Stealing Light

‘So tell him then, Mr Corso,’ Arbenz repeated. ‘When you tapped into the derelict’s data stacks, you didn’t cover your tracks as well as you might have hoped. In fact, if not for you, we might not have stumbled across this particular item of knowledge ourselves.’

Corso, panting, shook his head, blood fa

Dakota cried out in involuntary sympathy. This time, Corso’s scream was more like that of a wounded animal than anything human. He mumbled something incomprehensible.

Kieran yanked his head back again.

‘Speak up,’ Kieran snarled, bringing the knife down towards Corso’s face this time.

‘No! Wait. OK.’ Corso coughed and spat, his breathing ragged. ‘OK, fine.’ He looked at Dakota. ‘Sorry,’ he murmured to her, and looked away.

Dakota had no idea what exactly he was being sorry for.

‘Why don’t you just tell him yourself?’ Corso asked the Senator, then nodding towards Gardner.

‘Because I’d rather you did. So get on with it.’

Dakota watched, mute and apprehensive.

‘I found some information hidden in the derelict’s stacks,’ Corso told Gardner. ‘But I’d have been insane not to try and hide what I learned,’ he pleaded, looking directly at Arbenz. ‘It’s too dangerous, too-’

‘Kieran,’ urged Arbenz.

‘All right! All right,’ Corso begged, slithering away from the knife still held so close to his face. ‘I know what happened to the civilization that created the derelict. Or I’ve a pretty good idea, anyway.’

‘What we have there is even better,’ Arbenz informed Gardner with gloating triumph, ‘than a faster-than-light drive.’

For a moment, Corso stared at the Senator with unmasked disgust. ‘How good is your history, Mr Gardner?’ he asked, appearing to regain a little of his composure.

Gardner shrugged, looking bewildered. ‘Try me.’

‘Several centuries ago, we split the atom and thought we’d found the ultimate source of cheap energy. It didn’t take long before we turned it into a weapon and bombed entire cities into ashes in seconds. It was a pact with the devil: a way of generating cheap power, but one that could also destroy us all in seconds. It looks like the Magi had something not so different.’

Gardner looked quickly between Arbenz and Corso, then shook his head. ‘I don’t understand.’

Corso continued, sounding as if every word had to be wrenched from his soul. ‘I’d rather die than tell you this if the Senator didn’t already know. The transluminal drive doubles as a weapon that makes the atomic bomb look like a firework. That’s the real secret of the Shoal. And I’ll guarantee you it’s also the reason they’ve tried so hard to prevent any competitor species acquiring the means for faster-than-light travel.’

Arbenz’s excitement clearly became too much for him. ‘Mr Gardner, what we have found changes everything. The Freehold was meant to find that derelict. It’s as if the divine will of God-’

‘It’s got nothing to do with God,’ Corso yelled, his voice cracking and tears streaming down his face. ‘The process is clear, in the records. If a starship equipped with the transluminal drive is allowed to materialize within the heart of a star, even a very stable star, certain processes can be triggered by the ship’s subsequent destruction. The result is a nova.’

Arbenz positively glowed with triumph. ‘A nova, Mr Gardner, a way to detonate entire stars. What we have here isn’t just a device for travelling between stars… it can destroy them, and the worlds in orbit around them, too. Its discovery’-a beatific grin began to spread over his face-‘is very possibly the greatest moment in the entire history of the Freehold.’

Gardner finally had the good sense to look truly frightened. ‘All right, Senator. Assuming this is true, and I find it more than a little hard to believe, who exactly are you pla

‘No one,’ Arbenz replied. ‘That’s the beauty of it. If we can harness the power in that derelict, nobody could stand against us. They’d be insane to even try.’

‘And what if somebody else found out how to do just the same?’ Dakota shouted. ‘What about when the Shoal realize what you’ve been up to, and then threaten to destroy Redstone’s star? Or anywhere else in the Consortium, for that matter?’

Arbenz looked surprised that Dakota had spoken up. ‘The Shoal would do nothing, except to keep on preserving a secret they’ve clearly been sitting on for a long, long time. They must know what the transluminal drive is capable of, so at the worst it’ll be a state of detente -neither our side or theirs will be mad enough to instigate a war of mutually assured destruction.’

Dakota listened, horrified, staring at Arbenz who looked like he’d just been asked to take charge of the Second Coming.

‘But you’re wrong,’ Corso pointed out. He’d managed to haul himself to a halfway-upright position against the wall. Kieran glowered at him threateningly, but stayed where he was. ‘It can happen, because it’s happened before-in the Magellanic Clouds.’

Every pair of eyes in the room, except Dakota’s, turned to focus on Corso. Dakota kept her gaze on the rest of them while Corso explained.

‘We all know about the novae in the Magellanic Galaxies,’ Corso continued, to dumbfounded silence. ‘One after the other, all within roughly the same sector of a neighbour galaxy, more than a dozen stars detonated with no explanation. More than that, they were stars that shouldn’t have exploded. Most of them were the type of main sequence star any life we’ve ever encountered needs in order to survive. There was always the possibility the novae explosions were the product of something intelligent, but that was never more than wild speculation. Well, now we have the proof, in the navigational and historical records on board the derelict. On that basis, I don’t see any reason to doubt that the Magi weren’t refugees from a war of absolute destruction.’

‘And you know this for sure?’ Gardner demanded.

‘I can only tell you what the records themselves say. But it explains a lot.’

‘You’re lying,’ Arbenz hissed.

‘Listen to yourself!’ Corso shouted. ‘The Magi fled from a war that destroyed a fair chunk of an entire galaxy and you think you can control the weapon used to do it?’ He laughed weakly. ‘Finding that derelict is the worst thing that happened to the human race. If the Shoal don’t decide to destroy us, we’ll do it to ourselves, I guarantee you.’

Dakota couldn’t help resenting Corso for keeping so much back from her-even though she knew she’d have done the exact same damn thing. Arbenz was blinkered to the point of insanity, but Gardner was a different matter: he could see how deep they were all dug in now. No wonder the Shoal were terrified at the prospect of their client races discovering the secret of faster-than-light travel: the result might be war on an unbelievable scale. Star after star, after star… exploding in the endless night, spreading deadly, life-destroying radiation throughout the Milky Way, a brief mystery to be pondered in the night skies of a million unknown worlds.