Nova War (32 page)

‘Almost certainly.’

‘I don’t want that responsibility,’ Dakota moaned. ‘It shouldn’t just be up to me.’

‘Perhaps you’d rather things hadn’t gone quite so badly with Yi and her brother,’ the Librarian said. ‘You might have been able to quietly retire, as you’d been hoping. Isn’t that so?’

Dakota felt tears trickle down her cheeks as she sobbed quietly.
Get out of my head, damn you.

‘Would you like to see how your life would have been instead?’

Dakota sniffed. ‘You can do that?’

‘There are higher and lower probabilities of outcome but, yes, I can show you the most likely turn of events. Observe.’

Dakota looked up, and saw a world melting as the fires of a dying star reached out to consume it. A fleet rushed away from the nova, slipping into superluminal space a moment before its shockwave caught up with them.

It took a moment for her to understand that she’d just witnessed the destruction of Bellhaven.

‘They—’

‘Were Freehold ships,’ the Librarian finished for her. She’d recognized the red phoenix symbol emblazoned on the hulls of the attacking ships. ‘A fast strike against the system responsible for producing the vast majority of machine-heads. Within a few weeks, another occupied system is destroyed, and the Consortium capitulates to the Freehold’s demands.’

The Librarian shrugged with an affectation of world-weary cynicism. ‘But, of course, things didn’t actually turn out like that.’

Dakota lowered her gaze, her throat dry. ‘And what would have happened to me?’

‘Dead by now, I fear. At first there would have been an amnesty for machine-heads as the Consortium desperately tried to muster a military response to the Freehold. You yourself would have taken up arms, driven to fanatical anger by the destruction of your home world.’

‘And the Shoal – what would they have done?’

‘Against a fledgling would-be interstellar empire on their doorstep, but without the resources and reach of the Emissaries?’ Another shrug. ‘Wiped your entire species out of existence, of course.’

Dakota sat very still. ‘I don’t need to believe any of this. You could make me see anything you wanted, and you assume I’d just believe it. You’re saying that if I hadn’t taken that derelict out of Nova Arctis, this is what would have happened.��

‘Tell me then, Miss Merrick, if Senator Arbenz, instead, had retrieved the derelict, what do
you
think would have happened?’

‘Let me out of this chair,’ she whispered. ‘Give the job to someone else.’

‘I can do that,’ the Librarian quietly replied, ‘if you really want.’

Then she remembered. ‘You said . . . there were other candidates. Who?’

‘You already know who they are. One told you himself, and the other’s presence you sensed only quite recently.’

‘Tutor Langley.’

‘And Hugh Moss, of course.’

‘You can’t let him—’

‘If you refused to merge with me – to become my navigator – I would have little choice.’

‘Why?’ Dakota screamed. ‘
Why
wouldn’t you have any choice?’

‘The answer to that requires another history lesson. Look—’

‘No! Just tell me why you—’

More images suddenly filled the air above them. Some, demonstrating the Magi empire at its prime, were already familiar to Dakota; but for the first time, as fresh knowledge dawned, she realized that some avenues had previously been closed to her. She was now seeing and discovering things the Magi entities had never revealed to her before.

She saw how the Magi ships had originally been nothing more than weapons – autonomous, intelligent, and highly destructive. They were the last terrible legacy of the Nova War that had consumed the Magi, and they had roamed the Greater Magellanic Cloud in search of inhabited systems simply to destroy them. But eventually these star-killers had been retooled to a new purpose by the very minds they had been created to destroy, reprogrammed to become utterly dependent on the presence of a conscious, biological mind to guide them.

The myriad images began to fade, till Dakota was once more alone with the Librarian. ‘We each need a navigator,’ the Librarian insisted. ‘Without a guiding mind – a conscience, if you will – we are entirely unable to act. With a guiding mind, however, we are compelled to obey. But you could not have controlled the Nova Arctis ship in the way you did without first physically bonding with it. That means you have an immediate advantage over men like Moss or Langley, who are unable to speak to me in this manner, or to engage directly with the information preserved in my stacks in the way you do. But the choice is up to you.’

Dakota suppressed a shiver. ‘Maybe you’d be better off with Langley. He couldn’t possibly make a worse mess of things than I already have.’

‘Are you certain of that?’ asked the Librarian. ‘I can show you the most highly probable outcomes of either option.’

