That wouldn’t be possible, of course, because I had to close the hatch. So I led the wire from the cabinet mount over to the airlock, just enough to connect the two, cut off the excess, and taped the piece from the cabinet onto the hatch. Metal to metal, again. We went through the airlock, gently closed the hatch, and taped the remaining piece to it, once again ensuring a metal contact.
The remaining cable was just long enough to reach the bridge. I’d intended to tie it into the AG generator, but we didn’t need the same level of power this time. The hypercomm transmitter was sitting there, doing nothing. I connected the line to its power cell. Which meant we had connected a power source with the shuttle. This was the long wire.
We unrolled the final spool. The short wire. I linked it also to the transmitter’s power cell, and we walked it out to the main airlock, which opened off the common room. We did much the same thing we’d done with the hatch on the lower deck. I cut the cable and connected it to the inner door. Then I unwound the rest of it from the spool-there was maybe forty meters left-coiled it on the deck inside the airlock, stripped the insulation from the end, and connected it to the inside of the door.
“We need to put the rest of the wire outside,” I said.
Alex looked from the coil to the outer hatch to me. “We’ll need a volunteer,” he said.
“No. Not like that. We’ll blow it out.”
“Can we open the outer door without depressurizing the lock?”
“Normally, no. But I can override.” We left the lock and closed the hatch.
“Ready to go,” I told him.
“I hope.”
“I’ll need you to turn on the juice, Alex.”
“Okay.”
He had to sit down on the deck to get access to the power unit. I showed him what to push. Showed him which lamps would come on when we established the circuit.
“All right,” he said. “I got it.”
“What we want to do,” I told him, “is to open the outer door of the main airlock and simultaneously launch the shuttle. The shuttle goes out one side; the air pressure in the lock blows the cable out the other.”
“I’m ready.” We looked at one another for a long moment. “Just in case,” he said, “I’m glad you’ve been part of my life.”
It was the only time I’ve known him to say something like that. My eyes got damp, and I told him I thought we had a good chance. What I really thought, I was trying not to think about. “Okay,” I said, “starting depressurization in the shuttle compartment.”
“Chase, do you think it matters whether I turn on the power now? Or should we wait until everything’s outside?”
“Probably doesn’t matter. But let’s play it safe and wait.”
“Okay.”
“Overriding main airlock restraint. Got a green light.”
“Good.”
“I’m going to bleed a little air out of it.”
“If you think. But make sure there’s enough left to expel the wire.”
I took the pressure down to about seventy percent, warned Alex that I was about to shut off the gravity again, and did so. It would help ensure that the coil in the airlock got blown clear. When the launch bay showed green-vacuum-I opened the launch doors, activated the telescopes, and eased the shuttle out of the ship. Then I opened the main airlock. Moments later, the port-side monitor showed the cable drifting away.
“Looks good so far,” said Alex.
I’d instructed the shuttle’s onboard AI what she was to do. She took the shuttle out slowly while we watched on the monitor. The cable broke clear of the tape and began to pay out.
I gave it a couple of minutes. Then I told Alex to hit the juice.
The outside flux sent charged particles into the shuttle and the cable that was attached to its rear. The shuttle strained toward the pulsar and the cable straightened. The charge came toward the ship along the wire and passed through the open airlock. It circled the cabinet mount and penetrated the hatch on the lower deck. The wire on our side of the hatch picked it up and relayed it to the hypercomm power cell, from which it switched over to the short wire, passed through the main deck hatch, and out the main airlock. A luminous blue arc leaped from the shuttle to the tip of the short wire, connecting them. “What do you think?” asked Alex.
“Circuit is complete,” I said, trying to keep the sheer joy out of my voice. “I think we have a magnetic field.”
We got tossed around again, but it wasn’t nearly as severe as the previous time.
Within moments, I felt a gentle shove upward and to starboard. “We’re getting a course change, Alex.”
“Yes!” he said. “You’re right. No question.” His face broke into a huge smile.
“You’re a genius.”
“Magnetic fields don’t like each other,” I said. “The big one is getting rid of the little one. Had to happen.”
“Of course.”
“I never doubted it would work.”
The push was steady. Up and out. And accelerating. We were riding the wave, baby. Moving at a goofy angle, but who cared as long as it was away from the sabers?
The Toronto needed only five days to find us. It didn’t matter to us. All we cared about was that we knew they were coming.
It was a party cruise. The ship was filled with the cast and director of the musical Cobalt Blue, which had been a huge hit everywhere on Grand Salinas and points west and was currently headed for Rimway. Unfortunately, they did not have fuel available for our thrusters, so we had to go on with them.
The passengers were always looking for reasons to celebrate, and we ranked high. They provided food and alcohol, and we got to see Jenna Carthage, the show’s star, performing “Hearts At Sea.” It’s been a lot of years, but “Hearts At Sea,” which is the second act showstopper, remains a standard. And Alex occasionally refers to it as “our song.”
I should mention that I caught the eye of Renaldo Cabrieri. Alex didn’t care for him, but I liked the guy, and it didn’t hurt my self-confidence to have one of the biggest romantic stars in the Confederacy following me around. He was a bit over the top, but he was a charmer nevertheless. He made sure I always had a drink in my hand. He leered at me, purred in my direction, smiled in the most delightful manner, and just generally misbehaved. At one point, Alex told me it was embarrassing. Me, I thought I was entitled.
First, a dictator. Now a certified heartthrob. I wondered what, or who, was next.
TWENTY-ONE
Most of us deny the existence of ghosts. There is no spectre abroad in the night, we say. No phantom, no presence lingering over the dying fire, no banshee loose in moonlit trees. No spirit eyes peer at us from the dark windows of abandoned houses. But we’re wrong. It’s all true. And even though we understand that they are the creations of the mind, they are no less real.
- Ferris Grammery Famous Ghosts of Dellaconda
We never found Belle. Presumably, after she was taken from the ship, she was discarded.
The AI that had been inserted in her place turned out to be a standard model, a bit more advanced than Belle. But someone had made a few adjustments. Had prepped it to take us out sight-seeing to Ramses. “Could you have done it?” Alex asked me.
No. I wasn’t that good. But I don’t pay much attention to the inner workings of AIs. I knew a few people who could make those sorts of changes. “It’s not that hard,”
I said.
Fenn heard about what had happened, and an escort was waiting for us when the Toronto pulled into Skydeck. They stayed with us until we reached the country house. Fenn arrived moments after we did. “You can’t stay here any longer,” he said.
“We’ll have to arrange something elsewhere. These people, whoever they are, seem to be determined.”
It was good enough for me. But Alex said it was okay, no need to make a big deal of it. He wasn’t fooling anybody, of course. He was scared, too. But he didn’t like showing it, so he continued to tell Fenn not to bother until he thought Fenn was going to back off. Then he caved. For my sake. By early evening, we’d been moved to an inauspicious little two-story town house in Limoges, a medium-sized city two hundred kilometers southwest of Andiquar. There would be security bots constantly in the area, he assured us. We were given fresh identities. “You’ll be safe,” he said.