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 whirled 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 criss-crossing 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 that, 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 the 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 finalize 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 devices 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 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 taken over by 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 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.


Once more she reached out with the key. Once more 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 on 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 freefall 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, smooth and soft and almost indistinguishable from the real thing in the warm dark.


* * * *

Bourdain’s Rock measured fifteen kilometres along its widest axis, eight along its narrowest. Before Concorrant Industries had drilled out the asteroid’s core and plugged a planet engine into its empty centre, it had drifted for the better part of a billion years on a looping elliptical orbit, taking it close to the edge of the heliosphere before circling back in past Jupiter and Saturn. Several years before, Concorrant-built fusion jets had manoeuvred the asteroid into a permanent, stable orbit out beyond the most remote of Jupiter’s native moons.


Dakota had seen pictures of the asteroid before Alexander Bourdain had paid the Shoal to work their magic on it. The images had then reminded her of a fossilized turd she had once seen on display in a museum. To some extent it still looked like a fossilized turd, but one that had been sculpted with explosive nuclear chisels until its shape approximated that of a rough-edged flattened sphere. Its surface was still cratered with deep cracks running along one side, but had now been transformed into a chiaroscuro of blues and greens, like a child’s drawing of a tiny world with exaggerated people and buildings towering over its minuscule surface area.


The planet engine created a field of gravity by some arcane trick of physics that still baffled those human scientists who took it upon themselves to try and figure out the Shoal super-science behind it. The engine also generated a series of shaped fields that surrounded the asteroid, containing a pressurized atmosphere that extended no more than a few hundred metres beyond the asteroid’s surface while also filtering out radiation and retaining heat. It was a grand, baroque gesture on the part of a man who had inherited a fortune reaped from the helium-three mining operations at the heart of Jovian industry. More, it was a demonstration of the power the outer-system civilizations now wielded.


Once the gravity field and atmosphere were in place-the latter drawn from the substance of the asteroid itself-Bourdain had clearly spared little expense furnishing his new world with a complete flora and fauna, all prevented by Shoal magic from spontaneously floating away into interplanetary space.


Like Sant’Arcangelo, Bourdain’s Rock looked like a god’s discarded toy. Some of the buildings on the asteroid were tall enough to push through the atmosphere-containment fields like fingers poked through a soap bubble.


The Piri Reis had been decelerating for half an hour now, its engines pointing towards the asteroid in a braking manoeuvre. Strapped into an acceleration couch, Dakota looked up at a viewscreen showing densely wooded forests that fell away into deep crevasses. A herd of deer moved past grey cliffs, while the distant face of Jupiter was reflected in the crystal waters of a lake.


Light came from incandescent fusion units mounted on poles that also extended out above the thin cladding of air. She watched the Rock turn before the ever-watching eye of Jupiter, banks of lights strung along the asteroid’s longitude winked out to create a simulated night across one misshapen hemisphere.


It was utterly beautiful.


* * * *

It took Dakota a while to find her way from the docking bays, across the asteroid surface and into the Great Hall. Enormous deerhounds ran past as she entered its vast space, their claws skittering and slipping on the polished mirror-like sheen of the marble flooring. The Rock’s gravity had been set to about two-thirds Earth-normal. Beyond, in the distance, the sound of revelry echoed from the curved stone buttresses of a cathedral-like ceiling that looked at least a thousand years old, but had actually been in place less than five.


In the distance she saw two Shoal-members, each floating in their separate water-filled containment fields, each bubble supported by tiny anti-grav units. A retinue of Consortium bodyguards accompanied each of the creatures at a distance. Long tables held food and drink, all served by human waiting staff.


Dakota had dressed quickly, in loose light multi-pocketed trousers, and the one clean t-shirt she’d been able to find in a frenzied search through the zero-gravity maelstrom of her ship in the moments prior to docking.


She’d waited for several minutes in the antechamber that led into the main hall itself, composing herself and trying to quell the hammering in her chest. She had nothing to worry about, not really. Bourdain would be busy throwing endless parties in order to attract new investors, but she hadn’t expected to find herself attending any of these lavish dos.


All she wanted to do was sort out her payment, then leave immediately, and start a new life somewhere very far away.


Nothing could be simpler.


‘Piri, can you hear me?’ Dakota asked the air, unnecessarily.


‹Loud and clear,› the Piri Reis responded. ‹System response at maximum. Further directions?›


The computer’s voice was sharp and masculine, and Dakota had a mental flash of Piri’s effigy. Piri wasn’t really intelligent, of course, any more than her Ghost implants: that latter technology had been created in response to humanity’s failure to yet develop anything close to true artificial intelligence. But, even so, there were times when it felt close enough.


None, Dakota sub-vocalized, stepping forward into the noise and light of the party. Just keep an eye on things.


Sheets of transparent crystal allowed her to look up between the vast stone buttresses of the hall towards the black sky above. For the next few hours, it would be night on Bourdain’s Rock. Beyond the windows she could see where a sheet of rock rose sharply to a knife-edge peak, its vertiginous incline dripping with mosses and blue flowers. Everything she saw had been designed for maximum impact.


There must have been several hundred people at this particular gathering, but even they managed to look a little lost in such a vast interior space. She was very conscious of the clack of her boot heels as she crossed the marble floor.


The noise of the party grew louder, with a full-blown live orchestra, positioned on a raised dais, playing light classical music. Parakeets and finches flew overhead, darting towards nests built in carefully sculpted twists of ivy that grew up the walls. Unlike the Sant’Arcangelo asteroid, which had been designed as a financial centre for the outer-systems mining industry, Bourdain’s Rock was developed solely as a theme park for the obscenely rich.


Apart from the two Shoal-members, almost all the guests present were human. A couple of dark-furred Bandati had settled down on various perches just above the milling heads of the guests below, their vast roseate wings twitching above their tiny bodies while they conversed, via translator devices, with a group of men and women who had the hard-faced look of deep-space miners.


Dakota felt a small thrill of nerves when she saw the Bandati, but the chances they might have any idea who she was, or that she had stolen something from them, were vanishingly tiny…


‘Miss Merrick?’


She turned to see a gaunt-faced man in a formal suit, his hands clasped in front of him. She’d met Hugh Moss before on previous trips to the Rock, yet every time she managed to forget how badly he creeped her out. He had, as ever, the demeanour of a bloodless corpse that had been resurrected on a mortuary slab less than five minutes before and already regarded the experience with a warm nostalgic glow.


‘Miss Merrick,’ he repeated, in a voice drier than a desert grave. ‘If you’d care to follow me, Mr Bourdain is waiting for you.’ He gestured towards a door set into one wall, and began to turn away.


‘Wait a minute.’ She put up both hands as if physically trying to stop him. He halted and regarded her with a baleful eye. ‘I don’t have any intention of going anywhere unless it’s absolutely necessary. I’ve done my job. Just pay me now so I can get out of here.’


Moss smiled, revealing a row of yellowing tombstone teeth. ‘It seems Mr Bourdain wants to talk with you first.’


Dakota chuckled nervously. ‘C’mon, what for? He must have a hundred cargo shipments coming in here every day. What’s to discuss?’


‘That’s a matter for yourself and Mr Bourdain.’


Dakota studied him for a moment. ‘Is there some problem?’


Moss shook his head. ‘No problem.’


‘But there’s no point in my meeting him now I’ve done my job, right? I could just get paid and go. How does that sound?’


Moss regarded her silently for several moments, then shook his head slowly. ‘Speaking to Mr Bourdain is now a condition of payment’-that tombstone smile again -’and then you can be on your way.’


