“You’re right,” Kona told her. “It’s not fair, but it’s necessary, because you are the one I trust to design the gee deck.” His gaze shifted to Clemantine and then to Urban. “Let’s focus on that. Get the gee deck designed. Get it built. Then bring everyone out simultaneously into a comfortable environment, one they can begin to think of as home—and we’ll all be better off in the end.”
Urban looked irritated and a little puzzled. “You understand it could take years to finish the gee deck?” he asked.
“Years?” Clemantine echoed in disbelief.
He looked at her, the intensity of his gaze reminding her of the Engineer. “If we encroach too quickly into Chenzeme territory, we risk igniting a molecular war.”
She turned to Kona. “Years,” she said, the word feeling toxic in her mouth.
Kona looked disgruntled. “That’s a disappointment,” he admitted. “But it doesn’t change the argument.”
“You don’t think so?”
“No. I don’t. We’ll be centuries on this voyage. A few initial years invested in setting up our infrastructure won’t make any difference in the long run.”
Logically, that was true. But it felt wrong. Clemantine looked around their small circle, still half-expecting someone else to voice an objection—but who would? Not Urban. He met her gaze with a stony, resentful stare. Vytet wouldn’t look at her at alclass="underline" hands still deep in her pockets, shoulders hunched, gaze averted, body language that declared she’d removed herself from this decision.
“Years,” Clemantine said once more, this time in resignation.
“It’ll be all right,” Kona said. “People will understand.”
Clemantine raised a skeptical eyebrow.
“It’ll be all right,” he said again.
Chapter
8
Urban kept watch from the high bridge, cognizant of the grandeur around him: distant blue suns, furiously bright, illuminating nebulas light years across; the perfect repeating rhythm of pulsars; streamers of cold dust longer than he could transit in ten thousand years; the remote electromagnetic cacophony of star death at the galactic center.
And always, he remained mindful of the nearest stars and of the ship’s precise position among them.
Dragon had coasted as it left the vicinity of Deception Well, its velocity less than five percent light speed, allowing the fleet of outriders to catch up and then to move ahead into their customary formation: a long, staggered line around Dragon’s vector of travel. Khonsu was now closest, then Artemis, Lam Lha, Pytheas, and Elepaio, with Fortuna in the lead. Ninety light-minutes between each ship: a vanguard to warn him of hazards to come.
Urban issued an advisory: *Five minutes until we commence acceleration.
*Ready, Clemantine acknowledged. Kona and Vytet echoed her assurance.
At the scheduled hour he directed the philosopher cells to accelerate. They fed the propulsion reef with pulses of fierce ultraviolet radiation, enough to stimulate activity across its surface.
The reef was an aggregate entity, like a coral reef, made of billions of tiny cooperating organisms—polyps—layer upon layer of them, with those on the surface seeming most alive.
The polyps functioned in a manner so utterly alien Urban speculated they had originated in some other Universe. Each was capable of synthesizing nanoscale particles of exotic matter from the zero point field—matter that decayed in an instant—but with a billion events per microsecond the cumulative effect was to tweak the structure of space-time. Not randomly.
The reef was positioned far forward, at the bow. The polyps worked in concert to create a steepening gradient aimed away from the slight gravitational distortion of the ship’s mass. The reef accelerated along that gradient, and Dragon came with it, the ship’s velocity slowly growing.
The outriders accelerated at the same time, each powered by its own propulsion reef and piloted by a DI. From the high bridge, the lateral lines of Dragon’s gravitational sensor let Urban detect the signature of Khonsu’s reef, and more faintly, that of Artemis. The other outriders were too far ahead to be seen or sensed.
As the rate of acceleration increased, that version of Urban within the warren drifted toward the designated floor and began to walk. The ship’s company joined him—Clemantine, Kona, and Vytet. They sat together at a table, and ate and drank as if they were on a world. A convenient situation, but temporary.
Urban took the fleet to thirty-five percent light speed and then he dampened the activity of the reef, leaving Dragon to coast toward its faraway destination in the Hallowed Vasties. The reef could pull the ship to much higher velocities, but as Dragon’s speed increased so did the risk of collision. Interstellar space was not empty, and even a tiny object could severely damage or destroy the ship if it impacted the hull at a significant percentage of light speed.
Even at this compromise velocity, molecules of dust and gas constantly bombarded the hull cells. The cells renewed themselves, but Dragon slowly bled mass. That mass would eventually need to be replaced.
“Is this what you wanted?” Clemantine asked one evening, not long after Dragon ceased to accelerate. The warren had returned to a zero-gravity configuration. Ribbons of faintly glowing wall-weed again lined the oval interior of her private chamber. She drifted in the cozy space, one arm around Urban, a leg hooked over his, skin to skin. Shared sweat, shared warmth. She gazed at his face, at the sheen of his eyes under half-closed lids. Shared tranquility, after a long session of deeply attentive love-making.
“Having you here?” he asked in a low, almost hoarse voice. “It’s exactly what I wanted.”
Clemantine wanted the truth.
She ran two fingers down the smooth skin of his chest and, with a sharp edge of accusation in her voice, she said, “I trusted you.”
This induced an unmistakable tension in his body, an acceleration in his breathing—unwelcome evidence that her emerging suspicion was not misplaced.
“Look at me,” she said.
He obeyed, turning his head until they gazed at one another. She read guilt in the worried set of his eyes, but his confused frown hinted he wasn’t certain what he was being accused of.
Multiple options, then? Interesting. She would have to investigate further, but right now, she just wanted an honest answer on the status of the gee deck.
She said, “I talked to the Bio-mechanic today. The Engineer was there too.”
“Uh-huh?” Low, puzzled syllables rising from deep in his throat. He clearly had no idea what she was getting at—and that surprised her.
She said, “The basic structure of the gee deck has been designed. A site’s been determined. A construction plan is in place.”
Still no hint of enlightenment breaking through his perplexed expression, so she expanded on her complaint. “Construction should have begun as soon as we ceased acceleration. But nothing’s been done. I asked the Apparatchiks why. Both were irked. They said they were ready to begin. They would have begun already, but you’d withheld permission—”
“No, wait.” He grasped her concern at last. “That’s not what’s going on.”
“Then you did give them permission to proceed?”
“No.”
Anger flared. She started to untangle herself from him.