Stealing Light

by Gary Gibson

  The Senator bristled. ‘Outside of you and the woman pilot and Corso, there isn’t a single human being in this entire system who didn’t fight to the death at some time to prove they were good enough to be here. We aren’t afraid of dying, Mr Gardner. But if we do die, at least we die with honour. Maybe you should think about that.’

  ‘No.’ Gardner shook his head furiously, taking a step back from the Senator. ‘No!’ He shook his head again. ‘You’re insane. I want to communicate with my partners. Now.’

  ‘That’s not possible. We’re under attack, hadn’t you noticed?’

  ‘You have a duty—’

  ‘I only have a duty to the Freehold,’ Arbenz replied wearily. ‘You can return to your quarters. We’re going to catch and disable the derelict, but only once we’ve dealt with the fleet. It might possess transluminal capability, but until it decides either to jump or not jump, it’s no faster than either us or the Agartha.’

  Arbenz turned away from Gardner, implicitly dismissing him. But Gardner just stepped back around to confront him again.

  ‘Who the hell do you think you’re talking to, Senator? What exactly do you think you’re going to do without my help? You’re going to kill us all!’

  ‘Frankly, I don’t trust you, Mr Gardner.’

  Gardner’s face darkened. ‘To hell with you. Corso was right: you’re going to kill us all, just to satisfy your fucking honour.’ He spat the words out with maximum derision. ‘Our relationship is over.’

  Arbenz stared at him, his face twisted into a mask of fury, and then he burst out laughing.

  ‘Have you ever had those occasional moments of absolute clarity, Mr Gardner? I genuinely did wonder who was responsible for telling Bourdain about the existence of the derelict. Now that I think about it, I wonder how I could ever have harboured any doubts that you were the one responsible.’

  Gardner said nothing, but Arbenz could see the truth hidden in his cowardly eyes.

  ‘Kieran,’ signalled the Senator.

  Kieran came forward, quickly grabbing Gardner around the neck and pulling him back until he was bent over a console. Gardner flailed and twisted in his grasp.

  Arbenz then stepped forward and punched Gardner hard in the stomach. The man slumped, winded, then redoubled his struggles when he saw the long, heavy knife Kieran had withdrawn from its sheath. He handed it over to the Senator.

  ‘Don’t take this personally, David. You’re a braver man than I thought, going behind our backs like that. But if we can’t trust you, we can’t take any chances either. We took the life of a loyal Freeholder just to keep you alive, and now it’s time for you to pay him back.’

  Kieran yanked Gardner’s head back hard, exposing his throat. Arbenz wasn’t a sadist, so he made it quick. He took the knife and cut a deep slice across Gardner’s throat as Kieran kept a hand firmly planted over the man’s mouth. A spray of blood spattered on the deck. Gardner’s body twisted and jerked momentarily before it collapsed.

  Kieran gave his superior an accusing glare. ‘You should have let him defend himself, Senator.’

  ‘This isn’t the time and place for observing tradition,’ Arbenz snapped. ‘Have you readied the systems yet?’

  Kieran nodded. ‘We should evacuate straight away.’

  ‘Not yet.’ Arbenz shook his head. ‘Not until whoever’s in charge of that fleet is just about ready to board us—if that’s what they’re intending to do. Until the Agartha shows up and draws their attention, we’ll be an easy target if we abandon ship too soon.’

  —

  Dakota had already told Corso about the uninvited guest inside her skull. They’d watched, appalled, as a dome of dust and debris expanded across the face of the receding moon.

  ‘The derelict?’

  ‘It has to be, surely? I think Trader must have taken it over, now there’s nowhere else for him to hide. But the derelict itself- the machine intelligence in the heart of it—can still communicate with me. It’s the same with the other derelicts on Ikaria.’ She looked at Corso. ‘It’s like they want me to come to them.’

  ‘But your Ghost—?’

  ‘The physical circuitry still functions.’ She smiled. ‘With all the protocols and routines I built up gone, it means the other Magi ships will accept me as a pilot. No interface chair required whatsoever. Just me.’

