Chapter 72: Departure

The first door closed without difficulty.

The second needed three people and a length of pipe.

At the third, Sovan stopped.

Dinraal stood beside her in the narrow maintenance passage, watching a pressure indicator tremble above the wheel.

“What is it?”

“The seal.”

“Will it hold?”

She ran her fingers along the housing.

“I replaced it eight years ago.”

“That isn’t an answer.”

“It’s the only one I have.”

He crouched beside her.

Beyond this door lay part of the docking connection. On the other side, the shipyard supplied the Summer Orchard with water, power, and air.

Soon they would cut all three.

Sovan fitted the pipe over the wheel.

Dinraal reached to help.

“Slowly,” she said.

He obeyed.

The wheel turned.

A deep vibration passed through the wall.

Then the indicator settled.

Sovan watched it for several seconds before marking the door with chalk.

Three short strokes.

“Closed,” she said.

They moved to the next.

Lethan counted people at the entrance to the forward shelter.

He had counted meal portions.

Work crews.

Children returning from lessons.

People waiting to be taken away.

This time, each name received a mark in a different column.

Present.

“Your sister?” he asked a boy carrying a cloth bag.

“With the medical group.”

“Which group?”

“Mrs. Deren’s.”

Lethan checked the adjoining page.

Found the name.

Marked it.

The boy waited.

“Can I go?”

“Yes. Stay away from the doors.”

Inside the shelter, his granddaughter was helping distribute old restraint belts. Most had been salvaged from seats in the theater.

She looked up when he glanced through the entrance.

He nodded to her.

Then returned to the list.

A woman approached with two children and a small pot held against her chest.

Lethan opened his mouth.

She tightened her grip.

“It fits under a seat.”

He looked at the little green shoots.

Then at the children.

“Hold it carefully.”

She went inside.

Behind her came another family.

Then another.

The passage began to empty.

The engineering vessel approached along the shadow of the broken arc.

Its captain had shut down every unnecessary system.

No running lights.

No active ranging.

Only brief corrections from the maneuvering thrusters.

On Alexander’s bridge, the vessel appeared as a faint marker moving between much larger objects.

“Nearest traffic?”

“A maintenance craft passing inward. It hasn’t changed course.”

“Keep watching.”

Alexander looked at the time.

Fifty-three minutes until the attendants were expected aboard the liner.

Aramaeis stood beside him.

“We should go.”

Alexander nodded.

“Take Gilgamesh. Secure the outer lock and get the engineers inside.”

“And if the attendants arrive early?”

“Keep them off the passenger decks.”

Aramaeis fastened his helmet.

That order required no explanation.

Isolde found the cultivation room while checking the last evacuation route.

The old pool had become a series of planting beds.

Pipes hung above it on supports made from dismantled furniture. Water moved in thin streams through trays of roots. The air was warmer here than anywhere else aboard.

An elderly man stood at the edge of the empty aisle.

He held a pair of shears.

“Everyone is moving forward,” Isolde said.

“I know.”

“Do you need help?”

His gaze remained on the plants.

“We finally got that section growing properly.”

She followed his eyes.

Broad leaves filled a bed beneath the nearest lamp.

“It took three seasons to stop the roots rotting.”

Isolde came to stand beside him.

“Can you bring seeds?”

“I have.”

He touched his pocket.

Then, reluctantly, set down the shears.

“Who’s staying to keep the pumps running?”

“We’re going to try to move the ship.”

“And if you can’t?”

She did not pretend.

“Then we’ll take you off.”

He nodded.

After a moment, he reached back for the shears.

“May as well take these.”

Isolde smiled faintly.

“Yes.”

She walked with him to the shelter.

The engineering vessel touched the liner with a shudder so slight that most of the people aboard did not notice.

Sovan did.

She raised her head.

Dinraal listened to his receiver.

Enna’s voice came through.

“We’re attached. Tell your people there will be a pressure change at the service lock.”

Sovan was already moving.

By the time the inner hatch opened, she had cleared the passage and laid out the tools they would need.

Enna entered first.

Gilgamesh followed carrying a generator component against his chest.

Two engineers came behind him with a cable reel.

Sovan stared at them.

At the equipment.

At the clean seals on their suits.

Enna stopped beside her.

“Show me your main distribution board.”

Sovan swallowed.

“This way.”

No embrace.

No speech.

Just someone asking the right question.

Dinraal saw how much it steadied her.

They could not power the whole ship.

Enna made that clear after the first inspection.

“Air circulation. Medical equipment. Emergency lighting. Enough temperature control to keep the occupied sections safe.”

“Propulsion?” Dinraal asked.

“The tug.”

