Stealing Light (28 page)

‘All right,’ said Corso, suddenly all business. ‘First we need to run some calibrations.’

The chair’s petals folded in over Dakota, entombing her and blanking out her senses, so that the only information she received would come directly through her Ghost circuits.

‘I’m activating the connection between you and the derelict
now.’
Corso’s voice came to her from out of the darkness, his voice hazed by electronic filters. ‘Remember, anything unexpected,
any
unusual activity or responses of any kind, the inbuilt alarms can shut off the interface. Beyond that, remember all you need to do is let go of the handle and the whole thing shuts down.’

‘I’m fine.’

In truth, part of her was excited by what she might now find.

She sensed the connection being made and . . .

. . . knowledge rushed in towards her in a great tide, a vast, near-indistinguishable mass out of which only a few clear details could be barely discerned. As if from a great distance she felt her fingers trembling as they gripped the dead man’s handle.

Sense-impressions slammed through Dakota’s cerebrum, a howling maelstrom of loss and regret. Stars tumbled past, their shape and light twisted and warped through the lens of transluminal space.

Light filled the sky above an alien shore, a million years of sunshine released in one terrible instant, transforming an ocean to steam while rocks and soil caught fire, all in one consuming wave of carnage. Then more images tumbled past her mind’s eye: other worlds, all imbued with a sense of the very ancient.

She saw creatures like nothing she could have ever imagined, dead and forgotten for longer than she could comprehend. She experienced memories of places that had fallen to dust countless aeons before. As she watched, worlds that had once been the centres of vast empires were reduced to blackened carbon corpses orbiting the burned-out shells of dead suns.

Within the confining petals of the interface chair, she struggled to breathe, her chest heaving as if she were drowning.

Dakota struggled to absorb the tidal wave of information being thrust upon her. Mercifully the myriad impressions began to fade, and the seeping omniscient light of the derelict surrounding her crawled back under her eyelids. The petals of the interface chair had folded down and Corso was leaning in over her, pulling the neural cap away from her skull.

‘Bloody hell,’ said Corso, letting out a shaky breath as he moved out of Dakota’s way. ‘I’d call that a resounding success. Judging by the measurements, you were in full neural lock with the derelict.’

‘I’m OK,’ she mumbled.

‘I don’t know what it was hitting you with, but whatever it was, it wasn’t in half-measures.’

Dakota glanced over Corso’s shoulder and saw Kieran watching her carefully. She decided not to reveal too much about just what she’d experienced. ‘I’m fine. I just couldn’t make much sense out of anything.’

‘What happened?’ Kieran asked Corso, as Dakota slowly lifted herself out of the chair.

‘Calibration,’ Corso replied. ‘It means the derelict accepts her input.’

‘But she was only in there for a second or two.’

Corso shrugged. ‘That’s all it takes.’

‘So she can fly the ship now?’

‘No, not straight away. But in the next few days, hopefully, yes.’

‘Let’s say “definitely”,’ Kieran replied tersely.

Folding her legs under her, Dakota lowered herself down next to the interface chair. ‘It’s like it’s alive,’ she muttered weakly. Her head was still spinning. ‘I don’t know if it’s hostile exactly, but defensive, scared maybe, assuming you want to attribute human emotions to the thing.’

‘Did you find anything out? Any information about where it came from, who built it, whether the drive is still functioning?’

She shook her head. ‘The whole experience was too vague for that.’ She caught his eye. ‘But I think you were right about them running away from something.’

The Magellanic Novae had occurred in such a relatively small volume of space, and in such a short period of time, that one of the most popular conspiracy theories posited that the stellar detonations had been deliberately induced. This remained no more than a theory partly because no one was in a hurry to give credence to the notion of any interstellar civilization with the technology to destroy entire solar systems.

Dakota gazed at the pale walls around her, and recalled the fleeting images and sensations she’d endured within the interface chair. A chill, deeper and darker than any she recalled experiencing before, went through her at the thought the Magi might have been capable of such terrible destruction.

