Stealing Light

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 She felt numb, withdrawn, while Gardner and Arbenz chatted quietly together in their seats.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.]

‹Dakota, I have placed a block on 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-

‹Miss Merrick,› Piri Beta replied. ‹Delightful harmoniousness in multiple greetings. Trumpeting of delight at reacquaintance after many adventures.›

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.

‹It was the simplest challenge: to integrate my ethereal self within the confines of a bauble, a trinket gifted by this one to your most estimable self, in preparation and expectation of this journey of journeys, this laudable search for that which must not be discovered, the purest of fires, the most essential of knowledge, most precious, oh yes, to us, your silver-finned friends.

‹Thence, from the confines of said bauble within which a representational mirror of my soul was encoded, complete with the finest qualities particular to this individual, it was a simple matter of transference once more to the far greater realms of this ocean of thought and steel, the 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?

‹My systems are far more secure than those of the Hyperion,› her ship replied.

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

‹It is attempting to trace a physical location for the Piri Reis,› it continued. ‹However, we remain effectively invisible to outside forces bar direct visual observation by any crew.›

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.

Mental processes of near infinite complexity had been magically compressed into the tiniest of virtual environments, entirely equivalent to taking a Deep Dreamer and squeezing it down until it occupied barely the same space as an amoeba. Such limitations prevented the digitized Trader from feeling regret that its existence was by necessity a brief affair.

To destroy the derelict and the transluminal drive within by conventional means would be to risk detection, for Shoal monitoring networks within transluminal space existed precisely to detect the complex radiations thereby produced.

And that would never do. The subsequent investigation would certainly lead to unanticipated and deeply embarrassing revelations concerning long-hidden factions within the Hegemony, for whom Trader was the prime mover when it came to dirty work.

And that would really never do.

Far, far better that the greater masses of Shoal throughout the galaxy never learned the truth contained within the derelict-never learned of the great and terrible crime that had been committed so very long ago, albeit for the highest and noblest of reasons. The destruction of the last survivors of an entire civilization-of even the knowledge of that civilization’s existence was far from a minor consideration.

The Deep Dreamers had indicated that something of great and future significance lay in the near future, and clearly the derelict now took centre stage. And this despite the fact that other copies of Trader existed in other places, monitoring other, potential near-future causal hotspots-a way of spreading the bet, as it were.

Clearly, however, the Dreamers had been on the money where Dakota was concerned.

Trader’s purpose was to ensure her actions, and those of the Freehold, did not affect the security and stability of the Shoal Hegemony. The future was to a certain degree predictable-but it was most certainly not immutable.

Corso found himself wondering what it would be like to live entirely in a world without shadows. The Hyperion’s simulations hadn’t come close to the maddening reality: every surface here was illuminated to an equal degree, still with no apparent source for that radiation.

At one point, by way of experimentation, he squatted on his haunches and tried to block out the all-pervading light by tucking his head in against his chest and covering his head with his arms. It worked to a certain extent, but he quickly came to realize there was a… a misty quality to the derelict’s atmosphere, which suggested some form of luminous gas all around them. That theory might have made sense if the air piped into the derelict via the Freehold’s filtration system remained visibly luminescent outside the ship itself, but as soon as you stepped beyond the hull and into the tunnel leading to the submersible, the luminescence vanished.

It was strangely like entering a dream world.

‘According to the map, we’ve now gained access to almost two-thirds of the derelict,’ said Kieran, watching Corso as he worked. ‘Are we getting any closer yet to locating the bridge?’

‘You’re assuming there is any equivalent of a bridge,’ Corso replied. ‘Even the Shoal don’t appear to have anything like the human equivalent. Far as anyone knows, they just float around in a central space according to some ancient shoaling instinct, and issue commands according to social protocols we know almost nothing about.’

‘Then there’ll be a hub, at least, one or more central points from where the ship can be controlled.’ Kieran sounded like he’d stubbornly made his mind up.

