This is an excerpt from Stealing Light, comprising the first three or so chapters. Stealing Light was published in the UK in hardback in October 2007 by Tor UK, an imprint of Pan Macmillan, and is the first in a projected series of three books set 500 years in the future.
STEALING LIGHT by GARY GIBSON (excerpt)
It's the 25th century, and only the ancient race known as the Shoal possess the secret of faster-than-light travel, allowing them to exert an economic stranglehold over every intelligent species throughout the galaxy. For centuries mankind has spread only slowly under their restrictive gaze, occupying a few sparse colony worlds scattered along the Shoal trade routes and making contact with a few permitted alien species.
Dakota Merrick, while serving as a military pilot, has witnessed atrocities for which this alien race is responsible. Now piloting a civilian cargo ship, she is currently ferrying an exploration team to a star system containing what may be a derelict starship of mysterious origin. From its wreckage, her passengers hope to find a way to subvert the Shoal's monopoly; but the Shoal are not yet ready to relinquish their stranglehold on a technology acquired through ancient genocide.
PART ONE
ONE
Standard Consortium Date: 03.06.2538
25 kilometres south of Port Gabriel, Redstone Colony
Port Gabriel Incident +45 minutes
It was like waking up and finding you’d just sleepwalked through the gates of hell.
Dakota drew in a sharp breath, feeling like she’d first awakened into existence only a moment before. She stood stock still for several seconds, the touch of freezing rain clear and sharp on her skin.
Trying to take it all in.
Bodies were scattered all around her, under a slate-grey sky from which snow fell in sporadic squalls. Most had been cut down as they ran for safety. It was a scene of appalling carnage.
She remembered with dazzling clarity what it had felt like to kill them.
Her hands hung uselessly by her sides, Consortium-issue assault pistol still gripped in one fist. Fat-bellied Consortium transports rumbled far overhead, dropping down from orbit, looking to salvage something – anything - from the disaster of the assault.
The worst thing was that she remembered so much. Every moment, every scream, and every death: it was something she was going to have to live with for the rest of her life.
That made the decision to kill herself a lot easier.
Dakota wandered away from the transport and the bodies of the Freeholder refugees it had been carrying, walking along the side of the highway and seeing where bodies had slumped into the snow-filled ditch running parallel to it.
A woman had died tangled up in the thick, hardy roots and foliage of a jugleaf bush. Dakota pulled her free, ignoring the plant’s sharp-edged barbs that tore at her skin and survival suit. She laid the woman down on the side of the road, peering into her face. Middle-aged, motherly looking, a few strands of grey amongst the black roots on her scalp.
Dakota closed her eyes and remained kneeling by the corpse for a minute or so.
Finally she stood and looked around, listening to the rasp of freezing air coursing through the filtration systems in her breather mask, and felt her lungs heave into a scream that felt like it would never end.
Eventually her chest began to hurt from the exertion of screaming, and she stopped.
She started walking again, stripping off her survival suit bit by bit as she went. She dumped the vacated suit in the roadside ditch, then pulled off her insulated undergarments, until she stood naked under the Redstone morning sky.
The subzero temperatures were instantly numbing. She kept her breather mask on, however, because a quick death by asphyxiation in this alien atmosphere somehow felt too easy an end. Flecks of snow danced over the soft pale flesh of her bare shoulders, and against the close-cropped stubble of her scalp.
Dakota managed to stumble a few more steps, her vision blurring as she stared over towards the trucks and buses and long-distance haulers that had been carrying the refugees to safety. Some of them were burning, staining the Redstone sky with their oily smoke.
She collapsed beside the statue of Belle Trevois, the Uchidan child-martyr, that stood in eternal vigil by the roadside. Its arms reached up into the air in a gesture that seemed forlorn for such a lonely and desolate spot. The plinth the image stood on was stained with ugly Freeholder graffiti.
Dakota realised death was very close, and curled up in a ball beneath Belle’s feet. From there she gazed up at the statue’s blank features.
Inside her head she could still hear the sound of running feet, the sound of the refugee‘s screams as they burned.
Then she heard other voices – soldiers shouting to each other, coming closer.
Coming to rescue her.
TWO
City of Erkinning, Bellhaven Colony
Consortium Standard Date: 03.02.2536
Two years prior to Port Gabriel Incident
Dakota stared out over the distant rooftops of the shanties clustering beyond the city’s grim stone walls. The seven stars of evening shone down on her like an Elder’s blessing.
The instant she glanced up at the night sky, her new Ghost circuitry - freshly installed within her skull - unloaded a deluge of mostly useless information into her thoughts: without any effort she knew instantly how far away each star was, its declination in respect to the galactic equator, and how many planets and dark companions orbited each of them. A rich cornucopia of similar detail in relation to thousands of other stars, all scattered within a sphere hundreds of light years across and centred on Bellhaven, waited on the fringe of her mind. She imagined she was a spider at the centre of some vast cybernetic web, her implants like thousands of dainty multiple limbs that could reach out and tug suns and moons out of the sky for her to play with.
She pulled her gaze back down, her breath frosting in the cold night air after escaping from under the neck scarf wrapped tight up around her mouth and throat. A chill winter wind whipped across her freshly shaven skull where it emerged, exposed, beneath the protection of the thick leather cap she had pulled over her head and ears. She glanced behind her to see Tutor Langley standing only a short distance away.
Langley wore a small goatee beard against his dark skin, and his long black coat resembled that of a preacher from some past century, its high stiff short collar pressing tight around his neck, while its skirt fluttered around his boots. It was a uniform intended to remind citizens of the authority of the City Elder’s controlling religious oligarchy.
Dakota noticed the expression on his dark-skinned features and flashed him a grin. She didn’t mind that her freshly depilated scalp still looked bruised and battered from the surgeon’s intrusions.
In the streets far below the Garrison, on whose roof she stood, she could see people clustering at food stalls lining a busy crossroads she had wandered past a thousand times. She could just make out their faces gathered in a few small patches of light. Snatches of their conversation drifted up to her, along with the smell of cooking, making her hungry.
Dakota was suddenly aware how easily these odours could be broken down into specific categories. Words like hydrolysates, esters and caramelised sugars popped into her head, broken down into percentages that changed with each sudden gust of wind. Far below, people hid from the winter cold and rain under sheet-metal awnings, or warmed themselves around communal fusion heaters set up at each corner of the crossroads.
Jesus, Uchida, Buddha; these and a dozen more effigies glowed in incandescent hallucinatory colours from dozens of niches as they did in so many other parts of the city. They bestowed their incandescent blessings on the fossilised layers of posters and public notices pasted over and over again onto every available flat surface.
Just then she realised Marlie had joined her by the railing, her mouth wide in a grin under dark eyes.
“Did you hear the latest about Banville? Now they’re saying he’s defected, gone over to the Uchidans, and abandoned his family in the process.”
“Are you sure?” Dakota replied. “Last I heard, they were claiming he was kidnapped.”
