Stealing Light

by Gary Gibson

  It soon became clear that the Hyperion had seen better days. Rather than deal with the time and cost of making repairs, large sections of the frigate had been closed down and depressurized. The crew was minimal, a half-dozen individuals put in charge of the maintenance of a behemoth craft that had once ferried thousands across unimaginable light years. Corso saw very little of them, as Kieran insisted on keeping them apart for what he deemed security reasons.

  However, it became rapidly obvious that, unlike much of the rest of the craft, the weapons systems had been kept thoroughly up to date. The Hyperion was bristling with guns and automated defensive systems. Yet the Shoal-members who crewed the coreship, in which the Hyperion was currently cradled for its long voyage to the home system, appeared to be unconcerned with the presence of this heavily armed warship within their vessel’s interior.

  ‘All you need to know right now,’ Kieran had explained curtly, ‘is that the craft we found is a derelict of unknown origin. And very old, we assume.’

  ‘But how old?’ Corso had asked, standing there in the room Kieran had taken for his quarters. Some of the furniture looked like it might even date from before the Freehold migration but, apart from that, the adornments were pretty much what Corso would expect from a member of the Senate’s security team. There were swords mounted on a wall, citations of honour bestowed during the perpetual war with the Uchidans, paintings of ancient battles dating from Ancient Greece right up to the present.

  Kieran’s face had remained expressionless, but his irritation with Corso’s constant questioning was evident in the way he studied the blade of a wicked-looking knife he kept, turning it in the light and occasionally stroking along its length with an oiled cloth. ‘Just old,’ he growled dismissively.

  ‘And I’m not allowed to know which system it’s located in? But it’s in human space, right?’

  Before Corso had been brought into matters, those few who’d known about this derelict had begun referring to its builders as the ‘Magi’, after it became clear that it almost certainly predated the existence of the Shoal Hegemony. Even from the little he’d witnessed so far of the derelict’s secrets, Corso had to admit that the name fitted.

  ‘Of course,’ came the firm reply. ‘But the less people know about it the better. If the Shoal got wind of its existence . . .’ Kieran shrugged, then opened a lined case and carefully placed the dagger back inside, before closing the lid. ‘You understand me?’ he added, staring back up at Corso.

  ‘But we’ll still have to hitch a lift on a coreship even to get there, and that means the Shoal will know exactly where we are anyway.’

  Kieran clearly wasn’t a man used to having to provide explanations. ‘That’s only partly true,’ he replied, now affecting an air of infinite patience. ‘The Shoal know where we’re going, but they don’t know the real reason. They don’t know about the derelict. You need to know about the derelict, and what we’ve discovered there so far, because you need to be as ready as possible by the time you actually go on board.’

  ‘All right,’ said Corso, raising both hands in a placatory gesture. ‘The only reason I ask is because anything else you can tell me might have some impact on what I can find out there.’

  ‘Not likely.’ Kieran shook his head. ‘Just be happy you’re helping your people overcome the greatest challenge they’ve ever faced.’

  —

  As flawless as the simulated environment was, Corso noted, the suit he himself wore—entirely real—lent a certain Veritas to the proceedings by virtue of being heavy, uncomfortable and smelling like it hadn’t been washed since worn by its last dozen users.

  ‘You said something about a particular discovery on board the derelict,’ Corso commented, his voice sounding dull and hollow to him inside the helmet.

  Kieran’s voice floated back a moment later. ‘I want you to discover it the way we did. In context, you might say.’

  Corso nodded resignedly. His progress across the ledge was hard work. Even though the suit had been set up to respond to his movements as if he were in a low-gravity environment, the extreme pressure of the simulated ocean waters made the going extremely difficult, power-assist or no.

  He could see how it wouldn’t take a huge effort to tip the derelict entirely over the edge of the ridge and into oblivion. Some conventional explosives would probably manage that. Probably, the flow and ebb of the chaotic tides inside the vent had slowly pushed it closer and closer to the abyss over many millennia. It would be just his luck for it to finally slide over the ledge the moment he got inside the real craft.

