Empire of Light

Chapter Thirty-five

Half an hour later, Dakota was back on the bridge. She looked at the grim, worried faces around her, thinking how few of them were left now.

Five against an empire was not good odds.

Dan Perez was giving everyone booster shots, Dakota last of all. 'For the nerves,' he said, with an attempt at a smile, as he pressed the spray against her shoulder.

A numb, icy feeling spread through her where the spray touched her skin.

Corso sat next to a console, Martinez standing beside him with folded arms.

'All right,' began Corso, leaning forward slightly, with his elbows resting on his knees. 'Whitecloud's dead, Trader's left our ship half-crippled, and he's taken the Mos Hadroch with him. According to Dakota, we lost a third of the Meridian drones when he blew the hold apart.' He shrugged and made a face. 'But it could be worse, right?'

Dakota affected a weak smile.

'I'm not kidding,' Corso continued. 'At least we're still alive. We came very close to suffering a breach of one of our plasma conduits, and if that had happened, we wouldn't be here now. Not only that, most of our critical systems are unaffected, despite losing most of the hold. Our jump drive is still functioning. A good part of the ancillary fusion propulsion system is screwed, admittedly, but enough of the reactors are still working that we might be able to compensate for what we've lost. Manoeuvring inside our target system isn't going to be nearly as easy as we want it to be, but it won't be impossible.'

Martinez sighed and shook his head. 'Lucas, our reason for coming out here is gone. When the hold went up, it almost certainly took all our landing craft with it. The most sensible thing we can do now is turn back.'

'We're getting a response from the on-board systems for at least two of the landers,' Lamoureaux pointed out. 'I've already sent a couple of spider-mechs in to take a look, and I reckon they're salvageable, but I can't know for sure until we check them out.'

'Of course we go on,' interrupted Dakota. 'We chase Trader all the way there. Why give up now?'

'You don't make the decisions here!' Martinez exploded, stabbing a finger at her. 'You told us yourself, he's gone to do the one thing we came here to do. That means our job is over. So we go home.'

'Look, I don't know if we can go home,' said Dakota wearily.

They all stared at her, waiting until she continued.

'When I was chasing him – chasing Whitecloud, I mean – Trader told me the Emissaries had some way of tracking us.'

'How do you know that's true?' Corso demanded.

'I didn't believe him at first, but the fact is those scouts we ran into back there knew just where to find us, out of a truly enormous volume of space. The chances of that being a coincidence are beyond astronomical. Trader said so himself

'That would make sense out of what happened back at the cache,' confirmed Perez, from beside her. 'It felt like an ambush.'

'Exactly.' Dakota nodded vigorously. 'They clearly knew we were coming.'

'If that's the case,' Lamoureaux said slowly, 'they could be on their way here right now.'

'Just hold on for one minute,' said Martinez, moving closer to Dakota. 'You haven't told us how they could track us.'

She chose her words carefully as she answered. Some things, she had decided, were better left unsaid for the moment.

'He told me there was something planted on the frigate that would lead them right to us.'

'So what does that have to do with Trader taking the artefact?' asked Perez.

'He planned on grabbing it for himself once we'd done what we came out here to do,' she explained. 'But he panicked when he realized the Emissaries knew how to find us. The way he sees it, we might as well have a bull's-eye painted on the hull.'

Martinez glared at her. 'Even if any of this is true, it doesn't fundamentally alter my original point. There's no reason for us not to turn back.'

'Because, even if we did turn back, there's a good chance the Emissaries would still come after us,' she snapped. 'And remember what Whitecloud said: the Mos Hadroch might decide not to let Trader activate it. If that's true, then it's imperative we carry on and be ready to finish the job, if we have to.'

Martinez laughed. 'You really believed that fairy tale?'

'The Mos Hadroch isn't just a weapon any more than the Magi ships are just ships,' Dakota persisted. 'And Whitecloud might have been an evil son of a bitch, but even you could see he was telling the truth when he recorded that message. Right there at the end, he did one good thing in his life by trying to warn us.'

'How the hell do you expect us to "finish the job"?' Martinez demanded. 'The artefact is gone!'

'We have the command structure,' she reminded him. 'We could activate the artefact ourselves, if Trader fails. And even if he doesn't, we have enough drones left to let us try and stop him escaping with the artefact.'

'Perhaps you're forgetting who's in charge of this expedition,' Martinez spat, his face turning red.

Dakota regarded him with a weary expression. 'You're out of your depth, Commander. You don't have any idea about the forces we're dealing with, or the kind of power they have.'

Martinez started to move towards her with bunched fists, but Corso leaped up and grabbed him by the shoulders.

'I want you to shut the fuck up for now,' Corso barked at Dakota, then turned his attention to the Commander.

'Eduard… listen to me. I know exactly what's going through your head right now. It's much the same thing that's running through mine. I don't want anything more right now than to go home. But I also don't want to have come this far just to turn around. Especially not if something could still go wrong.'

'I agree,' said Lamoureaux, nodding vigorously and gazing around at them all. 'We can't just turn around now – not this late in the day.'