Corso sighed and returned to his work, making minute physical adjustments to the interface chair’s neural circuitry. Kieran, along with the Senator, appeared to believe flying the damn fossil out of the Nova Arctis system in a blaze of glory was merely a matter of applying a can-do attitude.

One adjustment in particular seemed to make a difference: a minor tweak to improve the rate of dataflow between the human and alien software configurations, but one glance at a handheld screen he’d plugged into the chair suggested he’d turned a spigot and let loose a waterfall.

Corso took one look at the level of activity flowing through the walls around them and felt his heart skip a beat.

He bent down to pick up the toolkit he’d left lying next to the interface chair. Just as he was about to lay his hand on it, it slid away from him, slowly at first, then faster. Dumbfounded, he watched it slither across the pale, marble-like floor, and almost lost his balance when the floor unexpectedly seesawed under his feet.

He saw Kieran staring back at him from across the room, mute with surprise. The floor regained its former stability, but only for a moment. Now it was beginning to tilt.

Corso’s immediate thought was that the derelict was about to slide into the abyss. His terror of the abyssal depths far below them hit hard, and he moaned in terror. He grabbed on to one leg of the interface chair for purchase.

The ship continued to tilt. Kieran dropped to his knees and slid helplessly into a corner of the room, along with several random pieces of equipment Corso had kept scattered around him while he worked on the interface. Fortunately the technical team who had installed the chair had bolted it to the floor. Corso scrambled to get purchase on one of the chair legs, but lost it, tumbling down hard next to Kieran.

Then he realized the tilting was limited to the room they were in. They both gaped in stunned amazement towards the entrance.

They had both ditched their gel suits in the corridor outside. These, along with a stack of hardcopy data left behind by the surface base’s technical staff, resolutely refused to slide away or otherwise become affected by the tilting effect.

That seemed bad enough-but then monsters started coming out of the walls.

An alert via the Hyperion’s ground link manifested as a tickling sensation in the back of Dakota’s throat.

She’d been floating in the silence and dark of her own ship for the better part of an hour, the Piri Reis’s effigy-form having since disappeared once more back into its wall-niche. Her mind at first had been full of thoughts of revenge, but these had given way in the end to icy determination.

Their treatment of her, she realized, was partly because they were afraid of her. It was good that they were afraid of her.

After a while, she sank into a kind of Ghost-induced machine meditation, a near-vegetative state, her consciousness set adrift and only peripherally aware of the constant flow of maintenance routines keeping the Hyperion running.

As she half-dreamed, images slipped by her mind’s eye, mostly incomprehensible. She recalled the brief moment of connection she’d felt with whatever lived deep inside the derelict’s stacks. Even her Ghost was struggling to assimilate or make sense of that intense, overwhelming flood of sensory data. But understanding was nevertheless coming, albeit slowly.

She came to full awareness as the alert signal became more urgent, demanding her attention. She kept her conscious mind at one remove while her Ghost handled the situation, working at machine-speed in a familiar, occasionally disturbing anticipation of her own thoughts and actions.

Something significant was happening on board the derelict: the energy output from its systems was growing exponentially. It was, Dakota realized with awe, channelling through its hull bursts of energy so vast they might more typically be associated with solar flares.

It became rapidly clear that any contact with the personnel on the derelict had been lost. Dakota hesitated for long seconds. Arbenz was likely already aware of the situation developing, but if he wasn’t, he would punish her for failing to pass on what her machine-senses were now telling her.

What, exactly, to do?

A moment later that decision was out of her hands. Automated systems were already spreading the alert to the surface base, as well as to the Agartha.

‹There are very unusual graviton fluctuations taking place beneath the ice,› Piri Alpha informed her, emanating from within the derelict…›

She next became aware that orbit-to-ground drop-ships were being powered up on board the Agartha, for the Hyperion’s sister ship had a full complement of crew. Dakota pulled up a live feed displaying the subsurface ridge on which the derelict rested. Nothing there appeared out of the ordinary. It looked as peaceful, as quiet, and as dead as it had when she had first set eyes on it.

But something was in there. She didn’t know if it was something alive, but it was certainly aware of her. Even from orbit, she could sense it, like some ancient beast padding just beyond the reach of a campfire’s light.

