To Crush the Moon by Wil McCarthy Read Free Book Online

kilograms all by itself, with the solid helmet adding another two or three, but fortunately a properly designed suit would stiffen and relax in response to its wearer's movements, lightening the burden. Carrying its own weight, as it were, and in heavy gravity it would do its best to carry
your
weight as well. God bless the stuff.
    This level had the same circular corridor as the one above, but with only two hatches instead of six. Bruno chose one, and on the other side he found a ring-shaped chamber far less tidy than the rest of the level. Its floor was littered with hand tools, with dead wellstone hoses and sketchplates, with other items he couldn't immediately identify. The air had frozen over these tumbled implements, and afterward nothing had moved. For centuries.
    There were six support columns holding the floor and ceiling apart, and by these landmarks he circumnavigated the chamber, noting the position of the four corpses in their coffins of glass. And then, approaching one, he felt a dizzy wash of déjà vu.
    “I know this man,” he muttered, and felt in his bones that he had said this before, on another spaceship somewhere, contemplating some other frozen corpse. During the chaos of the Fall? Life was long, and like any bounded system with finite variables it
must
repeat itself periodically. No matter how improbable the event.
    Unless Bruno was badly mistaken, this crystallized starman had been a privateer during the Children's Revolt. A revolutionary, a confidant of Prince Bascal, and later a builder of orbital towers on the face of Planet Two, better known as Sorrow.
    “He is Senior Commander Conrad Ethel Mursk,” said a quiet voice in Bruno's helmet. “First Mate of the QSS
Newhope
and First Architect of the Kingdom of Barnard.”
    “Ah, so you're awake,” Bruno said to the walls and bulkheads around him.
    “Aye, Sire,” replied the QSS
Newhope
in some radio frequency or other, and in vaguely feminine tones. By tradition, machines had an accent of their own which set them apart from human beings, but the Barnardean
mechsprach
was slower and breathier than the Queendom's own—almost comically so. “You honor us with your presence.”
    “Us? Are these people alive, then?”
    “These four were,” the ship said, “when I froze them after the accident. They were my crew.”
    “Ah.” Curious, that. A crew of four for an entire starship?
    “However,” the ship continued, “since reviving them is beyond my capabilities, the answer to your question rests upon your definition of the word ‘alive.' There are bodies in my cargo pods as well, who died and were frozen before the journey began. So I will answer, guardedly, that four of these people are alive, and twenty-five thousand are dead but presumed recoverable.”
    “I see. Thank you.” Bruno was about to ask for further clarification when he felt a hand on his shoulder.
    “Gaah!” he cried, spinning in surprise and alarm. One did not expect to be
touched
onboard a ghost ship! But as he wheeled around, dizzy against the ship's own spinning, what he saw behind him was no ghost or zombie but his own wife, Queen Tamra-Tamatra Lutui, in her own suit of space armor—royal purple trimmed with gold. She didn't look happy, and flanking her on either side were an equally unamused-looking admiral and a burly midshipman, both in navy black. And behind
them
were a pair of superreflective Palace Guard robots—a reminder that Bruno himself was here, against laws and traditions and the insistence of his staff, without his own two guards. It had taken a Royal Override to dismiss them, but Tamra's override trumped all others. Were these two for him?
    Blast.
    “Hello, dear,” he tried saying.
    She crossed her arms, nodding once inside her helmet. “Darling.
Malo e leilei
. It was very kind of you to bring an active fax portal and network gate here. It saves us all kinds of time. Why, we can fax here directly from
Malu'i
, still en route.”
    “Ah. Well, er,