  Corso shook his head. T don’t know what to say. I know I don’t have any choice but to believe what you’re telling me.’

  She stared off into space, far away for a moment.

  ‘I’m not crazy, Corso. Trader might have control of the Theona derelict, but maybe there’s a way to persuade one of the other ones on Ikaria to take us out of this system.’

  —

  The surface of Theona was hazed by cloud, pale tendrils slowly wrapping themselves around the surface of the little world, spreading outwards from the gaping hole the derelict had blasted through kilometres of encompassing ice. Dark and silent, the Hyperion drifted far above.

  The three ships comprising Bourdain’s fleet manoeuvred to come alongside the inactive vessel, while sporadic automated mayday alerts and warnings of cataclysmic life-support failure continued to broadcast from the Freehold craft. Warnings blasted out from Bourdain’s fleet that the Hyperion was about to be boarded.

  There was no reply. Before he and the Senator had departed the bridge, Kieran had deliberately left several communications channels wide open that permitted those in charge of the invading fleet to access the bridge’s video feeds and witness the carnage within.

  In the meantime, on the far side of the Hyperion from the nearest ship of the attacking fleet, there was a brief burst of energy as an emergency rescue pod, carrying two people, jetted away.

  A few moments later, once the central ship of Bourdain’s fleet was within a thousand metres, the Hyperion’s engines blazed into unexpected life and it began to move. Slowly at first, but then faster, heading for an intercept with the fleet’s command ship.

  At that same moment, the commander of Bourdain’s fleet picked up the Agartha on long-range telemetry, approaching from over the curve of Theona’s horizon.

  Missiles raced away from the Agartha, closing in on the other two vessels in Bourdain’s fleet.

  Twenty-eight

  ‘Something’s happening,’ remarked Dakota.

  Corso peered over at a display of figures scrolling in tight columns as the Hyperion unexpectedly powered into life. They’d watched closely the destruction occurring on the surface of Theona, now barely more than a distant pinprick of light as they accelerated away. Dymas itself was beginning to dwindle as the Piri used up most of its remaining fuel to blast them halfway across the Nova Arctis system.

  The images they were now watching were fed through a deep-space optical scanner system set up by the Freehold. It allowed them to watch the approach of the three unmarked vessels, as they carefully vectored in to match the Hyperion’s orbit and velocity.

  ‘Why aren’t they shooting?’ Corso wondered out loud.

  ‘Because there’s too much valuable information on board the Hyperion. At least, I reckon that’s what they’re assuming.’

  ‘I didn’t mean the other ships,’ said Corso. ‘I meant the Senator. He’s not the type to go down without a fight.’

  ‘Assuming he’s even still alive,’ Dakota replied dismissively.

  ‘You couldn’t kill him that easily. And look.’ He pointed at the screen, as the Piri’s detection systems kicked up and isolated the image of a tiny vehicle exiting the Hyperion.

  ‘Yeah, he’s up to something,’ Corso mused, leaning in closer.

  —

  The Hyperion had been programmed for a basic intercept course with the fleet’s command vessel. Under any other circumstances, the crew of the command vessel would simply have plotted a course that took them out of the ageing warship’s path. But that didn’t take the Agartha into account, preceded by three nuclear-tipped missiles.

  Bourdain’s command vessel was
now caught in a classic pincer movement. Its beam weapons swivelled in their ports and fired outwards, destroying each of the missiles in a flash of bright fire.

  Too late: the command vessel’s crew had hesitated a moment too long. The Hyperion had ramped its engines to maximum acceleration—a far higher rate of gees than could have been possible if anyone on board had still been alive.

  The command ship tried to boost itself out of the Hyperion’s path. And it almost made it.

  The Hyperion surged forward, slamming into the command vessel, whose hull crumpled like paper under the impact, releasing puffs of atmosphere. To an outside observer, it would have appeared as if the two ships were actually melting into each other.

