The Dark Reaches (19 page)

Stop right there,” Iain sen Paolo said sharply to the pale, heavyset older man who knelt at the base of Linnea’s piloting shell, in the glare of a string of work lights, studying the access plate to a junction of conduits. “That’s sealed. Just like the others.” Iain let his exhaustion and exasperation show.

“Liquid circuits again?” The tech sounded disbelieving.

“Some of them. But in any case, the pressure balance in all those conduits is critical.”

The tech settled back on his heels. “Look, Pilot. If you would let me open just one of these conduits, take a few images, the schematics would make a lot more sense to the boys back at the lab. I won’t pull anything. I won’t
touch
anything. How can we learn—”

“There’s nothing to learn,” Iain said. Impatience made his voice cold—that and the tension that had been building in him over the days since Linnea’s disappearance. “You could see exactly what’s in there, and you’d be no closer to being able to manufacture anything like it. Our dockyards have had centuries to develop this technology, and the tools to build and maintain it. But here, you can’t even make the tools to make the tools you need to start running that kind of line. Even if you could afford to build new ships. Which, from what I’ve seen, you can’t.”

The tech got lightly to his feet, picked up his case of tools. “Then I guess I’m done here, Pilot,” he said, an edge in his voice.

Finally.
Iain suppressed a sigh, glanced out of habit at the chrono on Linnea’s main external control board. The number meant nothing. In the Hidden Worlds it would have synched to local time on docking. Here there’d been no signal; the blue-glowing numbers flicked silently past, meaningless, telling the time on some far-distant world. Iain’s hunger, though, told him that it must be past time for the evening meal.

The tech lingered. “Look, Pilot. Will you at least tell First Pilot Kimura that I tried?”

Iain grimaced, then nodded. The man had only been trying to carry out his assignment. “Look,” he said. “It’s not my ship. And it’s the only one like it in this system. We couldn’t afford to risk damaging it even if that
could
help you.” He moved to Linnea’s board and checked it—jump engines on deep standby, all lockdown lights blue—then ran his hand across the edge of the board, shutting it down.

Kimura Hiso had made a point this morning of showing Iain commscreen images of the strong metal docking clamps that held the ship down in its bay, inside the main thermal barrier that kept out the worst of the cold, but outside the pressurized part of the station. Clamps that had been sealed in place and locked by port security. Linnea’s ship was not going anywhere, not unless, by some miracle, Iain could gain access to vacuum work gear, vacuum cutting tools, and a few hours to work undetected. Which would not happen, not in this heavily monitored skyport.

The tech left, and Iain took a last look around the piloting compartment. Hiso’s crew had left nothing behind; the data cables the comm tech had built on-site, to link Linnea’s commscreen to a Tritoner storage device and transfer the ship’s schematics, had been cleared away. Iain had worried about a monitoring device, but there was nothing he could do to prevent one from being planted.

The silence in the ship made Linnea’s absence even more painfully real. Days after her disappearance, there was still no word from the deepsiders: no request for ransom, though Iain had not expected that; but also no rumor or hint of a rumor of where they might have taken her. He only knew that she’d been helpless, too sick to stand—that, after all, she had not chosen to leave, to leave him behind.

He touched her empty piloting shell, stood with his eyes closed imagining her here, again, safe at his side.

Iain checked the passenger compartment, apparently untouched, and stepped through the lock to the docking tube. The hatch irised shut behind him, sealed to impervious smoothness. And the ship was safe again. Only Iain, or Linnea if—no,
when
—she returned, could open that hatch without wrecking the ship.

Back at Tereu’s house, Iain paused in the doorway of the reception parlor. Hiso and Tereu stood by the hearth, in close conversation. Iain stood silent, listening to Hiso’s words, the quiet ring of triumph. “—And we’re on the point of successfully adapting some of our mining nukes to reload the missile tubes, after the ship’s missiles are spent. We can rearm it. It’s a real weapon now.”

Iain strode into the room, and they both turned to face him. “What use?” His voice was rough. “What use will those missiles be? Tell me. Persuade me, if you can.”

Hiso looked annoyed. “Perrin Tereu and I were having a private conversation.”

