physically present, aboard a huge, ponderous, fragile-as-gossamer machine, something that could no more tolerate a collision with another of its kind than it could execute dogfight course changes. And with two delicate ships being drawn to the candleflame of the Winter Palace, the chances of an accident, let alone a deliberate obstructional act, could only increase.
‘Kinyeti is ten kays out,’ Gilbert said, a few minutes later. ‘Looks as if they’re lining up for . . . the docking node where Hector’s already clamped on. That make sense to anyone?’
‘Might be the only entry point they trust,’ Jumai said.
Geoffrey nodded. ‘Let’s wait and see what their intentions are.’
A second or so later, Arethusa said, ‘Pirates.’
She had seen it an instant before the rest of them: an eruption of pinprick light from either end of the habitat’s cylinder, the bright spillage of magnetic and optical collision-avoidance devices as they directed mass and energy against whatever the Winter Palace’s autonomous defence systems had identified as an incoming threat. Not an enemy, because the notion of ‘enemy’ required the supposition of intent, of directed sentience, but rather something dumb and non-negotiable, space debris or a marauding chunk of primeval rock and ice, sailing too close for comfort.
It took Geoffrey a moment to interpret Arethusa’s statement. There were no pirates. But there were proximal impact ranging and target eradication systems, and in English the acronym was precisely the word Arethusa had uttered. Guns, basically, but rigorously fail-safed, incapable of being directed at anything other than a real, imminent collision hazard.
Non-weapons.
They had stood down upon Hector’s approach, but they had not shown the Kinyeti the same courtesy. A moment after he grasped what was happening, Geoffrey saw the flowering of multiple impact points along the Kinyeti’s hull, attended by puffs of sudden silver brightness as metal and ceramics underwent instantaneous vaporisation. The best the pirates could do was subject her to a continuous disruptive assault, aiming to break up her mass into smaller parts that could be individually bulldozed out of harm’s way using further kinetic-energy volleys.
Most of the ship remained. One of her centrifuge arms had been ripped loose, cartwheeling away on its own new orbit, and all up and down her hull lay a peppering of craters and voids where she had been struck. One of her fuel tanks had been punctured and was now venting furiously, while there was evidence of systemic pressure loss from three or four rupture points in the forward module. The view was clouded by the debris and gases expanding away from the ship itself, cloaking her injuries.
But she wasn’t dead. They knew this when a second stutter of heat and light signalled the Kinyeti deploying her own anti-collision systems, this time in a coordinated strike against the habitat. Quite what the legality of that action was, Geoffrey couldn’t begin to guess: the number of instances of ships being attacked by other ships, or stations by ships, or vice versa, was surely so small that there could be little or no precedent for it in modern law. That the Kinyeti was protecting herself was beyond dispute, but equally, her crew must have realised that the habitat would not permit a closer approach, and that their actions were provocative.
From the Quaynor, all they could do was watch, transfixed, as the conflict ran its course. The Kinyeti’s assault had taken out the visible pirate emplacements ringed around either end of the Winter Palace. But the Winter Palace was rotating, and her slow spin brought undamaged emplacements into view. The Palace fired again, blasting another fuel tank, nearly severing the main axis and doing further harm to the command module at the ship’s front. The gas cloud thickened to grey-white smog. The Kinyeti retaliated, less convincingly this time, as if portions of her own defence systems had been damaged or rendered inoperable. Blast sites pockmarked the Winter Palace – some landing far from the endcaps, cratering the unmarked skin of the cylinder, punching so far into insulation that they might have touched the bedrock of Eunice’s private hothouse. The Winter Palace kept spinning, as heavy and oblivious as a grindstone. More pirates revolved into view and rained hell on the Akinya craft. There was a sputter of retaliation, then nothing.
The Winter Palace, largely undamaged even now, maintained its spin as the debris/gas cloud slowly dispersed away from the wreck of the Kinyeti. The tattered, broken-backed mining ship was still moving, still on an approach vector for the habitat.
No further attacks were forthcoming.
‘OK, would someone be so good as to clue me in on what the fuck just happened?’ Jumai asked, doubtless rhetorically.
‘Hector must have called for help, or he was late checking in,’ Geoffrey said. ‘Somewhere between his arrival and the point where it fired on the Kinyeti, the Winter Palace must have changed its mind about him being welcome.’ He sounded awed and appalled even to himself, not quite able to process what he had just witnessed.
‘There could still be survivors,’ Gilbert said. ‘I’m trying to establish direct comms. Resuming aug reach: we don’t have much to lose now, and it may be our only way of establishing a path to the Kinyeti.’ The merwoman paused, rapt with concentration. ‘Oh, wait – here’s something. General distress signal, point of origin Kinyeti. She’s calling for assistance.’
‘Can you patch me through?’ Geoffrey asked.
‘No idea if they can still hear, but you can try. Speak when ready.’
He coughed to clear his throat. ‘This is Geoffrey Akinya, calling the Kinyeti. We saw what just happened to you. What is your status, and how may we assist?’
The reply came through on voice-only comms, sounding as if it had been broken up, scrambled and only partially reassembled. ‘This is Captain Dos Santos . . . Akinya Space mining vehicle Kinyeti. We have sustained damage to critical systems . . . life support . . . inoperable.’ It was a man’s voice, speaking Swahili at source. ‘We can’t steer and we have no delta-vee capability. Our emergency escape vehicle is detached.’
‘They’re screwed,’ Eunice said.
‘We saw the departure,’ Geoffrey said, trying to tune out the construct but not wishing to de-voke her completely. ‘I presume Hector took the vehicle?’
‘I . . .’ Captain Dos Santos hesitated. Geoffrey could imagine him wondering how much he was at licence to
