Empire of Light

Chapter Twenty-six

Over the next few days, Ty was surprised at how quickly normal routines reasserted themselves. When Nancy made an unexpected visit to the lab on the evening after the discovery of Olivarri's body, he had asked her questions even as he undressed her, until finally she pressed a finger against his mouth to forestall any further interrogation.

By the following evening, the last of the disrupted systems were back to normal, and Ty found himself scheduled to take part in the first of a series of hull-maintenance shifts, in the company of Martinez and Perez. As soon as they were outside, Ty made an excuse to head off in the direction of the stern, and a failing drive-spine, accompanied by a half-dozen spider-mechs.

He set the hull-clamps to retract, and waited until they had unlocked from around the spine, before setting the spiders to work in lifting it out of its socket. He then left them to it, making his way quickly to an emergency airlock close by.

Ty clambered inside and yanked the hatch shut after him, pulling his helmet off as soon as the air had finished cycling. Then he activated the airlock's inbuilt comms terminal.

This, he knew, was where he ran the greatest risk of being caught. Although he had been careful to pick out an airlock equipped with an imager-enabled terminal, the unscheduled tach-net link he was about to open might drain enough power to trigger an alert on the bridge, one that could in turn be traced back to his current whereabouts. But it was still a risk he was prepared to take.

He pulled off his right glove and reached out to the terminal screen, then paused. He could stop now, go back outside, and get on with his scheduled task. He could simply forget about his encounter with Olivarri.

No. He took a deep breath, shook his head as if to dispel his fears, and pressed his palm flat against the screen – making sure the ring given to him by the avatar came into full contact with it.

The panel flashed twice, to show it had recognized the ring as imager-compatible. Ty waited as the terminal pulled a data package out of the ring and dumped it into its own localized memory. The panel flashed again, letting him know it was working at opening up a line of communication.

Whoever was behind the avatar hadn't lied when boasting about the level of encryption involved. Ty had uploaded the same data packages into the lab's own stacks, but hadn't been able to crack them, despite several days of effort. But that didn't matter nearly so much as finding out what was really going on.

He fidgeted there in the coffin-like space for several minutes, while he waited for the terminal to establish a link. He briefly opened up his spacesuit's comms to check in on Martinez and Perez, but they were busy talking sports, so he turned it off again and waited.

The terminal chimed eventually, and a confirmation request appeared. Ty tapped the screen, and a moment later the same avatar he had encountered in Unity appeared before him.

'Mr Whitecloud,' acknowledged the voice behind the avatar.

'There was another Consortium agent on the Mjollnir, and now he's dead,' Ty yelled, without any preamble. 'What the hell is going on? Just how many of you people are on this ship? And… how the hell do I even know you're really a Consortium agent? In fact, what proof did I ever get?'

The avatar gazed back, silent and calm and so clearly artificial, while whoever was behind it tried to put together a response.

'We're aware of your encounter with Leo Olivarri,' the synthesized voice finally responded. 'Olivarri was in reality an agent for the Freehold Senate – not for the Consortium.'

Ty stared at the screen, befuddled. How could they have found out about Olivarri's death already? How-?

'No.' Ty shook his head several times, slowly at first, then more violently. 'No, that's bullshit. I talked to him! He told me he was a Consortium agent, and I asked him why he'd approached me, when you had already contacted me. He didn't know what the hell I was talking about. So I know he was telling me the truth. He had no idea who you were – and now he's dead!'

There was another long pause, and Ty imagined whatever shadowy figure lurked behind the avatar trying to come up with a plausible response.

'It's possible,' the avatar said eventually, 'that whoever killed him might target you next.'

'None of what you're saying makes any sense!' Ty shouted at the tiny screen. 'If he was really working for the Freehold, then who killed him? Yet another Consortium agent?'

He pounded the hard plastic of the screen with one fist, feeling pain like hot needles being rammed into his knuckles. He was breathing hard, hyperventilating, fast using up the airlock's limited supply of air. He sobbed with frustration, and felt hot salt tears trickle down his cheeks.

'Listen to me,' he spat, both hands now gripping the sides of the screen, as if framing the face of the avatar. 'Show yourself. Do you hear me? Show yourself. And tell me who the hell killed Olivarri… and if it had anything to do with your talking to me!'

'Nathan?'

It was Martinez, his voice sounding tinny from within Ty's discarded suit helmet. He grabbed up the helmet and opened a channel.

'Where are you?' asked Martinez. 'We can see your spiders, but we can't see you. You need to stay in sight at all times, Nathan.'

'I'm fine. Sorry,' Ty replied, a little too hurriedly. He swallowed and forced himself to sound calm, or they would suspect something was wrong. 'I'm… I thought some of the stern drive-spines might have got more damaged than we thought. So I figured it might be better to check them out, just in case. I'll be right back.'

'Well, okay,' said Martinez, doubt evident in his voice. 'We're heading up to one of the middle hull sections. Mr Corso's currently picking up some fail signatures from up that way, and we're off to take a look. We'll see you there in… make it five hundred seconds from now. Got that?'

'Got that,' Ty replied and cut the connection.

The avatar was gone, and the screen had turned black. If he wanted answers, Ty was going to have to find them somewhere else. He re-secured his helmet, cursing and muttering as he twisted around in the confined space, then paused just as he was about to pull his glove back on.

He left the same glove spinning slowly in the air, as he pulled the other one off as well. Then he tried to slide the data-ring off his finger.

The moment he worked it up to his knuckle, a deep, primal terror washed over him like a black tide. Worse, the ring actually became tighter, rather than looser, as it was designed to do when removed.

Ty gritted his teeth and once again tried to work the ring past his knuckle. It could only get so tight, after all.

Something like an electric current surged up his spine before exploding inside his skull. He writhed in pain, his head feeling like it was on fire, twisting around in the zero gee like a trapped animal.

When this pain finally subsided, the knowledge of how thoroughly he had been duped became unavoidable. He had suspected as much when he first encountered the avatar, but had been so desperate to escape from the residency and from Marcus Weil that he had ignored his own instincts.

Worse, he now had a pretty good idea what had been done to him.

It was still difficult for Ty to think back to his days developing military technologies for the Uchidans; conscripted or not, he had allowed himself to be sufficiently drawn into his work that it became easy to ignore the potential human cost of their research, while helping his fellow scientists develop a variety of possible means by which neural implants could be attacked or compromised. One in particular had involved the use of the body's own bio-electric field as a conduit for signals that could overcome or suppress the flow of information in implants – except that, in order to work, whatever affected the bio-electric field had to remain in constant contact with the target's own body. This, in turn, had led to the development of hardware-based neural-feedback mechanisms that could manipulate the neuro-chemical balance of the target's brain, eliciting powerful negative emotions or even generating escalating levels of pain and distress that could prove ultimately deadly.

Something like a cheap data-ring could do the job. And whoever was behind the avatar had somehow figured out how to use Ty's own research against him.