Dakota thought for several seconds, the sudden pounding of her heart merging with the sounds of the party around them. ‘I’m going to tell you right now, I don’t like this.’


One corner of Moss’s mouth curled upwards. ‘Nonetheless.’


Dakota made an exasperated noise, shook her head and waved a hand at Moss. Go on, then. He started moving towards the door again, and she followed him.


* * * *

They passed a whole circus of people in their progress. There were at least a dozen Catholic priests standing together in a loose knot, a few of them engrossed in conversation with an entirely human Imam wearing the gold earring of the Ministry of Islam. She caught a glimpse of a woman in a long dark gown, her hair pulled back in a tight bun-one of the many avatars of Pope Eliza, who stood in the centre of this gaggle of metal-skinned priests. Perhaps they were explaining to the Imam how they were free of sin because they were free of corruptible flesh.


Gas paintings partitioned the hall into sections, forming curtains of dry ice that trailed down from the ceiling, with images of mythical beasts projected on them, creating the illusion of ghostly monsters rampaging high overhead or wheeling through arched spaces on vast ribbed wings. In the centre of the hall a small artificial lake lapped at shores of finely crumbled marble, again creating the impression that the walls around it had stood here for millennia.


Mosses and vines wreathed the statues scattered here and there around the perimeter of the miniature lake, while clearly non-Terran shapes moved through its waters, sending up spumes of water from their blowholes as they surged from one side to the other. Hidden holo-projectors painted the air with abstract patterns of light through which guests passed as they walked from one fresh attraction to the next. Significantly, each constantly evolving pattern was based around the logo for Concorrant Industries.


Despite her qualms, Dakota felt a tug of excitement at the sight, mingled with deep unease. There was no doubt that Sant’Arcangelo was impressive, being one of the first asteroids to be equipped with a planet engine, but this one had it solidly beat.


But a darker side to Bourdain’s Rock quickly became evident. She followed Moss through the door, and then along a corridor opening into an enfilade of cavernous spaces that managed to make her feel claustrophobic after the sheer epic scale of the Great Hall behind them.


There were even more guests gathered here, but their activities were rather less salubrious. In a pit a pair of mogs-half-human, half-dog hybrids-fought with steel-tipped claws, while a crowd cheered and jeered encouragement from above. The beasts were vicious, lupine things, their human element barely recognizable in the dull vacancy of their eyes.


Even by the relatively lawless standards of the outer solar system, for all its lawlessness, breeding mogs was stunningly illegal. By such a display, Bourdain was openly flaunting his power and influence in the face of the Consortium.


Moss led her along past the edge of the pit and she glanced down on hearing an agonized howl. Just then one of the mogs collapsed, bright red blood gushing from its eviscerated torso.


The next cavern they entered was given over to the darkest sexual desires. There were mogs here too, hairless muzzled bitches with perfumed bodies, caged and set on plinths and awaiting the attentions of those whose tastes were so inclined.


Moss led her blithely through this cavern and on into the next, where human whores cavorted or copulated or danced with their clients, many glassy-eyed from the skin euphorics Bourdain’s employees had painted on their flesh. None of this would have bothered Dakota, except that some of these whores, male and female alike, were bead-zombies.


Moss escorted her through a final door, and into a large office space so relatively mundane that it took Dakota a moment to adjust. Subdued lighting cast gloomy shadows across expensively upholstered couches and chairs arranged casually around coffee tables. Bourdain had clearly been waiting for her. He stood up from behind a vast desk made of dark wood and stepped forward to greet her, instantly recognizable from a thousand newscasts and any number of scandals reported in the media.


‘Dakota, I’m delighted you made it to my little party.’ He smiled, revealing a row of expensive teeth. ‘Go on, admit you’re impressed,’ he continued, his smile broadening as if he meant to take a bite out of her.


She glanced around and noticed that Moss had taken up a position by the door, as if to block her exit, his hands folded casually in front of him.


‘If I have to be honest, I’m a little surprised you wanted to see me in person,’ Dakota replied, not able to keep a quaver out of her voice. ‘If there’s anything wrong with the consignment, it’s nothing to do with me, I assure you.’


Bourdain perched on the edge of his desk, with his arms folded in front of him, and gestured with a nod towards one of the visitor’s chairs near by.


‘Sit down, Dakota. I promise this won’t take long. I just want to clear up one or two small things, and then you can be on your way.’


Dakota stared at him, not moving. She heard Moss step up behind her.


Piri? Are you there?


Only silence. She felt the first swellings of real panic.


‘I can’t contact my ship.’


Bourdain shrugged. ‘Sorry about that, but I’d like anything we say here to remain private. Now, the sooner this is over the better, so please do sit down.’


Dakota obeyed with a show of reluctance. ‘All right, tell me what’s wrong, Mr Bourdain.’


‘Nothing,’ interrupted Moss from behind her. Dakota twisted her head to study him, and then realized Moss had been addressing Bourdain. ‘No scanning devices, recorders, weapons, nothing inside or outside of her body apart from her black-market machine-head implants. And we’re blocking them, of course.’


‘Nothing’s necessarily wrong’ Bourdain finally said in reply to her question. He hadn’t even glanced at his subordinate when he spoke. ‘But I’d like to know for sure if, at any point, you carried out a remote scan of the contents of your ship’s cargo hold.’


‘Never.’ Dakota shook her head. ‘I’ve got no idea what you’ve got in there.’


‘You were involved in the Port Gabriel massacre, am I correct?’ A fresh grin spread across Bourdain’s face. ‘Don’t look so startled, your secret’s safe with me, Dakota. You see, I don’t like too many surprises.’


She stared at him, for a moment more surprised than afraid. ‘That’s none of your business,’ she snapped. ‘I…’


Bourdain laughed as Dakota faltered, then he flashed a look at Moss. Dakota glanced to the side and saw the corner of Moss’s mouth twitch upward again in an attempt at a smile. Watching it made her think of a corpse exhibiting the first symptoms of rigor mortis.


‘You were subsequently tried for war crimes,’ Bourdain added. ‘That’s one hell of a thing to have in your resume.’


‘Wait a minute.’ Surprise gave way to renewed anger. ‘What does any of this have to do with me being here?’


Bourdain leaned forward. ‘I want you to realize there’s nothing you can tell me that I don’t already know. All I’m asking now is that you tell the truth. Did you ever try to find out what was in the cargo hold of your ship?’


‘No, of course I didn’t. I-’


Moss grabbed her head in two vice-like hands. She struggled desperately, but he was deceptively strong.


Then her sense of survival kicked in, and she let herself suddenly relax. As she felt Moss’s hold on her ease marginally, she thrust herself away from him and towards Bourdain.


Two strong arms yanked her back down into her seat, and held her there. Moss’s fingers dug hard into her flesh, Dakota screaming as overwhelming pain ran through her entire body.


She glanced down at Moss’s hands where they held her, and she saw he was now wearing insulated gloves coated in fine metal mesh.


Lightning gloves.


Dakota tasted blood and realized she’d bitten her tongue. Bourdain continued looking at her as if nothing had happened. Somewhere behind him a concealed door slid quietly open and two ambulatory nightmares stepped into the room: bead-zombies.


The door closed silently behind them, and they stood behind Bourdain, awaiting orders.


Bourdain was speaking again. ‘Port Gabriel was, what, almost a decade ago? Now look at you. Scraping a living in a stripped-down cargo ship that can barely haul itself from one lump of space-borne slag to another. And then this unfortunate business with the Bandati on Corkscrew?’ Bourdain shook his head, and looked almost sympathetic. ‘I heard a little rumour you took something from them, and didn’t tell me. Now, what kind of way to do business is that?’


