Exodus, page 34
* * *
—
Finn spent a lot of the next two days in the cupola watching the crew attach the Lestari to the wreck. Tabia maneuvered them close, aligning the starship directly along the spin axis, then matched the rotation. Once they were synchronized, she moved them forward until the Lestari’s trio of attachment pads touched the wreck’s hull.
Under Basyl’s direction, it took twenty hours to secure them properly. Around the rim of each pad were a dozen holes through which they drove long stanchions into the wreckage, then bonded them into place with vacuum-activated epoxy. Once that was done, Uzoma got Finn to activate the fusion rockets again. He operated them at their highest efficiency again, throttling them up slowly until they were accelerating the combined mass of the Lestari and the wreckage at five percent gee. Then he deflected the exhausts in opposite directions, opposing the rotation. Six hours later they’d canceled the rotation. Finn increased the thrust over six hours until the entire ponderous mass was accelerating at point-two of a gee.
Uzoma gave him a quick thumbs-up from across the bridge. “If your plans for the Diligent don’t work out, you’ve got a drive specialist job waiting for you here,” she told him cheerfully.
He shook his head. “No going back now.”
* * *
—
It was the buzzing Marcellu became aware of first. Fast motors spinning, or drills, maybe a malfunctioning life support system…Whatever, it was bloody annoying, especially with a hangover this potent. He groaned.
“Hey there,” a voice said from a long distance away. “You’re back.”
Marcellu recognized the synthesized voice, which was why he was reluctant to open his eyes. If I still have eyes.
Timidly, he opened his eyes. He recognized the Arcadia’s Moon clinic: a cylindrical compartment that was barely larger than the bed he was strapped onto. A dozen surgical arms were folded back into their recesses around him, like a torture chamber primed to unleash its worst. A disturbing number of intravenous tubes drifted loosely in zero gee, rooted into the meld pads dotted across his body like tenacious leeches.
“Crap,” he whispered. Both his arms had metal muscle pistons extending up from his elbows to his shoulders, supporting the flesh-and-blood limbs. The incisions where they merged with his bones were smothered in a pale blue foam. His left leg was encased in the struts of a black exoskeleton. Worse, his chest ached with a numb warmth that he knew resulted from deep incisions. “What have you done?”
I-kdrene-Four drifted into view above him. Even the name of the Arcadia’s Moon doctor made him sound like a piece of equipment. Marcellu suspected that was probably the point. The doctor had more cyborg mechanisms than any other crew member. Looking at him now, it was possible he was just a human brain transplanted into a Remnant Era Ghost chassis. An irrelevant thought: If that’s true, how did he contribute to the Gift of Passage? Open a valve somewhere? I-kdrene-Four’s limbs certainly had no biological tissue left at all, nor did the lean black-and-brass-colored torso have enough volume to contain the full array of human organs.
“You’re fine,” I-kdrene-Four said in a reassuring tone. “The substitutions I made are integrating nicely with your original components.”
“Components! You mean my organs?”
“There’s no need to be mechphobic,” I-kdrene-Four said peevishly. “You would be dead without those replacement parts. A human biobody is simply not capable of surviving the rigors of space warfare.”
“How…How much of me?”
“Your limb muscles were badly torn by your weapons implants shifting, and in turn they knocked joints out of alignment. I have augmented your mobility with exoprosthetics, while the damaged muscles have been mesh-wrapped to heal. Inside your chest I drained and reinflated your lungs, but their functionality is currently being assisted by an oxygen infuser until they recover.” A metal finger clicked against the eight-centimeter grille in the center of Marcellu’s sternum. “So don’t block that with clothing; it needs a constant flow of air. In addition, your spleen, liver, one kidney, and a length of large intestine were all ruined beyond repair. I have replaced them with equivalent cymech components. Several bones were fractured; they are now encased in ceramic meshes to add strength should you be exposed to high-gee maneuvers again. Good news, from your point of view: your heart remains intact.”
“Sweet Asteria!”
