Gardens of the Sun (58 page)

Back when she’d been working in the R&R Corps at the northern edge of the Fontaine Territory, Macy, caught in a full-on winter storm, had spent nine days in a line hut out of radio contact with base, hunched in all her clothes over a convector heater or lying in the bunk under a mountain of blankets, living on MRE packs and instant coffee while everything beyond the hut’s frosted window was erased by a blur of falling whiteness. She felt the same lonely anxiety now - although back then she hadn’t had to worry about running out of air or water, and although she’d been entirely cut off from the civilised world, the base had been just thirty klicks away, half a day’s ride in the snow-cat once the blizzard had blown itself out, snow-covered pine trees standing under a flawless blue sky, sunlight sparkling on the crests of crystalline white drifts.

But she was such a very long way from everywhere else now, and despite her housekeeping routines and the daily contact with Newt and Han and Hannah, she never forgot that she was caught inside a fragile bubble of heat and light and air. A spark rising in an infinite flue. A mote of dust floating in a cathedral. The old airplane fear would seize her at odd moments and she had trouble sleeping, would wake with a sudden jolt, convinced there was something badly wrong, her pulse hammering in her ears for long moments before she felt the steady subsonic rumble of the motor through the pad of the sleeping niche, the whirr and sigh of the fans and pumps that circulated and refreshed the air.

At last she reached turnover. Although she’d practised assiduously for the moment, and Newt was in constant contact throughout, the business of shutting down Elephant’s motor and swinging the little tug end for end and reigniting the motor to begin deceleration was a blur of nightmare anxiety. When it was over Macy stripped off her suit-liner, sponged stale cold sweat from her skin, and crawled into the sleeping niche and slept for twelve hours straight.

One day Newt sent her shots of the Ghosts’ little fleet, taken at the closest approach to Nephele, which wasn’t very close at all, a gulf of several billion kilometres. The four ships were strung out in a line like broken fragments of a comet, each no more than a handful of pixels across. Tiny clusters of bright squares. Macy knew that it was impossible to resolve any meaningful detail, but all the same she stared long and hard at them. They had a high albedo, perhaps because they were painted white, the Ghosts’ totemic colour, and they were far bigger than any ships that the Ghosts were known to possess.

A few days later, Newt called and told Macy that the Ghost ships hadn’t gone into turnover. They were still accelerating.

She ate her lunch while waiting for Newt’s reply. Curd cheese smeared on a gritty biscuit, a handful of small sour tomatoes from the cold store. She was eating sparingly, knew it was because she had the irrational fear of running out of food, couldn’t help it.

A telescopic image of Saturn hung in the memo space. Just three hundred and forty million kilometres away now. A minuscule half-disc that looked slightly deformed because of the rings. Like the fuzzy image of a broken teacup. In nine days she’d be there, and her problems would really begin. The prospect filled her with a grinding dread. She might not be able to convince the right people to do the right thing. She might be thrown in prison, or worse. She might never see the twins or Newt again: an unbearable thought.

The comms pinged. Newt’s reply had arrived.

- When it comes to making a deal, you’re going to have to do some fast talking. You’re slowing down so you can make orbit around Saturn, but the Ghosts are coming on faster and faster . . . It means you don’t have three weeks’ grace after all. It means that the Ghosts will arrive at Saturn a little over five days after you do.

Macy and Newt spent the rest of the day discussing her options. There weren’t many, and none of them were good. She could begin to accelerate again, but she would have to get rid of the excess velocity when she reached Saturn. Elephant was a true space vehicle and lacked a heat shield, so she couldn’t brake by ploughing though the upper atmosphere of either Saturn or Titan. At best, she could fire up the motor for a day or so and add a couple of hours to the gap between Elephant’s arrival and that of the Ghosts, but then she’d have to slow down by performing a complex series of fly-bys past Saturn and Titan, which would waste more time than she saved. Or she could start accelerating again and keep going, swing straight past Saturn as the Ghosts were evidently planning to do, but she didn’t yet know whether they were heading on to Jupiter or Earth or someplace else, and she couldn’t be sure of their final destination until after Elephant had encountered Saturn. For all she knew, they could be heading for Mars, planning to reclaim the planet lost to the Outers more than a century ago.

And in any case, her options were limited by the amount of fuel she was carrying.

In the end, Macy and Newt decided that they’d stick with the plan. Continue to slow down, then swing around Saturn in a reverse gravity-assist, enter orbit and get to Paris, Dione, as quickly as possible. They also agreed that it was time to wake up Loc Ifrahim.

 

The coffin did most of the work. Macy fed Loc sips of fruit juice, swabbed his face and torso with wet wipes, helped him to the head. She’d twice been through revival after long periods of hibernation and knew how bad it was. He picked at a small helping of boiled rice, chewing every grain, saying in his post-hibernation croak, ‘I’ve been ready to return to Saturn ever since you picked me up, Macy. There was no need for this drama. All you had to do was ask.’

‘We needed to save on consumables.’

‘And spending nine weeks in this little ship with me was not a pleasing prospect. I quite understand - the feeling is mutual,’ Loc said, with a ghost of his old crooked smile.

‘We make quite a team, don’t we?’ Macy said. ‘They wouldn’t believe me alone, or you. But both of us together . . .’

‘May I ask, did you also bring aboard the body of Captain Neves?’

‘There wasn’t time.’

‘Ah.’

‘If this all works out,’ Macy said, with a deep pang of guilt, ‘you can take her back to Earth.’

‘Of course. Well, what has been happening while I have been asleep?’

