by Gary Gibson
The pulse-ship sped on, with minimal damage reports. Attitudinal systems rapidly brought it back onto its original trajectory. A few moments after the manoeuvre had been completed, it was boosting hard away from Ironbloom, with no reported casualties amongst the crew.
Roses loved his Queen in many ways, yet he couldn’t help but question the wisdom of reviving this ancient conflict – a war whose legacy remained in the form of deep scars cut into worlds throughout the Night’s End system.
Millennia ago, the Fair Sisters – the Queens of both Immortal Light and Darkening Skies – had financed a joint exploration of Night’s End in order to assess its suitability for a new Bandati colony. Such an undertaking was bound to mean dealing with the Shoal and their despicable colonial contracts.
That relations between the Sisters had become strained at this time was a matter of historical record, but the reasons why had never emerged, and records from that time proved a source of considerable frustration to any interested historian. Until a few days before, Days of Wine and Roses had been as much in the dark about the roots of that bloody conflict as any other Bandati.
Since then, however, he had been permitted to learn the cause of that ancient war, and this knowledge brought a sense of foreboding.
Less than a few centuries after being granted a joint development contract for Night’s End, the Sisters had discovered something as ancient as it was remarkable. They had fallen out over what to do with their discovery, and this disagreement had proven contentious enough to engender a conflict still remembered throughout the Bandati worlds even after several millennia – a conflict in which Darkening Skies had been the loser.
And then this ancient starship had materialized out of nowhere on the edge of the Night’s End system, carrying two humans about whom there was something sufficiently important to rekindle that ancient conflict – something closely involved with that long-ago discovery.
Roses was forced to concede the possibility that one might know too much.
Dakota rode in her gel-chair, eyes closed, only peripherally aware of the similarly racked Bandati soldiers around her, who nevertheless endured the sudden multiple-gee accelerations and wild shifts with only the occasional click. Her filmsuit had reactivated about twenty minutes after lift-off, and Days of Wine and Roses hadn’t made any objection to it, or attempted to shut it off remotely.
She escaped from her pain and discomfort by communicating with the derelict, which had by now tapped into dozens of live visual feeds from tracking systems both on the ground and in orbit. She found herself confronted with a multitude of viewpoints on the pulse-ship, as it blasted away from the small, blue-red world.
She finally had the time to think more clearly about some of the things Moss had said to her.
It chilled Dakota to the marrow that he might actually be in a position to take the derelict away from her, and yet the freshness of the scars he bore made it clear he himself had received his implants only very recently. At a guess, he very likely hadn’t yet had nearly enough time to break them in. Dakota herself had required months of careful tutelage in order to learn how to use her own. More than likely Moss was still overwhelmed by the sheer sensory overload.
Had he known her filmsuit would activate once she was far enough away from her cell? Perhaps, yes. It seemed far less likely, however, that he could possibly have anticipated a rival Hive grabbing her in the way they had.
Dakota thought hard, staring at the alien faces so close around her. He’d very nearly got what he wanted. If these rescuers– if that was what they were – hadn’t turned up when they did, she’d still be running around Darkwater with no plan and no immediate way to get off-world. But she couldn’t bring herself to be thankful; whatever they told her, it was inevitable they wanted her for the same reasons everyone else did – the Magi derelict still held in orbit above Blackflower.
She could feel the derelict as a distinct presence in the back of her thoughts, both a blessing and a terrible burden.
A solution to her troubles had been forming in her mind ever since she’d re-established contact with the derelict. Even contemplating it, however, had frightened her so badly that even after all she’d been through, she couldn’t be at all sure she had the courage to carry it out.
And yet it was so simple, so perfect, a way of resolving everything all at once. And with that, she knew she was ready to act, and found herself wondering just why she’d taken so long to make this necessary decision.
She merged her senses fully with those of the derelict, seeing the complex framework that surrounded it, almost as if it had been snared from out of the stars by some vast, cybernetic spider and wrapped in a metal cocoon. She could see the pocked and ruined surface of Blackflower far below.
Although subverting the orbital facility’s computer networks was a relatively simple matter for the derelict, what she had in mind was going to take time, because she couldn’t afford to draw attention. The derelict began to power up its systems as the shaped-field generators holding it in place shut down, one by one.
She hesitated, appalled by the enormity of what she had in mind. She was doing the right thing, the necessary thing. Yet she needed more time to think, to consider the consequences of her actions . . .
Dakota pulled back, switching her attention back to the immediate vicinity of the pulse-ship. The derelict responded by feeding her views of the ship as seen through the electronic senses of the pursuing Immortal Light forces.
She found herself contemplating a disorienting number of perspectives. Laid over it all was a cotton-wool tangle of discrete communications channels in their millions, comprising the totality of instantaneous tach-net traffic throughout the entire Night’s End system.
At the heart of this nightmare tangle was a knot of data so complex it shone like a second star from the derelict’s perspective, a white-hot informational nexus centred on Ironbloom. Dakota found herself trying to make some sense out of a deluge of tactical, defensive and offensive data that spilled over her as Immortal Light struggled to muster a coherent response to the attack.
