Gary Gibson - Stealing Light

Corso shook his head and looked away. ‘Maybe you’ve got something there.’

‘No, Lucas, I’m more sure of this than I’ve ever been of anything.’

‘So,’ he asked carefully, ‘what are you proposing we do now?’

She studied him carefully as she spoke. ‘I don’t know. I really don’t know. At first I just didn’t want Arbenz to get his hands on that Theona derelict, and now I realize you don’t either. But there’s even bigger reasons now to make sure he doesn’t win this.’

‘That’s a given, but it’s not what I meant,’ Corso replied. ‘Say, for argument’s sake, you got your hands on that derelict. Do you destroy it like the Shoal presumably want, or do we take possession of it and make humanity into a true star-faring species?’

‘I’m still not sure,’ Dakota admitted. ‘But right now our priority is staying alive. Your Senator has that fleet to deal with, and I don’t know who’s going to win the fight, but once it’s over, the survivors are going to come after us.’

‘Now you’re going to tell me just why it is we’re headed into the inner system.’

‘Do you remember when I came to you in the medical bay, and I said the derelict had fired out some kind of signal at the same time it attacked you?’

‘Yes,’ he said guardedly. ‘But I never had the chance to find out what that was all about.’

‘It looks like our derelict isn’t alone: it might have been part of a fleet. Well, that transmission was fired directly toward Nova Arctis’ innermost world, Ikaria.’

Corso took a moment to absorb this information. ‘But you don’t actually know anything’s there,’ he said finally.

‘It’s a chance.’

‘A chance at what?’ Corso protested. ‘There’s nowhere for us to go. You saved my life. I’m grateful for that.’

‘We’ll never get control of the derelict that’s on Theona,’ Dakota replied, ‘but I’ve got reason to think we might do better with whatever other derelicts are on Ikaria. Maybe, if we’re very lucky, we can survive this one.’

Corso stared at her, speechless.

She grinned. ‘But, if you’d rather turn back and surrender…’

Corso shook his head. ‘No, Let’s just maintain this course. At least we’ll gain ourselves some breathing space before the fusion piles give out.’

Bourdain’s fleet fell into the Nova Arctis system like a swarm of avenging silver angels, the hull of his centre ship bristling with plasma weapons focused on the silent shape of the Hyperion, still locked into its tight orbit around Theona.

They had crossed the system at the highest speed possible, and were currently locked into a high-gee deceleration, their engines pointed in-system as they braked hard to avoid overshooting the gas-giant Dymas altogether. Warriors in dull-grey liquid body armour were couched in racked acceleration couches inside the two accompanying craft.

The three ships began to turn as they came out of deceleration, each slowly spinning around until they dropped towards Theona nose-first, their automated weapons systems swivelling to maintain their line of fire on the Hyperion itself and the base on the moon’s surface, far below.

Arbenz frowned, glancing across the bridge to where Kieran still maintained his post at a console. Gardner sat a little way off, in a couch at one end of the bridge area, watching them both with a contemplative look. Contemplating how to get rid of us, more than likely, the Senator mused.

Kieran looked up. ‘Sir, I’m concerned about what that woman Merrick said, about the Shoal placing software spies inside the Hyperion’s stacks-’

‘We can worry about that later,’ Arbenz responded dismissively. ‘Right now, we have this fleet to contend with. In the meantime, I’d love to know who was responsible for leaking information about the derelict’s existence to Bourdain.’

‘Senator?’

Arbenz glanced over at Gardner, who was peering down at a comms console with apparent fascination.

‘What is it, Mr Gardner?’ he snapped, his voice full of irritation.

‘It’s the derelict, Senator. You might want to take a look at this.’

Arbenz turned to Kieran, who then brought up what Gardner was seeing to the main screens.

There were severe tremors evident on Theona, bad enough to rupture the ice, and all centred on the derelict. The officer in charge of the surface base had already ordered an evacuation.

Doubt assailed Gregor Arbenz for the first time in a very, very long while. Things were starting to move far faster than he would have anticipated.

The staff and troopers stationed inside the Theona base had barely a few seconds to register what at first appeared to be a major ‘quake. Then they registered nothing at all, when the base, along with several cubic kilometres of ice and rock, was vaporized in an instant, leaving the churning ocean below exposed to the stars and the cold of space for the first time in half a billion years.

A hole had appeared in the pristine white surface of Theona, a vast chasm with foam churning at its bottom, as water boiled on contact with the near vacuum of the moon’s atmosphere.

From the centre of it all arose a shape like a nightmarish expressionist sculpture of a squid, carried upwards by incandescent bursts of energy. Water cascaded from its hull, freezing instantly and shearing off in great sheets, as the derelict fought its way through the clouds of debris and superheated steam that rose in a great mushroom above Theona’s fractured horizon.

‘Senator,’ Gardner’s tone became harsh and clipped, ‘I am asking you again to order the Agartha to fire on the derelict.’

Arbenz sighed and forced himself to turn away from what he was seeing on the overhead screens. So far, Bourdain’s fleet hadn’t fired on them, and Kieran had regained nominal control of the propulsion systems as well as the weapon banks, but hadn’t activated either. They were going to run silent for as long as possible. The Hyperion still looked like it was mostly inoperative: dead in the water, as they used to say.

So far it looked like their strategy was working, while the approaching fleet appeared to be heading for a rendezvous. Arbenz couldn’t help but wonder what they would make of the alien craft that had just wiped out an entire Freehold base.

Meanwhile, the Agartha was due to reappear, any minute now, from its hiding place on the far side of Theona.

‘Mr Gardner, you have no power aboard a sovereign Freehold military vessel. Your role here is purely advisory-and I’d counsel you to remember that.’

Gardner came round to stand directly in front of the Senator, thrusting his face forward. ‘If you don’t shoot that thing out of the sky before it jumps out of this system, our entire arrangement is over. All support for this expedition will be withdrawn, and you can pay your own damn bills.’

The Senator stared at Gardner, and then burst out laughing. ‘Why in the name of Christ do you think we would destroy the one thing we came here for?’

Kieran stood silently nearby, awaiting his orders. It seemed Gardner had forgotten about him for the moment. Good.

‘That derelict is clearly under the control of some alien force,’ Gardner persisted. ‘What if it jumps right inside the heart of this system’s star and turns it nova, Senator? What if it tries to destroy us all?’

The Senator gave him a pitying look. ‘Or you might consider the more realistic possibility that Dakota Merrick is controlling the derelict herself.’