Quill.


How else could Bourdain have found out so much about her?


The first thing she was going to do, if she ever got out of this, was find Quill-and kill him.


‘Fuck you,’ she swore weakly ‘I don’t respond too well to torture, so fuck you. Just tell me what you want and let me go.’


‘Not the answer I was looking for.’ Bourdain turned to the two bead-zombies, each of which came around opposite ends of the desk to stand on either side of Dakota. One male, one female, both tawny-skinned. Dakota wondered who they’d been when they were still alive, and why Bourdain had them killed.


Their heads had been surgically removed, and then cloned skin grown over the neck wound. Tiny low-level control beads implanted into the top of each of their truncated spinal cords allowed the bodies to respond to external orders, as well as controlling the basic functioning of the body and acting as a guidance system hooked into the local computer networks. Their bodies had been steroid-pumped, the skin shining and glossy. Each was dressed in a complex arrangement of fetishistic leather straps wrapped over their shoulders and under and around their groins, barely concealing the naked flesh underneath.


Bourdain nodded to Moss. Dakota gritted her teeth and heard herself scream when a high voltage current ripped through her once more.


Once it passed-surely the jolt had lasted only a second or two, but it was starting to feel like she’d been in Bourdain’s office for a couple of hours-the power of speech took a moment to return to her.


‘I don’t know what’s in the cargo hold,’ Dakota croaked, with such an overwhelming sincerity in her voice it surprised even her.


Bourdain stood up and went to kneel next to Dakota’s chair, laying one hand on her thigh in an almost paternal gesture.


‘Let’s get it straight exactly how much shit you’re in right now, Dakota.’ His hand slid up closer to her crotch and she tried to jerk away, but it was impossible with Moss holding her so tightly. ‘If you’re legitimate, you walk away. That’s the truth. If I’m anything, I’m fair. But if you’re lying’-he looked up, nodding at each of the headless monstrosities on either side of them-‘this is what Hugh’s going to do to you, too. That right, Hugh?’


A breathy sound from behind her, like air escaping from a flatulent corpse. It was too easy to picture those greasy yellow teeth bared expectantly.


‘So I think you’ll agree, Dakota, that doing what I want you to is really going to be in your best interests.’ He stood and looked down at her with what appeared to be real sorrow. ‘I hate this kind of situation because it’s so distasteful, you know? But that’s business.’


‘I haven’t done anything!’ she screamed. ‘And, besides, the cargo is still in my ship, Bourdain. You can’t get hold of it without my say-so, you understand me? If you go near it-’


Bourdain shook his head sadly, cutting her off. ‘I own you, Miss Merrick, same as I own Quill. We know that someone or something probed your ship, and also probed the control systems for the cargo. Maybe you knew about it, maybe you didn’t. If you didn’t, I’m sorry, but I just can’t afford to take any chances. Hugh, let her speak to her ship for a second, then…’ He waved a hand towards her. ‘Then find out what you can. Just make sure you clean the place up before I get back.’


Moss nodded as Bourdain walked out of the room, before leaning down to whisper in her ear.


‘My dear Dakota, it’s so good to be alone together at last. I can’t tell you how much I’m going to enjoy you, after I remove your head.’


‹Dakota?›


Piri!


Panic-stricken relief swept through her. She probably only had a few moments before Moss managed to close the connection again.


I need you to get me out of here.


‹I am afraid to inform you that as you are no longer the registered owner of the Piri Reis, I am obliged to refuse you command as of seventy-five seconds ago.›


What? Override that, Piri.


‹Only the appropriate personnel can permit overrides. ›


Dakota twisted around to face Moss, seeing the look of triumph on his face. It was the same look she’d seen on Quill’s face once she’d agreed to take this job. Who else would have been able to supply Bourdain with the necessary overrides?


What ‘appropriate personnel’?


‹Mr Alexander Bourdain is the registered majority shareholder in Quill Shippings


Dakota closed her eyes, opened them again. Moss chuckled quietly.


‘You and I are now going to have a long talk, Miss Merrick.’ He deliberately drawled the word long.


Emergency systems override, Piri.


‹Emergency systems overrides can only be facilitated by the appropriate registered senior personnel. Please note that-›


Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme, she subvocalized, rattling the words together in her panic.


‹I am registering a stage-one intrusion alert.›


Remember me to one who lives there, she continued.


Somewhere inside the Piri, carefully hidden higher-level systems were coming alive as Dakota spoke her own secret code phrases.


‹Second-stage intrusion alert: I am alerting the appropriate registered senior personnel. Further intrusions on higher-level autonomous functions will be severely-›


She once was a true love of mine, Dakota finished in a blur as Moss leaned in towards her ear.


‘Your connection’s cut,’ he said. ‘Now it’s just you and me.’


‹Hello, Dakota.›


Dakota’s heart skipped a beat.


Create a distraction, Piri. Anything.


One of Moss’s fingers stroked her ear, and she winced at the stench of his breath. Then he suddenly stood bolt upright, but kept one hand resting on her shoulder.


‘Sir?’


Dakota twisted around further and saw Moss seemed to be talking to the air, one finger to an earlobe. She guessed he was speaking to Bourdain.


‘I just received an automatic alert, sir. Comms report receiving warning of a terrorist threat through a secure police channel.’


Moss nodded to the empty air. Dakota could almost hear the sound of her heart trying to bludgeon its way through her ribcage, her hands gripping the chair.


‘It’s a secure channel routed through the Consortium Outer System Patrol offices,’ Moss continued, for the benefit of his invisible employer. ‘They’re claiming an unmanned helium dredge has been programmed to alter course and hit the Rock within the hour. No details beyond that, at the moment. And given the number of guests we now have in the Great Hall…’


‹Dakota, I have generated a false police warning and routed it through the Rock’s alert systems.›


Piri, I love you.


‹You’re welcome. Does that mean you would like me to fuck you on your return?›


Please.


Bourdain reappeared a moment later, so clearly he hadn’t gone far.


‘It’s still only an automated alert,’ Bourdain snapped. ‘I need someone human to tell me what’s going on.’ He reached up and tapped his earlobe, looking over Dakota’s shoulder. His eyes gradually unfocused, and she guessed he was seeing and hearing someone on his technical staff as if they were standing next to him.


‘Tell me what’s happening,’ he suddenly demanded of the empty air. His expression got grimmer. After a moment, Bourdain shook his head, clearly unhappy.


He appeared to suddenly notice her, as if he’d forgotten what had only just taken place in his office. ‘This isn’t over,’ he told her, venom in his voice. ‘Hugh, come with me.’


She heard Moss shift away from behind her. ‘Stay here,’ he warned her. ‘Don’t make it any worse for yourself than it already is.’


They left, closing the door as they exited.


She was on her own.


Almost.


The bead-zombies remained standing on either side of her, like frighteningly detailed statues. Dakota realized, with a start, that neither Moss nor Bourdain had yet given them any orders, and without directions they were about as dangerous as a pair of well-muscled vegetables. She sat there frozen for a couple of seconds more, filled with sick fascination at the steady rise and fall of the zombies’ chests as they hovered beside her. As they would wait, for ever, or until instructed to go elsewhere.


Dakota stood up carefully, ready to bolt if either of them so much as twitched a non-sentient muscle in her direction. A wave of nausea swept over her and she leaned against the back of her chair just in time to stop herself from collapsing.


‹Systems indicate,› the Piri Reis informed her, ‹that you might require medical attention.›


The bead-zombies remained as impassive as ever.


Thank you, Piri. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. You saved my life.


‹Comment noted.›


Can you please, please get me out of here?


