Nova War (26 page)

Dakota took a breath and ducked her head down defensively, her voice trembling surprisingly little. ‘I already told you to go to hell, Trader. There’s nothing you can do to make me follow your orders.’

‘Excuse me that I should be so bold, but may I assume you are at least passingly familiar with the history of the First Civil War on your own world of Bellhaven?’

Dakota stared back at the Shoal-member. ‘What?’

‘If you will please recall, State and Church struggled more than once for control of your world. The Elders fought hard to gain victory and yet, if not for a healthy trade in technologies with other worlds throughout the vastness of the Consortium, Bellhaven might easily have slipped into obscurity and political chaos. Praise be, then,’ Trader concluded, ‘that so few of their stockpiled nuclear weapons were ever used.’

‘Get to the point,’ Dakota snarled between gritted teeth.

‘Near-orbital space around Bellhaven is littered with the ruins of military platforms, some of them centuries old. Many are heavily irradiated, so that to approach them is not permitted. This, supposedly, is because they are tainted with the active remnants of biological or nanotechnological weaponry. The truth is perhaps more complicated.’

Trader navigated his bubble back across the narrow viewing chamber, casting his gaze again across the face of the galaxy. ‘It is of no surprise to man or fish that many of those platforms have been secretly maintained to this day. To acquire the requisite launch codes proved scandalously easy, and your world does not lack in competing factions to take the blame for a sudden all-out strike upon the Free States. Which, I do believe,’ Trader added with relish, ‘include your own city-state of Erkinning.’

Dakota stared back with frightened eyes. ‘You wouldn’t dare.’

Trader’s tentacles wriggled with amusement. ‘That I might guarantee your cooperation? I cannot help but feel disappointment that, despite our acquaintance, you would yet underestimate me. Do only as I require, and your world will be safe.’

Dakota crouched on the floor and fought back tears of frustration. Too much was happening too quickly. Nobody could be expected to carry such a burden of responsibility.

The breath hissed between her teeth as she fought for control. She despised feeling so powerless, so, so . . .

Human ?

She pushed that thought away and realized that the image of the galaxy was beginning to fade from around them once more, to be replaced by a fresh view of the lightless ocean. Directly ahead lay three tiny points of light, at first bunched close together but spreading apart with increasing speed, and getting closer to their viewpoint. She guessed the yacht was now approaching another passageway, which presumably led back up towards the coreship’s outer layers.

‘Just tell me what you want me to do,’ Dakota muttered listlessly.

‘An Emissary Fleet arrived within Ocean’s Deep during these last few hours. At the heart of that fleet is a vessel known as a Godkiller, and it is considered to be extremely formidable. This Shoal-member, with the utmost certainty, can inform you that both Lucas Corso and the
Piri Reis
are inside this Godkiller, accompanied by a much smaller Immortal Light fleet. In these circumstances, and with threats of destruction hanging over the skies of your homeland, your path from this moment on must surely be clear.’

Dakota stood as the Shoal-member’s field-bubble began to rise up through the chamber. ‘I’ll kill you!’ she screamed up at him. ‘I swear it, Trader!’

‘I imagine the derelict’s song must be sweet,’ he replied from far above her. ‘Listen to it, dear Dakota, and entwine yourself in its song. You and I will meet again when you return with the derelict and, if your thirst for revenge is as yet unabated, perhaps I may even allow you the opportunity to confront me. But first you have a long journey ahead of you. Be prepared.’

And with that, Trader slipped back the way he had come, through a ceiling passageway, leaving her alone. The Ocean’s Deep derelict whispered to her, yes, like a long-lost lover, and she realized that Trader had been entirely right in one respect. She could never destroy a Magi ship again; without its presence in her mind and her thoughts, she had felt more alone than she could have imagined possible. Even losing her original implants had never been so hard.

Before the map of the galaxy had faded, Dakota had felt some exterior force directing her gaze to the unmarked territories lying beyond the Magi’s route . . . towards the dim lights of countless barren stars scattered across the face of the galaxy.