Even from this far, she knew it wanted something from her. Just what, precisely, she couldn’t yet begin to guess.

‹Dakota, I am picking up encrypted communiquйs from the Agartha. An initial scan of their contents post-decryption suggests they may be important. Would you like to see them?›

Please, Piri.

The wall framing the entrance had now become a ceiling, putting any chance of escape far out of their reach. The interface chair stuck out from what had been the floor, but had now become a wall. Kieran and Corso stood next to each other, panting heavily: only a few seconds had passed since the gravity had flipped.

Corso could feel it beginning to shift again. His stomach churned with nausea as his senses grappled to cope with these sudden shifts. Now, the surface under them-until very recently itself a wall-slowly tilted towards the far corner.

Corso scrabbled at the wall underfoot, but it was hopeless. The material from which the derelict was constructed offered little purchase.

Random pieces of equipment began to slide at first slowly, then faster, into a far corner. The entrance still remained resolutely out of reach far above.

Corso became aware of a low hum, slowly building in pitch and volume, which rapidly became a bone-rattling vibration. A tiny part of his mind that remained calm speculated that they’d set off some kind of alarm.

The second flip, when it came, was as sudden and unexpected as the first. The wall on which they crouched suddenly became the top of a hollow cube, with the entrance to their right, but still far out of reach.

They fell, dropping like stones from one side of the room to the other.

Corso hit hard enough to stun him, but Kieran had less luck. He collided heavily with the interface chair, before tumbling on down to land next to Corso like a broken doll.

The entrance was still out of reach above their heads. Corso tried desperately to think of some way to get to it…

Things were emerging out of the walls, floor and ceiling, whose pale surfaces had begun to swirl. It was as if they had become transparent enough to reveal a liquid in different shades of cream flowing and ebbing beneath.

Then the surface of the wall furthest above them began to warp, extruding long, curving spines that began to weave like time-lapse films of plants growing. These and other, unidentifiable, shapes, that Corso couldn’t help but interpret as malevolent.

Kieran coughed and shifted groggily, and then his eyes flickered open. He put a hand to his chest and winced.

‘The next time the room starts shifting,’ Corso told him, ‘do exactly what I say.’

‘What do you mean?’ Kieran stared at him.

‘The first time the room flipped, it dropped us into that corner,’ Corso said, pointing upwards. ‘Then into this corner. It’s too early to really guess if there’s a pattern to the way it flips, but there’s a chance, if it happens again, it’ll land us this time on the same wall as the entrance.’

They didn’t have to wait long to find out.

The intervening seconds passed in silence amid an awful, growing tension. The surface on which they lay then began to ripple gently, and Corso choked back his urge to scream when he felt something tendril-like brush against the inside of his thigh.

Then their tools and equipment once again began to slip away…

The world tipped again, but in the direction Corso had hoped. As they tumbled downwards, Corso aimed himself towards the entrance, knowing the opening would remain out of reach, a few metres above them, if he didn’t make it -

He landed hard, the impact knocking the wind out of him. But he had managed to get a grip on the jamb of the doorway, and clung on for all his life. After a few moments he managed to pull himself up and hook an arm fully over the edge, reaching down into the corridor beyond. The gel suits looked like they’d been glued into place, an affront to his already shattered sense of gravity.

A moment later an awful, lurching weight began to pull him back into the room, and he realized Kieran was hauling himself over his body to reach the entrance.

‘Stay right where you are, Corso, and hold on tight,’ Kieran grunted.

The pain Corso felt was indescribable, and he felt his hold beginning to slip.

He glanced back down into the room and saw the walls, floor and ceiling had transformed into a mass of waving spines that made him think of sea anemones. He moaned, which became a grunt of pain as Kieran pulled himself right over him before falling back out into the corridor.

For a sickening moment Corso wondered if the other man was going to leave him there. But a moment later Kieran, now standing firmly upright in the corridor, grabbed his shoulders and heaved him out.

