Stealing Light

by Gary Gibson

  Perhaps time would tell. . . but then again it wasn’t likely either of them had more than a few hours to live.

  Twenty-four

  ‘I’ll have to admit, I’m impressed. Really.’

  Arbenz stepped back from kneeling over Dakota, who lay curled in a ball, gripping her stomach where Kieran’s boot had slammed into it. The Senator signalled to his henchman, who stepped forward again, the bruises on Kieran’s face livid and smooth from his time in the med bay. He kicked out at her a second time.

  She tried desperately to shield herself with her arms, but it wasn’t enough.

  Corso and Dakota hadn’t really any choice but to be hauled back inside the cargo bay by the three figures in armoured suits. There was, after all, nowhere else to escape to. Their brief fantasy of somehow stealing the derelict had been waylaid when the alien intelligence within the Hyperion’s stacks had killed the vessel’s crew, drawing the others back to investigate the orbiting ship—while Corso meanwhile had struggled to warn her of the traitor inside her own skull.

  Now there was only pain, and the inevitability of death.

  They had been brought into a storage room near the cargo bay. Kieran obviously had some experience of undertaking torture in zero gee: he first anchored himself by gripping a bulkhead so that he didn’t float away each time he kicked her.

  Kieran next turned his attention to Corso, who had crawled into a corner after his own severe beating. The three troopers from the Agartha, grim-jawed Freeholders with unreadable expressions, stood watching from near the door.

  ‘I’m impressed,’ the Senator confessed, ‘that so much escaped my attention for so long. Do you know how much of an embarrassment that is to me?’

  He started pacing the room. ‘But really, you’re the biggest disappointment of all, Mr Corso. You’re a traitor who’s betrayed his own people, the worst kind of scum there is.’

  He bent down until his face was level with Corso’s, though Corso looked like he was having trouble focusing. ‘So tell me. Why did you do it?’

  ‘You’re out of fucking time, Senator,’ Corso wheezed back at him. ‘You can’t ever go back to Redstone, that’s what I think.’

  Arbenz stood, his face flushed with anger, and aimed a sharp, swift kick at Corso’s head.

  ‘How long,’ the Senator screamed, ‘did you think it would be before we’d have found that ship hidden in the cargo bay?’ He stared around at Dakota. ‘Did you plan this from the beginning?’

  She noticed that Gardner had entered the room. He still remained near the entrance, by the troopers, one arm crossed over his chest, the other hand reaching up to his mouth in an unconscious gesture of horror.

  ‘Senator ...’ Gardner cleared his throat. ‘Senator. I should remind you we still need them.’

  ‘Need them?’ Arbenz rounded on Gardner. ‘Don’t you understand what these two have done? They have been engaged in a conspiracy against my people. We’ll find another way to deal with the derelict.’

  ‘There’s no time left, Senator. We need both of them more than ever.’

  Arbenz cocked his head and stared. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Don’t you know?’ Gardner looked incredulous. ‘That’s why I’m here. The derelict’s propulsion systems have started powering up.’

  ‘Powering up?’ Corso croaked, failing to pull himself upright.

  Kieran made a move forward, murder in his eye, but Gardner stepped across and grabbed the man’s shoulder.

  For a moment, Dakota was sure Kieran was about to kill Gardner, then she saw the look passing between the Senator and Kieran. Kieran’s mouth twisted in anger, but he held back.

  Gardner turned to the Senator. ‘While you’ve been chasing each other around up here, some of the rest of us have been paying attention to the priority alerts. The derelict’s primary systems are powering up, but with no intervention from us. The base on Theona is picking up exactly the same graviton fluctuations you’d get from a coreship prior to jumping into transluminal space. What it might do next is anybody’s guess.’

  Arbenz adopted a weary expression. ‘This isn’t the time, Mr Gardner.’

  Gardner looked bug-eyed. ‘Didn’t you hear what I just said? Senator, the derelict is coming alive. Corso, here, is the only one who has any real idea what’s going on inside that thing.’