Macy told him about the refusal by the Brazilian forces at Jupiter and Saturn to surrender control, told him that the Ghost ships were still accelerating towards the Saturn System, and explained what it might mean.

He thought for a while, then said, ‘You have not yet talked to the TPA. Or to the PacCom authority on Iapetus.’

‘We thought it best to keep radio silence.’

‘But now you think otherwise. Which is why you woke me. And not before time,’ Loc said. ‘Let’s see what I can do, shall we?’

After some to-and-fro with Newt, Macy managed to aim Elephant’s main antenna at Dione. She turned the comms over to Loc Ifrahim and watched as he engaged in a text conversation with someone called Yota McDonald. An old friend in the diplomatic service, he said.

Yota McDonald explained that the revolution in Greater Brazil had caused a seismic shift in the balance of power at Saturn. A sizeable faction in the Brazilian contingent of the TPA, including the diplomatic, police and civil services, and four of the five governors and their staff of the Brazilian-controlled cities, wanted to come to an accommodation with the Outers, but Euclides Peixoto and senior officers in the Army and the Air Defence Force refused to countenance any such move. It seemed that Euclides Peixoto was determined to stick it out at Saturn; not so much out of loyalty to the old regime, but because he did not want to relinquish power over his little empire. But he lacked the backing of the Europeans and the Pacific Community, and without their support the only way he could keep power was by main force. There had already been a long series of strikes and nonviolent protests in Camelot, Mimas, and Baghdad, Enceladus, and Athens and Sparta, Tethys. The governors of those cities had refused to challenge the protesters, and Euclides Peixoto had threatened to send in troops if nothing was done, a stand-off that had not yet been resolved, mainly because the approach of the Ghost fleet was a menace overshadowing every kind of domestic problem. There could be no doubt about its hostile intent now. Euclides Peixoto claimed to be planning a spectacular counterstrike, and he wanted to attack their city on Triton, too. If Loc Ifrahim and Macy really did have useful intelligence about the Ghosts, Yota McDonald sent, Euclides Peixoto would certainly want to talk with them.

Loc Ifrahim and Yota McDonald discussed ways and means of contacting the various administrations, and of obtaining a firm promise that the TPA would issue a guarantee of safe passage. When Loc finally broke contact with his friend, Macy said that it was time they talked to Tommy Tabagee.

‘We’re going to land at the PacCom base on Iapetus. Unless you can convince me that you have a better idea.’

‘Oh, I have no objections,’ Loc said. ‘But let’s not do everything in a rush. Before everything else, we need that guarantee of safe passage. It shouldn’t be a problem as long as we can convince the TPA security council that we have valuable information about the Ghosts. Then, and only then, should we begin to negotiate the terms of our surrender. I think we can survive this, but don’t expect cheering crowds when we arrive.’

‘I’ll be happy just to stay out of jail.’

‘For what it is worth, I believe that you made the right choice,’ Loc said.

His smile was a true work of art. For once, Macy decided to take him at his word.

‘I think we had better go through everything we know about the Ghosts,’ she said.

‘An excellent idea. We will rehearse until you are letter-perfect. Although we must try to retain a few of your rough edges, I think. People so often mistake that kind of thing for honesty.’

‘Not something you could ever be accused of.’

Loc smiled. ‘It’s true that my talents lie elsewhere. Which is why we’re going to make such a convincing team.’

 

Apart from tedious coaching sessions and long and tangled discussions with Tommy Tabagee, the Brazilian ambassador, and various members of the TPA security council, Macy Minnot and Loc Ifrahim spent as much time as possible out of sight of each other. Macy in the command blister; Loc in the living space. They had established a wary mutual respect, but it by no means resembled any species of friendship. More like a business partnership between two people who trusted each other against their better judgement.

Saturn and its retinue of moons swelled astern of Elephant. The Ghost ships stood off to one side of the gas giant - because of the different positions of Neptune and Nephele relative to Saturn they were approaching at another angle. At first, Elephant’s telescope showed only the tiny spear of mingled light emitted by their fusion drives and mass drivers. Then, at maximum magnification, Macy could make out long fingers of shadow within the glow - shadows cast by the ships. And at last she could see the ships themselves, but even as Elephant entered the outer edge of the Saturn System she still couldn’t resolve any real detail.

On that last day, Elephant swept in past the eccentric orbits of Saturn’s retinue of small outer moons: the four moons of the Gallic group; the Norse group of some thirty moons in retrograde orbits, including Phoebe, the largest of all the outer moons; the five moons of the Inuit group. The rest of the system lay beyond. Two-faced Iapetus; tumbling, cavern-riddled Hyperion; smoggy Titan; battered Rhea. The smaller inner moons: Dione, Tethys, Enceladus, Mimas. A greater variety of moons here than around all the other planets in the Solar System, arrayed outward from the banded globe of Saturn and the Ring System, with its retinue of co-orbital moons and ring shepherds, and swarming moonlets embedded in the A Ring.

Iapetus’s traffic control contacted Macy via tightbeam laser and she downloaded her flight plan for approval. It was purely a formality: she was already committed. As Elephant fell inward, she banished Loc to the passenger compartment, checked and rechecked the flight parameters, and kept an eye on the thin traffic between the various moons. Remembering how, when she and Newt and Avernus had fled Dione during the Quiet War, a singleship and its proxies had chased them across the rings. Aware that at any moment a missile or proxy could slam towards her out of the darkness. A speck of smart gravel travelling at hyperkinetic relative velocity could pierce Elephant’s hull and its fusion-motor chamber, turn the tug into a sudden fireball and an expanding shell of tumbling debris within a microsecond. She’d never know what hit her and couldn’t do anything to prevent it, but still.