Stealing Light

Twenty-four

‘I’ll have to admit, I’m impressed. Really.’

Arbenz stepped back from kneeling over Dakota, who lay curled in a ball, gripping her stomach where Kieran’s boot had slammed into it. The Senator signalled to his henchman, who stepped forward again, the bruises on Kieran’s face livid and smooth from his time in the med bay. He kicked out at her a second time.

She tried desperately to shield herself with her arms, but it wasn’t enough.

Corso and Dakota hadn’t really any choice but to be hauled back inside the cargo bay by the three figures in armoured suits. There was, after all, nowhere else to escape to. Their brief fantasy of somehow stealing the derelict had been waylaid when the alien intelligence within the Hyperion’s stacks had killed the vessel’s crew, drawing the others back to investigate the orbiting ship-while Corso meanwhile had struggled to warn her of the traitor inside her own skull.

Now there was only pain, and the inevitability of death.

They had been brought into a storage room near the cargo bay. Kieran obviously had some experience of undertaking torture in zero gee: he first anchored himself by gripping a bulkhead so that he didn’t float away each time he kicked her.

Kieran next turned his attention to Corso, who had crawled into a corner after his own severe beating. The three troopers from the Agartha, grim-jawed Freeholders with unreadable expressions, stood watching from near the door.

‘I’m impressed,’ the Senator confessed, ‘that so much escaped my attention for so long. Do you know how much of an embarrassment that is to me?’

He started pacing the room. ‘But really, you’re the biggest disappointment of all, Mr Corso. You’re a traitor who’s betrayed his own people, the worst kind of scum there is.’

He bent down until his face was level with Corso’s, though Corso looked like he was having trouble focusing. ‘So tell me. Why did you do it?’

‘You’re out of fucking time, Senator,’ Corso wheezed back at him. ‘You can’t ever go back to Redstone, that’s what I think.’

Arbenz stood, his face flushed with anger, and aimed a sharp, swift kick at Corso’s head.

‘How long,’ the Senator screamed, ‘did you think it would be before we’d have found that ship hidden in the cargo bay?’ He stared around at Dakota. ‘Did you plan this from the beginning?’

She noticed that Gardner had entered the room. He still remained near the entrance, by the troopers, one arm crossed over his chest, the other hand reaching up to his mouth in an unconscious gesture of horror.

‘Senator…’ Gardner cleared his throat. ‘Senator. I should remind you we still need them.’

‘Need them?’ Arbenz rounded on Gardner. ‘Don’t you understand what these two have done? They have been engaged in a conspiracy against my people. We’ll find another way to deal with the derelict.’

‘There’s no time left, Senator. We need both of them more than ever.’

Arbenz cocked his head and stared. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Don’t you know?’ Gardner looked incredulous. ‘That’s why I’m here. The derelict’s propulsion systems have started powering up.’

‘Powering up?’ Corso croaked, failing to pull himself upright.

Kieran made a move forward, murder in his eye, but Gardner stepped across and grabbed the man’s shoulder.

For a moment, Dakota was sure Kieran was about to kill Gardner, then she saw the look passing between the Senator and Kieran. Kieran’s mouth twisted in anger, but he held back.

Gardner turned to the Senator. ‘While you’ve been chasing each other around up here, some of the rest of us have been paying attention to the priority alerts. The derelict’s primary systems are powering up, but with no intervention from us. The base on Theona is picking up exactly the same graviton fluctuations you’d get from a coreship prior to jumping into transluminal space. What it might do next is anybody’s guess.’

Arbenz adopted a weary expression. ‘This isn’t the time, Mr Gardner.’

Gardner looked bug-eyed. ‘Didn’t you hear what I just said? Senator, the derelict is coming alive. Corso, here, is the only one who has any real idea what’s going on inside that thing.’

‘And if you don’t stop interfering, you’ll be the next one put under arrest.’

Gardner opened and closed his mouth a few times as he gradually realized Arbenz was entirely serious.

‘Please don’t say I’m insane, Mr Gardner,’ Arbenz said grimly. ‘I’m fighting for the future of my own people, and I’m not interested in a debate.’

