Owner 03 - Jupiter War (17 page)

‘I do, and they’re up on all screens and accessible to all personnel,’ the station’s technical director replied. ‘Every damned one of them is on target and we have to move.’

Saul turned back to Hannah, who had now been joined by Var. ‘Railgun missiles heading straight for us. I feel they are an important reminder to us all.’

‘Yes, I know,’ she replied, suddenly looking tired.

Rhine was working his drive, Saul deliberately not interfering but keeping a watch on him from the inside of the computer system. The warp bubble should be near enough spherical despite the remaining mass of the asteroid, and the shift would be a short one, but still the margins for error were tight. Saul did not want to risk losing any of the newly constructed parts of the station. He walked over to join Hannah and Var.

‘In fact, this celebration has made things easy for us,’ he offered. ‘All but one of the human teams have locked down their work and are not presently anywhere that might be dangerous, while the team that fixed that last beam is on its way in.’ Even as he said this, his mind was ranging throughout the station, constantly checking. If the station hit anything large enough to knock out the warp, then they might experience a momentum change; however, there were impellers mounted on the biggest unsecured objects – the Mars Traveller engine and the asteroid chunk – and any drift could be corrected.

‘Oh, goody,’ Hannah replied.

Var popped the cap off of one of the bottles. ‘They didn’t need to give us a reminder. The images I’ve seen of those three ships they’re building tell the whole story.’ She used a small manual pump on the base of the bottle to squirt a stream of the wine into one of the capped glasses, then paused in bringing the glass straw up to her mouth. Everyone in the control room was staring at her. ‘What? It seems a shame to let it get warm.’ She sipped.

The shift was imminent and they could all feel it: a slightly different sensation now, as if the new surrounding superstructure was somehow distorting whatever it was that affected them. Saul nodded towards the glasses on the gurney. ‘Pour them all.’

Var raised an eyebrow and did as instructed. She was already on the third glass when the drive engaged. The light of the sun dropped rapidly through the spectrum, and the moment of their shift was marked by a flash of intense red through the windows. Then the sun was back, glaring on the structures visible outside.

‘Just a few thousand kilometres,’ said Rhine.

Saul focused through that warning satellite on the stations ranged about Earth. By his calculation, it was possible that the enemy had tens of thousands of railgun missiles available. If it had been Galahad’s intention just to send them a reminder, then fine; the smelting plants could be extended and they could simply get back to work here. However, if the dictator of Earth was intent on driving them away from their power supply, that was a different matter. Saul did not want to spend the next weeks, if not months, dodging pot-shots from Earth, nor did he like the idea of the work here going on hold during that period. Galahad could commission her ships within that period and he would be forced to run out-system before having achieved what he wanted here – without having made the necessary preparations for the immense journey across interstellar void.

‘Drink your drinks,’ he instructed, taking a sip of the wine himself while wondering how alcohol might affect or impair the distributed functioning of his mind.

They all gathered round to accept their glasses in turn. Saul moved away to gaze out through the windows of Tech Central. He decided against ordering the smelting plants to be extended again just yet. Calculating signal delays, he reckoned on twenty-three minutes before Galahad learned that they had moved, then a further twenty-eight minutes before he learned if she had devised an immediate response to that. Meanwhile he watched the workers coming in, the proctors installing further elements of the Mach-effect drive, and simultaneously absorbed detail and tweaked and changed his plans to greater efficiency.

‘She can’t touch us,’ said Langstrom with relish.

Saul turned to him, a hollow feeling in his stomach. ‘On the contrary,’ he replied, now seeing a second launching of missiles from the vicinity of Earth. This launching was early, before Galahad could know they had moved, a wide spread to incorporate where some tactical team of hers had calculated he might move his ship. None of them was on target, but Galahad’s message had been delivered. Walking past Langstrom to join the rest, he announced, ‘We’re shifting again.’ And immediately began inputting new coordinates, factoring in known solar-system debris and deciding on two further shifts to take them to their first destination.

