Stealing Light

Eight

Trans-Jovian Space, Sol System, en route to Mesa Verde

A long, long time later, Dakota came to realize her biggest mistake had been opening the alien’s gift.

Whatever she’d expected to find when she investigated the box the Shoal-member had passed her, she hadn’t thought she would find herself holding a tiny and entirely anthropomorphic figurine handcrafted of wood and silver wire.

As she touched it for the first time, a slight stab of pain in the back of her head heralded the arrival of a severe headache. The pain was so sharp she even imagined she saw a spark of light, out of the corner of one eye.

She returned her attention to the figurine she held, trying to work out what seemed so dauntingly familiar about it, so much so it gave her a curiously queasy sensation in the pit of her stomach. Fine pieces of patterned paper surrounded the head and hips of a matchstick figure, suggesting a headscarf and skirt. The tiny, delicate arms were raised up as if in alarm, and the figure itself was mounted on a cross-shaped base.

It looked just like the kind of cheap folk art people bought on holiday, then left forgotten on some dusty shelf. For the life of her, Dakota could not begin to understand what significance the figurine might hold for the Shoal-member, or what significance the alien believed it might hold for her.

She placed the object on the instrument board in the command module of the Piri Reis, and stared at it for a while longer. Despite its innocuous appearance, something about it still chilled her.

Finally Dakota grew bored trying to understand it. As her Ghost tugged at her senses, she flicked over to an external view. A message icon was currently flashing over a display of Mesa Verde, another Shoal-boosted asteroid much like Bourdain’s Rock.

She put the message on display over the expanse of infinite black space extending beyond her ship, and felt a surge of relief at what she read there.

A long time ago (Dakota recalled) Mesa Verde had been a prison of sorts, one part of a loose confederation of human communities scattered throughout the asteroid belt and outer solar system. In the dark days before the invention of tachyon transmission and the subsequent first contact with the Shoal, people serving penal sentences had been exploited as cheap labour in mining operations. The mining still continued, of course-the need for raw ores was greater than ever. But the quality of life for most humans in the outer solar system had improved immeasurably, and Mesa Verde hadn’t been a prison for a long time.

The asteroid had instead become a centre of commerce and shipbuilding, mostly unmanned ore-freighters. In the pre-Shoal days, the asteroid had floated naked to the vacuum, its surface riddled with slag and excavation mounds left over from the construction of internalized living quarters. Or so Dakota was informed by the moodily grey and black images hanging on the walls of the tube leading from Mesa Verde’s docking ports as the spoken testimonials of long-gone prisoners whispered out from hidden circuitry in the picture frames.

The asteroid’s surface was visible all around through panoramic windows. Palms waved in an artificially induced breeze stirring up the air that wrapped around Mesa Verde’s mottled surface like a blanket. Multiple tiny suns shone down through the containment fields, their light and warmth falling on tended gardens and open plazas.

Dakota focused on keeping calm. There were hidden security devices everywhere, scanning her inside and out every step of the way. Lenses the size of dust-motes, and recording devices invisible to the naked eye, moved around her in a cloud, even probing beneath her skin to verify her ID.

Her new ID, she remembered. She wasn’t Dakota Merrick any more, and wouldn’t be for a long while. Her Ghost worked overtime balancing out her internal neuro-pharmacology, suppressing any detectable signs of anxiety-anything that might lead Mesa Verde’s security to suspect she might, say, be carrying a mini nuke in her gullet, or a timed virus woven into her DNA.

Dakota’s Ghost also worked overtime in order to disguise its own existence. She could sense it hovering in her mental background, calculating risks and strategies nanosecond by nanosecond.

All of this was good, but it was nice to have a little extra too: like someone on the inside of Mesa Verde’s administrative body helping her out, invisibly altering records and allowing her to pass through security procedures without unnecessary altercation.

Dakota was making good on old contacts.

What neither she nor her Ghost had predicted, though, was the presence of real, live, human customs officers. That was entirely unexpected.

