Stealing Light

by Gary Gibson

  But he’d definitely heard the airlock mechanisms operating, whatever the security records showed. That wasn’t the kind of thing you could imagine.

  There was something too convenient about it all. Was it possible, he wondered, for the logs to be faked? Or was he himself simply descending into irretrievable paranoia and madness?

  Corso debated taking his doubts to Arbenz, but decided against that. Despite everything, Mala Oorthaus was not his real enemy here. She was not in any way responsible for the predicament facing his family, and he was increasingly ashamed to acknowledge how thoroughly complicit he had been in sealing her fate in a way not likely to be pleasant. In truth, he was no better than Senator Arbenz.

  True, she was strange, but Freehold society placed clear formal limits on any social contact between men and women, so for him there was something brazenly different about Mala that made her seem far more attractive than any of the Freehold women Corso was used to.

  Her obvious terror of what secrets Arbenz might be keeping from her had awoken within Corso an increasing awareness of their joint insignificance in the scheme of things. Once Arbenz and Gardner had achieved what they wanted, he himself would become an unwanted witness to a crime as yet uncommitted. Yet they meanwhile depended on him to open the treasure box.

  What to do then, Corso wondered? Was the Senator a man he could trust to keep his word and give him as well as his family their freedom? Or was holding on to that belief just a way to keep himself sane?

  And so he decided to remain silent, and bide his time.

  Sixteen

  Corso watched from his seat as Arbenz and Gardner stood in mumbled conversation by the meeting room’s doorway. In the past he had often entered this same room to find the two of them already in heated argument.

  Each time, as Corso took his seat ready to give his daily briefing on the derelict, their voices would suddenly drop to low whispers, broken by sudden pauses, while they would both cast sideways glances towards him. If Corso hadn’t been so busy wishing the pair of them dead, it would have been comical.

  But this time, they didn’t seem so concerned about Corso overhearing them.

  A fresh news squirt from Redstone, picked up only a few hours ago, brought the news that Aguirre, a Freehold city on the coast of the Mount Mor peninsula, had surrendered to Uchidan military forces after a long siege. The siege itself was almost certainly in reprisal for bombing raids against Uchidan damming operations on the Ka River.

  At almost the same time, disruptor probes had nearly destroyed the Freehold orbital frigate Rorqual Maru. With this grim news came the inevitable, though unfounded, rumours that the Consortium was engaged in talks about intervening on the Freehold’s side, but Corso remained sceptical that any such intervention would ever happen. After all, there were no valuable scientists like Banville for the Consortium to try and recover this time.

  Corso had belatedly come to accept that Arbenz might be right in believing the Freehold’s only real hope of continued survival lay somewhere inside the derelict. That the Senator should represent the best hope of achieving that salvation was, to his mind, the greatest tragedy of all.

  With the disastrous loss of Aguirre to the enemy, Arbenz had been torn over whether he himself should continue on to Nova Arctis, or instead make his way back to Redstone via the coreship. That would have meant leaving Kieran in charge of the recovery operation, a concept that understandably infuriated Gardner.

  ‘It’s an intolerable idea,’ Gardner now raged. ‘There is absolutely no excuse for you to simply walk away!’

  ‘David—’

  ‘I am not going to be left on my own to deal with Kieran or his appalling brother,’ Gardner spat. ‘Why, Senator, are they even here?’

  ‘They’re here because I trust them,’ Arbenz replied just as heatedly.

  Gardner laughed in disbelief. ‘Look me in the eye, Senator, and tell me how much you really want either Kieran or Udo making decisions over how we handle the derelict. As talking guard dogs they’re great, but do you seriously want to give them that much responsibility? Do you?’

  Arbenz opened his mouth to reply, then seemed to think better of it. The other man’s argument had clearly hit home to some extent. He shook his head angrily and took a seat at the table across from Corso, without another word.

