Gary Gibson - Stealing Light

The cost, however, was high, and she’d never seriously imagined she might be forced to take such drastic action.

Nevertheless, this was the time.

‘April is the cruellest month,’ she whispered, the words emerging from her throat as a bare whisper. She saw one of the troopers glance towards her suspiciously.

In response, a visual cue flagged up in the corner of her vision, a warning flag she’d put in place long, long ago.

Next, she murmured: ‘I will show you fear in a handful of dust.’

The trooper who had looked over stepped towards her, and she ducked her head down so he couldn’t see her lips move.

Another warning flag appeared in the corner of her eye, followed by a request for confirmation.

Granting chat request was the simple matter of a half-whispered affirmative.

The trooper lowered the snub nose of his weapon towards her. By now, Kieran glanced around as well.

She said: ‘Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.’

Another flag came up, flashing red in the foreground of her vision. A final warning.

All she needed to do was utter the last sentence.

The Piri Reis spoke to her.

‹Dakota, you must now directly confirm to me your request to create an irrevocable erase and destroy loop in your Ghost implants before proceeding. However, the approaching fleet is now in weapons’ range, and is spreading out in what appears to be an attack pattern. Their computers have targeted the Hyperion. If your implants are destroyed, your ability to interact with the Hyperion and carry out defensive manoeuvres against hostile forces will be gone.›

Thank you, Piri, she replied. Nonetheless, I confirm.

The trooper stepped forward to where she still crouched, barking something she did not understand, before bringing one booted foot up and using it to nudge her shoulder. Kieran stood staring at her with hard eyes for a moment, then his hand flicked back towards the knife sheath hidden inside his jacket.

She stared up at the trooper.

‘Shantih shantih shantih,’ she snarled up at him, completing the sequence.

The changes inside her skull were abrupt and violent, the higher functions of her implants fading away to leave only a dim, insensate void.

‘Sir,’ one of the other troopers was saying to Arbenz. Theona base camp reports that the enemy fleet is now in range and moving in for an attack.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ Kieran snapped. ‘If that was the case the Hyperion ’s automatic systems would have…’

Gardner, Kieran and the Senator all stared at each other at that same moment. Suddenly, emergency klaxons began sounding the length of the ship. Kieran shouted something incomprehensible, and stamped over to the door, but it refused to open.

‘We’re locked in.’

‘Bullshit,’ Arbenz retorted. ‘Blow the damned thing open if you have to.’

The troopers exchanged glances with each other, then stepped forward, lowering their weapons to aim at the door’s locking mechanism. A moment later, thunder and light filled the room. As Dakota watched, the door held for just a few moments, before fracturing at the hinges and falling outwards into the corridor.

I’m losing my mind, thought Dakota miserably, as her Ghost continued its self-immolation.

It felt a lot like dying, like plummeting into an endless abyss where one’s soul had previously resided.

Then, just when she thought it was all over, something else slid into the vacant space inside her skull. Something dark, heavy and alien.

She writhed uncontrollably, gasping for breath.

Whatever this was that had settled into her brain, it wasn’t the Shoal AI. Something entirely different had replaced the higher-level Ghost functions she’d just erased.

From somewhere far down the corridor sounded a series of loud, echoing booms, accompanied by a grating, rolling roar that grew louder second by second. It didn’t take a lot of guesswork to figure they were listening to the sound of explosive decompression. The Hyperion’s entire atmosphere was being violently dumped into space.

Dakota had her filmsuit to protect her, but Corso’s pressure suit had been torn from his back and discarded as soon as they’d been brought back on board the Hyperion. Keeping him alive over the next few minutes wasn’t going to be easy.

‘Is this your doing?’ Arbenz screamed at Corso. ‘A thousand generations of Freeholders are going to grow up using your name as another word for traitor-or don’t you get that?’

‘You’re the traitor!’ Corso screamed back. ‘You’re a murderer, a gutless opportunist.’ The roar of air had become deafening. A powerful wind tore at Dakota as she tried, with difficulty, to stand up.

‘It’s no wonder we’re trapped on a useless backwater rock being told what to do by a bunch of psychotic assholes like you,’ Corso continued. ‘The Shoal know everything, Senator. And they probably have ever since you got here.’

Arbenz looked apoplectic. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Listen to him,’ Dakota shouted from behind the Senator.

Arbenz whirled around to face her. ‘They know everything that’s going on,’ she continued. ‘They planted software spies in the Hyperion’s stacks long ago.’

There are worse ways to die, Dakota reflected. It was clear neither she nor Corso was going to leave this room alive. At least, before the troopers blew their heads off or the last of the air was gone, she’d had the satisfaction of seeing the look on Arbenz’s face.

Ignoring them both, Kieran grabbed the Senator’s shoulder. ‘We can get to the bridge!’ he yelled. ‘We can seal it off manually, and try and retake control from there.’

The Freehold troopers had begun pulling breathing apparatus out of their uniforms and fitting masks over their faces. Kieran pointed to two of them. ‘Barnard, Lunghi-you’re coming with me.’

‘What about them?’ Gardner shouted, gesturing at Corso and Dakota.

‘Fuck them,’ Arbenz replied. ‘They-’

Everything went black.

Pandemonium reigned. Dakota blindly fought her way over to Corso, but the darkness went deeper than just the lights going out. There was an emptiness now that Dakota hadn’t felt inside herself since her first set of Ghost implants were ripped out.

Corso fought against her at first, until she identified herself by yelling in his ear over the cacophony of raised voices and howling air. He stopped struggling immediately.

‘This is our chance,’ she urged him, her mouth pressed right up against the side of his head. Her words sounded thin and indistinct as the atmospheric pressure rapidly dropped.

She dragged him away in what she hoped was the right direction, blindly crashing into other bodies. Hands grabbed and punched at her, and she lashed out in return, taking a savage bite at someone’s hand when she felt it grab her face. Despite the near-total darkness, her eyesight was starting to adjust. Something thudded against her shoulder. She reached up, and it felt warm and sticky to the touch.

The confusion got them out through the door, where it was just as impenetrably dark. She could hear Corso’s laboured panting next to her as she took an educated guess on which way to head to get back to the cargo bay. There was a fifty-fifty chance she’d made the wrong decision, but it was still infinitely better odds now than before the lights had gone out.

And all the while, Dakota struggled to understand what had just happened.

She had no doubt Trader was responsible for this shipwide systems failure, yet she was sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that she had destroyed whatever remained of the Shoal AI inside the Hyperion. Without the semi-organic machinery she had tracked down and destroyed, the Hyperion’s stacks couldn’t possibly allow the alien’s intelligence to function or survive.