Empire of Light

Chapter Twenty-three

'Let me get this straight,' said Ty. 'I thought no time passed at all during a jump?'

They had come outside again as soon as the latest jump had been completed. Star-tangled nebulae hung in the void behind Olivarri. He had the whitest teeth Ty had ever seen in another human being; they positively shone when he gri

Their three-person repair team was completed by Nancy, who was mending a spine-clamp prior to lowering a new spine into place. Ty could see her over Olivarri's shoulder, busily working away.

What lazy creatures we men are, he thought, standing here while the woman toils. The reality, of course, was that Nancy didn't trust anyone but herself to fulfil certain jobs. He found himself recalling the way her hands had gripped his hair the night before, her small lithe form arching above him, her mouth round and wide as she noisily climaxed.

'Virtual time passes. Jump-space has to find a way to deal with the sudden appearance of physical matter from our universe. So it wraps the Mjollnir in a bubble of virtual time.'

'Because time doesn't actually exist within superluminal space?'

'Exactly.' That toothy grin again. 'It's the virtual time that allows the physical matter to begin degrading.'

'But that's purely theoretical, isn't it? We don't know this for a fact.'

Olivarri was standing with one gloved hand resting on the lower curve of a drive-spine. He raised his other hand and waggled it from side to side. 'No, but it's the current best explanation, unless the Shoal have a better idea, and they weren't telling us even before they pulled a vanishing act. But virtual time at least explains why the degradation starts from the outside' – he lifted his helmeted head to look up towards the tip of the drive-spine – 'and works its way in towards the hull, rather than affecting every atom of the frigate at once. You need to introduce time, even if it's just virtual time, to explain that.'

'Like the little bubble of virtual space-time we're caught in had started to shrink.'

'Exactly. And because the virtual time that passes is vanishingly small-'

'We come out with relatively minor degradation.'

'Got it.' That brilliant toothy smile again.

Ty turned to look behind him towards the stern. He couldn't even pick out the Hyades Cluster any more, and it was only six days since they had left Redstone. A hundred metres away, a couple of spiders were hovering around another drive-spine, getting ready to repair some of that very same degradation.

He and Olivarri had decoupled the failed drive-spine, and half a dozen spiders were ready, their extendible arms gripping it at various points, to lift it away from the hull once the clamps that attached it in place were released.

Its replacement waited nearby, held in place by its own separate retinue of spider-mechs. It was a tricky and dangerous procedure, so all three humans kept a safe distance for the moment, letting the spiders do most of the work, and stepping in only where absolutely necessary.

Despite the precautions, there had already been some near fatalities. Lamoureaux had nearly fried himself getting too close to some frayed power-conduits; a hull-plate had swung loose while being detached, totalling a couple of spiders and very nearly taking Corso with it. And that wasn't even taking into account the greater risk of replacement drive-spines blowing up once they were plugged into the frigate's plasma flow, if they weren't configured in just the right way.

Given those risks, using the spiders generally, with a few human beings at hand to step in if absolutely necessary, was a fine idea in principle, except that in practice the team had to take over from the spiders on pretty much every occasion. The mechs were fine for grunt work, but the more delicate aspects of the job required human hands and minds.

'Okay,' said Nancy, 'releasing the clamps now.'

The restraints holding the drive-spine in place slid back into the hull, and the spiders arranged around it began emitting tiny jets of gas. Slowly, ponderously, the spine rose away from the hull, tilting to one side as the spiders coordinated with each other. The new drive-spine began to move forward as its own retinue of spiders pushed it towards the slot.

The work was so tedious that it was easy to fall into lengthy conversations. Nancy and Leo had spent most of this shift talking politics, and they quickly picked up the same thread again as the spider-mechs dragged the two drive-spines in different directions.

'Am I right in thinking,' asked Olivarri, 'that the only people who're allowed to vote or hold political office in the Freehold are those who've seen military service?'

'Well, mostly,' Nancy replied. 'Senator Corso's one of the exceptions, but for most of the Senate members, yeah. It's a sane principle.'

'Sane how?' asked Olivarri.

'Well, think about it,' Nancy replied. 'Why should someone who isn't prepared to pick up a gun to actively defend his or her society get to have a say in how that society is run?'

'Well… I'm not sure that the kind of people who are prepared to pick up a gun, based on an argument like that, are the ones I'd want ru

'Why?'

'Because they usually turn out to be exactly the kind of people I need protecting from in the first place.' Olivarri guffawed.

Nancy made a sound of disgust. 'You just don't understand.'

'What's not to understand?' Olivarri shot back. 'That's exactly why the Freehold were booted from world to world.'

'Leo, seriously. You have no understanding of the historical context. Our ending up on Redstone had nothing to do with our relations with the Consortium. The Freehold is about self-determination. It's about the right of the individual to defend herself and not to have to answer to any authority that wants to take away her basic human right to self-determination.'

Ty sighed quietly. Leo appeared bent on needling Nancy, and she appeared unable to resist rising to the bait every time.

'Okay,' said Olivarri, 'so what happened to all those ideals? That's – what – two coups you've had in a little over two years?'

'Because…' Nancy sighed. 'The wrong people are in charge, that's all.'

'Those people with the guns, you mean.'

Ty was deeply grateful when they all received an automated alert that the new drive-spine was ready to be locked into place. Nancy moved in close, obsessively rechecking the hull clamps and ru

'Nice,' said Leo approvingly. 'Everything went right, just for once.'

But Ty reflected on how often the drive-spines were failing, and how many of them would need replacing before they reached the end of their journey. They were making long and frequent jumps that would take the Mjollnir a lot further and faster than it had needed to go on its maiden superluminal flight. At the rate they were going, they would end up having to ca

'C'mon, Nathan, come back up to the centrifuge with us. You can't hide away from the rest of us for ever.'

Ty stowed his helmet on a rack in the changing room and climbed out of his pressure suit, wrinkling his nose at the smell of his own stale sweat. He twisted his head around in a slow circle, hearing the crunch of tired muscles as he locked his hands together behind his head and stretched a little.

'Maybe,' he replied. But Nancy understood that maybe within the context of their developing relationship really meant definitely.