Empire of Light

by Gary Gibson

  Corso shook his head. ‘Wheeler what?’

  A hypothetical technology that manipulates the fundamental properties of space at its lowest possible level, where matter and information cease to be distinguishable,’ Ty explained, glancing back into the chamber. He touched the terminal and several tiny cutting tools swung down until they almost touched the carapace. Wheeler-Korsh engines? Incredible. ‘And if matter is only an expression of information,’ he continued, ‘then the universe itself is ultimately programmable, an infinitely complex computational system. Subatomic particles aren’t really anything more substantial than a collection of data concerning spin, angle of momentum, location . . . that kind of thing. Some might say that this means there is no such thing as death, only iterations of a program that started running at the beginning of time.’

  ‘That sounds almost like religion,’ said Dakota.

  Ty froze for a moment, realizing how close he was coming to describing Uchidanism. ‘It’s pure speculation, of course,’ he said, turning and forcing a smile. ‘Unless one actually finds a Wheeler-Korsh engine, in which case it ceases to be just speculation.’

  ‘It sounds pretty far-fetched,’ said Corso, glaring.

  Ty ignored him. ‘How did you find this out?’ he asked Dakota.

  ‘I tapped into the swarm’s collective mind when I went out to investigate it,’ she explained. ‘It’s how I found out about the Mos Hadroch.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said Ty. ‘You said they communicated by tach-comms, but if they’re spread all across the universe, how could they power the signals to reach that far? You’d need power on an astronomical level to pull off something like that.’

  ‘I watched them use the energy of a nova,’ she explained, ‘just to power a signal to a swarm located in another galaxy.’

  Both men stared at her in silence for several moments.

  ‘I should be used to having you completely fuck with my head by now,’ the Senator finally grumbled, then turned to look at Ty. ‘Mr Driscoll, I think it’s time we cut that thing open and looked inside, don’t you?’

  Ty nodded and set to work. Tiny precision plasma jets began to cut into the Atn’s carapace with smooth efficiency. Multi-jointed manipulators reached down, securing pieces of metal shell as the jets sliced through them.

  The internal biological components of the Atn had long since turned to dust, though Ty made a mental note to analyse the remains of the brain when he had the time and opportunity. There was a chance that useful data might have survived.

  ‘I can’t tell you,’ he muttered, ‘how much I’ve been looking forward to this.’

  Once a large enough hole had been cut, Ty stepped away from the terminal, and the entrance to the isolation chamber slid open. ‘Let’s take a look,’ he said, stepping through.

  The three of them crowded inside the small space, which smelled of burned dust and hot metal. The Senator’s earlier antipathy towards him appeared to have shifted into something like a grudging respect. It was Merrick that Ty could not make his mind up about: the news archives had carried accusations of murder and thievery. She struck Ty as someone who worked hard to keep her emotions under control, but certainly not the cold-blooded killer she had sometimes been made out to be.

  ‘They’re amazing creatures, the Atn,’ said Ty, pulling on a pair of insulated gloves. The edges of the hole cut in the carapace still glowed faintly with trapped heat. ‘There’s strong evidence they’ve been around for longer than any other species we’ve come into contact with. Perhaps longer than even your Magi, Miss Merrick,’ he added. ‘And when we’ve shuffled off the galactic stage, they’ll come wandering back through the empty ruins of our cities.’

  ‘I wondered if maybe that was why they were entrusted with the Mos Hadroch in the first place,’ said Dakota, watching as Ty squatted by the carapace. ‘They operate on a timescale that pretty much beggars the imagination.’

  ‘I think maybe we’d better get on with this, don’t you?’ said Corso with faint annoyance.

  ‘Yes,’ Ty agreed, reaching into a pocket and pulling out a slim torch.

  He shone the light into the cavity and discovered that, as he suspected, the creature had been thoroughly gutted. The light played over something smooth, and he reached in past the jagged edges of the hole and touched it. To his surprise, it was very slightly warm to the touch. He shoved the handle end of his torch inside his mouth, to free his hands, then pushed both hands deep inside the cavity.