“Please remain calm; emotional overstress will be countered by suppressants from a pharmagland I incorporated into your cranial cavity. It is mainly secreting drugs to encourage legacy tissue engagement with the new components, but keeping you neurally stable is part of the post-op procedure. Concentrate on the fact that if you were not the recipient of cymech, you would now be dead. The positives in life are what allow you to move forward.”
“Okay.” He instinctively raised a hand to touch his forehead, but the arm servos had a notable delay, so he stopped the movement before it was complete. “Wait. How long have I been in here?” The sheer amount of augmentation must have taken hours to implant, longer…
“Our encounter with the Lestari was two and a half days ago.”
“Asteria’s ass. And we’re still not under power?” As he said it, he realized the Arcadia’s Moon had at least stopped its infernal spin.
“The damage from the relativistic cannon shot was extensive. Our integral maintenance remotes are still repairing a great many systems.”
“Do we know where they went? Can we get after them?”
“Please, Marcellu, do not excite yourself with events we are no longer connected with. It took a great deal of effort to raise you to this state. I don’t want to have to initiate fresh repairs. So no sudden movements. In fact, keep all movements to a minimum. I don’t want you to start bleeding again.”
“Okay, receiving, but I have to talk to Andino. Please. I’ll dial it down, but I cannot let the Lestari acquire that ZPZ generator.”
“Very well, but I will be monitoring your vitals constantly. If I see any undue stress levels, I will sedate you.”
“Understood, doc. I’ll be good.”
I-kdrene-Four and a pair of medical remotes with tentacle-like arms transferred Marcellu and several of his medic support gadgets onto an acceleration couch. It gripped the slim transit rails that wound throughout the ship and slid him onto the bridge.
Andino was there, a single strap across her abdomen tethering her to the acceleration couch. The compartment was alive with movement as the ship’s biotech remotes scuttled about performing various repairs. Her lens tubes whirred softly as she examined him.
“The doc says you’ll live,” she said.
“He told me that, too.”
“I’ll add the surgery and your new components to the invoice.”
“Good to know your personality wasn’t damaged.”
“Just my pride. And the Arcadia’s Moon.”
“How soon can we accelerate again?”
“Seriously?” She gestured at his prone body. “This wasn’t enough?”
“Can you get the Arcadia’s Moon flightworthy?” he asked patiently.
“We should be able to power up the drive in another seven to ten hours.”
“Okay, so where is the Lestari?”
“They rendezvoused with whatever the hell chunk of Aktoru wreckage they came here for. If it had a ZPZ generator inside it, then they couldn’t get it out. Instead they’ve attached to it, and they’re currently on their way to Terrik Papuan. I’m assuming they’ll take it to Bubbletown, then fly it to Terrik Papuan for Breakerville to take it apart.”
“Now that we know how powerful their fusion rockets are, can we stay out of their range and launch a stand-off assault?”
“Sure we can, but that just gives us the same problem. They can take out anything we can fire at them long before it gets within an effective range.”
“Asteria’s ass.”
“And I don’t want to fly the Arcadia’s Moon any real distance until we’ve had some serious downtime. We have a damn fine microfacturing capacity on board to fabricate spare parts, but it has limits. We need a decent astroengineering station to produce the more complex systems that took a beating from the power overload. Two of the null-spectrum sheaths were fried while they were deploying, so we’ve only got seventy-eight percent coverage. It’s enough for now, but I’ve no idea where we’ll find replacements for them; that fabric is almost as rare as ZPZ generators. We also need more helium-three and deuterium; three of our tanks split and vented.”
Marcellu closed his eyes to think. “So we need to go to Terrik Papuan anyway, for repairs and more fuel?”
“Yes. Bubbletown on Five has some halfway decent facilities. They can certainly patch us up. But after that we’re going straight back to Kelowan, where I can get us a proper refit at Anoosha’s orbital tower habitat. And, Marcellu, it’s going to be a massive bill. Bigger than the charter bond you took out.”
“It’s always about the money with you, isn’t it?”
“Yep. It makes life very simple.”
“Don’t worry; I can pay. So my first big question: If we dock at Bubbletown, will Lestari know it was us?”