Arbenz returned his attention to Corso, for the moment having decided to ignore Dakota. She wondered if that was a good thing, or if it only meant he’d now made up his mind to kill her.

‘Mr Corso,’ the Senator was saying, ‘you miserable piece of shit, you’re a stain upon the Freehold. You’re exactly what I mean when I refer to the weakness among us. The weakness we wanted to escape when we founded Redstone.’

He finally turned his attention to Dakota, staring down at her while she cowered, waiting for the next blow. ‘I was an idiot to expect any less of you. You murdered Udo and, except for me standing between you and Kieran, I think I might actually feel pity for what he’d do to you for that.’

The Senator’s voice began to grow louder. ‘I should have realized Bourdain would send spies,’ he continued, ‘and I know that’s his fleet approaching us right now. If any man possessed the resources to find out about the derelict, then it would be him.’

Gardner wore an expression like he was the only sane man left in a madhouse. He reached out to Arbenz, more words forming on his lips. Kieran suddenly seized hold of Gardner, twisting his arm behind his back and slamming him against the wall. Gardner yelled with pain.

A small smile crossed the Senator’s face.

‘For God’s sake,’ Gardner panted. ‘You’re sabotaging your own damn mission!’

‘That, Mr Gardner, is exactly where you’re wrong,’ said the Senator, now looking delighted. He turned and looked down at Corso. ‘Tell him.’

Corso stared up at Arbenz, his hands still raised in the not unreasonable expectation of another blow. ‘I… I don’t understand,’ he replied haltingly.

‘Kieran, I want you to help Mr Corso remember what it is he’s been keeping quiet from all of us.’

Kieran released Gardner and grabbed Corso by the hair, forcing him into a kneeling position. Kieran produced his knife and pulled Corso’s head back, as if to cut his throat. Instead he made a single shallow cut across the side of Corso’s neck, just above his shoulder. It was enough to make Corso scream shrilly. Dakota looked away, trembling violently.

‘So tell him then, Mr Corso,’ Arbenz repeated. ‘When you tapped into the derelict’s data stacks, you didn’t cover your tracks as well as you might have hoped. In fact, if not for you, we might not have stumbled across this particular item of knowledge ourselves.’

Corso, panting, shook his head, blood fanning out across his shoulder from where he’d been wounded. Arbenz nodded to Kieran and, a moment later another, more anguished scream filled the air as Corso was sliced again, this time in the tender flesh just below his ear and next to the jaw.

Dakota cried out in involuntary sympathy. This time, Corso’s scream was more like that of a wounded animal than anything human. He mumbled something incomprehensible.

Kieran yanked his head back again.

‘Speak up,’ Kieran snarled, bringing the knife down towards Corso’s face this time.

‘No! Wait. OK.’ Corso coughed and spat, his breathing ragged. ‘OK, fine.’ He looked at Dakota. ‘Sorry,’ he murmured to her, and looked away.

Dakota had no idea what exactly he was being sorry for.

‘Why don’t you just tell him yourself?’ Corso asked the Senator, then nodding towards Gardner.

‘Because I’d rather you did. So get on with it.’

Dakota watched, mute and apprehensive.

‘I found some information hidden in the derelict’s stacks,’ Corso told Gardner. ‘But I’d have been insane not to try and hide what I learned,’ he pleaded, looking directly at Arbenz. ‘It’s too dangerous, too-’

‘Kieran,’ urged Arbenz.

‘All right! All right,’ Corso begged, slithering away from the knife still held so close to his face. ‘I know what happened to the civilization that created the derelict. Or I’ve a pretty good idea, anyway.’

‘What we have there is even better,’ Arbenz informed Gardner with gloating triumph, ‘than a faster-than-light drive.’

For a moment, Corso stared at the Senator with unmasked disgust. ‘How good is your history, Mr Gardner?’ he asked, appearing to regain a little of his composure.

Gardner shrugged, looking bewildered. ‘Try me.’