‹It may take several seconds. The local security systems have a high level of encryptions


Somewhere inside Bourdain’s Rock, the Piri’s offensive routines were subordinating the systems that ran the asteroid’s primary computer networks, forcing them to channel erroneous information to Bourdain’s technical staff.


Even so, it wouldn’t take Bourdain long to realize that Dakota was the cause of it all.


She went to the door and tugged at it experimentally, unsurprised to find it locked. Come on, Piri.


‹Please wait. Please wait. Please-›


She rattled the handle for the tenth time in as many seconds, and suddenly the door swung open. She peered out into the corridor beyond, knowing her problems were far from over. All she’d done was find her way out of his office. Now she had to get past Bourdain’s security set-up, and safely off the asteroid itself, and that was going to be an entirely different challenge.


She touched her lips and her hand came away sticky with blood. Dakota closed her eyes and thought hard. If she tried to find her way back to Piri in her present battered state, she’d just be making herself easier for Bourdain’s security to spot.


A frantic search located a bathroom some way along the corridor outside Bourdain’s office, but fresh despair filled her when she saw herself in one of the mirrors. Blood smeared her mouth and chin from having bitten her tongue.


She grabbed a wad of toilet paper and soaked it under a tap, then began cleaning the gore off her face, her hands shaking so badly she kept dropping the tissue, cursing as she bent down to retrieve it. And all the while, she pictured Bourdain or Moss coming back to look for her, while she stood here defenceless.


A few moments of effort and she still looked deathly pale. Not the best image to present, but it would have to do. Fortunately her dark t-shirt made the bloodstains less noticeable.


She edged through the door at the far end of the corridor and found the party was still in full swing. She waited a moment, composing herself, then stepped forward, fresh neurochem flooding into her bloodstream. By a miracle there was no obvious sign of either Bourdain or Moss.


She cut a straight line through the first of the sequence of caverns, heading for the Great Hall and the antechamber beyond, and after that the docking bays.


Can you locate Bourdain?


‹Yes.› There was a pause as Piri negotiated the Rock’s databases. ‹He is at the very far end of the Great Hall from your current location.›


What’s he doing right now?


‹He is speaking with the man named Hugh Moss. Wait. Wait. They are now returning. They will reach your current location in approximately two minutes.›


Dakota found her way past a group of whores cavorting lasciviously in a cushioned depression in the floor, busily servicing a dozen male guests. Meanwhile, harsh and brutal music pounded from hidden speakers. She picked up traces of euphorics from the sweat of the onlookers around her each time one of them brushed against her bare arms. This contact generated tiny, unwanted bursts of pleasure in her body as she passed by.


Two inebriated men lurched eagerly towards her. One of them she decked without warning, pausing just long enough to grab the other on either side of his head, before lowering him to the ground and kneeing him hard in the stomach. He curled into a foetal ball and twisted away from her, gasping in agony.


She was only distantly aware of drunken cheering in her wake; the euphorics were starting to affect her senses. Got to get out of here.


She hurried on into the next chamber, where the female mogs were located. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of a male whore copulating with one of the caged creatures on its plinth, for the benefit of a roaring crowd. The sight goaded her on with renewed and grim determination.


Dakota emerged at last into the Great Hall, but didn’t pause for a second. She brusquely pushed her way into the deepest, densest part of the crowd in search of cover, ignoring the startled stares her passage provoked and a few knowing looks cast toward the door she’d just come through.


‘Welcoming hello, meeting you please?’


Dakota stumbled to a halt, as one of the Shoal-members drifted up close to her. None of its human, Consortium bodyguards were anywhere in sight.


She blinked in surprise, studying the creature more closely. The bubble of water in which it floated extended perhaps two metres in width, and the anti-grav units holding it above the marble floor took the form of tiny metal discs placed at equidistant points around the containment field.


The Shoal-member itself possessed about half the body mass of a human, but its shape was that of a large chondrichthian fish. Rainbow-hued fins and tail wafted within the surrounding waters, and the several tentacles it used for manipulation extended downwards from its belly region, while the gills appeared as long dark slashes halfway along its torso.


Other, much tinier, non-sentient fish darted around it and, as Dakota watched, a few of the creature’s tentacles lashed out to ensnare a clutch of them, stuffing them greedily into its ancillary mouth. The alien’s translation and communications systems failed to disguise the cracking and chewing sounds as the fish were messily ingested.


‘Pleased to meet you too,’ Dakota said insincerely. She glanced around to see if she could catch sight of either Moss or Bourdain. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me-’


‘Miss Dakota Merrick?’


The Shoal-member had her full attention now. It wasn’t conceivable the thing was working for Bourdain rather than the other way around-or was it?


No, of course not. Concorrant Industries couldn’t survive a day without the beneficence of the Shoal’s technology and expertise.


‘Hungry fish swimming for minnows,’ the Shoal-member’s translation software informed her, more than a little obscurely. ‘A shallow pond. Mr Bourdain seems unhappy. Safety in numbers. Co-operation is key.’


She didn’t have the time for alien riddles.


‘I’m sorry, I really am in a hurry.’ She began to move away.


‘Small and alone in deep water, more likely to be consumed by predators,’ continued the alien, rather less obscurely, floating along beside her as she strode rapidly through the hall. ‘A free lunch. Some feed from skin of larger fish, live. Safety in numbers, in survival strategies. Two is better company than one.’


‘You…?’ She had the uncanny sense the creature was offering to help her. ‘How did you know my name?’


‘Shoal know all,’ the alien replied mysteriously. ‘What is dark to you is light to us. Clarity itself. Shoal hold open book of dreams, waiting to be read. All locks are broken with Shoal science, all secrets laid bare. You dart through deep waters with Mr Bourdain, yes? He attempts to force words from your head. Where Mr Bourdain is concerned, many smaller fish get eaten, and much blood is spilt.’


Dakota finally caught sight of Bourdain and his sidekick out of the corner of her eye, and she quickly ducked around the other side of the alien’s floating bubble. She was pretty sure they hadn’t seen her yet. The creature inside it swivelled to face her once more, while the bubble itself floated along by her side, matching her steady progress towards the main exit.


She knew it was impossible to read human emotion into the alien’s face, but she couldn’t help but believe that it looked amused, somehow.


‘You know what happened to me in Bourdain’s office?’ she enquired, then started to move faster, almost breaking into a jog. People around them stared as they passed. ‘Is that what you’re telling me? How do you know?’


‘Affirmation most appropriate answer. Shoal know all.’


‘Look, Bourdain is out to kill me, and I don’t know why.’


‘Shoal is thinking affirmation. Much tail-thrashing, much gnawing at deep waters. Query, Miss Merrick…’


It took her a moment to realize it wanted to ask her a question. She kept darting glances from side to side, feeling deeply vulnerable from the lack of anything even resembling a weapon with which she could defend herself. It took a great effort of will not to make a dash for the antechamber; with the alien floating along beside her, she was drawing too much attention to herself.


‘What?’ she snapped, wondering if she should simply make a break for it. But Bourdain would surely have placed security teams at every access point to the docking bays. Yet she saw nothing menacing as the tall archway leading out of the Great Hall drew closer.


But of course, she thought furiously: mounting an impromptu security operation to catch her right in the middle of a public extravaganza like this would draw far too much attention for Bourdain’s comfort, especially after all his recent legal troubles. And with so many witnesses…


She had to remain calm. She kept moving forward, briskly. Her arms and neck were already damp with sweat.


‹Dakota, I am being scanned by the primary local defence systems.›


Can you deal with it?


‹For the moment.›


Keep me updated and prep for launch. I’m on my way.


