Empire of Light s-3

by Gary Gibson

  Corso nodded to her. 'Think you can stay awake a few minutes more?'

  'Sure,' Dakota muttered hoarsely. A numbness, like thick black cotton pressing against the inside of her skull, kept threatening to swallow her thoughts. She had enjoyed maybe a couple of hours' sleep at most out of the last seventy-two. Her implants could modulate her hormone and adrenalin levels to give her the occasional boost, but there was only so much abuse her body could endure.

  Lamoureaux climbed down from the interface chair and sat beside her. Corso now stood up and faced them all.

  'First,' he said, 'there's still no sign of Whitecloud. It's the same problem as before: this ship's just too big. We've set the fabs to manufacturing a couple of dozen stripped-down spider-mechs to take over the search, but they won't be much more than a camera mounted on a navigational platform. They'll search the ship systematically, and at speed, starting at the bow and finishing at the stern.'

  'Who's going to be running them?' asked Dan Perez.

  'No one,' Martinez replied. 'We can't afford the spare hands, not with only five of us to do all the work. The spiders will maintain their own network, cross-check everything they see, and flag anything even slightly out of the ordinary.'

  'But that's still going to take too much time,' Lamoureaux protested.

  'I agree,' Corso nodded. 'What we really need to be doing is using our heads to try and figure out another way to track Whitecloud and the artefact down. While he was rooting around in the lab computers, Dan found something you really need to see. Over to you, Ted?'

  Lamoureaux nodded, and a moment later an image of the Mos Hadroch appeared overhead, still suspended inside the imager array in the lab.

  Dakota leaned forward. There seemed to be something wrong with the artefact, as if the air around it had become distorted.

  'The video you're about to see was made before the Mos Hadroch was removed from the lab, obviously,' Corso explained. 'Dan came across several crushed fab-manufactured cameras, while the rest of us were out searching the ship. He's found a few more since, still intact and apparently deliberately hidden in secluded parts of the lab where you wouldn't find them unless you looked pretty hard. Dan also found some video files that Whitecloud had apparently deliberately distributed through the ship's stacks. Run the first one, Ted.' The image jerked into life.

  As Dakota watched, the Mos Hadroch appeared to explode in extreme slow motion, glittering shards diverging outwards from its central mass and twisting slightly as they did so. The central core – the artefact itself – was meanwhile changing shape, seeming to twist apart and then fold in on itself every few seconds, in a way that challenged her senses. It literally hurt her eyes to watch.

  There were hints of what might be shadows, as if the artefact were trapped at the centre of a tangle of struts and mechanisms, most of which were invisible, or very close to invisible. An eerie and overwhelmingly alien throbbing accompanied these contortions.

  She finally tore her gaze away and pressed her fingers to her eyes. When she looked back up, Lamoureaux had stopped the video.

  'We also found this,' said Lamoureaux. 'Lucas?'

  'Run it, Ted.'

  A new video began. This time Whitecloud stared into the lens of the lab's main console, a wild look about his eyes.

  'My name – my real name – is Ty Whitecloud,' he announced. 'I suspect I may be dead by the time you see this. The files accompanying this message include a command structure I believe can be used to control the artefact. I…'

  The image jerked momentarily as Lamoureaux jumped it forward.

  '… artefact is composed of some form of non-baryonic material imbued with a highly self-organizing principle, possibly hylozoic in nature, in essence a classical model of a Wheeler-Korsh engine. This is the only way I can begin to comprehend the nature of the communication between myself and the Mos Hadroch.'

  'Communication?' exclaimed Perez.

  Dakota sat up, her fatigue suddenly forgotten.

  'What you must understand is that the Mos Hadroch is more than just a simple weapon. It will not function for just anyone who happens to come into possession of it. If the communication I shared with it is anything to judge by, it is entirely capable of making its own decisions. It knows everything about us – about the Shoal, their war with the Emissaries, our purpose in being here.'

  'He's babbling,' said Perez. 'None of this makes any sense.'

  'Shut up,' said Corso.