On encountering them, Dakota hesitated only for a moment, before pushing on with a determined stride. The two men wore the uniforms of the Consortium military detachment permanently stationed on Mesa Verde, and each had a force stick holstered on his hip. They were talking with a pair of priests who had obviously also just disembarked.

As Dakota approached the gathered figures she heard the artificial tones of the priests’ voices, and noticed the bright lights of the corridor gleaming off their metallic skins. They moved on after a moment, having obviously satisfied the guards of the nature of their visit. The long dark vestments swished on the floor of the walkway as they headed towards the atrium beyond.

Dakota produced her credentials and handed them over. ‘Mala Oorthaus,’ one of them muttered, studying them. ‘What’s your business here?’

‘Real live humans?’ Dakota said in mock surprise, giving them each a grin. ‘What’s wrong with an ordinary scan-and-sweep?’

‘You’ll have heard about what happened at the Rock.’ The guard didn’t smile back as he replied. ‘What’re you here for?’

‘Independent shipping contractor.’ She held his gaze for a moment. ‘Just hoping to drum up some business here.’

She had used the cosmetic software in Piri’s surgical unit to puff out her cheeks a little. Her lips looked correspondingly thinner than usual, and her hair was shorter and darker than it had been. Her skin, too, was darker, and a couple of days in the medbox had swelled her hips, building up and slightly altering her skeletal structure while she lay in dreamless sleep. Her face itself was smaller, rounder, her eyes wider with a hint of epicanthic fold.

The guard glanced to one side, studying a report Dakota couldn’t see clearly from where she stood, but she caught a glimpse of an image of the inside of her skull displayed in real-time, as hidden devices analysed the interior of her body.

She tried not to moan with relief when she saw that her implants weren’t showing up.

After a moment he waved her on. Several steps on, and she remembered to start breathing again.

She found Josef Marados in a tall building whose uppermost floors pushed out through the thin envelope of atmosphere surrounding Mesa Verde. Judging by the size of his office, she figured he’d done well for himself in the years since Redstone.

‘God damn, even with the alterations, you’re still a sight for sore eyes,’ he began, coming over to her with a grin. There was a hint here of the effusive manner Dakota remembered from years ago, but this was otherwise an altogether much more sombre individual than the man she’d known.

‘How long, Dakota? How long has it been?’

‘Not so long,’ she replied, pulling him into a brief, tentative hug. He’d lost weight over the years, perhaps too much given his large frame. ‘It’s only been a few years since-’

‘Yeah, since.’ He nodded into her sudden silence. ‘Feels like a lifetime though, don’t it?’

Dakota nodded in return. It did.

The few illegal machine-heads still in existence in the home system had their own methods of staying in touch. Moreover, Ghost implants were designed to be mutually detectable-two machine-heads could sense each other’s presence once they were within several kilometres’ range of each other. So if Josef had still possessed his implants, she’d have sensed him at a considerable distance beforehand.

At first, Dakota thought Josef merely worked for Black Rock Ore. Instead, it turned out that he owned it.

Black Rock Ore had once specialized in the exploitation of carbonaceous asteroids. Nowadays, under Josef’s administration, they skipped doing the dirty work themselves by financing other small, independent contractors to mine the asteroid belt for its precious metals, and then raked in a very profitable percentage.

Now here she was, sitting on one of a pair of couches, facing the man who had been her sometime lover in those few, brief years before her previous life had ended.

He studied her and smiled. ‘So, Bourdain’s Rock. Care to tell me what happened back there?’

Dakota felt her jaw tighten.

‘Room’s clean,’ Josef assured her. ‘No bugs. Glass is one-way and tuned to randomize vibrations, so we can see out, but no one on the outside will be able to see or hear anything. The Aligned Worlds Federal Treaty gets a bit vague on business practices, so industrial espionage is just part of the landscape around here. But all that really means,’ he said, a grin spreading across his face, ‘is you need to make sure your counter-espionage is more effective than their snooping.’

‘I didn’t mention anything about the Rock. How did you know?’

