by Gary Gibson
Corso cocked his head. 'The Emissaries are gone. The Shoal abandoned us here and vanished. They-'
'We won a battle, but not the war. And believe me when I tell you that war's on its way here right now. We need to be ready – not just you and me, but the whole Consortium. Leidner doesn't really believe what I'm saying to him, and when I talk to the Legislate Representatives back in the Consortium, they just treat me like I'm insane. Instead they keep making demands, but if they don't listen soon, we're all dead.'
She leaned forward beseechingly, any trace of a smile gone from her lips. 'You've seen at least some of the skills I have, Lucas, and no one else understands them as well as you do. I really need your help.'
Corso raised his hands and dropped them again. 'There's nothing I can do, Dakota. We're stranded way out here, and the Shoal aren't around any more to take us back… unless you're going to do it?'
Dakota leaned back. 'I can expand the jump field of any Magi ship so that it'll carry other ships on superluminal jumps, same as we did with the Piri Reis. You'll all get back home. But in the meantime, there's even more to worry about. Have they told you about what happened with the coreships that were carrying human populations?'
Corso shook his head.
'They dumped their human and Bandati populations en masse in systems that can barely sustain their existing populations, before apparently abandoning us for ever,' she told him.
'Shit.' Corso sat up straighter, wondering just how much news of the outside world had been kept from him. 'The coreships are gone?'
She nodded. 'People are scared right now, but you have to reassure them that it's going to get better eventually, even if it's going to be hard for a good while yet. There are a lot more Magi ships on the way, but it'll take months before the last of them gets here. I want to get started on setting up a superluminal network, using the Magi ships, to keep the Consortium together now the Shoal seem to have abandoned this part of the galaxy.'
Corso opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again. 'More Magi ships?'
'About a thousand.'
Corso simply stared in amazement.
'The Magi Fleet,' she explained, 'turned out to be a lot bigger than anyone realized. I've recalled them all to Ocean's Deep, and at least a dozen more should get here over the next couple of weeks.'
'And then?'
And then I'm going to train new navigators for them.'
'Oh.' The implications took a few moments to sink in. 'You're talking about machine-heads.'
'I'm talking about candidates,' she insisted. 'Just having the implants isn't enough, but the original machine-heads – the ones who still have their implants, anyway – we can start with. My old tutor is one. He told me he met you, briefly'
'Langley.' Corso nodded. 'I'm glad he got out of that mess alive,' he added.
She leaned forward, clearly excited by her vision. 'A peacekeeping force, Lucas. One that can cross the galaxy if necessary, help maintain lines of communication, control traffic and trade, and most especially stop any wars before they can happen. A thousand machine-heads, a lot of them rejected by the society that made them – a way back for them, after the Redstone massacres and all the mistrust. Myself and the rest of these new navigators will share the responsibility for moving people and supplies between the colonies. And some of those colonies simply can't survive without regular contact with Earth and the older settlements.'
'You know that the first question people are going to ask is who you yourself are going to be responsible to. Who do you answer to, Dakota?'
'Myself and the other machine-heads will be custodians of the technology, Lucas. The Consortium, the Bandati, whoever – they'll have to come to us. We'll lease out the technology, but we'll always control it and protect it.'
Lucas snorted and shook his head. 'This is like some wet dream of absolute power. You're no better than the Shoal.'
'You've seen what happens when a bunch of different power groups came close enough to getting their hands on a prize like this. It's just too dangerous to entrust any of them with it.'
Corso looked away from her. 'There are people out there who think you're responsible for what happened to Night's End. An entire civilization was wiped out.'
'That wasn't me.'
'You're hardly lacking for a motive, are you? They locked you up, tortured you. You already killed thousands of them when you made a Magi ship self-destruct.'
'It wasn't me.'
He looked back up at her. 'Then you're going to have to deal with the fact that nothing you do is necessarily going to make you popular, Dakota. It's not like they're lining up to give you medals or the keys to the city, even as it is.'
'No. No, they aren't,' she agreed, swinging her feet back down to the floor. 'But I just can't think what else to do.'
'And that's what you want me to tell the Consortium?'
'No.' Her voice grew quieter again. 'I want you to take charge, Lucas.'
'What?' He gaped at her, thunderstruck.
'I'm going away for a while – not just yet, but eventually. The Magi weren't just looking for the caches; they were also looking for the creatures that created them in the first place – the Makers. They were close to getting the answers when the Shoal wiped them out.' She shrugged. 'Now I want to get those answers myself, if I can. But somebody needs to take care of things back here while I'm gone – just to organize, set up the network to bind the Consortium together. We can use the Leviathan's Fall station for a temporary base, since there are no habitable worlds here for us to endanger by our presence.'
'Shit, Dakota. I don't know what you expect me to do. I don't know how to organize anything like this, or where to even start. I mean' – he raised his hands in bewilderment – 'how do you know they won't take it all away from me as soon as you're gone?'
'Because I'll be able to find out what's happening from the new navigators, once they take charge of their ships,' she replied. 'And because Colonel Leidner, his staff and the entire Consortium Legislate are scared of what else I might do.'
