Stealing Light

Thirty-one

The foam of miniature singularities began to evaporate, but the killing blow had been dealt. The central mass at the heart of Nova Arctis was sucked inwards, becoming dense enough to strip the electrons from every atom and compacting what remained into a supermassive ball of neutrons, releasing a wide-spectrum blast of radiation in the process.

The result was cataclysmic.

The outer layers of Nova Arctis instantly exploded outwards, leaving behind a tiny neutron star barely a few dozen metres across. The star’s dying throes released a level of energy equivalent to that of the entire Milky Way, within the space of a few seconds, and releasing a second blast of neutrinos in the process.

The wave front of plasma blossomed outwards from the neutrino core, moving at approximately one-tenth the speed of light.

The Agartha moved towards Ikaria’s shadow, still decelerating to avoid overshooting the planet itself. Arbenz looked up at a display showing the Piri Reis as a blip now falling into a low orbit.

One of the science execs stepped forward, looking pale and drawn as he glanced towards the still forms of the security officer and then at his dead Captain.

‘Senator, there’s just been a second neutrino burst from Nova Arctis.’

‘What does that mean?’ Arbenz replied in irritation.

‘It’s a phenomenon highly congruent with records relating to the Magellanic Novae some years back.’ The man cleared his throat. ‘Basically… it means the sun just went nova.’

It had occurred to Arbenz, as he waited here on the bridge, that sometime in the last half hour Kieran had quietly gone insane. The man stood at attention, gripping the dead security officer’s weapon in both hands, but there was an almost dreamy look upon his face.

‘It doesn’t look any different,’ Arbenz frowned, turning back to the science exec.

‘Neutrinos move at the speed of light,’ the man replied. ‘The plasma wave front will be moving a lot slower, but still at a fair fraction of light-speed. We won’t know it when it hits, but it won’t be long. Our only hope of at least temporary shelter is getting into Ikaria’s shadow. However, the chances of our survival for very long even there are very, very slim indeed, assuming we get into orbit and fully inside the shadow cone before the wave front hits Ikaria. And increasing our acceleration towards Ikaria isn’t an option either, because if we did, we’d just crash into it at a couple of thousand kilometres an hour.’

Arbenz watched as another member of the crew stood up suddenly, threw a piece of equipment at a nearby screen, then bolted off the bridge. The piece of equipment bounced off and rolled away harmlessly. No one said anything.

‘How many missiles do we have left?’ Arbenz asked.

‘Three,’ said another member of the crew. He was sitting at a weapon’s station and looking over towards them. ‘What are you-?’

‘Fire them.’ Arbenz gestured at the blip representing the Piri Reis. ‘They can reach that machine-head’s ship long before we could. Fire them now.’

‘We’re out of range,’ the crewmember replied. ‘There’s no guarantee-’

‘That doesn’t matter, damn you! It’s all we have,’ Arbenz yelled, fear finally evident in his voice. ‘If it’s the last thing we manage to do, just kill them.’

A moment later, three tiny blips raced towards the Piri Reis in rapid succession.

Dakota felt a hammering lurch, then nothing. She was crammed into the escape pod like a baby in a steel womb, having stripped off her clothes and then activated her filmsuit before climbing inside.

She was all too aware of being far beyond the point of no return. The only light came via the feeble glow from a data screen that displayed the surface of Ikaria rushing towards her.

They had identified a wide shelf, deep within the chasm, on which the three Ikarian derelicts lay. The shelf itself was about twenty-five kilometres in length and about two kilometres wide, and surprisingly level. She watched as the pod drifted down on a tail of fire between canyon walls that dropped away into darkness. But she rapidly lost any meaningful sense of perspective.

The pod hit hard, and began rolling. She screamed once, and then listened for a few seconds to the sound of her own frantic breathing. Status lights blinked on, while static fuzzed across the data screen.

But at least she was down, and alive.

She cracked the pod open and it split in half like an egg, releasing her onto the frozen surface of Ikaria, deep down within the chasm. The vast stony walls rising around her were far more intimidating than she’d expected. With the stars appearing only as a thin sliver of light above, it felt like standing within the maw of some vast mountain-toothed monster that was frozen in the act of consuming the universe.

She could feel the derelicts brushing against her mind even before she spotted the nearest of them, less than half a kilometre distant from where she’d landed. It was easier to get an idea of the size of the thing when it wasn’t looming out from murky, subterranean waters.

She realized with a start that it was powering up in anticipation of her arrival, readying itself for transluminal flight. She felt strangely drawn to it, despite its nightmarish appearance, like the bleached skeleton of some apparition from deep within the recesses of her id.