  'Someone – something – has been exerting control over me against my will, and the only reason for doing so is because they want the artefact. But what you must understand…' Whitecloud paused to clear his throat, clearly at his wits' end '… what you must understand is that whether the artefact fulfils its purpose or not will depend on the artefact's own judgement of anyone who tries to activate it.'

  Whitecloud slumped at the console and brushed one shaking hand through his unkempt hair. 'You must understand that it will destroy us, if it finds sufficient reason.'

  For a moment he looked like he was thinking of adding something, but then appeared to change his mind, stepping back from the console.

  'He's crazy,' said Perez.

  'I agree,' said Martinez. 'He's clearly lost his mind.'

  'I'm not so sure,' said Dakota.

  Lamoureaux pointed upwards. 'There's more.'

  Dakota looked back to see that Whitecloud had splayed one of his hands across the surface of the console, while the other gripped a knife with its blade aimed at one of his fingers.

  Jesus and Buddha, she thought, horrified but unable to look away. Whitecloud kept shaking badly, muttering under his breath and clearly in great distress.

  He stood like that for several seconds, then his behaviour changed abruptly. His face grew expressionless, in a way that sent cold prickles of horror up Dakota's spine. He stared towards the lab entrance, which was out of sight of the console's recording lens, then himself stepped out of view, the knife still clutched in one hand.

  'Talk about timing,' Perez muttered. 'This must be when Ray turned up.'

  'Yeah, I think you're right,' agreed Corso. 'Whitecloud killed him before he could see what was happening to the artefact.'

  'No, Trader killed him,' said Dakota, turning to eye him pointedly. 'The fact that it was Whitecloud's hands actually holding the knife doesn't mean anything. You saw the way he was struggling with himself

  'I'll move it forward by a few minutes,' said Lamoureaux, and Whitecloud reappeared overhead once again. He was now covered in blood that was not his own, and he was panting hard, his chest rising and falling. Ray Willis would not have been an easy man to kill, even if caught by surprise.

  Dakota watched Whitecloud pull the Mos Hadroch out of its cradle and stuff it into a bag. There was something monstrous about his eyes, as if they had been drained of any humanity.

  'Does this mean he had the command structure for the Mos Hadroch the whole time?' asked Perez, in a subdued tone.

  'There's a bit earlier on where he describes finding it hidden deep inside the stacks. How it got there, he doesn't know.'

  Something clicked into place inside Dakota's head. 'I know,' she said, thinking furiously.

  Corso stared at her. 'How do you know?'

  'By putting two and two together. I don't have a shred of doubt anymore that he's under Trader's control. But here's the thing. We didn't let Trader come on board because we didn't want him getting anywhere near the Mos Hadroch, right? At least, not in person.'

  'So he used Whitecloud to get to it?' said Lamoureaux, his eyes widening.

  'And used him as well to run his own experiments on the artefact,' Dakota continued. 'He transferred copies of the command structure into the lab, where he could test it out and see if it worked. But, somehow, Whitecloud stumbled across the command structure and figured out what was going on.'

  'But why take the Mos Hadroch now? Why not before?'

  'I don't know,' Dakota admitted. 'But once Trader discovered Whiteclo
ud had distributed copies of the command structure throughout the ship, he'd have realized we wouldn't need him any more.'

  Martinez stood up, his expression grim. 'Which means right now Whitecloud is on his way to Trader's yacht – if he isn't there already.'

  He stepped over to a console and a moment later a wire-frame of the frigate appeared above them. 'We'll resume the search, but this time we'll focus exclusively on the aft airlocks, and on every access route leading to the main hold and Trader.'

  'But he could be there already,' said Perez. 'He probably went straight there after killing Ray.'

  'Not necessarily,' said Corso. 'As soon as we found Ray, I programmed the surveillance feeds to send me an alert the moment Whitecloud showed up on a camera.'

  'Except that the cameras don't cover the whole ship,' Martinez pointed out. 'Just the main passageways and bays.'

  'But including every access point leading directly to the hold,' said Corso, nodding in agreement. 'Except we haven't caught him on camera yet, which means he – meaning Trader – is staying away from the parts of the ship under surveillance.'

