Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

it again: whatever
became of him, this Ship was his whole world, for the rest of his
life.
    The lock opened. He ripped off his helmet. The light was emergency
red, and klaxons sounded throughout the ship; the air was cold, and
smelled of fear. Lethe, he was aboard! But there could only be a
minute left.
    He ran along a cold, ice-lined corridor towards a brighter
interior.
    He reached an amphitheatre, roughly circular, carpeted by
acceleration couches. Andres’s voice boomed from the air: ’Get into a
couch. Any couch. It doesn’t matter. Forty seconds. Strap yourself
in. Nobody is going to do it for you. Your safety is your own
responsibility. Twenty-five seconds.’ People swarmed, looking for
spare couches. The scene seemed absurd to Rusel, like a children’s
game.
    ’Rus! Rusel!’ Through the throng, Rusel made out a waving hand. It
was Diluc, his brother, wearing his characteristic orange skinsuit.
’Lethe, I’m glad to see you. I kept you a couch. Come on!’
    Rusel pushed that way. Ten seconds. He threw himself down on the
couch. The straps were awkward to pull around the bulk of his
suit.
    As he fumbled, he stared up at a Virtual display that hovered over
his head. It was a view as seen from the Ship’s blunt prow, looking
down. Those tongue ramps were still in place, radiating down to the
ice. But now a dark mass boiled around the base of the curving hull:
people, on foot and in vehicles, a mob of them closing in. In amongst
the mass were specks of bright yellow. Some of the Enforcers had
turned on their commanders, then. But others stood firm, and in that
last second Rusel saw the bright sparks of weapon fire, all around
the base of the Ship.
    A sheet of brilliant white gushed out from the Ship’s base. It was
Port Sol ice, superheated to steam at tens of thousands of degrees.
The image shuddered, and Rusel felt a quivering, deep in his gut. The
Ship was rising, right on time, its tremendous mass raised on a bank
of rockets.
    When that great splash of steam cleared, Rusel saw small dark
forms lying motionless on the ice: the bodies of the loyal and
disloyal alike, their lives ended in a fraction of a second. A
massive shame descended on Rusel, a synthesis of all the emotions
that had churned through him since that fateful call of Diluc’s. He
had abandoned his lover to die; he had probably killed others
himself; and now he sat here in safety as others died on the ice
below. What human being would behave that way? He felt the shame
would never lift, never leave him.
    Already the plain of ice was receding, and weight began to push at
his chest.

 
II
     
     
    Soon Port Sol fell away, and even the other Ships were lost
against the stars, and it was as if Ship Three was alone in the
universe.
    In this opening phase of its millennial voyage Ship Three was
nothing more than a water rocket, as its engines steadily sublimated
its plating of ice and hurled steam out of immense nozzles. But those
engines drew on energies that had once powered the expansion of the
universe itself. Later the Ship would spin up for artificial gravity
and switch to an exotic ramjet for its propulsion, and its true
journey would begin.
    The heaviest acceleration of the whole voyage had come in the
first hours, as the ship hurled itself away from Port Sol. After that
the acceleration was cut to about a third standard - twice lunar
gravity, twice what the colonists of Port Sol had been used to. For
the time being, the acceleration couches were left in place in that
big base amphitheatre, and in the night watches everybody slept
there, all two hundred of them massed together in a single vast
dormitory, their muscles groaning against the ache of the
twice-normal gravity.
    The plan was that for twenty-one days the Ships would actually
head towards the sun. They would penetrate Sol system as far as the
orbit of Jupiter, where they would use the giant planet’s gravity
field to slingshot them on to their final destinations. It seemed
paradoxical to begin the exodus by hurling oneself deep into the
inner system, the Coalition’s home territory. But space was big, the
Ships’ courses had been plotted to avoid the likely trajectory of the
incoming Coalition convoy, and the Ships were to run silently, not
even communicating with each other. The chances of them being
detected were negligible.
    Despite the wearying gravity the first days after launch were busy
for everybody. The Ship’s interior had to be rebuilt from its