This was significant news. Banville was the scientist personally responsible for much of the cutting-edge Ghost tech the world of Bellhaven had long built its scientific reputation on. Both Marlie and Dakota, and everyone else with Ghost implants, carried a piece of Banville’s work inside them.
Marlie shrugged happily. She had a way of smiling completely regardless of what she was actually saying, which indicated a lifelong (and to Dakota deeply irritating) dedication to perkiness beyond reason. “I picked up a City Bulletin just before I got here. Looks like he left voluntarily, after all, and the Elders are going crazy because of it.”
Dakota nodded. The news of Banville’s disappearance had already inspired riots in the Grover Communities, as the Elders preferred to call them. Shanties would have been a better word - they’d been growing out beyond the city walls for three years now, packed as they were with refugees flooding in from the failed Grover colony a thousand miles further north.
Dakota quickly performed the visualisation routines that opened her subconscious to a flood of data and news from the local tach-net. Her eyes widened in shock as a torrent of new information was dumped into her skull: Banville had disappeared less than a day before, but within the past few minutes a recorded message had surfaced in which he claimed to have joined the Oratory of Uchida willingly, and had left Bellhaven forever.
She looked over at Marlie, knowing instantly that she was getting the exact same information.
“This is bad,” Dakota said unnecessarily.
Marlie nodded. “Yes, Dakota, it’s very bad.”
There were reports of a dozen more riots erupting across the globe as the shock revelation of Banville’s defection spread. Dakota watched a pall of smoke rising from two different sectors of the Grover camps as she stood on the flat roof of the Garrison’s East Quadrant Tower, the perimeter of which was ringed with ancient battlements. Steel and ceramic mountings for pulse weapons, which had defended Erkinning during the First Civil War, lay pitted and rusted from a century and a half of neglect.
Given the current circumstances, the celebrations surrounding Dakota’s graduation were a touch muted. Still, as the night wore on, Langley had set up his telescope as he’d promised, upon this selfsame rooftop, so they could all take a look at the new supernova sliding towards the horizon as dawn approached.
The telescope looked positively medieval to Dakota, a fat tube of gleaming copper and brass mounted on a rotating equatorial base, as if some machine-arachnid invader from beyond the known worlds were stalking the city rooftops.
“Did you say something, Dakota?” Langley peered over towards her.
She gestured upwards with her chin, indicating the supernova. “I said, I’d like to go someplace like that some day, and see what a dying star looks like up close.”
Her gaze met Aiden’s and she faltered, her pale skin flushing red as she recalled their fumbled intimacies in the dormitories.
“You’re kidding, right?” said Aiden, a touch the worse for wear from drinking. “Go visit the supernova?” he laughed, eliciting nervous chuckles from any remaining students who were still awake and hadn’t already passed out. Marlie sat cross-legged, ignoring the damp tiles under her as she fixed her attention on Langley, who in turn was fully aware of her unrequited longing. Martens’ owlish features were distracted by some personal reverie, lost to the world around him. Otterich and Spezo looked bored and tired, while the rest had since made their apologies and retired for the night. Exploding stars didn’t hold much interest for some students.
Langley himself flashed Aiden a warning look. Then he glanced over at Dakota, apparently finally satisfied with the minute adjustments he had been making to the telescope. “I share the sentiment, but the Large Magellanic Cloud is a little farther away than the Shoal are prepared to transport either you or anyone else.”
“Yeah, what is it again?” sneered Aiden. “Hundred and sixty thousand light years, right?” He flashed Dakota a grin, and she shot him back a look of pure hatred. “So we’re seeing an event from about the time the Shoal first developed faster-than-light technology. Loooong way away, yeah?”
The first supernova had appeared six years before, early in the autumn, and just a couple of days after Dakota’s sixteenth birthday. It had blossomed like cold fire, briefly one of the brightest elements in the night sky, before gradually fading out over the following weeks. Then, over the next several years, dozens more had appeared at irregular intervals, shining brightly for a few brief weeks before again fading back into stellar anonymity. And all this had occurred within a relatively tiny sector of a neighbour galaxy.
“What you’re all forgetting,” Langley told them in his soft-spoken way, “is that these novae still represent a mystery. And there’s nothing people like more than a mystery. It’s in our nature.”
He stepped back from the telescope and rested one hand gently on its glinting carapace. “Martens, since you’ve been studying the novae, why don’t you remind us of some of the background detail? What is it that’s so remarkable and unusual about them?”
Martens wasn’t entirely sober himself, and he blinked and stuttered, caught unawares by the Tutor’s potentially dangerous line of enquiry. “Uh, Sir, up until now our understanding was that most stars that go nova are part of a double-star system.” His foot kicked over an unfinished bottle of beer that sat forgotten by his foot. He reached for it, but changed his mind halfway. Dakota caught the look on Aiden’s face, and even he suddenly looked a lot more sober. “One of these stars sucks up material from its companion, and as a result you get a stellar detonation. But, as far as anyone can tell, none of these new novae were either massive enough to go nova, or even part of a double-star system.”
“And there’s also the double neutrino bursts,” Dakota added impulsively, whereupon Martens looked grateful not to have to say any more. Langley turned to her with a look of appreciation, even admiration, which made her blush.
“Deep space scanners have always recorded a neutrino surge occurring a few minutes before any visual observation is made,” she continued. “But every one of the recent Magellan novae has been preceded by a neutrino echo: not one but two bursts, separated by a few seconds, followed by the normal visual confirmation. Yet that should be impossible. Maybe a couple of novae appear every century in our own galaxy, but now there’s a couple of dozen occurring in a neighbouring galaxy made up of only a tenth as many stars as our own Milky Way. That’s in the space of a few years, and almost literally next-door to each other. It just doesn’t make sense.”
Langley grinned. “See, that’s a girl with genuine curiosity, Aiden. She likes to ask questions, while you just sit around and complain.”
There was nervous laughter from Martens, which Otterich joined in with after a moment. Aiden forced a smile as if to say You win, and Dakota suddenly found it hard to remember what it was she’d liked about him enough to let him climb on top of her not so long ago. She put it down to a combination of alcohol and the undeniable fact that he was far from unattractive.
She sighed and pulled her thoughts away from the memory of their bodies tangled together between warm sheets. It was one thing for them to climb up here on a frozen rooftop because yet another new star had appeared in the sky, but even coming close to asking the reason why could, in some quarters, lead to problems.
When those first novae had appeared, the City Elders, who ruled Erkinning and all the other cities of the Free States, had been quick to label such stellar manifestations as part of God’s Ineffable Purpose, and, therefore, not open to scientific or indeed any other kind of speculation.
The Consortium – the name by which the administrative and military body that controlled human-occupied space was known - had little interest in local politics, yet the fact remained that of Bellhaven’s several different nations, the Free States had been heavily invested in by the Consortium itself due to the remarkable advances that technicians in Erkinning and certain other Free State cities had achieved in developing Ghost technology. Under the circumstances, this clampdown on public speculation over the novae was little more than sabre-rattling: an attempt by the Elders to show they remained the real authority in Erkinning, when everyone knew otherwise.
