Redemption Ark

Something awful had happened to his beloved Storm Bird since the last time he had seen it. Whole parts were gone, ripped clean away. The hull looked as if it had seen its last service some time during the Belle Époque, not a couple of months ago. He wondered where Antoinette had taken it — straight into the heart of Lascaille’s Shroud, perhaps? Either that or she had had a serious run-in with well-armed banshees.

‘It’s not your ship, Xavier. I just pay you to look after it now and then. If I want to trash it, that’s entirely my business.’

‘Shit.’ He had forgotten that the suit-to-ship comm channel was still open. ‘I didn’t mean…’

‘It’s a lot worse than it looks, Xave. Trust me on that.’

The salvage tug detached at the last minute, executed a needlessly complex pirouette and then was gone, curving away to its home on the other side of Carousel New Copenhagen. Xavier had already calculated how much the salvage tug was going to cost in the end. It didn’t matter who ultimately picked up that tab. It was going to be one hell of a sting, whether it was him or Antoinette, since their businesses were so intertwined. They were well into the red at the favour bank, and it was going to take about a year of retroactive favours before they groped their way back into the black…

But things could have been worse. Three days ago he had more or less given up hope of ever seeing Antoinette again. It was depressing how quickly the elation at finding her alive had degenerated into his usual nagging worries about insolvency. Dumping that hauler certainly hadn’t helped…

Xavier grinned. But hell, it had been worth it.

When she had announced her approach Xavier had suited up, gone out on to the carousel’s skin and hired a skeletal thruster trike. He gunned the trike across the fifteen kilometres to Storm Bird, then orbited it around the ship, satisfying himself that the damage looked every bit as bad up close as he had first thought it was. None of it would cripple the ship for good; it was all technically fixable — but it would cost money to put right.

He swung around, bringing the trike forwards so that he was ahead of Storm Bird. Against the dark hull he saw the two bright parallel slits of the cabin windows. Antoinette was a tiny silhouetted figure in the uppermost cabin, the small bridge that she only used during delicate docking/undocking procedures. She was reaching up to work controls above her head, a clipboard tucked under one arm. She looked so small and vulnerable that all his anger drained out of him in an instant. Instead of worrying about the damage, he should have been rejoicing that the ship had kept her alive all this time.

‘You’re right; it’s superficial,’ he said. ‘We’ll get it fixed easily enough. Do you have enough thruster control to do a hard docking?’

‘Just point me to the bay, Xave.’

He nodded and flipped the trike over, arcing away from Storm Bird. ‘Follow me in, then.’

Carousel New Copenhagen loomed larger again. Xavier led Storm Bird around the rim, tapping the trike’s thrusters until he had matched rotation with the carousel, sustaining the pseudo-orbit with a steady rumble of power from the trike’s belly. They passed over a complex of smaller bays, repair wells lit up with golden or blue lights and the periodic flashes of welding tools. A rim train snaked past, overtaking them, and then he saw Storm Bird’s shadow blot out his own. He looked back and behind. The freighter was coming in nice and steadily, although it looked as large as an iceberg.

The huge shadow slid and dipped, flowing over the hemispherical gouge in the rim known locally as Lyle’s Crater, the impact point where the rogue trader’s chemical-drive scow had collided with the carousel while trying to evade the authorities. It was the only serious damage that the carousel had sustained during wartime, and while it could have been repaired easily enough, it now made far more money as a tourist attraction than it would ever have had it been reclaimed and returned to normal use. People came in shuttles from all around the Rust Belt to gape at the damage and hear stories of the deaths and heroics that had followed the incident. Even now, Xavier saw a party of ghouls being led out on to the skin by a tourist guide, all of them hanging by harnesses from a network of lines spidering across the underside of the rim. Since he knew several people who had died during the accident, Xavier felt only contempt for the ghouls.

His repair well was a little further around the rim. It was the second largest on the carousel and it still looked as if it would be an impossibly tight fit, even allowing for all the bits of Storm Bird that Antoinette had helpfully removed…