Nova War (14 page)

A tingle in her neck announced the return of the
Piri Reis.
But something was different now; her implants made it clear the ship was a lot closer than before.

It was, in fact, several hundred kilometres overhead, locked into orbit around Ironbloom.

Ironbloom. I know.

I know. How long do we have?

Dakota laughed weakly at this.
If you only knew,
she sent.

She stepped towards the canister, with the idea of pushing it out of the door-opening. She yelled as she touched it, and quickly stepped away. It was hot – hot enough to burn her.

And enormously heavy.

She cursed and cradled her singed hand. No, not just heavy, she realized; it was locked onto the slab somehow, possibly even magnetized.

The blimps,
she sent frantically,
are they on their way?

The canister rattled again, and the mewling grew louder – angrier. Whatever was inside was clearly restless from its long incarceration.

There isn’t the fucking time,
Piri
! You need to redirect the nearest blimps to me right now. I’m in serious trouble.

Something pale and wormlike was beginning to emerge from the top of the canister.

No,
several
somethings.

The stink of the creatures that emerged made Dakota gag. At first they reminded her of fat caterpillars, but about the length of her arm and twice as thick. Each had tiny, stubby, almost comical legs, perhaps a dozen in all. She wondered how they’d survived being crammed into such a confined space.

I didn’t say I wanted to debate the fucking matter! Now,
Piri,
or I’m dead!

There were four grubs in all, pale-bodied, with small, puckered mouths. They did not appear to have eyes, and their heads waved blindly in the air as they emerged. The nearest to Dakota seemed to sense something, however, when it turned in her direction, the pitch of its mewling changing to become more intense, more desperate.

Born hungry.

They moved so slowly, however, and surely—

The nearest reared up on its hind legs and hissed at her, baring tiny, razor-sharp teeth. Its body trembled, as if scenting fresh meat, and with an undulating motion that made her stomach twist, began to creep towards her.

Oh crap,
thought Dakota.

Ten

Things got bad for Corso after he was removed again from Dakota’s cell.

His immediate conclusion when he awoke once more strapped on a gurney was that they were going to resume the torture. A tight strap under his chin held his head immobile, and he could feel bands of pressure where others secured his legs and arms. His mouth felt thick and clammy, familiar evidence that he’d been drugged into submission even as he slept.

He was being wheeled down a passageway, its etched-copper walls alternating with bright strips of light as four blank-eyed Bandati – one at each corner of the gurney – pushed him along, the wheels bumping noisily.

Suddenly, the overhead lights gave way to natural light and open air. A moment later Corso found himself in free-fall, the side of the tower rushing by at enormous speed.

He entered a realm of resounding terror, screaming hoarsely as he plummeted towards the streets and twisting tributaries of the river far below.

The four Bandati were still there, though, each holding one corner of the gurney, but with their wings spread wide to catch the air. Their descent slowed suddenly, the light now picking out the iridescent patterns on their extended wings.

They glided downwards at an eye-wateringly steep angle, the wind whipping the breath from Corso’s lungs, before making a sudden and far from gentle landing on what appeared to be a rooftop. They were near the centre of a cluster of buildings standing inside a funnel-shaped space that lay at the tower’s heart.

The back of Corso’s skull had banged against the gurney several times, almost knocking him unconscious. He felt a warm trickling sensation across his thighs and realized belatedly he’d pissed himself during their sudden descent.

They wheeled him through a wide arch, and into what he soon realized was an elevator big enough to accommodate a hundred humans. The elevator dropped for what felt like a remarkably long time before emerging into what was clearly a subway system, with long, arrow-nosed, windowless trains floating above rails in a well-lit tunnel that vanished into infinity.

There were more Bandati here, most of them armed with weapons slung over heavy grey harnesses. Two of these stepped forward, took charge of the gurney and wheeled it inside one of the trains.

Corso found Honeydew – recognizable by his now-familiar wing-patterning – waiting for him inside. The car they were in jerked slightly and they started to accelerate, the movement so gentle that Corso had only the barest sense they were even under way. Curling patterns, like those that patterned his cell, began to glow across the walls of the car.

