by Gary Gibson
She turned, and looked at the door they’d just emerged from. A sign on it read: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY: EMERGENCY LIFE-SUPPORT & MAINTENANCE SYSTEMS ACCESS.
‘Costs a bundle to keep the Dock Manager quiet,’ Yi explained unnecessarily. ‘And it took an age and a half to get rid of all the stuff that used to be in there.’
‘So what happens now if there’s a genuine emergency?’ Dakota asked.
Yi stared at her like she’d asked the stupidest question in the world. ‘Then they get a big surprise. Now, go down the other end. Move.’
Yi shoved Dakota in the back with one hand, till she stumbled forward. Torchguns tended to run out of fuel fast and, the way Yi was keeping hers burning, it probably wasn’t going to last much longer.
‘What about your brother?’ Dakota asked, stalling for time. ‘Aren’t you—?’
‘A fucking liability is a fucking liability, regardless of whether he happens to share the same genes,’ Yi snapped.
Dakota heard Yi stop walking, could almost feel the other woman’s consternation. ‘There should be . . .’
‘The Piri Reis?’ Dakota turned to face Yi. ‘You were expecting it to have been moved here by now, right?’
The other woman was now showing naked fear, her attention focused not on Dakota but on the empty gantry where she’d expected to find the Piri Reis waiting for them. ‘Yi, let me explain something straight away. I’m a machine-head. Try and screw around with my ship, and I know about it instantly. Someone already tried to override the dock computers and move it here. That was never going to happen.’
Yi, eyes bright with anger verging on madness, brought the torchgun up until its bright blue flame was only millimetres away from Dakota’s cheeks. ‘Then we go to your ship.’
Dakota shook her head. ‘No we don’t, Yi. Look.’
Another ship was coming into dock, pushing through the shaped fields surrounding it like a finger pushed through the membrane of a soap bubble. Yi glanced towards it as its shadow obscured the view of the Milky Way beyond, Fullstop having by now wheeled completely out of sight.
Dakota punched the other woman hard, her teeth clicking as her head snapped back. The torchgun clattered to the floor of the platform and Dakota kicked it away. Its harsh blue flame flickered as it slid over the edge and out of sight.
Yi had staggered backwards. Following her, Dakota cupped the other woman’s cheek in one hand before hitting her again with the other. Yi crumpled, curling up into a ball on the platform.
‘Fucking amateurs,’ Dakota yelled, nursing her scraped knuckles against her chest.
She had to find Milligan, and fast.
She went back the way she had come, ignoring Lin as she passed him, his frightened pain-filled eyes following her as she headed straight on through the rent in the bulkhead and back into the Wayward Dragon.
Piri, locate Milligan, tell him I’m in trouble. Tell him it’s a job for Quill, so he knows the rules. But encrypt this message all to fuck and beyond before you send it.
She strode rapidly through the bar and out onto the busy concourse beyond. Nobody paid her any attention or challenged her in any way.
There might be Bandati on our trail. See what you can find out. But make sure you don’t leave any trace.
She felt the ship’s presence wink out of her mind.
‘I heard about it already,’ said Milligan, his face appearing bruised and scarlet under soft lighting that looked like it had been filtered through a bottle of absinthe. ‘I mean, Yi and Lin, they’re not exactly . . .’ Milligan’s eyes darted upwards, as he tried to find the right words. ‘They’re not circumspect, if you follow me. In fact,’ he added with a flourish of one scented hand, ‘they practically broadcast everything they do. All just a tragedy waiting to happen, really. Sebastian!’
The interior of Milligan’s quarters was filled with velour and chintz fabrics, some decorated with semi-abstract patterns modelled after dreamwind spores as viewed through an electron microscope. The room to which Dakota had been brought smelled of burnt spores and dried roses, and the lighting was mostly concealed behind curtains and drapes, leaving much of the room in darkness. Dakota noticed an expensive-looking imaging unit in one corner, which had sat there untouched for as long as she had known the spore-dealer. It, like everything else there, was coated in a fine layer of dust.
