Pushing Ice (26 page)

“I agree,” said Saul Regis, tapping a finger against the braided strand of his beard. “We stay, we live.”

“I’m with Bella,” said Reda Kirschner, one of the cometary scientists under Nick Thale. “We’re not finished with Janus. We didn’t come all this way just to turn around.”

Bella was glad of the support, but she knew that those people who had publicly thrown in their lot with her had no strong ties to Earth, or to any of the space colonies. None of them were married; they had left neither lovers nor close family behind.

Unfortunately, that could not be said for everyone on the ship. No sooner had she framed that thought than Craig Schrope pushed himself away from his tether point at the wall and drifted into the middle of the auditorium. With expert timing, he brought himself to a halt three metres to Bella’s right: close enough to command attention, but not so close that he looked like he was standing with her.

“This space vehicle is a DeepShaft commercial asset,” he said. “We have an obligation to bring it back home. Bella and Jim can talk about professional duty all they like. We’re miners — yes. But we’re also custodians of this ship.” He looked pityingly at Chisholm, the way he might have looked at roadkill. “I’m sorry, Jim, but you have no authority here any more.”

“Craig,” Bella said warningly, “don’t try to split the ship. It doesn’t have to happen this way.”

“I’m not splitting anything,” Schrope said. “I’m not the one talking about being abandoned by DeepShaft. I’m not the one talking as if the company has already forsaken us.”

“And don’t try playing the company loyalty card, either,” Bella said. “This is about human lives.”

“It is,” Schrope said, nodding emphatically. “And I don’t happen to think this is any place to spend the rest of my life.” An idea seemed to occur to him suddenly: a gloss of interested animation suffused his face. He looked at Svetlana. “I will freely admit that you and I have had our differences in the last few days.”

“What about it, Craig?” Svetlana asked, with exaggerated civility.

“You never wanted this,” Schrope told her. “Rightly or wrongly, you didn’t buy into this. You were always ambivalent about Janus, and after the accident you had grave reservations about continuing the mission.” He waved a hand dismissively. “It’s true that we had a difference of opinion about the validity of your fears, I admit that. But if you’d had your way, we’d have never ended up in this mess.”

“Fuck you, Craig. You didn’t listen. That’s all that matters to me.” She was still furious with him.

“But I’m listening now,” he said. “I’m listening, and I’m asking you to work with me: for the sake of
Rockhopper
, if not DeepShaft.”

She looked appalled. “Work with
you?
”

“Bella can’t operate this ship without you. You hold the reins, Svetlana; you are the one who gets to choose whether we stay here or make a run for home. It’s in your hands.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Bella said. “We’ve been over this — it’s suicide even to think of returning.”

“It won’t be a question of taking the ship,” Schrope said, talking to everyone in the room. “Bella has already abdicated authority here by giving up on us. That leaves me. I’m still in command. All anyone here has to do is keep doing their job.”

“If you listen to Craig, you will all die,” Bella said.

Schrope fixed his attention on Svetlana, as if Bella had not spoken. “I need you to get us home,” he said. “I need you to pull your team together and start the engine. We’ll rig for two gees. It’s all or nothing, Svieta: the engine will either get us home, or we’ll go out in a blaze of glory. Both of those options are better than rotting out here.”

“Don’t do this,” Bella said, but her voice died somewhere in her throat, reaching no one. They were no longer listening to her, or to any of the other senior staff. The gathering had erupted into heated debate, a ruction that at any instant threatened to boil over into violence. “I’ve lost the ship,” she said, for the benefit of no one but herself, yet Jim Chisholm whispered, “They’ll come back to you. They’ll always come back. Deep down, they know you’re right.”

A voice boomed from the crowd, temporarily silencing them all. It was Saul Regis, his big form trembling with adrenalin. “Fine,” he said. “If it comes to this, so be it, but let’s see how we all stand. Let’s draw a line in the sand. Those with Bella, gather around me. Those who agree with Craig, gather around him.”