  Despite his nervousness, and his resentment of men like Kieran Mansell and Senator Arbenz, Corso had felt a growing sense of excitement ever since he’d realized what he was being asked to do.

  Several tiny robot submarines lifted themselves from a charging unit held in a rack mounted next to the airlock. These floated towards Corso, lighting his path as he drew closer to the derelict.

  And it really did look like some ancient beast of the deep; it was gigantic. The curving spines rising high overhead bore a clear resemblance to the drive spines that protruded from the hulls of Shoal coreships, too much so for it to be a coincidence.

  Any remaining doubts Corso had about whether the derelict was once capable of travelling faster than light finally vanished. He felt a chill rush through his bones: the implications of what he was seeing were staggering.

  The robots now swarmed around him, lighting his way towards the airlock that had been welded on to the derelict’s exterior. He clambered up the ladder and stepped inside, allowing himself no pause to think about the vertiginous drop barely a hand-reach away. He waited while pumps noisily laboured to extract the freezing cold water out of the lock.

  Once the airlock was fully pressurized, its inner door swung open, and Corso peered inside the derelict itself. The robot submarines had accompanied him into the airlock. They now raised themselves up on insect-like legs and scampered into the darkness ahead, their light revealing a sinuous corridor that twisted out of sight. The robot’s lights then flickered off, and Corso could now see perfectly clearly all the way down the corridor, yet strangely there was no apparent source of light.

  He pulled off his suit and dropped it next to the inner airlock, sucking in air that tasted entirely dry. It was the same air as the Hyperion’s environment chamber, since there were, after all, physical limitations to even the most sophisticated holographic projection systems. He found this oddly reassuring.

  ‘Straight ahead,’ Kieran urged over the comms link. ‘Follow the ‘bots.’

  The ‘bots were waiting at the far end of the corridor. He stepped towards them and they again scampered ahead, stopping only to look back towards him once they got a certain distance ahead, like hounds devoted to the chase.

  Corso cleared his throat. ‘Those spines projecting out of the hull, they reminded me a lot of-—’

  ‘I know what they reminded you of,’ Kieran interrupted. ‘You wouldn’t be the first to make that comparison.’

  ‘So do we know for certain . . .?’

  ‘Not for certain, no. For that, we’ll need to extract a lot more information from the craft’s data stacks.’

  Corso sighed. ‘The reason I’m here, right?’

  ‘Entirely correct. I’m hoping we’ll have found proof that this derelict contains a salvageable transluminal drive before we bring Senator Arbenz himself on board.’

  Corso shook his head, not quite able to believe what Mansell had just said. A transluminal drive. That meant faster-than-light travel. It was like stumbling into some ancient king’s tomb, or finding a lost city: the stuff of boyhood dreams.

  He continued onwards, finally finding himself in a room with a ceiling so low he was forced to crouch.

  Senator Arbenz’s face kept intruding on his thoughts. Somehow, this far, he’d managed to push that face to the back of his thoughts. The man who imprisoned his father was behind the killing of Cara, whether that happened on his
direct orders or not.

  And here he was, Lucas Corso, working for the very devil himself. How the hell did that happen?

  ‘There’s something weird about everything in here,’ said Corso tightly. ‘Everything looks too new. Is that something to do with the simulation?’

  ‘If you mean a fault in the projection, no. We think the ship is able to renew itself, or parts of itself, anyway. Clearly it can’t entirely fix itself, judging by the broken spines.’

  A wall had been torn open to reveal a mess of alien circuitry into which human computer equipment and screens had been wired. This in turn was connected to an interface chair that had been bolted to the floor. Its dark metal petals were neatly folded at its base.

  ‘What about the bends?’ Corso asked. ‘We’ll be going up and down from the derelict a lot.’

  ‘We’re already adjusting the atmospheric pressure on board the Hyperion to match that inside the derelict,’ Kieran replied, ‘so nitrogen narcosis shouldn’t be a problem. Besides, the moon we found this derelict on is small, with low gravity. The atmospheric pressure, even under several kilometres of water and ice, is correspondingly lower.’

