Stealing Light

Twenty-two

Dakota started to come round again after a couple of minutes. Corso felt her take a firm grip on his shoulder as he hauled her towards a service lift leading to the centre of the gravity wheel and to zero gee.

Dakota mumbled, her words slurred and mashed together. He tensed instinctively, fearing that she might attack him again. After a moment she opened her eyes and focused on his face.

‘Corso?’

It was barely a mumble, but he nearly wept with gratitude. Whatever had taken her over previously had relinquished its control-at least for the moment.

‘Come on, Dakota.’ He dragged her on to the elevator, an open platform used for transferring equipment from the ship’s centre to the inner circumference of the wheel and to the bridge.

The elevator started moving at a painfully slow pace, but Corso felt the gravity drop rapidly away.

Once he had her out of the elevator, however, it was like trying to steer a boulder upstream. He’d kick off from one wall at the extreme end of a drop shaft, pulling Dakota after him, but the problem was in judging their combined momentum. And, just when he thought he had her aimed right, she’d twist within his grasp and send them both sailing towards a side wall.

Then, more often than not, he’d have to try and get between her and the approaching hard surface before she collided and injured herself. A couple of minutes of this manoeuvring left him feeling like he’d been worked over by a couple of seriously pissed-off giants with fists made of stone.

Dakota moaned and blinked, apparently becoming more aware of her surroundings.

‘Get back,’ Dakota mumbled. ‘Piri’

‘That’s right, Dakota. Back to the Piri.’

He could have cried with joy when they finally came to the complex of passageways and shafts surrounding the cargo bay.

‘Corso…’ Dakota’s expression was still hazy and unfocused. ‘Wait, I…’

‘We’re almost there.’

Corso was still wearing his pressure suit. Once he’d got them both inside the airlock leading into the bay, he noticed with a start that the air had started cycling out too soon. He panicked, realizing he wouldn’t have time to get Dakota into a suit as well before the air pressure dropped to zero.

Then something very strange happened.

In a flash, a black, oil-like substance spread out across Dakota’s skin from under her clothes, till it was covering her completely. Even her hair flattened under this tide, the substance bubbling also into her nostrils and spilling deep into her mouth, forming a smooth membrane over her parted lips in barely a moment or two. He let go of her instantly, backing against the far wall of the airlock in horrified fascination as the door leading into the cargo bay swung open.

His first thought was that this oil-like substance that had swallowed Dakota was the alien presence she claimed had taken over the Hyperion: some liquid monstrosity that had been hiding inside her, rather than that insidious presence being the Shoal-member as she had claimed earlier.

However, Dakota showed no sign of struggling or thrashing around, as surely she must do if either suffocating or experiencing distress. He could see the steady, calm rise and fall of her chest.

Forcing himself to overcome his terror, he gingerly reached out and grabbed the edge of her jerkin. The others would be hunting for them, and it was only a matter of time before they came to investigate the cargo bay once they concluded there was nowhere else to look. He hauled Dakota after him into the vast interior space and struggled to guide her towards the Piri.

The Piri’s external airlock automatically cycled open as he dragged and shoved her towards it.

Once they were safely inside, Corso pulled off the headpiece of his suit and took a moment to recover his breath. His whole body seemed a solid mass of aches and pains. It was easier to take light, shallow breaths. Gradually, the pain became a little more bearable.

Dakota had drifted away from him, apparently unconscious, finally coming to rest against a fur-lined bulkhead. He watched as the black oil that had coated her flesh receded once more, apparently draining away into whatever hidden receptacle it lurked within.

He looked around for some way to secure her in case she turned violent again. First he guided Dakota into an acceleration couch, wrapping the webbing tight around her supine form. Her skin felt clammy to the touch, but at least she was still breathing normally. Finally he pulled her wrists behind her back and used a piece of loose webbing to bind her.

‘Please remove the restraints from Dakota.’

It was the Piri Reis speaking. ‘Please comply,’ it continued, ‘or I will use countermeasures against you.’

‘It’s me, Lucas Corso. She’s injured. Her Ghost’s been compromised.’

He let himself float against one wall and grabbed at another handhold to keep him in place. ‘Dakota gave me the necessary access privileges, Piri. You can accept my commands.’