‘All right.’ Dakota felt something lurch deep within her chest. ‘Show me.’

She remembered Langley less well than she was prepared to admit even to herself, as obviously she’d blocked out a lot of her old life – those happier days before the massacres on Redstone.

It hurt to watch what the Librarian now showed her. She saw her old tutor successfully retrieve the Ocean’s Deep derelict on behalf of the Consortium – and as a result, all the settled worlds of mankind were smoking ruins within a century.

And as for Moss . . . that was a unique nightmare all on its own.

‘You mean he’s not even human?’

‘The Shoal have a somewhat whimsical term for it: “Involuntary Re-Speciation”.’

‘Christ and Buddha, it’s . . .’

‘Barbaric, indeed. Trader in Faecal Matter of Animals was very insistent about reviving the techniques involved. I believe he wished to make a very visible and powerful statement to his detractors.’

Minutes earlier, Dakota had watched as Moss flew the Magi ship right to the heart of the Emissary empire. Within months the Shoal home world was destroyed, followed by a thousand-year war during which these two rival powers finally succeeded in destroying each other – along with most of the Milky Way.

‘And me?’ she asked, when the last of the visions had faded. ‘If I make it to the station before them, what’s going to happen?’

She imagined the shadowed face was smiling as it framed its reply. ‘I can’t show you that, Dakota. You’d change your own future just by looking at it.’

‘But you know how things will work out?’

‘I still can’t help you with the decision you need to make. It has to come solely from you.’

This isn’t what I want,
Dakota thought miserably.

‘All right, say I win the day, and nobody else gets near you. Does that stop a full-blown war from starting?’

‘The war has already started, and millions of lives are already gone. The conflict will inevitably spread, and trillions will die.’

‘Then what’s the point of any of this?’ she exclaimed.

‘To limit the ultimate damage,’ the Librarian replied. ‘Trader has already launched an illegal pre-emptive strike he believes will bring the war to an acceptable end.’

‘Then maybe we should be helping the Shoal.’

‘An acceptable end for the Shoal; a disaster for everyone else. Much of the galaxy would be left uninhabitable – and humanity extinct. The Shoal would rule over an empire of ashes.’

‘How can you know all this?’ Dakota demanded.

‘I am as powerful in my own right as any Shoal-level civilization. I have found my way into every part of the colony at Leviathan’s Fall. I have penetrated the coreship that brought you here, along with every Shoal craft, every Consortium or Bandati vessel throughout Ocean’s Deep. Before long I will have penetrated to the core of the Emissary Godkiller. I am a powerful and dangerous weapon, Dakota, so be careful how you use me.’

‘The Shoal wanted to wipe you out because you were too powerful?’

‘They infected our navigators with a deadly phage. Some few survived, but their minds were enfeebled by the disease. We ourselves were each programmed to run and hide in the event of our navigator’s death . . . and that’s what we did, but not before the last of the Magi raised the Shoal out of their oceans and gave them the stars. They were already civilized, but primitive in the technological sense – trapped by their own evolution.’

‘So . . . in effect, you yourselves created the Shoal Hegemony?’

‘Our navigators believed they could control the Shoal.’

‘They were wrong, weren’t they?’

‘Desperate times, Dakota. Mistakes were made.’

Dakota found she could stand at last. She walked past the orrery and stepped towards the seated Librarian. The face remained in shadow.

‘The Bandati never figured out a way to get inside you, after all this time,’ she reflected. ‘But it took hardly any time for Corso and the Freehold to penetrate deep inside the derelict at Nova Arctis. Why is that?’

‘That ship had been seriously damaged. I’m rather better defended, and the Bandati never developed the equivalent of machine-head technology.’ The figure shrugged. ‘Fortunately.’

Dakota thought she saw the hint of a smile beneath the shadows. ‘Before you go,’ the Librarian said. ‘There’s one last thing I have to show you – to help you towards the decision I know you will make. Look behind you.’

Dakota turned. Yet more pools of light began to appear beyond the orrery of Ocean’s Deep; dozens at first, then hundreds . . .

‘You see?’

‘I do,’ Dakota breathed. ‘I – I already knew, in a way, but I couldn’t bring myself to believe it.’

‘You suspected there were many more Magi ships, but all lacking navigators.’

