Marauder

by Gary Gibson

  ‘They’re trying to what?’ exclaimed Tarrant, when she gave her latest report.

  Having spent the better part of three hours interrogating the Wanderer, Megan now had difficulty forming words. ‘I think what it’s saying,’ she rasped, ‘is that the Makers are trying to redefine the laws of the universe. They’ve converted entire star systems at the core of the galaxy into gigantic computers, transmuting them on the subatomic level. For some related reason, they needed access to the black hole at the galaxy’s centre. The Core Transcendence tried to stop them encroaching on its territory, and the Makers just . . . wiped them out.’

  ‘But why?’ asked Tarrant. ‘What purpose could there possibly be in all this?’

  She coughed and massaged her eyes vigorously with the heels of her hands. ‘They think there’s something hidden beyond our universe, and therefore if they change the rules by which this universe operates, they can gain entry into that greater reality.’

  Tarrant appeared clearly unsettled. ‘You’re talking about them in the present tense. Are you saying they’re still around?’

  She nodded tiredly, wanting nothing more now than to go to sleep. ‘They’re still around, all right, and building something around the black hole itself. But what it is, I couldn’t even begin to guess.’

  She let her eyes slide shut for just a second, and she was rewarded with the flat of a hand striking her on one cheek. She gasped from the shock, and reopened her eyes to see Sifra leaning directly over her.

  ‘You need to stay with us,’ he snapped, before turning to face Tarrant. ‘This is all very interesting, but it sure as hell isn’t what we came here for. We need, instead, to focus on getting hold of practical information.’

  Megan laughed wearily. ‘What does it take to make you understand?’ she said. ‘It’s not going to provide anything unless it gets our nova drive in return.’

  Sifra gave her a scowl. ‘Then make it very clear that we’ll destroy it if it refuses to negotiate. Maybe it’ll start to see reason once it understands what’s at stake.’

  ‘And what if it attacks us?’

  ‘Then we jump out of range,’ said Sifra. ‘It’s not as if it can follow us, after all. The Kelvin may have been taken by surprise, but it’s not going to catch us out the same way.’

  That was it, then, she thought hopelessly. They were going to keep forcing her and Bash to link to the Wanderer until they both died or were left permanently brain-damaged.

  It was too late for Bash anyway. He had soon stopped speaking altogether, and when she sat by him and took his hand and tried to talk to him, he just stared blankly past her as if unaware either of her or of his surroundings.

  She had to act soon, before she herself wound up the same way.

  Fourteen hours later, Megan was woken up in her quarters by strobing alerts. She linked into the ship’s net, to find the Beauregard had suffered multiple impacts to its hull.

  Even in zero gravity, and knowing how much was at stake, it proved an effort to pull herself out of her bunk. She was exhausted from blackouts, fits and long hours of wrestling with the Wanderer.

 

  —Identified.

 

  —Source of Impacts: large object +>123km distance [ident: Wanderer].

  —Multiple impacts hull sections 13a/25b/178sigma6.

 

  —Core dump requires fifteen-minute countdown rescindable at any time by senior personnel/70% Hull Integrity.

 

  —Current hull integrity 87%, borderline optimal but dropping.

 

  —All senior personnel accounted for.

  If the hull’s integrity dropped to critical levels, in other words, she’d be able to trigger an emergency core dump and capture the nova drive before it had a chance to engage its automated jump circuits.

  She got dressed quickly, while keeping her link active. The modifications to the lifeboat were complete. If she was ever going to find some way of escaping, it had to be now. She didn’t otherwise think she could survive long enough for the next opportunity.

  Tarrant opened a link to her. Megan. It looks as if we’ve run into trouble. We need you in the astrogation chair.

 

  This is only a temporary setback. Get up to the command deck and see if you can get us out of range.

 

  Sifra should be with you at any moment.

  Sifra arrived shortly after, looking harried as the door to her quarters slid open. Instead of the gloves, he was carrying a more conventional weapon, which looked as if it had come out of one of the engineering deck’s fabrication units. She hoped he hadn’t been paying too much attention to anything else in that part of the ship.

  She stepped out into the corridor. ‘Get moving,’ he said, gesturing with the gun.

  She was ushered to the right, Sifra following close behind. More symbols indicating an alert appeared around them just as the ship shuddered with insane violence. A pressure field popped into existence a couple of metres away from them, indicating that a loss of pressure had taken place elsewhere within the Beauregard.

  Sifra looked around wildly, his attention distracted from her for a moment as he tried to figure out what was going on. That was all the time she needed.

  Without thinking about it consciously, she reached up, took hold of an overhead hand-grip and swung herself around so that her boots impacted directly with Sifra’s belly just as he turned back towards her. His gun went flying, caroming off the walls and spinning away down the length of the corridor in the zero gravity.

