Nova War

And waited.

The tension was growing unbearable. The coreship's commanding officer reported directly to Desire, so perhaps the old fish had already seen reports of the Emissaries' retaliation.

But, then again, Trader recalled there were privileged backdoors programmed into every coreship's primary stacks. As long as he hadn't been completely locked out of the starship's systems, perhaps he could It worked: permission was finally granted. An automated response appeared on one screen, and the Shoal-member's blubbery bulk quivered with relief. The yacht lifted from its cradle and began to make its way towards one of the exit ports.

Recalling Desire's words, Trader meanwhile pored frantically through a database of recent Dreamer predictions. He soon found the details the General had mentioned, but they were so far off the main curve of probabilities…

But not, he finally realized, impossible. They had gambled, and lost.

There had always been some ambiguity in intelligence reports relating to the Emissaries. It wasn't impossible that they had nova weaponry but, given their tendency to overwhelming aggression at the best of times, it seemed unlikely in the extreme that they wouldn't have used it long before now. Ergo, it was assumed they had none.

But, clearly, that assumption was deeply flawed. Someone out there was retaliating with a series of devastating strikes against Shoal-governed systems.

And it could only be the Emissaries. Twenty-three That first day, Dakota walked for several hours, then rested as night fell. She woke the next morning to find breakfast waiting for her, rare Bellhaven delicacies she hadn't eaten since childhood. They had been wrapped in soft crinkled paper and laid by her head.

There was only one path to follow, and nothing else to do but walk. The path ran first through grasslands and then through wide dark forests, eventually becoming a highway that led through one deserted town after another. There were no other roads, no other paths to follow; for all she knew she might walk right around the world she had woken up in until she came back to her starting point.

Days became weeks. And, although eating was not a necessity in this virtual environment where she found herself, she always woke to find breakfast waiting for her, always found more left for her to eat as the day wore on, as if someone were constantly ru

At first she couldn't rid herself of the constant state of anxiety she'd been suffering ever since the cataclysm at Nova Arctis but, as more and more subjective time passed, she realized she finally had a chance to rest. The sun was unfailingly warm and the skies unca

Dakota passed through uninhabited towns that became larger and larger, separated from each other by long stretches of carefully cultivated forest. She spied once again the spires and grandiose structures of the city, much closer now, and realized her journey must be approaching its end. She walked on steadily, never hurrying, aware that time within the derelict was not equivalent to time outside it.

Finally Dakota reached the outskirts of the city and, lacking any other clue, made her way towards the largest, grandest building that rose in the centre. She took her time as she progressed, wondering if the derelict had drawn inspiration for the architecture here entirely from her own imagination, or if this had all once been real, but destroyed in the nova war occurring in the distant Magellanic Clouds.

Dakota carefully explored some of the i

She lingered, knowing that virtually no time whatsoever would be passing in the outside world. For the moment at least, the Emissary hunter-killers could wait. The Shoal could also wait – along with the Bandati, and everything and everyone else vying for her attention or trying to take something from her.

They could all wait. Dakota spent one final night in what might have been a palace designed for some alien king and queen. To no surprise on her part whatsoever, she had come across an entirely human bed ready waiting for her. Yet the city had been as deserted as every town she had passed through so far, as if its inhabitants had got up as one and simply decamped for ever.

The air around her sang with information. The Magi had lived in a constantly shifting web of data that encompassed their entire galaxy, using tach-comms technology of a sophistication even the Shoal couldn't conceive of. In a crude but nonetheless real sense, they had been a society composed of machine-heads – like herself. When she woke again, she realized at once that she was no longer in the bed she'd gone to sleep in. Instead she rested on a richly upholstered chaise-longue, its fabric decorated with bright and complicated patterns that glittered under the sunlight that slanted down on her from far above.

She was clearly no longer in the palace, since the roof above her culminated in an onion-shaped dome supported on artfully twisted girders and ornate metalwork that rose to a central point perhaps forty or fifty metres above her head. The sun leaked through this elaborate structure, casting a complex pattern of light and dark on a stone-paved floor covered by dozens of finely decorated carpets.

On every side, the walls of the building were lost in the gloom beyond these sprayed patterns of sunlight. A short distance away, almost directly beneath the apex of the onion dome, was another chaise-longue, close to a high-backed armchair. Next to them stood a machine Dakota couldn't at first identify.

She stood up warily, and realized she was dressed in the same clothes she'd worn when still a student on Bellhaven – soft loose trousers and a quilted blouse. There were slippers also waiting for her, but she didn't take advantage of them. The carpets that covered the floor felt warm and comfortably itchy under her bare feet.

Dakota walked over to the chair and chaise-longue and recognized that the machine was in fact an orrery mounted on a heavy circular base. Brass and copper balls and levers gleamed dully in the sunlight.

She realized with a start that the high-backed chair was already occupied by a man with one leg comfortably crossed over the other, his hands resting loosely on the chair's arms. The way the light fell from above, only his legs and lower torso were illuminated, while everything from the chest up was cast into shadow. He was wearing the stiff-necked formal coat and clothes of a Bellhaven tutor. Clearly, she had been cast in the role of student.

'Sit.' The figure gestured to the chaise-longue. 'Please.'

She perched on the edge of the chaise-longue, leaning forward a bit to peer at her host. She still couldn't make out a face. 'Why can't I see you?' she asked. 'What's with the cheap dramatics?'

'It's a personal choice. If you could see a face, you might make the mistake of thinking I was human.'

It felt strange, speaking, after so long. The muscles of her throat and jaw felt stiff as she formed each word. 'I spoke with Magi Librarians before, and they always looked human to me.'

'Merely helper programs: intelligent, but not genuinely self-aware. They simply looked the way you wanted them to look.'

'Are you self-aware?' she asked.

The figure shifted slightly. 'I've been programmed to always say "yes" in response to that question,' it replied.

'Did you… I'm sorry, but did you just make a joke?'