Empire of Light s-3

by Gary Gibson

  Corso gaped at her, dumbfounded.

  There was another chime, and the diagnostics display flashed a couple of times.

  'What does it say?' she asked.

  'That there are lesions in your brain,' Corso told her. 'The med-bay thinks you've suffered a grand mal seizure.' He reached out and touched the screen, and more information appeared. 'It's the same thing as Ted,' he observed.

  'I feel okay. And whatever changes the Magi made to my brain or Ted's, your med-bay isn't programmed to factor them in.'

  'Well, one way or another, there are changes.'

  'Will Ted be okay?'

  Corso shrugged. 'We won't know until the medbox is finished with him. How are you feeling?' he asked, looking at her with a curious expression.

  'About what?'

  'I know you were…'he struggled to find the right word '… attached to your ship; to the experience of being joined with it.'

  'I'll deal with it,' she said abruptly. 'I'm not going to crack up like I did before.' She nodded towards the med-bay entrance. 'You said we should take a look at what we've gone to all this effort for. How about now?' Ty Whitecloud looked up at the sound of the lab's airlock cycling, and realized he still had no idea if the Senator's plan to hijack the frigate had been successful. He sat at the lab's primary console, sudden tension knotting the muscles of his back.

  The inner airlock door finally sighed open and Senator Corso entered the lab in the company of a woman he felt certain he had never seen before, but who looked familiar. After another moment, he recognized her from news archives as Dakota Merrick.

  Her eyes were wide and dark, and she hardly seemed to blink. Her hair stood up in spiked tufts, giving the impression of someone who didn't get much sleep, and she was attractive, in a half-starved-looking sort of way. Had she, he wondered, already been on board the frigate when they arrived?

  'Dakota, this is Nathan Driscoll,' said Corso, fixing Ty with a peculiar stare, as if to put particular emphasis on Ty's nom de guerre. Corso had so far spoken to Ty only when absolutely necessary, and as on those occasions the Senator's distaste for him remained entirely evident. 'Nathan's responsible for the original research that led us to the Mos Hadroch. Without his help, we wouldn't have got this far.'

  Ty nodded wordlessly to Dakota, and crossed his hands on his lap so that the ring he had been given by the Consortium agent, and which he wore on his right hand, was hidden under the left palm.

  He heard that high-pitched static-like sound again, but it rapidly increased in pitch until it passed beyond his ability to hear it. He saw Merrick wince in that same moment, pressing the fingers of one hand against her temple.

  She heard it too, he realized. A glance at the Senator confirmed that he appeared unaware of her distress.

  'I think it's time we had a look at exactly what we came here for,' said Corso. 'Mr Driscoll?'

  Ty nodded and stood up. 'This way,' he said. They passed through another room, then came to the isolation chamber containing the Atn's remains.

  Ty tapped some commands into a terminal mounted next to a sheet of polycarbonate armoured glass, through which the alien remains were visible. A moment later a long robot arm slid out from a recess in the chamber's ceiling, turning this way and that as it reached downwards, its machine-fingers spreading wide, each one of them tipped with a different kind of probe or instrument. It came to a halt just a few inches above the dead alien's carapace.

  Ty inhaled deeply and stared at the alien body through the glass. I've waited a long time for this, he thought, then he exhaled slowly.

  He quickly typed more commands into the terminal, and in response the upper right corner of the window darkened to show an image of the Atn's remains as seen from directly above. After another moment, this image was replaced by a series of vague outlines rendered in grey, which constantly shifted and altered.

  Ty pointed to the monochrome images. 'This is from a multisystem scan I managed to run on the thing's body before they locked me out of the lab,' he explained. 'X-ray, muon, the works. Look here.' He pointed to a black shadow at the core of the image. 'There's something lodged inside the Atn's carapace, but it's completely opaque to everything I can throw at it.'

  'And that's the Mos Hadroch?' asked Corso.

  'I'm rather hoping it is, yes,' Ty replied, glancing at the Senator.

  Merrick was frowning, clearly distracted by something. 'It's the Mos Hadroch, all right,' she said. 'It's been scanning me from the moment we walked into this lab.'

  The two men stared at her.

  'I'm serious,' she continued. Her eyes lost focus for a moment, and Ty thought she might faint. 'I think it's trying to find information about the swarm.'

  'Maybe bringing you here wasn't such a good idea.' Corso began moving towards her.

  She put up a hand. 'Wait, Lucas.'

  'What does it want to know?' asked Ty, deeply fascinated.

  She moved back against one wall, pressing a hand against the bulkhead behind her. 'The swarm's purpose,' she replied. 'Its reason for being.'

  'Do you actually know that?' Corso asked, just beating White-cloud to it.

  'Sure.' She shrugged. 'There are millions of swarms scattered all across the face of the universe, all in long-range contact with each other via tach-comms. They want to manipulate the underlying structure of reality.'

  Corso laughed dismissively. 'Come on, that's ridiculous. Who ever-?'

  'It's not ridiculous,' Ty interrupted him. 'Not if they're Wheeler-Korsh engines.'

  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 coffee – 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 the
re 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.'