  The same impact sent her sailing in the opposite direction. Her heart was beating wildly, the adrenalin surging through her veins making her forget all about the myriad aches and pains assailing her body.

  She managed to bring herself to a halt just as Sifra crashed into a far wall. Megan thrust herself back along the passageway towards him, barrelling into him before he could step out of her way. He doubled up, and she anchored herself with another ceiling grip before she slammed the back of his skull against a steel flange protruding from the wall behind him.

  He screeched in pain and fury, then she rammed his head against the flange a second time.

  This time, Sifra went limp.

  She pressed her ear against his mouth and listened. He was still breathing – not that it mattered. She rifled through his pockets and laughed with delight when she found exactly what she was looking for: a systems override card, operable for the whole ship. Tarrant would have a similar card, but just one was all she needed.

  She tucked it into a pocket, then went in search of Sifra’s pistol, shortly finding it near where the pressure field had appeared. Just holding it in her hand made her feel considerably more confident.

  she sent.

  Where’s Anil? Is he there?

 

  She waited long, tense moments before Tarrant finally replied. Fine, I’m on my way down.

  She tried swallowing, but her throat was completely dry. Just from his tone of voice, she’d been able to tell he didn’t believe a word of her story.

  She swam through the air towards the nearest drop shaft, guiding herself along with occasional deft touches to strategically positioned handholds and ceiling grips. She then pushed herself up to the very top of the drop shaft, and waited there with her back pressing against its ceiling.

  Just a few metres below h
er feet was the entrance to another passageway, beyond that part of the ship containing the command deck. Keeping Sifra’s gun aimed firmly towards it, she waited.

  It didn’t take long before Tarrant came barrelling into the drop shaft, twisting around sharply so that he hit the opposite side of the shaft with one shoulder. He glanced wildly around until he spotted her, then tried to bring his own pistol to bear on her.

  Megan shot first, having the advantage, and hit Tarrant in the shoulder. The recoil slammed her against the ceiling with painful force. The impact, meanwhile, sent Tarrant spinning down the shaft and away from her, cannoning off the walls as he went. A trail of blood arced through the air behind him.

  She pulled herself back through the passageway that Tarrant had just emerged from, making her way towards the command deck as fast as she could. Once there, she pushed Sifra’s override card into a slot on the primary command console. Its display shimmered and changed as she locked into the ship’s AI.

 

  —Top-level command cannot be granted without permission of senior crew members or a report of null status of same.

 

  The ship shook around her, even more violently than before.

  —Warning. Hull integrity has dropped to mission-critical levels. I am issuing automated remote alert signals.

 

  —Primary navigational control is granted.

  She had full control of the Beauregard; it was now hers to do with as she pleased.

  Don’t screw this up, she told herself. Not when you’ve got this close.

  She tapped back into the ship’s net in time to receive a message from Tarrant. I’m coming for you, Megan. Do you hear me? I’m going to take a long time to kill you.

 

  She climbed into the astrogation chair, the petals quickly folding around her. The external monitors revealed that something had melted a deep gash into several hull plates, triggering catastrophic depressurization across three of the decks. Things were a lot worse than she’d realized.

  Something dark flew past the Beauregard, gone almost as soon as it had appeared. Bright light flared towards the aft, revealing multi-legged things, like something out of her worst nightmares, which began cutting through the hull plates directly over the engineering section.

  Where the nova drive was.

  God damn you, Tarrant snarled. I’ll kill you, do you understand me? I’ll flay you alive while Bash watches.

  She brought up a visual, and saw that Tarrant had found and pulled on an emergency pressure suit, his face white and bloodless behind the visor as he made his way back along a passageway towards her. She brought a hull-section door slamming down, blocking his way.

  she sent back.

  It was a truth she had not permitted herself until now. For a moment, grief threatened to overwhelm her. She was abandoning him, after all; leaving him here to die. That he had been reduced to little more than an ambulatory corpse made no difference to the fact that it was the hardest thing she would ever do.

  I knew you were lying, you stupid little bitch. I knew you’d done something to Anil. Take a look outside the ship.

  She checked the externals and saw that he had launched the anti-matter missiles. But how could he have . . . ?

  You might have taken Anil’s override card, but that still doesn’t give you sole control over everything aboard this ship, including the missile-launch systems. And once I’ve dealt with the Wanderer, Megan, I’ll deal with you.

  Megan watched as the missiles receded with astonishing speed, heading towards the Wanderer, which was clearly boosting its way towards the Beauregard. No more than a few seconds later, light bloomed out from the Wanderer, throwing the moon’s every crater and valley into brilliant, stark contrast. Filters kicked in, showing the Wanderer glowing a deep orange that shaded into yellow. Parts of it began to break off, drifting away from the main body. She watched, stunned. Surely it couldn’t be killed so easily?

  She switched her view back to the Beauregard, where the strange alien machines she had seen earlier were still trying to dig their way through the hull.