‘Yes, but . . .’ she glanced again at the oases of light, close on a thousand now, that stretched through a darkness far more extensive than the onion-domed building she had originally found herself in. ‘So many?’

‘Then you know what it is you have to do.’

It was so obvious now: a way to foreshorten the Nova War that wouldn’t destroy the Consortium, and also a possible means to redemption not just for herself but for all the machine-heads who had suffered the fall-out from Redstone.

‘Now look at me,’ the Librarian commanded.

She stepped further towards the seated figure, and the shadows dropped from its face.

Dakota fell into an infinity of stars.

Twenty-four

Corso was led back out of the domed building by a Bandati warrior. He stared at the human-built ground transport now parked next to the truck that had brought him and the rest of the Bandati to the maul-worm’s lair. Most of Honeydew’s warriors were gathered a short distance away, busily clicking and chittering amongst themselves. A few others circled high overhead, presumably on guard duty.

The bodies of murdered station-Bandati still lay scattered all over the plaza.

His attention was riveted by four humans, all wearing battle armour, who were deep in conversation with Honeydew.

The Bandati guard’s grip on his arm still firm, Corso could only stare at the newcomers: real, live people. One of them, he soon realized, was Sal, but at first he almost didn’t recognize him. The man looked so different, as if Corso hadn’t set eyes on him in decades. It was a shock to remember it had actually been barely a couple of months.

For a moment, Corso allowed himself to imagine that his troubles were finally over, that he’d been rescued and nobody was going to torture, kill, interrogate or eat him.

It didn’t take long before he was stripped of that hope.

The four of them, along with Honeydew, appeared to reach some form of agreement. As they broke off, Corso was pulled forward and left standing next to the transport. Honeydew twittered something at his guard, who then climbed back on the open-bed truck along with the rest of the Bandati. They drove back down the hill in the direction of the spoke-shaft they’d first emerged from.

Honeydew remained behind, however, while Sal climbed up into the transport, being careful to avoid looking at Corso as he did so. One of the three soldiers took Corso by the arm and nudged him inside.

Corso sat meekly in the back of the transport, as silent as a lamb, his gaze focused a long way off. The vehicle started to move, crashing down the slope of the hill and continuing along a different trail from the previous one. Corso stared fixedly at the floor of the transport, too scared to even close his eyes in case he opened them to see the inside of the maul-worm’s throat.

A little while later, and a couple of kilometres further around the ring’s circumference, Corso found himself sitting at a table with several other humans, the lower end of another spoke-shaft towering high overhead.

In the back of the transport one of the men had already introduced himself as Corporal Roche, but revealed only that they were heading for a ‘command post’. That turned out to be basically a conference-sized table set in the centre of a shallow open-air auditorium perched strategically atop yet another hill.

Around the same table sat four other people, seated on lightweight aluminium deckchairs. Several heavily armoured Consortium troopers stood nearby, constantly scanning the terrain below, while another two watched vigilantly beside a pulse-cannon mounted on a second ground transport.

In the centre of the conference table sat a simulation projector with a map of the Ocean’s Deep system floating above it. One symbol marked the presence of a Shoal coreship, while a black, spiked monstrosity clearly indicated the Emissary vessel that he’d arrived on.

Corso stared around the table, and those seated at it, with haunted, disbelieving eyes.

‘I said, do you know who I am, Mr Corso?’

It took a moment for Corso to realize the woman seated directly opposite was addressing him.

‘Why, yes, I do,’ he replied, sounding half-dazed. ‘Senator Marion Briggs.’ She was a member of the Freehold Senate, and had been decorated during the war with the Uchidans. The flesh just below her right ear was mottled and the ear itself looked half-melted, a legacy of some long-ago battle.

‘I knew your father, Lucas,’ said Briggs, more gently. ‘He was a good man.’

‘Thank you,’ Corso said automatically.

Not all of those present appeared to be military – one individual in particular, by the name of Langley, was dressed in a long dark coat that gave him a vaguely priestlike air.

Corso recognized the one seated between Briggs and Langley as General Gregor Hua, the man responsible for the Consortium’s disastrous campaign on Redstone – the same conflict Dakota had barely survived. He was a small, round-faced man of Korean descent, wearing light body armour and with a single pistol holstered at his hip.

When the General caught his eye, Corso found it difficult not to give him his immediate attention.