‘You should know, Mr Corso, that if not for my direct intervention you might be dead by now.’ The synthesized voice echoed stiffly. ‘I, however, have maintained a stand that you can still be of use to us.’

It took a moment for Corso to realize his restraints had been loosened. He swung his legs slowly to the floor.

‘If this is about what happened with Dakota—’

‘You failed, Mr Corso.’

Corso laughed, fresh anger blooming deep within his chest. ‘You tortured her continuously, and you think she’s just going to turn around and
help
you on my say-so?’ He shook his head. ‘She’s just looking for a fast way to kill herself – has been, ever since Redstone. All you’re doing is making it easy for her. The more you punish her, the more she thinks she deserves it.’

He stood up carefully, determined to stand his ground. ‘You’ll never get her to cooperate, and as long as she’s still alive and she can communicate with the derelict, you’re never going to get inside it. At least, not without my help.’

‘Dakota Merrick is no longer your concern.’

‘What?’ Corso balled his fists at his sides and stepped closer to the alien. ‘What does that mean?’

‘It means nothing, Mr Corso. You’ve proven adequately that you can help us penetrate the derelict’s interior, but there have been . . . setbacks.’

‘I already told you, I can’t help you as much as I might if I had access to the records on board the
Piri Reis.’

‘That can be arranged. We want you to retrieve your protocols from the
Piri Reis
’
s
stacks.’

At last.
‘That still doesn’t answer the question of just why in hell I should,’ Corso replied carefully. ‘You haven’t followed through on any of your promises – in fact, apart from trying to pry my brain apart or torture me, this is the first goddamn time I’ve been out of that tower-cell since we got here! Every step of the way you’ve treated the pair of us like
animals.
There’s been no sign or evidence of any negotiation. I’ve been given no opportunity to contact the Freehold, to—’

‘You will have your negotiations, Mr Corso.’

‘Like hell I will!’ he exploded. ‘I’m sick and tired of being led on. Bring me a representative of the Freehold, and
then
maybe we can talk. Until then, go fuck yourself!’

The alien cocked his head to one side slightly, the upper tips of his wings brushing against the ceiling of the subway car. ‘You should know that we’ve had some concern over the political stability of your home world. Are you aware there was a coup there while you were away in the Nova Arctis system?’

‘I knew about that.’ Corso stared at the alien. ‘What about it?’

‘The Freehold have become weakened through their infighting, and the Uchidans have been taking advantage of the situation by consolidating recent territorial gains. It’s possible civil war may break out again, further weakening your society. In that case, negotiating with them directly is unlikely to prove either fruitful or profitable.’

‘How do I know any of this is even true?’ Corso retorted.

‘Please understand that there is much that has been kept from you, by necessity,’ Honeydew continued. ‘For this I apologize, but we must have the complete protocols from the
Piri Reis.
The reason why will become clearer once we reach our final destination.’

Final destination?

‘I don’t do
anything
until you bring me a representative of the Freehold Senate,’ Corso replied, stabbing one finger at the floor between them. He’d meant it to look commanding, but standing there naked talking to an oversized bat only made him feel ridiculous. ‘You have to let me get in contact with my people first.’

‘That isn’t yet possible.’

Corso shrugged, and folded his arms defiantly. ‘Well, then—’

‘I have been ordered to kill you if it proves impossible to gain your cooperation.’

Corso blinked. ‘What?’

‘You are a security risk, a constant problem for my people to deal with during our investigations. In certain respects your expertise is invaluable – but if you withhold that expertise, there’s no reason to keep you alive.’

‘Wait a minute, I—’

The world turned white, and suddenly Corso was looking up at Honeydew from where he now lay curled up on the floor next to the gurney, pain radiating through his nervous system like hot lava. He saw Honeydew was holding a pain-inductor in the small black palm of his hand.

‘Please understand,’ Honeydew informed him, ‘that your cooperation is vastly preferred. But there are other, less pleasant ways of getting to the information stored in your head.’

Corso tasted blood and realized he’d bitten his tongue. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he coughed. Then he tried to stand, but his muscles seemed to have turned to putty.