As Arbenz and Gardner also entered, Dakota reflected that none of them had any real idea of the consequences of what they were trying to do. They were like soldiers on the eve of a battle, already celebrating their certain victory over a well-armed militia, when they only had one gun between them.

If only there were some way for her to steal the derelict out from under the noses of not only the Shoal, but the Freehold as well. But even if she found a way . . . what
would
be the consequences for the human race, of acquiring such embargoed technology? Would she bring the wrath of the Shoal hegemony down on her entire species?

A functioning transluminal drive would open up the stars to mankind . . . but the subsequent vengeance of the Shoal might mean the end of the Consortium.

Yet it was clear there was something more going on here. What Corso had accused her of made no sense: she had
not
been studying maps of the local galaxy cluster. Shortly after his challenge, she’d had her Ghost scan the bridge records, and found nothing amiss outside her own secret tweaks and alterations.

But why would Corso lie? She couldn’t help but think back to the many weird glitches occurring since she had first boarded the
Hyperion:
the way the Freehold vessel had reacted when she tried to scan the alien’s trinket on the imager plate; the almost seamless alterations to the ship’s records that she had assumed until now had been made by Arbenz, or one of his men, for reasons unknown.

And then there was the way the beta copy of
Piri’s
mind she’d uploaded to the
Hyperion
had spoken to her—that curious grammatical inflection so reminiscent of the speech pattern of the Shoal-member she had encountered at Bourdain’s Rock.

She’d been carefully avoiding thinking about the implications of that impression too much. She might just have imagined it. Anything else filled her with crawling horror.

She snapped back out of her train of thought to see Corso arguing with Arbenz.

‘Senator, we have no idea what kind of infrastructure, what kind of know-how, the Magi used to build either this ship or its propulsive systems. Taking the derelict out of Nova Arctis is one thing. Replicating the technology is something on a whole bigger scale. This is technology millennia ahead of our own. At the moment we just don’t know enough.’

‘So what do you suggest?’ asked Gardner.

‘Take our time, years if necessary,’ Corso replied immediately. ‘Pick the derelict apart piece by piece. Establish a permanent research base here as a cover. We were intending to move our entire population to Newfall over the next few decades anyway . . .’

Arbenz bristled, his anger clearly mounting. ‘We are at
war,
Mr Corso. We are engaged in a battle for survival. If we can’t take this thing apart and understand how it works, we don’t deserve to keep Redstone, or Newfall either, for that matter.’

‘I think,’ Corso replied, obviously choosing his words very carefully, ‘that there are people in the Senate who might see things otherwise. Technically, you require the authority of the full governing board before—’

‘They’re not
here!’
Arbenz bellowed, his face contorting in rage. ‘This is a God-given opportunity to raise ourselves up. Either we succeed in what we do here, or at the very least we die with honour before the eyes of God.’ Arbenz made an apparent attempt to cool down. ‘That’s final. I won’t tolerate any further dissent.’

Dakota had already caught sight of Gardner’s face and wondered, not for the first time, exactly what had driven this businessman to think he could engage in a profitable relationship with Freeholders. At this moment he looked aghast.

‘Senator,’ said Gardner suddenly, ‘I’ll ask you, with the greatest respect, to shut the hell up.’

‘Gardner . . .’

It’s falling apart,
thought Dakota.
They’ve been down here only, what, a couple of hours? And already it’s falling apart.

Gardner was insistent. ‘Without my financial and technical backup, you have nothing, Senator,
nothing.
I’m tired of being constantly sidelined because of your petty, parochial political arguments. If there’s any way to exploit or make sense of whatever we find on board this ship, it’ll be
my
research teams,
my
contacts that will bring it about. Do you understand me? You don’t have the resources. I do.’

‘You may have the resources,’ Arbenz replied acidly, ‘but you do not have the will.’

‘This is a joint mission,’ Gardner continued. ‘If anything happens to me, if I fail to get in touch with my business partners at designated times, your chances of being able to either do anything or go anywhere with this ship are nil. You understand that, don’t you?’