‘Apart from the fact you just told me? Come on. First, a terrorist attack on a major populated asteroid so spectacular the footage’ll be bouncing around the Consortium networks until kingdom come. Then, on top of all that, you appear out of nowhere begging for my help.’

Josef leaned forward and poured her a cup of coffee, stained pink to denote the form and quantity of legalized narcotics it contained. Dakota glanced behind him and saw, to her distaste, a Freehold challenge blade had been mounted on the wall near the door.

She responded with silence.

‘Dak, this isn’t a set-up. Alexander Bourdain is a snake, a piece of shit. The entire outer system would be a lot better off with him dead. And I know you, you’re no mass murderer.’

‘He’s still alive?’

‘So I hear,’ Josef replied, noting the frightened expression on her face. ‘He’s lying low right now, my guess being that he’s taking the opportunity to arrange a fast escape out of the home system in case he needs it. So what happened there?’

‘Someone blew up Bourdain’s Rock, and I was made to look responsible. But it wasn’t me.’

Josef blinked. ‘Seriously?’

‘My shipping agent-my previous shipping agent -fixed me up with a no-questions-asked delivery job to the Rock. It should have gone smoothly, but there were some unforeseen problems with the cargo.’

Josef was staring at her like he’d never set eyes on her before. ‘I guess we’re not talking about a shipment of toilet paper, then, are we?’

Dakota looked at him askance. He merely shrugged, and she continued. ‘My ship suffered major systems failures the whole way there, sometimes even total shutdown of life-support systems. All I could figure out was it had something to do with the cargo I was carrying to Bourdain, but it was part of the arrangement that I wasn’t allowed to even know what I was actually carrying.’

‘You must have been pretty desperate, taking on a job like that.’

Dakota shook her head. ‘Don’t even ask. Every time this disruption happened, the systems always came back online eventually. To cut a long story short, it turned out I was fetching Bourdain a GiantKiller.’

Josef’s eyes were just about popping out of his head by this point. ‘You’re shitting me,’ he said, after a moment. ‘A GiantKiller? Those things are supposed to be only a rumour. So they really exist? And that’s what ripped up Bourdain’s pride and joy?’

‘Yeah, but not before he grabbed me and started torturing me, since he seemed to think I’d sneaked a look at his cargo and figured out what it actually was.’

‘Wait a minute.’ Josef put up a hand. ‘So you didn’t know what you were delivering. But you just said it was a GiantKiller. Who told you that-Bourdain?’

‘No.’ Dakota thought fast for a moment, but a sense of self-preservation kept her from mentioning the Shoal-member. ‘I kind of read between the lines when something started eating the asteroid. I witnessed the whole thing, after the atmosphere gave out and I managed to escape. If it is a GiantKiller, your guess is as good as mine as to what made it go off.’

‘So, what, you think it self-activated? Or someone else set it off?’

‘Why not? Think how many enemies Bourdain must have. Think how much sense that would make. I deliver the GiantKiller, and somebody else detonates it. Who gets the blame? Me. When this all blows over-if it ever does-the first thing I’ll do is find the shipping agent who acted as the go-between in all this. That’s where I’ll get some answers, I’m sure of it.’

‘This shipping agent. Anyone I know?’

‘Constantin Quill, based in-’

‘I know of him. Or at least I do now. He’s dead.’

Dakota started. ‘He-?’

‘Don’t know the circumstances, but apparently what was left of him was pretty messy. Somebody put him in the same room as a couple of half-starved Mogs. That’s not official news, but you get to hear things on the grapevine.’

‘Great.’ Dakota lowered her gaze and sighed. She then accepted a glass of the pink coffee and tasted it, feeling a warming numbness slide down her throat and into her stomach. She began to relax despite herself. ‘Nice to know the kind of future I’ve got to look forward to myself, then.’

‘If Bourdain’s responsible for Quill’s murder, then it means he’s covering his tracks. Losing the Rock is a major blow for him, but if it gets found out he was involved in acquiring illegal alien technology like a GiantKiller…’

Josef let the words trail off and fixed her with an inquisitorial gaze. ‘Okay, now you get to tell me what you want from me.’