‘Sebastian’ was the young man who had greeted Dakota as she arrived at Milligan’s place, his bare chest oiled and features tweaked to present a wolflike aspect. Mog styling was the rage du jour, it seemed. He appeared obediently a few moments later from behind a drape obscuring an inner doorway.
‘Sebastian, we have a guest. Tea, please.’
Sebastian nodded dreamily and wandered off again, his pupils wide and dark from constant spore inhalation.
‘Now tell me more.’ Milligan turned back to his visitor. ‘Your ship implied you might be in some trouble.’
Dakota sat herself down on a low couch. ‘Well—’
‘Wait!’ Milligan snapped his fingers and leant towards her. ‘The . . . prosthetic I installed in your ship. How has it turned out?’
‘I - oh.’ Dakota’s face flushed as she realized he was talking about the artefact in her cabin aboard the Piri Reis, which Milligan had helped source for her. ‘The effigy, you mean. It—’
‘I mean the prodigiously equipped sex toy you keep squirrelled away there for those special, private moments, Dakota. I didn’t tell you, did I? I got one for myself ’
‘Really? I—’
Milligan’s expression had become slightly dreamy. ‘Sebastian’s been rather sullen ever since. Now, I’m sorry, I’ve been interrupting your story. So please continue.’
‘It was meant to be a regular pick-up. I don’t ask questions, Yi and Lin don’t either. Except this time they went and stole something, and now the original owners want it back. They also tried to steal my ship just so they could get off-station.’
Sebastian reappeared, carrying a silver tray which he placed on the low table positioned between Dakota and Milligan. Two china cups and a teapot sat elegantly on the tray. Sebastian then left, and Milligan began to pour.
‘Never fear, no spores in here,’ he informed her in his singsong voice, nodding towards the teapot. ‘Anyway, it all sounds very unfortunate indeed. But I did hear just before you got here that they’d been taken into custody by the station authorities, pending a special investigation which, in my experience, most often precedes a quick trip out of an airlock minus a spacesuit.’
Dakota drank from her cup. ‘Which leaves me.’
‘Which leaves you,’ Milligan repeated, something feral in his eyes as he leaned back and regarded her once more. He began putting on what appeared to be a pair of surgical gloves. ‘Of course I myself have a vested interest in helping you, because if they find you, they find me too, and that isn’t good for business.’
Dakota tried not to shrink away from his suddenly menacing gaze. ‘They won’t find me,’ she protested. ‘You’ve known Quill longer than I have. And I know you, and that you’re good for your word.’
‘That I am. Which brings me to this.’ Milligan leaned over to one side and opened a small brass case resting on a side table next to his chair. He reached into it and lifted something out.
At first, Dakota thought what he held was something living. Something black and shiny and wet-looking writhed slowly in Milligan’s hands. It appeared segmented, like a caterpillar, and between five and ten centimetres in length.
Dakota’s throat felt suddenly dry. ‘And that is?’
‘This, my dear, is what Lin and Yi got their grubby hands on; a form of artificial skin or armour of some kind. Pretty, isn’t it? And quite, quite alien.’
Dakota put her cup down carefully. ‘You know, maybe you shouldn’t be telling me any of this.’
‘In an ideal world, perhaps.’
Dakota tried to stand up, b
ut two pairs of strong hands suddenly pressed her back down and held her there. She twisted her head around and saw Sebastian and another of Milligan’s lovers standing behind her. She tried to twist away, but felt suddenly drowsy. The cup slipped from her hand and rolled across the floor, its contents staining the fine carpet.
As she slumped to one side, suddenly Milligan was sitting on the arm of her chair, one hand resting on her thigh as he leaned in close to the side of her head. ‘If there’s one thing I want you to remember, Dakota, it’s that this is not personal. Mr Quill really needs to find himself a better quality of thief than either Yi or her idiot brother. I’d say his game was slipping, so I’d say it was time we both found a new employer.’
‘You drugged me.’ She slumped further against Milligan’s shoulder.
He patted her head. ‘Yes, I did, my dear. It’s time we were both moving on. You back to the Sol System, if you must, and me to somewhere my business can’t be easily threatened.’