She quickened her pace again, willing herself not to start running. In the meantime, the alien kept pace with her, which had her cursing under her breath. It was as good as having a giant flashing arrow pointing straight towards her, for the benefit of the dozens of people already watching their progress with bewilderment or amusement.


‘Late to explain sorry sincerely. Embarrassment, as of revelling in self-fouled waters. Query: your craft is filled to capsizing with darkly operating systems, all unheard and invisible to dry-floating-island’s listening machines. If discovered by your Consortium, these non-legal modifications would consign you to ocean-bottom darkness for eternity, far from the common shoal, and with the loss of your craft. Follow?’


Darkly operating systems? And then it hit her what the Shoal-member was telling her. It knew the Piri was rigged with illegal black-ops modifications.


‹I am registering massive systems intrusions. Initiating defensive measures.›


‘What are they doing to my ship?’ she demanded of the alien.


‘Please to be curious,’ the creature replied. ‘This Shoal-member’s scent glands recognize the presence of much else that is questionable recently residing within the belly of your craft. For instance, to be enquiring as to means whereby Miss Merrick came into possession of GiantKiller?’


‘I don’t…’ Dakota’s mouth worked uselessly for a moment and she almost stumbled. ‘Did you say GiantKiller?’


‘Pleased to be affirming this.’


For the briefest moment she forgot about Moss and Bourdain. ‘You’re telling me I had a fucking GiantKiller on my ship?’


‘Shoal is pleased to note contrition arising from this unfortunate issue. Much unpleasantness. Human phrase “children playing with matches”, curiously apposite, with apologies and humour. Dealing in such non-leased, highly restricted goods is most non-Consortium behaviour, resulting in banishment for all concerned far from surface waters, chained upside-down in deepwater cell for eternity. A sorry end.’


Shit. ‘I didn’t know,’ she stammered. Somehow she found the strength of will to keep moving, despite a sudden weakness in her legs. ‘I swear, I didn’t know.’


But then, she reminded herself, she hadn’t wanted to know. She’d deliberately and carefully avoided so much as speculating what might be contained within the Piri’s cargo hold. Which was exactly why she’d spent the long days and nights of transit between Sant’Arcangelo and Bourdain’s Rock in a state of sustained borderline panic.


Dakota enjoyed a moment of personal re-evaluation, as if she could step outside herself and witness the events of the past several months for the very first time. And in that instant, she knew she was back where she’d started, that all her efforts had come to nothing, and she would never receive the rest of her much-needed money, ever, from Bourdain.


She balled her hands into fists, forcing the nails hard into the flesh of her palms, finding some kind of solace in the sudden flash of pain it brought to her.


Piri? What’s happening?


‹I have initiated further emergency defensive software protocols. I am awaiting further instructions.›


‘Shoal-member has suggestion.’


Dakota stared at the huge, fish-like creature floating in its ball of brine and wondered again if she could read amusement in its bulging black eyes.


‘Suggest away.’


‘Safety in numbers.’


‘You said that already,’ she snapped.


‘We will move as a shoal, towards the shelter of caves. In meantime, would like to suggest acceptance of gift.’


‘Gift?’


‘Precisely.’


Dakota glanced around the side of the Shoal’s bubble and saw, with a start, that Moss and Bourdain were staring straight towards her from nearby, but were still keeping their distance. After all, the alien was one of Bourdain’s clients, one of his primary sources of income.


The alien floated closer to the archway, and Dakota hurried to keep up with it. She understood that the longer she stayed beside it, the longer she was likely to stay alive. She noticed it now held something in its tentacles. A box.


The tentacles holding the box flicked outwards to the rim of its encompassing briny bubble. Dakota watched as the water first swirled around its restraining fields, then began to pitter-patter down onto the marble tiles as a small puncture appeared in one side of the bubble, just wide enough for the alien to push the box through. As it clattered to the ground, the restraining field healed itself immediately.


Dakota stared at the box stupidly for a moment before realizing she was meant to pick it up. She snatched it up and turned back towards the exit.


Bourdain stared towards her balefully and she turned away from him, feeling more naked and alone and frightened than she had since the ordeal in Port Gabriel. She clutched the alien’s gift in one hand as, breathing hard, they arrived at the archway.


‘OK, what is this thing?’ she asked the alien.


‘A gift. Accepting this, yes?’


‘I’m not sure. Why should I?’ she replied, with a stab of alarm. ‘What’s inside?’


‘If Miss Merrick accepts gift, Shoal-member will endeavour to restrain Mr Bourdain from eating Miss Merrick. Shoal-member will also instigate legal reparations against Mr Bourdain for suspected illegal acquisition of non-leased technology, most specifically aforementioned GiantKiller. This in turn will allow Miss Merrick opportunity to sail for safer shores, facilitating hopefully rapid escape.’


Dakota opened her mouth, closed it again, opened it again. ‘Why?’


‘Beneficence of Shoal-member,’ the creature replied. ‘Much of existence is mysterious. Accept fate as fickle -or determined by whim. To gift Miss Merrick is pleasing.’


Dakota felt the cool texture of the gift wrapping against her hand, slick and waterproof. ‘And in return-you’re going to help me to escape?’


‘Affirmation with pleasure.’


As soon as she passed through the archway the alien halted, placing itself between Dakota and her pursuers.


‘I don’t understand any of this,’ she said. ‘What’s in this box?’


‘A gift,’ the alien replied obtusely.


She heard shouts from somewhere beyond the antechamber, echoing in the complex of tunnels and caverns that threaded their way through the immensity of Bourdain’s Rock. The alien was clearly going no further.


Run. Run now. She stuffed the box in a convenient pocket and fled, soon leaving the Shoal-member in its containment field far behind her.


* * * *

A minute or two later Dakota found herself in a crystal-roofed forest, under a starry night. Winding paths cut lazily through dense green foliage and between vast tree trunks with a too-regular mottled bark that indicated high-speed vat growth. Her Ghost circuits guided her back along the exact route she’d followed on her way to meet Bourdain, and she jogged down a lane that snaked between tall trunks looming on either side.


It didn’t take long for her to sense that someone was coming after her. She could hear the twigs snapping underfoot as an unseen pursuer moved towards her at an angle through swaying grasses, but avoiding the path itself and staying out of sight.


Birds suddenly scattered in an explosion of wings, vanishing far above Dakota’s head as they sought new perches higher up. She pushed between a couple of benches and darted aside, behind the cover of some high bushes, crouching there in the grass and peering through dense foliage back the way she had come.


Moss emerged a moment later from the depths of a copse, and began looking around wildly. Blue flashes flickered around his lightning gloves, starkly visible in the artificial night of the surrounding forest. It lent him the appearance of some primeval nightmare god of electricity.


By the faint glow of his eyes, Dakota could tell his sight had been artificially enhanced. She watched as he scanned the trail just a few metres away from her, and when his eyes locked on the bushes that concealed her, it was as if nothing stood between them.


‘Come out, Miss Merrick,’ he ordered calmly.


She was so distracted she almost didn’t hear someone else sneaking up on her from behind.


She stood, turned and kicked hard, catching the side of a helmet as one of Bourdain’s security men moved towards her in a crouch. Burning pain flashed up her leg and she yelled out loud. The guard leapt forward and made a grab for Dakota. Ghost-boosted instinct caused her to let herself fall backwards as he slammed into her, his own forward momentum sending the guard sailing over her head.


She rolled back on to her feet by the edge of the path, almost colliding with one of the benches. She watched the guard as he crashed into his superior. Moss clutched at the tumbling man in surprise, and lightning snapped from his steel-meshed fingers. The guard screamed hideously, and Dakota caught the unmistakable stench of burning flesh.