‘Several centuries ago, we split the atom and thought we’d found the ultimate source of cheap energy. It didn’t take long before we turned it into a weapon and bombed entire cities into ashes in seconds. It was a pact with the devil: a way of generating cheap power, but one that could also destroy us all in seconds. It looks like the Magi had something not so different.’

Gardner looked quickly between Arbenz and Corso, then shook his head. ‘I don’t understand.’

Corso continued, sounding as if every word had to be wrenched from his soul. ‘I’d rather die than tell you this if the Senator didn’t already know. The transluminal drive doubles as a weapon that makes the atomic bomb look like a firework. That’s the real secret of the Shoal. And I’ll guarantee you it’s also the reason they’ve tried so hard to prevent any competitor species acquiring the means for faster-than-light travel.’

Arbenz’s excitement clearly became too much for him. ‘Mr Gardner, what we have found changes everything. The Freehold was meant to find that derelict. It’s as if the divine will of God-’

‘It’s got nothing to do with God,’ Corso yelled, his voice cracking and tears streaming down his face. ‘The process is clear, in the records. If a starship equipped with the transluminal drive is allowed to materialize within the heart of a star, even a very stable star, certain processes can be triggered by the ship’s subsequent destruction. The result is a nova.’

Arbenz positively glowed with triumph. ‘A nova, Mr Gardner, a way to detonate entire stars. What we have here isn’t just a device for travelling between stars… it can destroy them, and the worlds in orbit around them, too. Its discovery’-a beatific grin began to spread over his face-‘is very possibly the greatest moment in the entire history of the Freehold.’

Gardner finally had the good sense to look truly frightened. ‘All right, Senator. Assuming this is true, and I find it more than a little hard to believe, who exactly are you planning to blow up?’

‘No one,’ Arbenz replied. ‘That’s the beauty of it. If we can harness the power in that derelict, nobody could stand against us. They’d be insane to even try.’

‘And what if somebody else found out how to do just the same?’ Dakota shouted. ‘What about when the Shoal realize what you’ve been up to, and then threaten to destroy Redstone’s star? Or anywhere else in the Consortium, for that matter?’

Arbenz looked surprised that Dakota had spoken up. ‘The Shoal would do nothing, except to keep on preserving a secret they’ve clearly been sitting on for a long, long time. They must know what the transluminal drive is capable of, so at the worst it’ll be a state of detente -neither our side or theirs will be mad enough to instigate a war of mutually assured destruction.’

Dakota listened, horrified, staring at Arbenz who looked like he’d just been asked to take charge of the Second Coming.

‘But you’re wrong,’ Corso pointed out. He’d managed to haul himself to a halfway-upright position against the wall. Kieran glowered at him threateningly, but stayed where he was. ‘It can happen, because it’s happened before-in the Magellanic Clouds.’

Every pair of eyes in the room, except Dakota’s, turned to focus on Corso. Dakota kept her gaze on the rest of them while Corso explained.

‘We all know about the novae in the Magellanic Galaxies,’ Corso continued, to dumbfounded silence. ‘One after the other, all within roughly the same sector of a neighbour galaxy, more than a dozen stars detonated with no explanation. More than that, they were stars that shouldn’t have exploded. Most of them were the type of main sequence star any life we’ve ever encountered needs in order to survive. There was always the possibility the novae explosions were the product of something intelligent, but that was never more than wild speculation. Well, now we have the proof, in the navigational and historical records on board the derelict. On that basis, I don’t see any reason to doubt that the Magi weren’t refugees from a war of absolute destruction.’

‘And you know this for sure?’ Gardner demanded.

‘I can only tell you what the records themselves say. But it explains a lot.’

‘You’re lying,’ Arbenz hissed.

‘Listen to yourself!’ Corso shouted. ‘The Magi fled from a war that destroyed a fair chunk of an entire galaxy and you think you can control the weapon used to do it?’ He laughed weakly. ‘Finding that derelict is the worst thing that happened to the human race. If the Shoal don’t decide to destroy us, we’ll do it to ourselves, I guarantee you.’