'So maybe they'll call your bluff? What do you do then, blow up another star as a lesson? And what if that isn't enough?'
'I can only figure this out dealing with one thing at a time.'
'I don't want to have to do it.'
She smiled. 'Just like me.'
'To hell with you, Dakota!' he yelled. 'Don't play games with me. Why the hell should I run your fantasy of tin soldiers for you? What the hell makes you think I'm qualified to?'
'Well, for one, you don't want the job, which some people might take for a good sign. For another, you're an asshole, but at least you're an honest asshole. Enjoy some responsibility for a change.'
'I guess there isn't anyone else you could give the job to, is there?' he muttered.
'No, there isn't. And you know that means you'll do it.'
His face darkened, but after a moment a small smile flickered across his face, as if he'd just enjoyed a private joke. 'And you? How long before you're back from meeting your Maker?'
'Funny'
'Tragic would be more like it, Dakota.'
'I don't know,' she replied, and went to stand by the door. 'Where I'll be going is a long way away from here, and after a quarter of a million years there might not be anything there to find.'
'Before you go. A question I've been meaning to ask you.'
She eyed him expectantly.
'The Emissaries brought this ship we're on and an entire Immortal Light fleet to Ocean's Deep, and then turned on Immortal Light almost as soon as they were out of the Godkiller.' He shook his head. 'Why? I mean, at first, I thought I might be responsible.'
'How so?'
'Immortal Light took my incomplete protocols and managed to create a full working version of them in very little time.' He shrugged. 'But the protocols apparently didn't work and, no matter how I look at it, that doesn't seem enough of a setback for the Emissaries to suddenly turn around and destroy first Immortal Light's fleet,
then the entire Night's End system.'
'I wondered about that too,' Dakota replied. 'At first we all assumed the Emissaries were here to discover how to build nova weapons, except it turned out they already had a pretty good idea of how to do that, right?' Corso nodded. 'I didn't manage to get as deep inside the Godkiller as I would have liked, but I found enough to make some educated guesses.'
'Go on.'
'They destroyed Immortal Light not just because of what the derelict carried within it, but also because your protocols could grant them the same kind of power. They were just stringing Immortal Light along until they could be sure. They don't want other species competing with them directly any more than the Shoal do.'
When she smiled wryly, Corso knew how appalled he must look. Just then the door slid open again to reveal the three men still arguing in the corridor outside. All three halted abruptly, and turned to stare at them.
'Thanks,' Corso whispered, 'for saving my life. I know I didn't get myself in that medbox on my own.'
She merely nodded, the door sliding shut after her as she stepped out of the room. He'd half expected her to vanish in a puff of green smoke.
For a long time, Corso sat staring down at his slate. Then he shook his head angrily and deleted the single line of text he'd managed to produce.
He had other things to take care of now. Over the following weeks, the surviving crews of the Darkening Skies fleet gradually subdued the rich jungles of the orbital station and set about repairing its crumbling towers. Dakota, meanwhile, was frequently to be seen moving from meeting to meeting within ships belonging to both Bandati and human. And wherever she went, she went unchallenged. She was discreetly – or less discreetly – followed at every turn, the faces of her fellow humans now distrusting or angry or hateful, or frequently some combination of all three.
There were further meetings and conferences, many more of them; there were endless attempts to cajole, threaten, bribe or merely persuade her, but Dakota's position remained unchanged. The Magi ships would be coming to the Ocean's Deep system only; the arrival of the spreading shockwave from the destruction of Night's End was still years off, and here there were no fragile ecospheres to be damaged, no vast populations prone to attack – only lifeless worlds, a space station, and the growing fleet of Magi ships.
Every now and then she would direct her attention towards Ocean's Deep's star, which had been burning for more than seven billion years, a bright and serene presence in the night skies of other populated worlds far, far away. Now it seemed impermanent, even fragile; something that could be destroyed on a whim, or else sacrificed in the name of political or military expediency. Lucas Corso's life was becoming busier than he could have imagined. A third Magi ship soon arrived, and then a fourth, and a fifth. The second to turn up – now piloted by Langley – left shortly for the Consortium territories, taking with it most of the Casseia Andris's crew, and returning with a cargo ship and a fresh complement of military staff, bureaucrats, negotiators, engineers and politicians. The crews of the Darkening Skies fleet meanwhile took the orbital station for their own Hive. One ring of it was secured for the exclusive use of the Consortium, and Corso moved to private quarters there.
Almost a fortnight after Corso's conversation with Dakota in the medical bay, there occurred the first of several concerted efforts to kill both her and himself. It failed utterly, mostly thanks to Dakota.
A covert team that included at least one demolitions expert had arrived incognito, mixed in with a fresh detachment of Consortium peacekeepers who had just arrived from Galileo. All six members of the team had been transferred into the detachment at the last minute, and once positioned at the orbital station they hadn't wasted any time in laying explosive charges at key points so as to cause the maximum damage to the already weakened station. Their apparent intention was to destroy the colony while both Dakota and Corso were engaged in talks with senior Consortium representatives, all such negotiations having now been shifted to the station itself from the Casseia Andris.