  'Then he must still be hiding somewhere on board the ship,' said Dakota.

  'Listen,' said Perez, 'there's something else you have to keep in mind before we go running off looking for him. Right now we're down to less than fifty per cent jump capacity. There are also hull defects that need serious attention. We'd be at a huge disadvantage if we tried to jump into the target system right now.'

  'Dan's right,' Dakota said to Martinez, 'and I understand you want to let the spider-mechs hunt for Whitecloud on their own and free the rest of us up for essential work, but we've still got a much better chance of catching him if you let me or Ted run the spiders. No amount of repair work is going to make a damn bit of difference if we don't have the Mos Hadroch when we reach that cache.'

  Martinez closed his eyes for a moment, then took a deep breath before opening them again. 'All right, fine. I guess we don't have any choice.' He fixed Dakota with a look. 'As long as you understand we're running out of time.'

  Dakota nodded gravely. 'I understand. But maybe once we've got enough spider-mechs out and looking for Whitecloud, we can flush him out sooner rather than later.'

  Chapter Thirty-four

  ‹Got him,› Lamoureaux sent to Dakota, just a couple of hours later. ‹We just picked him up making for an ancillary airlock on Deck D. That's the good news.›

  Dakota herself was standing in the entrance of a deserted engineering bay close by the main hold, watching as three spider-mechs boosted themselves through its echoing empty space on puffs of gas, their lights swinging from side to side, reflecting off bulkheads and machinery, making the shadows around them seem that much deeper by contrast.

  You're saying there's bad news too?

  ‹We're picking up traces of Emissary tach-net communications that are definitely in our neighbourhood. Small, scattered but numerous.›

  Shit. Scouts?

  ‹Can't confirm yet, but that's my guess. Don't know if they've spotted us yet, but we're going to make the next jump before they do. I'm forwarding the video-capture of Whitecloud to you now.›

  She saw Whitecloud making his way rapidly down a corridor, a heavy satchel slung over one shoulder. A sign pointing towards an airlock facility was visible behind him as he passed the hidden security lens.

  Where the hell's he going? she sent back. That's nowhere near the main hold.

  ‹Ask him when you see him. You're closer to that airlock than any of the rest of us. Do you think you can handle him?›

  She turned her back on the engineering bay and grabbed a rung, using it to boost herself through the air, kicking off walls until she began to pick up greater speed. I've come up against things a lot worse than Whitecloud. How long before our next jump?

  ‹Twenty-five minutes.›

  Got it.

  ‹Do what you can, Dakota. And good luck.› She made her way towards the bow, moving away from the hold until she reached the same passageway in which Whitecloud had been sighted. She barrelled her way towards the airlock complex at record speed, but it still took her a good ten minutes.

  When she got there, she noticed a suit was missing from the racks. Whitecloud was already in one of the airlocks, but still cycling through.

  She kicked off from a wall and landed square on the airlock door. She peered in through the glass panel and saw the back of Whitecloud's head. He was wearing a helmet, his bag slung over the shoulder of his suit.

  She slammed her hand against the glass repeatedly until Whitecloud finally turned to look at her. Something in his face made him look eerily different. How long, she wondered, could Trader maintain his hold on him?

  There was no way to override the cycle once it had started, so all she could do was wait until he had exited on to the hull, and the external hatch had swung closed again.

  As soon as the safety light blinked on, and the airlock disengaged its safety locks, Dakota yanked the door open and climbed inside, initiating another cycle. By the time the outer hatch slid open once more, her filmsuit had spread out fully beneath her clothes.

  She pulled herself out on to the hull but couldn't see Whitecloud. For one freezing moment she thought she had lost him, but then spotted him making his way rapidly through the forest of drive-spines, heading for the stern, his bag bouncing around as he moved.

  Ty? Trader? Can you hear me? I'm right behind you.

  Whitecloud stopped just long enough to glance back at her. He turned away again, and began to move more quickly.

  She pushed herself along parallel to the hull. It was a risky manoeuvre to move this fast without the benefit of a lanyard to keep her attached to the hull itself. One misjudgement could send her spinning away into the darkness of space.