The rich, thick velvet of Milligan’s bathrobe felt luxurious against her cheek, and she snuggled against it. ‘I’ll kill you, you miserable fucker,’ she murmured, a drowsy half-smile on her face. ‘I’ll hunt you down and feed your pecker to your boyfriends.’
‘I like you, my dear, contrary to all appearances. Nevertheless, I require you to draw attention away from me before the Bandati decide to turn up on my doorstep. And ours is a business where trust must frequently be sacrificed in the cause of survival.’
Milligan was gently stroking Dakota’s hair now, but, deep in her drug-induced warm and snuggly mental cocoon, her thoughts were full of images of merciless vengeance. ‘You know what?’
‘Yes, my dear?’
‘If you go anywhere near my ship, I’ll make sure it buggers you to death, slices and dices what’s left, and sells the remnants to one of those long-pig restaurants I hear Alexander Bourdain’s running.’
‘If you’re anything, Dakota, you’re certainly consistent. But, in the meantime, I’m really, really curious to see if this thing can do what it’s supposed to.’
She heard him shifting beside her. ‘Sebastian, have you finished programming the medbox? Oh, very good. Now, help me lift her up.’
‘Milligan?’ Dakota felt herself lifted from her chair. ‘What’re you going to do?’
‘I’m going to see if this . . . device can really do what it purports to,’ he told her. ‘And if it can, well, I like to think you’ll thank me one day . . .’
‘And you escaped from this man Milligan?’ the Queen of Darkening Skies asked Dakota as she finished.
She had slowly shifted herself to a sitting position as she spoke, though constantly aware of the weapons still aimed at her. ‘Not exactly. I woke up in a medbox with scars up and down my back, and my implants told me maybe twenty-four hours had passed. There was no sign of Milligan, and he was gone for good from the orbital port. I knew straight away that he’d installed the filmsuit tech inside me. He obviously wanted to know if it really worked, or if it could be placed inside a human body. I’m guessing the medbox’s analytical systems confirmed that it could. I still don’t know how he got hold of it or if there was more than just the one filmsuit.’
Another Bandati, one of several others who had arrived while Dakota told her story, now turned to the Queen and spat out a rapid series of clicks and trills that went untranslated. The newcomers all wore long, coloured rags suspended from a fine mesh encasing their upper bodies. None of them, however, appeared to be carrying interpreters.
‘This isn’t a trial,’ the Queen said, by way of reply to the Bandati who had addressed her. ‘We won’t, therefore, have another opportunity to gather evidence we can file away for later. But, yes, the Magi starship is of much greater importance.’
She turned her attention to the same Bandati who had snatched Dakota from the surface of Night’s End. ‘My dear Days of Wine and Roses,’ she said, ‘tell me, is the cease-fire holding?’
‘Only just, my Queen. We’ve allowed Immortal Light’s negotiators to believe our field generators are on the verge of failing. They’ll stop short of launching a full-scale attack as long as they think we’re trapped here.’
‘You know,’ Dakota said, staring around the chamber, ‘There’s no reason for me to even be here. I told you everything I can about the filmsuit. But I destroyed the derelict. Surely there’s nothing for you to be fighting over any more?’
‘Apart from what little knowledge still remains in your head?’ Roses suggested. ‘Perhaps we should dig that out the hard way’
‘An unnecessary violation of corporeal matters,’ boomed Trader. ‘We have the other starship to consider.’
‘ “Other starship”?’ Dakota echoed, genuinely puzzled.
Trader’s manipulators writhed in malicious pleasure. ‘Indeed, another Magi vessel intact, manifestly not destroyed, a mere smidgen of light-years removed from our present location, yet far from the beaten track of Shoal trade routes. A starship whose existence might yet have remained unknown, unrevealed, and hidden within these tideless depths of space - if not for the aid of the dear Queen who graces us with her presence.’
Dakota wondered when she was going to wake up, and also when that stony cold feeling in her gut was finally going to go away. ‘Another Magi ship?’
‘Whose deep and precious secrets we request your aid in hiding for ever from the voracious attentions of a species known as the Emissaries,’ Trader continued. ‘They, like us, have ships that swim the depths of the universe at speeds greater than the fleeting photon.’