She thought of Corso, from whom she had snatched one last kiss before closing the pod’s hatch around her. It had been a small intimacy but, given the likelihood of failure, it had assumed for her an overwhelming importance.

She could still taste him on her lips but, now she was actually down here, her ship felt a long way away.

Corso stared aghast at the screens on board the Piri Reis. One showed a second flood of neutrinos emanating from deep within Nova Arctis, while the other displayed what could only be missiles rapidly closing the gap between the Agartha and Dakota’s ship, though still some considerable distance away.

‘Piri!’ he yelled in panic. ‘We need to take evasive action, now!’

‘Not possible,’ the Piri Reis replied. ‘Further course alterations would use up too much fuel and we would rapidly lose orbit. Alternative courses of action are required.’

‘I can’t think of any!’ Corso yelled, literally tearing at his hair. ‘For God’s sake, isn’t there something we can do? If one of those hits us, there won’t be anything left to hit the ground!’

There was an agonizing pause, for four or five seconds. ‘All possible courses of action result in fatalities. I recommend we maintain our current position. The missiles may not have enough fuel to strike us. Also, we represent only a small target.’

‘Can’t you scramble their brains?’ Corso yelled again. ‘They’re just missiles, for God’s sake! Tell them to hit something else!’

Another agonizing pause.

‘Attempting,’ Piri replied.

The first missile missed the Piri Reis by just fifteen metres. The onboard systems showed its path, spiralling down towards the surface of Ikaria. The second, arriving a minute or so later, was entirely on target, however. Corso watched numbly as it drew closer and closer, accelerating towards him. The blip wavered slightly while the Piri attempted to subvert the device’s internal instructions remotely.

Corso realized it was too little too late. He remembered how he’d quickly gone over the Piri’s systems in order to understand how the ship functioned, and had found there were manual systems just aft.

A few seconds of scrabbling located them.

He found what he needed. The only option for survival was performing a manual fuel dump. It was tantamount to suicide, but there weren’t any other options.

He tapped at a manual interface with shaking fingers, more than a little aware just how quickly the seconds were ticking by. A few moments later the Piri Reis shuddered as half its remaining fuel was jettisoned into space, causing it to veer slightly in its orbit.

He listened to the sound of his own frenzied gasps as he waited to be blown to smithereens.

And waited.

I can’t still be alive.

He crawled back through to the command module and laid shaking hands on the back of an acceleration couch, before peering up at a display.

A blip was closing fast on the Piri Reis. Corso didn’t even have time to open his mouth to scream.

A thousand hammers slammed into the hull.

Dakota looked up at a tiny flash of light far above.

Oh please no, she thought. Piri›.

‹I am here, Dakota.›

Dakota had never felt more relieved. Where’s Lucas?

‹I am not sure. We were fired upon by the Agartha and subsequently hit by a missile. I have lost contact with the cargo area, and analysis of footage recorded at the moment of impact suggests it may have either been damaged beyond repair or entirely sheared off. There has been loss of pressure from some internal spaces, and internal communications are currently offline. It may take fifteen minutes at current estimates to re-establish contact with the command module and ascertain if he is still alive.›

Dakota felt the bottom drop out of her stomach. Find out now, Piri.

‹Until contact with the command module is reestablished, I cannot-›

I get the idea, she replied, cutting the connection.

Light filled the chasm.

The edges of the valley were thrown into stark relief. Her eye filters dimmed to their very darkest, but even at that setting she was blinded. Every surface, every grain of rock and sand was brilliantly lit up.

At the very edge of the horizon, she thought she saw the edge of a mountain melt.

The third missile’s guidance systems were sent into confusion by the sudden, overwhelming increase in albedo from the direction of Nova Arctis. The missile strayed towards the edge of the cone of shadow cast by Ikaria, and was turned to a puff of superheated gas in a fraction of a second. This was carried outwards by the advancing storm of energy expanding in a shell around the neutron core where a star had been.

The expanding wave front of plasma rushed on towards the Agartha.

Kieran stepped towards the Senator, who looked up at him.

‘We only have a few moments, Senator,’ he said. ‘The wave front will reach us very soon.’

The Senator nodded tightly; it was clear he was barely holding himself together. ‘I hope it’s-’

He shook his head. I hope it’s quick, Kieran knew he’d meant to say.

Kieran reached out, almost lovingly, and cradled the surprised man’s face in his hands.

‘I hope it is, Senator. But it may not be.’

