Nova War

Epilogue

Cold air tumbled down from high mountain peaks and across a barren plain that stretched out towards a distant horizon, stirring up little eddies of sand here and there and scattering the fragile, needle-like leaves of nearby porcupine bushes. A road cut across the plain in a long, straight line, before vanishing into an industrial haze that obscured the setting sun.

An atmosphere factory belonging to the House of Attar loomed out of the haze like an abstract sculpture of a toad rendered in steel and iron, belching out climate-altering quantities of gas, while administrative buildings and workers' quarters, rendered in cheap concrete, clustered tightly around its base. Clouds tinged green from bioengineered algae stained the dusk skies the colour of pale lime.

Dakota stared on past the factory while her kukaman mount belched and shifted. She reached up and adjusted the neckerchief she'd pulled over her breather mask. The same gritty dirt that caked her face wherever it was exposed had a habit of clogging up her mask's filtration systems.

The kukaman she rode on suffered no such inconvenience. It was not the product of natural evolution, and had clearly benefited from an excess of boar DNA. Shortly after arriving on Morgan's World, Dakota had been warned that in order to reach New Ankara – the besieged capital of the House of Attar – she would have to make her own way through a mountainous region notable for the presence both of Attar snipers and of the insurgents they doggedly hunted through a thousand hills and valleys. It was a trek by land of some two hundred kilometres, but anything taking to the air within a thousand kilometres of New Ankara was liable to be shot down by any one of a number of weapons platforms currently in orbit above the planet.

Despite the warnings, Dakota had purchased a balloon-wheeled transport and set off towards the distant mountains, the first hint of dawn glimmering beyond their peaks. Less than one hundred and fifteen kilometres later, she'd run straight into a night ambush.

The insurgents encountered had been armed only with primitive rocket-launchers and shotguns, but that was all they needed to blow out the front two tyres on her transport and send it skidding into some nearby rocks, its front axle twisted beyond repair. Dakota had crawled out of the ruined vehicle and made for cover while a number of voices shouted in unidentifiable accents.

A few seconds later, the technicians and crew of an orbital platform maintained by the House of Attar were alarmed to find themselves losing control of their orbit-to-ground offensive systems. Pulse cannons mounted on the platform now began targeting the insurgents, incinerating them where they stood in a series of second-long pulses that lit up the sky for a hundred kilometres around.

And, meanwhile, Dakota hid in the deep shadow between two massive boulders with her hands clamped over her ears, wondering how the hell she was going to get to New Ankara now.

By the time it was all over, maybe four and a half minutes had passed. She had then found the kukaman tied to a post at what was clearly the insurgents' encampment, its long lizard-like tail swinging from side to side in an anxious way, suggesting it hadn't been fed in a while. Dakota dragged one of the burned corpses back to the encampment and then made friends with the beast while it chewed on the bones of one of its former masters. Trader was there, in New Ankara, as Dakota had known he would be. His yacht had been like a beacon in the interstellar night, drawing her inevitably to Morgan's World.

She had guided the kukaman, grumbling and croaking, past the factory without further incident, finally setting it loose near the crest of a hill that overlooked the city. Dakota had then made her way into a disused system of tunnels that led beneath the city walls while her ship, high in orbit and invisible to all observers, worked at subverting any local surveillance systems.

She emerged an hour and a half later, tired and sore and stinking of sewage, close to the centre of the city. Buildings surrounded her, their walls stained in pale agate tones by their edenwood resin coating. Long murals, here and there, depicted key battles from the earliest days of settlement, when the most powerful of the noble houses had battled each other for dominance. Soldiers moved regularly along the streets, maintaining a curfew, but they were too few in number and overstretched.

All she had to do was wait quietly for a while, stay out of sight, and then move on.

Trader realized she was coming, of course, since his yacht's onboard equipment had detected the Magi ship the instant it entered the system.

Finally Dakota came to a flat-roofed tower that rose high above the rooftops of the city's Merchants' Quarter. It had once been a water tower of enormous capacity, an ornate and rugged edifice for which the city had been rightly famous. Until just recently it had been long abandoned, but money had clearly been lavished on constructing the elaborate new pumping mechanism which now encircled its cylindrical wall, as well as on the discreet defensive systems positioned just shy of the roof almost seventy metres above her head.