'I'm sorry, sir,' added Perez, 'but, with the greatest respect, I'm with the others on this one.'

'We still have most of the drones,' Dakota pointed out, sweeping back the dark fringe of hair from her face. 'And the new field-generators, too. We can do this.'

Martinez stared at her like she was insane. 'Are you even listening to yourself? You already said the Emissaries know that we're on our way!'

'No, they only know where we are right now. And I don't see any reason to believe they have any idea exactly where we're headed, or that the Mos Hadroch even exists, let alone what it's capable of

A sudden alert sounded, an insistent beeping that cut off abruptly when Corso reached out and touched the console nearest him.

'Scouts,' he announced a moment later. 'Lots of them, and about one light-minute away. No details on their acceleration or specific vector, but definitely too close for comfort.'

Martinez tightened his hands again into fists before opening them wide, peering down at them as if seeing them for the first time.

'I guess that clinches it, then,' he said, dropping his arms helplessly to his sides. 'We go on.' The frigate jumped again less than twenty minutes later, running at approximately 40 per cent jump capacity – just enough to carry them several hundred light-years across the Perseus Arm and into the close vicinity of their target system.

Dakota took the interface chair for the jump procedure, fatigue washing over her like a dark tide.

She closed her eyes and let herself sink deep into the ship's data-space. As long as she could keep up concentration, she could stay awake.

The power of suns flowed out of the fusion reactors and then through the drive-spines, tearing a hole in the fabric of the universe. The stars twisted, then changed.

A flood of new data immediately began to stream in via the sensor arrays: spectral analyses, mass estimates, number of visible planets, evidence of technology. They were still at least half a light-day out from the main-sequence star at the system's centre, but they would get up close to the target world through the next couple of jumps.

Dakota was distantly aware of Lamoureaux guiding a small contingent of spider-mechs out on to the hull, intending to make a quick assessment of the hull-degradation.

Dakota activated the command structure that Moss had given her, and tried using it to locate Trader's ship. Before very long she got an automated response from the vicinity of a low-albedo object somewhere deep in the heart of the star system. She compared the object with the data she had received from Trader, and they matched. That meant they had reached the target cache.

She checked in on Lamoureaux once more, and found he was analysing video feeds scraped from the spider-mechs that had been sent into the hold. Pieces and fragments of hull-plate clung to those sections of the underlying skeleton that had survived the blast.

I can see the landers, she sent to Lamoureaux.

‹Yeah, they must have been at the farthest point in the hold from where Trader's yacht was when it jumped.›

Feeling a hand on her shoulder, she opened her eyes to see Corso bending over her.

'Do we know where we go from here?' he asked.

She nodded, her throat dry. 'The target cache is on a small planet in the inner system, not much over a thousand klicks across and tidally locked to its star. The cache is on the dark side, however.'

'And how long before we get there?'

She let her head fall back against the head-rest, almost afraid to close her eyes in case she passed out from exhaustion.

'At least another hour before the drive is up to making another jump.' She raised a hand, stopping him before he could speak again. 'I know what you're going to say. The scouts will reach us before that, but it's just not possible to do it any sooner.'

'Then you're going to have to find a way to keep us safe from those scouts in the meantime.'

'Sure.' She nodded wearily. 'Of course.'

He studied her. 'How are you holding up?'

Dakota laughed weakly. 'Just barely.'

He started moving away, but she reached out to stop him. 'Wait. I need to show you something.'

She put on display the video feeds from the spiders.

'You can see how badly trashed the hold is, but Ted was right: those landers look like they survived pretty much intact.'

Corso nodded and stepped back down from the dais. 'Dan, come with me,' he said to Perez, then stopped, before he left the bridge, to look back at her. 'See what else you or Ted can discover before we arrive there,' he said.

'I'll send a spider out on to the hull to retrieve a couple of field-generators,' she said. 'If we're going to attempt a landing, we're going to need all the protection we can get.'

Corso nodded and left, with Perez following.

Dakota linked into the remaining Meridian drones and prepped them for combat. At the same time, she noticed it was early evening, shipboard-time. She settled back in the chair and wished she had asked Perez for another shot.

Whatever happened after this, she already knew it was going to be the longest night of her life. Trader swam through the dense, pressurized waters that filled his craft. Schools of tiny fish swam around him, and he snatched some up with his tentacles, devouring them as he studied the multicoloured projections all around him. The first jump had brought him within a few light-hours of the target system; subsequent jumps brought him closer to the inner system.

Defensive networks pinged his yacht constantly as it accelerated inwards, but he had obtained automatic response codes, leached from captured Emissary vessels, which fooled the networks into thinking he was one of their own. They would see through it eventually – particularly once he got within range of the cache – but it would meanwhile get him close enough.

He entered the chamber in which he had placed the Mos Hadroch. It hung there in the air, suspended in a series of interlocking shaped fields. Its mass was much greater than might be expected, but of course much of that extra mass was hidden in nonlocal spatial dimensions.

His ship spoke to him: All propulsion systems are currently optimal. The local Emissary population is primarily located aboard habitats orbiting the fourth world. Local comms traffic implies they are engaging in one of their periodic purges.

