Nova War

The report of the incident, when it finally made its way into Corso's hands, made for heartbreaking reading. And security was tightened yet again.

But at least there were no more attempts made on either of their lives. The commanders of the new military detachments recently arrived at Ocean's Deep made the decision to provide each of the navigators-in-training with armed escorts. These individuals soon found themselves enjoying a unique mixture of instant fame, opprobrium and hatred.

Corso meanwhile returned to a seemingly endless round of talks during which he listened, argued, and attempted to cajole men and women from every stratum of the Consortium Legislate. One popular suggestion, on the part of many of the politicians he met, was that responsibility for electing new machine-head navigators should be shared with the Consortium.

Dakota's answer to this and other possible compromises was always firmly no.

Although she had sufficient political acumen not to say it outright to the Consortium's delegates, Corso knew Dakota was unwavering in her desire for the Peacekeeper fleet to be an entity entirely independent of the Consortium. And, as more weeks passed and the days and nights blurred into one seamless, artificially-lit stream of conferences and discussions, Corso surprised himself by increasingly siding with her way of seeing things.

So few of the politicians and policy-makers he was forced to deal with were interested in much more than short-term goals. Everybody wants to protect their little bit of turf he found himself thinking more than once. They didn't seem to understand something was coming that could burn their little worlds to ashes. Then, one particular morning, Corso opened the door of his quarters only to find a phalanx of Consortium Special Security troopers waiting for him, armed with concussion bolts and holstered batons. He was taken – protesting and still exhausted after the previous night's debates – to a command frigate that had recently docked with the Leviathan's Fall station.

At first he'd thought he might be under arrest – that the Consortium was attempting to wrest control from Dakota, as he'd feared it might do – but instead he found himself thrust inside a crowded lounge area on board the frigate, with Dakota herself standing at a portable lectern at one end.

Corso looked around at the muttering faces of the audience. Most of them were wearing military uniforms or the traditional dark-grey civilian attire of senior politicians and their administrative staff.

They were all staring resentfully at Dakota as if she'd chained them to their seats and was forcing them to watch her eat live babies.

'I'd thank you all for coming,' she said as the hubbub began to fade, 'but very few of you have had any choice but to be here. So I'll keep this simple and short. I won't accept any more attempts at stopping potential navigators from making their way to Ocean's Deep. Neither will I tolerate attempts at blackmailing them or threatening their families. Believe me when I say you need these people on your side. Any more such attempts will prove utterly futile.'

She sca

The screen on the wall behind her flickered into life, displaying a series of names, faces, and personal information. 'Most of this stuff is highly classified,' Dakota continued. She smiled. 'The kind of information people like me aren't supposedly meant to know.'

Corso instantly recognized the faces as the members of the assassination team who had recently tried to blow the colony to pieces.

'The information currently on the screen has just been transmitted to all of your data-sheets,' she explained to her audience. 'You'll find details there on how those members of the bomb squad were recruited, who did the recruiting, who ordered the mission – along with the planetary governments responsible for putting the plan into action.'

Corso pulled out his own data-sheet and studied the files that had just appeared on it. He glanced around and saw that most of the audience were also staring at their data-sheets. One individual in particular was gripping his sheet so hard his hands were shaking.

'I'm introducing a temporary embargo against all those governments responsible for that attempted atrocity. Temporary, that is, until the new Authority decides otherwise. The colonies identified will not be allowed to continue participating in any negotiations, nor to elect their representatives to the Authority, and no ships of the Peacekeeper fleet will travel to their worlds until further notice.'

She stared around the gathered delegates, her hands gripping the lectern like she expected them to rush her. 'Consider this a warning. Goodbye.'

She strode out of the room to a roar of unanswered questions, escorted by a security contingent.

Corso stared after her, wondering if this was really the same woman he'd encountered just a few weeks before: battered, uncertain and vulnerable.

But then he remembered what she'd told him on several occasions, how time wasn't the same when you were linked into a Magi ship – how you could live virtual lifetimes. Corso had one last encounter with Dakota before she departed.

Back on Redstone, and free from the threat of immediate Consortium intervention, the Uchidans and the Freehold had renewed their conflict. On other colony worlds, a dozen similar internecine struggles till now suppressed by the overwhelming military authority of the Consortium were either on the verge of breaking out into open war, or had already done so. And set against all this strife was a greater conflict, so far away still that it would be mille

The Long War.

Ever since Dakota had asked him to make public certain details of the Shoal-Emissary war, the tach-net news networks had been rife with speculation that the Long War was nothing more than propaganda invented to fuel support for the Peacekeeper Authority. Once again, Dakota's criminal background was pored over in endless detail, as was her participation in one of Redstone's bloodiest tragedies.

There was no doubt she made an unlikely saviour.

Dakota, meanwhile, had been true to her word: the Aleis system, fifty light-years from Earth, was the first to be shut out of any future discussions. The handful of representatives it had sent to Ocean's Deep were placed under house arrest until it was decided whether or not they'd been directly involved in attempted sabotage.

In the meantime, Corso was left to manage a dozen staff who were busy juggling endless requests for meetings, clarifications, decisions and the occasional, inevitable threat. But at least his movements were no longer restricted, and he could now go where he pleased, escorted by a carefully vetted armed guard called Leo.

And so it went, on and on and on: meetings were held, arguments were made, positions were stated. Fist-fights were far from unusual. And during it all, Dakota seemed to fade into the background, rarely seen but always easily in touch.

As Corso became busier, he relied increasingly on proxies to handle the meetings he couldn't attend. Thus the Peacekeeper Authority was finally taking shape, achieving the kind of solidity Corso hadn't really believed possible when Dakota had first suggested it.

Machine-head candidates were still trickling into the system, but there were surely many more still too wary of risking public exposure, reprisals, or the unpleasant fate of Jim Krieger. Also, medical and technical facilities, donated by Bellhaven, were being built in order to create new machine-heads – for the first time in many years. Such candidates had to each undergo a severe psychological grilling to ensure they had no suicidal urges that might prompt them to fly their craft into a star.