‘I’ll assume, Mr Corso, that you weren’t expecting to see us.’

‘That would be something of an understatement, sir.’

‘Do you understand why we’re here?’

‘I’ll hazard a guess that you’re also after the derelict.’

‘Very good, but not quite accurate. We’re here to provide expert help and aid to Immortal Light while they try and prevent the derelict from falling into enemy hands. To which end we’ve been pursuing several paths of investigation.’

‘Just a minute.’ Corso nodded towards the simulation. ‘How did you all
get
here? On a coreship?’

Briggs’s face hardened and she started to say something, but Hua gave her a sharp look and she fell back, silent and angry-looking.

‘We were brought here on board the Emissary ship,’ the General explained, ‘or rather, we rendezvoused with Immortal Light forces within their own system, then . . . hitched a lift.’

‘With the Emissaries? And you’re still alive?’ Corso asked, with genuine amazement.

All eyes around the table regarded him with frank suspicion.

He finally turned to directly face his old friend for the first time since he’d emerged from the dome. ‘Sal, how long have we known each other?’

‘Since we were kids,’ Sal grudgingly admitted.

‘You were one of my best friends, to the extent that I would talk to you when I was alone in that cell, and thinking I’d never see another human being ever again. I heard you when he’ – and with this, he nodded towards Honeydew – ‘was using me like fish bait.’ Corso gripped the edge of the table, waiting for his own anger to subside. ‘They were torturing me, and you just stood by and let them. Why?’

It said volumes that Sal waited for a nod from Briggs before replying.

That used to be me,
Corso realized – unquestioningly loyal. But so much had changed, and both Sal and the Senator seemed more like figments from some terrible, half-remembered dream.

‘I know you think I’ve betrayed our friendship, but there’s too much at stake here, Lucas,’ Sal replied tersely. ‘We can’t afford the niceties now. I’m sorry about what happened – really, truly sorry – but, given the magnitude of what’s happening here, we’re lucky the Freehold is being allowed to get involved at all.’

‘That’s enough, Mr Mendez,’ Hua said, sharply cutting him off. ‘Lucas, we’re sorry about what happened to you, but you should consider yourself lucky to even be alive. Immortal Light approached us – by “us” I mean the Consortium – and asked for our help in their interrogations, in return for partnership in exploiting the derelict starship located somewhere on this station. They needed what was lodged inside your head, and they needed it fast. However, we made sure they stuck to a more conventional approach in interrogations, rather than, say, dissecting you at the start.’

‘Is that supposed to
reassure
me?’ Corso demanded.

Hua glanced at an aide seated by Corso’s other side. ‘Read him the second situation summary, Mr Cohen.’

‘Sir,’ Cohen replied, glancing down at a screen nestling in his palm. ‘The Nova Arctis expedition was monitored by
in situ
agents acting on behalf of the Consortium, following information received of the recovery of an artefact of unknown origin. They subsequently reported on events leading up to and immediately prior to destruction of the system.’ The aide looked directly at Corso as he concluded. ‘Your subsequent detainment on Ironbloom was with the explicit permission of a secret committee of the Consortium Central Administration, and on the recommendation of the Ministry of External Intelligence, following consultations with court advisers of the Queen of Immortal Light.’

‘Our presence in this system is a secret, Mr Corso,’ Hua added. ‘The Freehold have been permitted to join us simply because their new government offered their full cooperation when we demanded information about Nova Arctis. If things work out the way we hope they will, representatives of the Consortium as well as Immortal Light will soon be opening negotiations with the Emiss—’

Corso couldn’t hold it in any more, and he dissolved into hysterical laughter.

Briggs slammed the table with one hand, her face as red as the morning sun and a lot angrier. ‘Lucas Corso, you will
pull yourself together.
’

Hua didn’t look happy either. He was about to say something, when one of the troopers hurried over. ‘General, we’ve secured this ring for now, but that’s about all we can manage without stretching ourselves too thin. The Immortal Light contingent appear to be fighting their own people here to get control of the station. There’s a lot of fighting on the alpha and delta rings as well.’

‘Do we even know where the derelict is yet?’

The soldier nodded. ‘It’s on Ring Gamma, the central ring, and heavily defended by automated systems. Lieutenant Nairit suggests maintaining our command post here, and sending a force to rendezvous with the rest of the Immortal Light forces there.’

