Dark Tempest. Manda Benson

the golden hull of the comparatively tiny ship to support the sail, streams of coruscating metallic flags trailing from the galleon’s lagging blades as it wandered by on the outward journey to the Oort cloud.

      Jed watched through the window, but as the galleon passed she felt Wolff’s attentions turning on her back. The Shamrock’s interior acuities confirmed it–the man was watching her.

      “Why do you stare so?” she said, without looking round.

      She heard Wolff shifting his posture. From the Shamrock, she envisioned him to be leaning his weight back on his heels and grinning theatrically. “If I may not touch, would you deny me the privilege of looking?”

      Jed turned around, twisting her mouth and sighing through her nose. “You stink, Gerald Wolff. Away and cleanse yourself.”

      Wolff flashed his irritating and, Jed thought, lecherous smile, shrugged and sat.

      The Satigenaria Circumfercirc became visible some minutes later, dark bars casting an acute silhouette before the star’s orangey glare. Behind the sun, the narrow inner edges of the rings faintly reflected the star’s brilliance.

      “There are three rings, you say?” Wolff watched the sun through the photomitigators impregnating the Shamrock’s vitreous alloy.

      “Three concentric rings, each within a few leagues of the other. The innermost is for purposes of photovoltaic power generation. The outermost circumfercirc is a superconducting rail, used to guide large ion-driven ships around the habitable ring.”

      Jed felt the forward thrust offline then the braking thrust gradually coming on. The Shamrock passed the thin spoke of the outer ring, a vessel riding along it beneath their course, like a swollen maggot on a silver stem. The enormous machine was built around the ring, threaded onto the wire-rail. A soft blue plasma glowed behind its bulk, and tiny motes of light chased after it like hunting damselflies—runnerships with normal thrust propulsion, each twelve times the length of the Shamrock, accelerating to ferry cargo and passengers onto and off of the tram on its non-stop voyage around and around the sun. All below the massive vessel and its track, and ahead of the dwarfed Shamrock, lay the immense girth of the central ring, an ineffable dark tract that swallowed up first the sun then the whole sky.

      Wolff did not speak. He stood still beside Jed and gazed at the panorama, the rasping of breath through his nostrils obnoxiously loud in the silence.

      Tiny pinpoints of light showed up on the black stratum, their numbers multiplying and forming strange artificial constellations as they approached. It was some time before the full extent of the dark cityscape and its monolithic structures became apparent. Each spire protruded several miles out into the void, and tesselated polyhedrons of light broke up their dark surfaces. Thin, glittering strands of hypertensile alloy worked a fine mesh over the conurbation, like a dew-laden spider’s web.

      Jed had to admit this view was an impressive one, if not as a spectacle of nature then as a testimony to man’s skill at manipulating it. Beside her, Wolff exhaled. Jed felt the easing braking thrust cut out. The Shamrock drifted, unchecked by its propulsion. It could be that Taggart’s program was complete.

      “What now?” the man asked.

      The Shamrock was already picking up an identification request from the circumfercirc. Jed opened the channel and spoke aloud to the bridge transmitter. “This is the star Archer vessel Shamrock of hortica entering at vector stated. I request permission to dock.”

      It took a moment for the request to be processed and the affirmation to return.

      “You intend to dock?” Wolff asked.

      “If I am to disconnect this interference device, it is better done docked and secure than with the ship drifting in open space.”

      “Don’t they grant you docking permit grounded on their assumption that you intend to trade?”

      “My motives are none of their concern. If they turn me away they lose commerce in the future, so I think it is best for everyone involved if they oblige me and mind their own business.” With a tentative command, Jed fired the auxiliary thrusters. They worked, as well as they ever had. The Shamrock slid forward without question, and Jed aligned it with the docking terminus, and eased the ship forward into the reach of one of its dendrites. A venting of carbon dioxide ballast thrust, and the airlock flanges connected.

      “This, I believe,” said Jed, “is where you get off.”

      “Now wait a moment.” Wolff stood.

      Jed fixed him with a cold, uncompromising gaze. Wolff seemed to choose his words carefully. “I want to find out what’s going on, and why Taggart wanted to come to this circumfercirc in the first place.”

      “What you do without this ship is not my concern. Go and do as you wish.”

      “I rather hoped you would wait.”

      “And why should I do that?”

      “Fair enough,” said Wolff, and sat back down.

      “What?”

      “I don’t wish to disembark here. I shall wait until this ship alights somewhere more promising.”

      “You have no right to be on this ship!” Jed snarled.

      “Ay. Same as tapeworms have no right to be in people’s digestive tracts.” Again, that irritating smile.

      “I cannot disconnect this interference device with you here!” Jed thrust her hand toward Taggart’s device.

      A stupid grin broke out on Wolff’s face. “I’ll turn the other way.”

      “The typical idiotic remark I have come to expect from a man of your calibre.” Did he do this with the sole intention of annoying her? Why did the stupid, perverse man not get on with his own life and leave Jed to get on with hers?

      “So I can’t leave until you have a heart-to-heart with your ship, and you can’t do that until I leave, and I don’t want to leave. This sort of deadlock is becoming a frequent situation round here.”

      Jed looked at Wolff, then outside at the side of the docking pipe, then back at Wolff again. “What is it with you?” she spat.

      “I will call a truce. I will leave so you can repair your ship, on the understanding that you don’t leave until I return.”

      Jed narrowed her eyes. She hated having to yield to compromises like this. “I should have killed you while I had the chance,” she muttered.

      “You can kill me now.” Wolff spread his arms out in jest, as though inviting her to shoot him. There was an ever-so-slight tension in his face.

      Jed gave a sigh of exasperation.

      “Ah, so you no longer have it in you?”

      “Killing to prove one’s point is dishonourable. Killing in self defense is not.”

      “As it is said, you will have to make a choice. You either take a step forward and kill me, or you take a step backward and give me some leeway.”

      Jed tried to control the anger boiling up inside her. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. When she opened them, she looked up at the man standing, awaiting her decision at the other side of the bridge. “I leave when I have repaired the ship. If you have not returned by then, I leave regardless.”

      “That will suffice.”

      Jed shied away as Wolff reached his hand toward her. “Just go,” she said.

      Wolff headed off into the main corridor. Jed closed the door behind him and knelt on the floor. She must forget Wolff now. The quicker she dealt with this, the better. Examining the connection, she knew she’d have to remove the code from the Shamrock’s computer first then disconnect the device manually. Pressing her fingers against her interface crown, she prepared to go into mindlock with her ship.