Aiden looked grim. He had an uncle sitting on the Council of Elders, and getting involved in this kind of speculation wasn’t going to help advance his career. Dakota‘s next words came out in a rush, lest Aiden might accuse Langley of deliberately courting heresy.
“The supernovae have thrown everything we thought we knew about stellar mechanics out the window, but the Shoal won’t even discuss them, which makes everyone think they’re hiding something.”
For a moment, there was only silence, and the sound of the night wind blowing across the parapets.
“All right, then,” said Langley, unable to suppress a grin. “I brought this telescope out here for a reason. The Consortium expects a good return on its investment, so you have to understand just how much you’ll still need to learn after all your studies here are just distant memories – and by then, you won’t have to worry about the Elders telling you what you can or can’t think.”
He tapped the side of his head with one finger. “Nothing ever happens without a reason, and that includes a neighbouring galaxy lighting up like an explosion in a fireworks factory. So here’s a question to consider. Assuming some as yet unknown force has caused a considerable number of very distant stars to detonate, despite apparently lacking sufficient mass, does that suggest the same thing could eventually happen here?”
“But that’s an unanswerable question,” Aiden protested, a touch of defensiveness now apparent in his voice. “Even the Shoal’s ships would take centuries to get there and investigate, and whatever happened there, it happened when we were still swinging around in the trees back on Earth. There’s no point in speculating if we’ll never be in a position to find out the answer.”
Langley closed his eyes for a moment, and Dakota thought she heard him swear quietly under his breath. When he opened his eyes again he looked over at Dakota and motioned to her.
“Dakota, would you like to be first to take a look?”
She stepped forward, bending over to peer through the telescope’s viewfinder. Clearly, Langley hadn’t answered Aiden’s question because what he had said was true. The only reason humans had ever reached the stars had been down to the help of the Shoal. Twenty-Second Century experiments in long-distance quantum entanglement had resulted in tach-transmission, a form of instantaneous communication already long put in use by the Shoal’s vast interstellar fleets of coreships. Among all those millions of inhabited star systems, they claimed to be the only race who had developed a faster-than-light drive, and in return for a promise that humanity would never attempt to replicate this technology, mankind would be allowed to colonise other planets within a specified bubble of space approximately three hundred light years in diameter.
It was an offer that couldn’t be refused, but there had been stories and rumours of subsequent human attempts to replicate the transluminal drive, regardless of the Shoal’s original threats. But all those attempts had apparently ended in abject failure. Similarly, there was never any public admission that human governments used covert satellites and remote observation technologies to constantly observe Shoal coreships in those vital moments before they translated into transluminal space, yet it was widely believed to be the case.
Without the Shoal, therefore, there would now be no colonies, no interstellar trade, no carefully licensed alien technologies provided by the Shoal’s other client races, and certainly no original colonists to build Erkinning, the Free States, and all the other human cultures her on Bellhaven.
Without the magnanimity of the Shoal, none of this would ever have happened.
Dakota pressed closer against the telescope’s viewfinder, feeling the cool circle of plastic press against her eyebrow and cheek. Points of light then jumped into sharp contrast. Once again she was made very aware of details concerning the stars she now viewed that she couldn’t possibly have registered without the aid of her implants. But her Ghost was already learning to anticipate her desires, so the information evaporated as quickly as it had appeared.
It was true that orbital telescopes and distributed radio scanning networks were far more accurate for the business of stargazing, but there was still a visceral rush in the physical act of peering through a simple lens. It made her feel like Galileo looking at the moons of Jupiter for the first time.
“Maybe somebody blew them up,” Dakota muttered. “The Magellanic stars, I mean.”
Aiden laughed uproariously, and Dakota’s face grew hot with embarrassment.
“If you’ve got any better ideas, feel free to share,” she snapped. At that point, Marlie, clearly embarrassed by the sniping, stepped forward to take her turn in peering through the telescope.
Langley’s features had reverted to their usual granite-like impassivity, but he was doubtless taking in every word they said.
“You know, Aiden,” he spoke at last, “it’s entirely true that the Shoal have us over a barrel. There’s thousands of other species out there, we’re told, but we’ve so far only ever encountered the Bandati and one or two others. But you never know. Maybe it won’t always be that way.”
Aiden smirked, but Dakota could see he wasn’t so sure of himself anymore. “Tutor, those are dangerous words in some places,” he said quietly.
Langley’s stony features didn’t even flicker. “Then let’s just say that once you, too, realise just how many restrictions the human race labours under, then you’ll know how it feels to dream of changing the status quo. Then you’ll know how frustrating it is to get only so far, and be told you can go no further.”
“Well, it’s still far enough, isn’t it?” Aiden replied, looking slightly bewildered. “I mean,” he continued, a cocky grin now tugging up one corner of his mouth, “it’s still better than sticking around here for the rest of our lives.”
Dakota caught the look on Langley’s face, even if Aiden was oblivious to it.
“You have,” Langley muttered, each word rasping as it emerged from his throat, “a worrying lack of adventure.”
THREE
Shoal Homeworld, Perseus Arm
Consortium Standard Date: 01.02.2542
The creature’s name was Trader-in-Faecal-Matter-of Animals, and he fell from orbit, contained within a field-protected bubble of brackish fluid, towards an unending expanse of blue.
Far above him, only a very few stars shone down. The Shoal homeworld had been lost in a dense cloud of interstellar dust for almost ten millennia during its long and lonely flight, and was not expected to emerge from the other side of that another millennium at least.
The part of the homeworld towards which Trader descended was currently in day, the requisite heat and light providing life given not by the long-departed star under which Trader’s kind had first evolved, but instead by a myriad of field-suspended fusion globes arranged in a tight grid hanging some few thousand kilometres above the planet surface.
The homeworld moved alone through the vast expanse of the Milky Way, heading for the relatively empty spaces between its great spiral arms. There, at least, might be found safety from the war that would surely come one day.
Oh woe, thought Trader, as the watery surface of the homeworld approached at an alarming speed, that we should ever reach our fabled destination! His manipulator tentacles writhed under his body in an approximation of grim humour, snatching wriggling live-foods from his briny encasement and slipping them into his quivering jaws. Ten thousand years travelling and, with any luck, ten thousand years more, and another ten thousand years after that, and after that, and after …
The world of Trader’s birth was an ocean world. A long time ago there had been continents, too, but careful management of the natural tectonic system had lowered these continental surfaces until they could be safely drowned beneath the life-giving waters. Now all was ocean, forever and ever, except where carefully shaped energy fields cut great holes down through the surface of the waters: gaping abyssal spaces into which the vast pressures of the ocean yearned to plunge. These fields sliced high up into the atmosphere, generating vast areas of vacuum that led all the way down to the seabed, and even further.
It was to one of these tunnels running through the world that Trader dropped, his enormous blank eyes staring out from the skull of his piscine form, but safe within his protective briny bubble.
The ocean rushed towards Trader and then past, as the creature dropped down one of the vacuum shafts, the blue surrounding waters rapidly turning black as he descended, leaving just a bright circle of light far above to mark his point of entry.
