Empire of Light (25 page)

So that’s it.
‘But why didn’t you tell me any of this before – when you first contacted me? And what about this ring?’ he asked, bringing his hand up and displaying it to Olivarri. ‘What the hell is it for?’

‘What?’ Olivarri glared at him. ‘Ty, what the hell are you talking about?’

‘What am
I
talking about?’ Ty laughed. ‘
You’re
the ones who contacted me.’

‘Ty, no one else in the security services has been in contact with you, apart from myself, believe me.’

‘But . . .’
The explosion, the taxi, the meeting with the avatar.

‘Wait,’ continued Ty. ‘This doesn’t make sense. There was that Consortium agent back in Unity. Who was he?’

Someone who merely
claimed
they worked for the Consortium, Ty reflected. He stared at the ring on his finger as if seeing it for the first time. He had a sudden, overwhelming sense that there was something he needed to remember.

‘Ty, I swear,
nobody
from my side has approached you before now. I can guarantee that.’

Then who the hell . . . ?

Ty suddenly felt a deep terror grip hold of him. He pushed roughly past Olivarri, the sudden motion sending the other man sprawling.

Ty collided with the door, and clumsily pulled himself through, and kept going, caroming from side to side as he made his way down a passageway leading towards the nearest transport station. Only once he had reached it, and climbed inside a car, did he finally come to a halt, lungs aching breathlessly.

He glanced frequently out through the car’s open door towards the hub entrance, but there was no sign yet that Olivarri had followed him.

Ty was seized by a crippling pain in his head and he doubled over, gripping his skull and crying out at the unexpectedness of it. As he squeezed his eyes tight shut, he saw a tiny but intense flash of light in his peripheral vision, and . . .

The next thing he knew, he was still inside the transport car, but his hands were grimy and his body stank of sweat like he had never once taken a shower.

There was something he had to remember . . . something important.

But, however hard he tried, it wouldn’t come back to him.

Chapter Twenty-four

The
Mjollnir
jumped again only seven hours later, before dropping back into space several hundred light-years closer to the edge of the Orion Arm. Ahead lay the region of the Long War, the main battleground of the Shoal’s fifteen-thousand-year conflict with the Emissaries, and beyond that the Perseus Arm.

Once the all-clear had sounded, Lamoureaux climbed back out of the interface chair and nodded to Corso.

‘We’re pushing it with these jumps, Lucas. Too many and too often. This ship wasn’t designed for that kind of stress.’

Corso glanced towards him. ‘Objection noted,’ he replied, and returned his attention to the console before him.

Lamoureaux thought of saying something more, then changed his mind and left the bridge: there was no point telling Corso what he almost certainly already knew. More than twenty drive-spines had failed this time. New ones were already being manufactured, but if they kept failing at this rate the
Mjollnir’
s jump capacity was going to be seriously compromised.

Ty had paused in his work when the jump alert sounded, waiting quietly until the all-clear followed a minute later.

He dreaded the next time he might be assigned to a repair crew with Olivarri. Following their encounter, he had buried himself in his work, running ever more in-depth and increasingly aggressive scans of the Mos Hadroch, trying to get some idea of its internal structure. And yet, despite all his efforts, it remained as frustratingly opaque as ever.

He thought frequently of Nancy, of drowning himself in the taut muscular curves of her body. The more rational part of him would then like to catalogue the risks inherent in their affair, or remind him of the impossibility of it continuing after their return home. To his eternal surprise and consternation, the thought of the relationship coming to an end left him desolate.

He was still sitting there brooding half an hour later when the
Mjollnir
’
s
primary control systems and life-support suffered a catastrophic failure, and another, more urgent, alarm began to sound.

Dakota had picked a cabin located outside the centrifuge, having spent too many years working and living in zero-gee conditions to ever really be able to sleep comfortably in gravity, simulated or otherwise. She was still lying there awake when the alarm sounded.

She instantly sat up and locked into the data-space, only to find that large parts of it had gone offline. It was like walking into a deserted house and finding that most of the doors had been locked.

A moment later she felt Lamoureaux pinging her from within the centrifuge.

he sent.

Do we have any idea what’s going on?

To her considerable alarm, the lights suddenly flickered and went out. Emergency lighting kicked in a couple of seconds later, bathing her in a blood-red light. Some data trickled in from the exterior sensor arrays: nothing out of the ordinary was taking place outside the ship, which at least ruled out an external attack.

If we can’t get the life-support back online, we’re in deep shit, Ted. This is starting to look like—

Dakota pulled herself over to the door of her cabin and pressed her palm against its access panel. Nothing happened. She slammed the flat of her hand against it, then remembered there was a manual override accessible through a side panel.