  More missiles had been launched from the Agartha in the meantime, also targeted at the two subsidiary vessels. The command vessel’s fusion propulsion systems meantime exploded under the force of the Hyperion’s impact, releasing all their energy in one single, devastating blast.

  Lines of light spread along the length of the Hyperion’s vast bulk, rapidly moving from fore to aft as the craft’s magnetic containment chambers ruptured, spilling raw plasma into space.

  —

  Corso chewed at his knuckles as he watched intently on the Piri Reis’s main screen. The destruction of the Hyperion and the largest vessel in the enemy fleet had caused an explosion bright enough to overwhelm the Piri’s filters for a few moments. He was forced to partly rely on numerical feeds and communications traffic analyses to give him a true picture of what had just happened.

  The battle thereafter degenerated into a straightforward shooting match. The Agartha, was decelerating now, and one of the remaining two enemy ships was drifting lifeless, set into a slow spin by a missile strike. Judging by the way it had been ripped open, it was extremely unlikely that anyone on board had been left alive. The Hyperion and the command vessel had merged into a tangled, burning mass, twisting slowly as Theona’s gravity sucked them downwards.

  Corso next turned his attention to their passage across the Nova Arctis system. The Piri was already moving at enormous speeds, its tiny mass, relative to ships like the Agartha, allowing it to zip between worlds at an almost uncanny pace. The danger of interference from any other ships that might be orbiting Newfall was nonexistent: at the moment, that planet was far on the other side of the system from them, putting any other Freehold vessels far out of reach.

  The innermost world, Ikaria, was however a lot more reachable. It lay almost directly ahead, locked into a tight, Mercury-like orbit around its parent star, close enough that any atmosphere it might once have possessed had long since been burned away.

  Dakota’s ship was fortunately equipped with a small cache of micro-probes, tiny automated things that could be boosted to far higher speeds than a ship like the Piri Reis or its fragile human crew could withstand. They were already most of the way toward Ikaria, getting ready to dive downwards and relay back images and data pertaining to anything they found or saw.

  The battle above Theona was over almost as soon as it had begun, the Agartha firing further missiles that destroyed the remaining enemy ship. The Agartha. was already altering its course to come after the Theona derelict, which had by now left the moon’s orbit. It would inevitably pass within only a few million kilometres of the Piri Reis as it dived towards the heart of the Nova Arctis system.

  Long-range detection systems showed the crackle of plasma around the derelict’s skin. The Agartha, meanwhile, was already accelerating so hard it was a wonder its crew could survive on it at all. Regardless of this, the derelict still had the clear advantage.

  It didn’t take much guesswork to figure out that the derelict was powering up for a transluminal jump.

  Corso was willing to bet any amount of money the alien craft’s destination was the fiery heart of Nova Arctis itself. It seemed Dakota’s Shoal AI was about to destroy an entire system, all to wipe out the evidence that the Shoal had stolen their transluminal technology from a far older civilization.

  More information flashed up before him: tachyon relay signals from Newfall were being targeted at the derelict, presumably in a desperate attempt to slow, stop or divert it, using communications protocols he himself had helped develop. Whoever was behind the signals knew what they were doing. Almost certainly that meant other Freeholder scientists like himself. But whoever they were, they surely understood they were fighting for their lives.

  Corso stared at the board in front of his acceleration couch, sensing the power in his hands. Using his own copy of the same protocols, he could block those transmissions from Newfall.

  He felt a sensation like ice being clamped around his heart. He could do it: he could prevent his own people from finding a way inside the first derelict.

  Yet he found he didn’t want to do that.

  The extremists back on Redstone had been toppled. There could be no triumphant return for Arbenz, not even with the transluminal drive in hand. Only arrest and disgrace for his murderous ways.

  Perhaps, then, there was still the chance the Freehold could rise back up out of obscurity and become part of the Consortium in a way they never had been before.

  He carefully pulled his hands away from the board, glancing over at Dakota who lay asleep in her own couch, a remarkable feat considering the gees they were both still subject to as they blasted across a solar system.