“Artificial gravity?”

“Reduced.”

Sovan pointed to a bank of switches.

“We can close off the empty decks.”

“Do it.”

They worked quickly.

The liner’s old systems resisted in ordinary ways.

A bolt had seized.

A connector had been repaired with a part that did not match the plans.

One cable route was blocked by a storage cabinet no one had been able to move for years.

Gilgamesh moved it.

The cabinet came apart in his hands.

He looked down at the pieces.

Sovan stared at the newly accessible panel.

“I have hated that thing for a very long time.”

“I’m pleased to have met it,” he said.

Then the lights dimmed.

Everyone stopped.

A low tone sounded.

Dinraal looked toward Sovan.

Her face had gone pale.

“They’re early.”

The docking speaker came alive.

“Prepare the designated transfers.”

Six cabin numbers followed.

Sovan’s was the fourth.

Enna looked at her.

Dinraal moved toward the passage.

“Keep working.”

“Dinraal,” Enna said.

He turned.

“We need eleven minutes before we can cut the external supply.”

He nodded.

Then he went to find his uncle.

Aramaeis stood beside the inner docking hatch.

Through the inspection camera, three attendants approached along the covered bridge.

They wore pale uniforms.

Their faces were almost human.

One carried a rectangular case.

Another held a looped restraint in each hand.

Dinraal felt the silver spread over his chest.

Aramaeis glanced at him.

“Eleven minutes?”

“Yes.”

“We won’t get them by talking.”

“No.”

The speaker clicked.

“Open the transfer hatch.”

Aramaeis checked the final door behind them.

Sealed.

The civilian decks were separated from the docking passage.

Dinraal took his position on the other side.

Together, they waited.

The attendants opened the outer hatch themselves.

The first stepped through.

Aramaeis caught its arm and drove it against the bulkhead before it could turn.

Dinraal struck the second.

Silver closed around the restraints in its hands and tore them free.

The third dropped the case.

Its mouth opened.

A sound like tearing metal filled the lock.

Dinraal seized it beneath the jaw.

Too late.

Lights flared along the docking bridge.

Far beyond the hull, machinery began to move.

Alexander’s voice snapped through the receiver.

“They’ve noticed. Traffic turning toward the liner.”

Aramaeis pinned the first attendant beneath a silver blade.

“Then we’ve finished being quiet.”

In the shelter, a boy began to cry.

The noise from the stern had reached them as a dull, repeated impact.

Lethan turned from the door.

“Belts,” he said.

People pulled them tighter.

His granddaughter sat between two younger children, holding one hand from each.

“Grandfather?”

“I’m here.”

“Was that them?”

He crossed the room and knelt beside her.

“Yes.”

Her fingers tightened around the children’s hands.

“Did they get in?”

“Not here.”

He looked around the shelter.

Faces watched him.

Some hopeful.

Some furious with fear.

He had no announcement system left. No captain’s authority. Only the fact that they knew him.

“The people at the stern are keeping them there,” he said. “We can help by keeping this passage clear and staying secured.”

A woman near the medical alcove raised her hand.

“The portable ventilator is losing charge.”

Lethan stood.

He found the runner waiting beside the door.

“Tell the engineers. Medical alcove, second shelter.”

The young man nodded and went.

Lethan returned to his granddaughter.

She had begun telling the little children a story.

He stayed long enough to hear that it involved a bird.

She had never seen one.

The first attack on the engineering vessel came from below.

A maintenance craft turned sharply beneath the liner and extended a cluster of pale limbs toward the tug’s exposed connections.

Alexander’s escort fired across its path.

The craft kept coming.

The second shot broke it apart.

Fragments struck the Summer Orchard’s lower plating.

On the bridge, a warning sounded.

“More contacts.”

“How many?”

“Six moving toward us. Others changing course.”

Alexander examined the retreat route.

The broken section of the arc lay behind them.

Beyond it, clear space.

“Bring the reference field forward. Cover the engineering vessel.”

The officer at the local assembly acknowledged.

Silver brightened beneath her hands.

For the moment, every distance on the display agreed.

Alexander intended to keep it that way.

Enna heard the report about the ventilator and looked at the generator.

“Give me the medical line first.”

Sovan reached for a breaker.

Maera, working aboard the engineering vessel, spoke through the cable.

“Voltage stable on our side.”

“Connecting.”

The board flickered.

A row of green indicators appeared.

Far forward, the ventilator resumed its steady rhythm.

Enna exhaled.

“One circuit.”

“Air next,” Sovan said.

“Yes.”

Behind them, Gilgamesh braced a cable junction while an engineer fastened it into place.

The deck shuddered again.