And, as she did so, knowledge came to her; and with it a revelation.

She sat in the darkness for a while, her mind numb, and then she began to grin.

Either she’d finally gone completely insane ... or she finally had an inkling of just what the Magi intended for her.

Eighteen

Several hours before Dakota’s encounter with the Queen of Darkening Skies, Corso awoke from a feverish dream to the sound of a ship’s alert blaring.

He’d dreamt he was back on Redstone, back on the icy shores of Fire Lake, facing a deadly opponent, and with a knife gripped in one hand. But instead of Bull Northcutt, he found himself confronted with a creature that was little more than a vague blur.

His knife flashed in the subzero cold, but whenever he tried to make out his opponent’s face, it remained indistinct. Its angles and shadows kept slithering past each other in an indistinguishable blur. And as he shifted and turned and dodged, never quite able to get close enough to inflict any damage, he slowly realized he was actually fighting one of the Magi.

He had fallen asleep inside a programming suite that had been hastily assembled for him, and when he opened his eyes it was to a series of projections displaying the fragments of protocol he’d pulled out of the
Piri Reis’s
stacks. His work had been made that much harder by the fact that the programming interfaces hadn’t been designed with humans in mind, so he’d had to hack about with the equipment for a while until he had assembled something he could actually make use of.

But not too quickly, of course. That would never do.

The alert - a steady, almost subsonic thrumming - was not unexpected. A few days had passed since they had departed Ironbloom, and Honeydew had warned him that, although they would be reaching the culmination of their deceleration before very long, he should strap himself into a gel-chair provided for him. This made little sense, since deceleration would normally be followed by weightlessness; nevertheless he strapped himself in, once the alarm began to sound, and waited.

After half an hour of waiting in the gel-chair, Corso started to get bored. Perhaps, he thought, they were going to transport him down to the surface of some other world in the Night’s End system, somewhere the derelict was presumably kept.

But instead the weightlessness was suddenly replaced by gravity somewhat stronger than the point-eight Terran gees of Redstone. He knew they weren’t accelerating, so he guessed they were in an artificial gravity field of the kind used regularly by the Shoal.

He passed the time considering his options. It was impossible to be sure if Honey dew believed one word of his excuses, but ever since his encounter with the
Piri Reis
he’d been left very much to his own devices.

Yet, instead of working on rebuilding the protocols he’d sabotaged, he’d spent his time trying to work out what had happened to the
Piri Reis,
and if there was any purpose to the baffling alterations to its core systems.

Corso eventually levered himself out of the gel-chair and stood upright, feeling as if a million tiny hands were trying to drag him down onto the floor. Before very long, two Bandati entered the suite and pulled him away from where he’d been working. The Bandati lacked interpreters, so they were reduced to clicking at him futilely for a few moments before grabbing him by the shoulders and marching him along the ship’s corridors.

Game’s up,
he thought.
They know I tricked them.

He soon realized he was being led back to the docking bays where the
Piri Reis
was stored, but this time they took him to a much larger bay that was entirely empty, bar an enormous sculpture of jagged black glass that had to be the size of a city block.

Only it wasn’t a sculpture, he registered after a few moments’ contemplation. It was a ship of a kind he’d never seen before.

A hatch opened in the side of the craft, and something emerged. Something
big,
and mean-looking. It reminded him of an elephant crossed with a sea-urchin - a very angry one, too. It loped rapidly towards them, as if intending to attack, and Corso developed an overwhelming urge to turn and run the other way.

‘Stay very still,’ said a voice from behind his shoulder.

He’d started struggling with his two guards, desperate to flee to some small, safe dark corner where he could hide from big, angry-looking monsters. Somewhere in his panic he’d realized there was a tiny figure perched on top of the monster, but that observation didn’t make him any less terrified.

He managed to twist around to see who had spoken, despite the firm grip the two guards still had on him. Honeydew was standing directly behind him, staring past Corso towards the monster. He turned back and watched as it came stamping to within a few metres of them before finally, mercifully, coming to a halt.

