Nova War

'So… in effect, you yourselves created the Shoal Hegemony?'

'Our navigators believed they could control the Shoal.'

'They were wrong, weren't they?'

'Desperate times, Dakota. Mistakes were made.'

Dakota found she could stand at last. She walked past the orrery and stepped towards the seated Librarian. The face remained in shadow.

'The Bandati never figured out a way to get inside you, after all this time,' she reflected. 'But it took hardly any time for Corso and the Freehold to penetrate deep inside the derelict at Nova Arctis. Why is that?'

'That ship had been seriously damaged. I'm rather better defended, and the Bandati never developed the equivalent of machine-head technology.' The figure shrugged. 'Fortunately.'

Dakota thought she saw the hint of a smile beneath the shadows. 'Before you go,' the Librarian said. 'There's one last thing I have to show you – to help you towards the decision I know you will make. Look behind you.'

Dakota turned. Yet more pools of light began to appear beyond the orrery of Ocean's Deep; dozens at first, then hundreds…

'You see?'

'I do,' Dakota breathed. 'I – I already knew, in a way, but I couldn't bring myself to believe it.'

'You suspected there were many more Magi ships, but all lacking navigators.'

'Yes, but…' she glanced again at the oases of light, close on a thousand now, that stretched through a darkness far more extensive than the onion-domed building she had originally found herself in. 'So many?'

'Then you know what it is you have to do.'

It was so obvious now: a way to foreshorten the Nova War that wouldn't destroy the Consortium, and also a possible means to redemption not just for herself but for all the machine-heads who had suffered the fall-out from Redstone.

'Now look at me,' the Librarian commanded.

She stepped further towards the seated figure, and the shadows dropped from its face.

Dakota fell into an infinity of stars. Twenty-four Corso was led back out of the domed building by a Bandati warrior. He stared at the human-built ground transport now parked next to the truck that had brought him and the rest of the Bandati to the maul-worm's lair. Most of Honeydew's warriors were gathered a short distance away, busily clicking and chittering amongst themselves. A few others circled high overhead, presumably on guard duty.

The bodies of murdered station-Bandati still lay scattered all over the plaza.

His attention was riveted by four humans, all wearing battle armour, who were deep in conversation with Honeydew.

The Bandati guard's grip on his arm still firm, Corso could only stare at the newcomers: real, live people. One of them, he soon realized, was Sal, but at first he almost didn't recognize him. The man looked so different, as if Corso hadn't set eyes on him in decades. It was a shock to remember it had actually been barely a couple of months.

For a moment, Corso allowed himself to imagine that his troubles were finally over, that he'd been rescued and nobody was going to torture, kill, interrogate or eat him.

It didn't take long before he was stripped of that hope.

The four of them, along with Honeydew, appeared to reach some form of agreement. As they broke off, Corso was pulled forward and left standing next to the transport. Honeydew twittered something at his guard, who then climbed back on the open-bed truck along with the rest of the Bandati. They drove back down the hill in the direction of the spoke-shaft they'd first emerged from.

Honeydew remained behind, however, while Sal climbed up into the transport, being careful to avoid looking at Corso as he did so. One of the three soldiers took Corso by the arm and nudged him inside.

Corso sat meekly in the back of the transport, as silent as a lamb, his gaze focused a long way off. The vehicle started to move, crashing down the slope of the hill and continuing along a different trail from the previous one. Corso stared fixedly at the floor of the transport, too scared to even close his eyes in case he opened them to see the inside of the maul-worm's throat. A little while later, and a couple of kilometres further around the ring's circumference, Corso found himself sitting at a table with several other humans, the lower end of another spoke-shaft towering high overhead.

In the back of the transport one of the men had already introduced himself as Corporal Roche, but revealed only that they were heading for a 'command post'. That turned out to be basically a conference-sized table set in the centre of a shallow open-air auditorium perched strategically atop yet another hill.

Around the same table sat four other people, seated on lightweight aluminium deckchairs. Several heavily armoured Consortium troopers stood nearby, constantly sca

In the centre of the conference table sat a simulation projector with a map of the Ocean's Deep system floating above it. One symbol marked the presence of a Shoal coreship, while a black, spiked monstrosity clearly indicated the Emissary vessel that he'd arrived on.

Corso stared around the table, and those seated at it, with haunted, disbelieving eyes.

'I said, do you know who I am, Mr Corso?'

It took a moment for Corso to realize the woman seated directly opposite was addressing him.

'Why, yes, I do,' he replied, sounding half-dazed. 'Senator Marion Briggs.' She was a member of the Freehold Senate, and had been decorated during the war with the Uchidans. The flesh just below her right ear was mottled and the ear itself looked half-melted, a legacy of some long-ago battle.

'I knew your father, Lucas,' said Briggs, more gently. 'He was a good man.'

'Thank you,' Corso said automatically.

Not all of those present appeared to be military – one individual in particular, by the name of Langley, was dressed in a long dark coat that gave him a vaguely priestlike air.

Corso recognized the one seated between Briggs and Langley as General Gregor Hua, the man responsible for the Consortium's disastrous campaign on Redstone – the same conflict Dakota had barely survived. He was a small, round-faced man of Korean descent, wearing light body armour and with a single pistol holstered at his hip.

When the General caught his eye, Corso found it difficult not to give him his immediate attention.

'I'll assume, Mr Corso, that you weren't expecting to see us.'

'That would be something of an understatement, sir.'

'Do you understand why we're here?'

'I'll hazard a guess that you're also after the derelict.'

'Very good, but not quite accurate. We're here to provide expert help and aid to Immortal Light while they try and prevent the derelict from falling into enemy hands. To which end we've been pursuing several paths of investigation.'

'Just a minute.' Corso nodded towards the simulation. 'How did you all get here? On a coreship?'

Briggs's face hardened and she started to say something, but Hua gave her a sharp look and she fell back, silent and angry-looking.

'We were brought here on board the Emissary ship,' the General explained, 'or rather, we rendezvoused with Immortal Light forces within their own system, then… hitched a lift.'

'With the Emissaries? And you're still alive?' Corso asked, with genuine amazement.

All eyes around the table regarded him with frank suspicion.

He finally turned to directly face his old friend for the first time since he'd emerged from the dome. 'Sal, how long have we known each other?'

'Since we were kids,' Sal grudgingly admitted.

'You were one of my best friends, to the extent that I would talk to you when I was alone in that cell, and thinking I'd never see another human being ever again. I heard you when he' – and with this, he nodded towards Honeydew – 'was using me like fish bait.' Corso gripped the edge of the table, waiting for his own anger to subside. 'They were torturing me, and you just stood by and let them. Why?'