship laid out beneath her. Her gaze followed the arm down from her feet along its articulated length to the heavy ball-and-socket joint that attached it to the hull. She studied the ugly, stubby tank of the hull itself with its blankets and sensor platforms and airlocks, the Stars and Stripes ever more faded on its flank, the two remaining shuttle gliders like pinned moths, and the cupola, her own domain, glowing jewel-like near the base. She liked to make this kind of eyeball inspection from time to time, just to see if there was anything obvious the automated systems had missed. And it could happen, especially a multiple fault, such as a leak of some propellant in the precise spot where the pressure sensors were down. The longer the mission went on and as the systems aged-they were now far beyond the Ark’s design envelope-the more such low-probability situations were likely to crop up. It was a habit she had picked up during training sessions with Gordo Alonzo, a seasoned astronaut. Never did any harm to walk around and kick the tires, he used to say..