  ‘He’s far too much of a wild card to be left in charge of something this vital,’ Gardner added as he took his own seat, though sounding more even-tempered now he’d made his point. ‘Retrieving the derelict, winning your war—they’re the same thing, Senator. One secures you the other, and you’ll do much more good for the Freehold here than back on Redstone.’

  Without being asked, Corso activated the holo display, bringing up an image of their destination. Planets and gas-giants hovered in the air above the table, woven together by bright lines of plotted trajectory.

  At that moment Kieran entered the room, as ever the last to arrive. He took a seat at the table.

  ‘Base Camp on the moon Theona reports no new systems activity on board the derelict since we delineated the parameters of its defence grids,’ Kieran informed them without delay. ‘We were worried it might be transmitting some kind of distress signal after we screwed up getting on board the first time, but it looks like it was just a glitch in our own monitoring systems.’

  ‘Good.’ Gardner folded his arms, looking pleased. ‘The last thing we want is it broadcasting anything the Shoal can pick up.’

  Arbenz nodded to Corso. ‘I believe we’ve been making good progress in reverse-engineering the derelict’s computer systems?’

  ‘Based on the available simulations, yes,’ Corso replied.

  Gardner leaned forward. ‘Is the machine-head interface aboard the derelict ready?’

  ‘Pretty much, though I’m still running tests. But we can’t be sure how well it’s going to work until we actually plug Mala into it. The problem is that a large part of the simulation I’ve been working with is, by necessity, constructed mainly from best guesses. Until we actually get there, it’s all we’ve got.’

  ‘You understand, don’t you,’ Gardner pointed out, ‘that there’s absolutely no room for error.’

  ‘Look, we already know the derelict is extremely sophisticated when it comes to defending itself,’ Corso replied. ‘Two of the investigative teams you’ve already sent in vanished without a trace before you finally got even a part of it under control. But when we activate the real interface, I know for a fact we’re going to open up areas of the derelict a lot deeper than anything you’ve managed yet. And, yes, I feel pretty confident that what I’ve put together will work. But the fact remains, until we switch the chair on, with Mala sitting in it, whatever happens next is anybody’s guess.’

  Corso chose his next words carefully. ‘Senator, I have a question, if I may speak freely?’

  Arbenz nodded.

  ‘Assuming we’re successful in extracting a working star drive from the derelict. . . what happens next? What are the long-term plans, beyond winning the war against the Uchidans? Do we keep the technology, or share it with the Consortium?’

  Arbenz grinned.

  ‘You have no right whatsoever to ask that question,’ Kieran interrupted flatly. ‘Your job is to—’

  Arbenz gestured Kieran to silence and turned back to Corso. ‘Imagine the glorious future for the Freehold when it can go anywhere in the galaxy it chooses, Corso. We could conquer whole worlds, recruit vast armies to support our expansion. I see no reason why the Shoal wouldn’t eventually succumb before us, given time. The entire galaxy would fall before us. Picture it: a human hegemony, spread across the face of the Milky Way. A glorious, wonderful future for us all, if we only have the courage to seize the prize before us.’

  Corso forced a smile and nodded with feigned approval, but his heart wasn’t in it. This was the same attitude that had confined the Freehold in a desolate corner of human space, the same attitude that was now losing them a war. He knew he didn’t ha
ve the courage to tell any of them what he really thought: that if the Consortium didn’t crush them once they knew what the Freehold had acquired—if they could extract the drive engines, if they could reproduce the technology, if, if- then the Shoal would certainly do the job instead.

  ‘That’s exactly what I was thinking,’ he lied.

  Kieran changed the subject. ‘We have to discuss the machine-head pilot. I’m concerned about the degree of control we’ve already given her over the Hyperion. I’m far from comfortable about giving her even a fraction as much control over the derelict.’

  ‘You’ll recall the failsafes, Kieran.’

  ‘Senator,’ Kieran continued, ‘were you anywhere near Port Gabriel during the atrocities that occurred there?’

  Arbenz raised an eyebrow, looking suddenly unhappy at Kieran’s new line of questioning. ‘No.’