‘I know you don’t owe me anything.’

‘You get special dispensation. We had something going, the two of us, even if it was a long time ago.’

The coffee was making it harder for Dakota to stay focused. She put down the empty glass and pushed it away with unsteady fingers. ‘You were always particularly good with contacts.’

‘Rich family, generations of businessmen. It helps.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Where do you want to go now, Dakota? Somewhere far away?’

‘The further the better. For a long, long time.’

Josef shook his head. ‘I’ll try, but it isn’t going to be easy.’

‘How so?’

‘You’re being blamed for the destruction of a minor world. A couple of thousand people are dead, and you’re the prime suspect for their mass murder. Worse, you’re a machine-head, directly implicated in the Port Gabriel massacre. How long was it before you got yourself black-market implants?’

‘Why do you care?’

‘Humour me.’

‘I survived OK for about six months after they let us all out of internment. Then they took away our Ghosts, and I wanted to die. I had new implants put in as soon as humanly possible. Pretty well immediately.’

‘How about countermeasures?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Sure you do.’ Josef chuckled. ‘I’m talking about methods to survive your implants being compromised.’

‘Everybody has their own way of dealing with that possibility.’

‘And what’s yours? Some means of wiping or disabling your own implants, maybe a coded message?’

‘That sounds like suicide.’

‘But better than the alternative, like losing your mind to outside control, don’t you think?’

‘I guess. And even if I did-’

‘You wouldn’t tell me? Fine. And there’s nothing else you want to tell me?’ Josef’s eyes were searching her face.

‘Perhaps…’

‘Yes?’

‘No, Josef, there’s nothing else I can think of.’

He obviously wasn’t satisfied with this answer, but she couldn’t find any real reason to burden him with the truth. Assuming he would even believe her, which struck Dakota as unlikely.

‘OK,’ he said at length. ‘I can’t help thinking I might come to regret this, but I’ll see what I can do for you.’

She tried not to look too obviously relieved.

Dakota woke from a dream-filled sleep to find that already fourteen hours had passed since her meeting with Josef.

In the meantime she’d found herself a room-cell would be a more accurate description-in an echoing warren of twenty-four hour rentals that accepted anonymous payment. She could have stayed on the Piri Reis, of course, but Mesa Verde’s docks would be Bourdain’s first port of call if he came looking for her.

When she woke, it was from a nightmare of being incarcerated in a tiny space at the centre of Bourdain’s Rock that got steadily smaller and hotter, squeezing in around her until she couldn’t breathe. The room she’d hired was too small to stand up in, and for a few moments she panted asthmatically, staring up at a ceiling that was far too close, until she got her bearings.

Her thoughts smoothed out as her implants soothed her jagged brain waves, and she began to breathe more easily. Her Ghost informed her that Josef wanted her to return to his office. Apparently he’d found something suitable for her.

The dream had felt so real she felt half-sure she’d find the door out of her rented room locked when she tried to open it. Crouching to stop her head bumping against the ridiculously low ceiling, she felt an irrational wave of relief when the door opened smoothly on to a busy public corridor.

‘My name is Gardner. David Gardner.’

Gardner stood up and nodded politely to Dakota as she entered Josef’s office. He had close-cropped hair that she suspected he’d allowed to grow grey just enough to lend him a certain air of authority, and his dress was just this side of conservative. She thought there was something cold in the way his pale, milky eyes appraised her.

‘I’ve already explained how you’re looking for work, Mala.’ Josef took her by the elbow and guided her to one of the couches directly facing Gardner as he resumed his seat.

Dakota noticed the way Josef was subtly deferential towards the other man, the way Gardner sat with his arms draped across the back of his chair in a pose making him seem so much at home. It was as if they were in Gardner’s office, rather than Josef’s.

‘You’re a machine-head,’ Gardner stated flatly.

Dakota glanced at Josef, who nodded go on to her as he took a seat to one side of them.

‘Yes.’