Dakota mumbled something he couldn’t comprehend, and pulled against her restraints.

‘Nonetheless, I require the restraints to be removed from the owner of this vessel. Be warned, I am equipped for lethal force.’

‘Piri!’ he shouted, venting all the frustration and anger he’d put to one side during his long struggle to get Dakota back to the cargo bay. ‘Look at the records for the bridge. Look at what happened, I got her out of there.’

‘I am now initiating countermeasures. Please be warned that-’

‘Listen to what I’m saying! Infective routines have been placed in Dakota’s Ghost circuits.’

Corso floated towards a programming interface.

‘Please do not approach the interface.’

‘AW, just trust me. Please.’

It was useless trying to plead with a machine, but Corso couldn’t help himself. ‘Look inside her and see if I’m wrong.’ He reached out to the console and tapped at the screen, which blossomed into life at his touch.

He’d half expected the Piri to zap him immediately like a fly, but nothing happened. Obviously enough of what he was saying got past its security algorithms so as to give it some cause for delay. ‘I’m releasing these data-stack signatures from the moment when the Hyperion became infected. Compare them to the data signatures in Dakota’s implants and then tell me if I’m wrong.’

For the sake of his own life, Corso prayed he wasn’t.

Several moments passed.

‘Correlations with the infected signatures are detected,’ the Piri Reis replied. ‘Please stand by.’

Dakota’s head suddenly snapped back as if a powerful electric current had been run through her. Her teeth clenched in an involuntary grimace, and the muscles in her arms and neck stood out like steel cables under the skin.

‘Piri!’ Dakota began showing all the signs of suffering a major seizure. ‘Piri, stop! What are you…?’

Her eyes looked like they were about to pop right out of her head, and something very like a scream tried to force its way out from between her clenched teeth.

‘Remain where you are,’ the ship warned him. ‘I am currently cleaning invasive routines from Dakota’s implants.’

‘You’re killing her.’

‘Any physical responses you see are purely the result of nerve shocks generated by the analysis and removal process.’

Corso stepped forward and tried to loosen her straps. Whatever Piri was doing…

Something buzzed against his forehead and a moment later Corso found himself floating at the far end of the cabin.

‘Please remain where you are,’ the Piri stated calmly, ‘or the next shot I give you will be lethal.’

Thinking of countermeasures, Corso reached up and touched the skin on his forehead and wondered what the ship had hit him with. He looked around just in time to see something tiny and silver dart back into a recess that closed even as he watched.

Dakota’s body jerked again, a low animal sound escaping from between her clenched teeth.

‘At least let me get her into the fucking medbox, Piri?

‘Unnecessary.’

With the next shock she received, Dakota began foaming at the mouth. Corso was too sickened to watch, and looked away.

She suddenly uttered a shriek, her body tensing as if a powerful electric current were flowing through it, but then she fell silent and collapsed back against the couch.

Corso stared at her prone form, his mouth dry.

‘The process is complete,’ the ship suddenly announced.

‘And what? How is she?’

‘A more thorough analysis is required to determine if there is any brain damage from her recent head injuries. The invasive routines, however, appear to have been destroyed.’

Corso hurriedly pulled Dakota back out of the webbing. She felt like a broken doll in his arms as he clumsily hauled her into the cupboard-sized space where the coffin-shaped medbox was situated.

He yanked her clothes off and cracked open the medbox’s door. It responded instantly by enveloping Dakota’s body with slim, pale sensors as he lowered her in. Needles slid under her skin, while other sensors began probing her flesh. He stepped back, momentarily repulsed: the sensors reminded him too much of the things that had extruded from the walls of the derelict.

‘Piri, I need you to give me full access to your control systems.’

‘This is not permitted.’

‘Dammit! Piri, I-’

‘Corso.’

Her voice was weak. He stared down at her hopefully. She wasn’t focusing well, but she was looking straight at him. As he watched, a sensor found its way inside a nostril, while others slithered into her mouth and on down her throat. She twisted and choked for a moment, before relaxing again. He reached down and put one hand on her arm. The physical contact seemed to help soothe her.

