Nova War

But he didn't want to see it destroyed. After all, it had saved his life before. Maybe it could do so again.

'Look,' he said, improvising, 'the data may be scrambled, but you have to allow me the time to try and retrieve more data from the Piri. If I can do that, you could have a working copy of the protocols a lot sooner.'

Honeydew was staring towards the still-smouldering corpses. 'Very well then, Mr Corso. We will keep the Piri Reis for now. But if you don't recover the complete protocols soon enough, I'll make sure you die just as they did.'

I didn't ask you to send a goddamn rescue party, Corso almost complained, then thought better of it. Seventeen The assault on the Queen of Darkening Skies' personal yacht resumed a little while after Dakota had been given over to Trader's custody, and just as an artificial night began to fall across the core-ship's Bandati-occupied sector. From inside the yacht, Dakota heard a sound like unending thunder accompanied by a series of violent, tooth-rattling vibrations that shook the deck and bulkheads.

The yacht's energy reserves were rapidly approaching their design limitations. Immortal Light pulse-ca

Then something entirely unexpected occurred.

Most of the artillery fire was coming from semi-autonomous robot units controlled from an Immortal Light command post set up a few kilometres from the cradle. The air around these temporary structures began to sparkle as tiny shaped-field-bubbles first materialized and then shrank, in the blink of an eye, to a millionth of their original diameter. As those same bubbles winked out, the compressed atmosphere inside them exploded with devastating force.

The command bunkers were destroyed instantly, and then thousands more minuscule field-bubbles rapidly swept through the massed forces Immortal Light had gathered for the siege. The wave of destruction came to a halt less than fifty metres from the Queen of Darkening Skies' yacht.

For a couple of kilometres around the cradle, nothing moved, nothing lived, and everything burned. The pulse-ship that had carried Dakota to the coreship had now been reduced to a pile of softly glowing wreckage.

The yacht itself shuddered and lifted up from its cradle on a cushion of shaped fields, which carried it over the carnage as if it weighed little more than a feather. It was borne rapidly towards one of the kilometre-wide pillars that supported the coreship's outer crust.

High in the nearest side of the pillar, an enormous door irised open that was big enough to swallow the craft whole. The yacht was transported inside and then down a wide fu

Some minutes passed, and a faint blue sparkle appeared high up in the chamber. She looked up to see Trader's field-bubble enter the chamber through a passageway set close under the ceiling. He drifted down towards her and she backed away instinctively, frightened at being left alone with the Shoal-member.

Trader came to a halt, his field-bubble hovering a few millimetres above the deck. His enormous piscine eyes were fixed on her.

Then, as Dakota watched, the walls and ceiling around them began to fade from view, revealing a bottomless stony shaft whose walls rushed by at enormous speed. She felt a lurch of vertigo as the deck beneath her feet also became translucent.

Dakota squatted and placed her hands flat on the deck, just to take some comfort from its solidity. What she was seeing was an illusion, of course, but some part of her subconscious refused to accept that she was still on board the yacht.

The only illumination came from Trader's field-bubble and three vertical rows of lights spaced equidistant around the sides of the shaft, which rose far up above as well as below them.

'Where… where are we?' she managed to stammer. At first she could hardly bring herself to look down at the abyss beneath her feet, but when she finally did, she caught a glimpse of something swirling far below.

'You are to witness something few outside the Hegemony have ever been privileged to see,' Trader informed her. We are on our way to the coreship's Shoal-occupied sector. Hence, we travel downwards, towards the centre.'

The lights rushing by gradually began to slow, and they were nearing the bottom of the shaft. Dakota saw waters foam and break against its walls, and she gasped involuntarily as they suddenly dived deep beneath the choppy waves. The parallel lines of light soon gave way to a darkened abyss.

'The core of this vessel is an artificial ocean,' Trader explained. 'Lightless and serene, as close to the optimum habitable environment of our home world as possible. Consider yourself most privileged to swim in such waters.'

Before long they passed by something that, in Dakota's eyes, had a passing resemblance to a jellyfish- if only jellyfish could grow to the size of a small city. She gazed upon several vast toroid structures centred on a semi-translucent column that undulated as she watched. Dozens of Shoal-members swimming together near the hub of one wheel gave her a sense of the thing's sheer size; they looked like mi

Each torus was co

They continued on until the only light came from Trader's field-bubble.

'Why are you showing me all this?' Dakota demanded.

'Why?' Trader was silent for a moment. 'In essence, my greatest desire is that you witness how very much there is to lose. You and I, dear Dakota, are driven to swim dangerous currents because it is within our natures to do so. You by happenstance stumbled upon our most valued secrets, but in that very process discovered the reasons for such secrecy. And so for all that you believe you hate us – for visiting a multitude of despair upon poor ravaged Redstone, and for your life ever since that unfortunate debacle – you nonetheless understand why we have worked so hard to prevent the spread of the Magi's secrets among our client species.'

There was something appalling about the blackness of the ocean that surrounded them. Dakota felt as if she were descending into hell, and being lost in such an abyss awakened ancient, primeval fears. So she focused on Trader, and his protective bubble of energy, in order to distract herself from what lay beyond him.

'You know,' she managed to say eventually, 'that's not far from being a confession of sorts. Like you have a need to justify your actions to me.'

'It was always within the realm of possibility that some species very like yours would stumble across a cache long before we could sweep it into concealing depths, far from the watchful eyes of others. Yet all we could ever do was forestall the inevitable, and upon my willing fins was placed much of the burden of that responsibility. My only defence is the peace we have imposed upon the galaxy – a peace that has lasted far longer than some of our client species have even existed. To have done otherwise would be to shirk the responsibility thereby placed upon us. And now,' he added, 'my instruments inform me that there are several new structures inside your skull. Magi structures, it seems.'