Gary Gibson - Stealing Light

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.