  ‘And if you don’t stop interfering, you’ll be the next one put under arrest.’

  Gardner opened and closed his mouth a few times as he gradually realized Arbenz was entirely serious.

  ‘Please don’t say I’m insane, Mr Gardner,’ Arbenz said grimly. ‘I’m fighting for the future of my own people, and I’m not interested in a debate.’

  Arbenz returned his attention to Corso, for the moment having decided to ignore Dakota. She wondered if that was a good thing, or if it only meant he’d now made up his mind to kill her.

  ‘Mr Corso,’ the Senator was saying, ‘you miserable piece of shit, you’re a stain upon the Freehold. You’re exactly what I mean when I refer to the weakness among us. The weakness we wanted to escape when we founded Redstone.’

  He finally turned his attention to Dakota, staring down at her while she cowered, waiting for the next blow. ‘I was an idiot to expect any less of you. You murdered Udo and, except for me standing between you and Kieran, I think I might actually feel pity for what he’d do to you for that.’

  The Senator’s voice began to grow louder. ‘I should have realized Bourdain would send spies,’ he continued, ‘and I know that’s his fleet approaching us right now. If any man possessed the resources to find out about the derelict, then it would be him.’

  Gardner wore an expression like he was the only sane man left in a madhouse. He reached out to Arbenz, more words forming on his lips. Kieran suddenly seized hold of Gardner, twisting his arm behind his back and slamming him against the wall. Gardner yelled with pain.

  A small smile crossed the Senator’s face.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ Gardner panted. ‘You’re sabotaging your own damn mission!’

  ‘That, Mr Gardner, is exactly where you’re wrong,’ said the Senator, now looking delighted. He turned and looked down at Corso. ‘Tell him.’

  Corso stared up at Arbenz, his hands still raised in the not unreasonable expectation of another blow. ‘I. . . I don’t understand,’ he replied haltingly.

  ‘Kieran, I want you to help Mr Corso remember what it is he’s been keeping quiet from all of us.’

  Kieran released Gardner and grabbed Corso by the hair, forcing him into a kneeling position. Kieran produced his knife and pulled Corso’s head back, as if to cut his throat. Instead he made a single shallow cut across the side of Corso’s neck, just above his shoulder. It was enough to make Corso scream shrilly. Dakota looked away, trembling violently.

  ‘So tell him then, Mr Corso,’ Arbenz repeated. ‘When you tapped into the derelict’s data stacks, you didn’t cover your tracks as well as you might have hoped. In fact, if not for you, we might not have stumbled across this particular item of knowledge ourselves.’

  Corso, panting, shook his head, blood fanning out across his shoulder from where he’d been wounded. Arbenz nodded to Kieran and, a moment later another, more anguished scream filled the air as Corso was sliced again, this time in the tender flesh just below his ear and next to the jaw.

  Dakota cried out in involuntary sympathy. This time, Corso’s scream was more like that of a wounded animal than anything human. He mumbled something incomprehensible.

  Kieran yanked his head back again.

  ‘Speak up,’ Kieran snarled, bringing the knife down towards Corso’s face this time.

  ‘No! Wait. OK.’ Corso coughed and spat, his breathing ragged. ‘OK, fine.’ He looked at Dakota. ‘Sorry,’ he murmured to her, and looked away.

  Dakota had no idea what exactly he was being sorry for.

  ‘Why don’t you just tell him yourself?’ Corso asked the Senator, then nodding towards Gardner.

&nbs
p; ‘Because I’d rather you did. So get on with it.’

  Dakota watched, mute and apprehensive.

  ‘I found some information hidden in the derelict’s stacks,’ Corso told Gardner. ‘But I’d have been insane not to try and hide what I learned,’ he pleaded, looking directly at Arbenz. ‘It’s too dangerous, too—’

  ‘Kieran,’ urged Arbenz.

  ‘All right! All right,’ Corso begged, slithering away from the knife still held so close to his face. ‘I know what happened to the civilization that created the derelict. Or I’ve a pretty good idea, anyway.’

