Nova War

'Yeah?' She brightened. 'I'd like that.'

And then, with a smile and a brief wave, she was gone out the door, and Lucas Corso stared into the darkened silence around him for a long, long time.

Epilogue

Cold air tumbled down from high mountain peaks and across a barren plain that stretched out towards a distant horizon, stirring up little eddies of sand here and there and scattering the fragile, needle-like leaves of nearby porcupine bushes. A road cut across the plain in a long, straight line, before vanishing into an industrial haze that obscured the setting sun.

An atmosphere factory belonging to the House of Attar loomed out of the haze like an abstract sculpture of a toad rendered in steel and iron, belching out climate-altering quantities of gas, while administrative buildings and workers' quarters, rendered in cheap concrete, clustered tightly around its base. Clouds tinged green from bioengineered algae stained the dusk skies the colour of pale lime.

Dakota stared on past the factory while her kukaman mount belched and shifted. She reached up and adjusted the neckerchief she'd pulled over her breather mask. The same gritty dirt that caked her face wherever it was exposed had a habit of clogging up her mask's filtration systems.

The kukaman she rode on suffered no such inconvenience. It was not the product of natural evolution, and had clearly benefited from an excess of boar DNA. Shortly after arriving on Morgan's World, Dakota had been warned that in order to reach New Ankara – the besieged capital of the House of Attar – she would have to make her own way through a mountainous region notable for the presence both of Attar snipers and of the insurgents they doggedly hunted through a thousand hills and valleys. It was a trek by land of some two hundred kilometres, but anything taking to the air within a thousand kilometres of New Ankara was liable to be shot down by any one of a number of weapons platforms currently in orbit above the planet.

Despite the warnings, Dakota had purchased a balloon-wheeled transport and set off towards the distant mountains, the first hint of dawn glimmering beyond their peaks. Less than one hundred and fifteen kilometres later, she'd run straight into a night ambush.

The insurgents encountered had been armed only with primitive rocket-launchers and shotguns, but that was all they needed to blow out the front two tyres on her transport and send it skidding into some nearby rocks, its front axle twisted beyond repair. Dakota had crawled out of the ruined vehicle and made for cover while a number of voices shouted in unidentifiable accents.

A few seconds later, the technicians and crew of an orbital platform maintained by the House of Attar were alarmed to find themselves losing control of their orbit-to-ground offensive systems. Pulse ca

And, meanwhile, Dakota hid in the deep shadow between two massive boulders with her hands clamped over her ears, wondering how the hell she was going to get to New Ankara now.

By the time it was all over, maybe four and a half minutes had passed. She had then found the kukaman tied to a post at what was clearly the insurgents' encampment, its long lizard-like tail swinging from side to side in an anxious way, suggesting it hadn't been fed in a while. Dakota dragged one of the burned corpses back to the encampment and then made friends with the beast while it chewed on the bones of one of its former masters. Trader was there, in New Ankara, as Dakota had known he would be. His yacht had been like a beacon in the interstellar night, drawing her inevitably to Morgan's World.

She had guided the kukaman, grumbling and croaking, past the factory without further incident, finally setting it loose near the crest of a hill that overlooked the city. Dakota had then made her way into a disused system of tu

She emerged an hour and a half later, tired and sore and stinking of sewage, close to the centre of the city. Buildings surrounded her, their walls stained in pale agate tones by their edenwood resin coating. Long murals, here and there, depicted key battles from the earliest days of settlement, when the most powerful of the noble houses had battled each other for dominance. Soldiers moved regularly along the streets, maintaining a curfew, but they were too few in number and overstretched.

All she had to do was wait quietly for a while, stay out of sight, and then move on.

Trader realized she was coming, of course, since his yacht's onboard equipment had detected the Magi ship the instant it entered the system.

Finally Dakota came to a flat-roofed tower that rose high above the rooftops of the city's Merchants' Quarter. It had once been a water tower of enormous capacity, an ornate and rugged edifice for which the city had been rightly famous. Until just recently it had been long abandoned, but money had clearly been lavished on constructing the elaborate new pumping mechanism which now encircled its cylindrical wall, as well as on the discreet defensive systems positioned just shy of the roof almost seventy metres above her head.

From behind a corner, she observed three guards with their eyes adjusted for night-vision and carrying weaponry both visible and concealed.

Dakota watched them react as they each received a carefully faked alert. After they went dashing out of sight, she crossed the street quickly. Her implants reached out, through the orbiting Magi ship, and began to leach confidential files from stacks belonging to the House of Attar's Ministry of Internal Security.

There was only one guard now remaining between her and Trader. His name was Murat Oran, and the families of the dozen men and women he had tortured to death would be celebrating his demise long into the night.

She entered by a narrow doorway set in the side of the tower, and saw Oran seated in the shadows, facing towards her but looking down at a book held in his hands. His eyes widened when he noticed her and he started to stand. She raised her pistol and shot him in the head and chest twice each. He slumped back into his chair without a sound.

Dakota pushed on, aware there were weapons systems hidden everywhere, targeting her from each moment to the next, but none of them firing.

Finding a stairwell that wound round and round the inside of the tower, she soon reached the top of the building. There she passed through several doors until she found herself on a narrow tiled lip surrounding the giant tank that filled almost the whole of the tower's interior.

Looking up, she noticed how the iron plates of the flat roof overhead had been re-soldered in the very recent past. She then peered down into the liquid depths, where she could discern the outline of a superluminal yacht that barely fitted within the tower's circumference.

Trader in Faecal Matter of Animals, now a fugitive from his own kind, rose through the waters towards her. Before he reached the surface, his field-bubble formed about him, trapping the waters around him, and lifted him into the narrow pocket of air between the roof and the water's surface.

Piscine eyes regarded her blankly. 'You have come to gloat, perhaps, Miss Merrick?' he asked. 'My host, the Caliph of Attar, has been most concerned to lose control of one of his orbital platforms.'

She hunkered down, placing her pistol flat on the tiles before her. 'An exchange of information. That's all I want, Trader. I tell you something, you tell me something.'