Stealing Light

‘Not really, no.’

Dakota made a disgusted noise, her lips curling. ‘Then you’re just going to have to accept it. The Agartha is right behind us now, so there isn’t time for anything else.’

‘And what if you don’t come back?’ Corso demanded.

‘Then I guess we’re all dead.’

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!’