  ‘What we have there is even better,’ Arbenz informed Gardner with gloating triumph, ‘than a faster-than-light drive.’

  For a moment, Corso stared at the Senator with unmasked disgust. ‘How good is your history, Mr Gardner?’ he asked, appearing to regain a little of his composure.

  Gardner shrugged, looking bewildered. ‘Try me.’

  ‘Several centuries ago, we split the atom and thought we’d found the ultimate source of cheap energy. It didn’t take long before we turned it into a weapon and bombed entire cities into ashes in seconds. It was a pact with the devil: a way of generating cheap power, but one that could also destroy us all in seconds. It looks like the Magi had something not so different.’

  Gardner looked quickly between Arbenz and Corso, then shook his head. ‘I don’t understand.’

  Corso continued, sounding as if every word had to be wrenched from his soul. ‘I’d rather die than tell you this if the Senator didn’t already know. The transluminal drive doubles as a weapon that makes the atomic bomb look like a firework. That’s the real secret of the Shoal. And I’ll guarantee you it’s also the reason they’ve tried so hard to prevent any competitor species acquiring the means for faster-than-light travel.’

  Arbenz’s excitement clearly became too much for him. ‘Mr Gardner, what we have found changes everything. The Freehold was meant to find that derelict. It’s as if the divine will of God—’

  ‘It’s got nothing to do with God,’ Corso yelled, his voice cracking and tears streaming down his face. ‘The process is clear, in the records. If a starship equipped with the transluminal drive is allowed to materialize within the heart of a star, even a very stable star, certain processes can be triggered by the ship’s subsequent destruction. The result is a nova.’

  Arbenz positively glowed with triumph. ‘A nova, Mr Gardner, a way to detonate entire stars. What we have here isn’t just a device for travelling between stars ... it can destroy them, and the worlds in orbit around them, too. Its discovery’—a beatific grin began to spread over his face—‘is very possibly the greatest moment in the entire history of the Freehold.’

  Gardner finally had the good sense to look truly frightened. ‘All right, Senator. Assuming this is true, and I find it more than a little hard to believe, who exactly are you planning to blow up?’

  ‘No one,’ Arbenz replied. ‘That’s the beauty of it. If we can harness the power in that derelict, nobody could stand against us. They’d be insane to even try.’

  ‘And what if somebody else found out how to do just the same?’ Dakota shouted. ‘What about when the Shoal realize what you’ve been up to, and then threaten to destroy Redstone’s star? Or anywhere else in the Consortium, for that matter?’

  Arbenz looked surprised that Dakota had spoken up. ‘The Shoal would do nothing, except to keep on preserving a secret they’ve clearly been sitting on for a long, long time. They must know what the transluminal drive is capable of, so at the worst it’ll be a state of detente -neither our side or theirs will be mad enough to instigate a war of mutually assured destruction.’

  Dakota listened, horrified, staring at Arbenz who looked like he’d just been asked to take charge of the Second Coming.

  ‘But you’re wrong,’ Corso pointed out. He’d managed to haul himself to a halfway-upright position against the wall. Kieran glowered at him threateningly, but stayed where he was. ‘It can happen, because it’s happened before—in the Magellanic Clouds.’

  Every pair of eyes in the room, except Dakota’s, turned to focus on Corso. Dakota kept her gaze on the rest of them while Corso explained.

  ‘We all know about the novae in the Magellanic Galaxies,’ Corso continued, to dumbfounded silence. ‘One after the other, all within roughly the same sector of a neighbour galaxy, more than a dozen stars detonated with no explanation. More than that, they were stars that shouldn’t have exploded. Most of them were the type of main sequence star any life we’ve ever encountered needs in order to survive. There was always the possibility the novae explosions were the product of something intelligent, but that was never more than wild speculation. Well, now we have the proof, in the navigational and historical records on board the derelict. On that basis, I don’t see any reason to doubt that the Magi weren’t refugees from a war of absolute destruction.’