Dust fell from the overhead panels.

Nobody looked up.

Isolde reached the docking passage as Dinraal pulled the last attendant away from the hatch.

Its body had stopped moving.

Something beneath its skin had not.

Aramaeis sealed it inside an empty storage locker and drove silver through the latch.

“We have to leave this section,” he said.

Dinraal looked through the camera.

The docking bridge beyond was filling with movement.

Too many shapes to count cleanly.

Some crawled along the ceiling.

Others were already stripping panels from the walls.

Isolde placed one hand against the inner barrier.

Silver spread across its seams.

“That won’t last,” Aramaeis said.

“I know.”

Dinraal joined her.

Together, they forced the old pressure door deeper into its frame.

Then they backed into the next compartment.

Aramaeis closed the second barrier.

Behind it, metal began to bend.

“We have air circulation.”

Enna’s voice reached Dinraal as he ran.

“Emergency lights are holding. Gravity is transferring.”

The floor grew suddenly light beneath his feet.

He caught a rail.

Somewhere ahead, a loose object struck a wall.

Then weight returned, weaker than before.

“Medical sections stable,” Enna continued. “We can isolate.”

Dinraal reached Sovan at the main cutoff.

She had both hands on a lever.

It had been painted red once.

Most of the color had worn away.

Beyond the inspection window, the great external cables pulsed.

Sovan stared at them.

Twenty-six years of depending on whatever came through those lines.

Dinraal stood beside her.

“Your ship,” he said.

She looked at him.

Then pulled.

The lever resisted.

He added his hand over hers.

Together, they brought it down.

The board went dark.

Then their own emergency lamps came on.

The Summer Orchard belonged to itself for the first time in twenty-six years.

For three seconds, nothing happened.

Then every speaker connected to the old network began to scream.

Sovan flinched.

Enna cut the remaining communication feeds.

The sound stopped.

Outside, the pale structures around the docking collar tightened.

“Mechanical attachments still holding,” the tug captain reported.

Dinraal looked toward Isolde.

She was already sealing her helmet.

“Let’s go.”

They emerged beneath the stern.

The size of the connections stole a moment from him.

He had seen them through windows.

Outside, they filled the space around the liner like roots around a buried stone.

Three were ordinary conduits.

Two were not.

They moved as Dinraal approached.

One flattened against the hull.

The other drew itself toward the tug.

Isolde intercepted it.

Silver flashed.

A cut opened across the pale surface.

Dark fluid scattered into the vacuum.

Dinraal reached the first conduit and severed it beyond the ship’s sealed valve.

Then the second.

The third released under its own strain, whipping back toward the docking arm.

The liner trembled.

“Structural clamps,” the tug captain said. “We still have two.”

Dinraal could see them.

Massive jaws driven through plating that had never been intended to carry them.

He moved toward the nearest.

Something touched his mind.

Not a voice.

An immense pressure.

His vision narrowed.

For a heartbeat, the hull beneath his hand seemed to extend in every direction.

Then Isolde’s hand closed around his arm.

“Here.”

He looked at her.

At the ship.

At the clamp.

“Here,” he repeated.

Together, they tore it free.

The central darkness moved.

Alexander saw it on the forward display.

One of the enormous lines reaching inward from the arc had begun to bend.

Lights vanished along its length.

The reference operator made a strained sound.

“The field is slipping.”

“How far?”

“Outer edge first. Around the liner’s stern.”

Alexander looked at the tug’s status.

One attachment remaining.

“Dinraal. We need separation now.”

The last clamp would not release.

Dinraal split its outer housing.

Isolde cut the lower supports.

Inside, a dense pale structure had grown through the mechanism and into the liner’s frame.

He could tear it away.

He could also tear open the occupied decks above it.

Isolde saw the hesitation.

“The reinforcement.”

He understood.

His silver spread across the hull, following the frame members Sovan had marked on their plans.

Isolde braced the lower section.

They held the ship together while pulling the foreign structure out.

The strain passed through Dinraal’s shoulders.

Something in the hull cracked.

He stopped.

Adjusted.

Pulled again.

The pale mass came free with a section of empty outer plating wrapped around it.

“Clear,” Isolde said.

The tug fired.

The Summer Orchard moved.

Lethan felt it through the floor.

A sustained pressure.

Different from the shudders of docking traffic.

Different from the occasional movement imposed by the great structure outside.

Around him, people lifted their heads.

A woman began to laugh.

Then clapped a hand over her mouth.

“Are we moving?” his granddaughter asked.

Lethan looked at the little mechanical indicator above the shelter door.

It had not shown acceleration for most of her life.

Now its needle had left the stop.