“They can take a good guess, but they certainly can’t prove anything. Not that there’s a court of law out here. Contracts govern this star system, and money enforces them. Everyone puts up a bond with the Gonzalez Bank; it’s fiercely independent. It has to be, that’s the only way it can be trusted. Besides, I don’t think the Lestari has any imagery of the Arcadia’s Moon. As far as they know, their relativistic shot blew us to pieces. I’ll be telling companies on Five we got caught in an energy pulse while we were salvaging Aktoru tech. We wouldn’t be the first ship to have that happen.”
“Then Bubbletown it is.”
“So you understand, we will not be using weapons when we’re at Five—not against the Lestari or the local-owned heavy cargo spaceplanes. None of the ships docked there would take kindly to hostile action, not to mention Bubbletown’s owners. Space around Terrik Papuan is basically a neutral zone.”
“I don’t want you to shoot at the Lestari again. I’ll deal with Finn when he’s down at Breakerville. Which takes us to my second question: Is my cargo container still intact?”
Chapter Fourteen
It took eighteen days for the Lestari and its outsize cargo to rendezvous with Five, Terrik Papuan’s small innermost moon. Tens of thousands of years ago when the planet had been a pristine Eden world, someone had flown an ore-rich asteroid into a four-thousand-kilometer orbit above the equator as an industrial resource. Constant mining had reduced its original five-hundred-kilometer diameter down to an irregular lump two hundred forty kilometers wide. Some of the spoil ejecta had settled back down into a thick gray-brown regolith that covered most of its surface to a depth of ten meters—the exception being the circular crater where mining machines were still slowly cutting out the remaining ore.
Bubbletown was located next to the mine: a lattice of silvery metal transit tubes connecting a dozen big habitation spheres that were half submerged in the regolith. The structures had few windows, and not many of them had lights inside; there were also noticeable holes with frayed edges in a couple of the spheres. In itself, the little corporate astroengineering town was an utterly unremarkable home to a couple of thousand humans. But out of its center rose a spire fifty kilometers long, carrying cables and rails for lift capsules easily as big as anything that rode up Santa Rosa’s orbital tower. The top of the spire bloomed out into a skeletal disk ten kilometers broad, with the huge hoops of vacuum deposition fabricators standing on the top. Around the rim, long gantry wharfs extended outward, allowing Traveler ships to dock alongside big delta-shaped cargo spaceplanes and a multitude of high-mass maneuvering tugs and engineering pods. At the tip of each wharf, assembly frames gripped various chunks of ancient wreckage as they were prepared for their journey down to Breakerville.
The view from Lestari didn’t change for a day as Captain Uzoma negotiated with the astroengineering companies for an aerobrake bubble. In the end, they came to a deal with Miller’s Slipstream, who partnered with Wilson Reduction and Recover down on the planet. With a contract finally agreed and registered with the Gonzalez Bank, the Lestari detached itself and turned the wreckage over to a formation of maneuvering tugs, who flew it to one of the wharves.
Finn and Ellie spent the next three days watching the aerobrake bubble coming together. The vapor deposition fabricator owned by Miller’s Slipstream gradually extruded the giant ellipsoid—a tough foamed amalgam structure as shiny as polished silver. It came in two identical halves, twice the length of the wreck that the tugs hauled over to the wharf. They were coaxed into position on either side of the prize and brought together. Their inner surface was a series of cradles, customized from the laser-mapped template of the wreckage surface to grip it perfectly. Five big auto welders spent thirty hours crawling along the seam, joining the two sections together.
“Does it get pressurized?” Ellie asked.
“No,” Yoru told her. “The bubble’s interior stays in a vacuum until it reaches Breakerville. Helps with the buoyancy; especially getting it into a dock channel.”
A pair of streamlined thruster packs with tall swept-back fins were attached on either side of the aerobrake bubble’s upper surface.
“Time to go if you want to meet it at the breaker dock,” Uzoma told Finn as the aerobrake shell detached from the end of the wharf. “And kindly remember, Tabia is my representative down there. She has command authority over all of you.”