  ‘And you know this for sure?’ Gardner demanded.

  ‘I can only tell you what the records themselves say. But it explains a lot.’

  ‘You’re lying,’ Arbenz hissed.

  ‘Listen to yourself!’ Corso shouted. ‘The Magi fled from a war that destroyed a fair chunk of an entire galaxy and you think you can control the weapon used to do it?’ He laughed weakly. ‘Finding that derelict is the worst thing that happened to the human race. If the Shoal don’t decide to destroy us, we’ll do it to ourselves, I guarantee you.’

  Dakota couldn’t help resenting Corso for keeping so much back from her—even though she knew she’d have done the exact same damn thing. Arbenz was blinkered to the point of insanity, but Gardner was a different matter: he could see how deep they were all dug in now. No wonder the Shoal were terrified at the prospect of their client races discovering the secret of faster-than-light travel: the result might be war on an unbelievable scale. Star after star, after star . . . exploding in the endless night, spreading deadly, life-destroying radiation throughout the Milky Way, a brief mystery to be pondered in the night skies of a million unknown worlds.

  There could be heard a surge of static-laden speech, and Dakota glanced over towards one of the Freeholder troops, who stood with one finger to his ear.

  ‘Senator?’ interrupted the soldier. ‘We’re getting a report from the base on Theona. The ground team say the derelict is starting to move.’

  Dakota realized in that moment that Trader was not yet gone. Although possibly the derelict was acting under its own volition, it was much more likely Trader had wormed his way inside the Magi vessel’s computer systems. The alien craft, she didn’t doubt, was entirely capable of supporting the full weight of an alien artificial intelligence.

  Dakota experienced a sharp spike of pain in one temple, and glimpsed a flash of light out of the corner of her eye. It was a visual glitch she might have paid little attention to, if she didn’t remember experiencing exactly the same reaction every time Trader had taken control of her during the past weeks.

  Piri’s work on her implants had brought back the clear memory of those minuscule visual glitches, and the horror that had followed each and every time. On such occasions, her conscious mind had entered a kind of unquestioning limbo, reducing her to little more than a somnambulistic flesh puppet.

  But this time was different: this time she was more aware of it happening to her than ever before.

  Something of Trader still survived inside her implants—and it was trying to gain control of her again.

  Arbenz and Gardner were bickering together while a disgusted-looking Kieran Mansell stood over to one side, conferring quietly with the three troopers.

  Josef Marados had once said she would be crazy not to acquire some kind of countermeasure against the possibility of someone trying to control her through her implants. He had been right: both right to say so, and right in thinking she’d find a way of dealing with such an eventuality.

  The cost, however, was high, and she’d never seriously imagined she might be forced to take such drastic act
ion.

  Nevertheless, this was the time.

  ‘April is the cruellest month,’ she whispered, the words emerging from her throat as a bare whisper. She saw one of the troopers glance towards her suspiciously.

  In response, a visual cue flagged up in the corner of her vision, a warning flag she’d put in place long, long ago.

  Next, she murmured: ‘I will show you fear in a handful of dust.’

  The trooper who had looked over stepped towards her, and she ducked her head down so he couldn’t see her lips move.

  Another warning flag appeared in the corner of her eye, followed by a request for confirmation.

  Granting chat request was the simple matter of a half-whispered affirmative.

  The trooper lowered the snub nose of his weapon towards her. By now, Kieran glanced around as well.

  She said: ‘Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.’

  Another flag came up, flashing red in the foreground of her vision. A final warning.

  All she needed to do was utter the last sentence.

  The Piri Reis spoke to her.

 

  Thank you, Piri, she replied. Nonetheless, I confirm.

  The trooper stepped forward to where she still crouched, barking something she did not understand, before bringing one booted foot up and using it to nudge her shoulder. Kieran stood staring at her with hard eyes for a moment, then his hand flicked back towards the knife sheath hidden inside his jacket.

  She stared up at the trooper.

  ‘Shantih shantih shantih,’ she snarled up at him, completing the sequence.