She pulled it open and tugged at the lever behind it. Something clicked loudly and the door slid partway open to reveal a sliver of red-lit passageway beyond. Dakota prised at the open edge of the door with the fingers of both hands until it finally slid all the way open with a protesting whine.

She headed straight for the bridge. The quickest way there was to board a car at the nearest transport hub, about a minute’s walk away, but they all proved to be out of action as well. Dakota peered in through the window of one car and saw red failure lights blinking spasmodically on its dashboard. She turned back and made her way to a corridor that led directly towards the hub.

Once it was clear that the
Mjollnir
had suffered a sudden catastrophic systems failure, there was a part of Corso that was not surprised, and his first thought was of Trader.

Ever since Dakota had brought the Shoal-member on board, Corso had made sure that a discreet but constant eye was kept on his yacht. Although the frigate’s internal surveillance system had been directed to survey the main hold at all times, Corso wasn’t taking any chances. Both Willis and Schiller made frequent trips to the bay to check on Trader’s ship in person. Corso couldn’t say exactly what he was hoping they might find, but he wanted to send the alien a message that he was under constant surveillance.

He shut the alarm off, and the silence that followed fell across the bridge like a heavy, smothering blanket. He next used a console to project a highly detailed schematic of the
Mjollnir
overhead. Red dots blinked on and off up and down its length, identifying the depressingly numerous systems failures.

A groggy-looking Martinez entered the bridge, pulling a jacket on. ‘What the hell just happened?’ he demanded, striding over to join him.

‘Take a look for yourself Corso waved towards the console.

Martinez leaned over its glassy surface and quickly scanned the data Corso had just pulled up. His eyes widened, and then he glanced upwards at the schematic floating above their heads.

‘I’ve never seen anything like this,’ Martinez muttered, then peered over at the recently vacated interface chair.

‘You’re wondering if a machine-head could pull something like this off?’ suggested Corso.

‘Could they?’

‘You told me yourself that the new security measures make it just about impossible for anyone with implants to take covert control without being directly plugged into the interface chair. And if either Ted or Dakota was responsible, the other would know.’

‘That’s the idea,’ Martinez agreed. ‘But the system’s never really been tested properly, and I wasn’t around when they carried out the most recent modifications. Do we have any idea where either Merrick or Lamoureaux are?’

Corso sighed. ‘Right now I couldn’t tell you where
anybody
is, Commander.’

‘You do realize they’re the first and most obvious suspects, regardless?’

Corso nodded irritably. ‘Don’t forget how hard we’ve been pushing the
Mjollnir.
We don’t know what problems that might have caused. First that expedition to find the Mos Hadroch . . . then off again not much more than a week later. We’re making longer, more frequent jumps than any human-built ship has ever performed before. We’re having to carry out almost constant maintenance as it is.’

‘No,’ Martinez snapped. ‘This is deliberate sabotage.’

‘How can you be sure?’

‘For God’s sake, Lucas.’ The Commander nodded towards the overhead schematic. ‘Each and every subsystem has been targeted separately. Something like that takes conscious effort. Did you check the surveillance records yet?’

Corso opened his mouth and paused momentarily. ‘No, not yet.’

Martinez leaned over the console, and Corso watched as he pulled up screeds of data, muttering while he worked.

‘Take a look at this,’ he said, moving to one side. Corso glanced at the data and saw that it was a series of logs.

‘The past twelve hours of visual records,’ explained Martinez. ‘All of them wiped. You need high-level access to be able to pull off a trick like that – the kind of access only an interface chair gives you.’

Corso stared at the data. ‘Before you start pointing fingers at the team, remember our passenger in the hold. Besides, the Mos Hadroch might have triggered some glitches early on as well.’

Martinez frowned. ‘Trader’s stuck inside his own ship. He surely can’t pull off a trick like this from inside there, can he?’

‘I don’t know,’ Corso replied. ‘But then, I don’t know if Ted or Dakota could have pulled this off either.’

Just then, Lamoureaux came on to the bridge, looking distinctly out of breath. ‘I came straight back here as soon as I heard the alarm. What’s happened?’

Corso ignored the look on Martinez’s face as he turned to face the machine-head. ‘We don’t know yet,’ he told Lamoureaux. ‘I was hoping you might know something.’

Lamoureaux shook his head. ‘Most of the data-space is down. Dakota would tell you just the same.’

‘Where is she?’ asked Martinez.

‘She’s on her way here.’

‘Just to be clear about it, even with the ship’s networks down, you can still talk to each other?’