In the fraction of a moment it took Trader to twitch one of his palpebra, he was plunged into darkness except where the occasional fusion globe hovered in defiance of the laws of nature. These lit the way into sub-aquatic portals where a Shoal-member might pass at last from deadly vacuum and into the slippery embrace of Mother Ocean.
Down, down, down. Trader fell yet further, then twisted to one side with impossible speed in his inertia-free bubble, a fusion marker reduced to a fleeting point of incandescence as he sped by it in a flash. Then he was deep within the healing waters of Mother Ocean.
This was the place where the Deep Dreamers dwelt, in unending blackness at the very bottom of the world.
The decision to remove the Shoal homeworld from its orbit around the star that had birthed it had been made long before Trader had come into existence. But Trader himself was very, very old. He had employed a thousand names but, when he came to dealing with the humans who were his current area of interest and employment, the sobriquet Trader-in-Faecal-Matter-of-Animals had seemed apposite.
It was a joke between Trader and the humans, some of whom found the honorific deeply offensive while knowing there was literally nothing they could do about it.
And neither they nor any other client race had the faintest notion of the deep rifts that ran through Shoal society. Nor would they, ever, if Trader and those of similar employ had anything to do with it.
Trader drifted further across the sandy ocean floor, where the vast watery spaces were broken into distinct regions by field projections. Vast buildings and administrative blocks grown out of ancient coral rose above the seabed like living colossi, though this was a region to which few were allowed access. Other Shoal-members darted about, following their own paths, busy in the gigantic task of administering to the Dreamers’ needs - feeding and caring for them, aeon after aeon, on and on into a future which the Dreamers had been specifically engineered to detect and analyse.
The landscape was marked by yet more fusion globes that cast a luminescence over the chillingly vast shapes scattered across the face of the abyss. The Deep Dreamers would be aware of Trader’s approach, as they were aware of so much else in their godlike capacity to see where the roots of coming events lay within the present. Trader drifted on over the edge of a precipice, and then spotted the Dreamers directly ahead, great bulbous shapes with sightless eyes, their gargantuan tentacles draped across and dwarfing the smooth hummocks of what had once been an undersea mountain range.
The land for hundreds of kilometres around the Deep Dreamers was devoted to sea farms that generated the thousands of tonnes of food necessary to feed them. Hundreds of tenders could be seen constantly roaming around the Dreamers, appearing like acolytes waiting to be consumed by vast and terrible black gods.
“If you go among the Deep Dreamers,” Trader’s superior had warned several days before, “it’s very likely an agent of the Mother Star Faction will seek to destroy you.”
They had met at an arranged rendezvous in an orbital park, a water-filled environment constructed partly from physical materials and partly from shaped energy fields. The homeworld had been visible far below, its waters wreathed in summer storms, lightning flickering across the southern hemisphere where a hurricane raged, whipping the surface waters into foam-capped waves beneath a tight curl of coriolis.
Above the atmosphere, and beyond the warming light of the fusion globes that surrounded it, the planet was ringed from longitude to latitude by glittering silver bands like a jeweller’s cage. These were manifestations of certain fundamental energies that allowed the Shoal homeworld to be guided through the depths of interstellar space, keeping as far from any neighbouring star systems as could feasibly be managed.
Trader and his superior – an ancient, leather-skinned individual known to him only as Desire-For-Violent-Rendering, a title reflecting his past involvement in the messier and bloodier affairs of government – had swum in parallel course through the public space, appearing to any casual observer as merely two ancient fish lost in their reminiscences of times long past.
“It wouldn’t be the first time they’ve tried, I assure you,” Trader had replied. His answer had been enunciated as a cascade of watery clicks generated by its secondary mouth. “I know how to handle myself.”
Desire-for-Violent-Rendering had clicked assent, but Trader could discern the other’s nervousness manifest from the way he twisted his manipulator tentacles.
“Attention has been drawn to your working methods within higher levels of government,” Desire continued. “Officially of course you are a free agent, long retired from active service. Nevertheless … ”
Nevertheless. Trader had felt a certain wry humour listening to Desire’s carefully phrased statement. Even an old murderer like Desire got the shits in Trader’s presence. But as far as Trader was concerned, given that their ultimate purpose was to guarantee the continued survival of their species against so many enemies, real and potential, any successful approach was the right approach.
“You think me amoral and careless?” Trader had replied casually. “Yet if I had not acted in the past according to my own judgement, the outcome might well have been far more terrible than some of our cadre frankly are capable of comprehending. This agent of the pro-solar faction, would its name be Squat-Devourer-Of-Enemy-Corpses, by any chance?”
Desire-For-Violent-Rendering fell silent, and Trader enjoyed a small flush of triumph at this response.
General Squat was a Shoal-member with a reputation even more terrifying than that of Desire, who had been taking charge of many a military campaign since long before many of the Shoal’s client species had been huddling around their first self-made fires. Yet Squat seemed to have grown weaker with old age, more … liberal.
At that point, Trader had shot out a tentacle and snatched up a mollusc swimming by, ripping its shell open and stuffing the contents into his primary mouth with particular force. Even thinking about Squat provoked strong feelings of anger.
“Squat is close to the truth,” Desire-For-Violent-Rendering then warned Trader. “We know the General was approached by Mother Star representatives, after making some enquiries of his own, and has since been recruited to their cause. Do not underestimate either the power or the influence that –“
“With respect, I am hardly to be underestimated myself.”
“But you are becoming careless, I think,” had been Desire’s instant reply. “You wouldn’t be the first agent to get swallowed up by his own hubris. This name you have chosen for yourself …”
“Trader-In-Faecal-Matter-Of-Animals?”
“Yes.” Desire-For-Violent-Rendering’s distaste had become clear in the writhing of his manipulator tentacles. “A joke for a name, a very human joke at that. You have, I think, spent too long around those wretched creatures. Not only that, your methodology has become eccentric, for want of a better word. As if you’re testing fate by giving those you seek to manipulate the opportunity to uncover your very manipulation. One might believe you to be suffering a certain, well, existential despair, as is not unprecedented amongst agents of the Dreamers.”
Desire had halted close to the border of a vacuum shaft, clearly waiting for a reply.
Trader’s own manipulators had writhed in amusement. “Are you suggesting I retire?”
“Perhaps not immediately,” Desire had conceded, “since the Deep Dreamers appear to confirm the central nature of your role in coming events. Do you intend to visit them soon?”
“Yes, very soon. I will … have to deal with the General, it appears.”
“If word got out of the Great Secret, of the true reason for abandoning our home star and carrying our homeworld so far from any other solar body …”
“I understand.”
Desire appeared satisfied with this reply. “It seems more than likely the General will approach you during your visit to the Dreamers, since you’re otherwise unlikely to return to the homeworld again for some time. A meeting there would be … efficacious.”
Trader had flicked his massive eyes to either side of them out of habit. A multitude of peripheral devices scattered throughout the length and breadth of the park made it clear, however, that no one was in a position to overhear anything they said to each other.