Trader's fins shivered at the mention of the purges. The Emissaries were bad enough when it came to dealing with other species; they were hardly less harsh on themselves. Every now and then, they would set about destroying their weaker members in orgies of slaughter.

The ship provided him with images of the system's innermost world. He saw enormous machines scattered and apparently abandoned all across its scarred and airless surface. Great holes had been drilled deep into the planet's crust, so that Trader could see manufactories extending deep into the core. Godkillers guarded it, patrolling the volume of space surrounding the star, their hulls black and crystalline, and forbidding in their sheer strangeness.

Even a cursory analysis made it clear that almost everything in this system was old. His yacht was still pulling in data from local data networks which did nothing but assure him of what he already knew, that this system was a backwater, and therefore only lightly guarded by the Emissaries' usual standards. ‹We're coming under fire out here. Can you get them off our tail?›

Working on it, Dakota sent.

She had folded the interface chair's long petals up around her, enveloping her in silence and darkness. She could see the suited figures of Corso and Perez through the eyes of a single spider-mech hovering in the twisted wreckage of the hold. One of them was using a welding torch to cut away wreckage blocking in a lander.

She switched her viewpoint back to the battle taking place all around the Mjollnir. So far, the Meridian drones in conjunction with the field-generators were doing a good job of protecting the frigate but, for all their extraordinary power, they were being pushed to their limit by the onslaught of scouts. Worse, a godkiller had now appeared a couple of light-seconds away, vectoring towards them on an intercept course.

Dakota didn't want to think about what would happen if it got within range before they had a chance to jump.

‹Dakota.› Corso's voice sounded terse and strained. ‹I think something got in here with us.›

She switched her view back to one of the spider-mechs and searched through the shadows until she saw it: the scout that was part hidden in the twisted shadows of wreckage. As she watched, its carapace began to slide apart, revealing a variety of deadly-looking machinery. The hold was now a weak spot, since most of the field-generators meant to protect it had been destroyed during Trader's jump.

The scout began to cut and burn its way through an exposed bulkhead leading to the frigate's interior.

I've got it.

A Meridian drone peeled off from the rest, darting back inside the wreckage and reducing the scout to white-hot slag within moments.

How's it going with that lander?

‹Nearly done,› Perez replied. ‹She'll be good to go just as soon as we've finished mounting the field-generators on her hull.›

One hundred and eighty seconds to the next jump. Get back inside the instant you're done.

‹We'll be done by then.›

Dakota drew the drones back inside the frigate while Corso and Perez retreated through a still-functioning airlock that led into the rest of the ship. Less than three minutes later, the Mjollnir fell once more between the folds of the universe. The frigate dropped back into space less than twenty thousand kilometres from the surface of the cache-world. The system's star now filled the sky, huge and terrifying, while the hull's sensor arrays showed the world itself as a circle of black imposed against this seething light.

New data came in: vast, apparently abandoned craft circled the star in long, eccentric orbits, along with a halo of less easily identifiable junk. The surface of the target world itself, outside of the cache, was pocked with what might have been machinery or habitats of some kind. There were two… no, three godkillers in orbit around the target world.

As she watched, they started to move out of orbit. Because of me, she thought, with no small amount of horror.

A few moments later, Emissary scouts began to materialize all around the frigate.

She picked up Trader's yacht, already dropping down towards the planet's surface. He was being chased by several scouts himself, and automated defences positioned on the surface of the planet were firing on him. Trader became aware of the Mjollnir 's arrival at about the same time his ship warned him that its primary defences were approaching catastrophic failure. The scouts that had been chasing him decelerated almost at once, reversing their thrust and heading back towards the frigate.

Within his yacht, the waters remained dark and cool. Trader studied the data coming in from his hull arrays, but no matter how often he looked he still couldn't quite believe what it was telling him. ‹Dakota. I see that you are still alive.›

Trader?

‹I did not expect you to make it this far.›

What can I say?. I'm tenacious when I'm really fucked off. When we're done, I'm going to take that damn artefact and ram it up your-

‹Dakota, according to my instruments, the Emissaries have just dropped a nova mine into their own star. The neutrino flux is quite unmistakable.›

You can't be serious.

He waited while she checked the readings from her own ship's sensors. When she came back, he could feel her panic surging across the connection between them in bright hot waves.

But why? They can't possibly know about the artefact. Can they?

‹Perhaps Hugh Moss knew about the Mos Hadroch. If so, he may have passed the information on to the Emissaries.›

I told Moss you had a way to stop the war. I thought he might…

‹Listen to reason?›

Go to hell.

‹A most infelicitous disclosure, Dakota. Certainly enough for him to infer the existence of something approaching the nature of the artefact.›

But why blow the whole damn system up?

‹It is in the Emissaries' nature to lay waste all around them. If the sun detonates before I can implement the Mos Hadroch, the cache will be destroyed, and with it any chance of stopping them. They are, after all, not lacking for other caches in other parts of their empire. Do not attempt to take over my yacht again, Dakota. Not if you value our purpose in being here.›

Trader! Wait-

But once again, he was gone.