Stealing Light

Unfortunately for Belle, her parents made the stu

Up to that point, Belle and her family had been taking refuge in an Uchidan temple in the heart of Leverrier’s capital city, Ville d’Aiguille. Consortium-mediated negotiations failed to resolve the political situation and wide-scale rioting broke out. As things turned rapidly ugly, rioters broke into the temple and murdered everyone they found, including Belle and her parents, a few hours before they’d been due to finally be lifted into orbit aboard neutral tugs.

Overall, it had been an ugly, nasty business and, in the following decades, Uchidans everywhere had raised Belle Trevois to the status of a martyr, a symbol of their repression. Statues of her, with arms flung outwards, could be found in most Uchidan temples throughout the Consortium, or at least in those still allowed to exist. Even Corso, a loyal Freeholder, had to admit that the crimes committed against the Uchidans were far worse than those they were accused of.

And here she was again, on Dakota’s ship of all places. Belle Trevois, in the form of a simple religious icon…

He stared at the figurine. Something wasn’t right.

‘Piri,’ Corso asked aloud, ‘where did Dakota acquire this?’

‘On Bourdain’s Rock.’

‘Remind me how.’

‘It was given to her by one of the Shoal race.’

Corso exhaled long and slow. ‘Was that interaction recorded in any way? Sight and sound, visuals, anything like that?’

‘Yes,’ the ship replied with typical machine-like pedantry.

‘Can I see those records?’

‘No. Dakota’s direct permission is required.’

Scratch that then. But so far the ship had supported what Dakota had told him.

Let me think. Let me think… Belle was an involuntary martyr, because she hadn’t chosen her faith. Instead, it had been imposed on her, like a kind of mental rape.

‘Port Gabriel,’ said Corso. ‘Dakota was at Port Gabriel, correct?’

‘Yes.’

‘There was a massacre.’

‘Correct.’

Feeling fairly hopeless, Corso tried acting on a hunch. ‘Piri, is there anything at all in that incident pertaining to Belle Trevois?’

‘A Uchidan military transport named the Belle Trevois crashed there during the first war with the Freehold, but some years prior to the incident in question.’

Corso nodded, finally recalling old, half-forgotten history lessons. The Uchidans had long ago placed a small statue of Belle on the exact same spot where their transport had crashed. The statue still stood, even now, having become famous after the massacres. For years afterwards it kept cropping up again and again in news reports and articles about the Port Gabriel incident.

‘How about records of when Dakota placed that figurine on the imaging plate in the bridge?’

‘Those records have been deleted.’

He hadn’t expected that. ‘Deleted by whom?’

‘By Dakota.’

‘Don’t you think it’s strange that an alien would give a statue of Belle Trevois, of all people, to a woman whose implants had been forcibly compromised by Uchidan ideology? Why would it do that?’

‘This question is not understood.’

Corso had forgotten he wasn’t talking to a true intelligence, just to a machine. He carried on thinking aloud regardless. ‘None of this would be remarkable except for her telling me she didn’t know what the figurine represented or where it came from. But how could she not know?’

If there was any one image most commonly associated with the Port Gabriel disaster, it was that statue.

‘Piri, is there any way to insert a contact virus into inert matter, something that could get inside a machine-head’s Ghost circuits the same way information can be read through an imager plate?’

‘There are research papers on record concerning such speculative technology. However, all attempts at identifying a reliable delivery method, without the use of imaging technology, have proved extremely inconclusive.’

Corso couldn’t rid his head of the idea that something had got inside Dakota the same way it had wormed its way inside the Hyperion. This felt like an unusually fragile chain of logic, yet it appealed precisely because it made perfect sense of Dakota’s more unusual behaviour.

Corso pulled the pressure suit back on and headed towards the bridge as fast as he could.

Even so, as he hurried, he misjudged angles in the zero gee environment, nearly knocking himself out at one point when he ca

Crashing against a wall at the far end of yet another drop shaft, he kicked his way into a co

He heard people yelling as he approached the bridge, and tried to put out of his mind the terrible secret he’d gained from the derelict.

The sight that confronted him upon his arrival there was so ghastly, so morbid, it belonged in the realm of the surreal. Half a dozen bodies lay scattered in various states of contortion, the expressions on their faces making it clear their deaths had been far from peaceful.

In the middle of it all stood Udo, panting hard, one fist gripping the lapel of Dakota’s jerkin while she slumped beside him.

It looked like the man could barely stand. After a moment he turned and saw Corso, staring hard at him for long seconds before raising his other hand and pointing towards him.

‘You. You’re next.’ Udo’s extended hand wobbled, his index finger drawing patterns in the air.

‘Let go of her,’ yelled Corso. ‘She’s the one shot we have left at recovering the derelict. Arbenz will kill you if you harm her.’

‘Fucking machine-head bitch!’ Udo snarled, his lips curling in anger.