He nodded earnestly. “Yes. Given how slim the margins are, I felt it best to make the change immediately.”
“It was the right thing to do, Struma. You’ve given us a chance. We’ll take it to the passenger-representatives. Maybe they’ll forgive me for what happened with the suit.”
“You couldn’t have guessed, Captain. But this lifeline … it’s just a chance, that’s all. The repair schedules are estimates, not hard guarantees.”
“I know,” I said, patting him on the shoulder. “And I’ll take them for what they are.”
I went to interview Magadis again, deciding for the moment to withhold the news Struma had given me. The Conjoiner woman was still under armed guard, still bound to the chair. I took my seat in the electrostatic cage, facing her.
“We’re going to die,” I said.
“This is not news,” Magadis answered.
“I mean, not in the way we expected. A clean collision with the surface—fast and painless. I’m not happy about that, but I’ll gladly take it over the alternative.”
“Which is?”
“Slow torture. I fired an instrument probe at the object—a suit stuffed full of sensors.”
“Was that wise?”
“Perhaps not. But it’s told me what we can expect. Spacetime around the sphere is … curdled, fractal, I don’t know what. Restructured. Responsive. It didn’t like the suit. Pulled it apart like a rag doll. It’ll do the same to the ship, and us inside it. Only we’re made of skin and bone, not hardware. It’ll be worse for us, and slower, because the suit was travelling quickly when it hit the altered spacetime. We’ll take our time, and it’ll build and build over hours.”
“I could teach you a few things about pain management,” Magadis said. “You might find them useful.”
I slapped her across the face, drawing blood from her already swollen lip.
“You were prepared to meet this object. You knew of its prior existence. That means you must have had a strategy, a plan.”
“I did, until our plan met your resistance.” She made a mangled smile, a wicked, teasing gleam in her one good eye. I made to slap her again, but some cooler part of me stilled my hand, knowing how pointless it was to inflict pain on a Conjoiner. Or to imagine that the prospect of pain, even drawn out over hours, would have any impact on her thinking.
“Give me something, Magadis. You’re smart, even disconnected from the others. You tried to commandeer the ship. Your people designed and manufactured some of its key systems. You must be able to suggest something that can help our chances.”
“We have gathered our intelligence,” she told me. “Nothing else matters now. I was always going to die. The means don’t concern me.”
I nodded at that, letting her believe it was no more or less than I had expected.
But I had more to say.
“You put us here, Magadis—you and your people. Maybe the others will see things the same way you do—ready and willing to accept death. Do you think they will change their view if I start killing them now?”
I waited for her answer, but Magadis just looked at me, nothing in her expression changing.
Someone spoke my title and name. I turned from the prisoner to find Struma, waiting beyond the electrostatic cage.
“I was in the middle of something.”
“Before it failed, the suit picked up an echo. We’ve only just teased it out of the garbage it was sending back in the last few moments.”
“An echo of what?” I asked.
Struma drew breath. He started to answer, then looked at Magadis and changed his mind.
It was another ship. Shaped like our own—a tapering, conic hull, a sharp end and a blunter end, two engines on outriggers jutting from the widest point—but smaller, sleeker, darker. We could see that it was damaged to some degree, but it occurred to me that it could still be of use to us.
The ship floated eight thousand kilometres from the surface of the object. Not orbiting, since there was nothing to hold it on a circular course, but just stopped, becalmed.
Struma and I exchanged thoughts as we waited for the others to re-convene.
“That’s a Conjoiner drive layout,” he said, sketching a finger across one of the blurred enhancements. “It means they made it, they sent it here—all without anyone’s knowledge, in flagrant violation of the Europe Accords. And it’s no coincidence that we just found it. The object’s the size of a star, and we’re only able to scan a tiny area of it from our present position. Unless there are floating wrecks dotted all around this thing, we must have been brought close to it deliberately.”
“It explains how they knew of the object,” I mused. “An earlier expedition. Obviously it failed, but they must have managed to transmit some data back to one of their nests—enough to make them determined to get a closer look. I suppose the idea was to rendezvous and recover any survivors, or additional knowledge captured by that wreck.” My fingers tensed, ready to form a fist. “I should ask Magadis.”
“I’d give up, if I were you. She’s not going to give us anything useful.”
“That’s because she’s resigned to death. I didn’t tell her about the revised repair schedule.”
“That’s still our best hope of survival.”
“Perhaps. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t explore all other possibilities, just in case the repair schedule doesn’t work. That ship’s too useful a prize for me to ignore. It’s an exploratory craft, obviously. Unlike us, it may have a shuttle, something we can use as a tug. Or we can use the ship itself to nudge the Equinoctial.”
Struma scratched at his chin. “Nice in theory, but it’s floating well inside the point where the suit started picking up strange readings. And even if we considered it wise to go there, we don’t have a shuttle of our own to make the crossing.”
“It’s not wise,” I admitted. “Not even sane. But we have the inspection pods, and one of them ought to be able to make the crossing. I’m ready to try, Struma. It’s better than sitting here thinking of ways to hurt Magadis, just to take my mind off the worse pain ahead for the rest of us.”
He considered this, then gave a grave, dutiful nod. “Under the circumstances, I think you’re right. But I wouldn’t allow you to go out there on your own.”
“A Captain’s prerogative…” I started.
“Is to accept the assistance of her second-in-command.”
Although I was set on my plan, I still had to present it to the other officers and passenger-representatives. They sat and listened without question, as I explained the discovery of the other ship and my intention of scavenging it for our own ends.
“You already know that we may be able to reverse the drift. I’m still optimistic about that, but at the same time I was always told to have a back-up plan. Even if that other ship doesn’t have anything aboard it that we can use, they may have gathered some data or analysis that can be of benefit to us.”
Doctor Grellet let out a dry, hopeless laugh. “Whatever it was, it was certainly of benefit to them.”
“A slender hope’s better than none at all,” I said, biting back on my irritation. “Besides, it won’t make your chances any worse. Even if Struma and I don’t make it back from the Conjoiner ship, my other officers are fully capable of navigating the ship, once we regain auxiliary control.”
“The suit drew a response from the object,” Grellet said. “How can you know what will happen if you approach it in the pods?”
“I can’t,” I said. “But we’ll stop before we get as deep as the suit did. It’s the best we can do, Doctor.” I turned my face to the other passenger-representatives, seeking their tacit approval. “Nothing’s without risk. You accepted risk when you consigned yourselves into the care of your reefersleep caskets. As it stands, we have a reasonable chance of repairing the ship before we get too close to the object. That’s not good enough for me. I swore an oath of duty when I took on this role. You are all precious to me. But also I have twenty thousand other passengers to consider.”