Gary Gibson - Stealing Light

There was enough basic systems information, however, to tell him the worst had happened. He was drifting now, and in another twenty minutes or so, the Piri Reis would orbit into Ikaria’s sunward side, and then straight into the path of the nova.

Dakota awoke naked between cool sheets.

She sat up with a start and looked around. Tall windows looked out over an azure sky.

There was no sign of the derelict, of Ikaria…

After staring about herself for a while, convinced she’d gone mad, she stepped over to the window and looked up to where the sun should be. Instead there was only a black dot surrounded by a visibly expanding ring of fire.

She looked down, at the empty city below her, and crumpled to her knees.

Below the window lay a chasm of such magnitude that it made the valley on Ikaria look like a crack in the pavement. Lights burned all the way down as far as she could see, illuminating windows and verandas all the way down into an apparently bottomless pit.

On the other side of the chasm, a vast alien metropolis spread out yet further.

Without knowing quite how, she became aware she was now the only living thing on this entire world.

She moved away from the windows, and from the sight of the pitiless chasm below, and noticed a door at the far end of the room. She raced over and tugged it open, finding a corridor stretching beyond. Everything-the shape of the corridor itself, of the doors, of the windows-suggested this place had been designed for creatures larger than humans, and of entirely different proportions.

Dakota wandered down steps not designed for human legs and constantly peered about her. When she reached ground level, she saw that a street stretched away into the distance.

Something about her surroundings made her sure this city had been abandoned for a long, long time. She wandered about, naked and still in shock, then turned back for fear of losing her way. Eventually she found her way back up to the room she had woken in.

The bed was of entirely human proportions, as was the data book that stood on a plinth to one side of it. She had no idea if it had been there or not when she’d woken.

She picked up the book and began to read the words there.

Some hours later, she wandered back into the empty streets in a daze. She was still naked, so clothes appeared to be a concept alien to whoever or whatever had brought her here. She didn’t feel cold, however. And though she felt hungry, the actual need to eat, just in order to stay alive, appeared to be absent.

This entire world was a library: the book had told her that. The library obligingly shaped itself to her memories of human libraries, giving her information in the form of words on electronic pages. It had also told her she was still inside the derelict, and still on the surface of Ikaria.

This, then, was how the derelict chose to communicate with her. Corso’s interface chair seemed laughably primitive by comparison.

As months passed, she learned how to summon the ghosts of the dead Magi Librarians and quiz them about their history. In turn, they taught Dakota her true purpose: the one they believed she had been brought to Nova Arctis to fulfil.

After a few years, she began to understand just how much was required of her, and just how much would be at stake throughout the galaxy if she failed.

Corso listened to the desperate sound of his own breath, as he counted down the seconds to his death. He was sufficiently preoccupied, and it took a moment before he realized a comms light on the command console was blinking.

Someone was trying to communicate with him.

He lurched upright. Information was scrolling across a screen, too rapidly for him to follow.

It appeared something else had taken control of the Piri Reis.

‘Piri!’

No answer.

He hammered at the controls, but they failed to respond.

The ship lurched violently.

For millennia, the three Magi vessels had lain in their silent graves, waiting for the arrival of a Pilot.

The first Pilots were older than dust, half-forgotten Magi who had flown these ships to this lost, lonely system even as the Shoal hunted down the last of their numbers. Those first Pilots had enjoyed countless virtual years within the memories of these three craft, but even that near-eternity of subjective experience eventually gave way to the gradual pace of external time and entropy.

In the end, death had claimed even them.

Bright rivers of white-hot lava spat and flowed in the depths of Ikaria’s great chasm, sending searing light up towards the ridge on which the three derelicts lay. The one Dakota had entered finally rose from its resting place, bright energies flickering around its skeletal spines.

As the ground fell away from beneath it, pockets of gas detonated from deep within the chasm walls, sending boulders and debris tumbling down on the two remaining vessels.

Vast fissures began to tear through Ikaria’s crust, and the planet shifted in its orbit as it rapidly lost mass to the searing heat of the nova.

Above it all, the Piri Reis floated like a dragonfly above the open door of a furnace.

‘Corso? It’s Dakota. Can you hear me?’

Corso jerked around, astonished. For a moment he’d thought she was right there beside him, but the voice he heard had come through the Piri’s comms system.

‘I’m here, Dakota. I really, really hope you’ve got some good news.’

‘Can you activate the external cameras?’

‘I don’t know,’ Corso admitted. ‘I can’t get the Piri to respond. Where are you? Are you still down there? I’m deaf and blind up here. I have no idea what’s going on.’

‘What’s going on is that it’s a fucking miracle you’re still alive. I need you to do something. I can see from where I am that the Piri Reis is badly damaged. The cargo section and aft, right?’

‘Yeah, part of it’s been sheared off, best as I can tell. I think you’re going to be sleeping in the command module for a while.’

‘A lot of primary systems can still be controlled manually, just not very efficiently. You understand?’

‘I do.’

‘I’m on my way up, aboard one of the derelicts. I’m going to tether it to the Piri and then we can get the hell out of here.’

Corso hesitated. The idea that she had somehow succeeded was strangely difficult to accept. It was only at that moment he fully realized just how thoroughly he’d expected to die. That he might actually survive…

‘Now listen to me, Corso. There’s an extendible cable system at the back of the Piri, same stuff they use for building skyhooks. The only problem is the winch system, and how badly it got damaged during the missile impact. The Librarian thinks the cable itself might be fine, though. All I need you to do is release the cable manually, then I can take care of the rest.’

Librarian?

‘Release it how?’ he demanded.

‘You won’t need to go outside. Are the lights on-on the main console?’

‘Yeah.’

‘OK, key in this sequence.’ She recited a list of numerals and letters, and he entered them. More lights began to flash, and Corso felt a low vibration pass through the deck.

‘OK. Something happened, but I can’t tell what. Dakota… who’s this Librarian?’

‘Long story. I’ll be over there in maybe ten minutes. There’ll be time to explain later.’

Corso stared at the console. You don’t say.

The derelict shot upwards, achieving escape velocity within seconds of lifting off. Beneath, the shelf on which the derelict had sat for so very long finally collapsed into the fire far below it.