Pirate Sun by Karl Schroeder

pulled, the house began to drift away, the chain unraveling behind it. A few minutes later it snapped taut, and then because her bike was pulling at right angles to the line joining house and water tank, the whole assembly began to rotate.
    For a few hours, the farmer would enjoy the centrifugal gravity allowed by the rotation. He had weight as long as he didn’t step out his front door; Chaison, Darius, and Richard would have to stay atop the windblown surface of the water tank to gain the same benefit.
    It was worth it. As the headwind from their rapid spin grew to a gale, Chaison felt a sensation he hadn’t had in months. His head drooped, his shoulders slumped as he sat on the tank. After a few minutes Antaea had reached the safe rotation rate for the chains, which provided more than half a gravity. Up in the house, the farmer would be testing his legs; Chaison needed to do the same. He stood, carefully keeping a grip on the chain.
    “Oh, that hurts!” The other two were also standing up. They grimaced and laughed as the deficiencies of their weightless exercise made themselves apparent. There were muscles essential to walking that Chaison had not been able to tone in all his cell-bound bouncing and isometrics. He wobbled on his feet.
    Richard had it worst. Apparently his discipline had broken down early in their incarceration; he would need extensive rehabilitation to regain his gravity legs. Aside from the weakness, there was the little problem that the authorities would be looking for three Slipstream men crippled by chronic weightlessness. If they could spend a week or two in a town, he would at least be able to stand up and walk a straight line; the irony was that they couldn’t visit a town until he could walk. The police knew this. If Richard could get his legs before they visited a town, their chances of getting caught might diminish—a little.
    Chaison gazed out at the swiftly turning sky. He had no idea where they were relative to their home. Their fates were in the hands of a complete stranger. Almost out of habit, he began to form plans—half-conscious decision-trees like the look-ahead moves in a chess game. What if Antaea was an enemy? What if the guard were friends? Could they commandeer a ship from somewhere? Or could they fly all the way to Slipstream hanging off of Antaea’s little bike?
    Darius was frowning into the sky as well. They stood in a small circle all gripping the same chain, and for a few minutes he seemed to be thinking of something clever to say. Finally he said, “Well? When do we give her the slip?”
    Chaison glanced up the chain at the upside-down house far overhead. “I’m not sure we do,” he said.
    When Darius returned an incredulous look, he shrugged. “Her intentions aren’t clear, but I don’t think she’s our enemy. If she were, she wouldn’t have admitted to being a member of the home guard.”
    Richard snorted. “You believe that drivel about her being the one who freed us?” He was trying valiantly to keep his knees from buckling.
    “If not her, then who did it?” said Chaison. “As to the home guard…She knows too much to be making it up. The ‘outage’—clearly she’s referring to our shutting-down of Candesce’s defensive systems. It never occurred to me that it would be noticed so easily. But then, it never occurred to me that there might be a real and present threat outside Virga that the system was keeping at bay. If I’d known…”
    “If you had known, your wife would still have talked you into it,” said Richard Reiss. Chaison glared at him, but it was true. The plan had been her idea, and she could be very persuasive. In fact, she had committed a minor case of blackmail to guarantee that Chaison would adopt the plan. He hadn’t really had much choice.
    Remembering that made him smile. She was an unstoppable force, that was for sure. But it had been months now that they were separated, and for all she knew he was dead. Venera was nothing