  But it wasn’t really sleep, she had informed him when her eyes had briefly fluttered open a little while back: more a kind of trance state.

  Whatever was happening inside her head, or within the empty vaults of her Ghost circuits, was beyond his comprehension. To Corso that was the most frightening thing of all.

  Twenty-nine

  For Dakota, it felt strangely like stepping into someone else’s dreams.

  For several hours now, her Ghost had been slowly flickering its way back into life. There was no trace of the highly personalized routines she had built up over so many years—but something was trying to speak to her, its voice reaching out from distant Ikaria.

  Most of the sensations she was currently experiencing within her mind were entirely incomprehensible: synaesthetic flurries she strongly suspected were intended for sense organs entirely different to her own. But within that chaos appeared nuggets of information that were startlingly clear.

  She was learning to understand the Magi.

  The derelicts on Ikaria reached out to her, across the cold and lonely void. They had been waiting for someone like her for a long, long time.

  She felt rough, hot rock pressing against her skin. She lay at the bottom of a deep valley, a kilometres-deep crack running along an ancient fault line in Ikaria’s crust.

  There were three of her . . . no, of them. They were machines, the same as the Theona derelict—partly organic in nature: not alive in any way she could understand, but certainly aware nonetheless.

  She opened her eyes and looked around. Corso had finally fallen asleep in his couch despite his grumbled complaints earlier about the constant acceleration. Her brain felt like cotton wool, and she knew she’d been communing with the distant derelicts for far longer than she’d realized.

  She could see from the readouts that the Agartha, was accelerating fast in the same direction. Catching the Piri Reis wouldn’t gain them anything, so they could only be chasing after the derelict.

  She laughed to herself. Did they actually think they could outrun it?

  Directly ahead, Nova Arctis was steadily growing larger, though still barely more than a particularly bright pinprick in the unending night. Very soon, the Piri was due to flip on its axis mid-course, as a prelude to heavy deceleration.

  The Piri’s miniaturized probes, in the meantime, were sending back initial reports from orbit above Ikaria. She stared at blurred images of what looked like, yes, three more craft identical to the Theona derelict, but buried deep within a chasm on Ikaria’s crater-pocked surface.

  The probes circled lower and lower in their orbits, gaining
higher and higher definition images in the remaining time before Ikaria’s gravity finally sucked them to their doom.

  By now Corso had woken up.

  ‘They’re just the same as the first derelict we found, aren’t they?’ he commented.

  ‘Looks that way. Have you noticed the course the Theona derelict is taking?’

  Corso tapped at a console and stared up at a screen. The first derelict had now adjusted its trajectory to bypass Ikaria, clearly having set a course for the heart of the sun.

  Corso pulled himself up with a strap and swore, his muscles bunching with tension. ‘No, it’ll get there too soon. We don’t have enough time—’

  ‘Stop panicking,’ Dakota snapped. ‘It’s still too soon for it to make the jump. It could take hours, even days, right? Assuming it even can make a jump once it’s this deep inside a system.’

  —

  The most interesting aspect of not being real, Trader’s virtual doppelganger had long concluded, was the lack of concern felt for one’s own self-preservation.

  The recesses of the derelict’s information stacks were near infinite in their storage capacity, far surpassing just the satisfaction of mere curiosity. Within their depths Trader had discovered the accumulated knowledge of a culture that had undergone endless expansions and contractions within the Magellanic Clouds for very nearly two million years. Their empire had ruled countless worlds before collapsing into half-remembered dust, only to rise again with passing aeons, and spreading yet further outwards.

  The humans liked to call the cloud-dwellers ‘Magi’, and it was as good a name as any, given the miracles of which they were capable. But even so, some things had yet remained far, far beyond them. Their empire had been built with excruciating slowness, taking hundreds of millennia to spread incrementally across their galaxy at a sublight crawl. That empire had fought itself to the death a thousand times, as vast civilizations, locked into war with each other, failed to recognize their common ancestry until long after the combat was over.