Gardner nodded thoughtfully, as if carefully considering this information. ‘Josefs explained to me you weren’t anywhere near Redstone when those massacres took place. Nevertheless, I’m sure you understand why it’s important I ask you how well your artificial immune system can be trusted to protect you.’

Dakota knew Gardner was referring to her Ghost’s ability to react to and then prevent hostile intrusions. She glanced sideways at Josef, but he was carefully avoiding her gaze. She wondered how worried that should make her.

‘It’s the best available,’ she replied. ‘That’s all you need to know.’

Dakota wondered if she saw a glint of amusement in Gardner’s eyes. ‘Yet there are never total guarantees, are there? History can repeat itself.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Dakota said, turning towards Josef, ‘but who the hell is this?’

Josef leaned over and put a hand on her arm. ‘Just listen to him.’

Gardner continued as if she had said nothing. ‘There must be very few people, apart from others like yourself, whom you can fully trust. I gather it’s quite a wrenching experience to lose your Ghost implants.’

‘It is,’ Dakota replied levelly. ‘It’s the worst thing you could imagine.’

Gardner chuckled and glanced at Josef, who smiled tightly. Internal alarm bells that had nothing to do with her Ghost circuits were starting to clamour inside Dakota’s head.

Gardner leaned forward. ‘Let’s not beat about the bush here, Miss Oorthaus. I understand you are used to dangerous work, and the job I specifically require a machine-head for may prove very dangerous indeed. But ultimately extremely profitable.’

‘I appreciate that, Mr Gardner, and my piloting skills are the best. But you’re going to have to tell me just what it is you need me to do.’

‘You are familiar with colonial surveys?’

Ah, that was it.

Because humanity, in the form of the Consortium, was restricted by the Shoal to travel only within a bubble of space a few hundred light years across, potentially habitable worlds within that bubble were becoming a precious and dwindling resource. In fact, most of the systems to be found within that bubble of space did not contain any Earth-like worlds. In those systems that did, few of the worlds were life-bearing, and even fewer of those were capable of supporting human beings unaided.

Competition for such limited resources was subsequently extremely fierce-and occasionally deadly.

It was not unknown for claim-jumping to take place. Rival groups chasing after the gradually dwindling number of colonial contracts could separately find their way to a promising system via coreship and, by the force of arms, prevent another colony from being set up there. The Shoal appeared to care little whether such armies were carried across space in the Shoal coreships so long as they themselves were not threatened.

Most such incidents of colonial rivalry ended in decades of litigation, while Consortium warships remained in orbit above those barely habitable worlds until such time as the courts decided who should get which contract. The origins of the Consortium itself lay in arbitrating such conflicts: disparate private enterprises had been merged under a general UN charter, and an administrative Council set up to oversee exploration and exploitation in an attempt to bring order to an otherwise chaotic interstellar land-rush.

The precursors to such contracts were colonial surveys, whereby the potential colonists could raise funds to send ships and survey teams to assess the likely costs and time-scales for establishing viable settlements. Such expeditions were particularly prone to piracy.

‘I’ve never taken part in a colonial survey, but…’

‘Yes?’ Gardner raised his eyebrows.

Careful, thought Dakota: she’d almost mentioned Redstone. She had been there, but Mala hadn’t.

‘But I’m more than aware of the dangers involved. Particularly after the Freehold-Uchidan conflict.’

‘So can I assume you’re at least familiar with events on Redstone?’

Another quick glance at Josef, but his face was impossible to read. She looked back to Gardner. ‘It would be extremely hard to be a machine-head and not be familiar with what happened there, Mr Gardner.’

Gardner smiled, looking pleased. ‘Quite right, quite right. The reason I’m here involves the Freehold, as a matter of fact.’

‘It does?’ A trickle of ice began gliding down the length of Dakota’s spine.

‘Yes. But anything I tell you from now is on the condition that you have agreed to take on this job. Josef here can assure you the money you’ll be paid is very, very generous.’

She glanced to one side and saw Josef’s head bob energetically.