“Even if you can rearm Linnea’s ship,” Iain said, “what do you think you can do with it? What can you protect? What battle can you win? If the Cold Minds decide to finish killing humans, they could do it with a few well-placed rocks. One ship, even with a few missiles in its tubes, is not going to prevent that.”

Hiso picked up a clear bulb of purple wine and sipped at it before he answered. Tereu watched, her eyes moving from Hiso’s face to Iain’s. “We will use it,” Hiso said, “to keep our children safe. Your ship is fast, possibly faster than anything the Cold Minds have. Certainly you are a more skilled pilot—and I am sure the same could be said for Pilot Kiaho.” He raised his bulb of wine in a brief, regretful toast. “Your ship and its systems can help keep us aware of Cold Minds incursions in the Neptune system. We can also use it to spy out developments in their orbital shipyards near Earth. If the number of ships under construction should suddenly increase, for example, that might be a useful warning.”

“As you must have seen before they launched their invasion of the Hidden Worlds,” Iain said. “Did you not?”

Hiso’s smile froze a bit. “Ah. You must understand that we have never allowed
our
few pilots,
our
few ships, to approach the inner system. The Cold Minds have better jumpships than ours. We had no warning of the invasion.”

“There were more frequent raids,” Tereu said softly. “More children taken, for several years.”

“To replace the pilots they sent off, yes, they had no choice,” Hiso said. “But the raids have never been a steady attrition; some years there are many attacks, some years few.”

Tereu’s face was smooth, expressionless, as she listened—but her eyes, dark with meaning, met Iain’s. He looked back at Hiso, who was studying them both with an odd intensity. “I have spent two days giving your work crews access to the ship,” Iain said. “It can be functional tomorrow, with me as its pilot, if I am allowed to work there undisturbed for a single day. Then we can discuss when I will be free to search for Linnea.”

“Which will be soon, I promise you,” Hiso said earnestly. He looked at Tereu. “You’ve finished your wine, I see, my dear. You should go and rest awhile. I’ll join you presently.”

Tereu nodded silently and went out, closing the door behind her. Iain watched her go, a little startled at her docility. Or—was it fear?

Then, setting down his bulb of wine, Hiso leaned aside and touched the base of the commscreen that stood nearest the hearth. “Now she can’t monitor.”

Which means: Now we come to it.
Iain waited.

Hiso turned away and filled a fresh bulb of wine, passed it to Iain, who took it without looking at it. “Listen to me,” Hiso said. “You tell me there’s no hope of rescue from the Hidden Worlds and no refuge there. I don’t accept that. You tell me we are on our own, forever. But that, too, is unacceptable.”

“I don’t see what you or I can do about it,” Iain said. “Or Linnea’s ship, with or without missiles in its tubes. Your ships can’t reach the Hidden Worlds; they’re not set up to handle long jumps, the pilots would die.”

“Which is why we need your ship’s speed, its capabilities,” Hiso said. “We need to change the balance of power with the Cold Minds.”

“How? If you mean spying, that can be done by drones—”

“I don’t mean spying,” Hiso said. “I mean something much more dangerous. I didn’t wish to upset Tereu, you understand—” He half shrugged.

“Go on,” Iain said.

“Your ship could disable a Cold Minds vessel by detonating one of its nuclear missiles in range.”

“You don’t need my ship to launch a missile,” Iain said.

“To move as quickly as we must, at the moment we suspect a possible raid, we need your ship,” Hiso said. “Ours are too small. Too slow. You could jump in, fire, jump out, in seconds.”

Iain shook his head angrily. “What use would that be? The Cold Minds own this system. They have thousands of ships, hundreds of thousands. They can build more as quickly as they need them. Disabling one or two ships means nothing.”
This is insane.

“We want to capture a living Cold Minds pilot,” Hiso said.

“What,” Iain said, struggling to keep the revulsion out of his voice, “
use
would that be?”
Bad memories.
He remembered Linnea’s nausea that day on Nexus—she had seen the essential humanity in them at once. A humanity Iain had tried to deny, for the sake of his own peace.