‘Piri,’ she gasped, her voice barely coherent past the sensors blocking her throat. ‘Full systems access granted for Lucas Corso. Acknowledge.’

‘Acknowledged,’ came the reply.

‘Dakota, I…’

A sensor pushed itself into a vein on her arm and her eyes rolled back, the eyelids closing in deep sleep as the medbox’s sedatives took effect.

Corso woke a few hours later to an urgent beeping sound. He’d curled up in the same acceleration couch Dakota had been confined in, watching as status alerts on her condition continued flickering on a screen.

His sleep, what little of it he was able to manage, had been sporadic, interrupted by nightmares due to what he’d learned from the derelict during that final frantic upload to the Piri Reis.

He felt he could tell no one what he’d discovered, and he’d wiped the data from the Piri Reis’s stacks as soon as he’d absorbed its message in all its awful import.

Despite all she’d been through, the damage to Dakota’s body and brain appeared to be largely superficial. There was no sign of major cerebral tissue damage, either from her fight with Udo or from the Piri’s attempts to destroy whatever had been hiding inside her skull.

‘The Hyperion’s systems are undergoing aggressive analysis by sources currently on its bridge,’ Piri informed him at one point. ‘It appears to be an attempt to locate both yourself and Dakota.’

‘How many are on board the Hyperion now?’

‘Six, including David Gardner, Kieran Mansell and Senator Arbenz. The remaining three are not on record, but are armed and wearing combat-ready armour.’

‘Those are probably security from the Agartha. Have they gone anywhere near the cargo bay yet?’

‘Apart from yourself and Miss Merrick, there has been no physical human presence in the cargo bay since our departure from Mesa Verde. However, aggressive security scans have probed the bay several times in the past few minutes.’

‘But they can’t detect the Piri, can they?’

‘Visual and data feeds show only partly depleted ion cells placed in storage,’ came the reply.

‘And that’ll hold up?’

‘Only so long as the cargo bay is not physically entered for visual confirmation.’

‘What happens if we take you outside the Hyperion right now? What are our chances?’

‘The prognosis is not good,’ came the reply. ‘I am equipped primarily for counter-surveillance. Regardless of this, the chances of being visually identified on exiting the Hyperion are very high, in which case black-ops capabilities would be of negligible effect against the firepower of either the Hyperion or the Agartha. My recommendation is we should remain hidden within the cargo bay as long as possible.’

So either they stayed put until the others finally found their hiding place, or they could exit the Hyperion and get blown out of existence.

Corso yanked himself up out of his seat and returned to the medbox. Dakota’s breathing looked deep and regular, as he gazed down at her through the transparent cover. The wounds and bruises she’d picked up looked like they were healing rapidly.

‘Any more on Dakota’s prognosis, Piri?’

‘She is recovering well, but it will be some hours before she is fully functional.’

‘We don’t have that much time. Can we wake her now?’

‘That is not advisable.’

‘I don’t care if it’s advisable. Can we wake her?’

A pause. ‘Yes.’

‘Then do it.’

‘This is counter to safe practice of-’

‘Piri, she gave me full privileges. Do it.’

Lights on the medbox changed from red to green. The tentacle-like sensors slowly unwound from around her still form. Her injuries weren’t anywhere near as bad now as they would have been without the medbox’s rapid-healing technology, but she still looked a long way from sparkling health.

Corso hated to wake her so soon, but he needed her help if they were going to get out of this.

‘Do you have any idea exactly what that was in her Ghost implants?’

‘That is difficult to ascertain,’ the ship replied. ‘I detected two conflicting processes. One appeared to share traits with the invasive routines found within the Hyperion’s data stacks, whereas the second bore a closer relationship to data configurations originating from within the derelict.’

‘What, two processes? Explain that.’

‘There were what appear, upon initial analysis, to be two invasive processes present within Dakota’s ghost implants,’ the ship replied with endless pedantry. ‘These have been erased where possible, along with a variety of traps and memory blocks.’

Dakota’s chest heaved suddenly, her back arching, her small apple-sized breasts pressing upwards. Corso was having a hard time pushing back memories that were still delightfully fresh; the opportunities for sex back home on Redstone were limited, to say the least, given the Freehold’s tight social constraints. It had felt at the time like Dakota was assuaging some deep hunger that went beyond the expression of mere lust, into a need whose origin he couldn’t begin to guess.