Bella watched her crew split into those two groupings, still a little stunned that it had actually come to this. At first it looked as if Schrope was going to win the day by a clear margin — but Bella had more loyalists than she realised. Saul Regis, supporting Bella, gathered most of his robotics team around him, with only Marcia Batista defecting to Schrope’s party. Half of the science team came to Bella, and more than half of the medical team, and a handful of Svetlana’s flight-systems party: mostly the younger, less experienced members, like Meredith Bagley and Mengcheng Yang. Bella counted heads: including Saul Regis and herself, she had around forty people. There were a lot fewer than forty people gathered around Craig Schrope. The rest of the crew formed an amorphous, jostling group between the two rival leaders. Most of Parry’s mining team, as well as Parry himself, had yet to decide. Svetlana had not declared her allegiance either.

It couldn’t have been easy for Svetlana, Bella thought: no matter how much she might have agreed with him, the idea of joining forces with Craig Schrope must have really stuck in her craw.

Bella caught her eye. Svetlana mouthed back something that might have been defiance, but might equally well have been an apology.

As if their friendship still counted.

She moved to Craig Schrope’s side. A moment later, Bella observed Parry Boyce follow her. She could not blame Parry for that.

Where Parry followed, so did most of his EVA team. Gregor Mair was the only miner who stayed loyal to Bella.

So now it was done. There were no stragglers, no undecided votes, and there was no need to count the numbers: Svetlana’s decision had been crucial. Craig Schrope could now count on more than half of the crew. His angry clique was visibly larger than Bella’s motley assembly. The difference was fewer than twenty people, but the addition of the EVA party gave Schrope’s group the cohesion of an army. With their expertise in ship systems, they had a clear technical edge over Bella’s assortment of scientists, roboticists and medical staff.

Miraculously, a kind of calm fell upon the divided gathering. Schrope’s party knew they had effective control of the ship. Bella’s group knew there was nothing they could do about it. It had been a bloodless mutiny: her crew, even as it ripped itself apart, had not disgraced itself. Bella allowed herself a tiny, waning flicker of pride. They had behaved like adults, even as they spurned her.

“I have the ship,” Schrope said. He sounded relieved more than triumphant. “We’ll do as I said: prep for two gees. Immediate burn, as soon as we’re ready. We’ll drop the mass drivers.” He looked at Svetlana. “Can you organise your team and get on this right away?”

Svetlana took a deep breath, crossing some mental Rubicon, and nodded. “It’s doable.”

Bella raised her hands. She had their instant, total attention. “All right. You’ve done what you think is right. I can’t blame any of you for that. You want to survive very badly. Believe it or not, so do I. To those of you who have joined Craig because you think that’s the best way to keep serving the company, and that to follow me would be the disloyal act… well, I understand. I don’t blame you for it. But you’re still doing the wrong thing —”

“You’ve said enough, Bella,” Schrope cut her off. “Now let me say my piece.”

“Be my guest,” she said.

“Bella is wrong about this,” he said, addressing the crowd again. “Yes, we could eke out a living around Janus — maybe. But don’t mistake optimism for certainty. We
know
we can slow down. That’s not in dispute. That’s physics.”

“Is this leading somewhere, Craig, or do you just want to rub my nose in it?” Bella asked.

He fixed her with a tolerant smile. “You’ve said that you understand my people. Well, I understand yours. I’m extending the hand of reconciliation to all of you: Saul, Ryan… Jim — it isn’t too late to throw your weight in with us.” He spread his arms magnanimously, as if welcoming them to the party. “We’re committed to the slowdown now. The ship is ours. But we can still behave like civilized human beings. Join us, accept that this course of action is going to take place, and we can all be friends.”

“Just like that?” Nick Thale asked. “You’re saying we just join you, and it’s let bygones be bygones?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“I do,” Thale said. “You’ve stolen this ship from Bella Lind. The captain. I wouldn’t piss on you if you were, on fire.”

A line of tension creased Schrope’s neck like a hawser. “I have — I have secured this ship. That’s all.”

“Why don’t you go play in an airlock, Craig,” Thale snapped back.

“It’s all right,” Bella said. “I appreciate the support, Nick, I truly do, but let’s keep this civil. Before very long we may all need each other again. I’d rather not stoop to personality attacks.” She turned from Thale and spoke up again. “So, Craig: how do you want to play this? There are about forty of us against about a hundred of you. One of my people is terminally ill. It’s obvious that we lack the numbers to retake the ship, but rest assured that my people will obstruct and impede your every move. We’ll do all in our power to keep this ship from falling out of the slipstream.”