The Deep Dreamers were the result of tens of millennia of selective breeding and genetic manipulation that had resulted in creatures as near to immortal as could be imagined, even by the standards of the exceedingly long-lived Shoal. The Dreamers’ biological neural networks constituted a massive engine of quantum parallel-processing designed to navigate the chaotic foaming surf of the very near future, and thereby discern the rough shape of coming events. They could sift through near-infinite numbers of conflicting and competing quantum uncertainties, and predict where certain trends might bear fruit, or where certain historical processes might either grow in impetus or grind to a halt. They were also one of the Shoal’s very best kept secrets.
Generally, the Dreamers’ predictions produced relatively few real surprises. Trader had long known that the war they all feared was an historical inevitability, something to be postponed as long as possible rather than entirely avoided. Nevertheless, the Dreamers could often produce remarkable – if occasionally unreliable – results on a far more basic and personal level.
It was for this reason Trader-In-Faecal-Matter-Of-Animals had chosen to make this personal trip to visit the Deep Dreamers for the first time in centuries. Extremely secret communiqués had predicted his prominent role in certain worryingly apocalyptic visions recently generated by the Deep Dreamers.
Never one happy to accept information at second hand, Trader had naturally requested a direct audition with the Dreamers, in order to more accurately decipher his role in coming events.
This close to them, it would have been easy to mistake the vast undulating shapes of the Deep Dreamers for a particularly sinuous and disturbingly organic-appearing range of hills and valleys. Hills that, from time to time, moved.
Occasional tiny sparks of bright energy fizzed around the surface of Trader’s protective field bubble, as it adjusted to a soul-crushing pressure far higher than that in which Trader’s species had first evolved. Other bubbles of bright energy, each containing a Shoal-member, rose up towards Trader from the direction of the Dreamers. These were the priest-geneticists that spent their lives tending and guarding their mountainous oracles here in endless, solemn darkness.
Trader soon became aware of the presence of another, approaching him rapidly from another direction. Trader slowed, allowing General Squat-Devourer-Of-Enemy-Corpses to come parallel with him. They swam on together, progressing in the direction of the Dreamers.
“There you are!” cried the General with forced joviality. “Trader-In-Faecal-Matter-Of-Animals, eh?” His manipulators rattled together with a series of clicking sounds, the Shoal equivalent of raucous laughter.
Trader suffered a momentary frisson of panic. Could the approaching priest-geneticists be fully trusted in their imminent dealings with the General? They were all, supposedly, insiders, loyal to Desire-For-Violent-Rendering’s decision to suppress the unpalatable truth from the likes of General Squat.
But what if Desire had in fact already betrayed Trader? What if Desire’s warning about Trader’s working methods had really been a kind of ultimatum?
What if? What if?
Trader scolded himself even for such a momentary lapse of faith. If death came this day, he would die with the knowledge he had served the Shoal Hegemony far longer than most. There was grace and nobility in that thought for, after all, the notion of dying a natural death seemed preposterous.
And if not this day, then he would die on another. So be it.
Trader ceased his worrying. He cast a sideways glance at Squat, noting what an ugly brute the General was, his scaly hide scarred and weather-beaten. One eye – albeit easily repairable – was milky-white and blind, with a visible rent in its surface. A formidable opponent indeed, but Trader had faced worse.
General Squat rammed his field bubble into Trader’s, and the water around them boiled as their energies clashed. Trader rapidly skipped his protective field away from the General, taking a moment to realise Squat was not in fact attempting to kill him.
“General –“
“Caught you there, eh?” The General came rushing back up, ancillary mouth snapping and tentacles writhing. “Need to stay sharp! Never know when you might get a knife between the fins.”
“And you, General,” Trader was regaining some of his composure, “what brings you to the Deep Dreamers?”
“Well, you see, the future’s been rather on my mind of late too,” Squat replied.
At this comment, Trader kept his tentacles noncommittally bundled.
Something very like a human shrug rippled across the General’s scarred exterior. “There are rumours … very dark rumours, my friend.”
“I had no idea,” Trader replied.
“I hate to listen to unfounded gossip, but you’d be amazed the things that are presently being muttered in some very high-ranking circles.”
“Such as?”
Trader cast a sideways glance at his companion. They were close enough now to the Dreamers to see the sheer scale of the beasts; each tentacle-sucker could easily consume a hundred Shoal-members all at once. They were deep within the Dreamer’s influence now, caught in the eddying tide of the very near future, even as it prepared to crash into the present.
“Well, I wouldn’t care to elaborate,” Squat replied in a conspiratorial tone. “And if I did, I might subsequently be forced to kill you.” The General’s tentacles swirled around with humourless mirth.
“I have heard rumours myself,” Trader replied, “that the Dreamers all predict a war is coming.”
“Yes!” The General seized upon this. “Now don’t get me wrong, war is a wonderful thing - in the right context, with the right enemy, and as long as you win. But these rumours, they concern an unwinnable war, as preposterous as that notion seems. Unwinnable?”
“Perhaps some of our associates have been talking too freely, General. It really wouldn’t do to frighten the ordinary population.”
“Indeed,” the General replied.
Trader glanced ahead and noticed the priest-geneticists were almost upon them.
“Have you heard about old Rigor-Mortis?” asked Squat. “Dead, I’m afraid.”
“Is that so?”
Trader failed to conceal his surprise. Rigor-Mortis had long been a prime mover amongst those who, like Trader, were privy to the Great Secret.
“Yes. Rigor gave himself to the Dreamers not so long ago, apparently unable to bear the burden of some preposterous secret he had carried all his life. Or so the old fool told me, before he became voluntary squid food.”
“I see. And what might this secret be?”
“Preposterous nonsense, obviously. But I wanted to ask you about it, considering you were close pals with old Rigor for, oh, so many centuries. He claimed he knew the real reason we’ve been fleeing our own sun for so long. What he said was – remarkable. Of course, if you were to lend credence to such stories, it would raise rather a whole slew of other questions, wouldn’t it?”
Trader steeled himself. “I wouldn’t know, General. What secret? Which questions?”
“Officially, the decision to remove our world from the original home system was due to inherent instabilities within our own star, which were likely to result in particularly destructive solar flares. Correct?”
“This is old news, General.”
“For this reason,” Squat blithely continued, “we have since been travelling through the eternal darkness of space at a sublight crawl for millennia. Yet there are plenty of viable and stable star systems we could have guided our world toward before now. But we haven’t done so. Why?”
“General –“
The General ignored Trader and continued. “Yet we continue eternally on this quixotic quest, believing misguidedly that it wouldn’t possibly occur to any of the tens of billions of Shoal-members living today that this story doesn’t hold up nearly as well as a bucket of fish guts on the sunniest day of the year. Otherwise, why would the Mother Star Faction have gathered so much support for the idea of simply finding a viable star and going there! And then, of course, there remains the question of why we don’t simply construct the biggest transluminal drive in the galaxy, and just fly this bloody great mudball to some other perfectly compatible star in an instant. Oh, so many questions, my dear Trader. And yet old Rigor seemed remarkably certain he had all the real answers.”