“I thought you said there was no legal framework here,” Ellie said.
Uzoma grinned wolfishly. “There isn’t. You just have to decide if you want a lift back home on my ship. I hope that clears up the chain of command issue for you?”
“Yeah, that does make it very clear, captain.”
Including their pilot, Miteris, six of them transferred into the Lestari’s small arrowhead-shaped spaceplane. Its cabin had seats for eight passengers. So Toše seated himself right behind Miteris, the next seats were taken by Grssia and Ichika Enfoe, who were on the ship’s roll as security, leaving Finn and Ellie to take the rear seats, with a small window giving them a restricted view out.
Miteris separated them from the Lestari’s engineering bay behind the life support module, firing their reaction control thrusters to take them clear of the starship. Bubbletown shrank away.
Toše turned around in his chair and fixed Finn and Ellie with a stare. “Okay, you two, this is what’s going to happen. Before we land, everyone will put on light armor. I don’t care if it’s uncomfortable; you do not take it off until we are back in orbit. We stay in a group at all times; Grssia, Ichika, and myself will be visibly armed to discourage any stupidity. It is our job to protect you. That means you do what I tell you, when I tell you.”
“I’ll be carrying as well,” Tabia said.
“I’ve handled weapons,” Finn said.
“Congratulations,” Toše said scathingly. “Did you bring a gun you’re familiar with?”
“Uh, no.”
“Then don’t waste my time.”
“How dangerous is it down there?” Ellie asked.
“Ordinarily, not much,” Tabia replied. “Ships’ crews have been known to settle arguments in bars the fun way, but everyone respects the breaker deal. There’s no artifact thievery here. Breakerville companies come down hard on anyone that trashes their reputation for fairness and order. They have to; they need Travelers as badly as Travelers need them. However, there’s a ZPZ generator involved now. That’s enough to tempt even one of Asteria’s disciples. And there’s already been one attempt to take it from us.”
“You think there was more than one ship after us?” Ellie asked.
“I’ve been evaluating the ships that are docked on Bubbletown’s wharves,” Toše said. “There are two, the Obriana-Mu and the Arcadia’s Moon, that have damage compatible with a strike from our fusion exhaust.”
“They survived?”
“We assumed our attacker had been destroyed because we couldn’t detect a ship afterward. However, they could have gone dark immediately. A strike from our exhaust beam doesn’t guarantee an automatic kill.”
“So…these two ships?”
“I don’t know. Both are here for repair, both captains claim they suffered an extreme energy pulse while attempting to salvage Aktoru tech. There is a long history of similar incidents in this system. Aktoru wreckage is notoriously hazardous.”
“Bit of a coincidence, though.”
“Yes. Which is why you need to follow the instructions I’ve just given. We stay together. Meetings, meals, whatever, all of us are there. Shared dormitory, too.”
“And when I need the restroom?” Ellie asked truculently.
“I have some field sensor remotes,” Grssia said. “Picked them up on Braxalam. I’ll set up a perimeter. You’ll be fine.”
“Riiight.”
The spaceplane followed the aerobrake bubble as it left Five. Finn watched its thruster packs fire for a long time, changing its orbit from circular to elliptical, with a perigee of two hundred eighty kilometers. At that altitude, the thermosphere would start to exert a braking force on the bubble’s broad lower hull surface. It would shed speed, falling deeper into the atmosphere, and increasing the braking coefficient. Soon after, it would drop below orbital velocity. The thruster pods would then alter its pitch again, making best use of its minimal aerodynamics, allowing it to glide down. The descent would last for thirty thousand kilometers—almost a full planetary circumference—to a splashdown in the equatorial ocean fifty kilometers offshore from Breakerville.
The Lestari’s shuttle, with its sleeker profile, had a different descent trajectory, its wide delta wings allowing it to brake faster and still maintain a low thermal loading. Once they’d confirmed the aerobrake bubble was on its way down, Miteris fired a de-orbit burn, and ninety minutes later they dropped below supersonic speed ten kilometers out from Breakerville.