There was time yet, so he would allow all solar energy collection to continue for a while yet. He studied the disappointed expressions around him.

‘We would have had to have moved shortly, anyway,’ he stated, his voice taking on an echo as it repeated through the PA system, ‘since we are running out of materials.’

They then watched him attentively, aware that he had something more to say. Via cams throughout the station, he saw people turning to public screens now displaying his face.

‘A second launching of railgun missiles is heading on its way towards us,’ he continued, ‘and it is a simple fact, with the resources Earth commands and its supply lines established, that they could keep up this rate of fire indefinitely. We are therefore going to shift away from the sun.’

‘We need energy,’ Var protested pedantically, ‘and you’re taking us away from it.’

‘Where are we going?’ asked Le Roque – posing a question to which, in the long term, there was really no simple answer. Saul, however, gave them the simplest answer he could.

The abrupt relocation of the station had been brief but disconcerting, especially since it occurred while Alex and Gladys were in the elevator taking them down into the Arboretum. A brief announcement through his fone informed Alex that Earth had just fired railgun missiles at them, so the Owner had shifted the station out of their way. They were safe again, it seemed, yet suddenly Alex felt angry at his powerlessness, his lack of knowledge.

He stepped out of the elevator to feel the ground solid underneath his feet for the first time since he had last been here, with Messina, when the Arboretum hadn’t been spinning, and his feet had hardly touched the ground, as he went on his killing spree among the invading troops. He now scanned his surroundings and saw no signs of the battle that had taken place here.

‘She’s a bitch, that Galahad,’ Gladys muttered, then pointed over to the dividing section of the Arboretum, where Akenon and Ghort waited for them, having already shed their suits and used the elevator some minutes earlier.

‘So this is your first time here?’ she asked, perhaps not wanting to talk further about the station shift, or its implications.

‘First visit to the Olive Tree, yes,’ Alex replied, playing along. ‘After my previous experiences in the Arboretum, this isn’t a place I’ve wanted to return to.’

‘Come on!’ urged Akenon.

They picked up their pace and soon reached the other two.

‘It’s this way.’ Ghort pointed up some steps rising against the dividing section, which led to a metal walkway jutting two metres off the ground before following the inside circumference of the Arboretum cylinder. Alex supposed they were expected to walk there, rather than on the premium soil inside the cylinder itself, to save them trampling on a jungle of squashes growing underneath the trees, or pushing through densely packed fruit bushes. The walkway curved its way round to a balcony jutting out directly above, where the people occupying the tables and chairs seemed to hang suspended upside-down. As he and his team climbed up and made their way round, perspective slid round with them, until at last they were approaching the balcony the right way up.

The area was occupied by ten circular tables, each with seating space for four. Every table but one was now occupied by personnel, the empty one being reserved for them, the team who had fixed the last beam. A desultory cheer greeted them, the party atmosphere obviously diminished by the recent station shift. Waving and grinning, Ghort led the way to the table and they sat down. Shortly, four bottled beers, along with the luxury of open-topped glasses, were brought out to them. Alex sipped, gazed into the Arboretum, which resembled a forest distorted through a fish-eye lens, and wondered what people here talked about in their time off. He listened carefully, but very little was being said, since everyone on the balcony seemed to be concentrating on the wall-mounted screen above the doors into the bar, while those sitting inside were similarly occupied with a screen there.

‘Now that the heroes of the hour are present, I’ll continue,’ said the Owner, gazing out with unhuman indifference from the screen for a moment, before attempting a smile that was only frightening.

Alex glanced at Ghort but received only an unreadable blank stare in return. Did he resent being demoted from bodyguard to Chairman Messina to the role of a working grunt? Did he hate the Owner?