‘We have data-retrieval methods for securing your memories,’ Honeydew explained, ‘neural maps that can guide us to the information storage areas of your cerebrum. Extracting the information would require highly invasive surgical procedures, and the chances of your surviving such procedures, let alone regaining your current level of cognition, are extremely low.’

‘Shit.’ Corso laughed weakly. He tried to pull himself up by gripping one leg of the gurney, but it rolled away from him as soon as he put his weight on it and he slid back to the floor. ‘You’re acting like you don’t even need me. Why put me through all this if you don’t even need me?’

‘These methods I describe are unreliable. The results and information obtained would be uncertain and possibly highly fragmentary. But don’t make the mistake of thinking we wouldn’t make the attempt if necessary. You’ll have time to consider your options before we make orbit.’

Orbit'?
Corso stared after the departing alien in a daze, wondering if he’d heard the creature right.

Where the hell were they taking him?

Eleven

One down, three to go.

Dakota glanced below quickly, but couldn’t see the maul-worm grub as it tumbled and bounced down the wall of the tower.

If she had one single advantage, it was that the things didn’t appear to be able to move very fast. Even though they lacked anything that looked to Dakota like eyes, it was obvious as hell they had a superb sense of smell, because every time she darted away from one, the rest of them all bobbed and weaved their featureless heads until they were once again focusing straight towards her.

For the past two hours she’d been playing a deadly game of tag, during which the same sequence of events had already played out several times; first, one of the grubs, constantly hissing and screeching, would slowly crawl towards where she crouched or stood in whichever corner of the cell was as far away from her new cellmates as possible.

Every time she tried to sidle out of the approaching grub’s way, one of its brethren (but
only
one) would begin to move towards her as well. She’d wait until the last moment before leaping over their snapping heads and sprinting the very short distance across the cell to whichever corner appeared to be the most worm-free.

Except, of course, that left the other two to deal with.

The grubs clearly gravitated towards the canister they’d emerged from. They crawled back to it constantly, their heads weaving and bobbing, and sometimes one or another of them would climb back inside before re-emerging after a minute or so. Apart from that, they tended to stick together. At least they hadn’t spread themselves out uniformly across the cell, because then—

Well, perhaps it was best not to think about that.

Once she’d made her brief dash to a relatively grub-free corner, whichever two had been hanging back would take their turn to try and corner her, and the whole thing would play out again.

It was a game of attrition that could go on, she felt sure, for days. But they’d wear her down long before that.

So she decided to go on the attack.

She dodged past the snapping, tooth-filled mouth of the grub nearest her and made her way out onto the ledge beyond the door-opening, the cold wind raising goose pimples on her bare skin. Another grub wove its head for several seconds until it had figured out where she was, and began crawling towards her. A second grub took an interest and also started making its way over in the same direction.

Dakota crouched on the ledge, knees bent and arms spread wide, facing back into the cell. When the first grub got close enough, it reared up on several of its stubby rear legs, hissing and mewling. Dakota grabbed it in a wrestler’s grip, arms locked around it while its gaping mouth spat and raged over her shoulder.

Dakota rolled backwards, and felt the back of her head touch the edge of the lip. The grub’s momentum carried it sailing over her head. She twisted around just in time to see it clip the edge of a platform some way below, and a few seconds after that it had tumbled out of sight.

Then she saw the blood trickling down her shoulder and the pain kicked in a moment later.

The second grub was almost on her by now. She brought up a foot and kicked out at it, hard; needle-like teeth grazed her ankle. She kicked again and it skittered to one side. She took the opportunity to push herself up onto her feet and darted back into the interior of the cell.

Piri
. In the motherfucking name of God, how long are you going to take?

Dakota reached behind herself and felt a deep wet scar across the back of her shoulder.

Easy for you to say.
Nausea rippled through her senses and Dakota felt the urge to vomit. The remaining grubs were finally starting to gang up on her now, backing her into one corner without waiting like before.

Her leg had started to itch furiously where one of the creatures had grazed her with its teeth. She waited until a grub got close enough so she could kick out at it and caught it just below the mouth. It wriggled backwards, then advanced again, hissing.

