Gary Gibson - Stealing Light

Corso had trouble figuring out what it was about this that so disturbed him, until he realized she looked less human every time she slipped into this strange fugue state.

Was it possible, he wondered, for her to slip so deep inside whatever dreams the Magi craft generated for her, that she lost track of where she actually was? Or was that just the voice of his own paranoia in the face of something he couldn’t begin to really understand?

He spoke her name gently, hoping she might respond. Nothing. Just that same, calm, semi-blissful mask.

‘Dakota’ he repeated, a little louder this time.

At last an acknowledgement: a blinking of her eyes as her head turned towards him

‘You do realize we don’t have enough fuel left to land on Ikaria without crashing?’ he said. ‘That’s assuming we could land all the way down inside that chasm, in the first place. We used up too much fuel just getting here.’

She smiled with a faraway look, like she was actually listening to someone else. ‘We don’t need to land.’

‘What?’

She focused more clearly on Corso. ‘We don’t need to land. We’ll just bring one of the derelicts to us.’

Within Nova Arctis, the cloud of singularities began to condense, adding to the core collapse. The collective gravitational attraction of the condensing cloud was more than equal to Nova Arctis in its entirety. Within minutes, superheated plasma that had flowed along the same convection patterns for millions of years would be sucked inward to the void at the star’s heart, drawn downwards at a considerable fraction of the speed of light.

In the end, Arbenz decided to tell Liefe the truth. It was obvious something fundamental was happening to the star anyway. Besides, all of Liefe’s crew deserved to die as warriors, with full knowledge of the fate that lay before them.

‘Inside its core? Liefe stuttered as Arbenz finished. The faces of the crew around them were pale with shock.

For a moment, Arbenz could see, the Captain actually suspected he might be joking. Then the truth of it all began to sink in.

Arbenz put a hand on Liefe’s shoulder. ‘I’m sorry we didn’t tell you before: the drive doubles as a weapon of unprecedented power. We need to destroy any remaining derelicts located on Ikaria, because if they’re allowed to get away they could be used to subjugate the Freehold-’

‘Arrest him!’ Liefe shrieked at his security officer. Liefe drew his own weapon and stepped back quickly, levelling it at Arbenz. ‘You should know that there were contingency plans in case you weren’t able to handle this this-’

Kieran moved from his static position with dazzling speed, his Challenge blade appearing in one hand for the briefest moment before it went hurtling across the bridge to land squarely in the middle of Liefe’s back.

The Senator watched the commander hit the deck, the hilt of Kieran’s knife protruding from his spine. The security officer fired his own weapon, catching Kieran on the shoulder. Kieran spun backwards, landing hard a few metres from where Liefe now lay twitching in his death throes.

Arbenz moved forward without a moment’s hesitation, pulling the pistol from Liefe’s dying fingers and firing three shots at the security officer. Two hit the man in the chest, while a third landed in his skull. The side of his head exploded messily.

Arbenz went over to Kieran and discovered he’d suffered no more than a bad flesh wound. He fanned his pistol around the remaining crew, most of whom stood in various poses of shock. Several appeared undecided whether they should try rushing the Senator or not.

‘Listen to me,’ Arbenz shouted hoarsely. ‘I am still your commanding officer by seniority of rank. Don’t forget that. What Liefe tried to do just now was an act of mutiny. Nova Arctis is dying because of a Magi weapon. You can see that clearly. I don’t know how long we have, but if you want to make your peace, make it now.’

‘You’ve killed us, Senator,’ said a young Lieutenant, stepping forward, his face full of cold fury. ‘We believed in you, and you’ve killed us.’

Arbenz stood, staring at the younger man angrily. ‘What’s your name?’ he demanded.

‘Klein, Senator.’

‘Fine,’ Arbenz spat, throwing Kieran’s knife down at Klein’s feet. ‘I killed your Captain, and you have the right to try and execute me for that. My rank is civil, after all, not military. But you knew the risks, all of you, when you came here.’

He nodded towards the display showing the distorted, flaring face of Nova Arctis. ‘Just remember, in no time at all you’ll all be following me to hell, and nothing you do can change that.’

Arbenz punched one hand into the other. ‘Or we can make sure the ship directly ahead of us has no chance of escaping with what is by divine right our prize. If we die, they die. Wouldn’t you rather go out fighting?’

Klein stared back, his jaw trembling. Arbenz could see how scared he was, though he was handling it well.

After a moment the younger man nodded, a defeated look crossing his face. He bent down and slowly picked up the knife, stroking its sleek dark surface as he spoke.

‘All right,’ said Klein. He held up his hand when some of his fellow crew began to protest, and they fell silent.

Arbenz waited while Kieran watched from where he sprawled nearby, obviously experiencing great pain with every breath he drew.

‘We’ll obey your orders, Senator, because we can see for ourselves the evidence behind your words-but if you’re wrong, and we do survive this, we’ll make sure that people know your death was protracted, and we’ll be recording your pleas for mercy for prosperity. Do we understand each other?’

‘We do,’ was the Senator’s grim reply.

Dakota led Corso back through the command module, and then into the claustrophobic tunnel leading past her sleeping quarters towards the ship’s rear, just fore of the engines. He crawled through after her, cursing when she managed to kick him in the head as he was squeezing through. After several appalling seconds they emerged into a space so tiny their heads were forced together.

‘Listen,’ said Dakota, ‘see this door?’ She pointed to a hatch next to Corso’s shoulder. ‘There’s a one-man lifeboat on the other side, and here’s the plan. I’m going down to Ikaria while you stay here in orbit. I get on board the first Magi ship I come to and bring it back up.’

‘Uh huh,’ Corso replied, appalled. ‘That easy.’

‘Yes, that easy,’ Dakota snapped at him, grabbing him by the ear hard enough to hurt. ‘Don’t you think I can do this? I can’t believe I’m saying it, but I should have scrubbed my Ghost out of my head long ago. What I’ve got in here now is infinitely better. It’s like there’s an entire world inside my head, do you understand me?’

‘Not really, no.’

Dakota made a disgusted noise, her lips curling. ‘Then you’re just going to have to accept it. The Agartha is right behind us now, so there isn’t time for anything else.’

‘And what if you don’t come back?’ Corso demanded.

‘Then I guess we’re all dead.’

The foam of miniature singularities began to evaporate, but the killing blow had been dealt. The central mass at the heart of Nova Arctis was sucked inwards, becoming dense enough to strip the electrons from every atom and compacting what remained into a supermassive ball of neutrons, releasing a wide-spectrum blast of radiation in the process.

The result was cataclysmic.

The outer layers of Nova Arctis instantly exploded outwards, leaving behind a tiny neutron star barely a few dozen metres across. The star’s dying throes released a level of energy equivalent to that of the entire Milky Way, within the space of a few seconds, and releasing a second blast of neutrinos in the process.