‘As I understand it so far, you’re surveying a new system, and you need a machine-head pilot who knows how to keep her mouth shut,’ Dakota announced flatly. ‘That’s what we’re talking about, isn’t it?’

Gardner nodded. ‘That about sums it up. Now tell me if you want the job.’

Dakota nodded tightly, trying hard not to let Gardner see the emotional turmoil she was in. ‘I do, Mr Gardner. You have a pilot. But what I don’t understand is why the Freehold would specifically want to hire a machine-head? What do they need me for-target practice?’

Gardner just stared at her.

‘Easy, Mala,’ Josef muttered. ‘It took a lot to set this up, and you owe me.’

‘Miss Oorthaus, you weren’t on Redstone when the tragedy at Port Gabriel took place. There’s still a lot of bad feeling there, that’s true, but the Freehold Senate understands that the machine-heads present on Redstone were… subverted? Is that the right word?’

‘Good enough,’ Dakota replied.

‘The truth is the Freehold are losing their war with the Uchidans. Because of this, the Freehold are in the market for a new homeworld, and they currently have a new charter up for consideration by the Consortium. The system in question is already under survey, but the Freehold’s military resources have been badly stretched by the war on Redstone. They lost a lot of their capability during the Port Gabriel fiasco, and a good deal since. They have only three orbital warships left, all centuries old, and they need this colonial charter because, frankly, they’re history without it.’

‘You’re saying these ships are old enough they’re still set up for navigation by machine-head pilots, right? Aren’t they worried the Uchidans could pull the same trick again if I was allowed to pilot one of their ships?’

‘It’s a good question, but they don’t actually consider the Uchidans a major threat to the survey expedition. If it proved successful, and the Freehold won themselves a new colonial contract, the Uchidans would end up getting Redstone all to themselves. The main worry involves other, outside interests-other colonies, potential or real, prepared to go to war over an uninhabited world. Plus, the Freehold can’t pilot their ships as well as a machine-head could. The frigate they’ll be sending to this system would be at a disadvantage if it encountered any opposition unafraid of hiring someone like yourself. You’d be an essential part of their inventory, regardless of the past.’

Dakota leaned back, thinking hard. ‘I hope that money you mentioned is really, really good.’

‘Better than good.’ Josef laughed and shook his head. ‘The kind of money they’re offering, you or I could find a rock and stick a planet engine in it and call it home. Let your Ghost talk to the Black Rock systems and see if it isn’t true.’

Dakota’s Ghost instantaneously flashed up the details of the pending financial transaction, and the arcane financial trickery that was meant to disguise where it had come from and who exactly was going to benefit from it. Half the money, for both Josef and Dakota, had already been deposited. But even with that first payment alone, she was already set to be very, very rich.

Gardner smiled. ‘You can’t deny it’s generous.’

Dakota felt dizzy, and tried hard to keep her face impassive at the sheer number of zeroes she’d just seen marching across her mind’s eye.

‘And what about you, Mr Gardner? What do you get out of this? You’re not part of the Freehold, are you?’

‘No, but I represent outside investments that allow this expedition to happen at all. A business can make a great deal out of a successful colony, if it invests in it early.’

Good enough, Dakota decided. Good enough because there wasn’t anywhere else to go.

‘If you’re screwing me over, Josef, I’d appreciate knowing just how much before I jump in the fire. What exactly did you tell him about me?’

Josef carefully placed a hand over Dakota’s, where it had balled up around a fistful of his shirt just before shoving him up against a wall. Gardner had left them a few minutes before.

‘Let go, Dakota,’ Josef said, adopting a reasonable tone.

‘You’re asking me to stick myself inside a locked steel box for maybe several months, among a bunch of people with every reason to want to see someone like me dead. So if you’re missing anything out, anything at all, I swear the last thing that pretty face of yours will ever see will be me pulling the trigger right before I blow your head off.’

Josef coughed out a horrified laugh, and Dakota released the pressure a little. ‘Dakota, you came to me, remember? You asked for my help. Or maybe’-his voice took on a more accusatory tone-‘it’s more convenient for you to forget that.’