Dakota couldn’t help resenting Corso for keeping so much back from her-even though she knew she’d have done the exact same damn thing. Arbenz was blinkered to the point of insanity, but Gardner was a different matter: he could see how deep they were all dug in now. No wonder the Shoal were terrified at the prospect of their client races discovering the secret of faster-than-light travel: the result might be war on an unbelievable scale. Star after star, after star… exploding in the endless night, spreading deadly, life-destroying radiation throughout the Milky Way, a brief mystery to be pondered in the night skies of a million unknown worlds.

There could be heard a surge of static-laden speech, and Dakota glanced over towards one of the Freeholder troops, who stood with one finger to his ear.

‘Senator?’ interrupted the soldier. ‘We’re getting a report from the base on Theona. The ground team say the derelict is starting to move.’

Dakota realized in that moment that Trader was not yet gone. Although possibly the derelict was acting under its own volition, it was much more likely Trader had wormed his way inside the Magi vessel’s computer systems. The alien craft, she didn’t doubt, was entirely capable of supporting the full weight of an alien artificial intelligence.

Dakota experienced a sharp spike of pain in one temple, and glimpsed a flash of light out of the corner of her eye. It was a visual glitch she might have paid little attention to, if she didn’t remember experiencing exactly the same reaction every time Trader had taken control of her during the past weeks.

Piri’s work on her implants had brought back the clear memory of those minuscule visual glitches, and the horror that had followed each and every time. On such occasions, her conscious mind had entered a kind of unquestioning limbo, reducing her to little more than a somnambulistic flesh puppet.

But this time was different: this time she was more aware of it happening to her than ever before.

Something of Trader still survived inside her implants-and it was trying to gain control of her again.

Arbenz and Gardner were bickering together while a disgusted-looking Kieran Mansell stood over to one side, conferring quietly with the three troopers.

Josef Marados had once said she would be crazy not to acquire some kind of countermeasure against the possibility of someone trying to control her through her implants. He had been right: both right to say so, and right in thinking she’d find a way of dealing with such an eventuality.

The cost, however, was high, and she’d never seriously imagined she might be forced to take such drastic action.

Nevertheless, this was the time.

‘April is the cruellest month,’ she whispered, the words emerging from her throat as a bare whisper. She saw one of the troopers glance towards her suspiciously.

In response, a visual cue flagged up in the corner of her vision, a warning flag she’d put in place long, long ago.

Next, she murmured: ‘I will show you fear in a handful of dust.’

The trooper who had looked over stepped towards her, and she ducked her head down so he couldn’t see her lips move.

Another warning flag appeared in the corner of her eye, followed by a request for confirmation.

Granting chat request was the simple matter of a half-whispered affirmative.

The trooper lowered the snub nose of his weapon towards her. By now, Kieran glanced around as well.

She said: ‘Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.’

Another flag came up, flashing red in the foreground of her vision. A final warning.

All she needed to do was utter the last sentence.

The Piri Reis spoke to her.

‹Dakota, you must now directly confirm to me your request to create an irrevocable erase and destroy loop in your Ghost implants before proceeding. However, the approaching fleet is now in weapons’ range, and is spreading out in what appears to be an attack pattern. Their computers have targeted the Hyperion. If your implants are destroyed, your ability to interact with the Hyperion and carry out defensive manoeuvres against hostile forces will be gone.›

Thank you, Piri, she replied. Nonetheless, I confirm.

The trooper stepped forward to where she still crouched, barking something she did not understand, before bringing one booted foot up and using it to nudge her shoulder. Kieran stood staring at her with hard eyes for a moment, then his hand flicked back towards the knife sheath hidden inside his jacket.

She stared up at the trooper.

‘Shantih shantih shantih,’ she snarled up at him, completing the sequence.

The changes inside her skull were abrupt and violent, the higher functions of her implants fading away to leave only a dim, insensate void.

‘Sir,’ one of the other troopers was saying to Arbenz. Theona base camp reports that the enemy fleet is now in range and moving in for an attack.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ Kieran snapped. ‘If that was the case the Hyperion’s automatic systems would have…’

Gardner, Kieran and the Senator all stared at each other at that same moment. Suddenly, emergency klaxons began sounding the length of the ship. Kieran shouted something incomprehensible, and stamped over to the door, but it refused to open.