He broke Arbenz’s neck with a sudden, swift twist. The Senator didn’t even have time to look surprised.

Kieran lowered the dead man’s body to the deck with due love and respect, before standing up straight again to wait for the end with the rest of the crew.

The shell of plasma swallowed the Agartha totally, tearing it apart and transforming it into superheated vapour in barely more time than it had taken to envelop the missile.

It continued to expand, racing towards Newfall, a hundred and thirty million kilometres distant, carrying the gaseous remains of the Freehold ship and its crew ever outwards, as it would continue to do for many tens of thousands of years.

On the sunward side of Ikaria, the effect was devastating. The amount of energy slamming into the planet was equivalent to several thousand nuclear warheads exploding every few seconds, as plasma that had been trapped within the photosphere of a star for untold epochs was unleashed instantaneously.

Ikaria’s crust literally began to melt away, turning white-hot and then vaporizing, the overwhelming fire digging deeper into the planetary crust at a rate of hundreds of metres every second. Ragged mountain peaks, which had formed long ago during asteroid impacts, exploded under the pressure as they slowly turned from the night side to face the rage of the dying sun.

Within hours, rather than days, the planet would cease to exist, joining the wave of expanding gas as it was reduced to its constituent atoms and spread through the local constellation.

The ground trembled under Dakota’s feet. She broke into a run, bounding under the low gravity straight towards the skeletal alien ship.

She couldn’t help but feel, as she approached, that she was somehow tumbling into a trap. The ship’s spines were too much like the reaching cilia of some hungry sea creature. The beckoning space that had opened beyond the spines in anticipation of her arrival was too much like a gaping, expectant maw.

She kept her eyes half-shut and focused on the ground, her thoughts filled with the terrible, pervasive light slowly seeping over the horizon and turning the top of the valley a dull orange-red.

‹Dakota. I am maintaining a position as close to directly above you as possible. However, it may be only minutes before there is insufficient fuel to prevent drifting sunward. My records indicate there is further danger in the form of sunlight reflected from the dust and debris now being thrown up around Ikaria. The energy output from Nova Arctis is currently several billion times the average, and when reflected from clouds of particles it may prove extremely lethal.›

Almost there.

She threw herself forward, as the terrible light began to overrun even the filmsuit’s filters, dashing through the derelict’s spines and into its interior.

The impossible light began to fade as the entrance behind her flowed shut. There were no open spaces beyond the entrance. Instead, the body of the derelict began to enclose her, entombing her like a dinosaur that had stumbled into a swamp.

She felt it cool and soft against her skin and realized in a moment of terror that her filmsuit had somehow shut off by itself. She struggled to draw breath as her lungs kicked back into action, but there was no air in here to breathe.

She was buried alive, deep within a chasm on a dead world orbiting a dying sun.

Madness began to seep into her thoughts.

Then she saw stars rushing towards her.

Several minutes later, the shockwave reached Newfall.

Shallow oceans were turned to superheated steam, and the very atmosphere burned. As one hemisphere facing Nova Arctis dissipated under the equivalent of ten billion suns beating down on it, Newfall began a process of losing mass that would last, at most, a day or two.

It was like taking a flamethrower to a crumpled ball of paper. As gases burned away and the nova dug deeper towards the planetary core, Newfall’s gravity would drop, making it easier for burned-away atoms and molecules to achieve escape velocity under the intense pressure of nova heat.

Newfall would soon be little more than a memory.

Corso had cried out in terror as the Piri lurched. Then he heard a high-pitched whistling that tore at his nerves, and felt air rush past his face, tousling his hair.

The Piri was losing atmosphere. The lights had gone out.

He grabbed fistfuls of wall-fur as the air vented, sucking him in the direction of Dakota’s sleeping compartment. If he didn’t do something now, he’d be dead in seconds.

He let go of the fur, twisted around and landed just next to the entrance to the space where Dakota slept. He saw where the hull had been ripped open, sucking out half the contents of the room. He found the emergency-seal button and slapped it, waiting while the compartment was sealed off.

The howling ceased abruptly and he gasped for air. Automatic pressure sensors had picked up the oxygen drop, and hissed quietly as they replenished the supply from the Piri’s depleted supplies.

Corso paused there for the next minute or so until he had stopped shaking too violently. Then he pulled himself over to a console that still appeared to be active, though unresponsive. He couldn’t even tell if the Piri’s stacks were still functioning.

There was enough basic systems information, however, to tell him the worst had happened. He was drifting now, and in another twenty minutes or so, the Piri Reis would orbit into Ikaria’s sunward side, and then straight into the path of the nova.