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What was it he’d said? ‘If you only knew.’
Maybe, Dakota decided, she really didn’t want to know.
What she needed more immediately was something concrete against the Mansells-Udo, in particular. Halfheartedly, she had her Ghost circuits scan the morass of new data in the faint hope of finding something usable. At the very least she could find out more about how to deal with Udo the next time he-
‘Oh shit,’ she said aloud, though her voice sounded muffled in the cramped space of her cabin. ‘You have to be kidding me.’
‹Breaking the encryption on this particular data was surprisingly easy,› the Piri Reis informed her. ‹Please note that it concerns open financial transactions between Udo Mansell and a specific establishment on board the coreship we are currently approaching.›
Dakota couldn’t figure out if she was appalled or elated. Probably both. I thought those two were supposed to be ru
‹The encryption methods used by Udo Mansell in particular are out of date,› Piri explained. ‹This is likely more a result of limited resources available to the Freehold authorities on Redstone than to specific negligence on his part. However-›
Yeah, yeah. I get it. They have to make do with what they can get. But you’d at least think he could keep it in his pants for the duration of the expedition, rather than take the chance of someone digging this up.
She couldn’t keep the huge grin off her face. If anyone had been watching her at that moment in the privacy of her cabin, they’d have thought she’d completely lost it.
She sca
‹I draw your attention to a note alluding to reprimands relating to Udo Mansell.›
Dakota’s Ghost worked overtime cross-referencing the decrypted messages with other items stored in the Hyperion’s data stacks. They were as good as transparent. Yet for all that, neither she nor Piri could find anything that might explain what Udo had said to her on the bridge. Nor could she find details of the system they were intending to visit-not even its name.
The feeling that she’d walked into something bad all over again had been growing ever since she’d boarded the Hyperion, and with Josef’s apparent murder her fears had taken an exponential leap into the unknown.
Cross-reference, Piri. What would happen to Udo if any of this became known back on Redstone?
Piri just then dumped another mountain of data into her Ghost circuits. A growing awareness of the complexities of Freehold society spread through her mind.
‹Note the highly stratified nature of the Freehold social structure and honour code,› Piri added.
Dakota nodded, biting the corner of her lip and barely able to suppress a giggle. Udo hadn’t struck her as quite so… kinky. If she had it right, if what she had just found out about Udo Mansell became public knowledge among the Freehold, not only was he finished, but so was anyone associated with him.
The Senator would certainly be tainted by any of this information if it became public knowledge.
This, Dakota thought with a deep sense of satisfaction, is what I call real leverage.
Fourteen
A day later, they finally rendezvoused with the coreship.
As they made their approach, its bulk filled every available screen on board the Hyperion. Dakota sat in the interface chair on the bridge, her Ghost cha
The coreship itself was spherical in shape, perhaps a hundred kilometres in circumference, like a world in itself. Its surface was pockmarked with gaping holes through which the hollow interior could be glimpsed. Beneath the vessel’s vast curving roof, supported by huge pillars a kilometre thick, could be found a far greater habitable environment surrounding the central core. And deep within that core could be found the mysterious transluminal drive that pushed the craft through space at enormous multiples of the speed of light.
Rumour had it the core contained a liquid environment-a lightness, abyssal ocean in which resided the craft’s Shoal crew. Some trick of its planet engine prevented it from exerting any significant gravitational pull on the Hyperion as Dakota followed a standard docking manoeuvre.
Even though she couldn’t see them directly through the interface chair’s petals, Dakota was nonetheless aware of Arbenz and Gardner paying close attention to the bridge’s monitors while she focused on the multi-layered data passing through her implants.
She could feel the weight of their attention being focused on her through the petals, judging and appraising her piloting skill. If she screwed up in any way, automated guidance systems would kick in and dock the Hyperion automatically.
But she wasn’t about to let that happen.
She merged with the Hyperion’s primitive intelligence and guided the frigate’s vast bulk through one of the kilometre-wide apertures in the coreship’s hull. The bridge was temporarily under zero gee, the gravity wheel having been stopped for the duration of their voyage aboard the coreship. The bridge now sat at the bottom of the stilled wheel.
Dense layers of rock and compacted alloys appeared to rush towards and then past her on either side. A moment later the curving interior surface rose above her viewpoint, and the Hyperion was falling, on a cushion of shaped fields, towards the outskirts of a sprawling city.
A flicker of warning data -
A burst of violent energy shot through one of the aft drive bays like a muscle spasm, pre-ignition processes flickering with exotic fire deep within the engine cores.
Not good. Not good at all.
Dakota fully melded with her Ghost, making full use of its intuitive algorithms as a heavy, rattling vibration passed through the frigate. She was distantly aware of Gardner cursing and muttering somewhere beyond the petals of the chair.
There, she had it: a software failure. Something Dakota couldn’t possibly have missed, unless…
The Hyperion was starting to push against the shaped fields that bore it downwards, as the main drive threatened to self-activate, the hull screaming in protest at the unexpected stresses. Dakota rerouted fresh instructions past the problem-a kind of logjam of erroneous data -and the drive finally powered down. Then it was a natter of clever calculations and sheer guesswork to steady the Freehold vessel as it continued to descend.