‘We’re locked in.’

‘Bullshit,’ Arbenz retorted. ‘Blow the damned thing open if you have to.’

The troopers exchanged glances with each other, then stepped forward, lowering their weapons to aim at the door’s locking mechanism. A moment later, thunder and light filled the room. As Dakota watched, the door held for just a few moments, before fracturing at the hinges and falling outwards into the corridor.

I’m losing my mind, thought Dakota miserably, as her Ghost continued its self-immolation.

It felt a lot like dying, like plummeting into an endless abyss where one’s soul had previously resided.

Then, just when she thought it was all over, something else slid into the vacant space inside her skull. Something dark, heavy and alien.

She writhed uncontrollably, gasping for breath.

Whatever this was that had settled into her brain, it wasn’t the Shoal AI. Something entirely different had replaced the higher-level Ghost functions she’d just erased.

From somewhere far down the corridor sounded a series of loud, echoing booms, accompanied by a grating, rolling roar that grew louder second by second. It didn’t take a lot of guesswork to figure they were listening to the sound of explosive decompression. The Hyperion’s entire atmosphere was being violently dumped into space.

Dakota had her filmsuit to protect her, but Corso’s pressure suit had been torn from his back and discarded as soon as they’d been brought back on board the Hyperion. Keeping him alive over the next few minutes wasn’t going to be easy.

‘Is this your doing?’ Arbenz screamed at Corso. ‘A thousand generations of Freeholders are going to grow up using your name as another word for traitor-or don’t you get that?’

‘You’re the traitor!’ Corso screamed back. ‘You’re a murderer, a gutless opportunist.’ The roar of air had become deafening. A powerful wind tore at Dakota as she tried, with difficulty, to stand up.

‘It’s no wonder we’re trapped on a useless backwater rock being told what to do by a bunch of psychotic assholes like you,’ Corso continued. ‘The Shoal know everything, Senator. And they probably have ever since you got here.’

Arbenz looked apoplectic. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Listen to him,’ Dakota shouted from behind the Senator.

Arbenz whirled around to face her. ‘They know everything that’s going on,’ she continued. ‘They planted software spies in the Hyperion’s stacks long ago.’

There are worse ways to die, Dakota reflected. It was clear neither she nor Corso was going to leave this room alive. At least, before the troopers blew their heads off or the last of the air was gone, she’d had the satisfaction of seeing the look on Arbenz’s face.

Ignoring them both, Kieran grabbed the Senator’s shoulder. ‘We can get to the bridge!’ he yelled. ‘We can seal it off manually, and try and retake control from there.’

The Freehold troopers had begun pulling breathing apparatus out of their uniforms and fitting masks over their faces. Kieran pointed to two of them. ‘Barnard, Lunghi-you’re coming with me.’

‘What about them?’ Gardner shouted, gesturing at Corso and Dakota.

‘Fuck them,’ Arbenz replied. ‘They-’

Everything went black.

Pandemonium reigned. Dakota blindly fought her way over to Corso, but the darkness went deeper than just the lights going out. There was an emptiness now that Dakota hadn’t felt inside herself since her first set of Ghost implants were ripped out.

Corso fought against her at first, until she identified herself by yelling in his ear over the cacophony of raised voices and howling air. He stopped struggling immediately.

‘This is our chance,’ she urged him, her mouth pressed right up against the side of his head. Her words sounded thin and indistinct as the atmospheric pressure rapidly dropped.

She dragged him away in what she hoped was the right direction, blindly crashing into other bodies. Hands grabbed and punched at her, and she lashed out in return, taking a savage bite at someone’s hand when she felt it grab her face. Despite the near-total darkness, her eyesight was starting to adjust. Something thudded against her shoulder. She reached up, and it felt warm and sticky to the touch.

The confusion got them out through the door, where it was just as impenetrably dark. She could hear Corso’s laboured panting next to her as she took an educated guess on which way to head to get back to the cargo bay. There was a fifty-fifty chance she’d made the wrong decision, but it was still infinitely better odds now than before the lights had gone out.