  The object nestling inside the carapace was roughly conical in shape, its blunted point facing up towards him. Two bars like handles extended out and then upwards from the base of the cone, which at least gave him something to grab hold of.

  Ty got a good grip on the object and lifted it out. Then Corso grabbed one handle, and together they lowered it to the deck. It was a pale cobalt-blue colour, and seemed to glow with a faint iridescence. There was something undeniably alien about the device, some nameless quality of otherness that sent a tingle of fear and excitement racing down Ty’s spine.

  Corso peered at it with clear alarm. ‘It’s not radioactive, is it?’

  ‘Not according to the instruments,’ replied Ty. ‘If it was, we’d have known long before we even brought it on board. I don’t know what could be causing that glow.’

  Suddenly Ty heard a sound, like whispers mixed with static, cutting through his thoughts and once again rising to a high-pitched whistle before fading to nothing. He glanced over at Dakota and saw her wince and cover her eyes with one hand.

  ‘I can hear it again,’ she murmured. ‘The Mos Hadroch, I mean. I think something’s just happened.’

  Corso put up one hand to touch the comms-bead in his ear.

  ‘That’s fine, Dan,’ he said after a few moments. ‘Thanks for letting me know.’

  He turned back to face them. ‘Perez says half the primary data stacks just spontaneously rebooted themselves without explanation. It could be there’s someone still hidden on the frigate and trying to sabotage us before we can jump out of this system.’

  Dakota shook her head. ‘No, it’s the Mos Hadroch. I’m certain of it.’

  ‘Then what the hell is it doing now?’ Corso demanded.

  ‘I think,’ she replied carefully, ‘it just wants to know who we are.’

  Chapter Nineteen

  Two hours later, the primary stacks had recovered, whereupon Dakota jumped the Mjollnir half a light-year outside the Redstone system. A day later the frigate jumped more than a hundred and fifty light-years, to a point deep inside the Hyades Cluster.

  The frigate’s astrogational systems started matching the local stellar population against maps of known stars, quickly identifying a reddish-orange star no more than two or three light-years distant as Epsilon Tauri.

  Dakota left the bridge and made her way to a nearby meeting room, where the others were waiting. She smelled food as she entered, unfamiliar spices and odours that made her stomach growl. An image of Epsilon Tauri, the surrounding cluster spread out around it like a sprinkle of multicoloured diamonds, floated above a low table in the centre of the room. The room itself was oval-shaped, with low couches set against curving bulkheads and facing inwards towards the table. The only faces not present were Martinez and Lamoureaux, but Corso had told her they could expect to be decanted sometime in the next twenty-four hours.

  Corso himself looked dog-tired and haggard. While Dakota had been busy prepping the Mjollnir for its jump, he and Schiller had got busy moving the bodies of the dead to the ship’s morgue. Then they had a go at scrubbing the bloodstains off the deck.

  Corso looked at her with raised eyebrows as she lowered herself on to a couch opposite him.

  ‘I just put us about halfway across Consortium territory,’ she told him, leaning back, her shoulders cramping with fatigue. ‘We can jump again in another day or so, which should take us a long way outside the Consortium.’

  Corso handed her a bulb containing some dark liquid. ‘Here, Redstone coffe
e – guaranteed to wake you up.’

  She took it and sniffed at it warily, then noticed Perez and Schiller were watching her carefully. She sucked at the straw for a moment, then her eyes widened and her face turned pale.

  She dropped the bulb and succumbed to a coughing fit. Someone laughed. When her eyes had stopped watering, she could see that Corso was grinning at her.

  ‘What,’ she asked, ‘the fuck is that?’

  ‘There’s this weed, see, grows in water-pipes and plumbing back home,’ said Nancy Schiller. ‘They’ve been brewing it up since the days of the first settlers. They made me drink a gallon of the stuff in one go when I first joined up.’ She shook her head sadly and gazed at Corso. ‘This girl wouldn’t last an hour in any regular crew.’

  Dakota started coughing again, and Corso passed her a glass of water. She swallowed it all in one go, to clear a little of the sour, gritty taste from her throat. When she looked up, Corso wore a conciliatory grin.