  ‘So all I need to do is wander on board the real thing, type in some commands, figure out how to fly it, and away we go. Right?’

  Silence.

  ‘I can tell you’re holding something back from me,’ Corso spoke into the empty air. ‘And I’ll take a guess I won’t like it very much.’

  ‘Previous attempts to penetrate deeper into the derelict have been . . . turned back. We had to overcome certain automated defensive systems in order to construct the interfaces you see before you. That came at the cost of some lives. Even so, we only gained limited access to the derelict’s core systems. Finding a way to actually control the craft, to make it follow our orders -well, that’s another matter entirely.’

  ‘Right.’ Corso clambered laboriously into the newly installed seat and studied the displays in front of him. He noted a series of familiar-looking glyphs aligned in a row on one screen. ‘I recognize these.’

  ‘Outmoded Shoal protocols. I believe they haven’t been used, according to our available information, since—’

  ‘Since the earliest days of the Shoal Hegemony—at least according to their own records,’ Corso finished for him, feeling suddenly light-headed. He touched each glyph in turn, watching as submenus sprang into existence. ‘And here they are on a ship that might just have been constructed at some period before the Shoal say they developed transluminal technology—am I right?’

  ‘That’s the current conjecture.’

  Corso blinked several times, a chill of excitement shooting up his spine. An ancient spacecraft capable of travelling between the stars in the blink of an eye, but not of Shoal manufacture. Obviously the Shoal had no idea of the derelict’s existence, or they would never have agreed to deliver the Hyperion to its ultimate destination.

  ‘You understand what this means,’ said Kieran.

  ‘Everything changes.’ Corso nodded, thinking along several strands at once as he studied the interfaces.

  Senator Arbenz’s researchers had discovered an alien Rosetta Stone inside the least well defended of the derelict’s stacks. The craft had turned out to have dual systems that allowed communication between their own computers and those belonging to the Shoal. Studying those communication protocols—protocols in which Corso was an expert—would allow him to work out how to communicate with the derelict, and ultimately to control it.

  But it would take time. Even with the weeks they spent travelling, first to rendezvous with the hated Arbenz and then on to whichever benighted system the derelict actually resided in, he could not be sure how long the task would take him.

  He thought of Prometheus, stealing fire from the gods and receiving an eternal punishment for his efforts. The Shoal weren’t gods but they were close enough, in terms of their knowledge and power.

  Corso leaned back, thinking aloud. ‘What if we get caught?’

  ‘Caught?’ Kieran’s voice was full of derision. ‘We are the Freehold, morally superior to any other civilization in human space. Failure is not an option.’

  Corso immediately thought of the Uchidans, and the struggle of always pushing them back and back and back, on a world that had once belonged in its entirety to the Freehold.

  ‘Everyone knows what happens if we try and acquire technology the Shoal don’t want us to have,’ he insisted. ‘Total revocation of every colonial contract—it’s an impossible risk. Maybe we should . . .’

  ‘Should what, Mr Corso?’ came the reply in a menacing tone.

  Every human-occupied- world stranded from each other for ever without the benefit of Shoal coreships shuttling between them, if we’re discovered.

  Even if they weren’t discovered, and all went to plan, the Shoal would surely know if the Freehold were constructing a fleet of starships. What then? War with the Shoal? It would be like an army of ants taking on an orbital nuclear bomber. The risks were too enormous, too overwhelming.

  ‘How do we know no one else knows about this derelict? What if it’s a trick of some kind?’

  Corso had voiced this last possibility despite its wildly paranoid tone. But Kieran’s rapid response suggested it had already been carefully considered.

  ‘A honey trap left by the Shoal, you mean?’ Kieran laughed with a harsh, rasping sound. ‘So they can catch us in the act and revoke their contracts with us? No, Mr Corso, it’s really not very likely.’

  A wave of embarrassment washed over Corso and he stared mutely at the screens before him. ‘But there are risks. Unimaginable risks.’