Something apparently went wrong, though, for when the report on the incident finally arrived, Lucas found that the remote detonators for the explosives had all failed mysteriously. Within minutes, joint Consortium and Darkening Skies security teams had been able to track down most members of the assassination team, after their cover identities and current whereabouts had been revealed anonymously. It was, of course, far from difficult to detect Dakota's own hand in arranging this last detail.
Two of the would-be assassins made a last stand in a loading bay, apparently preferring death to capture. They turned out to be Freeholders who had previously worked as mercenaries for the Consortium Legislate's special security services.
As for who had recruited them, and why, that remained a mystery. Those responsible had gone out of their way to avoid leaving any kind of electronic paper trail that could link them to the squad-members. There was, however, no lack of potential suspects. Over the next several days, there were two more failed attempts on Dakota's life. One involved an engineering consultant called Gloria Kjel, whose father had been working for Legislate business concerns in Darkwater's human quarter when the Night's End system had been destroyed. By the time Kjel had been apprehended, again thanks to an anonymous tip-off, Dakota's idea of going away for a while was starting to seem like a pretty good idea to Corso.
The other assassination attempt was nastier. Tracking down machine-heads to enrol as navigator-candidates presented its own unique set of hurdles, since the machine-head tech in itself was still illegal, presenting difficulties for any potential candidate wanting to make himself publicly known. Dakota herself, with an extensive criminal career behind her, would have had difficulty qualifying according to the tangled mess of regulations and specifications being hammered out by committees day and night. Yet the fact remained that, without navigators able to fly the superluminal Magi ships, the Consortium could not hope to survive as a cohesive entity.
One such candidate was a man called Jim Krieger, a Bellhavenite like Dakota, who'd also gone underground shortly after the Redstone massacres. By the time he found his way to Ocean's Deep more than a dozen Magi ships had arrived there, with new navigators currently being trained for each.
Krieger got close enough to Dakota to slash at her with a knife on their first meeting. Subsequent interrogation showed that he was being blackmailed over his young daughter, who'd been taken hostage by someone determined to destroy Dakota's plans. Krieger's child turned up dead less than a week later, in a Bellhaven city called Morningside.
The report of the incident, when it finally made its way into Corso's hands, made for heartbreaking reading. And security was tightened yet again.
But at least there were no more attempts made on either of their lives. The commanders of the new military detachments recently arrived at Ocean's Deep made the decision to provide each of the navigators-in-training with armed escorts. These individuals soon found themselves enjoying a unique mixture of instant fame, opprobrium and hatred.
Corso meanwhile returned to a seemingly endless round of talks during which he listened, argued, and attempted to cajole men and women from every stratum of the Consortium Legislate. One popular suggestion, on the part of many of the politicians he met, was that responsibility for electing new machine-head navigators should be shared with the Consortium.
Dakota's answer to this and other possible compromises was always firmly no.
Although she had sufficient political acumen not to say it outright to the Consortium's delegates, Corso knew Dakota was unwavering in her desire for the Peacekeeper fleet to be an entity entirely independent of the Consortium. And, as more weeks passed and the days and nights blurred into one seamless, artificially-lit stream of conferences and discussions, Corso surprised himself by increasingly siding with her way of seeing things.
So few of the politicians and policy-makers he was forced to deal with were interested in much more than short-term goals. Everybody wants to
protect their little bit of turf he found himself thinking more than once. They didn't seem to understand something was coming that could burn their little worlds to ashes. Then, one particular morning, Corso opened the door of his quarters only to find a phalanx of Consortium Special Security troopers waiting for him, armed with concussion bolts and holstered batons. He was taken – protesting and still exhausted after the previous night's debates – to a command frigate that had recently docked with the Leviathan's Fall station.
At first he'd thought he might be under arrest – that the Consortium was attempting to wrest control from Dakota, as he'd feared it might do – but instead he found himself thrust inside a crowded lounge area on board the frigate, with Dakota herself standing at a portable lectern at one end.
Corso looked around at the muttering faces of the audience. Most of them were wearing military uniforms or the traditional dark-grey civilian attire of senior politicians and their administrative staff.
They were all staring resentfully at Dakota as if she'd chained them to their seats and was forcing them to watch her eat live babies.
'I'd thank you all for coming,' she said as the hubbub began to fade, 'but very few of you have had any choice but to be here. So I'll keep this simple and short. I won't accept any more attempts at stopping potential navigators from making their way to Ocean's Deep. Neither will I tolerate attempts at blackmailing them or threatening their families. Believe me when I say you need these people on your side. Any more such attempts will prove utterly futile.'
She scanned the room, from side to side. 'I have ambitious goals, as you know, in order to save our civilization, and the creation of a superluminal fleet is only one of them. I can't make this happen without your cooperation, but far too many of you seem intent on blocking me at every turn, while there's a large, vocal minority which doesn't appear to be interested in listening to reason of any kind.'
The screen on the wall behind her flickered into life, displaying a series of names, faces, and personal information. 'Most of this stuff is highly classified,' Dakota continued. She smiled. 'The kind of information people like me aren't supposedly meant to know.'