—
Finn spent a lot of the next two days in the cupola watching the crew attach the Lestari to the wreck. Tabia maneuvered them close, aligning the starship directly along the spin axis, then matched the rotation. Once they were synchronized, she moved them forward until the Lestari’s trio of attachment pads touched the wreck’s hull.
Under Basyl’s direction, it took twenty hours to secure them properly. Around the rim of each pad were a dozen holes through which they drove long stanchions into the wreckage, then bonded them into place with vacuum-activated epoxy. Once that was done, Uzoma got Finn to activate the fusion rockets again. He operated them at their highest efficiency again, throttling them up slowly until they were accelerating the combined mass of the Lestari and the wreckage at five percent gee. Then he deflected the exhausts in opposite directions, opposing the rotation. Six hours later they’d canceled the rotation. Finn increased the thrust over six hours until the entire ponderous mass was accelerating at point-two of a gee.
Uzoma gave him a quick thumbs-up from across the bridge. “If your plans for the Diligent don’t work out, you’ve got a drive specialist job waiting for you here,” she told him cheerfully.
He shook his head. “No going back now.”
* * *
—
It was the buzzing Marcellu became aware of first. Fast motors spinning, or drills, maybe a malfunctioning life support system…Whatever, it was bloody annoying, especially with a hangover this potent. He groaned.
“Hey there,” a voice said from a long distance away. “You’re back.”
Marcellu recognized the synthesized voice, which was why he was reluctant to open his eyes. If I still have eyes.
Timidly, he opened his eyes. He recognized the Arcadia’s Moon clinic: a cylindrical compartment that was barely larger than the bed he was strapped onto. A dozen surgical arms were folded back into their recesses around him, like a torture chamber primed to unleash its worst. A disturbing number of intravenous tubes drifted loosely in zero gee, rooted into the meld pads dotted across his body like tenacious leeches.
“Crap,” he whispered. Both his arms had metal muscle pistons extending up from his elbows to his shoulders, supporting the flesh-and-blood limbs. The incisions where they merged with his bones were smothered in a pale blue foam. His left leg was encased in the struts of a black exoskeleton. Worse, his chest ached with a numb warmth that he knew resulted from deep incisions. “What have you done?”
I-kdrene-Four drifted into view above him. Even the name of the Arcadia’s Moon doctor made him sound like a piece of equipment. Marcellu suspected that was probably the point. The doctor had more cyborg mechanisms than any other crew member. Looking at him now, it was possible he was just a human brain transplanted into a Remnant Era Ghost chassis. An irrelevant thought: If that’s true, how did he contribute to the Gift of Passage? Open a valve somewhere? I-kdrene-Four’s limbs certainly had no biological tissue left at all, nor did the lean black-and-brass-colored torso have enough volume to contain the full array of human organs.
“You’re fine,” I-kdrene-Four said in a reassuring tone. “The substitutions I made are integrating nicely with your original components.”
“Components! You mean my organs?”
“There’s no need to be mechphobic,” I-kdrene-Four said peevishly. “You would be dead without those replacement parts. A human biobody is simply not capable of surviving the rigors of space warfare.”
“How…How much of me?”
“Your limb muscles were badly torn by your weapons implants shifting, and in turn they knocked joints out of alignment. I have augmented your mobility with exoprosthetics, while the damaged muscles have been mesh-wrapped to heal. Inside your chest I drained and reinflated your lungs, but their functionality is currently being assisted by an oxygen infuser until they recover.” A metal finger clicked against the eight-centimeter grille in the center of Marcellu’s sternum. “So don’t block that with clothing; it needs a constant flow of air. In addition, your spleen, liver, one kidney, and a length of large intestine were all ruined beyond repair. I have replaced them with equivalent cymech components. Several bones were fractured; they are now encased in ceramic meshes to add strength should you be exposed to high-gee maneuvers again. Good news, from your point of view: your heart remains intact.”
“Sweet Asteria!”