“I can’t have that,” Schrope said.

“I didn’t think you would. That means we have to discuss terms and conditions.”

“There isn’t time for this,” Svetlana said. “If we’re going to do this, we have to start
now
.”

“Take whoever you need,” Schrope told her. “Just make sure you give us five minutes” warning before you light the engine.“

Svetlana took Robert Ungless and Naohiro Uguru with her; she needed only two trusted members of her team. Together they would have no difficulty in bringing the engine back up to power. No one made any effort to stop them leaving. It was obvious that Schrope’s party had a massive advantage, not just in numbers, but in strength, too: Parry’s EVA miners were steroid-muscled and tough as nails, and they probably counted for double their actual number.

Once Svetlana and her engineers had left, Schrope stroked his jaw and studied Bella with curatorial interest, as if wondering where in his scrapbook to pin her. “You’re right about Jim,” he mused. “The best place for him is the medical centre. You have Ryan, Jagdeep and Judy in any case.”

“I’m still the flight surgeon on this ship,” Axford said. “You’ll need my services if one of you slips and breaks something.”

“That’s why I’m proposing that you occupy the part of the ship clustered around the medical centre. It’ll be a squeeze, but I’m sure you’ll manage. Like Bella said, we can’t very well have you running around.“

“And you?” Bella asked.

“We’ll need access to the critical flight systems, of course. Navigation and propulsion, life support. That means pretty much the rest of
Rockhopper
. But don’t worry. We’ll look after you.”

“You know,” Bella said, “the more I think about it, the more I like Nick’s suggestion about the airlock.”

“I thought you wanted to keep this civil,” Schrope said.

* * *

Five minutes later, Svetlana sent word that she was ready to start the engine. Schrope told her to start the burn at a quarter gee, and then to smoothly increase to half a gee over the ensuing five minutes. That would give everyone time to reach their berths for confinement during the immobilising lockdown of the two-gee burn. Then Svetlana could turn the engine up as far as she dared. Janus would fall away. In thirty or forty minutes, the ship would drop out of the slipstream — and Janus itself would look as if it was suddenly speeding away from them as its true acceleration became apparent.

By that time, Bella knew, they would already be lost. Craig Schrope’s intimate knowledge of
Rockhopper’s
layout had served him well. The medical centre and its surrounding cluster of rooms formed a near-perfect prison, isolated from any ship-critical systems. With only two airlocked passageways accessing the entire area, it was an easy matter to seal one lock and station an informal sentry point at the other. Bella and her party were left to make their own provisions for comfort. Under two gees, walking would be nearly impossible, and even sitting would be unpleasant. While the ship was still at half a gee, Bella and Axford raided the medical centre for support cushions and pillows, and distributed these around. Jim Chisholm was helped back into bed, completely drained by the events in the gymnasium.

“I wish I could think of something we could do,” he said as Axford slipped nutrient lines back into his permanent cannulas. “But Craig has us right where he wants us.”

“Just rest,” Axford told him gently.

Belinda Pagis held up the limp form of a flexy. “We’re locked out of anything useful. I’ve tried all the obvious tricks to get around the barriers, but they look pretty watertight.”

“Let me try,” Bella said. But the result was the same: the flexy would only allow her access to the most superficial layers of ShipNet. “This is what I did to Svetlana,” she said.

“I’ll keep trying to find a hole,” Pagis said. “My guess is that Svetlana didn’t set up these barriers — she’d have been too busy with the engine. More than likely it was Bob Ungless.”

“Ungless is good,” Bella said.

“I’m better.”

“It won’t make much difference even if you do find a hole,” Carsten Fleig said. “Even if you had unrestricted access, you’d only be able to stop the engine once. Then they’d come and take the flexies away from us.”

Fleig’s calm pedantry often irritated Bella, but as usual he was absolutely correct. At best they could impede the escape effort, not block it for ever. “If we could just inflict some damage on the engine,” she said, “enough to put it out of action, but not destroy the ship…”