Empire of Light s-3

by Gary Gibson

  '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.'

  'Remember how I told you I could only go where the Magi ship wanted me to go?'

  Corso nodded.

  'It took me to Trader. I didn't have any choice.'

  'Why him?'

  'Because he has the key to awakening the Mos Hadroch. Without that key, it's useless, like a bomb without any explosives.'

  'Everything he says is a lie, Dakota.'

  'That's not true,' she replied sharply. She could feel her nails digging into the flesh of her palms, where she'd balled them into fists. 'He merely twists the truth to get his own way.'

  Corso gave her a pitying look. 'Got you right over a barrel again, hasn't he? What does he get out of this?'

  'If we pull this off, he'll have helped turn the tide of the war. I think he's hoping the Shoal will decide to forget he's the one who started it.'

  Corso laughed. 'In other words, he can't even get his own people to back him up. I can't tell you how much I don't like this.'

  'So what do you want us to do?' she demanded. 'Go ahead without him? Take our chances and hope for the best? I mean what, Lucas? It's not like the artefact comes with a fucking manual. I've got no idea how to make it work. Do you?'

  'We've barely got this far, and already it feels like everything's getting out of control.'

  Dakota stepped forward and laid a hand over one of his. 'You've changed a lot, Lucas. The man I first met on board the Hyperion could never have got us this far. We need to try to find some way to control the Mos Hadroch that doesn't involve Trader. If it's at all possible, maybe Driscoll can work it out before we reach our goal.'

  'And if it isn't?'

  'Then at least what Trader wants is what we want, for a change. And if he's lying about that… Well, we'll watch him, Lucas, and we'll be ready. It's really all we can do.'

  Chapter Twenty

  A little more than a day later, Dakota made her way to the Mjollnir's stern and towards the main hold, an enormous drum-shaped vault that took up nearly a fifth of the frigate's overall internal space. Taking a seat in an observation blister overlooking its airless interior, she saw the Meridian drones nestled amongst the drop-ships and cradles, and clinging to various bulkheads as if glued to them. Their perfectly reflective surfaces rendered them nearly invisible.

  She watched the main doors of the hold swing slowly open, splitting into four quarter-circle slices and revealing a widening cross of starry black. Trader's yacht hung at the void's centre, growing slowly larger as it slowly manoeuvred itself inside the hold.

  The yacht was the colour of parchment. Its drive-spines sparkled under the hold's powerful lights. It moved to one side as the doors began to swing closed again, waiting until the grapples took hold of it, pulling it in towards an empty cradle.

  Dakota touched a comms terminal, and a moment later a soft chime told her a link had been established with the craft.

  'Welcome aboard, Trader.'

  'Greetings and felicitations, dear Dakota. Awareness comes upon me that the frigate is refusing to extend an airlock connection to my yach
t. May I ask why?'

  'You're going to have to stay where you are for the duration of the voyage. Senator Corso made himself very clear on that point.'

  'Ah, Lucas Corso. I have heard news of his hard journey up life's stream these recent years. His teeth have grown; now become a predator rather than prey. I gather you've had an opportunity to use the Meridian drones already?'

  'I did, yes. Are you sure you trust me with that kind of firepower?'

  'I think of our relationship as symbiotic, Dakota. Our need for each other assures mutual trust. But even those drones aren't quite enough for our purposes. This frigate remains extremely vulnerable to direct attack, so I propose we acquire shielding of a far more advanced type than that currently available to you.'

  'Where from?'

  The Mjollnir's primary stacks alerted Dakota to new data, squirted over from the Shoal-member's yacht. She tested the data for traps, and, on finding none, dropped it behind a firewall within the terminal's memory. It turned out to be a set of coordinates for a system located a few thousand light-years further along their projected trajectory, close to the edge of the spiral arm and not far from the region of the Long War.