And all the while, Dakota struggled to understand what had just happened.

She had no doubt Trader was responsible for this shipwide systems failure, yet she was sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that she had destroyed whatever remained of the Shoal AI inside the Hyperion. Without the semi-organic machinery she had tracked down and destroyed, the Hyperion’s stacks couldn’t possibly allow the alien’s intelligence to function or survive.

Which led her to the conclusion Trader had left boobytraps in case of just such an eventuality. After all, it was exactly what she would have done.

The air got thin enough for Dakota’s filmsuit to activate automatically, swallowing her bruised and battered body in its oily embrace. She felt Corso’s hand jerk away for an instant, as it touched his skin where he clung on to her.

She realized to her chagrin that getting out of the storage room would have been a lot easier if she’d activated the filmsuit as soon as the lights went out, because the lenses over her eyes were starting to pick up the infrared heat signatures of the walls and machinery around them, making it far easier for her to find her way.

Corso’s flesh glowed a dull orange beside her, while the corridor was transformed into a hellish tangle of hidden power conduits and circuitry overlaid with the ghostly cool sheen of the walls. But at least she could see they were heading in the right direction.

Corso was floundering badly, struggling to breathe. The howling sound was becoming fainter. Another minute or so and they’d be in vacuum.

She grabbed hold of Corso, dropping them both straight down the middle of a drop shaft that she remembered would take them most of the way.

Then, thankfully, dull red emergency lighting flickered on.

They got to an airlock, and she hauled both of them inside it, feeling her bruised and exhausted muscles protest. Fortunately the airlocks were all equipped with emergency manual switches that would pressurize them within a couple of seconds, and they ran on circuits independent of the ship’s central stacks.

She hammered at a switch and waited for what felt like long, long seconds before she heard a faint hiss that gradually built up into a roar that lasted several seconds.

She let herself slide down against the wall, almost crying with relief. Corso lay slumped beside her.

That empty silence inside her, where her Ghost had been, was no longer so silent. The alien presence she’d felt entering her now filled up her skull, grating against her senses as if it quite literally didn’t fit.

She listened carefully to its voice, and realized the creature that had entered her mind was the same as the intelligence she’d previously sensed within the derelict’s stacks. And with this came other knowledge.

She could hear other voices-like that of the derelict, but different-calling from deep within the inner system.

It seemed there was more than one derelict in the Nova Arctis system.

Without thinking about it, she tried to summon a mental image of the cargo bay on the far side of the airlock. But instead of the perfect, accurate, three-dimensional map she would once have expected, there was only a half-formed notion drawn from her own frail human memories, inexact and unreliable.

She opened a locker, hoping to find an emergency suit there, but it was empty. She cursed and slammed the door closed. She glanced at Corso lying half dead beside her, and knew they had no choice but to exit into the vacuum of the cargo bay regardless.

If she remembered-if her frail, human memory served her right-the Piri Reis was located very close to their current position.

‘Corso? Corso, can you hear me?’ She shook his shoulder frantically.

His eyelids fluttered, and Dakota thanked the heavens as his eyes focused on her.

‘Listen to me,’ she said. ‘There’s only so much air in here and hard vacuum out there. Understand?’

His head moved slightly in what passed for a nod. ‘I hear you,’ he rasped.

‘The cargo bay is just on the other side of this airlock. We’re going to have to move fast, and I mean fast. But it shouldn’t take more than half a minute or so.’ She forced a weak grin. ‘Think you can last that long?’

‘But I don’t have a suit.’ His eyes focused more clearly. ‘Dakota, no-’

‘That’s exactly what I mean,’ she said, reaching up to the airlock’s control panel. ‘When I say, take a couple of deep, rapid breaths, OK? Suck it in, hyperventilate, and then let your lungs empty. I’ll get you there in a couple of seconds, I swear.’

‘You’re insane,’ he murmured.

‘Right, and back on your blessed Redstone people don’t try to prove they’re the ultimate flicking warrior by seeing how much poisonous native atmosphere they can breathe without passing out or dropping dead?’

‘That’s not the same thing.’