In informational terms, it was like standing in a crowded stadium just as a bomb went off; a million voices shouting in your ear at once while you struggled to find the exit.
Dakota pulled her focus back to the immediate vicinity of the pulse-ship, and the deluge dropped back to manageable levels.
Something new: a bright sparkle of points, some tens of thousands of kilometres ahead of them, directly in the pulse-ship’s path.
She shifted her focus back to Ironbloom, the derelict anticipating her request and grabbing control of orbital reconnaissance systems, reaming them of any data relating to the expanding cloud. Within seconds she discovered the points of light were in fact proximity nukes, launched from a network of automated defensive platforms. The nukes were already spreading out to intercept the pulse-ship.
Closer at hand, she became aware the ship’s Bandati pilot was already working on a response to this newest threat. But, from Dakota’s perspective, his response was impossibly slow; worse, he was relying heavily on pre-programmed evasion patterns.
I don’t know if they’ll thank me or shoot me for what I’m about to do.
The derelict wormed its way deep inside the pulse-ship’s core stacks, rapidly subverting them. Within seconds Dakota had full control of the ship. Its programmed defensive algorithms were laid bare before her, her machine-senses analysing them in a moment and finding them distinctly wanting.
The proximity mines wouldn’t have any problem getting close enough to the pulse-ship to detonate, and there was no guarantee its shaped-field generators could hold up to the damage they could cause.
She had a mental flash of the Bandati commander and his crew on the ship’s bridge; he lacked a couple of wings, while those that remained – carefully bundled against his back – appeared ragged and torn from old wounds. She watched as he desperately twisted around in his gel-chair restraints, trying to figure out
why his vessel had suddenly stopped responding to his commands.
Dakota closed her eyes, drawing on her training. Focus.
Only seconds remained before they met the first of the nukes.
Her mind flashed back to Bellhaven and her first day of training, when the implants had been fresh in her skull. Everything that makes us human – the ability to think and to reason – is a recent development in evolutionary terms, Tutor Langley had said. Underlying all of it is a sea of instinct a billion years old carefully adapted for life at the bottom of a gravity well. That is not to be underestimated. It can react instantaneously, breaking down and analysing any situation or potential threat far faster than our conscious minds can even—
Something accelerated hard towards the pulse-ship from dead ahead. The pulse-ship’s manoeuvring jets fired in response to Dakota’s non-verbal commands, subjecting every living thing on board to dangerously high levels of acceleration. Alarms began to wail throughout the ship, and the helpless Bandati commander found himself at the centre of a deluge of automated threat-assessment reports and status requests from a dozen different locations.
Some of the proximity mines detonated in the wake of the pulse-ship’s unanticipated new trajectory, but none within several kilometres of the hull. Dakota kept the ship veering, mines slipping out of range before they could get close enough to detonate with any effectiveness, betrayed by their own momentum as they boosted into empty vacuum where the ship had been only moments before.
The worst of the danger was past, the receding nukes burning up the last of their fuel in a futile attempt to gain on them as they boosted towards the outer system. Dakota let out a long, shuddering sigh and opened her eyes to just narrow slits, feeling the painful tension in her body.
Now there was only the question of exactly where the pulse-ship was headed.
Something sent a burst of static through her machine-head senses and Dakota finally lost control of the ship’s systems. She caught one last glimpse of the grizzled-looking commander as he swiftly rerouted the primary navigation systems.
Perhaps she could—
‘Please don’t do that,’ said a voice very close to her.
Dakota opened her eyes wide to see that one of the Bandati had pulled himself free of his gel-chair restraints and now stood next to her with something very much like a pistol held close to her forehead. She couldn’t help but notice the hand holding the weapon was shaking.
‘Days of Wine and Roses,’ she said, remembering the alien’s name.
‘Yes. Now, relinquish control of the ship.’
The Bandati remained standing with relative ease, which surprised Dakota since they were still undergoing substantial acceleration. Then she noticed the fine web of silver struts and servos encasing the alien’s body and his narrow, spindly legs: a motorized exoskeleton.
‘Already done,’ she told him carefully. They were out of immediate danger anyway. ‘You can put the gun down.’
Roses didn’t respond directly. Instead he clicked rapidly into his gently glowing interpreter, which had changed from its usual hue.
Dakota didn’t need to tap into the flow of data around them to know he was making sure she was telling the truth. The barrel of his weapon remained where it was, cool and hard against her head.
Dakota cleared her throat. ‘You know, if I hadn’t done what I just did, we’d all be dead. Those mines would have taken this ship out.’
‘Thank you. Please don’t do it again, though, or I’ll be forced to kill you.’
She studied the wide black eyes staring down at her. ‘You’re not going to just casually kill me, not after you went to this much trouble to find me. You have your orders, right?’
Roses adjusted his grip on the gun, switching hands. ‘Accidents are possible. Perhaps you were injured during the sudden acceleration. You came free of your gel-chair in an attempt to escape, and were smashed to a pulp.’ The alien paused for a moment, quietly clicking to himself. ‘That can be arranged.’