From behind a corner, she observed three guards with their eyes adjusted for night-vision and carrying weaponry both visible and concealed.

Dakota watched them react as they each received a carefully faked alert. After they went dashing out of sight, she crossed the street quickly. Her implants reached out, through the orbiting Magi ship, and began to leach confidential files from stacks belonging to the House of Attar's Ministry of Internal Security.

There was only one guard now remaining between her and Trader. His name was Murat Oran, and the families of the dozen men and women he had tortured to death would be celebrating his demise long into the night.

She entered by a narrow doorway set in the side of the tower, and saw Oran seated in the shadows, facing towards her but looking down at a book held in his hands. His eyes widened when he noticed her and he started to stand. She raised her pistol and shot him in the head and chest twice each. He slumped back into his chair without a sound.

Dakota pushed on, aware there were weapons systems hidden everywhere, targeting her from each moment to the next, but none of them firing.

Finding a stairwell that wound round and round the inside of the tower, she soon reached the top of the building. There she passed through several doors until she found herself on a narrow tiled lip surrounding the giant tank that filled almost the whole of the tower's interior.

Looking up, she noticed how the iron plates of the flat roof overhead had been re-soldered in the very recent past. She then peered down into the liquid depths, where she could discern the outline of a superluminal yacht that barely fitted within the tower's circumference.

Trader in Faecal Matter of Animals, now a fugitive from his own kind, rose through the waters towards her. Before he reached the surface, his field-bubble formed about him, trapping the waters around him, and lifted him into the narrow pocket of air between the roof and the water's surface.

Piscine eyes regarded her blankly. 'You have come to gloat, perhaps, Miss Merrick?' he asked. 'My host, the Caliph of Attar, has been most concerned to lose control of one of his orbital platforms.'

She hunkered down, placing her pistol flat on the tiles before her. 'An exchange of information. That's all I want, Trader. I tell you something, you tell me something.'

'And what, enquiries rendered in due suspicion, might you possess that I could possibly desire?'

She raised her shoulders and dropped them again with a sigh. 'Then I guess you're not interested to find out that Swimmer in Turbulent Currents has tracked you down here to Morgan's World. Whatever it is you did to stop him finding you this long, it isn't working any more.'

'And yet you are the one who loosed that abomination upon me. So why would I grant you an audience, given such foreknowledge?'

'Because, in the end, we both want the same thing, Trader. We both want to keep our people safe.'

The Shoal-member drifted up closer, the stubby tentacles that dangled below the main mass of his body now writhing in anger. 'How you must enjoy this, but I must inform you, Miss Merrick, that you are dead. All I see before me is a hollow shell filled with the beating heart of a Magi navigator. You are no more human than the creature that calls itself Hugh Moss.'

'Let's skip the philosophy lesson.' Dakota stepped forward, tapping her forefinger against the faintly sparkling surface of the field-bubble. She felt a faint, tingling shock from the contact. 'I want to know what happened when you went looking for the Maker.'

'Then first I must ask to what ominous depths your understanding of my history extends, Miss Merrick.'

'Deep enough.'

'Retrospective endeavours lead me to think back upon the paths I have swum. I should have contrived to drown your species in lonely darkness long before such terrible damage could be done.'

Something shone in the waters far below Trader's bubble, and she made out the outlines of his yacht's drive spines as they began to charge. He was already preparing to leave. She had a good idea of the technological riches the Caliph had gained in return for providing this hiding-place, but wondered what Swimmer in Turbulent Currents might do to the House of Attar once he found his prey absent.

She fought back the urge to remind Trader precisely who had started the nova war. 'The Magi came to our galaxy looking for a Maker they believed had laid the caches. Now I discover that you went in search of the Maker yourself. I want to know what happened.'

'Oh, Dakota, how alike you and I once were; how joined by the urgent romance, the idealism of our respective youths. But you are still so young and eager, ready to charge off in search of adventure and honour.' Trader swivelled in his bubble, his leathery fins manoeuvring gently. 'How I miss Mother Ocean and her crushing embrace; how I regret my present state of exile. And yet I would do again all that I have done thus far, truly I would, all in order to preserve her chill dark depths.'

He pushed up against the side of his field-bubble that was closest to her. 'I wonder to what allegiances you swear, however, or are those dissenting voices truthful when they say the only cause you serve is your own?'

