Stealing Light

It was a popular conspiracy theory, and not one Dakota might normally subscribe to. However, under the present circumstances, she found herself prepared to entertain wilder ideas than she might do otherwise.

‘First you boot the Uchidans off their homeworld without explanation. Then they land on Redstone and try to throw the Freehold off theirs, something I’d have thought way beneath your interest. Yet one of your people was present, for some reason, in the Central Command ring the day before the massacres at Port Gabriel.’

She continued: ‘Then the next time I see one of you, it’s on Bourdain’s Rock, and people want to blame me for what happened there. And now, suddenly, here we are almost literally in the middle of fucking nowhere, a derelict but viable alien starship under our feet, and… big surprise, here you are, too. It was you every time, wasn’t it?’

‘Enquiry to elucidate, with pleasure?’

Dakota gritted her teeth. The alien’s word games were really begi

She already knew it, but somehow she needed to hear the creature repeat it. ‘Trader-In-Faecal-Matter-Of-Animals,’ he replied. ‘And you are correct.’

‘You know,’ she said, relishing the opportunity to give vent, ‘it really gives some indication of how little you regard us as a species that the name you use when you’re around us is a seriously tasteless joke.’

‘This one is forced to point out that circumstances remain unaltered from present: vis-а-vis relationship you and I, no change. Agreed?’

She was almost at the bridge by now. She slowed her progress, taking her time in case she ran into any of Arbenz’s skeleton crew. She had no idea what she was going to say to them when the time came, but could see no reason for them to keep her from the interface chair. If she was wrong about that… well, she’d just have to deal with it when the time came.

‘What happened to the race that built the derelict?’ she asked, realizing the creature was baiting her. ‘Where are they now? It has a transluminal drive dating from long before your species were supposed to have developed the technology, so just what are you trying to hide here?’

A secure link via her Ghost allowed her to observe Corso’s handiwork as he covertly hacked away at the Hyperion’s stacks from inside the Piri Reis. She had to hand it to him: he knew exactly what he was doing. Any lingering concerns faded regarding his expertise with computer systems.

Trader refused to be drawn, though. Instead of answering, he continued blithely, as if anything she had to say was of little or no concern to him.

But then she reminded herself that the alien very much had the advantage. Everything she and Corso had pla

‘Of highest tantamount importance in approaching task of cataclysmic destruction is appreciation that the object of our concern, in order to be rendered nonexistent, ca

Dakota reached the gravity wheel and pulled herself up a series of rungs, feeling the tug of centrifugal force from the rotation of the Hyperion’s wheel segment, the higher she got. She climbed into a corridor in the wheel’s i

‘Who built the derelict, Trader? You’re holding all the cards. Why not just tell me?’

‘Please regard that derelict in question rests-chance and circumstance be thanked-upon the very precipice of a mighty abyss. A most advantageous and opportunistic means of destruction is thereby presented: to be sent tumbling into welcoming and bottomless embrace of mother ocean, is also to be squeezed and squeezed until boom! Derelict is at an end. How so, therefore, to reach accomplishment of this mighty and noble task? Placing of explosives conventional, certainly. Or activation of secondary propulsion systems, to allow such an unfortunate event to most merrily happenstance. All to be considered by this one called Dakota. Rescued, recall, please, from certain blackness of death aboard space-bound asteroid by this one. Surely, to indicate refusal in our current concern is equivalent to expression of churlishness, given my life-saving kindness?’

Keep him talking. Anything, to divert the majority of his consciousness away from Corso’s hacking.

As it turned out, she had little to worry her, once she entered the bridge. The crew were dead.

It was unusual in itself to find the emergency seal on the entrance to the bridge activated when she got there. She reached up and deactivated it by hand, using a panel on the wall.

When the seal slid back, revealing the bridge’s interior, she stared at the scene before her with numb horror.

It wouldn’t take a genius to figure out that Trader must have locked the crew into the bridge deck, sealed the emergency exits, and then voided the life-giving atmosphere.

By the looks of things, two of the crewmembers had made a concerted effort to open the emergency seals from the inside. They lay just inside the doorway, staring sightlessly upwards, their tongues protruding from their mouths.

At least I have my filmsuit. Trader couldn’t possibly know about that. Even if he did, he’d still have to be a lot more inventive than this if he chose to hurt her.

She slowly picked her way past the two corpses. The other four crewmembers were all huddled by an open floor panel. Dakota averted her gaze from their faces, frozen in terror, guessing they’d been desperately trying to access bypass circuits as they’d died.

‘An unfortunate matter, but necessary,’ the alien’s voice boomed from the bridge’s comms system. ‘For them to be allowed interference in requisite destruction of derelict would be unforgivably remiss.’

Dakota nodded, still unable to find her voice. Her throat felt like something large and heavy had been lodged halfway down it, and she had a particularly nasty taste in the back of her mouth.

She watched as the petals of the interface chair began to unfold, unbidden.

‘Look, they’ll know by now, on the Agartha. and down on the moon, that the crew are dead. I’ll never be allowed to get as far as the derelict and do what you want. And you know I can’t do anything from up here.’

‘Interface, contrary to clear untruth, awaits your embrace, and is linked in readiness to identical device aboard derelict. Sufficient control for destruction may be manifested from here.’

Her heart sank as she realized the alien was a step ahead of them. ‘And what happens when Arbenz comes back up here? Who do you think he’s going to blame for… for this carnage?’