‘Okay’ She nodded slowly, and realized she believed him. ‘Put that thing away, please. I won’t do it again.’
The Bandati’s wings twitched in their shoulder-restraints, and he finally let the barrel drop until it pointed down at the deck.
‘There are,’ he said, ‘some things we have to talk about.’
To Dakota’s amazement, they had found clothes for her.
The ship, as often with vessels driven by nuclear-pulse propulsion, had unusually large and comfortable quarters for its crew, very different from the cramped and tiny living spaces Dakota had had to put up with on board craft like her own Piri Reis.
They were in a bubble-shaped room centred on the confluence of several passages, making it easy to guess this room had been designed primarily for use in zero gee. They’d finally stopped accelerating a few hours before, and were – so Dakota gathered – merely coasting until they were ready to reverse the ship and begin braking prior to reaching a destination that Roses, so far, had chosen not to reveal. Almost every available surface, apart from several hammocks she guessed were the Bandati equivalent of chairs, was hidden under strips of greenish-red foliage. The room thus resembled a garden.
She glanced at a strip of soil populated by blue-leafed things resembling a cross between a porcupine and a cabbage; unfamiliar smells came to her as their leaves slowly reached towards her, suggesting what she was looking at was as much animal as plant.
But of far greater interest than any of that was the collection of underwear, trousers and T-shirts bundled together inside one of the stringy hammocks.
‘Where did you find these?’ she exclaimed, pulling each item out and studying it with barely concealed delight, before leaving it hanging in the gravity-less air and then digging out the next.
‘There’s a small human presence in the Night’s End system,’ Roses explained. ‘So finding clothes for you was less difficult than I expected.’
Dakota picked up a bra and tried it on. It felt tight under her breasts. She dropped it and found another. In fact there were several of everything there, as if Roses hadn’t been quite sure what to get, or in what size.
She glanced over at him with wry amusement: Definitely the male of the species. She tried on the second bra and found it fitted well enough. She pulled some more stuff on, revelling in the feel of cloth against her bruised skin, while at the same time becoming more and more aware of the one thing she’d had to learn to ignore during the past several weeks: the fact that she stank to high heaven.
Her skin was greasy and dark, and her unbrushed teeth felt matted and sticky. But, then, basic human sanitation hadn’t been easy to come by, and she had a feeling a species that utilized scent as one of its modes of interpersonal communication might not be so big on washing any odour off. At least she’d been able to get rid of the worst of it by standing on the ledge outside her cell whenever it chanced to rain.
‘I need water,’ she said. ‘Something I can clean myself with?’
Roses clicked for a moment. ‘You wish to hide your scent?’
She stared at the alien in complete non-comprehension. ‘No, clean myself. I don’t like to feel this dirty, and I haven’t washed in weeks. My teeth feel like—’
‘You are not thirsty,’ said the alien. ‘I understand.’ He clicked and chittered into his interpreter. ‘You will have an appointment with one of our surgeons.’
‘No, really, all I need is a cloth and a – oh, forget it.’ She began rolling a T-shirt over her head, regardless, while the alien watched with apparent impassiveness from nearby. ‘Roses, I’d like to ask you a couple of questions.’
‘You may ask,’ Days of Wine and Roses replied, ‘but whether I can answer is another matter.’
‘Okay, exactly where are you taking me?’
‘We’re rendezvousing with a coreship scheduled to materialize in the outer system in four days’ time, local measure.’
Dakota nodded, understanding that nuclear pulse-ships were
extremely fast, although outlawed in most human systems for obvious reasons. It took her a moment to realize this was as much as Roses was going to tell her without further prompting. ‘And once we’re there?’
‘And then you will be granted the privilege of an audience with the Queen of Darkening Skies.’
Dakota sighed. ‘And then will I be free to go?’
A pause. ‘It’s not quite so simple as that.’
‘Really,’ Dakota replied with another sigh. ‘I had a feeling you’d say something like that.’
‘If you make any further attempts to grab control of this ship, I will be forced to—’
‘Kill me, yes. I understood you the first time.’
‘You should realize,’ Roses added, ‘that there’s not much more I’m able to tell you. I have my orders from my Hive-Queen, and they are to bring you to her at any cost. That’s all.’
Dakota nodded, wondering if she would have the opportunity, once more, to try and lose herself in a coreship, and remembering how badly that had turned out the last time. ‘Then you ought to be aware of something, Roses.’
The Bandati’s wide, lustrous wings – now free of their bindings – twitched in what she chose to perceive as a noncommittal gesture.
‘I can do a lot more,’ she explained, ‘than just take control of this ship. I could grab something like those mines back there and pull them right up against the hull, easily enough energy to overload your shield generators and turn us all to radioactive slush. I could ram us into the side of the coreship when we reach it. When I told you I didn’t need to be rescued by you or anyone else, I meant it. I had a plan, a way out.’
‘There was nowhere for you to go. And, even assuming you had found some way to escape into Darkwater and remain at large, you would never have been able to find transport off-planet. You have no understanding of Bandati culture, no ability to communicate with the majority of Bandati, even assuming you could have found any willing to help you.’