The Dying Light (26 page)

“I’m looking for survivors.”

“Why?” The voice of the third outrigger was male and sharp with suspicion.

“We picked up a distress call.”

“We didn’t send one.”

“Well, someone did.” Roche suppressed an urge to snap. “Regardless, I need to know what happened in this system so we can stop it happening elsewhere. You can help me do that.”

“How very commendable,” said the first voice. “Your superiors must be proud of you.”

“I told you: I’m independent. I don’t have any superiors.”

“You come looking for us in a COE Intelligence courier vessel, wearing a COE Intelligence suit, and you expect us to believe that you no longer work for them?”

“I don’t care what you believe,” said Roche. “And really, does it make any difference who I work for?”

The waldoes on the third all-suit shifted. “I think we should space her,” said the accompanying voice.

“Private channel, you idiot,” said the second outrigger, all humor gone.

For a moment the outriggers ignored her, only the slight motion of waldoes and antennae betraying the fact that some sort of interaction was taking place. Clearly the all-suits acted in much the same way as normal bodies for their inhabitants, with a peculiar form of body-language to match. Only the lasers didn’t shift, aimed squarely at Roche through the helmet of her suit.

After a minute of silence, she opaqued her faceplate and had the suit display the view artificially. Haid was pinging her, sending her a repetitive signal through the interference to let her know he was watching and ready to act if needed. That was reassuring, but she wanted to keep him out of it if possible; she had to earn their trust on her own, without using force.

The outriggers shifted around her. She tensed, ready to defend herself if attacked. Instead, two of the lasers dimmed, then snapped off. After a few moments, the third did likewise.

“We’re taking you to a quorum,” said the second outrigger.

“I’m not going anywhere until you tell me who you are and kill the interference so I can talk to my crew.”

“You’re in no position to make any demands,” said the third outrigger.

“For the last time, Yul,” said the second, “shut up and let me do the talking. She’s here to
help
us.”

“I’d like to,” Roche cut in. “Insofar as I can, at least; if you’ll let me.”

“Exactly. I’m Idil, and this is Yul and Eli.”

Now the lasers were off, Roche could see the all-suits properly. Mil’s was painted entirely in a color that might have been orange but looked pink in the light; Yul’s had four silver bands around its midriff; Eli’s was angular, almost rhombohedral in shape.

“We’re from Long Span spine. Auditor Byrne says you can talk, but the ship you came here in is not to change its orbit. If it comes near the spines, we’ll retaliate.”

Roche grunted as the interference faded. She used the same encrypted channel Haid had requested earlier.

“Ameidio? You there?”

“Yeah,” came Haid’s voice. “You okay?”

“Fine. They’re taking me somewhere to negotiate. I don’t want you to do anything else but wait until I come back.”

“How long?’ he asked.

She relayed the question to the outriggers.

“A couple of hours,” Idil said. “Or never. The quorum may decide it doesn’t need your help. And if so, it might not let you return to your ship at all.”

Roche privately doubted the outriggers’ ability to damage her suit, but wasn’t keen on testing her theory just yet. “Give them three hours, Ameidio, then use your judgment.”

“Will do.”

“And if you hear from the Box, tell it to stay away. We don’t want the drive falling into the wrong hands.”

“I understand,” said Haid. “And should anyone make a move on me, I’ll get the hell out of here, but I’ll try contacting you first. Any idea where they’re taking you?”

“To one of the spines, I guess. They haven’t said.”

“Well, I’ll keep the channels open.”

Roche turned her attention to the outriggers. All three suits were oriented toward her, their antennae spread wide like eyes watching her intently.

“Okay,” she said, readying her suit to take her up into orbit, toward the spines. “Let’s go.”

But instead of up, they took her down.

* * *

She lost direct radio contact with Haid the moment she followed Idil into the shaft. She could still hear the regular
ping
broadcast by the courier, but only as a series of faint and highly peculiar echoes, as though the shaft was absorbing the signal, interfering with it, then broadcasting it back at her from a dozen locations at once. She didn’t know what would happen if she tried to contact him. Maybe nothing out of the ordinary, or he wouldn’t hear her at all.

