Gary Gibson - Stealing Light

Corso shrugged and relaxed again. Her eyes subsequently unfocused once more and she went back to wherever it was she went at such times.

And even if he’d been able to gain control of this situation, what then? He himself wasn’t able to communicate with the derelict. And even if he had been, he was pretty damn sure it wasn’t going to go anywhere he wanted it to go. No, Dakota had the upper hand-had always had the upper hand. She had always been the key to this whole operation.

Corso gave himself up to the inevitable. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘at least tell me where we’re going.’

She snapped back out of her fugue instantly and focused on him. ‘I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know? I thought you said you were that thing’s pilot.’

‘We can’t jump this soon without taking some risks. But we don’t have any choice either. If we wait any longer, any minimal protection we have against the nova will be lost, and we’d be dead in an instant. So we jump now, but where we end up… hard to say.’

Corso took a deep breath. ‘Frankly, I’m surprised we even got this far.’

‘I just wanted you to know before-’

He raised a hand. ‘I appreciate it. Really. But after we get there, can you let me off at the next stop?’

She laughed fiercely at that. ‘I don’t want to be enemies,’ she said.

‘Neither do I.’

Dakota felt the Piri Reis rumble beneath her. At the same time, she saw her ship from the outside, smashing hard against one of the white-hot spines, the confining cables whipping about.

The derelict surged forward, crashing against the Piri’s engine block, sending it spinning. The derelict’s inertialess zone was the only thing preventing Corso and Dakota from being smashed to pieces in an instant.

If they didn’t jump now…

The derelict with the tiny ship cradled in its spines flickered out of existence, and fires unimagined even in hell filled the void where it had been.

When the plasma shockwave reached Dymas, the outer layers of the gas-giant’s atmosphere were stripped away within only hours. The planet was literally smeared across the face of the Nova Arctis system.

As it shrank, the gas-giant’s gravitational grip on its satellites-including Theona-weakened, and these worlds spun away into space, burning and boiling under the lethal assault of the dying star, their rocky cores vaporizing over the following hours.

Vast streamers reached out from where a star had once been. If anyone had been there to witness it, they would have recognized that they were witnessing the birth of a nebula.

It was over.

Dakota crawled through the darkness until she found Corso’s warm body. She put one hand on his chest and felt it rise and fall. Then she let her head fall against his chest and wept.

After another little while, the lights began to flicker back on.

‘Piri?’

‘Dakxxx-’

She tried again, rerouting her ship’s language circuits. They were still running on emergency power; still cradled within the half-melted spines of the derelict.

But they were alive… and somewhere far, far away from Nova Arctis.

Corso was badly concussed, constantly slipping in and out of consciousness. The medbox had given her some of the necessary medication, but it was still going to be a while before he made a great deal of sense.

‘xxzzz-ota. Dakota.’

‘Piri, good to hear you.’

‘Our stellar maps appear to be out of context with the observed local area,’ the Piri advised.

Dakota patted the console. ‘Yes, Piri, that’s right.’

‘We also appear to be attached-’

‘No more questions, Piri. We’re safe, at least for the moment, and that’s all that matters. I know we’re out of fuel. How are we tor everything else?’

‘There are sufficient supplies for another one hundred hours,’ Piri stated, ‘at normal rates of consumption by one person.’

Not so great then, and now for the important question. Dakota licked her lips, and felt her heart hammering as she asked it.

‘Where are we, Piri? Do you have any matches in your stacks for where we are just now?’

There wasn’t any sign at all of the burgeoning nebula where Nova Arctis had once been, and the last time the derelict they were lassoed to had travelled through this part of the Milky Way had been long enough ago for its own stellar maps to be wildly out of date.

‘I have found a match,’ Piri declared after a few moments.

‘You’re shitting me,’ she mumbled. ‘Where?’

‘We are in Bandati space,’ the Piri Reis declared. ‘On the edge of one of their colony systems. Analysis of current tach-traffic indicates they are aware of our presence. What appear to be a fleet of mining ships has departed in our direction from an outlying world. Would you like me to initiate an emergency broadcast to them?’

‘No, wait.’

What now, Dakota wondered? What now, indeed?

‘Call them,’ Corso mumbled from somewhere behind her. ‘We don’t have any choice. You heard the Piri. We don’t have enough supplies to stay alive. Not even if you dumped me overboard.’

There’s always the derelict, Dakota thought. It was out there, waiting for her. But it had been too badly damaged, and was now engaged in a long process of self-repair that might take months.

‘Call them,’ Dakota agreed after another moment’s hesitation. ‘Tell them it’s an emergency.’

Perhaps, she thought, it was enough just to be still alive.

For a hundred thousand years, throughout the Milky Way, creatures with eyes-or something that fulfilled the same function-would turn their faces up to the sky and see a new star burning brightly in the night, before it gradually began fading after a few days. The sight of that light would inspire wars and poetry and philosophies that would live for a thousand years more, long after the memory of the nova itself had passed on.

That same light would shine down on other worlds at far greater distances, even in other distant galaxies, and inspire curiosity and terror in equal parts.

In time, other stars would join it, blossoming and burning briefly all across the face of the Milky Way, like a fiery portent of doom.