She grabbed it without thinking, and it fought like a demon in her grasp. Yelling, she ran towards the ledge and pushed it out of the door-opening. It tried to wrap itself around her arms, but she smashed it against the ledge until it let go and tumbled into the void beyond.

Two down, two to go.

She stared out across the city and saw a train of blimps, coming closer. Elation bloomed in her mind. They were making their way directly towards her, under the control of the
Piri Reis.

Soon enough, somebody was going to notice something out of the ordinary, even if all they had to do was look out of a window in one of the surrounding towers to see it. Surely some of the Bandati flying nearby would be able to tell that the blimps had changed their pre-programmed course.

She still didn’t know why the
Piri
had been moved to orbit above Ironbloom, while the derelict remained at the Blackflower facility. It wouldn’t matter much longer anyway, since the derelict had very nearly subverted the communications network for the entire system, and then even the
Piri Reis
wouldn’t be so necessary.

More hissing from behind.

They were very nearly even, but she was starting to feel nauseous and dizzy despite the best efforts of her implants, which informed her she was suffering from anaphylactic shock, and were trying to counter it by flooding her lung tissue with adrenalin while modulating her serotonin levels.
So much for incompatible physiologies.

She staggered away from the two remaining grubs to the corner of the cell farthest from them, bracing her arms against the two walls on either side while she tried to shake the blurriness out of her head. Whether what Moss had said about her implants was true or not, the fact remained they were still doing what they’d been designed to do.

She then darted past the nearest grub and stuck her head outside. The lead blimp was a couple of hundred metres away and coming slowly closer.

But it was also a long way below her cell – enough so she worried about whether she’d injure herself by trying to jump down to it. Ever since she’d formulated her plan for escape, she’d fantasized constantly about being able to step out of her cell and straight onto one of a blimp’s gas bags.

As for what came after, well . . . she had a pretty good idea of Darkwater’s layout, thanks to the derelict’s subterfuge, and even an understanding of how to find her way through the streets that wove between the myriad towers. There was a complex subway system too, but she feared they’d be able to trap her there even more easily.

Beyond that, she would be playing it strictly by instinct.

She steadied her breath and pushed one foot into a wall-groove just next to the ledge. Her stomach curled at the sight of the ground so far below. She kicked at an approaching grub with her other foot, while tightly gripping onto the frame of the door-opening with both hands.

‘Yeah, and fuck you too,’ she snapped in response to the hissing of the two remaining grubs.

The lead blimp edged closer and closer to the side of the tower and finally began to drift up towards her. She pushed herself out and away from the ledge, gripping onto the narrow grooves in the tower wall with her toes and fingers, and fixed her gaze on the approaching craft.

A siren began to sound, filling the vast caverns of air between the city towers.

The grubs mewled and spat at her from the door-lip where she’d been crouching only moments before. From the tentative way they poked their heads out beyond the shadows of her cell, before quickly drawing back again, she guessed they didn’t have much of a taste for sunlight.

She remembered what Moss had told her before vanishing: how he intended to ‘lead them on a wild-goose chase’. He had wanted her out of the way while he pursued the derelict for himself – and yet there were clues in what he’d said that made it clear he was, for reasons she didn’t yet understand, working for the Immortal Light Hive.

And as for her implants – well, she’d realized something was different. Ever since the terrible migraines had begun to fade away, she’d felt an enormous sense of
presence,
as if something greater and more mysterious lay behind the derelict’s machine-consciousness.

The more she learned, the more questions she discovered that still remained unanswered.

She stared down at the blimp as it slid up next to the wall of the tower below her, the distant siren now joined by others, echoing throughout the river valley, a discordant yet strangely plaintive sound.

Just a few moments more, just a few moments more . . .

No matter what changes might have taken place within her skull, her implants were receiving the same information: they leached data from Bandati weather observation stations and other sources, and used it to make precise calculations based on the current wind speed, local gravity, and the amount of push she would need when she finally jumped off the ledge and onto the blimp.