  ‘Well, I was, and the machine-heads killed everyone they came into contact with. No—more than that: they tore them apart. They decorated the streets of the city with the corpses of women and children. They carved the Uchidan symbol of unity into the bodies of infants and then put them back in the arms of their dying parents.’

  ‘Whatever your point is,’ said the Senator, between gritted teeth, ‘hurry up and make it.’

  ‘I’m not convinced that Oorthaus won’t find some way to circumvent Corso’s failsafes. It’s easy to underestimate what any human being with Ghost implants can do.’

  ‘The machine-heads who took part in the massacre weren’t responsible for what they did, Kieran,’ Gardner pointed out. ‘It was a failure of the technology, not the people using it.’

  ‘Machine-heads are outlawed because they’re uniquely vulnerable to outside control,’ Kieran bristled. ‘We have no guarantees this woman isn’t really a Trojan horse under the control of our enemies!’

  ‘Kieran,’ Arbenz’s tone was rising, ‘right now, whether we like it or not, we need her, and our window of opportunity is narrow. Every one of our scientific advisers has agreed it will take a machine-head interface to control the derelict. We are therefore not going to discuss the pros and cons of this any further.’

  Corso’s own grandfather, Silas, had been working at the university in Port Gabriel when the massacre there took place. A Consortium ship had come thudding down in the Square of Heroes, a few blocks from the campus. They’d had to identify him later from DNA analysis of his remains, after they finished digging through the rubble. Silas wasn’t the only person Corso had known who had died during the horrific assault. Most people belonging to the Freehold knew someone, or was related to someone, who’d been injured or killed at that time.

  Images of the dropships falling on Port Gabriel, like avenging angels, had played on Freehold news networks for months afterward, entirely uncensored.

  An angry silence passed between the two men, before Kieran finally sucked it up. ‘I apologize, Senator. I didn’t mean to question your authority.’

  ‘Accepted. But your point is taken.’

  ‘Actually,’ said Gardner, speaking into the silence that followed, ‘while we’re on the subject, I’ve been looking further into what happened in that mog bar.’

  Arbenz groaned. ‘We’ve been over this, David.’

  ‘Well, I’ve been making my own enquiries, Senator. I’ve managed to identify the man who attacked Udo.’

  Arbenz looked disbelieving. ‘I’ve spent a lot of time trying to find out everything I can about him, but none of the General’s people could discover anything.’

  ‘I have my own sources,’ Gardner continued, ‘and it seems the assassin’s name was Hugh Moss, an employee of Alexander Bourdain.’

  Corso looked down at his hands where they were clenched together on the tabletop, and saw his knuckles were white with tension.

  A look flashed between Kieran and Arbenz. ‘How did you come by this?’ demanded the Senator, turning back to Gardner.

  Gardner smiled tightly. ‘I had my own suspicions, and I’ve friends in the Consortium Legislate who owe me favours. It turns out the General has a profitable long-term working relationship with Bourdain, based on the trade and gene-cultivation of mogs, so it’s hardly surprising he didn’t want to tell you anything that might compromise his relationship with one of his best customers.’

  ‘But why would Bourdain send someone to try and stop us?’ said Kieran, gripping the edge of the table with both hands. ‘Or are you telling us Bourdain already knows about the derelict?’

  Gardner shook his head. ‘You’re looking for the wrong answers. Let’s recap on some recent events: first, Bourdain’s new world detonated in an act of apparent terrorism. Then Mala Oorthaus showed up looking for work that would take her safely out of the Sol System.’

  Arbenz didn’t look convinced. ‘You were the one responsible for hiring her, David. Why didn’t you check all this out back then?’

  ‘I did,’ Gardner stated flatly. ‘But we were pressed for time, and machine-heads aren’t easy to come by any more, remember? All I knew about her came through Josef Marados, and it turns out he was murdered just before our departure from Mesa Verde.’