  It’ll be your turn soon, she heard Tarrant bellow.

  She set the modified lifeboat to prepare for immediate launch, then stepped down from the chair, its petals folding back into its base.

 

  —Acknowledged. Core dump in three hundred and sixty seconds.

  She made her way back out of the command deck and down a different drop shaft. Following a route that would allow her to work past Tarrant, it took her long, precious minutes to get to the engineering section and the modified lifeboat hidden inside it.

  She found it prepped and ready for launch. Part of its hull had been replaced by a hollow cage almost as large as the lifeboat itself. Her heart nearly broke when she saw the pair of life-support units integrated into its hull.

  She pulled herself inside one of these units, the opaque lid closing over her almost immediately. For one brief instant, she was in absolute darkness. Some part of her thought: This is what it feels like to be buried alive.

  She pushed the thought away as soft lights came on within the unit. She pressed her hands against the inside of the lid and noticed they were shaking. She felt on the verge of hysteria. The sooner she got under way, the sooner she could sink into blissful unconsciousness.

  She linked through to the command deck and triggered a launch sequence. She watched through the onboard surveillance systems as two massive hull plates swung open immediately below the lifeboat, revealing blackness beyond.

  The cradle opened, releasing the lifeboat, which moved rapidly away from the ship. After a moment the lifeboat’s thrusters pushed it further away from the Beauregard, at an accelerating speed.

  She switched to the lifeboat’s own sensor arrays in time to see light blossom all along the Beauregard’s belly as emergency explosive charges blew through several hull plates. The nova drive came tumbling out seconds later, accompanied by a storm of shattered electronics and escaping air.

  She ordered the lifeboat to give chase.

  Megan? Do you hear me?

  It was Tarrant again.

  You think I’m finished, but I’m not. I’ve come through worse and survived. I’ll kill you a thousand different ways, over and over and—

  She cut the connection before he could finish.

  It took a good fifteen minutes to rendezvous with the rogue nova drive, which had stabilized sufficiently to cease spinning and match course with Megan’s lifeboat. The cage to the rear of the lifesupport units opened wide, like the leaves of a flower spun from silver mesh, closing around the drive as it was manoeuvred into position.

  Megan worked feverishly, running a systems update that allowed the drive to integrate with the lifeboat’s low-level AI. Once that was completed, crude drive-spines dotted around the lifeboat’s hull flickered with eerie lightning, sucking energy out of the interstellar void.

  The stars shimmered and changed. Megan laughed, pounding the interior of her life-support unit with her fists. But the laughter turned to sobs, with tears cascading down her cheeks.

  She forced herself to take deep, even breaths, then activated the cryonic circuits. She was now going to sleep for a long, long time, but get home she would. And when she awoke under some different star, with the familiar chatter of human worlds filling the comms circuits, she would remember Bash and ask his spirit to forgive her – before she set about picking up whatever pieces remained of her former life.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Gabrielle

  2763 (the present)

  A few hours after Gabrielle, the Speaker
-Elect of the Sacerdotal Demarchy of Uchida, had been taken on board a dropship by the man she had known as Karl Petrova, but who was in truth some stranger named Tarrant, she felt the ship begin to rumble around her.

  She had run from Tarrant after telling him she was pregnant with his child, and hidden herself within a storage locker in another part of the dropship. She had curled up in a ball in the zero gravity, her eyes still full of the images Tarrant had shown her – of vast waves spreading inland through the Demarchy, crushing everything and wiping whole cities and towns out of existence.

  He was, in some way she did not yet understand, responsible for this devastation. That made her, in a sense, an accessory to the worst of all imaginable crimes.

  This thought was more than she could bear, and she determined to find an airlock and throw herself out into the vacuum without a suit – or hunt for something sharp enough to cut through the tender flesh of her wrists. But, even as she entertained these thoughts, another part of her felt a deep determination to go on living so as to resist whatever Tarrant had planned for her, with all her might.

  Tarrant came and searched her out, after a while.

  ‘You have a choice,’ he declared, staring down at her. ‘Either you ride back down in the cockpit with us, or you’ll go back inside the medbox if you don’t behave yourself.’

  If you don’t behave yourself. As if she were still a child.

  She blinked away angry tears, her hand reaching instinctively to protect her belly. ‘But if I spend too much time inside a medbox, mightn’t it hurt my—?’

  ‘I already told you I don’t care about that,’ he snapped, gripping the frame of the doorway one-handed.

  Gabrielle wondered what kind of man he had been before becoming the one she had known as Karl Petrova. Had he a family, perhaps, or children? She found that difficult to imagine.

  ‘I’ll behave,’ she said quietly, unable to keep a slight edge out of her voice. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Back down to Redstone, before very long.’ He seemed stiff, reserved, as if holding something back. ‘Somewhere a long way from Dios, in fact, around the other side of the world.’