Stealing Light

‘Not many.’ The Freeholder stared like he wanted to swat Dakota like a fly, but for the moment at least he was thinking rationally. He glanced over his shoulder, looking at four companions still extracting bodies from inside the hull. ‘Just the five of us are mobile, most of the rest of us are dead. It looks like part of the fusion drive chassis sheared off during the impact, and-’

He never got to finish his sentence.

For Dakota, the worst thing about killing him was knowing that he would never see the Kingdom of God. She slipped her pistol out of its holster with practised ease and fired off three rapid shots, tattooing the man’s chest with rapidly spreading dark stains. He dropped like a stone, sprawling lifeless on the ground.

The others immediately went for their weapons, but Dakota had the element of surprise. She fired again, shearing off the side of one man’s head. Another flipped over and tumbled into a twisted heap. The remaining three scrambled towards cover, but Dakota killed them with expertly placed shots in the back.

Dakota had never killed anyone before. It had taken seconds.

She walked over and saw that one or two lying on the ground were merely injured. Their friends had pulled them free of the wreckage and placed breather masks over their faces. Filled by an overwhelming sense of peace, she despatched each of them with a single shot to the head.

Somewhere in the distance, she noticed a glint of light from a moving windscreen. A line of vehicles was approaching along the road leading from Port Gabriel.

Eighteen

A yellow star in its mid-life dominated the Nova Arctis system, accompanied by a retinue of eight planets comprising two rocky i

The second i

Dakota sat enclosed within the steel petals of the bridge’s interface chair, watching the dance of numerals and data feeds that had constantly measured their deceleration into the new system. Before her hovered an image of the fifth world out from the star: a Jovian-type gas-giant called Dymas. It carried sixteen moons with it in its slow, majestic journey around its star. They were currently on an approach vector with the fourth moon out, a frozen world the Freeholders had named Theona.

They had been in constant deceleration now for several days, the Hyperion flipped on its axis for most of that time, its engines pointed starward. Dakota had been worried they might be forced into a delay if orbital braking manoeuvres were required to prevent them overshooting Dymas, but her fears were unfounded. For the fusion propulsion system, at least, unlike the rest of the Hyperion, was up to date. The ship was now on its way to a perfect rendezvous.

As the chair’s petals folded away and Dakota stepped down on to the bridge, she found Gardner studying a screen displaying high-res orbital images of Theona. Sharp-edged mountain ranges poked up through the ice that coated the little world’s surface. Deep-range scans showed a substantial liquid environment beneath the ice: and somewhere below that lay a core of rock and iron hidden under a liquid ocean several kilometres deep.

‘Nothing down there but ice and a little ammonia.’ She nodded towards the display. ‘Sure this is where you want to go?’

‘Very sure,’ Gardner replied, irritation clear in his voice. ‘Just pilot the ship, Mala.’

We found something. Corso’s words still reverberated in her skull, as they had every day since leaving Ascension. So they found something, but what?

Robot probes and supplies modules had already been boosted towards Newfall from out of the cargo bay, carrying the terraforming gear that was the official reason for Hyperion’s coming here to the Nova Arctis system. Dakota could see their trajectory paths marked on another screen: they were moving at a considerably higher number of gees than the frigate itself and its frail human cargo could possibly manage.

Dakota made final checks, which confirmed that the frigate was smoothly slipping into orbit around the moon.

Apparently there was already a minuscule human presence on Theona’s surface. A ground base had been established near one of the poles, the majority of its living and working units buried under the dense ice.

From the vantage point of the humans huddled in their cramped quarters under the icecap, Nova Arctis would be little more than a particularly bright star that frequently disappeared as the moon slid behind its parent. Right now they were basking in what passed for summer sun, despite surface temperatures not much above absolute zero.

Arbenz entered the bridge. ‘A few moments ago I picked up the ident of another ship on the hail frequencies,’ Dakota informed him. ‘It’s still on Dymas’s far side, but we should be matching course in another couple of hours or so.’

‘That’s the Agartha,’ he replied. ‘It’s here to provide us with back-up.’

Dakota’s Ghost fed her fresh information concerning the Agartha. It was only a third the size of the Hyperion, but armed to the teeth. In fact, it represented a considerable portion of the Freehold’s military might in their war against the Uchidans, yet here it was in another star system, dozens of light years from home and absent from a conflict where it was surely desperately needed.

That fact alone was enough to convince Dakota that whatever the Freehold might have found here, it was of enormous significance. More, her Ghost was feeding her images of what appeared to be a massive mining operation on the surface of Theona, a dark scar ripped across the pristine marbled white of its surface, just a short distance from the Freehold-maintained base. The hole that had been dug so far looked like it went a long, long way down.

Piri. How well integrated are you with the Hyperion?

‹Secondary copies of my routines have now been uploaded to the Hyperion’s stacks without detection, as per your instructions. All systems remain nominal.›

Dakota’s Ghost showed how the secondary copy of Piri’s faux-consciousness-Piri Beta, as she thought of it-integrated seamlessly with the original on board her ship. Fortunately, Senator Arbenz and the rest of them would never be aware of what she had done.

She decided to test the Beta copy. We’ll need a shuttle down to the moon’s surface, she informed it.

‹Affirmation with pleasure.›