All of this was channelled to her in the form of an instinctive foreboding, an acute sense of exactly
when
she had to jump, and how hard she would have to launch off her perch. And when she did so, the derelict would effectively be controlling her leap for freedom.

What the hell were those sirens for? Surely she didn’t represent that much of a threat that they had to—

She glanced up to see a brilliant, almost blinding, flash of light high up in the sky. Something was breaking through the clouds overhead, and dropping towards the city . . .

She screamed as, reacting in shock, she suddenly slid before managing to grab on hard to the lip. There were platforms below, but a long way down, and at the very least she’d break her neck if she fell onto one of them.

There were further bursts of light, but closer to the ground this time. Dakota swivelled her head and saw that these flashes were coming from the riverside. A closer look showed her that the points of light each rose upwards on a vertical column of smoke. They were missiles.

They shot up past the topmost level of the towers, heading for whatever it was that was now dropping down through the clouds: something heavy and black and huge.

She glanced down again. The blimp was still blithely moving towards her.

The wind keened high as it swept over her bare skin, filling her with a deep chill that had nothing to do with the ambient temperature. She focused on the wall of the tower just millimetres away from her nose.

Another flash of light, even more blinding, from high overhead.

She felt a weird ecstasy take her over, almost indistinguishable from bottomless fear. Without thinking about it, without allowing herself to ponder the decision for even one more second, she launched herself out into the air, as forcefully as she could, and fell headlong.

She dropped straight towards the blimp, but with only eight, maybe ten metres to go, she wouldn’t hit too hard, with any luck.

She heard explosions far overhead, like balloons popping. More missiles?

As she dropped, a dark film slid over her vision, softening the brightness above. The
something
pushing through the cloud overhead had become a burning star dropping straight towards the river below her. The air was suddenly filled with a roar like nothing she had ever heard, drowning out even the ongoing cacophony of sirens.

She hit the blimp dangerously near its nose and she started to slide, grasping wildly at the netting that held the craft together. Her body was now coated in a black skin, entirely non-reflective, shielding her from both radiant and kinetic energy.

The breath had frozen in her throat, her lungs had stopped working, and even her heart had ceased its beating. The brightness above faded, the gamma adjusting automatically.

Somehow, some way, her filmsuit had activated.

The invader – there was no other way to think of it – continued to drop rapidly towards the city. Her filmsuit had adjusted to the light sufficiently, so she could make out the form of the arrival; a vessel of dark metal, its upper half roughly conical in shape, while its lower half took the form of an inverted bowl. It rode downwards on a tail of fire that pulsed several times a second. It was also, she realized, enormous.

The heat and light coming off it was so insane that if it hadn’t been for her filmsuit, Dakota would very likely be dead already. Platforms up and down the tower immediately next to the blimp burst into flames – as did the blimp on which she crouched.

And yet, the invading ship had to be still at least a couple of kilometres distant. Her implants told her it was giving off enormous levels of hard radiation, while engaged in some very hard braking.

Trickles of data about airspeed, along with a chaotic running analysis of the invader, were being supplied by the derelict, but none of that changed the fact that her carefully planned escape route had just turned into a flying bonfire. The other blimps in the train had also caught fire, and had started to drift away from their programmed positions.

The blimp directly under Dakota began to tilt nose-upwards as flames consumed it. All she could do was stare at the invading spaceship as it dropped down between the towers on a tail of brilliant, flaring fire. Her implants told her it was just shy of eighty metres tall.

The blaze emanating from its underside pulsed like a strobe.
An Orion pulse-ship,
she realized with horror; like some relic out of the early days of human space exploration, the kind of thing that had been planned but rarely built. It was firing miniature nuclear explosives out of its single main nozzle, up to a dozen every second, using sheer brute explosive power to drop it smack in the middle of Darkwater, at enormous cost to the surrounding landscape.

She spied projections on the upper surface of the invader’s hull that looked like mounts for heavy artillery – probably pulse weapons and the like.

Rising on white columns of smoke, more missiles rocketed upwards from near the river. She saw one or two find their target, but the majority were destroyed by the nuclear inferno jettisoning from the invader’s underbelly, inflicting little or no damage on it.