Free Gardens of the Sun by Paul McAuley Page B

bitch hadn’t taken the hint. Loc hoped that she’d stick with Arvam Peixoto until the day of reckoning came; he very much wanted to have a hand in her downfall, even though he couldn’t see any way of profiting from it.
    Meanwhile, he was stuck on the dreary round of his dead-end job, rotating between Paris and the orbital salvage yard. Dione’s elegant shipyard, a gossamer web dotted with workshops and cradles, had been destroyed during the war. Its replacement was a grim utilitarian lash-up of modified cargo cylinders, with noisy air conditioning, an ineradicable odour of stale cooking and chemical toilets, and little privacy. Loc had to bunk in his tiny office, with his aide snoring on the other side of a betacloth curtain; the rations were military MREs; the recycled water reeked of chlorine and showers were rationed to two minutes once every three days. Colonel James Lo Barrett, the soldiers of the security detail, and the Outer salvage crews didn’t seem to mind the appalling living conditions, but Loc loathed the place, and would have spent as little time as possible up there if he hadn’t had to cover for Colonel Barrett’s deficiencies.
    The salvage yard hung in the middle of a Sargasso Sea of derelict ships. More than sixty of them now, and one or two still arriving every week, even though it was a year and counting since the war had ended. Their shapes sharply silhouetted against Saturn’s foggy bulk, flashing like fugitive stars as they tumbled slowly through black vacuum. Those damaged beyond repair were stripped of reusable components, their fusion and attitude motors were dismounted, and their lifesystems, hulls and frames were rendered into chunks of scrap metal, fullerene composite and construction diamond. Most were powerless and frozen but otherwise intact, killed when their cybernetic nervous systems had been zapped by microwave bursts or EMP mines during the investment of the Saturn System. Salvage and refurbishment of these brain-dead ships was fairly straightforward, apart from having to deal with the remains of the dead.
    General Arvam Peixoto had refused to mount any kind of expedition to rescue the crews and passengers of the crippled ships. There were too many ships in too many orbits, and the risk that rescue crews might be attacked by survivors was too great. So every ship was a tomb, because those trapped on board without power and life support had either committed suicide, suffocated, or succumbed to the relentless cold. Before salvage could begin, the dead were located and documented and removed, along with all their possessions, the black boxes containing the ship’s logs and flight data were handed over to an intelligence officer for analysis, and any cargo was inventoried and offloaded. Then the hulk was guided into a cradle where crews of men and robots replaced AIs and control systems, overhauled and quickened the lifesystem, checked attitude motors, and gave the fusion motor a static test before the ship was inspected by flight technicians, certified, and handed over to the transport wing of the Three Powers Authority.
    The salvage work went slowly because there was a shortage of skilled Outer volunteers, and the Air Defence Force claimed that the only flight technicians it could spare were the surly pair who certified the salvage work. The job Loc detested would last for at least two years. Maybe more. But then a chance to redeem himself came out of the empty black sky.
     
    Loc was in Paris, recuperating from another bruising session with the Economic Commission’s subcommittee, when his aide called and told him that one of the salvage crews had found a live body.
    It was late in the evening. Loc was dining with Yota McDonald. They’d finished a bottle of expensive imported wine and were working on their second brandies, so Loc was a little thick-headed, saying stupidly, ‘A live what?’
    ‘A passenger. One of the salvage crews found a live passenger.’
    The crew had been