‘I didn’t forget,’ Dakota mumbled, and finally let him go. ‘I just hate being in any situation where I don’t feel in control.’

She slumped back on Josef’s couch, and a few moments later felt him place a hand on her shoulder as he stepped up behind her. ‘Once this is all over, you’ll be right back on top. You’ll have the money to do what you like-or even not do anything at all for the rest of your life.’

Dakota cast him a dubious look.

‘This is a routine operation,’ Josef insisted. ‘I’m not saying Gardner’s an angel, but the money’s real enough, and I’ve dealt with him in the past. But, while we’re at it, there is one other thing I wanted to bring up with you, and you’re probably not going to like it.’

Dakota stroked her brow with one hand. ‘Thanks for leaving it till last,’ she deadpanned.

‘You’re going to have to leave your ship behind.’

Dakota’s eyes snapped open, staring at Josef in disbelief. ‘You mean in storage?’

He sighed and sat down next to her. ‘Dakota, right now that ship of yours is like a big glowing arrow pointing at your head saying “dangerous criminal here”. Anyone who wants to find you just needs to look for your ship. Yourself you can disguise, but not the… what’s it called?’

‘The Piri Reis.’

‘Yeah, that. I set tracer systems on the Piri, to keep an eye on it, and it responded by attacking our databases. Where the hell did you get that ship?’

‘It’s a very valuable piece of hardware, Josef, and that’s all you need to know. That, and the fact there’s absolutely no way I’m going to leave it in storage. I can stow it in the cargo hold of whatever ship I’m piloting to this Freehold system.’

‘Uh-uh.’ Josef shook his head. ‘In case I wasn’t sufficiently clear, I mean you have to destroy it, Dak.’

‘Fuck you.’

‘And fuck you too,’ Josef echoed back at her. ‘You’ll leave it here, and it’s going straight to scrap. Stop!’ he yelled, as Dakota pulled herself up, her mouth open to argue. ‘Just think for once in your life. Right now you’re public enemy number one-and I mean that literally. Right now I’m the only bridge you haven’t completely burned, and the Piri Reis is going to lead everyone straight to you. You take that ship along with you, when you’ll be spending probably weeks on board a coreship, that’s plenty of time for Bourdain and the Consortium to set their bloodhounds on your trail. And believe me, every coreship leaving this system for months to come is going to be filled with agents looking for you.’

Dakota stood up and pulled on her coat. ‘I don’t like it,’ she protested weakly.

Josef shrugged and spread his hands. ‘I’m open to alternative suggestions.’

Dakota responded with silence.

Several hours later, when she found herself back on board the Piri Reis, it felt like attending a wake.

She had Piri knock together something warm and alcoholic for her in the kitchenette, something loaded with the kind of neuro-adjusters she normally derived from her implants. As the shaking she had felt build up in her hands edged off, she began to feel better.

Here’s to you, Piri, she toasted.

The possibility that she might have to ditch her ship after the destruction of Bourdain’s Rock had always been there in her mind. But she felt like a hermit forced to leave her cave after a lifetime of solitude-and ever since Port Gabriel, the Piri Reis had been a pretty good substitute for a hermit’s cave.

She curled up against the warm fur inlay that coated the interior of her ship and felt like an agoraphobic who’d just woken to find someone had strapped a parachute to her back and thrown her out of an aircraft.

‘Dakota?’ She heard the effigy calling her name softly. She stood up and walked through into the welcome darkness of her sleeping quarters, and let the effigy slide its warm, flesh-like arms around her. Its fingers pried at her clothes, gently peeling them away before tugging her downwards and planting soft, dry kisses on her belly and breasts.

She stroked the smooth, hairless dome of its head as it pulled itself up and slid her arms around its shoulders, feeling its weight press down on her. All the while she couldn’t help thinking that there had to be a way to get around Josef’s demands.

It was her they were hunting for, not the Piri Reis.

When the solution finally came to her, she had to wonder why it took her so long to think of it.