She turned and dived along a different path, running blind now. As more shouting erupted nearby, she could hear Moss scream and curse somewhere behind her.


A moment later she realized that the local net was denying her Ghost access. And she was lost.


Piri, I need you to get me out of here.


‹I have you on the live security feed. Proceed directly ahead and enter the third access tunnel on your right. This will return you to the docking bays via the shortest possible route.›


The forest gave way to an arcade of empty shop fronts strung along a wide walkway that eventually disappeared out of sight as it followed the natural curve of the asteroid’s circumference. It was like a street constructed up and over the summit of a rounded hill.


Shots whined from somewhere behind her, sending more birds flying upwards in panic from their nesting places in numerous sculpted nooks. She heard the sound of running feet, coming from the far end of the arcade that was still hidden from her by the curve of the asteroid.


She slid into deep shadow between two shop fronts, then noticed that it was the mouth of a narrow alleyway. She ran further into it, and paused.


‘Get the lights up!’ somebody yelled. ‘Get them up now!’


Panting hard, Dakota crouched with hands on knees. She guessed they were trying to get the main lights of the arcade switched on: the only illumination at present came from faintly glowing globes placed at discreet intervals, and which were clearly intended to be decorative rather than practical.


With one hand, she touched the alien’s gift in her pocket.


Piri, why can’t they turn the main lights on? Are you the reason?


‹Yes.›


Then she noticed Moss’s eyes flickering, luminous and satanic, in the dim light of the arcade beyond. They turned in her direction and he started straight towards her.


Dakota hauled herself back upright, wondering how much longer she could keep going like this, and why she was even bothered to try. They’d never allow her to get near the docks. Never.


At its far end the alleyway opened on to a covered plaza. This wide open space was filled with yet more trees whose dense foliage reached up towards narrow walkways that ringed the lofty surrounding walls. Drunk on adrenalin, she scrambled up a tree trunk, and then dropped off a branch and on to one of these walkways, water dripping on her from the wet leaves surrounding her. She hurriedly looked around, her head spinning from so much physical effort.


Muffled shouts as figures began to emerge at the far end of the plaza below. A sudden shot whined off the stonework of the wall, just inches from her head.


There’s something I want you to do, so listen carefully, Piri. Apparently we were carrying a GiantKiller in the hold.


‹Understood. Initial scans indicate there are restricted classified files in regards to their operation currently stored within local databases. Do you wish me to attempt to access them in full?›


Yes! I need to know if there’s a way we can trigger it. Can you trace the GiantKiller itself, since it was unloaded?


‹Affirmative. I have its location.›


She continued at a crouch towards the far end of the walkway, then saw to her horror that Moss was already waiting for her there. Torchlight flickered below, its narrow beam shining in her eyes for a moment. She ducked away from it, desperate to find some kind of cover.


Ahead of her, Moss held his hands out and blue sparks flickered through the gloom, crossing and spitting between the lightning gloves. His enhanced eyes glowed as dim ovals in the dark silhouette of his face.


He started towards Dakota, moving fast. She scrambled back the way she had come, then pulled herself up a stairway towards the roof. It brought her to the entrance of a wide gazebo set astride the wall at one corner of the plaza. Below its roof stood an intricate water sculpture.


Water gushed from the mouth of a marble dolphin set high on a plinth of finely sculpted rock, tinkling as it descended and splashed into a wide but shallow pool through which myriad finned shapes darted incessantly. Grassy ferns and occasional palm trees surrounded the fountain, dripping water like rain on to the sculpture so that it constantly glistened.


There were no other exits from the gazebo. Dakota turned to see Moss appear at the entrance, his unnaturally illuminated eyes finding her instantly in the dim half-light. She felt a sudden, terrible despair flood through her. She was trapped.


‹I have located the protocols required to activate the GiantKiller, but it will take considerable time to fully decrypt and implement them.›


How long exactly?


‹I estimate between twenty hours and fifteen days, Dakota. ›


Dakota felt all hope evaporate. She’d been planning on a complex bluff, in case Bourdain might back down if she threatened to set off the device.


Someone else, she didn’t doubt, had scanned the contents of the Piri’s cargo hold on its voyage to Bourdain’s Rock. The critical question now was, who?


It had to be the same Shoal-member that had spoken to her in the Great Hall. How else could it have known what was inside her ship?


GiantKillers were a near-mythical technology, supposedly originating from a Shoal client race somewhere else in the galaxy, which humanity hadn’t yet been allowed to come into contact with. It was a tool of reportedly enormous destructive power, supposedly designed to reduce large bodies-such as asteroids, heavy with valuable mineral resources-to dust within mere minutes. Her Ghost’s knowledge stacks were filled with a century of wild speculation concerning how such a technology might work.


As Moss moved slowly toward her, she decided to take a chance.


‘Back off!’ she yelled. ‘Let me through to the dock or, I swear on the Pope’s tits, I’ll activate the GiantKiller from here!’


Moss paused. ‘Nice bluff, but it really won’t work.’


‘I mean it!’ she yelled in terrible despair. ‘I’ve got the activation protocols uploaded to my Ghost circuits,’ she lied. ‘I can read every last fucking one of them back to you right now, or I can blow the shit out of this asteroid. Got a preference?’


‘Lying slut, I’ll open you from neck to navel and devour your innards while you watch.’ Deadly blue sparks leapt lazily from one hand to the other as he again moved cautiously forward.


‘Do you really want to try me, Moss?’ she screamed, backing around the fountain, away from him. ‘Seriously?’


Then something remarkable happened.


* * * *

The GiantKiller had already been moved to its new home in a secure storage facility deep inside the body of the asteroid, several kilometres below its outer surface. The Piri Reis had meanwhile been monitoring the Rock’s communication channels, disguising its presence from moment to moment by simulating any one of thousands of maintenance programs, with a degree of sophistication equal to the covert systems used on board many of the Consortium’s finest military vessels.


Suddenly, the Piri was no longer alone in its explorations. Something vast came crashing through the Rock’s data stacks, devouring information like a lumbering virtual behemoth. For a few moments the Piri became deaf, dumb and blind as this new presence swept through the Rock’s computer systems with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer being used to smash a doll’s house.


By the time Dakota’s ship recovered, the Giant-Killer’s protocols had been wiped clean from the records. Alarm circuits blazed throughout the asteroid.


In appearance, the GiantKiller itself was little more than a mottled silver ball several centimetres in diameter, still held in the same field containment chamber it had been placed in prior to its trip aboard the Piri Reis. A casual observer might notice that this silver ball appeared to be flickering in and out of existence from moment to moment. But, rather than flickering, this was in reality a series of rapid expansions and contractions occurring almost too fast to register with the human eye. The GiantKiller was in fact testing its prison walls, lashing out in its pre-programmed desire to consume.


A microscopic analysis of the GiantKiller’s surface would reveal something very like capillaries inside an organic body, channelling resources and information through a highly complex bundle of exotic matter held in check only by the shaped fields that contained it.


Without warning, the shaped fields that surrounded the GiantKiller vanished, and the silver ball now dropped to the floor of its containment chamber deep within the heart of Bourdain’s Rock.


That same microscopic analysis would have then revealed those containment fields dissipating without warning, allowing a torrent of programmed matter to crack through the dense walls of the chamber, in just a few millionths of a second.


It was exactly as if a bomb had gone off.


The alien device underwent explosive decompression, extending microscopic feelers deep into the ancient flesh of the asteroid, spreading and dissolving the molecular bonds of almost everything it touched, reducing the solid matter of Bourdain’s vast, pressurized folly to dust and gravel in an instant.