  ‘Which is exactly why the Freehold are so well placed to deal with this discovery. It’s in our human nature to take risks, isn’t it? The manifestation of our warrior spirit? I’ll remind you, Mr Corso, that if all comes out well—and it will—you’ll be a member of the Senate, as well as a declared Hero who can decline to participate in the challenge system if he chooses and still retain his status as a Citizen.’

  Corso nodded. ‘OK, another thing. Interface chairs are generally intended for use by machine-head pilots. So what’s it doing here?’

  ‘There’s a good chance a human machine-head will be able to interface with the derelict’s controls in the way a normal human cannot, once we have broken through the security blocks and into the ship’s core systems. Bellhaven Ghost technology appears to have close parallels with the means used by the Magi for piloting their craft.’

  It took a moment for Corso to absorb this. ‘Let me get this straight. Are you telling me you’re intending to find yourselves a machine-head to fly this thing out from where you found it?’

  ‘Correct, Mr Corso. There isn’t the time to circumnavigate the derelict’s systems to allow a normal pilot to control it, but extreme circumstances require radical thinking, wouldn’t you agree?’

  ‘I’m just finding it hard to accept the idea of a man like Senator Arbenz actually hiring a machine-head to work for him. It’s . . . rather ironic, given recent history, wouldn’t you say?’

  Corso could almost feel the anger and irritation coming at him down the comms link. ‘This is far from a laughing matter, Mr Corso. So just concentrate on the task at hand.’

  ‘How much are you going to tell the poor bastard anyway? What if he doesn’t want to do it?’

  ‘Leave that to us.’

  Corso shook his head and bent down to peer again at the chair’s readouts. His mind whirled: a machine-head?

  Whoever ended up piloting the derelict was going to find it about as pleasurable as walking into a nest of angry snakes.

  And if Kieran’s reputation was all he had heard, there was every chance the experience might be deadly, too.

  Eight

  Trans-Jovian Space, Sol System, en route to Mesa Verde

  A long, long time later, Dakota came to realize her biggest mistake had been opening the alien’s gift.

  Whatever she’d expected to find wh
en she investigated the box the Shoal-member had passed her, she hadn’t thought she would find herself holding a tiny and entirely anthropomorphic figurine handcrafted of wood and silver wire.

  As she touched it for the first time, a slight stab of pain in the back of her head heralded the arrival of a severe headache. The pain was so sharp she even imagined she saw a spark of light, out of the corner of one eye.

  She returned her attention to the figurine she held, trying to work out what seemed so dauntingly familiar about it, so much so it gave her a curiously queasy sensation in the pit of her stomach. Fine pieces of patterned paper surrounded the head and hips of a matchstick figure, suggesting a headscarf and skirt. The tiny, delicate arms were raised up as if in alarm, and the figure itself was mounted on a cross-shaped base.

  It looked just like the kind of cheap folk art people bought on holiday, then left forgotten on some dusty shelf. For the life of her, Dakota could not begin to understand what significance the figurine might hold for the Shoal-member, or what significance the alien believed it might hold for her.

  She placed the object on the instrument board in the command module of the Piri Reis, and stared at it for a while longer. Despite its innocuous appearance, something about it still chilled her.

  Finally Dakota grew bored trying to understand it. As her Ghost tugged at her senses, she flicked over to an external view. A message icon was currently flashing over a display of Mesa Verde, another Shoal-boosted asteroid much like Bourdain’s Rock.

  She put the message on display over the expanse of infinite black space extending beyond her ship, and felt a surge of relief at what she read there.

  —

  A long time ago (Dakota recalled) Mesa Verde had been a prison of sorts, one part of a loose confederation of human communities scattered throughout the asteroid belt and outer solar system. In the dark days before the invention of tachyon transmission and the subsequent first contact with the Shoal, people serving penal sentences had been exploited as cheap labour in mining operations. The mining still continued, of course—the need for raw ores was greater than ever. But the quality of life for most humans in the outer solar system had improved immeasurably, and Mesa Verde hadn’t been a prison for a long time.