Nova War

'If you believe I'm self-aware, then, yes, I did. If you don't believe I am, you can blame the creatures who programmed that answer into me.'

Dakota tried a different tack. 'Are you a Librarian? Like the ones inside the… the derelict I found in Nova Arctis?'

She had almost said the derelict I destroyed, but then hesitated as if fearful that the creature before her might seek revenge for destroying one of its own kind.

'It might,' the darkened figure replied, 'be more accurate to think of me as a Head Librarian – a caretaker intelligence, if you will, always in thrall to its navigator. You might also think of me as' – and with this, the shape raised one entirely human-looking hand as if grasping an idea out the air – 'an adviser of sorts.'

Dakota glanced towards the orrery, and realized it was a representation of the entire Ocean's Deep system. The star at its centre was a golden sphere, with a brass gas giant slowly ticking its way around it. Small, rough-edged rocks that looked like uncut diamonds apparently represented the asteroid fields, while dark, streaky balls of marble stood in for the smaller planets. A ball of dark obsidian represented the black hole that orbited Leviathan's Fall, and there were even tiny models of the coreship and the Emissary Godkiller, now visibly clicking their way closer and closer to Leviathan's Fall.

She leaned in closer, fascinated, and realized there was even a minute model of the scout-ship carrying her and Days of Wine and Roses ever nearer to the gas giant. A model of Darkening Skies' secret colony was attached to Leviathan's Fall by a filigree wire.

The Head Librarian leaned forward. 'You're admiring my machine.'

'It's… very complicated.'

'Crucial moments in history usually are, when you're involved in them. Historians with the benefit of hindsight have a habit of rendering such moments far more intelligibly than they might have seemed to those actually caught up in them.'

'All right, Head Librarian, why am I here? Why did you drag me here just when…' She left the end of her sentence hanging in the air. Just when we were about to die.

'So I can help you in making a decision,' the shadowed form replied. 'It might benefit you,' it added, 'to think of me as a distant cousin of the AI on board the Piri Reis. I must apologize, by the way, for the damage caused to it.'

'That was you?'

'There was a… confusion when it came to identifying you from a distance of several light-years. I suspect you don't realize it, but machine-heads can, over time, imprint an unconscious pattern of their own thought processes on systems like the Piri's AI. From a distance, it can appear as if you are a single mind.'

The shape affected a shrug of the shoulders. 'We attempted to reorganize its core programming, believing it was part of your conscious mind. But as we soon discovered, its mechanisms are too crude for genuine consciousness. By this point, you yourself were already deep in the process of navigator maturation – by which I mean the changes to your original machine-head implants, which have now been fully replaced with something far more compatible with my own systems. You can thank the ship you found in Nova Arctis for that.'

'You know what happened to it, then.'

'If you're afraid of punishment, don't be. The knowledge it carried was not unique; each one of us carries the same data in our stacks. You were merely trying to prevent it falling into the wrong hands. In fact, you did no less than many Magi navigators did when confronted by the Shoal's betrayal.'

'I have a question. Why did it go to Night's End?'

'Your escape from Nova Arctis system was difficult, dangerous, and driven by necessity. It made the logical decision to try and get you as close as possible to the next and nearest Magi ship.'

'But it didn't make it all the way.'

The figure shifted slightly in the gloom. 'Given the circumstances, it's surprising it got anywhere at all, Dakota. Necessity forced you to jump out of the Nova Arctis system before the ship was absolutely ready.' The shadowy figure spread its hands. 'But now you're here.'

'So I am.' She caught herself fidgeting, and folded her hands over her knees. 'Do you know why I'm here?'

'I believe you want to stop Immortal Light and the Emissaries from reaching me first.'

'I need to take control of the scout-ship I'm currently aboard – its defensive drones as well, just so I can try and stay alive. You know I can't do that without using you as a go-between. Why didn't you let me assume control?'

'The answer to that question is… complicated. There are other candidates for control of the Magi ship of which I am part.'

''What candidates?' She desperately wanted to get up, walk over and stare into the face of whatever was interrogating her But she couldn't move. She wasn't physically trapped, but she simply couldn't summon up the will, or even the strength, to lift herself up from the chaise-longue and take the necessary steps.

She was, in fact, helpless.

'First things first,' the Librarian continued, leaning forward, its face tantalizingly close to becoming visible. 'Look around you.'

The Librarian waved a hand to indicate the onion-dome above and the carpeted space around them. In a brief moment, the building and its shafts of light dimmed until the chaise-longue, the chair and the orrery were isolated in a pool of light that came from no particular direction. Beyond was only darkness.

Just then, another pool of light appeared a considerable distance away, revealing a second orrery. Dakota stared at it, and, as she did so, her mind's eye seemed to zoom towards this second device until its components and levers were as clear as if she was standing next to it.

The second orrery represented little more than a single world, a sphere of dense blue glass hiding a darker core. Bright points of light like tiny stars floated high above its surface, as it sailed alone, seemingly through a spray of diamond dust.

'This is the Shoal home world,' the Librarian explained, 'and it is a very long way off. This is where they maintain their Deep Dreamers – technological oracles designed to predict both near-and far-future events.'

Beneath the thick blue glass – Dakota understood without being told that this was an ocean world – something enormous and tentacular shifted as if alive.

'The Shoal predicted all this happening? That's why Trader followed us to Nova Arctis – is that what you're saying?'

'The Dreamers predict many possible futures, while Shoal-members like Trader try to manipulate key events solely for the Hegemony's benefit – often regardless of the cost to other species.'

'Do the Emissaries have anything like this?' Dakota now realized that other, more distant orreries were starting to appear all around them, each illuminated by its own pool of directionless light. One in particular featured a writhing, smoke-like shape that was difficult even to look at.

'Fortunately no,' the Librarian replied. 'The Emissaries are exemplary proof of why Maker caches are so potentially dangerous: they can grant enormous power without understanding. The Emissaries are an immature species who haven't had the opportunity to evolve alongside that technology – to make the necessary mistakes only in order to survive them and thereby grow wiser. They were a primitive culture when they first stumbled across a Maker cache, and they still are now. They are, in fact, exactly the kind of creature the caches were apparently intended for – volatile and ultimately self-destructive.'

'Except, the way things are going now, they'll probably wind up destroying everyone else as well as themselves.'

'Precisely.'

'Is that what will happen if I don't get to you first?'

'Almost certainly.'

'I don't want that responsibility,' Dakota moaned. 'It shouldn't just be up to me.'