'My sole allegiance is to life,' she replied. 'And the right to it.'

His manipulators twisted in amusement. 'The Emissaries are gathering their forces. I sense them sometimes, like dark sails upon a still sea, glimpsed over a far horizon.'

'There's a way to stop all this, Trader. The Magi Librarians tell me so, and the Maker – if it's still out there – might have the answer. I want to know what it said to you.' She paused, collecting herself. 'I want to know why you failed.'

Ah.' The waves beneath Trader trembled, interference patterns criss-crossing the surface of the waters. 'I was found wanting, as surely as you will be.'

'I don't understand.'

'Did you read no fairy tales, my dear child? Was there no parent to rock you to sleep, to tell you tales of derring-do? I confronted the dragon in its lair, my foolish girl, and found I was insufficiently pure of heart to gain access to the secrets it hoarded.'

He was taunting her.

'I don't have time for this bullshit,' she snapped.

'Then listen, and listen well. I travelled all across the face of the galaxy, to sparse regions almost devoid of the pulse of living stars. And there the Maker, to this day, still makes its long, slow progress through our universe. We had learned from the Magi that it held a secret they themselves sought; some undefined miracle that could end all troubles, still all conflicts. But necessity drove us to destroy the Magi before they could reduce us to little more than servants. We built our own starships and sailed them to those distant barren places wherein dwelt the Maker, but were met only with ashes and failure. We were rejected, turned back.

'I took the helm of that great endeavour and, yes, I sought to wrest secrets from the very entity that long ago sowed the seeds of the Magi's destruction. Few of my fleet returned to report on what had taken place. Instead, most were stranded there, their newly drive-equipped warships reduced to burned husks spinning in slow orbits around stars that had been dead a million years and more, drained by the Maker of the energies that had once burned bright within their cores.'

The waters began to foam, as a bass rumbling sounded from deep below. 'You are no one's saviour, Dakota Merrick,' Trader continued. 'You are a liar, a betrayer, a thief and a murderess, yet once again you delude yourself that you act out of the highest ideals. I cannot give you the answer I believe you seek. I can tell you only that the Maker nearly destroyed us when we attempted to destroy it. And so it may well do the same to you.'

Without a further word, Trader shot downwards. Blinding light shone up from the depths and the waves began to rise, smashing against the underside of the ceiling.

Dakota found her way back to the winding stairwell, cursing as she slipped on the waters now splashing down the worn stone steps. The entire building started to vibrate around her, the air filling with choking dust as bricks began working their way loose.

She ran past the slumped corpse of Murat Oran and out into the streets surrounding the tower. The roof of the tower exploded behind her, sending debris and foaming waters hurtling downwards, while the humming and shimmering form of a Shoal starship rose rapidly into the night sky, sending more water cascading down onto the buildings beneath. The vessel's drive spines glowed a deep cobalt blue, the air around them curiously puckered and distorted.

Dakota kept on running, ignoring the cries of the three guards who were now returning. She ducked down some steps between tall buildings, making her way to a sewer entrance close by the river.

I need your help, she had almost said to Trader, despite everything he had done to her. She remembered what the Shoal-member had said, that once he'd been like her, driven and idealistic. The notion that she might then become like Trader, weary, cynical and murderous, was one that appalled her. And yet the fear of what the power she'd gained might yet do to her remained in the back of her mind like a persistent whisper.

Thousands of gallons of briny water surged through the sloping streets. Trader's ship was barely a twinkling in the sky by now, and the air was filled with a sound like thunder as pulse cannons positioned upon the city walls began firing bolts of supercharged plasma skywards to no avail.

She paused, looking upwards, aware of the Librarian's thoughts as just a dimly sensed presence.

A long time ago, Trader in Faecal Matter of Animals had gone in search of the Maker and – in his own words – been found wanting. And still the dragon lurked unslain deep within its starry lair, waiting and watching to see who else might come creeping up close.

And now it's my turn, Dakota thought, with a final glance skyward.

She heard running feet coming closer, and ducked quickly into the lightless subterranean depths beneath the city. The end of Book Two of the Shoal Sequence – Taipei, June 2008 Acknowledgements With thanks to Jim Campbell for comments and suggestions. And Emma Chou, for all the obvious reasons.