the displays, ominous as a bloodstained iceberg, blood that had coagulated to a dark, scabrous red, his brain began to insist that there was a definite up and down to the situation. It took a conscious effort to stop clutching his seat rests, as if he was in danger of falling ahead of the ship.
‘Nine kilometres to dock,’ Hector reported. ‘We’ll need slow-down thrust if approach control doesn’t kick in. Jumai: keep signalling. We may break through at the last moment.’
‘Do you have the faintest idea what we’re going to find in that thing?’ Geoffrey asked.
‘I was hoping you’d have all the answers, cousin.’
‘There are going to be a lot of people very interested in getting a closer look at this ship. Maybe Lionheart has something to do with that.’
‘I’ll remind you that this remains Akinya commercial property,’ Hector said. ‘People will get to look at it if and when we choose. I may have been wrong about wanting to keep Eunice’s legacy locked away, I’ll admit that much. But that doesn’t mean I’m about to neglect my obligations to the family.’
Under other circumstances, Geoffrey might have taken that for a goad. But all he heard in Hector’s words now were weariness and resignation, the drained convictions of a man surveying the grave he’d just excavated for himself.
‘It really matters to you,’ he said, marvellingly.
‘Of course it does.’ Hector sounded surprised that it needed stating. ‘That doesn’t make me a monster, any more than rejecting the family makes you one.’
‘Seven kays,’ Jumai said.
They had always known that Lionheart had the means to strike at them without warning, but it was quite another thing to have that truth demonstrated with such spectacular indifference to their sensibilities. The ice package emerged on schedule, ninety seconds after the last, but as it boosted from the launcher the steering lasers pushed it through nearly ninety degrees. All this happened too quickly to analyse: the first they knew of any strike was when the ship shuddered violently, and then kept shuddering, pitching and yawing as if on a rolling sea. Geoffrey braced for decompression, or something worse, but the air held. His heart racing, he searched the schematics for signs of damage. But Hector was quicker.
‘We just lost a centrifuge arm – it wasn’t shielded by the aerobrake. The other arm’s still revolving – it’s acting like a counterweight.’
‘We should be able to stop it.’ Geoffrey sounded calmer than he felt. ‘Slow it, lock it down or something.’
The pitch and yaw were ebbing; they hadn’t done anything, so the ship must have sensed the damage and acted accordingly. Geoffrey glanced at the console chronometer, counting back in his head. How many seconds had it been?
Hector’s hands returned to the steering controls. ‘Arresting forward motion.’
‘You’ll need to do more than that,’ Eunice said sharply. ‘You’ve been sucker-punched. Ship’s still drifting off- axis. You’ll lose aerobrake protection in about thirty seconds. Dorsal three, two kilonewtons, three seconds. Hit that mark.
‘Overcorrecting,’ Hector said, when the input had had time to feed through.
‘You were slow. Laterals one and six, two kilonewtons, two seconds. Geoffrey: dorsal four, one kilonewton, one second:
‘We’re still drifting,’ Jumai said after a few moments.
‘It’s coming under control. Switch to vernier thrust. Laterals one and three, dorsals two and five: five-second micro-bursts.’
‘Aerobrake is beginning to realign,’ Geoffrey said.
‘Good. Hold this drift for another ten seconds. Stand ready on laterals two and five, two-second bursts. That should kill it.’
When the ship was at rest, holding station relative to Lionheart, Hector said, ‘The remaining centrifuge arm is static and locked down. I don’t think we lost much air – the internal doors must have shut tight as soon as the centrifuge broke away.’
‘Do you think we should pull back to ten kilometres?’ Geoffrey asked. ‘We were fine until we tried moving closer.’
Hector was already unbuckling from his seat. ‘Maybe we were, but if we do that we’re just back to square one – drifting with no fuel to get home. As far as I can see, there’s only one course of action now.’ He pushed himself from the seat, spinning around in the air. ‘I’m going to reach that airlock, disarm the security system.’
‘Across seven kilometres of open space?’ Geoffrey asked.
‘Better than ten.’ Hector stabilised himself, brushing fingertips against the wall, and opened the door.
The ship shook again. The impact was much louder this time, and it triggered an avalanche of damage and warning indications. The after-vibrations rumbled like a passing express train, dying away over tens of seconds. ‘Direct hit against the aerobrake,’ Jumai said, when the diagnostic messages had localised the impact point.
‘Even if we started pulling back now, it wouldn’t make any difference,’ Eunice said.
Geoffrey and Jumai abandoned their seats. ‘There has to be an alternative,’ Geoffrey said. ‘If we give ourselves enough drift away from Lionheart, we’re bound to fall out of range eventually.’
Hector was about to lower his helmet into place. ‘Not how it works out here, cousin. Provided Lionheart can see us, it can hit us.’
‘He’s right,’ Eunice said. ‘Unless you can find another comet to hide behind, you have very little choice. The aerobrake won’t hold indefinitely.’
Jumai and Hector were both now fully suited, with helmets on, although Jumai had not yet locked her visor down. Hector was on suit air: an image of his face, distorted and enlarged, had appeared on the external surface of