The irony was that the GiantKiller had been intended as a practical resource for mining rather than as a weapon. And now it was transforming the asteroid into essential components that could, under more typical circumstances, be more easily collected by mining ships.


* * * *

Dakota kept edging backwards, keeping the fountain between her and Moss. She was pretty sure he’d be careful about getting too close to running water while he was wearing…


And then it came to her. Everything here, the trees above, the ground under her feet, was wet, so there must be some kind of sprinkler system, some method of generating artificial rain…


Piri! If there’s any way to turn the water on in here, do it now!


In response, Piri fired fresh instructions into the local network, again feeding false information to the asteroid’s computer systems.


Dakota hauled herself up over the lip of the fountain and dropped into the pool, standing up again next to the splashing foam emerging from the dolphin’s mouth. Moss stood scowling at her, but kept his distance.


Something rattled and spat in the dimness overhead.


They both glanced up.


All at once, throughout the entire Rock, it began to rain from ten thousand steel nozzles.


A torrent descended from the dome above, soaking them both immediately. Dakota propelled herself instantly away from the fountain and hit the ground rolling. Moss began screaming as the artificial rain shorted his lightning gloves, and she almost gagged from the awful stink as he jerked and writhed in an expanding cloud of steam. Fresh torrents continued to drench him from above.


The stricken man staggered blindly towards her, and then he fell face-forward right into the pool.


Just then a sonorous boom sounded from somewhere deep within the asteroid, so faint at first that Dakota wondered if she’d imagined it.


But more, heavier vibrations followed, rippling underfoot in regular pulses, each growing slightly stronger than the last. She heard yelling, and voices calling to each other, back in the general direction of the plaza. But then the voices faded, as if moving further away.


Then there was a sound like the sudden onrush of an ocean tide. It lasted several seconds, before silence fell again.


Dakota remained rooted to the spot for another few moments, desperately wondering what the hell was going on.


She then crept back along the walkway leading to the plaza, noticing how the lush, damp grass below her now-shone with thousands of fragments of shattered crystal from the gazebo roof. Without warning, the entire plaza shook so hard she was almost sent tumbling over the railing to the ground some metres below.


No wonder Bourdain’s soldiers had fled. Whatever was going on here, Dakota wasn’t their priority any more.


The rumbling faded as quickly as it had started, whereupon Dakota made her way down to the ground level as fast as she could. She was conscious of glass crunching noisily underfoot, but that hardly mattered now there was no one around to hear.


Or so she at first thought. Two security personnel, their weapons already raised, emerged from where they’d taken cover under the dense foliage. Dakota gave a shriek and dived out of the way just as bullets whined off the tree trunks right next to her.


The ground rolled and rumbled beneath her with considerably more violence. Then it tipped sideways, suddenly transforming into a vertical plane.


Dakota went tumbling into some bushes, her senses spinning with the sudden shift in gravity. Her stomach twisted with a surge of nausea, and she desperately grabbed some branches, her legs dangling in empty air. The sidewall of the plaza was now several metres beneath her swinging feet.


Something was very, very wrong with the planet engine.


One of the two security men had grabbed hold of a tree trunk somewhere above her, then lost his grip and plummeted past her with a yell. He crashed into a concrete pillar supporting one of the walkways, his neck twisting at a sickening angle. His companion already lay dead nearby.


A steady shower of broken glass fell past her and on to the two corpses, but fortunately the dense foliage of the bushes sheltered her from most of the tumbling shards.


Then gravity began to right itself, just as she could feel her grip starting to weaken. A few seconds later the world had returned to normal, and Dakota found herself kneeling on the soft, wet grass again.


It took her a while to find the courage to stand upright.


Someone had clearly activated the GiantKiller.


Someone who wasn’t her.


There came another series of dull booms from far beneath Dakota’s feet, each one sounding closer than the last. Cracks began to appear in the nearby walls and in the grass. The plaza suddenly split into two halves, drawing away from each other. Dakota threw herself over the yawning chasm, landing safely on the other side, and ran for her life back the way she had come.


The constant tug of the Rock’s artificial gravity began to fade. Suddenly Dakota was swimming through the air, carried forward by her own momentum. A howling maelstrom of escaping atmosphere roared up from the lower levels of the Rock, spilling out through the yawning crack in the plaza’s floor and rushing upwards through the shattered roof.


Dakota activated her filmsuit and, under her clothes, it coated her bare flesh within moments. Her lungs shut down automatically and, as always, it took her a moment to get over the sensation that she was suffocating.


She then hurriedly discarded everything she was wearing, wanting to move as freely as possible. But first she removed the Shoal’s gift from the pocket it nestled in, and clutched it firmly in one night-black hand.


Unfortunately for them, nobody else on the Rock enjoyed the benefit of stolen Bandati technology such as her filmsuit. Most of those guests she’d seen in the Great Hall earlier were either already dead or very soon would be. The only others likely to survive were the Shoal-members and the occasional Bandati she’d seen there. The priests she’d spied with their Pope-avatar were vacuum-proofed and radiation shielded, of course, as all their kind were. But whether they were alive or not in the first place was a matter of conjecture and religious inclination.


Now the only thought in Dakota’s mind was how to escape.


* * * *

‘What did you say to her?’ Bourdain demanded from inside his own protective bubble of shaped fields. In a corridor filled with people desperate to find a way out, he’d caught up with the Shoal-member that had spoken with Dakota earlier. ‘How could you let her go?’ he screamed. ‘For God’s sake, look at what she’s done!’


There was no sign of Moss, but Bourdain had received a verbal report from one of the squad he’d sent after her of how she’d threatened to activate the GiantKiller. Bourdain raged at the thought of her actually following through, and right behind that thought came the appalling awareness that he had so badly underestimated her.


As soon as he had things under control, he was going to hunt that murderous little bitch down remorselessly. And when he had her-well, he was going to take his time over what happened then. It would require time and imagination.


‘Simple enquiry made concerning Dakota’s cargo, nature of,’ the Shoal-member that called himself Trader-In-Faecal-Matter-Of-Animals replied. ‘Perhaps to peruse Mr Bourdain’s thoughts concerning aforementioned matter?’


Anarchy now reigned throughout the ruins of the Great Hall. One of the ceiling buttresses had given way during the initial panic, sending a mighty spray of water across the cavernous space as the structure began to tumble into the artificial lake. Small decorative fish twisted frenetically in air that was misty with water now free of gravity’s grip.


Like Bourdain, a very few humans were wealthy enough to afford personal shaped field technology. Those had long fled, along with anyone else who had been able to reach the docks before the atmosphere gave out. But most of the rest hadn’t got that far, and their corpses littered the air all around.


Trader recognized that Bourdain was angry. It was very amusing to observe.


‘Your planet engines are guaranteed never to fail,’ Bourdain bellowed, his eyes showing white around the rims.


A strong gust of wind whipped constantly past them, rapidly increasing in intensity.


‘I’ll rip your fucking fish guts out in court. I’ll see you in hell. I’ll-’


‘Terrifying power of the most illegal variety has been unleashed, a much prized and non-leased technology, most dangerous in hands of irresponsible species. A GiantKiller, I believe you would phrase it.’


Bourdain sucked in a deep breath, and his eyes narrowed. ‘Prove it.’


‘With ease. But also note that planet engine fully operational under normal optimal circumstances, such circumstances invalidated by presence of activated GiantKiller. Therefore the Shoal can accept no blame.’