  ‘So,’ began Perez, looking around them, ‘down to business. First question: do we get to fly a pirate flag on the ship? And second question: who wants to make it?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Schiller. ‘I say we paint FUCK YOU on the side and just fly the damn thing into the sun of the first heavily populated Emissary system we find. Besides . . .’ she added, pausing to take a long suck at a bulb, ‘I can’t sew. Can you?’

  Perez shook his head sadly. ‘They’ve got lots more suns where we’re headed. I fear they won’t miss just the one, Nancy.’

  Schiller shrugged. ‘Well, that’s the flaw in my plan right there. Maybe you could wear an eyepatch, Dan.’

  ‘If you wear a bag over your head, I’ll think about it. What do you say, Senator?’ Perez looked over at Corso. ‘Should we pass a resolution that Nancy has to wear a bag over her head for the rest of the trip?’

  Corso shook his head. ‘I’d rather wait for Eduard to get better, as I think any bag-wearing decisions should stay strictly with him.’

  Perez chuckled, and an awkward silence fell.

  Corso put down his bulb – now half empty, Dakota noted – and leaned forward, hands resting on his knees, while making sure to catch each of their eyes in turn. Dakota watched as Driscoll drained a bulb of the foul concoction, and put it down empty with apparent satisfaction. Guy looks like he drinks it every day for breakfast. Maybe he was from Redstone, like the rest of them.

  ‘All right,’ said Corso, ‘this meeting is about making sure we’re all on the same page. That means us talking about what’s up ahead.’

  ‘But we’re not all here,’ said Nancy. ‘The Commander’s still on ice and your other guy’s still in recovery. Don’t you think maybe we should wait until they’re out of the med-bay?’

  ‘Martinez’ll be out of there sometime in the next several days, and Mr Lamoureaux isn’t going to be taking up any duties until at least then either. So we’ll fill them in when the time comes,’ said Corso. ‘Look, we’re all from different places, some of us from Redstone, some not. The only thing we’ve really got in common is our reason for being here, and that’s the Mos Hadroch.’

  He glanced over at Dakota. ‘Nathan’s filled everyone else in about what we found inside the Atn, while you were still up on the bridge. I can’t think of a better time than the present for you to tell us just exactly what it is the Mos Hadroch can do.’

  They all looked at her expectantly.

  ‘Okay.’ She cleared her throat. ‘The main thing you need to know is that every new superluminal drive-core produced by a cache is quantum-entangled with that same cache. That entanglement means any changes you make to the cache can affect any ships carrying those superluminal drives, regardless of how distant they may be.’

  Dakota looked around them and noticed that, apart from Driscoll, their expressions ranged from uncomprehending to suspicious.

  ‘Where did you get all this?’ asked Schiller.

  ‘From the swarm,’ she lied. ‘What you need to understand is that the Mos Hadroch is like a key. Take it into a cache and plug it into the cache’s drive-forge – that’s the device you need to manufacture a superluminal drive – and it gives you control over every one of the superluminal drives that ever came out of it.’

  ‘And what happens then?’ asked Willis.

  ‘My understanding is it’s possible to trigger a destruct sequence that will destroy not only the drives seeded from the forge, but also the ships carrying them.’

  She watched them absorb this information for a moment.

  ‘How quickly does it act?’ asked Driscoll.

  ‘Given the entanglement, I’m guessing it’s as near as damn instantaneous.’

  ‘What about the Tierra cache?’ asked Perez. ‘Couldn’t the Mos Hadroch be used on that, too?’

  ‘It could,’ said Corso, leaning forward. ‘That makes it particularly important not to allow it to fall into the wrong hands.’

  ‘And the Shoal?’ asked Olivarri. ‘Surely it’s a threat to them as well.’

  ‘If you can find the cache from which the drives for the majority of their starships were manufactured, then, yes,’ said Dakota.

  ‘What concerns me,’ said Schiller, ‘is how well defended this Emissary cache we’re heading for must be. If it’s as old as I’ve been told it is, then they’re going to want to keep it safe.’

  Dakota shook her head. ‘Not necessarily, because they have no idea that a threat of this nature even exists. Our destination is a relative backwater close to what used to be the heart of their empire, but the main centre of activity moved on a very long time ago. They rely far more now on much more recently discovered caches.’