“Please remain calm; emotional overstress will be countered by suppressants from a pharmagland I incorporated into your cranial cavity. It is mainly secreting drugs to encourage legacy tissue engagement with the new components, but keeping you neurally stable is part of the post-op procedure. Concentrate on the fact that if you were not the recipient of cymech, you would now be dead. The positives in life are what allow you to move forward.”
“Okay.” He instinctively raised a hand to touch his forehead, but the arm servos had a notable delay, so he stopped the movement before it was complete. “Wait. How long have I been in here?” The sheer amount of augmentation must have taken hours to implant, longer…
“Our encounter with the Lestari was two and a half days ago.”
“Asteria’s ass. And we’re still not under power?” As he said it, he realized the Arcadia’s Moon had at least stopped its infernal spin.
“The damage from the relativistic cannon shot was extensive. Our integral maintenance remotes are still repairing a great many systems.”
“Do we know where they went? Can we get after them?”
“Please, Marcellu, do not excite yourself with events we are no longer connected with. It took a great deal of effort to raise you to this state. I don’t want to have to initiate fresh repairs. So no sudden movements. In fact, keep all movements to a minimum. I don’t want you to start bleeding again.”
“Okay, receiving, but I have to talk to Andino. Please. I’ll dial it down, but I cannot let the Lestari acquire that ZPZ generator.”
“Very well, but I will be monitoring your vitals constantly. If I see any undue stress levels, I will sedate you.”
“Understood, doc. I’ll be good.”
I-kdrene-Four and a pair of medical remotes with tentacle-like arms transferred Marcellu and several of his medic support gadgets onto an acceleration couch. It gripped the slim transit rails that wound throughout the ship and slid him onto the bridge.
Andino was there, a single strap across her abdomen tethering her to the acceleration couch. The compartment was alive with movement as the ship’s biotech remotes scuttled about performing various repairs. Her lens tubes whirred softly as she examined him.
“The doc says you’ll live,” she said.
“He told me that, too.”
“I’ll add the surgery and your new components to the invoice.”
“Good to know your personality wasn’t damaged.”
“Just my pride. And the Arcadia’s Moon.”
“How soon can we accelerate again?”
“Seriously?” She gestured at his prone body. “This wasn’t enough?”
“Can you get the Arcadia’s Moon flightworthy?” he asked patiently.
“We should be able to power up the drive in another seven to ten hours.”
“Okay, so where is the Lestari?”
“They rendezvoused with whatever the hell chunk of Aktoru wreckage they came here for. If it had a ZPZ generator inside it, then they couldn’t get it out. Instead they’ve attached to it, and they’re currently on their way to Terrik Papuan. I’m assuming they’ll take it to Bubbletown, then fly it to Terrik Papuan for Breakerville to take it apart.”
“Now that we know how powerful their fusion rockets are, can we stay out of their range and launch a stand-off assault?”
“Sure we can, but that just gives us the same problem. They can take out anything we can fire at them long before it gets within an effective range.”
“Asteria’s ass.”
“And I don’t want to fly the Arcadia’s Moon any real distance until we’ve had some serious downtime. We have a damn fine microfacturing capacity on board to fabricate spare parts, but it has limits. We need a decent astroengineering station to produce the more complex systems that took a beating from the power overload. Two of the null-spectrum sheaths were fried while they were deploying, so we’ve only got seventy-eight percent coverage. It’s enough for now, but I’ve no idea where we’ll find replacements for them; that fabric is almost as rare as ZPZ generators. We also need more helium-three and deuterium; three of our tanks split and vented.”
Marcellu closed his eyes to think. “So we need to go to Terrik Papuan anyway, for repairs and more fuel?”
“Yes. Bubbletown on Five has some halfway decent facilities. They can certainly patch us up. But after that we’re going straight back to Kelowan, where I can get us a proper refit at Anoosha’s orbital tower habitat. And, Marcellu, it’s going to be a massive bill. Bigger than the charter bond you took out.”
“It’s always about the money with you, isn’t it?”
“Yep. It makes life very simple.”
“Don’t worry; I can pay. So my first big question: If we dock at Bubbletown, will Lestari know it was us?”