“General, Rigor believed in a lot of things, but his mind became increasingly addled since he was forced to retire. You’ll recall he was captured in some middle-of-nowhere conflict and came very close to being made into a stew.”
“Be that as it may, everything the General told me made perfect sense. And don’t keep trying to play the innocent, Trader. Your own name turned up often enough during his confessions.”
Trader sighed inwardly, and mentally prepared himself to murder General Squat at the nearest convenient moment. Now, however, it would have to listen to his idiotic heresies for a few minutes more, until the priest-geneticists were close enough for Trader to flash them the prearranged signal.
Squat continued in his blustering way. “Remarkable, Rigor’s revelations, particularly his suggestion that our faster-than-light-technology was in fact stolen from another species.“
“General, would you really see the Shoal Hegemony collapse after half a million years? Is that what you’re seeking? Would you still be proud of giving away the secrets of some dried-out old idiot too tired of life to stick around to see what damage he could do before he died?”
“Of course not. The days of our earliest interstellar travels are now long ago and half-forgotten. And, as we know, what few records still exist are sketchy at best. Yet he didn’t stop there. According to Rigor, the transluminal technology has other uses so remarkable that possessing the knowledge of it would alone entirely explain our long flight from the home star …“
The dozen priest-geneticists, in their bright, colour-coded pressurised bubbles, were almost upon them, feigning as if to pass on by in the opposite direction. Trader watched the General glance towards them, and struggled not to do the same.
“All right, General, tell me what your price is. Please don’t tell me it’s anything as banal as power and influence. I’d be disappointed.”
“Half a million years of unbroken rule would hardly become unbalanced by a more candid attitude towards our fellow citizens,” came Squat’s immediate reply. “If the Mother Star Faction’s demands can’t be met, then at least give them a reasonable explanation of why they can’t.”
“That won’t happen, General. Those to whom I answer will have none of it.”
“Then you’re facing the risk of revolution, Trader-In-Faecal-Matter-Of-Animals,” came General Squat’s immediate reply. “Now that I think of it, perhaps your chosen ambassadorial name sounds more appropriate than I realised. Most Shoal-members live far from the homeworld, but they would all rather see it orbiting securely around a stable star than lost forever in a frozen dust cloud. Otherwise …”
Otherwise, what? was Trader’s unvoiced reply. It was clear the General was not going to listen to reason.
“Otherwise,” General Squat concluded after a pause, “others like me will be sure to disseminate the truth - particularly if anything drastic were to happen to me.”
Trader gave the signal. Suddenly the dozen priest-geneticists came rushing forward. Their energy bubbles flashed as they collided with the General’s, while Trader himself retreated to a safe distance.
Thirteen balls of coloured light suddenly merged into one, with General Squat caught in the middle. The priest-geneticists now fell on the old warrior-fish, their tentacles ready-tipped with diamond-edged blades. The General fought valiantly, but he was old, and had been taken by surprise.
Your agents, dear General, are compromised, Trader thought to himself. Squat’s plans stank of rank amateurism.
It was over so quickly. After a few moments the priest-geneticists fell away from the General’s ripped-up corpse, which began spiralling down towards the seabed, preceded by a field disruptor weapon the old fool had kept concealed about his person.
“Feed the General’s remains to the Dreamers,” Trader instructed one of the priests, a near-albino known as Keeper-Of-Intimate-Secrets-Of-The-Unwittingly Compromised. “They can enjoy his memories.”
Keeper blinked his massive eyes at this request. “If we submit the General’s remains to the Deep Dreamers, his once-conscious matrix will merge with and further inform the Dreamers. The memory of what has happened here would survive and, so long as it remains within the matrix of the Dreamers, what he knew at the time of his death might be rediscovered by others.”
Trader sighed, emitting a long stream of bubbles. “And it is your duty to sift through, interpret and censor such information as it comes to light, is it not? Rigor-Mortis gave himself to the Deep Dreamers precisely because he believed the truth would emerge just as you describe, and it’s your duty to ensure this never happens. Is that understood?”
“Understood, yes,” the priest-geneticist replied, with a rapid string of clicks.
“Very good. Now take me to the Deep Dreamers.”
For some reason, some of the priests – including Keeper-Of-Secrets – appeared to regard Trader as almost as much of an oracle as the Deep Dreamers themselves.
“And you truly believe the war to end all wars is upon us?” Keeper-Of-Secrets asked yet again, as General Squat’s body was delivered to the vast spirochetes of the nearest of the Dreamers.
Trader’s reply was dismissive. “What the Dreamers tell us is … well, it’s rarely conclusive, is it? Sometimes, sad to say, it’s even useless.”
Keeper was clearly scandalised by this suggestion, but Trader blithely continued. “Instead the Dreamers give us clues vague enough to appear to mean one thing, then turn out to have a wildly different interpretation once it’s too late to influence the course of events. Keeper, I think we rely on them too much. They’re just a convenience the Hegemony can point to so they can abdicate from all responsibility for their own actions. Look, they just say the Deep Dreamers predicted this, and the outcome was inevitable, whatever they might have done.”
Trader flicked his tentacles in a shrug. “So ultimately that means an unfortunate few like myself are forced to take on responsibility for what must be done, and divert the flow of history.”
“Perhaps, but it must be …” Keeper hesitated.
“Continue.”
“I’m afraid of speaking out of turn.”
“You have my permission.”
“It strikes me as a lonely and thankless occupation,” Keeper-Of-Secrets continued. “So few are permitted to know that such as yourself must manipulate events throughout the galaxy for the general benefit of our species. Yet, since such manipulations are based on the Dreamer’s own predictions, and you appear not to think highly of the Dreamers …”
“I couldn’t live with myself, if I thought any inaction on my part led to our destruction,” Trader replied. “So, you see, to act is morally unavoidable, whatever the source of the intelligence.”
They had by now almost reached the first of the Dreaming Temples – a hovering robot submarine that granted the privileged few the means to interface directly with the Dreamers.
Trader made his farewells to his new partners in murder before finally slipping into the wet embrace of the temple. The machine’s innards opened up automatically at his approach, mechanical mandibles reaching out and securing his field bubble, which merged on contact with the temple’s own energy fields.
Trader found himself in absolute darkness, greater even than that prevailing beyond the Temple’s hull. This hiatus lasted only seconds, however, before the temple made contact with the Dreamer’s collective consciousness.
From Trader’s point of view, it felt very much as if his mind had expanded to encompass the entire galaxy within a matter of seconds.
Powerful images and sensations assailed his mind, far stronger than those faint intimations he had sensed on his journey here. He witnessed a hundred stars blossoming in deadly fire across the greater night of the Milky Way, a wave of bright destruction unparalleled in all of Shoal history, outside of the Great Expulsion, and he felt sickening despair.
This was the worst possible outcome: a seething wave of carnage sweeping the Shoal Hegemony into dusty history. To become a had-been and never-would-be-again civilisation, forgotten in the annals of the greater history of the cosmos.