  ‘Then why don’t we try and destroy those? asked Schiller.

  ‘Because, historically, the vast majority of their fleets use drives that were created in that less well-defended, older cache we’re heading for. Any ships using drives taken out of those newer caches won’t be affected, of course, but we’ll still be able to shut down or even destroy over eighty per cent of their existing fleets.’

  ‘But that still doesn’t tell us how the hell we’re going to get close enough to the cache without being blown to shit!’ Schiller insisted.

  ‘I’ve seen footage of the battle with the godkiller in Ocean’s Deep. How the fuck do we defend ourselves against something like that?’

  Dakota nodded towards the star-simulation hanging just above the surface of the table. It faded and, then, for the next few minutes it played back the destruction of the corvettes and missiles by Meridian drones.

  She made sure, however, to leave out the part where she destroyed her own ship.

  ‘Those things . . .’ Willis started, as the images faded.

  ‘Are weapons created by a race called Meridians,’ Dakota said. ‘They’re long gone, but these drones are self-maintaining and extremely powerful. They’re going to be our defence while going in. Believe me, I was barely using a fraction of their total power.’

  ‘Any other questions?’ asked Corso, looking around.

  Dakota studied their faces. Some looked fearful, but most of them appeared awestruck by what they had just been told.

  ‘All right,’ said Corso, standing. ‘We have preliminary reports of drive-spine failure in three separate areas of the hull. We’re going to be spending most of our journey time repairing this ship, and none of us gets out of working on those repairs.’

  He turned to Schiller. ‘Nancy, we’re going to have to do the repair work in shifts, so draw up an initial rota and I’ll check it over with you in an hour from now. Put Ted and the Commander in there as well – soon as the med-bay says it’s okay, they’re going to be doing the same work as the rest of us.’

  He turned to fix Dakota with a stare. ‘I’d like a word with you in private.’

  She nodded and followed him out of the meeting room. He kept going, following the deck as it curved upwards. He didn’t stop until they were almost at one of the spoke-shafts, before turning to regard her with
his arms folded.

  ‘Whatever it is you’re up to, it’s time to start talking,’ he said. ‘You didn’t tell me everything I needed to know back in the med-bay, did you? Those weapons didn’t just materialize out of nowhere. It’s not just that you obviously know the exact location of the cache we need to hit, or even that you’ve got a shitload of intel about the swarm and the Mos Hadroch, but how the hell could you know all this about the Emissaries?’

  He raised a silencing hand as Dakota opened her mouth to speak. ‘Stop,’ he said. ‘You can’t try and fob me off by telling me you got all this from the swarm, because I just don’t buy it. Do you remember when we were stuck together in that tower on Night’s End?’

  Dakota nodded. ‘I remember.’

  ‘You said you knew whenever I was lying: you could see it in my eyes, the whole way I acted. Well, here’s back at you.’

  Dakota folded her arms around her chest, hugging herself as if she was cold. ‘I’m sorry I haven’t been more straight with you,’ she mumbled. ‘I guess this is as good a time as any.’

  He leaned in towards her. ‘For what?’

  She drew in a breath, then exhaled, letting her shoulders sag. ‘Trader’s coming along with us. I got the information about the Emissaries from him, and he also led me to the Meridian drones. He’s also the reason I know exactly what the Mos Hadroch can do. He’ll rendezvous with us just before our next jump.’

  Corso’s mouth worked helplessly for a couple of seconds before he could get anything out. ‘What? Are you fucking crazy?’

  She stared back at him defiantly. ‘See, this is why I didn’t tell you straight away.’

  ‘No, why would you not want to do that?’ he yelled, throwing his arms wide. ‘Because I’d have said you were out of your fucking head!’ He was shouting, and the sound of his voice reverberated from the bulkheads around them.

  ‘At least hear me out,’ she said quietly. ‘I haven’t failed you yet.’

  Corso stood, staring off down the long corridor, then shook his head before looking back at her directly. ‘All right, then, go ahead. Tell me why that murderous fucking fish is coming along with us.’