Nova War

They both ducked into the airlock and waited for it to cycle through. Dakota slumped down, panting, and tentatively pressed fingertips against her aching head to feel for injuries. Scrapes and bumps, it seemed, nothing more.

What she'd seen of this station through the derelict's senses amazed her. That it hadn't yet suffered a catastrophic failure of its life-support infrastructure was a source of wonder, and it was clearly barely capable of keeping the onboard population alive. At least two of the rings – including the one they now found themselves in – showed signs of having been abandoned for several centuries. The colony was like a corpse that hadn't yet realized it was dead. It wouldn't take much effort to send it drifting into the path of the nearby black hole.

A few seconds later they were through to the other side, and facing the entrance to what was apparently a transport system ru

They entered an oval-shaped car floating serenely between sets of rails spaced regularly around the interior of a tu

'It occurs to me,' said Roses, 'that it's in your power to destroy this station, the way you destroyed the one in Night's End. But you didn't.'

He reached out to a scratched and dented control panel, but the car started moving before he could even touch it.

He turned and stared at her, and she gave him a small smile. The car rapidly accelerated.

'It doesn't actually work that way,' she explained. 'Before I can completely control the derelict here, I need to make physical contact with it.'

'I don't understand. You clearly controlled the starship that first brought you to Night's End.'

'Yes, but I physically got inside it back in Nova Arctis. After that, we were fully linked. Look, if just anyone could control a Magi ship remotely, you could override a navigator's control all too easily. This way, the derelict only recognizes a single individual – the one who happens to bond with it. The fact I'd already formed a bond with another derelict means the one here will recognize me, and help me, but only to a limited extent.'

Days of Wine and Roses regarded her silently for some moments, displaying a species-wide trait she was begi

'And once you have control of it, will you then destroy this station?'

Dakota glanced sharply at her Bandati companion, who had perched himself on a dandelion-like seat, narrow ball-tipped wires projecting from a thick, flexible arm rising straight out of the floor. These seats were widely spaced, enough to allow each passenger to spread his wings comfortably.

Dakota, unable to use such seats, slumped on the floor instead. Feeling weariness sap her strength, she looked up at the Bandati, and wondered what to do with him.

'I'm not sure what you mean by that question,' she replied at last.

'We obtained records of your interrogations, which suggest you consider yourself the only one who can be entrusted with control of a Magi ship. And yet you murdered thousands when you destroyed the previous derelict.'

The tone of Dakota's reply was taut and angry. 'I had reason to believe that not destroying the derelict would lead to trillions of deaths – and a war like nothing else before or since.'

'So you believed you were making a morally correct judgement.'

Of course, she almost replied, but suddenly had a mental flash of Senator Gregor Arbenz producing the exact same argument. Worse, she could imagine Trader saying the same thing, too.

Dakota felt her fists tighten with anger and frustration and, when she replied, it was all she could do to hold it in. 'I know a lot more now,' she declared, her voice pitched low enough as to be almost inaudible. 'I've learned things since that make all the difference. And I'll never do anything like that again, I swear.'

She glowered at the alien. None of this would have happened if your two Hives were at all capable of getting along, she thought, and it took her some effort not to give voice to this opinion.

But there were other things she had to worry about first.

Like Hugh Moss, for instance.

She'd sensed him as soon as they'd arrived in the docking bay. Langley too. That meant they were both inside the station – both perilously close to the derelict.

'What do you plan to do now?' asked Roses.

'There are two other machine-heads already here, one of them from the Consortium. The other is a little harder to explain, but he's on his way to the derelict right now. We're going to have to deal with them sooner or later.'

She tried not to think about what might happen if she came face to face with Langley in a competitive situation. After all, her memories of her one-time tutor were fond ones. She tried searching for him through the station's security network lenses and caught a brief glimpse of him weaving his way through the tight, enclosed spaces between a series of vast pumping mechanisms. He was accompanied by several extremely tired and haggard-looking men and women, most of them in military gear, who she guessed were fleeing the Emissaries. That there was a Consortium presence here at Ocean's Deep was a wonder in itself.

She could tell Langley's implants hadn't changed the way hers had, and she breathed a sigh of relief on realizing he wasn't, after all, likely to present a challenge. Besides, he was currently moving away from the derelict, obviously too caught up in the immediate business of staying alive.

'And their identities?'

When Dakota told him, the alien remained silent for what felt like a very long time.

'Hugh Moss,' Roses eventually remarked. 'This is not something I anticipated.'

Dakota frowned. 'You know him?'

'Yes, after a fashion. We met several times while I was carrying out ambassadorial duties within the Consortium. I encountered him recently on Ironbloom. He's not someone I would want controlling an artefact of such enormous power.'

The car suddenly decelerated, although it was still deep inside the tu

Taken by surprise, Roses slipped out of his seat, while Dakota remained where she was, watching him silently. The car suddenly reversed with a jerk, moving several metres backwards before once again coming to a halt.

'Did you do that?' asked Roses.

Dakota stood up and pointed to a string of overhead lights ru

She smiled at the Bandati agent. 'Let's be clear on something, Roses. I'm not interested in who you do or don't want getting to the derelict, even if it happens to be me. I'm here because Trader threatened to destroy my world if I didn't get it and take it back to him.'

'I know that,' Roses replied carefully.

Dakota's smile was almost savage. 'There's not much I can't leach from the data-stacks of every Darkening Skies ship in this system, and I know you were ordered to kill me once I'd recovered the derelict. Your people don't want the Shoal to get their hands on it any more than I do.'

Dakota waited while Days of Wine and Roses stood silently, facing her with wide, unreadable black eyes.

'My Queen increasingly believes the Shoal have no intention of following through on their promises,' he finally said. 'We know you'd feel constrained to take the ship back to them. My orders were to prevent that.'

The car slowly began to accelerate once more. 'Let's be clear on this much, Days of Wine and Roses. You wouldn't be alive right now if I thought you were any kind of serious threat to me.'