‘Like hell it isn’t. It’s dangerous, and so is this -except this time you don’t actually have a choice. Unless you’d rather sit here in this airlock and wait for those maniacs to find us again.’

‘There’s no other way?’

‘Like you don’t know that already!’ she snapped. ‘No more time for arguments.’ She hit the panel, and it began counting down the ten seconds to depressurization. ‘Now, Corso! Draw it deep, blow it all out. Hard and fast. Do it!’

Corso staggered to his feet. ‘Crazy bitch,’ he yelled, then forced his chest in and out, drawing air deep into his lungs. For all his apparent anger, Dakota could see just how terrified he was.

A bell chimed, followed by a loud hissing that got rapidly fainter. Corso’s eyes widened in alarm and he emptied his lungs one last time. Absolute silence fell and the outer door swung open on a cargo bay that was tinged hellish red. Corso propelled himself out of the airlock and into the interior of the bay with manic energy.

Dakota followed. For a heart-stopping moment she couldn’t figure out which way to go, but then she managed to make out the Piri’s dim shape. She boosted across the empty space, towards a spinning and flailing Corso, and collided with him.

They sailed together across the bay, crashing into a bulkhead only a short distance from the Piri Reis’s hull. Dakota stabbed towards it with one oilslick hand, Corso kicking after her.

He almost made it, heading the right way, but then he started to drift. The frantic pedalling motion of his arms and legs grew weaker moment by moment. Dakota pushed back towards him in a panic. For far too long, they’d both been running on nothing but sheer adrenalin.

As he finally drifted up against the Piri’s hull, she reached for the emergency access panel and slammed the release switch with her fist. An airlock flipped open a few metres further along, and Dakota manhandled him inside.

Corso lay beside her, apparently unconscious, as she waited for the pressure to stabilize. She shook him, out of fear and frustration as much as anything else, but got no reaction. She pinched his nostrils and blew air deep into his lungs. After several seconds he jerked away from her, his chest rising and falling more noticeably.

The inner door finally swung open and Dakota’s filmsuit dissolved back into her pores. ‘Piri,’ she shouted, ‘get the medbox ready!’

She looped one of Corso’s arms over her shoulder and dragged him inside, weeping from the effort. To her eternal gratitude, the status lights on the medbox showed it was already activated. She cracked the lid open and started to lift Corso inside with one last, strenuous effort.

He pushed weakly against her with her hands. ‘Dakota. I’m fine. It’s fine. I’m-’ He curled up in a ball and started coughing violently. ‘Oh God, I never want to go through anything like that again. I thought I was dead.’

‘Take it easy. We’re safe for the moment.’ She put one hand on his shoulder, in an effort to reassure him.

A few moments later he passed out. Dakota closed the lid on the medbox and went through to the command module and sat down at the console. Her stomach twisted to think of piloting the ship without her Ghost anticipating every thought and action.

‘Piri,’ she spoke into the air. ‘Respond only to voice commands from now on.’

‘Acknowledged.’

It all seemed so clunky, so difficult, with none of the speed of thought reaction she was used to. But it would have to do.

‘Primary systems are currently down on board the Hyperion. I want you to seek out any localized automatic or override systems for the cargo bay doors. Then open them and prepare to exit the Hyperion on my command.’

‘Acknowledged.’

Dakota waited in silence as seconds stretched into minutes. Meanwhile she ripped up an old shirt and used it to bind her shoulder and help stop the bleeding where Kieran had wounded her during their scuffle in the dark.

Finally, laboriously, the cargo-bay doors began to swing open.

Dakota sank back into an acceleration couch and guided the Piri out through the doors, slowly remembering half-forgotten piloting skills that didn’t involve the use of her Ghost implants. After slipping out of its cradle, the Piri moved inexorably towards stars framed by the huge open bay doors. The Hyperion slowly fell away behind them, and she instructed the Piri Reis to set a course for the inner system.

If anyone on board the Hyperion, or its sister ship, was bothering to pay any attention, it wouldn’t have been difficult to shoot them out of the sky. But if the Senator and his buddies were still alive, maybe they were too busy trying to stay that way.