Empire of Light

Chapter Thirty-eight

Five Years Later Corso glanced to the west and saw the Lantern Constellation rising into view as the sun set. He checked his pressure suit's filters, took one last glance at the ruins that had been his principal occupation for the last few years, and was on his way back to the truck parked nearby, when suddenly Dan called in over the short-range.

'Got some news, Lucas. Commander Nabakov says the landing party should be here a little after noon tomorrow. When will you get back here?'

'I'm finished,' Corso replied. 'I should reach there just after they land. Thanks for the heads-up, Dan.'

Four and a half years before, the Mjollnir had limped away from the expanding nova, reaching a star system less than a hundred light-years away only after a difficult and hazardous six-month journey, their long-range sensors having picked up a potentially habitable world there. Its atmosphere had proved deadly, but it carried life in the form of hardy flora and small brown-pelted animals, even the largest of which had soon proved to represent no threat, as well as the scattered remnants of a long-abandoned Emissary settlement.

They had named the world Pit Stop, and started the work of repairing the Mjollnir 's drive system, but it soon became clear this was going to take longer – much, much longer – than any of them might have suspected.

Only lichenlike growths studded the sandy, gritty soil. The sun was far away and dim, even during summer, and at night the ground frosted over. It was nobody's idea of paradise, therefore, but – as Corso soon realized – it wasn't really so different from Redstone. He'd found himself getting used to the idea that he might have to spend the rest of his life here.

Once the exploration ship California had come within range of the Mjollnir 's transceivers, a few weeks before, Corso had known he should feel elated. But, instead, he had felt only an obscure sadness he couldn't begin to explain.

He got back in the truck, pulled the door shut, and waited for it to cycle out the toxic atmosphere and replace it with something he could breathe, before pulling off his helmet with a gasp of relief. The dashboard came to life, automatically downloading the new data he had imaged from the site of the ruins, and filing it along with the rest. He had recorded thousands of samples of Emissary glyphs and art, all gathered from a hundred different locations, and in the past year or two he had finally begun to make some kind of headway. For somewhere in Pit Stop's myriad ruins, he felt sure, lay the key to understanding the Emissaries.

Corso opened his mouth to tell his truck to get moving, then he paused, turning to glance out of the window once more at what he and the others had come to call the Lantern Constellation.

It was hard not to think of Dakota every time he saw it. Four stars, forming a rough rectangle, with a fifth and brighter star in the middle; and, slightly to the right and much fainter, the star system whose destruction they had barely evaded. It still shone as serenely as ever, and would continue to do so for nearly another century, when the light from the nova would finally reach Pit Stop.

In that moment the memory of Dakota was so clear and sharp that he could almost imagine her stepping out from amongst the ruins, as if everything that had happened all those years ago had been merely some kind of dream. He didn't like to think this way, even though he always did, because of the regret that inevitably followed. They had all found ways to keep themselves busy, as the years on Pit Stop stretched out. The Mjollnir 's entertainment systems had been stocked with centuries' worth of music and books and 'viros, but mostly they had each filled up their time with work and with personal pursuits.

Corso had returned to his academic roots in alien machine-linguistics, while Martinez spent most of his time up in orbit aboard the crippled frigate, directing an army of spider-mechs, sometimes with Lamoureaux's help. Perez occasionally joined Corso on field trips that could last for weeks, while they sought out derelict computer-systems and buried data storage-sites. At other times, Perez joined Martinez back on the frigate, and they would work together on patching the hull. Lamoureaux had meanwhile taken charge of setting up their tiny encampment, as well as refurbishing and repairing the frigate's long-range tach-net transceiver so that they could finally send out a distress call.

And now, at last, rescue had come, but Corso couldn't help wondering just what there was for them to go home to. Certainly, he wouldn't be returning to Redstone, and neither would Martinez or Perez. They had stolen one of the Freehold's major military assets, and people there had long memories.

The truck rolled on through the night, while Corso slept in its rear cabin. He woke late the next morning, less than fifty kilometres from home, and ordered his truck to a halt so that he could have breakfast, mostly consisting of supplies brought down from the frigate in orbit every couple of months by the one remaining lander.

