The Recollection (6 page)

He found it hard to believe that it had been only seven months since the appearance of the Chancery Lane arch, and Verne’s disappearance. Now at least a dozen lay scattered around the country, more than a hundred worldwide.

“How long’s this one been here?” he said.

Alice stood holding the shotgun in one hand, a digital camera in the other.

“About two hours. I called you as soon as I found it.” She raised the camera and fired off half a dozen quick shots, getting him and the arch. Then she shivered, as if cold.

Ed walked back to the Land Rover and climbed into the driver’s seat. His fingers drummed on the wheel as he nerved himself to carry out his plan.

Alice opened the passenger side door and clambered in beside him. “What do you think?” she said. She seemed better than she had the last time he’d seen her. Calmer. More focused. The grief was still there, every bit as strong as before, but now better hidden.

Ed stopped drumming. He peered through the windshield at the arch, standing in the light from the car, in a field that smelled of dry grass and cow shit.

“I’m going to go through,” he said. The authorities had the other arches blocked off. If he passed up this chance, he knew he’d never get close enough to try again.

Alice frowned. Her knuckles were pale on the shotgun stock.

“Are you sure?”

Ed swallowed. All his instincts were telling him to turn the car around and make a run for it. Instead, he slid his hand into his combat jacket and pulled out the gun, and a St Christopher medal he’d pocketed on the way out of the flat: an old birthday present from his missing brother.

“I’ve got to find him,” he said, laying the medal on the dashboard, hoping he sounded a lot more decisive than he felt.

Alice bit her lip. She reached over and touched his arm.

“Then I’m coming with you.”

He squeezed her hand.

“Are you sure?”

She pulled away, eyes on the gun. “I’ve already lost my husband. You’re all I’ve got left; I don’t want to lose you as well.”

Ahead, the moon cast long dark shadows through the trees on the far riverbank. Moths flickered in the headlight beams. Ed settled himself into the driver’s seat, and slipped the pistol into the glove box. He wiped the sweat from his palms on the hem of his paint-splattered black t-shirt. Then he leant forward, squeezing the hard leather steering wheel.

“Okay, then.”

He turned the ignition and eased the Land Rover forward, over the uneven ground, keeping a firm grip on the wheel and the toe of his boot light on the accelerator pedal. The arch loomed up before them, easily tall and wide enough to swallow the Land Rover.

“Here we go,” he said. He took a deep, shuddering breath, and pumped the gas. They slithered forward, the wheels slipping on the wet grass, kicking up mud. The wing mirror on the passenger side hit the inside edge of the arch. There was a white flash, and an instant of shocking cold—

CHAPTER SIX

ARTIFICIAL SUNS

The shuttle flight to the
Ameline
’s parking orbit took an hour. Kat spent most of the time in her acceleration couch, working via her implant on the electronic forms needed to clear the ship for departure. There were so many—flight plans, health and safety certifications, maintenance updates, passenger manifests—that they took her full attention until the shuttle’s pilot announced they were on final approach to the
Ameline
’s rear airlock. She rarely had the chance to see her ship from the outside, so she leant across Tony Drake’s legs and pressed her nose to the porthole.

The
Ameline
was a snub-nosed wedge of black tungsten alloy and smart carbon composite, five metres across at the bow, flaring back to thirty at the stern. Long ago, someone had painted the ship in the blue and red livery of the Abdulov trading family. Black and yellow stencils marked out intake valves, air brakes and emergency hatches. Sensor pods and lateral thrusters stuck out like horns, and at the back, the rear airlock sat snug between the black exhausts of the main engines.

By the time Kat popped the lock and stepped into the
Ameline
’s musty interior, she had the paperwork complete and a clear launch window approved. She led Drake and the Acolyte through the cold, echoing cargo bay to the common area, which comprised a cramped lounge with a circular table, and a galley with doors leading off to individual staterooms. She waved at a pair of threadbare couches.

“Sit down gentlemen, and make yourselves comfortable.”

She showed Drake how to fasten the safety straps on his couch. Then she jerked a thumb at a hatch in the forward wall.

“If you need anything, I’ll be through there, on the flight deck.”

She ducked through the hatch into an antechamber, where she removed her coat and changed her grubby fatigues for an elasticised, skin-tight ship suit. Already, she could feel the
Ameline
’s enthusiasm for the coming flight. Through her implant, she could hear its silicon mind chattering at the edge of her awareness, running course calculations and internal status checks.

Dressed, she climbed the ladder up to the flight deck, a grey-walled cave at the front of the ship, illuminated by banks of softly glowing computer displays. Sliding her legs beneath the main console, she settled herself into the pilot’s seat.

She could see the curve of Tiers Cross through the forward windows, its snowfields blindingly bright with the reflected light of its orbiting, artificial suns. She took a moment to savour the view before buckling up, thinking of all the cold, lonely evenings she’d spent standing on its frozen streets looking up, anticipating this moment.

When she was ready, she hooked her neural implant into the ship’s sensorium and a head-up display appeared, superimposed across the vision in her right eye. Life support connectors snaked into the sockets sewn into the chest and thighs of her ship suit. The peppery smell of raw space filled her nostrils as her body interpreted the incoming data from the ship’s sensors, converting it into recognisable human sensations. Her skin prickled all over and, deep in her gut, she could feel power building in the fusion reactor. She was linked to the ship and it pulled at her like an eager puppy straining the leash.

> Where are we going?

It showed her a stylised, three dimensional map of local space, covering a sphere a dozen light years in radius.

Kat smiled.

“It’s good to be back,” she said.