  'The system in question requires a slight detour, but that shouldn't add more than a few days to our journey time,' Trader explained. 'And Dakota… please reconsider allowing me on board, as I would very much like to see the Mos Hadroch. I have waited a long time for that, and I want to demonstrate that I can be trusted.'

  It was surely just her imagination that she detected a strain of wistfulness behind the machine-tones of his translation system.

  'Not a chance in hell,' she replied. 'I had enough trouble persuading Lucas to let you even get this near.'

  'No one enters the arena of battle without making sure their weapons are fully operational, Dakota. If the Mos Hadroch is a gun, only I have the trigger. We need to test it before we can implement it.'

  The damn fish had a point, she realized. 'I'll talk to him,' she replied. 'That's all I can do. But he's still not going to go for it.' She shifted in her seat and waited for Trader's reply.

  Corso had ramped the security systems up to full alert in preparation for the Shoal-member's arrival, and put Nancy Schiller to work at rejigging the primary command systems to make them even more hack-proof than they already were.

  'Then it appears I am trapped between the crushing depths and the deadly air,' Trader finally conceded. 'You should be aware that when we reach our final destination, I won't be able to control the Mos Hadroch at a distance. Will you keep it from me even then, Dakota?'

  'No,' she replied. 'Not when that time comes. Of course,' she added, 'you could just tell us how to activate it ourselves. Then you wouldn't need to come along at all.'

  Dakota smiled to herself as a long pause followed.

  'I believe we understand each other,' Trader finally replied. 'Goodbye for now, Dakota.'

  'Wait.' She put out a hand, forgetting Trader couldn't see her. 'There's something I want to ask you.'

  'Yes?'

  'On my way to the swarm I came across hundreds of destroyed Atn clade-worlds. But most of them were destroyed long before the Mos Hadroch was supposedly created.'

  'Your point?'

  'At first I assumed the swarm attacked those clade-worlds because it suspected the Mos Hadroch could be hidden on one of them, but clearly the Atn and the swarm have been at war for much, much longer than that. Why is that? Or is the Mos Hadroch older than I thought?'

  'We all live amongst the ruins of our predecessors, Dakota. There are wars that began when the first stars were young, and will not end even with the death of the last star. Both the swarms and the Atn began their own existence as weapons on either side of a long-forgotten war – but the Atn forgot their original purpose. Does this satisfy your curiosity?'

  'Yes.' Dakota pushed herself out of her chair and took one last look out into the bay. 'Goodbye, Trader.'

  'I have been monitoring communications traffic from Redstone, Dakota. I know that you destroyed your own ship.'

  Dakota gripped the back of the seat she had just vacated. 'Yes, I had no choice. You already know why.'

  'It is always better to be the master of your own destiny, is it not? And yet I imagine it must have been a painful decision. I imagine it must make you feel very lonely.'

  She let go of the chair and drifted over to the window, suddenly breathing hard. She could just make out her reflection, floating like a ghost over the interior of the bay, and she fought an urge to activate the drones again, to burn Trader's ship in its cradle.

  'More than you can imagine,' she replied, and left.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Not long after Trader rendezvoused with the frigate, Corso paid a visit to the labs.

  'Figure out how the hell the thing works, Whitecloud. Or at least how it might work. That's your job as long as you're on board the Mjollnir. You'll eat here and sleep here in the lab, as well. Is that understood?'

  It was the first private conversation they had had, and Corso clearly had not been in the mood for making friends or wasting time with pseudonyms when no one else was around. There were dark rings under the Senator's eyes, and Ty had been aware of the frenetic level of activity following their departure from Redstone, while he himself had been safely ensconced in what had now become the familiar confines of the frigate's laboratory complex.

  Ty gazed around the low-lit lab as if he might find the right answer there. 'But won't people ask questions if I don't take quarters with the rest of them? I mean, there's plenty of room in the centrifuge-'

  'No.' Corso stabbed a finger at Ty's chest. 'I don't want you mixing with the rest of my people.'