‘Rivals to the Shoal’s hegemony,’ Roses added. ‘Certain restricted technologies, it appears, may in fact have originated from these Emissaries. The supposedly mythical Giantkillers, for instance, and the filmsuit technology as well.’
‘How do you know all this?’ Dakota shrilled at Roses.
‘They know what they know by employing the standard protocols of inter-Hive diplomacy,’ Trader answered on behalf of the Bandati. ‘Espionage, murder and deceit, all flavoured with additional knowledge, courtesy of myself. The Emissaries most quietly seek to flood our client species with dangerous cache-technology, so that the authority of the Shoal might thereby be gradually undermined. It is most unfortunate, Dakota, that you and Corso shared your knowledge of the Magi with the Queen of Immortal Light. You are aware, of course, that this is the deadliest of knowledge - knowledge that can kill entire worlds.’
‘I’m aware,’ Dakota retorted, ‘that you committed an act of genocide and stole the Magi’s drive technology for yourselves. I’m aware that you’ve used me from the moment you set eyes on me. I’m aware you made me murder people I cared about, when you weren’t just making me run around doing your dirty work for you. You raped me, you motherfucker! And now I’ve done your work for you by destroying the derelict, so frankly, I don’t know just how far those tentacles of yours reach, but go fuck yourself!’
She stopped, pushing her hands down on the deck and steadying herself. This is not the time to lose control.
‘Trader has a proposal,’ Roses informed her, ‘that would allow the Shoal to conveniently ignore our attempts to acquire cache-technology. His proposal contains a solution not only to your and our present predicaments, but to a conflict whose roots reach far back into the past of our own species.’
Don’t trust Trader, Dakota wanted to say. Kill him, do anything you like, but don’t trust him or any of the rest of the Shoal. But, at the same time, curiosity overwhelmed her, and she really wanted to hear just what it was Roses had to say.
She looked back up. ‘Go on, then,’ she urged quietly.
‘Several millennia ago,’ Roses explained, ‘our Queen was closely allied with her sister the Queen of Immortal Light. Bandati Hives, by their nature, compete for resources - yet at that time the Fair Sisters were renowned for working together to an unprecedented degree.’
In the centuries following first contact with the Shoal and gaining access to their coreships, the Bandati h
ad soon learned the hard lesson that the cost of developing and then settling any one system was so enormous that their Hives had no choice but to band together if they were to effectively exploit that new system’s resources.
In many respects the Fair Sisters had led the way, being amongst the first to pool their resources and capital in order to develop and settle the Night’s End system. The result had been a flowering of both Hives, which swiftly became amongst the most powerful of all the Bandati Hives. But this period of cooperation, although lasting some centuries, would ultimately prove short-lived given the entire spectrum of history.
The Fair Sisters - Roses then explained - had their own secrets to keep, carefully hidden both from the Shoal and from all other Hives.
‘Before our species made contact with the Shoal Hegemony,’ Roses continued, ‘we had already been contacted by the Atn. The Atn’s collective memory goes back more than a billion years, and there are a hundred theories about where they came from and whether there’s any purpose to their wanderings across the galaxy. Most of them still travel the Milky Way at sublight speeds in hol-lowed-out asteroids, and over time they’ve visited almost every corner of our galaxy.’ Roses’ gaze turned to Trader. ‘Even the Shoal have had no control over their comings and goings.’
‘Our ships generously offer sanctuary within their bellies to those little fish that desire it,’ said Trader. ‘Those that choose to swim alone in the vastness, becoming prey to time’s sharp teeth, do so entirely outside our influence.’
‘The Bandati first learned of the Shoal from the Atn, when a fleet of their asteroids arrived in our home system,’ Roses continued. ‘But, even after contact with the Shoal, we continued to make use of the Atn’s own ships to secretly explore unpopulated systems immediately adjacent to those we had already settled under contract with the Shoal.’
‘At sublight speeds?’ Dakota shook her head in disbelief. ‘But that could take—’
‘Centuries and longer, in most cases,’ the Queen broke in. ‘And sometimes a great deal longer. It was always a long-term strategy, but one that offered solutions to certain questions the Shoal clearly preferred to leave unanswered.’