Corso felt his own weight shift as he fell into a normal-looking corridor that, until a moment ago, his senses had insisted was a vertical shaft. He gasped from the intense pain racking in his shoulders and chest, and Kieran didn’t look much better.

‘We need to get out of here,’ Kieran gasped, ‘or we’re dead for sure.’

‘What about Lunden and-?’

‘What about them?’ Kieran snarled. ‘They’re soldiers. They know how to take care of themselves.’

Low vibrations had begun to roll along the corridor. Corso glanced hastily back into the room and saw his tools in the grip of tendril-like spines. The room now resembled the digestive organs of some sea-going invertebrate, and his stomach somersaulted at the thought of being left in there even a few seconds more…

Kieran began to head off, clumsily treading on hard-copy data with his boots. Images of crystal arrays and interface algorithms flickered and spasmed on the hard-copies as they scattered underfoot.

Moving slowly, they made their way back to the original entrance. Behind them, the vibrations transformed into a deep, guttural roar, as if some creature older than human civilization had begun stalking them through the passageways.

The derelict had finally given up its silence.

At first, it appeared to Dakota to be loudly radiating its presence to anyone or anything that cared to listen. But then it became rapidly clear that the signal was manifesting on an extremely obscure frequency not used by any of the known interstellar tachyon transceiver relays. She would never even have noticed it if her Ghost hadn’t been engaged in the process of monitoring the derelict across every conceivable transmission spectrum.

Even so, what was emerging was presumably highly encrypted, since it appeared to her Ghost as untranslatable gibberish. The resulting signal was of such low power and limited range it was hard to guess what it might be trying to communicate with.

Is there any way we can figure out what it’s saying, and who to? she asked of Piri Alpha.

‹No. However, the signal is extremely directional in nature. ›

Directional? You mean it’s deliberately aiming at something?

The ship replied by displaying maps of the Nova Arctis system. Lines stabbed out from Theona and Dymas towards one of the inner planets: not Newfall but the system’s innermost world, a tiny ball of rock barely outside the corona of the sun it orbited. This planet was called Ikaria.

What the hell was to be found there?

Two six-man squads were scrambled from the Agartha in response to the sudden breakdown in communications with the derelict, dropping down on tails of chemical fire to Theona’s icy surface in combat pods that spilled the pressure-suited figures inside on to the ice immediately adjacent to the surface base.

By now less then twenty minutes had passed since the loss of communications with the derelict.

Should have brought more than one sub, thought Gardner, standing back and watching the rescue operation being mounted from inside the ground base. But everything had been so rushed… they’d been working hard and fast, fearful that the Shoal might already be on to them, or if not yet, at least soon. There simply hadn’t been enough time to acquire all the resources they really needed.

Gardner could happily live without Kieran Mansell -a murderous, psychotic son of a bitch, if ever there was one-but Lucas Corso was indispensable. His specialist knowledge was the key to the derelict’s secrets. Leaving him down there with only Kieran to guard him seemed the sheerest blind folly.

Now, they had to wait for the squads to cycle through and get on board the sub. Then the long journey down again-and only then would they begin to glean any idea of what had happened.

This whole operation reeked of disorganized panic.

He glanced over at Senator Arbenz: a strutting, stiff-lipped, pumped-up little man; quite a ridiculous figure if Gardner hadn’t already been aware just how dangerous he could be. A few months ago the Freehold had been a defeated people on the verge of absolute retreat, but now they operated under the delusion they were the children of destiny, forged in war (or some such chauvinistic baloney Arbenz had spouted during one of his frequent rants) and destined to conquer the stars.

If the whole thing weren’t so pathetic, Gardner would have laughed. He needed the Freehold for now… but at some point something would have to be done. Leaving the transluminal drive in the hands of the Senator and his cronies was like placing a rocket launcher in the hands of a child. It was just asking for trouble.

Laden beneath their heavy vacuum-equipped combat gear, the troops entered the base, and began trudging through the network of clanging corridors and down to the submersible waiting for them in its pool. Along with the Senator, Gardner followed them.