Hua nodded. ‘Do it,’ he replied, turning back to Corso. ‘The only reason you’re here at all is because Immortal Light believed you were as important as Dakota Merrick. That was their mistake, and meanwhile she’s been taken by the enemy. Now we find the Emissaries have dropped all communications with us. The fact remains, however, that you
did
develop communications protocols that got the Freehold deep inside another derelict. We brought with us the same equipment you used back in Nova Arctis, and we’re going to want you to get us inside this derelict, too.’

‘Let me be frank.’ Corso shook his head. ‘You can’t hope to do anything with the derelict as long as Dakota Merrick is anywhere in this system.’

‘So she
is
here?’ asked Langley, leaning forward.

Corso nodded. ‘She has a special affinity with the derelict, something I . . . I can’t quite explain. Unless you’ve brought your own machine-heads, you don’t stand a chance in hell of getting anywhere near that derelict.’

Corso didn’t miss the sudden tension in the air, or the flash of alarm crossing Hua’s face before he recovered his carefully neutral expression. ‘You seem awfully well informed, Mr Corso.’

Corso glanced over at Honeydew, who stood nearby, watching the proceedings.

‘I heard some things,’ Corso replied quietly.

‘Did she mention anything about . . . other people like herself?’ Hua asked carefully.

Sitting next to Hua, Briggs wore an expression like an angry snake about to bite its victim to death.
They’re hiding something,
Corso thought, glancing again over at Honeydew.
There’s something they don’t want Honeydew to know.

For some reason his gaze next settled on Langley, the only apparent civilian present apart from himself and Sal.

Other people
? He wondered.
People like Dakota?

The more he thought about it, the more it made sense that the Consortium
would
have brought along other machine-heads to try and take control of the derelict.

Perhaps even without Immortal Light’s permission or knowledge.

‘Sir.’ Corporal Roche approached Hua to confer quietly. Roche then pointed upwards, and Corso raised his head to gaze at the surface of the gas giant wheeling past the ring’s enormous windows. Then he realized the Corporal was actually pointing towards an Emissary ship, all sharp edges and jutting spines, which was currently docking with the station’s hub. Corso now saw with a start that two other Emissary ships had already docked, and another was on its way.

‘That’s an Emissary ship,’ Briggs muttered. ‘I thought the idea was they were going to hold back for now.’

‘Oh, Christ and Buddha in a whorehouse.’ Corso stared wildly around the table. ‘Listen, we need to get out of here. Now. I mean
now.
’

Hua stared at him with open suspicion. ‘Why is that, Mr Corso?’

‘What do you mean “why?”’ Corso demanded. ‘Haven’t you ever met one of the damn things?’

‘As a matter of fact, no,’ Hua replied. ‘No human has – at least, not with anything beyond one of their client species.’

Corso stared at the General in horror. ‘Well,
I
met one. And I hope to never meet another.’

There was a muffled explosion somewhere in the distance. They all looked in the same direction, to see a thin trail of smoke rising from out of dense foliage less than a kilometre away – close to one of the ring’s external walls.

‘We just lost contact with perimeter station beta zero nine, General,’ said the Corporal. ‘That’s one of the ring-side spoke stations.’

‘Get our men there
now
!’ Hua ordered, standing as he spoke. ‘I think the rest of us should get ready to move in case we’re being specifically targeted. I think it’s time to head for Ring Gamma.’

He turned to Corso. ‘What happened when you met the Emissary?’ he asked forcefully, while several troopers piled into a transport and roared down the hill towards the source of the explosion.

‘It asked me if I knew where God lived and, when I couldn’t answer, it ripped a Bandati in half in front of me. Ask Honeydew; he was there. Frankly, General, those things make the Shoal look like kittens by comparison.’

Something roared in the distance, an enraged bellow that only Corso had heard before.

‘That’s an Emissary,’ he told the General, ‘and that means everybody has to get away from here before they come any closer. Believe me when I tell you that you don’t know what you’re dealing with.’

‘The only place
you’re
going is wherever we tell you to,’ Briggs snapped, but Corso could see the lines of apprehension evident in her face.

‘Sir, the transport just reported in.’ Another trooper, a tall, dark-haired woman, had stepped up to Hua. ‘They’re engaging—’