Corso found himself confronted by a vast, dripping maw, flanked by twin in-curving tusks. A spiked carapace encompassed the upper body of the monster, which looked capable of skewering a Tyrannosaurus rex, assuming the T-rex lacked the good sense to turn and run on sight. What had resembled an elephant’s trunk from a distance now revealed itself to be a tight knot of about a dozen long and narrow tentacles dangling down between the creature’s eyes. Some of these appendages reached out and slithered messily across Corso’s face and shoulders.

He nearly dislocated one of his shoulders trying to pull himself free. If Honeydew was trying to scare the total crap out of him, he was doing a fantastic job.

After several seconds of this unwanted attention, the monster did the same to each of the two guards, the long, wet feelers playing across their upper torsos. Then the monster took a step backward, the deck vibrating under the broad stumps that were its four legs.

Corso now had a better view of the diminutive figure perched high on the monster’s back, and seated just behind the broad expanse of its skull. It looked tiny and helpless, but clearly possessed some close relationship with the creature it sat atop. It was covered in a fine fuzz of hair the same colour as its mount, and it similarly sported a rope of facial tentacles. Its eyes appeared like small pink dots, and it slumped across the monster’s back as if resting after a hard day’s toil. When those eyes briefly settled on Corso, he had the feeling there was little or no intelligence behind them.

‘This is Emissary KaTiKiAn-Sha,’ Honeydew muttered into Corso’s ear.

‘What?’ Corso gasped. ‘Which one?’

‘The unpleasantly large one,’ Honeydew replied quietly. ‘The smaller one is its mate, the male of the species. Please, be polite when you answer her questions. Our lives are in danger.’

‘Your
lives?’ Corso hissed, his voice cracking. ‘What the hell do you want from
me
?’

‘Answer the Emissary’s questions,’ Honeydew replied, his electronic voice still pitched low. ‘And, please, be very, very, very polite.’

The hell
you
say, Corso almost replied, then realized to his horror that Honeydew was just as scared as he was.

The Emissary mount reached up, with its multi-fingered trunk, to what Corso had at first taken to be a saddle of sorts strapped to its back, just behind its pink-eyed mate. It retrieved a large and bulky microphone that looked distinctly primitive in comparison with the spacecraft the Emissary had recently emerged from. The microphone disappeared quickly beneath the tentacles.

A moment later a crackling roar filled the vast empty space of the bay, before suddenly dropping in volume; but the monstrous baying continued as a savage, guttural howl emerging from the Emissary’s mouth, hidden behind its tentacles.

‘You!’ an electronic voice bellowed over the monster’s roar, this simultaneous translation reverberating, too, from the bay’s distant walls. ‘I am Emissary! Of great anger and volume! We bring salvation! And light! I ride with my lover to find God! Tell me! Where. Is God!’

The Emissary paused, and then Corso realized it was asking him a direct question. Its massive, boulder-sized head had swivelled to stare straight at him with huge, angry eyes.

‘I . . . what?’ Corso replied weakly.

‘Answer,’ Honeydew urged quietly from behind.

In the grasp of his guards, Corso twisted to stare at the Bandati agent incredulously.

‘Please,’ Honeydew whispered.

‘I ... I don’t know what it wants me to say’

What happened next was something that would fuel Corso’s nightmares for the rest of his life.

The Emissary took a step forward and, reaching out with its knotted tentacles, grabbed one of the two Bandati guards, effortlessly lifting him into the air. The guard struggled desperately, and Corso tensed, ready to make a break for it.

‘Lucas.’ It was Honeydew, still behind him. ‘Believe me when I say she can run much faster than you. Just answer her question.’

The Emissary then took a half-step back, and ripped the struggling warrior’s head from his shoulders in one swift movement. Corso gaped, appalled, as the head hit the deck and rolled to a halt some distance away. The torso was dropped at Corso’s feet a second later.

Dark, wine-coloured blood spilled around his feet.