“They can take a good guess, but they certainly can’t prove anything. Not that there’s a court of law out here. Contracts govern this star system, and money enforces them. Everyone puts up a bond with the Gonzalez Bank; it’s fiercely independent. It has to be, that’s the only way it can be trusted. Besides, I don’t think the Lestari has any imagery of the Arcadia’s Moon. As far as they know, their relativistic shot blew us to pieces. I’ll be telling companies on Five we got caught in an energy pulse while we were salvaging Aktoru tech. We wouldn’t be the first ship to have that happen.”
“Then Bubbletown it is.”
“So you understand, we will not be using weapons when we’re at Five—not against the Lestari or the local-owned heavy cargo spaceplanes. None of the ships docked there would take kindly to hostile action, not to mention Bubbletown’s owners. Space around Terrik Papuan is basically a neutral zone.”
“I don’t want you to shoot at the Lestari again. I’ll deal with Finn when he’s down at Breakerville. Which takes us to my second question: Is my cargo container still intact?”
Chapter Fourteen
It took eighteen days for the Lestari and its outsize cargo to rendezvous with Five, Terrik Papuan’s small innermost moon. Tens of thousands of years ago when the planet had been a pristine Eden world, someone had flown an ore-rich asteroid into a four-thousand-kilometer orbit above the equator as an industrial resource. Constant mining had reduced its original five-hundred-kilometer diameter down to an irregular lump two hundred forty kilometers wide. Some of the spoil ejecta had settled back down into a thick gray-brown regolith that covered most of its surface to a depth of ten meters—the exception being the circular crater where mining machines were still slowly cutting out the remaining ore.
Bubbletown was located next to the mine: a lattice of silvery metal transit tubes connecting a dozen big habitation spheres that were half submerged in the regolith. The structures had few windows, and not many of them had lights inside; there were also noticeable holes with frayed edges in a couple of the spheres. In itself, the little corporate astroengineering town was an utterly unremarkable home to a couple of thousand humans. But out of its center rose a spire fifty kilometers long, carrying cables and rails for lift capsules easily as big as anything that rode up Santa Rosa’s orbital tower. The top of the spire bloomed out into a skeletal disk ten kilometers broad, with the huge hoops of vacuum deposition fabricators standing on the top. Around the rim, long gantry wharfs extended outward, allowing Traveler ships to dock alongside big delta-shaped cargo spaceplanes and a multitude of high-mass maneuvering tugs and engineering pods. At the tip of each wharf, assembly frames gripped various chunks of ancient wreckage as they were prepared for their journey down to Breakerville.
The view from Lestari didn’t change for a day as Captain Uzoma negotiated with the astroengineering companies for an aerobrake bubble. In the end, they came to a deal with Miller’s Slipstream, who partnered with Wilson Reduction and Recover down on the planet. With a contract finally agreed and registered with the Gonzalez Bank, the Lestari detached itself and turned the wreckage over to a formation of maneuvering tugs, who flew it to one of the wharves.
Finn and Ellie spent the next three days watching the aerobrake bubble coming together. The vapor deposition fabricator owned by Miller’s Slipstream gradually extruded the giant ellipsoid—a tough foamed amalgam structure as shiny as polished silver. It came in two identical halves, twice the length of the wreck that the tugs hauled over to the wharf. They were coaxed into position on either side of the prize and brought together. Their inner surface was a series of cradles, customized from the laser-mapped template of the wreckage surface to grip it perfectly. Five big auto welders spent thirty hours crawling along the seam, joining the two sections together.
“Does it get pressurized?” Ellie asked.
“No,” Yoru told her. “The bubble’s interior stays in a vacuum until it reaches Breakerville. Helps with the buoyancy; especially getting it into a dock channel.”
A pair of streamlined thruster packs with tall swept-back fins were attached on either side of the aerobrake bubble’s upper surface.
“Time to go if you want to meet it at the breaker dock,” Uzoma told Finn as the aerobrake shell detached from the end of the wharf. “And kindly remember, Tabia is my representative down there. She has command authority over all of you.”