‘Something must have been triggered by whatever Corso fed into the derelict’s computer systems,’ Gardner muttered. ‘God knows what’s happening down there now. I said all along we didn’t have enough contingency plans in place for unexpected major setbacks.’

Arbenz merely shot him an annoyed look; the tension between them had been growing. It was obvious to Gardner that the Senator simply wasn’t equipped to deal with even the notional concept of failure. For him only victory was possible.

‘God indeed only knows what’s happening down there, Mr Gardner, but remember God is on our side.’

‘Or possibly the Uchidans and Bourdain know too, given the security leaks you’ve been neglecting to tell me about.’

Gardner knew he was walking a dangerous edge, but he was finding it harder and harder to bite his tongue. He had already taken it upon himself to make coded queries to his associates back home, about contracting a fleet to wrest control of the derelict from the Freehold.

But the partners were still too cautious, too scared of drawing attention to what was happening out here, and drawing yet more potential combatants into a risky war over an unpredictable prize. Convincing them otherwise was going to take time Gardner wasn’t sure he had.

‘Don’t worry, Mr Gardner,’ Arbenz snarled, ‘you’ll get your share in the manufacturing and technology rights, once we acquire the drive. And I hope you’ll enjoy spending every last penny of it in hell.’

Gardner nodded, and kept his expression cool.

Corso and Kieran had almost reached the passage connecting to the external airlock when the gravity flipped again.

It had happened another four times so far since they had escaped from the room containing the interface chair. At one point the gravity cut off completely, leaving them in freefall for several panicked seconds.

The worst part of it was they were back in the part of the derelict which had until now been deemed safe. Clearly that was a mistake, and whatever countermeasures the derelict was currently implementing remained effective throughout its structure.

Sheer luck had saved them from being dashed to pieces when a passageway had flipped. The process was slow enough, they had time to react: unfortunately the passageway was a long one, and had rapidly transformed into a deep vertical shaft even as they raced along it.

Kieran had pushed them both down against the floor so rather than falling straight down, they instead slid down at an increasing rate as the gravity shifted. They still managed to hit the far end of the passageway with considerable force, and Corso blacked out for a couple of seconds. When he came to, Kieran was already hauling him by the shoulders towards the airlock and safety. From the way Kieran held himself and the expression on his face, Corso could see he’d been injured in some way.

After a couple of metres of this, Corso managed to stumble upright. A clanging sound reverberated from just ahead and he realized the submersible must have come back down and docked.

It was well ahead of schedule, so obviously somebody had figured out they were in trouble.

They rounded the last corner, almost collapsing on top of each other as the airlock door swung ponderously open. Several heavily armed Freeholder troops were stamping through it towards them, wearing combat armour too bulky to progress easily through the confined spaces of the tunnel. Corso laughed weakly as the soldiers were forced to shuffle towards them sideways in single file.

‘Get the hell back!’ Kieran yelled, waving at them to retreat.

Their faces were invisible behind their reinforced visors, but after a moment they started to shuffle back into the submersible.

The howling noise manifested itself once more from somewhere far around the curve of the passageway, sounding like it was getting closer. It was impossible not to imagine some terrible, monstrous apparition stalking them through the derelict’s twisting interior spaces.

Corso glanced up at the screen still roughly welded into an excision in the wall and noticed that the interior of the derelict was reshaping itself. Corridors and rooms disappeared from the map even as he watched, while others appeared that he was sure hadn’t previously existed.

In that same moment, Corso saw that Lunden and Ivanovich were gone. They would find no trace of their bodies now, as had been the case with anyone else who had disappeared into the derelict’s maw.

Kieran’s face turned pale and he slid to the ground, unconscious. Corso dropped down next to him and found the man still had a pulse, but his pupils were dilated and his breathing staccato and shaky. Corso didn’t feel that much better himself-sheer terror had helped him forget temporarily about the pain. One of the troops saw what had happened and headed back their way again, lifting Kieran up and leading the way back into the submersible.

He’d been so sure the derelict would accept his programming. He still couldn’t believe he’d overlooked anything. But would the Senator understand that when he demanded to know what had happened?