She blinked up a cursor and used it to click on the icon representing Strauli Quay. Seven light years away, with few natural resources and situated at the intersection of three trade routes, the planet was an important crossroads in interstellar culture, a collision of ideas and fashions from a hundred worlds, its wealth and reputation sustained by the rivers of commerce flowing through its orbital docks. And although no-one there had seen her in decades, it was also her home.

She thought of her parents, living and working in the sunny coastal villas and courtyards of the Abdulov compound. In her head, she could almost smell the jasmine in the gardens and hear the snap and flap of boat sails on the afternoon tide.

> Set course for Strauli Quay?

“Yes.”

> You got it.

She felt the old ship shiver as the fusion thrusters fired, pushing it up and out of orbit, seeking the emptiness of interstellar space. Tiers Cross fell away from the window, to be briefly replaced by the sparkling jewels of the Bubble Belt.

> Message coming in.

Above the window, one of the overhead displays cleared to reveal the worried face of the family representative, Ezra.

“Captain Abdulov? Are you under way?”

“We’re just breaking orbit. Why, what’s the matter?”

The young man flushed. “It’s Captain Luciano. His ship jumps for Strauli in five minutes.”

“Victor’s
ahead
of us?” Kat cursed under her breath. It was illegal to activate jump engines within a hundred planetary diameters of the surface—a distance that would take her more than an hour to reach at maximum thrust.

“Yes, I’m afraid we failed in our attempt to delay him.”

“Did you put in the complaint?”

“I did, but the local police have shown considerable reluctance to interfere in what they call ‘a dispute between traders.’ Personally, I suspect bribery.”

Kat balled her fists. She’d given up her home and family for Victor Luciano, only to have that sacrifice thrown back in her face when he left her. She couldn’t let him beat her to Djatt, not now she stood to get back everything she’d lost.

A matter of honour, Ezra had called it.

She took a deep breath.

“Okay,” she said, “here’s what’s going to happen. Ezra, you need to get on the line to traffic control. Tell them I’ve got an emergency on board. I don’t care what, make something up.”

“An emergency?”

“I don’t know. A reactor leak, maybe. Something that means I have to activate my jump engines right now.”

“You can’t do that.”

“At the same time, I’m going to open up the fusion motors so I’ll have enough residual velocity following the jump to overtake Victor before he reaches the Quay.”

On the overhead screen, Ezra’s mouth opened and shut wordlessly as he tried to think of a suitable response. Jumping under thrust was even more strictly forbidden than jumping within a hundred diameters. If another ship happened to be in the way when she appeared at her destination, she wouldn’t have time to take evasive action, and she’d still be accelerating when she hit it. Worse still, if it was
behind
her, her exhaust would incinerate it before she had time to cut the thrust. The risks to everyone were too great, and harsh punishments were doled out to captains caught engaging in such reckless behaviour. Punishments up to and including imprisonment and ship seizure.

“I know what I’m doing,” she said.

Ezra scratched his head. “But what happens at Strauli when they see you coming in hot?”

Kat smiled. “That won’t be for another seven years, and you’ll be well into middle age before the news works its way back here, so why don’t you let me worry about it?”

Ezra opened his mouth again to protest but she broke the connection before he could.

Fuck it
, she thought.
I’m never coming back to this dump.

She blinked up the engine controls and ramped up the thrust, letting it push her back in her seat. Accelerating hard, she told the
Ameline
to bring the jump engines online. Hooked into the ship’s senses, she felt the two smooth purple coils of twisted space-time powering up in its belly, their design back-engineered from the arches that first allowed humanity to spread out into the universe.

Thousands of kilometres ahead, Victor’s ship stood against the darkness like a silver splinter in the night.

She opened a channel.

“Hey,” she said.

On the overhead screen, Victor regarded her with tired eyes.

“What are you doing, Katherine?”

Strapped into her couch, she did her best to smile against the acceleration.

“I’m beating you to Djatt.”

There was a short delay as her words crawled across the gulf separating them, and then Victor shook his head sadly.

“You can’t catch us, Kat. Not in that old tub.”

Katherine bit her lip, enjoying the moment.

“You think so? Watch this.”

Knowing she’d be gone before her words reached him, she gave the mental command for the ship to activate its jump engines. All the power gauges spiked at once, there was a flash of white, and the
Ameline
vanished.

CHAPTER SEVEN

MISMATCHED MOONS

After the flash, darkness in the Land Rover’s cab.

Alice let out a cry: “I can’t see!”

Also blind, Ed stood on the brakes. The big car ground to a halt. Groping, he reached over and found her arm. They were both shivering and breathless, as if drenched in iced water.

“It’s okay,” he said, “I’m here.”

The flash had been too bright, like staring into the sun. He screwed his eyes shut and waited for the blobby green and purple afterimages to fade. When he opened them, he saw they were parked on a beach, in the dark. Breakers crashed and slithered on the sand ahead, froth bone-white in the light of the Land Rover’s headlamps.

Beside him, Alice knuckled her eyes.

“Stop it, you’ll make it worse.” He pushed her fists away and cupped her face in his hands.

“Look at me,” he said.

Her eyes were red and watering. With an effort, she focussed on him.

“Are you okay?”

She looked uncomfortable. “I think so.” She pulled back and wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her fleece.

Ed reached down and killed the engine. It shuddered into a deep silence, broken only by the rush and hiss of the surf.

Alice said, “Where do you think we are?”

Ed leant forward over the wheel. Beyond the headlamp beams, the beach stretched away in both directions, a long strip of sand bookended by the cliffs of distant headlands. The stars above were clear and bright and unfamiliar, and two crescent moons hung low over the water, one white and the other orange.