  Trader, I know you're behind this.

  To her surprise, he answered her.

  ‹Greetings, Dakota. I hope you are well.›

  The words sounded wrong, issuing from Whitecloud's throat. She found herself unexpectedly recalling the ghost stories of her youth, those tales of spirits and possessions. Hearing Trader speak through a human being was more than a little disquieting.

  I know everything, Trader, You killed Olivarri and Willis and now you're using Whitecloud to bring the Mos Hadroch to you. But you can't get to the cache without firepower to back you up, so why are you doing this?

  ‹You betrayed me, Dakota. Is that reason enough?›

  What?

  ‹You lied when you told me Moss was dead. I have received reports that he is very much alive. What did he give you, I wonder, to persuade you not to put an end to him?›

  Whitecloud disappeared momentarily behind the wide blade of a heat-exchange nacelle. Dakota kept pulling herself along one of the main plasma conduits, slowly gaining on him. But another fifty metres and the conduits would terminate; after that, she would be passing over the exterior of the main hold.

  Fine, I admit it. I didn't kill him. Stop now, Trader, or I'll take over your yacht.

  ‹You don't have the means.›

  You asked me what Moss gave me. He gave me the command structure for your ship. Stop now, or I'll never let you get inside it.

  ‹Make any such attempt, and Whitecloud will throw the artefact away from the ship. Your chances of recovering it will then be very low indeed, given that a large number of Emissary scouts are now approaching.›

  She came to a halt at the nacelle, and worked her way carefully around it. Once she was on the other side, she saw Whitecloud making his way toward an airlock leading directly into a series of access tunnels that surrounded the main hold.

  She saw him falter for a moment, standing there unmoving with one hand resting on the external hatch's manual release. She wondered if Trader's control over him was finally slipping.

  She pushed towards him with renewed energy.

  Ted, Whitecloud's entering the hold through a service lock.

  ‹Roger that. It looks like some of those
Emissary scouts just jumped into our very near vicinity to check us out. You need to get back inside, Dakota. Now.›

  I hear you.

  She kept pushing herself towards Whitecloud. He seemed to have recovered now, quickly releasing the manual switch. She saw red light illuminating the front of his suit as the airlock hatch slowly slid to one side.

  Trader! This is crazy. The Emissaries will blow you out of the sky if you try to go to the cache on your own.

  ‹How is it, Dakota, that the approaching scouts knew to track us here to these coordinates, out of all the vastness of the Perseus Arm?›

  Before Dakota could answer, Whitecloud disappeared through the open hatch.

  The hull sailed past, only millimetres beneath her. Light had already begun to sparkle along the top of the nearest drive-spines, and she realized the Mjollnir was only seconds from jumping. If she didn't get back inside the ship soon, she risked being vaporized by the energy flow.

  Something sailed past the frigate, moving so fast it was gone by the time she discerned its passage. She reached out for a rung next to the hatch…

  The field-generators came to life, even as the first pulse-beams lanced towards the Mjollnir.

  The world went white for several seconds, but she still had hold of the rung. The light faded quickly, and she activated the lock system, watching the door slide into its recess.

  More dark shapes shot past, so quickly they barely registered. She pulled herself inside.

  Trader? I don't know how they could have found us. Why don't you tell me?

  The hatch slid back into place above her, lightning playing across the hull outside.

  ‹You, of all people, know the inconceivable chances against simply stumbling across this frigate in all the depths of interstellar space. The only reasonable conclusion, therefore, is that they have the means to track us.›

  The airlock finished its cycle, and Dakota passed on into a network of cramped service tunnels. She briefly dipped into the data-space until she had an idea which way to go.

  Following the passageway to a heavy door, she passed through it and into a large control module overlooking the interior of the hold, designed for use by traffic controllers overseeing the movement of ships and cargo. As she entered it, she saw that the module was several metres across, with a wide window at the far end which revealed the looming shape of Trader's yacht, now free from its cradle and floating just beyond the glass. It was close enough, in fact, that its drive-spines risked shattering it.