Apart from that, it had been the greatest fuck of his life.

The lid hissed open. Corso remembered what the Piri Reis had just told him: memory blocks. Dakota’s eyelids fluttered and her eyes stared through him. After a moment she managed to focus on him at last.

‘Corso…’ She coughed and shook her head, and brought up a thin stream of liquid, retching as she cleared her lungs of the complex chemicals the medbox had used in the repair process. He reached down and helped as she struggled into a sitting position. Dakota leaned over the side of the medbox, choking and gasping the last of the medicinal liquid out of her system. Corso got his hands under her arms and helped her stand up slowly. She was shivering violently.

‘How… how long’s it been?’ she managed to stammer, her breath still heaving. She was peering around the command module as if she’d never seen it before.

‘Not that long. Couple of hours since I got you back from the bridge. But I don’t know how long we’ve got before Arbenz and the rest track us down.’

‘Shit.’

He helped her over to an acceleration couch and she dragged herself on to it, wiping gunge from her face and hair.

‘We need to get away,’ she croaked.

Corso shook his head. ‘Can’t do. They’ll shoot us out of orbit the moment we’re seen outside the Hyperion. There’s only so much subterfuge the Piri Reis can manage.’ He paused for a moment. ‘That’s why I brought you round early just now. I was hoping you might prove me wrong on that.’

She tried to focus more fully on him, and then started laughing weakly. ‘Put me back. Put me back in the medbox and wake me up when the universe is over. Oh my God, we’re fucked. We’re totally fucked.’

‘No, we’re not, Dakota, and I need your help if we’re going to get out of this. But I need to ask you some questions before we do anything else.’

‘At least find me some clothes first.’

‘Sure.’

Corso negotiated his way through to her sleeping quarters. A maelstrom of both clean and unwashed clothing still floated there, and began whirling around him as he disturbed the air with his passage. He grabbed a pair of trousers and the cleanest t-shirt he could find, and propelled his way back through. Dakota was curled up into a ball on the couch, one arm looped securely through a piece of webbing. For a moment he thought she’d fallen asleep, but then she opened her eyes and stared at him.

‘So did you bring me some clothes or are you just going to stand there staring at me like a pervert?’

‘Sorry.’ He handed them over.

She shook her head and forced a weak grin. ‘I was only kidding. You said you had questions?’

‘I want to talk about Josef Marados.’

Her expression stiffened immediately. ‘What about him.’

‘Someone tampered with the news feeds, while we were still in the Sol System. So the report of his death was deleted from the Hyperion’s records.’

She shot him an angry look. ‘You know, you actually sound like you’re accusing me of something.’

‘Let’s face it, you’ve been acting very strangely.’

She laughed, but the sound was harsh and edgy. ‘This coming from a Freeholder?’

‘Dakota, listen to me, I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m just trying to get to the bottom of things. Someone fixed the transceiver feed so certain specific items were flagged and deleted.’

Now Dakota looked bewildered and frightened. ‘Well, if you must know, I picked up on that too. I thought there might be an intruder on board, because there were alterations to the stack records.’

‘There wasn’t any intruder,’ Corso stated. ‘Not anything physical at least. You made the alterations yourself.’

She shot him a glance full of anger and suspicion. ‘Look,’ she swallowed, ‘I don’t deny I might have made some changes to protect myself. But there were other changes that had nothing to do with me-the kind of stuff you probably couldn’t pick up on unless you had a Ghost riding in your head.’

‘So you’d say the Shoal AI was responsible.’

Dakota nodded.

Corso shook his head. ‘That’s part of it, but not all. Just before we got to Nova Arctis, I saw you walking away from the airlocks leading into the cargo bay. I went up to you, and you completely blanked me. It was like you didn’t even know I was there. It was the same behaviour the time I found you on the bridge, looking at maps of the Magellans. Except you didn’t seem to remember that.’

‘Corso, this is ridiculous. I…’A brief look of uncertainty crossed her face, and she changed her tack. ‘Look, I don’t understand what you’re getting at.’