Dakota tensed, waiting to see which way things would swing now. But Arbenz simply smiled as if they were all friends and the past few hours of argument and threats had never happened. There was something very unsettling in that smile.

‘I think we’ve seen enough here for today,’ Arbenz said, turning his attention from Gardner to Corso instead. ‘What’s our next move on the technical front?’

‘The calibrations check out OK. Now I just need to fine-tune the interface so Mai—so Dakota can work on controlling the derelict. Once we reach that point, we’ve got a good chance of being able to explore the whole of the ship without getting killed.’

‘Good work, Mr Corso. Remember, we need to work as fast as possible.’

Corso looked thoughtful. ‘I can get a lot of work done right away.’

‘Fine.’ Arbenz nodded. ‘Meanwhile we’ll return to the surface. Kieran, I want you to stay here with Corso and keep an eye on things. Anything unusual happens—anything you suspect might be life-threatening—I want you to evacuate immediately. There’s no sense in taking unnecessary risks if you don’t have to.

‘As for you,’ he said, turning finally to Dakota, ‘you’re going back on board the
Hyperion
until we need you again. Don’t try anything that would make us unhappy, as you’d only get hurt.’

She couldn’t keep the quaver out of her voice. ‘You can’t kill me, Senator. You need me too much.’

‘That’s true,’ Arbenz replied with a mirthless smile. ‘But we can make things bad enough that you’d wish we had.’

Nineteen

Dakota sat still as a statue aboard the submersible as it rose back up through the frozen inky depths. She felt numb, withdrawn, while Gardner and Arbenz chatted quietly together in their seats. She now sat alone, to the rear of them, ignored and happy to be ignored.

What if she was wrong, she wondered? What if, despite their barbaric, murderous ways, the Freehold could actually pull this off?

People had long dreamed of finding some way to steal the transluminal technology from the Shoal or, better yet, develop their own. It was almost a childhood dream, a power fantasy brought suddenly screaming into real life.

Yet the only certainty Dakota could see was the one Arbenz was avoiding the most: that eventually the Shoal would become aware the Freehold had found a derelict starship, and that they would retaliate.

The sub thudded into place in the main base, and Dakota soon found herself back on the other side of the airlock.

An automated supply shuttle took her back to the
Hyperion,
accompanied by two troopers who looked like habitual steroid abusers.

To her dismay she found a new skeleton crew of half a dozen had been installed on board the
Hyperion,
running their own systems checks with an alacrity that alarmed her. The
Piri Reis
reassured her via remote link, however, that none of her hidden alterations within the memory stacks was likely to be uncovered or detected.

She wished she could have shared the machine’s confidence.

To her surprise, the troopers abandoned her to her own devices once they boarded the
Hyperion,
rather than confining her to her quarters as she’d expected. At first she wondered if this represented some unexpected level of trust, until it occurred to her that both the
Hyperion
and the moon base were now little more than unusually roomy prisons.

She found her way, undisturbed and unchallenged, back to the cargo bay and the comforting embrace of the
Piri Reis.
No matter where she went, Dakota knew, this would always be her home, the one constant in her life, unchanging and ready to yield to her every demand.

She let the Piri’s effigy-form stroke her hair as she lay with her head in its lap.

It didn’t take long for the tears to come.

For a while, she might even have slept.

She dreamed of escape from a building where every exit was blocked. Something was chasing her.

A monster came roaring out of the darkness and killed her. But not before she hurt it, badly. She woke and lay in the darkness for a long time, staring out at nothing, full of a sudden determination.

It’s not over, Senator. Not by a long shot.

When she was finally ready, she opened her Ghost to an ocean of information.

Establish a data link with the machine-head interface aboard the derelict,
she ordered
Piri
Beta.
Route and encrypt via Piri Alpha. [Piri Alpha: encrypt and wipe data path post-encryption. No trace.]

Piri
Beta as of this moment. I believe it has become corrupted and may infect this ship’s systems if a full data exchange is allowed.>

But who
—

Piri
Beta replied.

Dakota came to full alertness, adrenalin surging through her.