It was too late to worry about that now.

She followed close behind Idil, watching as the antennae of the outrigger’s suit were enfolded to prevent damage to fragile components. The other two, somewhere behind Roche, were no doubt doing the same. The shaft itself was lit by the searchlights of the three all-suits and her own suit, giving her an intriguing glimpse into the moon’s interior. The shaft’s smooth rockface faded after a hundred meters or so; beyond that it shared the color and albedo of bronze, although it could easily have been something else. At one hundred and fifty meters, the shaft doglegged, first upward with respect to Roche, then to her left, then down again, then twice to her right. The turns were always at right angles, but the distances between them were irregular. Navigation was tricky, using thrusters and the occasional limb—or waldo, in the outriggers’ case—to correct miscalculations. After several more such turns, Roche started to feel disoriented, as though trapped in some bizarre cosmic plumbing.

They passed a tunnel opening to her left, unlit and with the same radius as the shaft they were traveling along. They passed two others before moving “upward” into a fourth. From the inside, it was the same as the one they had left. She could see no markings, no fixtures, no artifacts of any kind. Nothing but endless tunnels, crisscrossing through the heart of the moon.

Only then did she realize that she had literally lost all sense of up and down—and so had her suit. It was obtaining readings consistent with being in free-fall, regardless of which way they traveled. Something in the tunnel walls, or elsewhere, had dampened the low gravity of the moon to nothing. Why, or how, she couldn’t imagine.

Ahead of Roche, Idil began to slow. The all-suit issued a burst of white noise, and a hole in the pipe-wall opened to one side. No, not opened, Roche corrected herself; it had always been there. The holographic generator concealing it had simply been switched off.

Idil led the way through the hole, into a spherical chamber one hundred meters across, from which many other such openings led. Otherwise, the walls were smooth, ranging in color from the bronze of the tunnels to a deep cherry-red at the points farthest from the holes. The walls radiated light of a frequency not dissimilar to that of Hintubet.

The space within the chamber contained a thin atmosphere, held in place by some sort of boundary-field across each hole, and a further seven outriggers drifting in free-fall. Each was slightly different from the others. With instruments retracted, they looked like escape capsules, capsules made by ten different companies for ten different Castes; when instruments did appear, they did so in unique configurations and combinations. There were no portholes, no indications as to the appearances of their occupants at all, but it was easy to tell them apart.

Idil, Yul, and Eli dispersed once they were in the room, and the seven others seemed to rearrange themselves slightly to accommodate the newcomers. Within moments Roche was the only thing moving in the center of the chamber; the outriggers had, perhaps by instinct, arranged themselves in a way that maximized the space between them.

“We want to know why you came here, Morgan Roche.” The signal came from an outrigger whose all-suit was shaped like a teardrop, tapering at its aft end to a menacing point. Even this close and in an atmosphere, the outriggers still communicated by radio.

“I came here to find you,” she answered. “Survivors, anyway. We were picking up signals from this region.”

“Not from us, you weren’t.”

“No. I know that now.” She paused for a second, then asked: “Why are you hiding down here?”

“Because we don’t want to die, like the others,” said one, his suit marked with concentric green triangles.

“You saw what happened?”

“Wide Berth spine lost almost a full complement over the spaceport on Aro. All hands of Long Span remained at a distance, and so we survived.” This voice, thickly accented, came from an all-suit striped diagonally in black. The effect it had upon Roche as it slowly rotated was dizzying. “We came down here when the Galine station arrived because we suspected we would not be safe near it.”

“We will never be safe in this system,” said the green triangle outrigger in sharp disagreement. “We’ve already lost seventeen since we’ve been here.”

“The short term is all that matters—”

“The short term is all you ever think about, Lud. When the one who killed the clan on Wide Berth comes looking for us, he will find you sitting here still, the easiest target in the galaxy.”

A babble of argument broke out. Clearly the quorum was divided on what to do about the Sol clone warrior, just as Idil, Yul, and Eli had been about Roche.