‘When I came across you that time by the external airlocks, it was less than an hour after Severn was murdered back in Ascension.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, Lucas! The man led a dangerous life. This is ridiculous.’

‘Dakota, do you remember at all what happened on the bridge just now?’

‘Why?’

‘Do you even remember killing Udo Mansell?’

‘I…’ That look of uncertainty flickered over her face again. ‘Yes,’ she said, a little more quietly. ‘I did. I’d… I don’t know. I hadn’t forgotten. I just… couldn’t place the memory. Except…’

‘Except what, Dakota? Except it didn’t feel real, maybe? When I got there, you had this blank look on your face like you weren’t really aware of what was going on around you. It was exactly the same look you had that time I found you running trajectories on the bridge, and that time by the airlocks. Like you weren’t really quite seeing anything around you? You know, you almost managed to kill me back there.’

Dakota shook her head vigorously. ‘I don’t remember anything like that. Besides, it was Udo attacked me. Then…’

Corso cocked his head. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Nothing,’ she replied, staring off into space. ‘I just can’t…’ She put one hand up to her head and dragged it through her hair, her fingers trembling.

‘Can’t remember?’

She flashed him a hostile glare. ‘Lucas…’

‘Are you still having trouble remembering? After you killed Udo, I had to actually knock you out before I could start dragging you all the way down here. I’ve seen some weird shit in my life, but I’ve never seen anything quite like that. Not even back home.’

‘I didn’t kill Severn, I swear. I don’t know what makes you think I even could. I… it was complicated. We were close, back in the old days. The same goes for Josef Marados.’

She sounded calmer now. ‘There’s no reason for me to kill either of them,’ she stated more defiantly. ‘But there was plenty of reason to kill Udo.’

Couldn’t agree more, Corso reflected, but he didn’t say a word about that. ‘You do realize I just had your ship rip a shitload of invasive routines out of your skull? Stuff that shouldn’t have been in there at all.’

Her head snapped back up. ‘What?’

‘I’m saying the Hyperion isn’t the only thing that was compromised. So were you-or your Ghost was, at any rate.’

‘But that’s…’

He could see the realization dawning on her.

‘There’s no one else with the access privileges and the skill-including the support of your implants-to enable you to alter records and hide your movements the way you did with the Piri Reis. But there’s plenty of precedent for your conscious mind being taken over.’

‘I remembered everything that happened at Port Gabriel, Lucas. That was the worst thing about it. I remember exactly how good the Uchidans made me feel when they turned me into a murderer.’

‘But it doesn’t have to be just like that, does it? What about a fugue state where your conscious mind thinks it’s doing one thing, while something altogether different is happening in reality?’

She twisted around and tried to strike him, but he anticipated the blow, catching her fist in his own and pulling her towards him.

She gripped his shirt with her free hand and began to weep. He held her close for a while, feeling her shoulders heave.

‘I’m sorry, Lucas. I had such bad dreams-I don’t want them to be real.’

She slid out of her seat and he let her drift until she snagged a piece of trailing fur and pulled herself in close to one wall. He let her just float there for a minute, before he continued.

‘What do you remember?’

‘I thought I was imagining it. I had… nightmares, about Chris Severn and Josef. I saw it happening. I just pretended it wasn’t real, because it couldn’t be real.’ She wept.

She stiffened again, then twisted around to face him. ‘The figurine.’

Corso said nothing. She pulled herself slowly upright and stared through him as if he were not there. Her expression was sphinx-like now: calm, eerie, deadly. ‘The figurine the alien gave me-Belle Trevois.’

‘I know. I-’

‘I remember now.’ Her tone was soft and calm, but something in its tone unnerved him. ‘I mean I’m starting to remember. Trader knew I was on Redstone during the massacres; he was just playing a game with me. I knew the figure was of Trevois as soon as I opened the box, but then I touched it and… I forgot.’

She focused fully on him now. ‘That thing raped me, Lucas. I don’t know how he knew I’d get here, but he had planned everything from Bourdain’s Rock on at the very least.’

Her lips twisted in a snarl. ‘And now I’m going to destroy him.’