I knew you were in there, you fucking fish. It’s you, isn’t it? The one that gave me that damn figurine. I knew it. How did you do it? How the fuck did you get in here?

For the first time in her life, even the enclosing walls of the
Piri Reis
felt like a prison.

Hyperion,
within which I now reside and—investigate and study in order that the balance of all things may be maintained.>

Dakota absorbed this information in a state of shock. She realized whatever it was that was speaking to her had almost certainly been transferred into the
Hyperion’s
systems when she’d placed the statuette on the imaging plate.

She’d been right in thinking there was a spy on board the
Hyperion.
She’d carried it on board herself, without ever being aware.

But that didn’t explain the niggling sense of significance she felt every time she thought about the figurine. It didn’t explain what was so damned familiar about it.

Piri Alpha, how safe are we from that thing?

Hyperion,>
her ship replied.

It was only her imagination that imbued those words with a sniffy tone.

Piri Reis,>
it continued.

Dakota thought hard for several seconds, her mind working overtime.

‘I thought artificial intelligence wasn’t possible,’ Dakota said out loud, choosing her words with precision. She needed to get as much information as possible out of whatever was residing within the
Hyperion’s
stacks. If it had wormed its way in deep enough, it might be able to override the life-support systems and send her, the ship’s atmosphere, and everyone else flying out into space. It could fill every room, shaft and corridor with deadly radiation . . . there was no knowing what it could do, or what it had already been doing all these long weeks. ‘At least, that’s what your lot always claimed. I thought Ghost technology was the only . . .’

The answer came booming out through the
Piri’s
speakers.

‘Manifold manifestations of “intelligence” exist, dry-skin, and can be utilized, toyed with, manipulated, as the creator might wish. Big Fish may create Little Big Fish, to do the bidding of the firstborn. And I, my dear Dakota, am one of the biggest, hungriest Big Fish of all. To possess such knowledge is to be bitten by such knowledge, even mortally wounded; therefore restriction of said know-how is but a kindness to many species, as well as to your own.’

‘I. . . see.’ So she was speaking to a genuine machine intelligence. Very well, one more secret the Shoal had been keeping to themselves.

‘Understanding within your thoughts is delightfully tasty,’ the alien commented. A visual sense-impression was beginning to form in Dakota’s mind’s eye, transmitted via the
Hyperion’s
stacks and filtered through her implants, of the Shoal-member she’d met on Bourdain’s Rock swimming within its briny ball of energy.

‘Enjoyment greatly derived from acquisition of understanding that, far below us, in welcoming but chilly depths, lies that which you would seek to fly far, far away. This imposing surfeit of knowingness arrives with me via wings of knowledge, derived from the very same inter-ocean singing by which your colleagues have gained their own understanding of that which lies below.’

‘All right, so you know about the derelict.’

‘In which precious and delicate matter, Miss Merrick, I might enquire as to whether you might consider it a delight—a healthy, lifespan-prolonging delight—to aid and assist me in the destruction thereof, preventing its further investigation by those big bad fish who have been the cause of so much
contretemps
in your life of late.’

‘You. . .’ Dakota struggled to understand. ‘You want me to destroy the derelict? Is that what you’re saying?’

‘Your understanding and compliance would be gracious and healthy. Further, there are precise and delicate means by which this matter must be pursued, to wit destruction of said derelict. Such means should be engaged most precisely, lest failure be permitted.’

‘But why destroy it? Why not just. . .’ Dakota had to swallow to clear the sudden thickness from her throat, but she had to know. ‘Why even let the Freehold come here in the first place? Why even
tell
me all this?’

‘Once more, manifold necessities present themselves, dear Miss Merrick, of a vulgar and varied nature too long and windy for casual discussion. To know is good, and not to know is frequently better. In agreement?’

Ignorance is bliss? Fine.

‘Consider further potential rewards of close attention paid to your task. Enjoyment of extensive lifespan in warm tasty seas, made sweeter by exclusive granting of partial rights to as yet undisclosed, but permitted, Shoal technology.’

‘In return for my silence.’
Destroy the derelict, betray the Freehold, escape, and be rich,
if
she could take the monster at its word.