‘Sure.’ Lamoureaux nodded. ‘Machine-head hardware creates its own spontaneous networks, as long as you’re reasonably close to each other.’

‘Could you get in touch with any of the others by using your implants?’ asked Corso.

Lamoureaux thought for a moment. ‘Like use them to reroute some of the low-level comms? Yeah, maybe. The primary systems are down, but secondary and back-up seem to be rebooting spontaneously.’

‘Go to it,’ said Corso.

Lamoureaux headed back to the interface chair.

‘All right,’ said Martinez, just as Schiller and Perez entered the bridge, ‘here’s what we’re going to do. We’ve got no idea if this is hostile action, but until we know otherwise we have to assume it is. We need to find out where everyone is and start piecing together how all this happened.’

‘And if we can’t find them?’

‘Then we go looking,’ Martinez replied.

Dakota reached the hub twenty minutes after the alarm had shut off and found Nancy Schiller and Dan Perez already waiting there. Both were armed with pulse-rifles.

‘That leaves just Driscoll and Olivarri,’ Schiller observed to Perez, as Dakota approached.

‘Any idea what’s going on?’ asked Dakota, grabbing a wall rung.

‘We’re assuming it’s sabotage until we know otherwise,’ said Perez. ‘We’re just keeping an eye out.’

‘What for?’

‘Can’t rule out a third party,’ Schiller growled, patting her rifle. ‘Lots of places on board for a saboteur to hide in. That means we’ve got to be ready for any surprises.’

‘But no word from Driscoll or Olivarri?’

Perez shook his head. ‘Not yet.’

‘Look, you’re forgetting about Trader. I’ll go back down to the stern and check he’s still where he should be.’ She started to head back the way she had come.

‘No,’ said Schiller, raising her rifle towards Dakota. ‘You stay right here where we can see you.’

‘Okay,’ said Dakota, turning back slowly. ‘If that’s what you want.’

Perez put one hand on the barrel of Schiller’s rifle and pushed it back down. ‘Nancy, let’s first work out what happened before jumping to any conclusions, okay?’

Schiller’s mouth worked like she wanted to say something in response, but then she relented, lowering her rifle and muttering something foul under her breath.

‘Look, right now we’re just trying to figure out where everyone is,’ Perez explained. ‘Most comms are still down, so we’ve been sitting tight and waiting to see who makes it back here, assuming they’ve got the sense to head for the bridge. If Olivarri and Driscoll don’t show, we’re going to go looking for them.’

‘In that case,’ said Dakota, ‘you’re going to want to break out the spider-mechs, especially if you think there might be saboteurs on board. They’re independent of the
Mjollnir’
s control systems, so they probably won’t have been affected by whatever’s happened. Plus, they can move around the ship and report back a lot faster than any of us can. In fact, I could run a couple of dozen of them at once single-handed. That’d free you up to—’

‘Goddammit, no,’ snarled Schiller, clearly working up a temper. ‘How do we know she’s not the one who did all this?’ she said, gesturing towards Dakota. ‘Maybe if we lock up her and Lamoureaux, we won’t have to worry about either of them sabotaging anything else until we have some idea just what the fuck is going on.’

‘You have no idea what you’re talking about,’ Dakota snapped, now losing her own temper. ‘I’m sick and tired of you thinking everyone with an implant is some kind of devil out to—’

‘Stop it, both of you!’ Perez yelled. ‘Keep this crap up and we won’t even deserve to survive what’s up ahead. We either work together or we give up now. Standing around pointing fingers solves nothing.’ He looked at Dakota. ‘It’s a good idea, Miss Merrick – but I’m coming with you.’

Ty panicked when at first he couldn’t raise anyone over the comms system, then nearly convinced himself he was trapped there in the lab as the doors failed to respond. But he soon located the emergency overrides and made his way out into the passageway beyond.

When the alarm finally shut off, his ears still rang in the sudden silence. He pushed himself cautiously along through the ship, unnerved by the eerie red emergency lighting, which made the frigate seem somehow unfamiliar and threatening.

He worked his way onwards until he reached a hydroponics deck filled with lush scents, the air warm and humid. There was also a transport station there, but when he tried one of the waiting cars it didn’t respond.

He was going to have to get himself to the bridge the hard way.

Ty retraced his steps, pushing himself along a wide passageway until he found his path blocked by an enormous pressure door that must have slid into place when the alarm went off. He stared at it, dismayed, wondering if the ship had lost atmosphere in some areas. He tried the overrides, but this time they didn’t work.

He doubled back and tried another route. Once again, he found his way barred, but this time the overrides did work.