“Yes,” he said.

His voice broke.

“Yes.”

They lost the aft service deck before reaching the broken arc.

A pursuing craft struck it with a narrow beam that sliced through the old hull.

Pressure fell in an empty compartment.

The closures held.

Sovan reported it without leaving her station.

Enna looked at her.

“You knew those doors would work.”

“I hoped.”

The engineering vessel’s captain increased thrust.

Alexander’s escort fell behind to cover them.

Weapons fire lit the wreckage.

Dinraal and Isolde landed on the tug’s hull, then moved toward its outer lock.

Aramaeis waited inside.

He caught Dinraal by the shoulder as the chamber closed.

“Both of you?”

“Both.”

Only then did his uncle release him.

The darkness followed them as far as the broken arc.

Distances stretched.

The escort’s range to the liner doubled, then collapsed.

Asha and the reference crew worked without looking up from their stations.

The field held around the ships.

Beyond it, fragments of old hull appeared in places where nothing had been a moment earlier.

Alexander turned the formation toward the narrowest gap.

“Stay on the tug’s course. Ignore the external corrections.”

The navigator’s hands remained steady.

The Summer Orchard passed through.

Then the engineering vessel.

Then the escort.

For several seconds, the enormous structure filled every rear display.

Then its broken edges began to recede.

The pressure on the reference assembly eased.

No one turned it off.

They reached the waiting transports beyond the outer planet.

The transfer began immediately.

Medics crossed first.

Then portable air units.

Then people.

Lethan stood beside the forward lock with his ledger open.

He had intended to count everyone himself.

After the first hundred, his hands shook too badly to hold the pencil.

Isolde took it gently.

“Tell me the names.”

He did.

She marked them.

Some people paused at the threshold.

They looked at the unfamiliar passage beyond, at the bright lights and clean floor of the transport.

One woman asked whether she could go back for a blanket.

A medic helped her.

A child refused to leave without the cultivation-room shears because the old gardener had fallen asleep and might forget them.

Gilgamesh carried both the child and the shears.

No one complained about the delay.

The final count was eight hundred and forty-six.

Twenty-three people had been injured during the escape.

Three required surgery.

All were aboard the transports or the engineering vessel.

Sovan refused to leave the liner until the air systems were secured for unmanned operation.

Enna stayed with her.

They came across together.

Lethan was last.

At the lock, he turned.

Dinraal stood behind him.

“Can we keep her?” the old steward asked.

Dinraal looked through the passage at the worn walls.

The hanging laundry had been taken down.

The cultivation lamps remained on at reduced power.

Somewhere beyond the empty dining hall, a nameplate still shone.

“We’ll tow her to the staging system,” he said. “After that, the engineers will tell us what’s possible.”

Lethan nodded.

He seemed to want to say something to the ship.

Instead, he put one hand against the frame.

Then stepped through.

Only after the transports began the journey outward did Dinraal return to the observation compartment.

Isolde found him standing beside the window.

The Summer Orchard traveled behind the engineering vessel, damaged stern enclosed by temporary braces.

“She’s ugly now,” he said.

Isolde looked at the battered liner.

“She’s moving.”

He nodded.

For a while, that was enough.

Then his gaze shifted beyond her.

Toward the system they were leaving.

Other ships remained attached to the arc.

Other lights.

Other people, perhaps, watching a place on the dock where a liner had stood for twenty-six years.

Isolde slipped her hand into his.

“We have the ledger.”

He looked at her.

“Transfers,” she said. “Names. Dates. Ships people came from. Lethan wrote down everything he could.”

Dinraal looked toward the medical decks.

Their rescue had brought more than witnesses.

It had brought people who had spent decades learning the place from inside.

“We’ll speak to them when they’re ready.”

“Yes.”

He let his head rest against hers.

Neither pretended they had finished.

Lethan’s granddaughter woke during the first quiet stretch of transit.

For a moment, she did not know where she was.

The bed was too soft.

The air smelled wrong.

Her grandfather sat in a chair beside her, asleep with his head bowed.

She touched his sleeve.

He woke immediately.

“What is it?”

“The ship’s still moving?”

“Yes.”

“Where are we going?”

He glanced at the little printed welcome card the medical orderly had left on the table.

A drawing showed blue water beneath a green shore.

“Hearth,” he said.

She studied the picture.

“Is that the sky?”

“That’s the sea.”

“Then where’s the sky?”

He pointed.

She moved her finger slowly across the pale space above the horizon.

After a while, she asked, “How do they keep all the air in?”

Lethan looked at her.

He tried to answer.

Instead, he began to cry.

She sat up and put her arms around him.

They stayed that way until he could tell her.