‘Consider benefits of continued trade amongst races of galaxy, as facilitated by mighty Shoal, biggest, vastest, mightiest Fish of all. Discovery by Shoal Hegemony of attempt to retrieve derelict would result in punitive measures, leaving human minnows lost in deepest abyssal waters without even means to sing across vacuum seas.

‘End of trade, end of all—woe, woe. But! But bad for Shoal. Much better to hide unfortunate discovery from eyes of all, sweep under planet-sized carpet and walk whistling away, yes?’

‘Which is where
I
come in.’

‘Huge and magnificent correctness, verified.’

‘I help you sabotage the Freehold’s salvage mission, and we pretend none of this happened. We keep it low-key so none of this registers on the Shoal’s radar, and that way they don’t have to run an embargo against humanity and lose their long-standing relationship with us. That simple?’

‘To be unhelpful in these matters would bring dastardly misfortune upon human species.’

Dakota couldn’t fault his argument. Except that meant helping alien creatures she couldn’t help but hate.

If she aided the Freehold, the alien—his consciousness somehow integrated into the
Hyperion—
would bring about the collapse of the fledgling interstellar human empire, and still bury any evidence the derelict had ever existed.

Or, she could work
with
the alien, destroy the derelict, and allow the continued survival of the fragile interstellar network of human colonies. And, if her actions were ever made public, she would earn the enmity and hatred of much of humanity for aiding the Shoal.

On the other hand, what choice did she have but to help the creature? She was already filled with loathing for Kieran Mansell and the Senator, and she desperately wanted to find a way to hurt them . . .

She thought for a long while, and the alien intelligence had the good grace to remain silent until she chose to respond. The situation was so dire, so ridiculous, she even laughed out loud at one point, the sound of her mirth edging uncomfortably close to hysteria.

But if she did help the Shoal, it might increase her chances of survival . . . and maybe give her the time to think of a way out of this mess.

And yet, and yet. . .

There was something missing here. Not so much what the Shoal-member had said, as what he had
not
said. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but she had the feeling there was something he didn’t want her to know. And whatever that was, it might just turn out to be an advantage.

‘Even if I help you, it doesn’t make us allies,’ she said out loud. ‘So don’t insult me by suggesting it does, you understand me? All this mess is because of
your
kind. The Uchidan Diaspora, the war with the Freehold—this is all because of you and your fucking colonial contracts.’ She cleared her throat of the foul taste that had gathered there, cold and bitter. ‘Yes, I’ll help you. But not because I want to.’

Alien sense-impressions flooded across the neural bridge of her implants, mostly incomprehensible, but buried deep in there was a very human-seeming sense of satisfaction and triumph. They had all of them been played like puppets.

And then she realized what it was that felt so wrong.

There’s just this one Shoal-member, but where are all the rest of them ? Why send in just one of their own as some kind of software ghost, instead of a whole ship, or even a fleet?

Unless, of course, the Shoal were so powerful they only needed to send in one of their own to defeat the aims of an entire civilization. But that wasn’t quite it either.

Everything this alien had done was underhand. He had infiltrated himself on to the
Hyperion
via Dakota (which also begged the question of how the alien could possibly have known she would eventually find her way into working as a reluctant pilot for the Freehold), and then remained almost entirely silent for the duration of the journey to Nova Arctis.

Why did he insist on engaging her in such an elaborate charade?

What was he hiding?

—

The digitized shadow that thought of himself as Trader-In-Faecal-Matter-Of-Animals observed Dakota with amusement. Even if she stumbled on the truth, she would have no choice but to do exactly what he wanted her to do regardless.

Trader had modelled his software environment to create the illusion of a limitless ocean, an eternal blackness that replicated the gentle drift of Mother Sea’s embrace. The creature that had spoken with Dakota was very close to being an accurate model of the original Trader: every circuit, subroutine and protocol aboard the
Hyperion—
plus a few hidden Shoal neural processors, well out of sight, without which the human computer systems would have provided insufficient processing power—were bent to generating his self-image and consciousness.