  'All right, but what about the hull repairs? There are only nine of us apart from the alien, and drive-spines deteriorate badly over long jumps. If I don't join the repair rota with the rest of them, they're going to ask why.'

  Corso clearly did not enjoy having to concede this point. 'Fine, I'll make sure you're on the rota so no one asks questions. But you stay put here the rest of the time, regardless. If anyone asks, it's because you're a selfless scientist who just can't tear himself away from his work. Just remember, Mr Whitecloud, the only reason you're still alive is because my people intervened on your behalf back at Ascension. That still doesn't mean you didn't deserve a bullet in the back of your head. So, while you're on this ship with me, you do exactly as I say or I will make life seriously fucking unpleasant for you. Am I clear?'

  Ty again looked around the laboratory. 'But what if I can't figure out how the Mos Hadroch works?' he stammered. 'What then?'

  Corso came up close, grabbing a fistful of Ty's shirt.

  'Think of it this way, Ty. This is a chance for you to exonerate yourself. The fact is, we're all fugitives here, and chances are none of us is ever going to see home again. But if we do get out of this…' Corso let go, putting one hand on Ty's chest and pushing him away. 'If we do, then you'll still be Nathan Driscoll.'

  'So you're saying you'll let me go when the time comes.'

  'I'll give you a chance to disappear. But God help you if Dakota or any of the others ever work out who you are before then.'

  Corso pushed himself towards the airlock and grabbed a handhold next to it. 'Let's face it,' he added, looking back over at Ty, 'it's not like you'd have anywhere to hide if they did.'

  Ty laughed, and Corso stared back at him, speechless.

  'Did you know I was conscripted, Mr Corso? The Uchidans put me into military R amp;D and ordered me to work on one tiny part of a project that employed dozens of researchers. I'm not denying I had at least some responsibility for what happened back on Redstone – it was easy to guess the strategists were planning something big in advance of the Consortium forces arriving, but my rank was much too low for me to be told anything more than what was strictly necessary. The people who actually planned and implemented the counter-attack were never required to face a Legislate tribunal, only the technical staff. We
were scapegoats, nothing more.'

  Corso pushed himself back over towards him. Ty flinched, but the Senator came to a halt a few metres away by placing one hand against a bulkhead.

  'I've read your file, Ty. You can't tell me you were only following orders. It's not an excuse, never has been. Hundreds died.'

  'If I could go back in time and make things different, I would. I used to fantasize about how things might have been if I'd made different choices. You said I had a chance to exonerate myself, and that's all I've wanted, all these years. I'm not a monster, Mr Corso. I just want you to understand that.'

  Ty drew in a breath, and waited. The other man's expression was unreadable.

  'Actions count more than words, Ty,' Corso said finally, twisting around until he faced the airlock once more. 'Find out how the Mos Hadroch works, and you'll help save a lot of lives. Maybe that'll give you the peace you're looking for.'

  I hope so too, thought Ty, and watched as Corso turned and left. Ty spent the next couple of hours taking his mind off this encounter by familiarizing himself with the upgraded lab equipment before moving the Mos Hadroch out of the isolation chamber and into the main lab. Its faint iridescent glow had long since faded, along with the aural hallucinations that only appeared to affect people with some form of cerebral implant. Now it sat amidst an array of technology that could carry out a much finer analysis than the isolation chamber could possibly manage.

  The artefact now sat in a cradle which had, in turn, been mounted in the heart of a gigantic multi-phase imaging unit intended for carrying out almost every conceivable type of material analysis the Mjollnir's scientific and technical staff could hope for. For the moment, some methods were out of the question: for instance, ultrasonic spectroscopy meant hitting the thing with a laser, and Ty was far from sure the Mos Hadroch would not interpret this as a form of attack and thus retaliate.

  The lab even contained its own dedicated manufactory for creating yet more gadgets, should they be required; so its dedicated stacks were filled with thousands of blueprints whose components could be manufactured within a matter of hours or days.