“I thought you said there was no legal framework here,” Ellie said.
Uzoma grinned wolfishly. “There isn’t. You just have to decide if you want a lift back home on my ship. I hope that clears up the chain of command issue for you?”
“Yeah, that does make it very clear, captain.”
Including their pilot, Miteris, six of them transferred into the Lestari’s small arrowhead-shaped spaceplane. Its cabin had seats for eight passengers. So Toše seated himself right behind Miteris, the next seats were taken by Grssia and Ichika Enfoe, who were on the ship’s roll as security, leaving Finn and Ellie to take the rear seats, with a small window giving them a restricted view out.
Miteris separated them from the Lestari’s engineering bay behind the life support module, firing their reaction control thrusters to take them clear of the starship. Bubbletown shrank away.
Toše turned around in his chair and fixed Finn and Ellie with a stare. “Okay, you two, this is what’s going to happen. Before we land, everyone will put on light armor. I don’t care if it’s uncomfortable; you do not take it off until we are back in orbit. We stay in a group at all times; Grssia, Ichika, and myself will be visibly armed to discourage any stupidity. It is our job to protect you. That means you do what I tell you, when I tell you.”
“I’ll be carrying as well,” Tabia said.
“I’ve handled weapons,” Finn said.
“Congratulations,” Toše said scathingly. “Did you bring a gun you’re familiar with?”
“Uh, no.”
“Then don’t waste my time.”
“How dangerous is it down there?” Ellie asked.
“Ordinarily, not much,” Tabia replied. “Ships’ crews have been known to settle arguments in bars the fun way, but everyone respects the breaker deal. There’s no artifact thievery here. Breakerville companies come down hard on anyone that trashes their reputation for fairness and order. They have to; they need Travelers as badly as Travelers need them. However, there’s a ZPZ generator involved now. That’s enough to tempt even one of Asteria’s disciples. And there’s already been one attempt to take it from us.”
“You think there was more than one ship after us?” Ellie asked.
“I’ve been evaluating the ships that are docked on Bubbletown’s wharves,” Toše said. “There are two, the Obriana-Mu and the Arcadia’s Moon, that have damage compatible with a strike from our fusion exhaust.”
“They survived?”
“We assumed our attacker had been destroyed because we couldn’t detect a ship afterward. However, they could have gone dark immediately. A strike from our exhaust beam doesn’t guarantee an automatic kill.”
“So…these two ships?”
“I don’t know. Both are here for repair, both captains claim they suffered an extreme energy pulse while attempting to salvage Aktoru tech. There is a long history of similar incidents in this system. Aktoru wreckage is notoriously hazardous.”
“Bit of a coincidence, though.”
“Yes. Which is why you need to follow the instructions I’ve just given. We stay together. Meetings, meals, whatever, all of us are there. Shared dormitory, too.”
“And when I need the restroom?” Ellie asked truculently.
“I have some field sensor remotes,” Grssia said. “Picked them up on Braxalam. I’ll set up a perimeter. You’ll be fine.”
“Riiight.”
The spaceplane followed the aerobrake bubble as it left Five. Finn watched its thruster packs fire for a long time, changing its orbit from circular to elliptical, with a perigee of two hundred eighty kilometers. At that altitude, the thermosphere would start to exert a braking force on the bubble’s broad lower hull surface. It would shed speed, falling deeper into the atmosphere, and increasing the braking coefficient. Soon after, it would drop below orbital velocity. The thruster pods would then alter its pitch again, making best use of its minimal aerodynamics, allowing it to glide down. The descent would last for thirty thousand kilometers—almost a full planetary circumference—to a splashdown in the equatorial ocean fifty kilometers offshore from Breakerville.
The Lestari’s shuttle, with its sleeker profile, had a different descent trajectory, its wide delta wings allowing it to brake faster and still maintain a low thermal loading. Once they’d confirmed the aerobrake bubble was on its way down, Miteris fired a de-orbit burn, and ninety minutes later they dropped below supersonic speed ten kilometers out from Breakerville.