While he was eating, he saw a light like a flare burning its way down through the atmosphere, and realized it was a lander dropping down from the California. 'Senator Corso.' The woman who had just taken a seat next to him looked impossibly healthy as she reached across to shake his hand. Pretty, too, with short dark hair and large round eyes. The skin of her hand felt silky smooth, so much so that he only just resisted the impulse to stroke it, like some love-starved prisoner on his first day out of jail.

'I've not been a senator for a very long time now, Miss…'

'Zukovsky. Meredith Zukovsky. I'm the liaison officer for the California.' The lander was clearly visible outside one of the prefab's windows, a massive, squat boulder of a ship resting on a dozen legs.

Corso could catch a strong whiff of himself after so many long nights sleeping in his truck's tiny cabin, so either Meredith had no sense of smell or she was doing a valiant job of pretending he didn't stink.

Apart from himself and his fellow exiles, there were a dozen members of the California's crew now gathered around a long table in the tiny settlement's largest enclosed space: a mess hall where the four of them would meet for meals whenever they were all down on the surface at the same time. But now the room could barely hold all sixteen of them – four times more people than it had seen in the last half-decade.

The table was covered with dishes of a variety that Corso had almost forgotten existed. The California's commander, a bluff, broad-shouldered man by the name of Casimir Anders, was meanwhile talking with Martinez and Lamoureaux.

'It's nice to meet you, Meredith. You'll have to excuse my manners and my body odour. I don't get to talk to people for long periods sometimes, and the bathroom facilities here still leave something to be desired.'

'But the main thing now is that you're able to go back to the Consortium.'

'That depends…'

She raised her eyebrows, tilting her head back slightly as if to get a better look at him. 'I'm not unaware of your circumstances, Mr Corso,' she said. 'The political situation on Redstone still hasn't stabilized, and you don't need to tell me it wouldn't be safe for you to go home. Not for most of you, either.'

He bit his lip and looked at her thoughtfully, then decided there wasn't any reason not to be honest. 'I'll admit that, in my more candid moments, I've wondered if there'd be any point in going back even if rescue did come. In a sense, this…' he waved a hand around the prefab, 'all this is my home now. And, besides, I've made real progress trying to decipher the records I've dug up. It's… hard to think I could end up just walking away from it all. But I'll have to, I realize that. I'm not some insane hermit. I don't want to stay here for ever on my own.' He could hear the sadness in his own tone.

Zukovsky nodded and smiled broadly, as if pleased with this answer. 'That's exactly why I came over to talk to you. How would you feel about staying here?'

He eyed her askance, as if she was kidding him.

'I should maybe be more candid,' she continued. 'We didn't just come out here to look for you, though that was part of it – in fact we also wanted to know exactly what happened to the Emissaries. It seemed prudent to try and assess whether they might still represent some kind of threat.'

'And do they?'

'What happened up there,' she said, shifting her gaze towards the ceiling as if she could look straight through it at the Lantern Constellation, 'wiped out most of their space-going fleets and crippled their empire, but it didn't put them entirely out of action. They have other surviving caches, so they could regroup and come back at us – and we need to be ready for that.'

'So what does that have to do with me being here?'

'We've taken a look at the research you've done here, and it's obvious you already have a better handle on the Emissaries than most of the specialists back home. That counts for a lot when it comes to making the kind of assessment I'm talking about.'

'You want me to keep working here?' he said. 'Seriously?'

'You wouldn't be alone,' she replied quickly. 'We came here intending to leave a permanent outpost behind. There'll be other ships visiting after the California's returned, as we want to use this place as a stepping-off point for deeper exploration into the Perseus Arm. We've already talked to Ted Lamoureaux, who's willing to stay and help us set up the outpost, but I got the feeling he wanted to hear what you had to say first. We'll still be here for at least another six months, and in that time we'll build up what you've already established here, and then some of us are staying behind to get things up and running.' She smiled. 'I know it's a lot to ask of you, but nothing you say meanwhile would be binding. And if you ever changed your mind before we headed back, there'd still be a berth waiting for you.'

Corso cleared his throat and looked her in the eye, almost super-naturally aware of the proximity of her hand to his. There were glinting depths in her pupils, in which he saw himself reflected.

'What about you, Meredith?' he asked. 'Will you yourself be staying?'

She looked back at him with an amused expression. 'As a matter of fact, I will be, yes.'

Do it, he could imagine Dakota urging him. What else do you have to go back for? Your life is here now.

'I'll stay,' he decided.