Redemption Ark

Around each weapon was a harness of girders to which were attached steering rockets and aiming subsystems, as well as a small number of defensive armaments, purely to protect the weapons themselves. The harnesses were able to move the weapons around, and in principle they could have positioned them anywhere within the system, but they were too slow for her requirements. Instead, she had lately fastened sixty-four tug rockets on to the harnesses, eight apiece, positioned at opposing corners of each weapon’s frame. It would take fewer than thirty days to move the eight weapons to the other side of the system.

She nosed the shuttle towards the group of weapons. The weapons, sensing I her approach, shifted their positions. She slid through them, then banked, circled and slowed, examining the specific weapons that the Captain had reported difficulties with. Diagnostic summaries, terse but efficient, scrolled on to her wrist bracelet. She called up each weapon, paying meticulous attention to what she saw.

Something was wrong.

Or rather, something was not wrong. There appeared to be nothing the matter with any of the eight weapons.

She felt again that prickly sense of wrongness, the sense that she had been steered into doing something which only felt as if it had been her choice. The weapons were perfectly healthy; indeed, there was no evidence that there had been any faults at all, transient or otherwise. But that could only mean that the Captain had lied to her: that he had reported problems where none existed.

She composed herself. If only she had not taken him at his word, but had checked for herself before leaving the ship…

‘Captain…’ she said hesitantly.

‘Yes, Ilia?’

‘Captain, I’m getting some funny readings here. The weapons all appear to be healthy, no problems at all.’

‘I’m quite sure there were transient errors, Ilia.’

‘Are you?’

‘Yes.’ But he did not sound so convinced of himself. ‘Yes, Ilia, quite sure. Why would I have reported them otherwise?’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps because you wanted to get me outside the ship for some reason?’

‘Why would I have wanted to do that, Ilia?’ He sounded affronted, but not quite as affronted as she would have liked.

‘I don’t know. But I have a horrible feeling I’m about to find out.’

She watched one of the cache weapons — it was weapon thirty-one, the quintessence-force weapon — detach from the group. It slid sideways spouting bright sparks from its steering jets, the smooth movement belying the enormous mass of machinery that was being shunted so effortlessly. She examined her bracelet. Gyroscopes spun up, shifting the harness about its centre of gravity. Ponderously, like a great iron finger moving to point at the accused, the enormous weapon was selecting its target.

It was swinging back towards Nostalgia for Infinity.

Belatedly, stupidly, cursing herself, Ilia Volyova understood precisely what was happening.

The Captain was trying to kill himself.

She should have seen it coming. His emergence from the catatonic state had only ever been a ploy. He must have had it in mind all along to end himself, to finally terminate whatever extreme state of misery he found himself in. And she had given him the ideal means. She had begged him to let her use the cache weapons, and he had — too easily, she now saw — obliged.

‘Captain…’

‘I’m sorry, Ilia, but I have to do this.’

‘No. You don’t. Nothing has to be done.’

‘You don’t understand. I know you want to, and I know you think you do, but you can’t know what it is like.’

‘Captain… listen to me. We can talk about it. Whatever it is that you feel you can’t deal with, we can discuss it.’

The weapon was slowing its rotation, its flowerlike muzzle nearly pointed at the lighthugger’s shadowed hull.

‘It’s long past the time for discussion, Ilia.’

‘We’ll find a way,’ she said desperately, not even believing herself. ‘We’ll find a way to make you as you were: human again.’

‘Don’t be silly, Ilia. You can’t unmake what I’ve become.’

‘Then we’ll find a way to make it tolerable… to end whatever pain or discomfort you’re in. We’ll find a way to make it better than that. We can do it, Captain. There isn’t anything you and I couldn’t achieve, if we set our minds to it.’

I said you didn’t understand. I was right. Don’t you realise, Ilia? This isn’t about what I’ve become, or what I was. This is about what I did. It’s about the thing I can’t live with any more.‘

The weapon halted. It was now pointed directly at the hull.