She smiled to herself. This was everything she’d hoped for. If she could only keep them talking—

She caught a flash that might have been leakage from a private laser communication, then the teardrop all-suit spoke:

“We shouldn’t squabble within the clan,” she said. Her voice was firm, and resembled Mil’s in inflection if not pitch. “We came here, Morgan Roche, to escape Wide Berth’s fate. We have watched events in the system carefully since then, awaiting any sign that the one behind the attack on Wide Berth was coming here. So far, there has been no such sign. Your arrival caused a moment of concern, but it’s clear that you are not the one. Your approach was too open, too blatant. I fear that the one we anticipate will be upon us before we even suspect.”

“The data you collected—” Roche broke in. “May I—?”

“Access it? Certainly.”

So easy? Roche couldn’t help but be suspicious.

“Why?” she asked. “I thought
you
wanted to interrogate
me
?”

“We do. But the clan teaches that all answers lie in the questioner’s own heart. If we exchange information, perhaps you will see for us what we do not.”

Roche nodded. “Perhaps,” she said.

“What do we have to lose?” The teardrop’s blunt end unfolded like a flower, peeling back shielding to expose delicate machinery within. “You are not the one we feared. I therefore put my trust in you, Morgan Roche. I have faith you will not abuse it.”

Roche was slightly taken back. “Just who are you, anyway?” she asked.

“My name is Byrne, auditor of Long Span spine. In situations such as these, when time is of the essence, I am the one that makes decisions.”

“So their lives are basically in your hands?” said Roche.

“As mine is in theirs,” she replied. “We are one, even when we disagree.”

“You are their voice,” said Roche.

The blunt end of the all-suit began to close. “I am also the one that asks the questions, and right now I would ask again: Why are you here, Morgan Roche?”

Roche was still a little stunned by the odd turn of events, but she knew that if she was going to get anywhere with the outriggers, then she was going to have to talk to Byrne, and that meant answering anything asked of her. So she outlined her reasons for coming to the system and what had happened to her since arriving. No point was covered twice, until the end, when Roche was asked to recapitulate her relationship with Adoni Cane. Many of the outriggers assembled for the quorum were hesitant to trust someone who had links with another Sol Wunderkind—albeit one who seemed less destructive than the one who had destroyed Palasian System. Roche could understand that.

“The other spine, Wide Berth,” she said, fishing for information of her own. “What exactly happened to them over Aro?”

“We received distress signals,” said Byrne. “A number of small pods, possibly escape capsules. Wide Berth decided to attempt a rescue. We advised against it, and suspected that the one behind the attack on the domed city—the Sol clone warrior, as you call him—was still in the area. Whether he was or not, we never did find out, but the pods were a trap. An orbital whip decimated the main body of those who went to investigate, while gas-guns picked off the survivors.”

“We were unable to assist them in time,” Lud’s bitter voice broke in. “And those observing from the Galine station did not intervene.”

“You saw the observers?”

“Yes.”

“But you’ve had no contact at all with Galine Four?” said Roche.

“We hailed them when it arrived, but they ignored us,” said Byrne. “This is not uncommon, of course, as outriggers are often overlooked. But when they also ignored the plight of Wide Berth, we knew its disinterest was more malevolent than usual.”

Roche absorbed this. The ferocity of the attack on the Wide Berth outriggers didn’t necessarily mean that the Sol clone warrior was personally directing it; automatic systems could have done as well. But Aro was the last location he’d been known to be; the chance of an eyewitness report was worth following up.

“No one survived the attack?”

“One,” said Byrne. “The youngest of the clan, a boy named Yarrow. His role in the spine was observer, so he was removed from the focus of attack. We found his all-suit breached and drifting a day later. His emergency systems lasted barely long enough to return him to Long Span, where his all-suit was repaired.”

“Could I talk to him?”

“That is impossible,” said Byrne.

“He might have information—”

“He can tell you nothing,” said Lud firmly.

“I’d still like to ask.”

“His peace is more important than your wishes!” spat Lud.

The softer voice of Auditor Byrne filled the quiet following Lud’s anger: “Yarrow has not spoken since the attack on his clan. You are welcome to try, but I don’t like your chances.”