Even so, hope could still be detected even in the face of apparently unavoidable doom. Over the next few hours, working within the Temple, Trader was able to identify potential key factors: individuals, places and dates that might well influence the initiation of the conflict.
And even if war could not be prevented, it might still be reduced in the scale of its destructive impact. With gentle manipulation, it might even be contained, rendered harmless: turned into a historical footnote rather than a final chapter.
Sometimes, Trader had found, fate really did lie in the hands of a few sentients such as himself.
He began to make plans to ensure he would always be present in the right places to witness – and influence – these pivotal events. And perhaps even divert them away from an astonishingly destructive war that otherwise threatened to erase life from the galaxy.
FOUR
Trans-Jovian Space, Sol System
The Present
Warm, naked, her muscles tense with anticipation, Dakota floated in the cocoon warmth of the Piri Reis and waited for the inevitable.
Ever since she’d departed Sant’Arcangelo, the ship had gone crazy at precise thirteen-hour intervals: lights dimmed, communications systems scrambled and rebooted, and even her Ghost circuits suffered a brief dose of amnesia, while heavy, bulkhead-rattling vibrations rolled through the hull.
Every incidence was worse than the last. And every time it happened, Dakota thought of jettisoning the unknown contents of her cargo hold, only to end up reminding herself just why that was a really bad idea.
Twenty seconds to go. She put down her rehydrated black bean soup and flicked a glance in the direction of the main console. Streams of numbers and graphs appeared in the air, along with the image of a clock counting down the last few seconds. She stared at the numbers, feeling the same flood of despair she’d felt every other time this disruption had happened.
Deliver the cargo. Ignore any alerts. Don’t interfere with either the cargo bay or its contents. That’s what Dakota had been instructed, and that was exactly what she intended to do.
Absolutely.
“Piri,” she said aloud, “tell me what’s causing this.”
–I’m afraid I can’t–, the ship replied in tireless response to a question she’d already asked a dozen times, –without violating the terms of your current contract. Would you like me to analyse the contents of the cargo bay anyway?–
Yes. “No.” This wasn’t the way her life was meant to work out. “Just leave it.”
The clock hit zero, and a sonorous, grating vibration rolled through the cabin. Floating ‘alert’ messages stained the air red. Meanwhile her Ghost implants made it eminently clear the source of the vibrations was the cargo bay. “Alerts off,” she snapped.
Everything went dark.
Piri?
No answer.
Oh crap. Dakota waited several more seconds, feeling a rush of cold up her spine. She tried calling out to the ship again, but it didn’t respond.
She felt her way across the command module in absolute darkness, guided by the technological intuition her Ghost implants granted her, pulling herself along solely by her hands, while her feet floated out behind her. The bulkheads and surfaces were all covered with smooth velvet and fur that was easy to grip. Cushions, meal containers and pieces of discarded clothing span in eddies created by her passage, colliding with her suddenly and unavoidably in the darkness.
The only sound Dakota could hear was her own panicked breathing, matched by the adrenaline thud of her heart. Convinced the life support was about to collapse, she activated her filmsuit. It spilled out of her skin from dozens of artificial pores, a flood of black ink that cocooned and protected her inside her own liquid spacesuit, growing transparent over her eyes so as to display the darkened space around her in infrared.
Instrument panels glowed eerily with residual heat, and she saw hotspots where her naked flesh had touched heat-retaining surfaces, making it easier for her mind to wander into fantasies of being trapped on a deserted, haunted ship.
She found herself at the rear of the command module. Three metres behind her lay its cramped sleeping quarters, two metres to the right, the head. Nine metres in any direction, the infinity of space beyond the hull. She ducked aft, into the narrow access tube leading to the overrides.
–Piri?–
She tried switching to a different comms channel but still couldn’t get an answer.
“Fucking asshole Quill,” she shouted into the darkness, her fear rapidly transmuting into anger. At least her Ghost circuits were still functioning: she let them flood her brain with empathogens and phenylethylamine, brightening her mood and keeping outright terror at bay.
Dakota started to breathe more easily. It was only a minor emergency, an easily fixable systems fault. She soon found the first of several manual override switches and punched it a lot harder than necessary. Emergency lights flickered on, and a single klaxon alert began to sound from the direction of the command module. The life support, however, remained resolutely inactive.
One thing she was certain of. Whatever the source of her present troubles, it was surely within the cargo bay.
“I can’t take that kind of chance,” Dakota had warned Quill several days earlier.
The asteroid Sant’Arcangelo’s central commercial complex was visible through the panoramic window filling one wall of the shipping agent’s office. Vehicles slid constantly along cables slung across between the two sides of a mountainous crack cutting deep into the crust of the Shoal-boosted asteroid. Birds flew in dizzy flocks through air so thick and honeyed you could almost drink it, while trees sprouted from slopes as broken and jagged as they’d been on the day of creation. On either side, both slopes were festooned with buildings and shopping complexes that literally hung suspended from tens of thousands of unbreakable cables crisscrossing the enormous void.
Just a few hundred metres above this city of Roke’s Folly, the narrow wrapping of atmosphere ceased abruptly at the perimeter of the containment field wrapped around Sant’Arcangelo. Beyond that lay the cold wastes of the asteroid belt.
“Dakota.” When he spoke, Quill combined all the verbal qualities of a stern teacher and a favourite uncle. “There is no risk involved. What could be simpler? My client loads an unspecified cargo into your ship. You fly your ship to Bourdain’s Rock, where you then allow my client to retrieve his cargo and go on his way. Where’s the risk in that?”
Quill shook his head, apparently incredulous. “Look. If it weren’t for the fact I’m not a pilot with a reputation as good as yours used to be, I’d do the job myself.” He moved over from where he’d been standing next to the window, and sat down opposite Dakota. “So tell me how it’s ‘taking a chance’.”
She stared at Quill and laughed. “For a start, you can stop pretending I don’t know that we’re talking about Alexander Bourdain himself. I know things about Bourdain that would make the hair stand up and creep off your head. I’ve dealt with him a couple of times before, and I’d rather take my chances stark naked in a cage full of hungry wolves. And, on top of this, I won’t even know what it is I’ll be delivering to him?” Dakota shook her head. “Gangsters like Bourdain –“
“Wrong,” Quill interrupted. “He’s not a gangster.” He glanced back towards the window, momentarily hiding his face from her. “All those charges were dropped, remember?”
She wanted to take Quill by the throat and ram his head against the window behind him. It took an extreme effort of will not to start shouting at him. “Well, I heard how one witness died mysteriously in an accident, and by remarkable coincidence all the others changed their testimony within a couple of days of that. Excuse me if I don’t feel totally convinced.”
Quill returned his gaze to her briefly. Then he walked over to the door of his office and opened it. “You, I think, need to get some trust into your life.” He gestured her out of the door with his head. “Or are you telling me you don’t need this job so badly anymore?”
“Shut that door. I haven’t changed my mind.”
Quill closed the door and went to stand over her, arms folded. Just then Dakota felt like she’d never hated anyone more in her whole life. “But it’s … it’s too much of a risk shipping something when I don’t even know what it is I’m delivering. That’s just asking for trouble!”