‘I should never have done business with your fucking kind,’ Bourdain snarled. ‘Really, outside of your box of magic tricks, all you lot are fucking tubeworms with attitude.’


‘Correct surmise,’ the Shoal replied. ‘But very powerful, very wealthy tubeworms. Note also that safety lies within personal protective bubble, as world dissolves like salt. Mr Bourdain advised to make use of such tube-worm technology by way of escape. Should reparations be sought, if still unhappy after conclusion of this sad woeful day, honourable tubeworm suggests further thoughts concerning embarrassment of criminal charges for procuring GiantKiller. Non-loss of species access to leased technologies in the face of such criminal acts might be considered extremely lenient.’


Bourdain was starting to say something else, but Trader failed to catch it as a vast crack rent the Great Hall totally asunder, rapidly opening out into a chasm below them.


Trader propelled himself upwards as the roof collapsed, revealing the stars beyond. He left Bourdain to find his own exit, ignoring his continuing protests over their shared comms band.


Trader’s human bodyguards were long gone in search of safety, and, truth be told, they were only there for show. If Trader had one real skill-beyond subterfuge and deceit-it would be a knack for survival.


He nimbly skirted a great section of the roof as it tumbled towards him, then navigated past several other sizeable chunks of falling debris as he made his way to safety far from the disintegrating asteroid.


Light sparkled from far above as the atmosphere’s retaining field vainly attempted to repair itself before finally giving out completely. Now he was well out of danger, Trader glanced down for the rare privilege of watching an entire world-however tiny-disintegrate before its eyes.


The ambassadorial cruiser had departed the Rock the instant the first signs of catastrophic engine failure had manifested. Any sooner and Trader would have run the risk of arousing suspicion during any subsequent investigation.


‘Please to be estimating surviving population of Bourdain’s Rock,’ Trader messaged his human staff aboard the cruiser.


‘Of two thousand, two hundred and thirteen individuals, of which two hundred and thirty-five were registered staff, there’s an early estimate of just seventy-five survivors, Ambassador.’


What would happen next depended on how much Trader chose to trust the information provided by the Deep Dreamers. Prior experience had taught the alien that the chances of someone successfully following a predicted course of action could be improved by narrowing down the alternative options.


So far, the Dreamers had been entirely accurate in their predictions of key events. In some way as yet unfathomable to Trader, the woman Dakota Merrick now stood at the beginning of a path that, without judicious interference, would lead to the most terrible war the galaxy had ever witnessed.


Now Trader’s priority task was to make sure of staying with her every step of the way, until the root cause of that impending conflict could be discerned-and then carefully eradicated.


* * * *

Before blacking out, the last thing Dakota remembered was a wall of rock rushing straight towards her. As she awoke, she was therefore considerably surprised to find she was still alive.


She remembered the plaza ripping apart down the middle, with a sound like an army of gods grinding their teeth in unison. She recalled seeing rivers of silver work their way through the ancient exposed rock, as she’d been carried upwards in a rushing tornado of air. Then a chunk of mountain had come flying towards her, lines of silver spreading through that too, before it visibly dissolved into gravel before her eyes.


The filmsuit, she knew, had kept her alive. She’d been aware that it could absorb kinetic energy to some fantastic degree, but ensuring her survival after colliding with a mountain was on a whole new level of scary


A section of slowly tumbling debris about the size of a stadium came rushing up towards her. There was no way she could avoid it, but she braced herself nevertheless, hoping against hope.


She came into contact with the hurtling debris at bowel-emptying speed, yet she felt nothing. For a few moments, her filmsuit glowed a dull red while the rock underfoot began steaming and cracking. It seemed the filmsuit could somehow reflect the enormous kinetic energy of the impact back into itself.


Dumbfounded at this knowledge, Dakota bent her knees and kicked, pushing herself away from the shattered asteroid fragment. Her filmsuit slowly faded to its usual black, any remaining energy radiating back into space. It was hard to believe the Bandati liquid shield could be capable of so much.


Gradually she built up a momentum taking her away from Bourdain’s Rock by pushing herself off other chunks of passing debris. Once she was far enough away, she finally took the opportunity to look back. Patches of dying forest were still visible, clinging to shattered asteroid-fragments that spun slowly away from each other or else collided and continued to disintegrate.


Dakota didn’t even want to think about what had happened to the people left behind.


As she watched, a huge chunk of the Rock’s shattered horizon split apart in a shower of grey and black dust. Trees and lichens still clung to one segment and, against all the odds, some localized emergency power circuits were still functioning, illuminating the interiors of ripped-open corridors, equipment bays and living quarters. Combined with the glow of sporadic electrical fires here and there, these lights gave the impression of a hellish grotto. She caught glimpses of the flash-frozen corpses of deer and horses floating near by, then they were gone, caught in a disintegrating maelstrom of dust and rock that was likely to grind them down to nothing.


Piri was feeding her news reports of the disaster, as local ships escaping from the Rock continued firing live feeds into the local tach-nets. Her Ghost subsequently picked out a description of a woman urgently being sought for questioning. A woman carrying illegal machine-head implants.


But I didn’t do anything, she protested within the safety of her own thoughts. Maybe they were talking about some other machine-head.


They were going to kill me. I had no choice…


But no choice as to what? She hadn’t followed through on her threat. She’d tried to bluff Moss, and failed pathetically.


But someone had followed through. She had absolutely no doubt the Rock had been destroyed by the same GiantKiller she’d transported here earlier.


The appalling notion that she had been set up oozed into Dakota’s thoughts like a pool of coagulating blood. People were looking for her, people who thought she was responsible for this outrage.


But who could be easier to blame than a machine-head, an illegal?


Old anger and frustration flared deep inside her thoughts. She remembered all too clearly the day they’d forcibly removed her original Ghost implants, after the fatal flaw in the technology had become clear. Just as vivid was the memory of her subsequent near-suicidal depression, a bleak period that had lasted several months. Then came her decision to acquire some crude black-market clones, furtively installed in a backstreet surgery, before slowly starting to piece her life back together.


Without doubt she was the perfect scapegoat, for no one really trusted machine-heads. Not after…


For a long moment, Dakota imagined her broken and beaten body being tossed aloft by a jeering mob.


Come and get me, Piri.


‹I am already on the way, Dakota. It may take me some time to reach you, however, due to the risk of compromising hull integrity through further impacts. It is therefore advisable for you to maximize distance between yourself and any debris.›


That’s fine, Piri. Just make sure you get here before my filmsuit runs out of juice.


She was drifting towards a boulder measuring about a hundred metres across. As she got closer, she recognized the tiles adorning part of its surface: it was a fragment of the Great Hall. Both she and it were moving in the same direction at roughly similar velocities, so she managed to land on it gently. She was about to push away again when she caught sight of a human body floating nearby-a partly naked woman, with the few remaining scraps of an evening dress still straggling from her torso.


The corpse’s eyes were glassy and frozen, the mouth open in a soundless scream. Dakota recognized her as the avatar of Pope Eliza.


As Dakota finally pushed off into the darkness her Ghost circuits tugged her gaze in a particular direction, where she saw light glinting from the rapidly approaching shape of the Piri Reis.


It would take days for her to shake the hideous memory of the avatar’s corpse from her restless dreams.


The Piri hove closer, changing from a dull silhouette barely visible against the stars to a grey hull comprised of three joined-up sections. From a distance it resembled a fat metallic insect. From the ship’s underbelly, a forest of grapples extended, seeking her out.


Dakota fell into her ship’s machine embrace, like a swaddled child falling into the arms of its mother. At that moment she became aware of the Shoal’s gift still clutched, by some miracle, in one black-slicked hand.


* * * *
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