  As Corso listened to this in mute shock, Kieran suddenly leaned forward, tapping at the air. Corso’s solar system disappeared, to be replaced by screeds of media information: news feeds regularly updated via the tach-net transponders. Corso watched as Kieran ran a fast search through the Mesa Verde public archives.

  He looked up again with a shake of his head. ‘Senator, I’ve been constantly monitoring events back on Redstone and within the Sol System, and can find no reports of any such incident. Something like that couldn’t possibly have escaped my attention.’

  ‘News feeds can be falsified,’ Gardner pointed out. ‘Marados was in charge of a major financial operation working in and out of the black market, and when someone like that dies, particularly when it’s a nasty, violent death, word gets out one way or another. And remember what I said—I have my own sources of information, outside of official channels. This whole thing stinks of someone covering their tracks, especially if you assume Bourdain’s assassin in fact came looking to kill the Oorthaus woman.’

  Arbenz looked thunderstruck. ‘But why would Bourdain send someone to ... are you saying she might be responsible for what happened to Bourdain’s Rock?’

  ‘Why not say just that? But we don’t know for sure, of course.’ Gardner’s smile was as dry as his voice. ‘But, you said it yourself: we still need her. Whether she likes it or not.’

  —

  On the edge of the Nova Arctis system, the coreship dropped out of transluminal space for a bare few minutes, but long enough for the Hyperion to lift up from its docking facility on a shimmering platform constructed of shaped fields and artificial gravity, before finally exiting through one of the many openings in the coreship’s outer crust.

  The frigate went into immediate deceleration as it pulled away from the vast Shoal vessel, which dwindled rapidly as it accelerated back to jump speed.

  Dakota sat in a web of data at the heart of the bridge, watching the way space warped around the coreship as it slipped back into transluminal space in a flurry of exotic particles. At last, she knew their destination: Nova Arctis. This system had only been a number in a catalogue until the Freeholders decided to give it that name.

  In the meantime, there were questions for Dakota to ponder, that in turn raised more questions rather than answers.

  Such as, who had killed Severn?

  Severn had obviously survived his encounter with Moss—if he hadn’t, she would have known, immediately. Yet several days ago, his life-signal—dim as it was, given he was some kilometres away in the heart of Ascension—had ceased. She’d woken from a dream at the time, her own heart pounding, filled with an inexplicable sense of loss, until she had realized what her Ghost was telling her.

  It was hard to believe. They’d hardly set eyes on each other more than a few times in the years since Port Gabriel, but the knowledge of his death gripped
her innards and filled her thoughts with a deep sense of mourning, despite his betrayal of her.

  Chris, dead.

  At first she assumed he must have finally died of the injuries sustained during his fight with Moss. But then she’d had the Piri Reis worm its way into the maintenance programs for a local medical storage facility in Ascension, and then discovered the truth. Severn had been messily executed by unknown assailants, after being hauled out of his medbox.

  Whoever was responsible, they’d been thorough, and particularly brutal.

  It was possible Arbenz was behind this, or perhaps Moss hadn’t been the only agent Bourdain had sent aboard the coreship. But also Severn had led a dangerous life, and had any number of enemies in a city still deeply divided by the aftermath of the civil war. Any one of them could have been responsible.

  Nonetheless, it was beginning to feel as if a lengthening trail of death led straight towards her. First the massacre on the Rock, then Josef Marados, and now Severn. It was enough to make a person very scared -and very, very paranoid.

  With a start, Dakota remembered Corso’s garbled suggestion that someone might have entered the Hyperion without any of them knowing. At first she’d considered such an idea to be ridiculous. There were few areas of the frigate that Dakota, via her Ghost circuits and Pot’s systems, hadn’t accessed or subjugated to her will in some way.

  A few parts of the Hyperion remained effectively invisible to her, because Arbenz still retained sole control over certain higher-level systems. Was it possible someone else had found a way to get on board? Someone far sneakier and deadlier even than Moss: an intruder who could somehow avoid or alter the security logs, and then murder her in her sleep?