The Owner continued, ‘Serene Galahad has fired upon us again, and quite likely she will keep on firing on us until she has driven us away from the vicinity of the sun. We are therefore obliged to move a lot further. Our first shift away is imminent, and the second will come directly after that – bringing us to the periphery of the Asteroid Belt.’ He gave another brief smile, this one thoughtful and slightly more human. ‘There our main task will be to get the Mars Traveller engine into position and operational, because we’ll need it to take us into the Belt, to our first target: an asteroid containing essential materials. This we’ll slice up and bring inside the ship.’ He paused to gaze, distractedly, to one side. They could all immediately feel it, so none of them needed his next announcement of, ‘First shift.’

The screen then flicked back to a holding image: a picture of the station – or rather
ship –
as it now looked. The shift ensued as a weird twisting sensation emphasized by sudden nightfall inside the Arboretum as the sun-catchers ceased to have anything to catch and the light tubes ceased to have anything to convey. Lights on the wall above the balcony and within the bar switched on automatically. In this artificial glow, Alex studied the faces around him. Some wore expressions of excitement, but most were pensive and serious, for no one could work in space for any length of time without knowing how quickly its vagaries could kill.

‘What about power?’ hissed Akenon, as conversations started up again around them. ‘We managed okay on fusion, but nowhere near as well as by the sun.’

‘He’s now got the reactor from Mars,’ Ghort noted, ‘besides three new ones built in Arcoplex Two waiting to come on line.’

He’s
got the reactor from Mars, Alex noted; whereas Akenon and Gladys would have said
we
have it.

‘Still not the same,’ Akenon insisted.

Alex nodded, for Akenon undoubtedly had a point. In driving them away from the sun, Galahad had won a brief skirmish in what Alex felt might be the start of a wholesale war. They now no longer had access to the power of the sun, so what would be the Owner’s response? How did Alan Saul intend to prevent Galahad from killing them all?

Akenon, Ghort and Gladys fell into a discussion about power usage, the effectiveness of the new rectifying batteries and how much could be stored in ultra-capacitors scattered throughout the station. Alex sat back and wondered how long this present shift would take. Presumably the Owner was taking them to some point where they would have a relatively clear run at the Asteroid Belt. With the Rhine drive running and their speed approaching that of light, this could take just minutes or it might take hours – he had no idea.

He had nearly finished his beer when they emerged from the shift, and Argus heaved and groaned all around them. Much less of a pull now from the gravity of the sun, Alex realized. Would this distort the vortex ring? Would adjustments have to be made? No . . . already he could feel the tension, the distortion of space and the pull of the ineffable building-up. Saul’s image again appeared on the screen.

‘Once we have possession of the materials we require from the Belt,’ he continued, as if there had been no pause, ‘we must fire up the Traveller again to get us clear. Then the next shift beyond the Asteroid Belt will ensue.’

Again the holding picture flicked onto the screen, as the second shift kicked in, and again Alex began speculating on its length. The Asteroid Belt lay three hundred million kilometres from the sun, so at light speed, which was approximately three hundred thousand kilometres per second, that distance could nominally be covered in a thousand seconds. However, the Belt was well over a hundred million kilometres thick, they might not be travelling that close to the speed of light, and not necessarily even in a straight line out from the sun. All he could say was that it would take
over
seventeen minutes to reach their destination: a miraculous rate of travel achieved over truly immense distances.

After ten minutes Alex suddenly found himself sweating. He diagnosed Hawking radiation, which meant their ship had to be now reaching the edge of light speed. And what would happen if they ever passed that speed? Would they all fry, all die? Alex felt his anger increase because he was tired of always facing these questions; tired of being a pawn. After fifteen minutes, conversation at the tables all around began to dry up except for the occasional doom-laden mutter. This changed, in turn, to nervous chatter when the shift finally ended after twenty minutes. Then the chatter stilled as Saul reappeared on the screen.

‘The last shift will take us to Jupiter,’ Saul announced, ‘where we should be able to obtain the rest of the materials we need. In orbit around the gas giant are currently hundreds of booster shells from the various Mars missions. These we’ll retrieve, dismantle and turn into what we require.’ Saul paused, seeming to gaze straight at Alex, who gazed back, wondering if becoming the ‘Owner’ had made this man lose any human concept of time.