“You mean nineteen thousand,” corrected Chajari diplomatically. “The Conjoiners don’t count any more—sleeping or otherwise.”
“They’re still my passengers,” I told her.
No plan was ever as simple as it seemed in the first light of conception. The inspection pods had the range and fuel to reach the drifter, but under normal operation it would take much too long to get there. If there were something useful on the Conjoiner wreck I wanted time to examine it, time to bring it back, time to make use of it. I also did not want to have to depend on some hypothetical shuttle or tractor to get us back. That meant retaining some reserve fuel in the pods for a return trip to the Equinoctial. Privately, if my ship was going down then I wanted to be aboard when it happened.
There was a solution, but it was hardly a comfortable one.
Running the length of the Equinoctial was a magnetic freight launcher, designed for ship-to-ship cargo transfer. We had rarely used it on previous voyages and since we were travelling with only a low cargo manifest I had nearly forgotten it was there at all. Fortunately, the inspection pods were easily small enough to be attached to the launcher. By being boosted out of the ship on magnetic power, they could complete the crossing in a shorter time and save some fuel for the round-trip.
There were two downsides. The first was that it would take time to prepare the pods for an extended mission. The second was that the launcher demanded a punishing initial acceleration. That was fine for bulk cargo, less good for people. Eventually we agreed on a risky compromise: fifty gees, sustained for four seconds, would give us a final boost of zero point two kilometres per second. Hardly any speed at all, but it was all we could safely endure if we were going to be of any use at the other end of the crossing. We would be unconscious during the launch phase and much of the subsequent crossing, both to conserve resources and spare us the discomfort of the boost.
Slowly the Equinoctial was rotated and stabilised, aiming itself like a gun at the Conjoiner wreck. Lacking engine power, we did this with gyroscopes and controlled pressure venting. Even this took a day. Thankfully the aim didn’t need to be perfect, since we could correct for any small errors during the crossing itself.
Six days had now passed since my revival, halving our distance to the surface. It would take another three days to reach the Conjoiner ship, by which time we would have rather less than three days to make any use of its contents. Everything was now coming down to critical margins of hours, rather than days.
I went to see Magadis before preparing myself for the departure.
“I’m telling you my plans just in case you have something useful to contribute. We’ve found the drifter you were obviously so keen on locating. You’ve been going behind our backs all this time, despite all the assurances, all the wise platitudes. I hope you’ve learned a thing or two from the object, because you’re going to need all the help you can find.”
“War was only ever a question of time, Captain Bernsdottir.”
“You think you’ll win?”
“I think we’ll prevail. But the outcome won’t be my concern.”
“This is your last chance to make a difference. I’d take you with me if I thought I could trust you, if I thought you wouldn’t turn the systems of that wreck against me just for the spite. But if there’s something you can tell me, something that will help all our chances…”
“Yes,” she answered, drawing in me a little glimmer of hope, instantly crushed. “There’s something. Kill yourselves now, while you have the means to do it painlessly. You’ll thank me for it later.”
I stepped out of the cage, realising that Doctor Grellet had been observing this brief exchange from a safe distance, his hands folded before him, his expression one of lingering disapproval.
“It was fruitless, I suppose?”
“Were you expecting something more?”
“I am not the moral compass of this ship, Captain Bernsdottir. If you think hurting this prisoner will serve your ends, that is your decision.”
“I didn’t do that to her. She was bruised and bloodied when she got here.”
He studied me carefully. “Then you never laid a hand on her, not even once?”
I made to answer, intending to deny his accusation, then stopped before I disgraced myself with an obvious lie. Instead I met his eyes, demanding understanding rather than forgiveness. “It was a violent, organised insurrection, Doctor. They were trying to kill us all. They’d have succeeded, as well, if my officers and I hadn’t used extreme measures.”
“In which case it was a good job you were equipped with the tools needed to suppress that insurrection.”
“I don’t understand.”
He nodded at the officer still aiming the excimer rifle at Magadis. It was a heavy, dual-gripped laser weapon—more suited to field combat than shipboard pacification. “I am not much of a historian, Captain. But I took the time to study a little of what happened on Mars. Nevil Clavain, Sandra Voi, Galiana, the Great Wall and the orbital blockade of the first nest…”
I cut him off. “Is this relevant, Doctor Grellet?”
“That would depend. My recollection from those history lessons is that the Coalition for Neural Purity discovered that it was very difficult to take Conjoiners prisoner. They could turn almost any weapon against its user. Keeping them alive long enough to be interrogated was even harder. They could kill themselves quite easily. And the one thing you learned never to do was point a sophisticated weapon at a Conjoiner prisoner.”
For the second time in nine days I surfaced to brutal, bruising consciousness through layers of confusion and discomfort. It was not the emergence from reefersleep this time, but a much shallower state of sedation. I was alone, pressed into acceleration padding, a harness webbed across my chest. I moved aching arms and released the catch. The cushioning against my spine eased. I was weightless, but still barely able to move. The inspection pod was only just large for a suited human form.
I was alive, and that was something. It meant that I had survived the boost from the Equinoctial. I eyed the chronometer, confirming that I had been asleep for sixty six hours, and then I checked the short-range tracker, gratified to find that Struma’s pod was flying close to mine. Although we had been launched in separate boosts, there had been time for the pods to zero-in on each other without eating into our fuel budgets too badly.
“Struma?” I asked across the link.
“I’m here, Captain. How do you feel?”
“About as bad as you, I’m guessing. But we’re intact, and right now I’ll take all the good news I can get. I’m a realist, Struma: I don’t expect much to come of this. But I couldn’t sit back and do nothing, just hoping for the best.”
“I understood the risks,” he replied. “And I agree with you. We had to take this chance.”
Our pods had maintained a signals lock with the Equinoctial. They were pleased to hear from us. We spent a few minutes transmitting back and forth, confirming that we were healthy and that our pods had a homing fix on the drifter. The Conjoiner ship was extremely dark, extremely well-camouflaged, but it stood no chance of hiding itself against the perfect blackness of the surface.
I hardly dared ask how the repair schedule had been progressing. But the news was favourable. Struma’s plan to divert the resources had worked well, and all indications were that the ship would regain some control within thirteen hours. That was cutting it exceedingly fine: Equinoctial was now only three days’ drift from the surface, and only a day from the point where the suit’s readings had begun to deviate from normal spacetime. We had done what we could, though—given ourselves a couple of slim hopes where previously there had been none.