Quill pursed his lips. “You’ve still got some time to think about it: another eight hours before they need a definite answer. Though I should add, he’s … my client is in a hurry to finalise arrangements. Maybe I’d be better off getting someone else to -”
Dakota shook her head, suddenly weary. She was just making a fool of herself pretending to Quill she might have any choice. If she didn’t do this job for Quill, she’d forfeit her ship the Piri Reis to him. He’d been responsible for acquiring much of the highly illegal counter-surveillance and black ops equipment now installed on the vessel, and Dakota still owed him for that equipment.
“No. I’ll do it.”
“Maybe I’ll -“
“No.”
“All right, then.” Quill nodded and sat down again behind the low marble desk from where he did much of his business. “We won’t need to worry too much about official channels, since I’ll be providing a manifest detailing something entirely innocuous.“
“Don’t,” she said sharply, cutting Quill off. “Just leave it. Load the cargo, tell the Consortium whatever you like, and just let me do the job. I don’t want to know anything more than I absolutely have to. I don’t even want to be having this conversation.”
Quill gazed at her blankly for a moment, then a small smile twitched at one corner of his mouth.
“You know, you wouldn’t be stuck like this if you hadn’t messed up that job out at Corkscrew. Way I heard it, you were lucky the Bandati didn’t dump you in a hive and feed you to their grubs. They like doing that kind of thing, I hear.”
“I delivered – but the people I was delivering to tried to kill me rather than pay me.” Dakota’s voice rose in pitch. “I’m a machine-head, yes, but I’m not a fucking psychic. I didn’t know what they were going to try.”
“Shame Bourdain’s now got you running jobs like this as penance, I guess.” Quill smiled, watching Dakota rage in impotent silence, then gave her the details.
“Okay, you’re going to have to rendezvous with another ship at these coordinates …”
A few minutes after the Piri Reis’s systems had ceased functioning, Dakota stepped into space and secured herself using intelligent lanyards. These snaked out of a belt she wore around her waist, and embedded themselves in the hull, constantly retracting and shooting out again to attach to a new point as she pushed herself on around the hull in the direction of the cargo bay.
She was still getting used to the filmsuit she’d stolen from the Bandati during her visit to Corkscrew. It coated her naked flesh just like a thick layer of dark chocolate, protecting her from the vacuum and radiation just millimetres from her skin. It smoothed out her features, making her appear, to any potential observer, like an animated doll. Her lungs were stilled, their function temporarily arrogated to microscopic battery units she’d had implanted in her spinal column. She was, in effect, a one-woman spaceship, though there was a clear limit to just how long the suit would keep functioning before the batteries needed recharging.
But if by some miracle this trip to the Rock worked out, it would have been worth the deception – and worth her botching the Corkscrew delivery.
The vibrations had faded by the time Dakota exited the ship. But when her Ghost suddenly fired a pulse of nervous attentiveness into the middle of her thoughts, she braced automatically, and a moment later the ship had jerked hard enough to propel her away from the hull. She drifted a couple of metres away before the lanyards roughly yanked her back.
That’s it, she thought. Screw Quill, and screw Bourdain. I’m going in to look.
She found her way to the cargo bay’s external airlock. The crew of the ship she’d rendezvoused with for the pickup had spent a busy hour installing security devices inside the cargo bay, while she herself waited inside the command module.
Dakota reached up and pulled the manual override key, which she wasn’t supposed to possess, off of the narrow wire she’d loosely strung around her neck. Bourdain’s installed security was good – the best money could buy – but it was off-the-shelf, and could be circumvented.
She adjusted her position, tightening the lanyard until her feet were firmly planted on the hull, and with one hand took hold of one of the hand-grips extending from the airlock door, still clutching the key in her other hand. She held this position for a minute, recalling her conversation with Quill, thinking about the risk she was about to put herself at.
If I do this and Bourdain finds out, losing the money and the Piri’ll be the least of my problems. Maybe it’s not worth it.
She reached out with the override key, and paused again.
But then again, I have no idea what it is I’m transporting. What if those vibrations get worse? What if it’s something that could destroy the Piri itself?
She tried to imagine a new life without the Piri Reis, her only home for several years now, and found she couldn’t.
One more time she reached out with the key. One more time she paused.
On the other hand, with the life-support apparently irretrievably down, she couldn’t even hide in the Piri’s medbox until she made it to the Rock, nor would her filmsuit last long enough to keep her alive in the meantime. Her only other option was the tiny one-man lifeboat she always kept on board, but it also had limited air and battery power.
Fuck that, she thought, and started to insert the key, just as she felt a familiar tingling at the top of her spine.
–Dakota?–
Piri?!
She froze, the key still poised in one hand. For a moment she thought she’d only imagined the ship’s voice inside her mind. A wave of exhausted relief flooded through her.
Piri, what happened to you? You were out of contact for, for –
–Approximately twenty minutes, Dakota. Life-support systems have been reactivated. I have no records relating to the downtime.–
Dakota let go of the key. Then her eyes closed for several moments behind their slippery film, and she sent out a fervent prayer to no one in particular. It was over.
Aboard the Piri, she lowered the lights and crawled exhausted into her sleeping space. She’d have to clean up before disembarking onto the Rock. That meant goodbye to now familiar body odour: regular hygiene was easy to forget in the long, lonely weeks between departure and arrival. She barely noticed the random detritus of her hermetical existence that now floated in free-fall throughout the living space, even drawing a kind of comfort from it.
As so often these days, loneliness and depression swept over Dakota, lying alone in the dark. The ship’s soft fur felt warm under her skin, yet something was missing.
It didn’t take long for the Piri to respond to her unspoken need.
She was facing the wrong way to see a familiar shape detach itself from one wall, but she could imagine it easily. A tall, warm-bodied effigy of a man, its face as smooth and bland as its artificial flesh, its machine eyes imbued with fake emotion.
In the dim red light seeping through from the command module, she saw the silhouette of its smooth curved buttocks as it kneeled over her, soft moist lips kissing her gently on her naked belly.
“Dakota?”
Her ship spoke to her through the lips of the effigy. It had soft brown hair, almost indistinguishable from the real thing. Cables like umbilicals ran from its spine and into the wall-slot where it spent most of its existence - her ship made flesh.
She was so used to it now, it was beginning to feel natural.
“Dakota, your nervous system is again flooded with high-grade Samadhi neural boosters. Perhaps you are over-indulging -“
“Don’t lecture me, Piri.” Dakota smiled, both her thoughts and body warm and fuzzy.
“Yes, Dakota. However, it does concern me that –“
That I’m not dealing properly with my past. Dakota felt a surge of anger, but it was soon gone ¨under a flood of neurochem that washed the bad feelings away. If you were really intelligent and not just doing a remarkable imitation of sentience, I’d –
Dakota wasn’t sure what she would do, but it would be mean. Mean and nasty. She smiled as she felt the effigy press down on her, warm and hot and almost indistinguishable from the real thing in the warm dark.
EXCERPT ENDS 