Honeydew’s voice was clear in Corso’s ear. ‘Please answer, Lucas, or we are
all
dead. She might not kill anyone else if she finds your answer satisfactory’

The little bastard’s hiding behind me,
Corso realized, as he stared up at the Emissary.

He opened his mouth, but at first he couldn’t get anything out. All he could do was stare at the headless corpse slumped at his feet.

‘I . . . I . . .’ He cleared his throat and started again. ‘I . . . God is . . . here?’ he finally stammered, improvising.

The Emissary stared down at him. ‘God? Is here?’

‘I ... I suppose he might,’ Corso mumbled, completely terrified.

The Emissary reared back to peer over Corso’s head. ‘You have God’s ship?’ she demanded.

This time, Honeydew stepped forward and himself addressed the Emissary.

‘We have docked within your own vessel and request that you deliver us to God’s ship. Our computers are now supplying you with the necessary coordinates, indicating that the ship is located in a neighbouring system. Once we get there, we will be able to make a full demonstration of our discoveries. This one,’ he turned to look pointedly at Corso, ‘has discovered a way of accessing its data stacks which, as you now know, is something that eluded us for a long time.’

Corso once again found himself the object of the visitor’s unwelcome attention. Its tentacles once again began slithering across Corso’s face and shoulders, and he found himself once more staring directly into its terrible black maw, whose fetid stench was almost more than he could bear.

‘If you fail to reveal God’s message to us, you will die!’ it screeched. ‘Should I kill more to make my point clear?’

Something wrenched at Corso from behind and he stumbled backwards. Honeydew and the surviving guard had pulled him away from the Emissary. ‘Tell her that will not be necessary,’ Honeydew said.

‘It won’t be necessary,’ Corso stammered.

‘We will go to God’s ship immediately!’ the Emissary cried, stomping backwards about a metre and turning as it did so.

In the distance, a panel slid open in the surface of the crystalline spaceship from which the Emissary had emerged. They watched as the enormous creature finally retreated back inside her ship.

If not for the firm grip the two Bandati still had on him, Corso would have crumpled to the deck. But after several moments their grip relaxed, and neither made any move to stop him as he turned and walked stiffly away from the still-expanding pool of blood.

Corso didn’t get more than a couple of metres before he dropped to his knees and vomited noisily onto the deck. Once he’d finished, he reached up with one shaking hand and used his sleeve to wipe his mouth before standing once more.

‘The Emissaries are very impatient,’ Honeydew informed him, ‘and, therefore, difficult to deal with.’

Corso nearly started to laugh, but choked instead.
Understatement of the century.
‘What the hell
was
that thing?’ he demanded angrily. ‘And why, in the name of hell, did you feel the need to put me through that performance?’

‘Emissary KaTiKiAn-Sha represents a culture at least as powerful and as widespread as the Shoal. Like the Shoal, they possess superluminal technology, and they have also been at war with the Shoal for a very long time.’

‘But how? I mean, I thought the Shoal—’

‘They lied, Mr Corso. Their knowledge of superluminal technology is not unique. The Emissaries originate from another spiral arm, several thousand light-years distant. Even I myself wasn’t aware of their existence until very recently’ Honeydew paused for a moment as if not sure what to say next. ‘It is possible that the Shoal are losing their contest with these Emissaries.’

‘So where do
I
come into all this?’

‘My Queen intends to offer certain information to the Emissaries in return for a favourable position within their expanding empire.’

‘The derelict,’ Corso croaked. ‘Your Queen’s going to give it to
that
thing?’

‘Yes - and possibly yourself as well, if the Emissaries demand it.’

Corso felt the blood drain from his face. ‘Is she fucking
insane
?’ he finally managed to stammer.

The Bandati agent regarded Corso with expressionless blank eyes for what seemed like a very, very long time. Then he turned and began to walk away towards the entrance to the docking bay.

After a moment the surviving guard prodded at Corso’s shoulder, and he reluctantly followed, his thoughts in turmoil.