Proxima by Stephen Baxter Read Free Book Online Page B

each, long before the insurrection, and now the
groups had been used as the basis for the lockdown.
    They were supervised by Peacekeepers, never fewer than two at a time, with astronauts overseeing them, in the case of Yuri’s group Lex McGregor and Mardina Jones. As the days passed the
passengers were released one at a time in a cycle, to use a bathroom modified for zero gravity, to wash, to feed. When they were out of their cuffs Lex McGregor insisted they stretch and bend, to
keep from stiffening up. They were spoken to, but not encouraged to speak back, or to have conversations with each other.
    The thrust was never restored, the gravity never came back on. But occasionally you would hear bangs and knocks, as if some huge fist was hammering on the hull, and jolts this way and that,
brief periods of acceleration. Lemmy murmured that having reached the Proxima system under its kernel drive, the ship must be using some secondary propulsion system to insert itself into a final
orbit, presumably around the target, the supposedly Earthlike third planet of Proxima. This was guesswork, however. They had no view out of the hull.
    The crew processed them bureaucratically, forever ticking off names on the piss and feed rotas on their slates. There seemed to be no formal comeback after the insurrection. No hearings, no
disciplinary measures. Yuri guessed the crew didn’t care, they just wanted to dump their unruly passengers down on this Proxima planet and have done with them.
    But it was evident there had been some punishment beatings. One man in Yuri’s group, called Joseph Mullane, some kind of dispossessed farmer type originally from Ireland, had been worked
over particularly hard, and Dr Poinar had to spend some time treating his wounds. But even he was kept cuffed to his chair.
    Mullane had been one of the men Yuri had seen attacking Abbey Brandenstein, the ex-cop, at the height of the trouble – and Abbey herself was in this drop group too. Yuri had no idea if
their pairing up like this had been deliberate. Maybe not, if it was true that the groupings had been defined long before the insurrection. Abbey Brandenstein spent all her waking hours glaring at
Mullane.
    In the hours and days that followed, Yuri never heard what had become of Anna Vigil and her kid; he didn’t ask, wasn’t told. Occasionally you heard voices from beyond the partition,
a murmur of movement, a snatch of a baby’s crying. Otherwise, as the shifts wore on, there was nothing to do but sit there, cuffed to your chair. It was possible to sleep; Yuri found that if
he relaxed, just let himself float in the zero gravity, he could find a position where the cuffs at his wrists and ankles didn’t chafe, and he could almost forget he was pinned down. He was
bothered by the fact of his lengthy unconsciousness, however. Another gap in his memory. It irritated him to have three years of counting disrupted like that.
    A few days after the last of those attitude-engine thumps and bangs had died away, there was a heavier shudder, as if some huge mass had joined the hull.
    Lemmy winked at Yuri. ‘Shuttle. Orbit to ground. This ship has two, one of the crew told me that—’
    ‘Shut the fuck up,’ said a Peacekeeper. It was Mattock, the cuts and bruises on his face yet to heal, his broken nose twisted – Mattock, who took out his suffering on Yuri in
sly kicks and punches, because Yuri had refused to help him before the fury of the mob.
    Now Lex McGregor, with another Peacekeeper at his side, came swimming into the cabin. McGregor was in his sparkling astronaut uniform, as usual, and Yuri felt oddly ashamed at his own
shabbiness.
    McGregor smiled.
    ‘Ladies and gentlemen. Time for us all to take a little ride. We’ll be boarding you one at a time. I do apologise, we’ll have to keep the cuffs on, you do understand how things
are following recent incidents. But I’m sure we’ll have no trouble. You first, Ms Amsler . . .’
    Jenny Amsler, a