“You’ve seen them,” Hiso said.

“Yes, I’ve seen them.” Iain took a long pull at his wine.

“And you know that they are not infested by the nanobots?”

Iain winced. “My—the Line dissected the corpse of a pilot. Its brain was—normal, by some definitions.”

“We’ve done the same,” Hiso said, “with damaged corpses left after a ship was destroyed. An infested mind can’t pilot; the control structures disrupt brain function.” He set down his wine. “But how do they stay uninfested, for all those years, in a ship that’s crawling with nanobots?”

Iain looked at him sharply.

“That is what we intend to learn,” Hiso said. “And you will help us.” His dark eyes glittered. “If we knew what it is that keeps the human pilots from being infested,” he said, “we might be able to adapt it to protect ourselves and our people.”

“But infestation is not a risk you face,” Iain said. “The Cold Minds don’t come near Triton. You said so yourself.”

Hiso looked patient. “Protection from infestation,” he said, “would open the prospect of capturing, and using, Cold Minds ships. Altering them for our own purposes.” He looked at Iain. “And then—escaping to the Hidden Worlds.”

Iain caught his breath. “You could never capture enough ships to carry every human in this system,” he said. “Or train enough pilots, with the resources you have.”

“Ah. Well,” Hiso said, and picked up his wine again. “It would not, as you say, be possible to rescue everyone.”

Now it comes.
Iain looked at him. “Who, then?”

“Just—our own people,” Hiso said. “Tritoners from this city and our own outposts. The true exiles, the true descendants, of Earth.”

“The deepsiders are also descendants of Earth,” Iain said sharply.

Hiso met Iain’s look. “You don’t understand. The deepsiders
chose
their exile, long before the Cold Minds rose. This is their home—space, out here in the cold.” He looked Iain in the eye. “But we—we are the people your great- grandfathers left to die. This cold desolation was never our home—never
meant
to be our home. If I could correct that injustice, take even a few hundred, a few thousand, of our people to safety—relative safety—in the Hidden Worlds, that would be an achievement I would be proud to remember when I die.”

“And you would abandon everyone else to the Cold Minds?” Iain did not try to hide his contempt.
He’s insane. Grandiose.

“No. No.” Hiso flicked his fingers and looked across the high table at Iain, the light of the hearth a hot spark in his eyes. “Your people could return for them.”

“You know we cannot,” Iain said. “My people have their own war to fight. A costly one. And their own cities to defend.”

“Then you will have to persuade them,” Hiso said.

Iain shook his head impatiently. “This is madness. You cannot even take the first step. And you would consign thousands of people to inescapable death.”

“As your fathers did to mine,” Hiso said. “Hard choices.”

Iain looked away. There was no good answer to that.

“Studying one of their pilots might save hundreds, maybe thousands, of
real
humans from the same fate.” Hiso looked at Iain. “It will give my people, for the first time, hope of escape. Of a future. Even with the war, the Hidden Worlds would be safer, better, than where we are.”

“I have a counterproposal,” Iain said. “Let Linnea return to the Hidden Worlds in her ship and come back with reinforcements. I will stay as your hostage.”

“You will forgive me,” Hiso said, “if I say that I do not trust you. Or your people. Or any plan of action that I do not myself control.” His confidence seemed to be growing. “No. we will do this in the way I propose. You will help me to capture at least one living Cold Minds pilot. We have already begun to set up a secure, quarantined lab in a research facility over Nereid, also in Neptune orbit. If we can learn how to save ourselves, Pilot sen Paolo, we can free ourselves forever.”

Iain looked away from the naked eagerness in Hiso’s eyes.
No matter what else this is, it is a step toward finding Linnea.
“So I can set the ship to my own control tomorrow?”

“I will allow that,” Hiso said. “Though the ship will remain under restraint until I order it freed for this mission. And you must clearly understand that Pilot Kiaho’s safety, when she is returned to us, depends on your keeping your word.”

Iain looked at him scornfully. “Of course I will keep my word.”

Hiso’s expression did not change, but there was open pleasure in his voice as he said, “I know it well.”

Iain gave Hiso a cool nod and left.