Blue Remembered Earth

disclose. ‘Yes. Of course.’

‘I’m Hector’s cousin, if you didn’t already know.’ Geoffrey glanced at one of Gilbert’s readouts, trusting that he was interpreting it correctly. ‘It doesn’t look as if you’re going to smash into the Winter Palace now – your vector puts you passing close to the docking hub but avoiding an actual collision. That’s lucky.’

‘They must have vented enough gas to push them off course,’ Eunice said. ‘But they’re still at risk from my guns.’

‘They’re your guns, you turn them off,’ Jumai said.

‘I can’t, dear.’

‘We don’t know how many of the Winter Palace’s guns are still operable,’ Geoffrey said, cutting over the construct, ‘and I doubt your information is any better than ours.’

‘No, probably not.’ The captain allowed himself a quiet, resigned laugh. ‘What do you suggest, Mister Akinya?’

‘We can’t risk endangering this ship until you’re out of immediate range of the Winter Palace,’ Geoffrey said. ‘Once we’re satisfied that those guns won’t be turned on us, we’ll close in for docking. You’ll have to ride things out until then. How many of you are there?’

‘Eight,’ Dos Santos answered. Comms had stabilised now: his voice was coming through much more clearly, and without dropouts. ‘That’s the regular crew, myself included.’

‘We can easily take eight survivors,’ Gilbert said. ‘It won’t overburden our life support, and at most we’ll only need to hold them for a few hours before UON or Lunar authorities arrive.’

‘There’s also Hector,’ the captain added.

‘I was about to ask,’ Geoffrey said.

‘Hector was supposed to return on his own – we were never meant to get that close. Then he signalled for help.’

‘He needed technical assistance?’

‘Rescuing. Beyond that, I can’t tell you anything. We think he may have been hurt, but that’s just guesswork – we were on voice-only, no ching, and no biomed feed from his suit.’ Dos Santos grunted: either effort or pain, it was impossible to tell which. ‘But he wouldn’t have called us unless there was a problem.’

‘OK.’ Geoffrey drew a breath, giving himself the space to collect his thoughts. ‘Are you in suits, Captain?’

‘Getting into them as we speak. Afterwards, we’ll crawl into our storm cellar. That’s the best armoured part of the Kinyeti. Should be able to ride out the worst of it in there, even full depressurisation.’

‘Whatever happens, help is on its way. I’m sorry you were dragged into this.’

‘We did what we were asked to do,’ Dos Santos replied. ‘That’s all.’

‘Good luck, Captain.’

‘Same to you, Mister Akinya.’

Dos Santos signed off. Geoffrey remained silent for a few moments, wishing it did not fall on him to say what was surely on all their minds. ‘We can’t leave him there,’ he said quietly. ‘But at the same time, we can’t endanger the Quaynor. We also have a duty of care to the Kinyeti’s survivors.’

‘If they make it through the close approach, they’ll have nothing to fear,’ Arethusa said. ‘Mira said it herself: the authorities will already have been alerted to the attack, and they’ll be on their way very shortly indeed. In a few hours, maybe less, this volume of space will be crawling with enforcement and rescue services.’

‘I’m just as concerned for your safety,’ Geoffrey said.

‘If I’d wanted to be cocooned, I’d never have left Tiamaat,’ the old aquatic answered. ‘We have an advantage over the Kinyeti, anyway – we still have power and steering. Mira, I want you to take us all the way in, to the airlock we originally agreed to use, but in such a way that you minimise our exposure to those pirate emplacements which we suspect may still be operational. Can you do that?’

‘I . . .’ Gilbert’s hands danced on the keypads. ‘I think so. Possibly. Whether the ship’ll take it, I don’t know. We’ll be stress-loading her to the max, to match the habitat’s spin.’

‘They build safety margins into these things,’ Arethusa answered.

‘And I’ve allowed for the margins,’ Gilbert said.

‘Let me look at this,’ Eunice said. ‘I may be able to help.’

‘Are you serious?’ Geoffrey asked.

‘Totally. Voke me active ching privilege. I need to drive your body.’

‘No,’ he said, even before he’d begun to consider the implications of her request.

‘You think nothing of chinging into a golem when the mood suits you. Nor would you object if another person wished to drive your body as a warmblood proxy. Why does my request offend you so very deeply?’

He was about to say: Because you’re dead, and you were my grandmother, but he stopped himself in time. The construct was a pattern of self-evolving data, nothing more. It embodied knowledge and certain useful skill-sets. That it just happened to manifest with the body and voice of his late relative was totally immaterial.

So he told himself.

‘I don’t know if Eunice can do a better job than any of us at flying this thing,’ he told the others. ‘What she thinks she can do and what she can really do are not the same things.’