Empire of Light

'Okay, Dakota.' He turned and glanced at her. 'I think it's time we talked. What did you mean when you said you destroyed your ship to get free?'

'I told you, I wasn't ready to-'

'Bullshit. You just don't want to talk about it, full stop. I don't care, but I want an explanation. I deserve an explanation.' He nodded towards the two occupied medboxes. 'Those two wouldn't be in there if they didn't believe in what we've been trying to achieve over the last couple of years. People got killed when we boarded this frigate. Most of them weren't bad people either, Dakota. They were just doing their job, and now they're dead. So don't try and feed me any more crap about not being ready.'

Dakota realized that the corners of her eyes were damp, and blinked the incipient tears away. 'I told you things were different after the Magi brought me back from the dead.'

'Different in what way?'

'In that now I only ever go where the Magi ships want me to go. I don't get to have a say any more, not since I was resurrected. They made me, rebuilt me, and that makes me part of them. But I'm still useful to them, whether I like it or not.'

'So you decided to do something about it.'

'The thing you have to understand,' she said, 'is that the Magi ships are hardwired to track down and destroy caches, and to find the entity that made those caches – the entity we know as the Maker. Right?'

Corso nodded.

'Hardwired, Lucas. That means finding the Maker has a higher priority than anything else where the Magi ships are concerned, even higher than obeying their navigators.'

'So their original navigators weren't really in charge of their ships either?'

'It's more complicated than that. The original navigators were bred to their purpose, and because of that they shared the same obsessive goal as their ships did – there could never be a conflict of interest. But they were all wiped out, and when we came along, instead of making everything better again, it presented the Magi ships with a conflict. On the one hand they're programmed to obey our orders, but on the other they're overwhelmingly programmed to track down and destroy any caches and ultimately find the Maker.'

'So what can they do?'

'They can try to change their human navigators: remould them into something more compatible with their own mission. Except, instead, it's turning them into vegetables or – if they're lucky – just leaving them with permanent brain damage.'

'Jesus and Buddha,' Corso exclaimed. 'You're talking about the bends?'

There was a soft electronic chime and then the whirring diagnostic equipment slid back up towards the ceiling and fell silent. Dakota pulled herself upright and clasped her hands over her knees.

Corso glanced towards Lamoureaux's medbox, then back again, with an appalled expression on his face. 'You're seriously telling me the Magi ships are trying to turn our navigators into something that isn't human?'

'Trader once told me he didn't regard me as human anymore. I didn't really believe him at the time, but I understand what he meant a lot better now.'

She could see Corso was still struggling with this revelation. 'But it's not working, is it?' He nodded at Lamoureaux.

'No, it's not,' she admitted. 'At least not for most of us. But I can't say for certain they haven't already succeeded in turning other machine-heads into the image of their original navigators. Maybe we won't find out until something happens.'

'Like?'

'I think their first priority would probably be to destroy the cache at Tierra.'

She watched Corso try to assimilate this. 'What?'

'Remember their original mission, apart from tracking down the Maker, was to destroy caches wherever they could find them. They don't make exceptions.'

'But the Magi ships don't have weapons,' he pointed out. 'How could they…?'

She smiled as Corso reached the obvious conclusion on his own, his eyes widening in horror. 'By destroying whichever star the cache is orbiting, of course,' she said, finally pushing herself off the examination table.

'We have to warn them,' he said, in a half-croak.

'Sure, you could,' she replied, stepping over to the screen to study the details of her diagnostics, noticing the dark patches inside her skull where her implants were located. 'But think about it, Lucas. I heard the news about Consortium forces moving in and taking over the Tierra cache by force. They're not going to listen to anything you have to say. But, if it came to the worst and we did lose the Tierra system altogether, there are other caches out there, and we still have other ships we can use to find them.'

She watched him think this over. He'd try to warn them anyway, she had no doubt, because that was the kind of man he was: endlessly drawn to hopeless causes.

'So you destroyed your ship…?'

'Because I couldn't trust it any more.'

Corso gaped at her, dumbfounded.

There was another chime, and the diagnostics display flashed a couple of times.

'What does it say?' she asked.

'That there are lesions in your brain,' Corso told her. 'The med-bay thinks you've suffered a grand mal seizure.' He reached out and touched the screen, and more information appeared. 'It's the same thing as Ted,' he observed.

'I feel okay. And whatever changes the Magi made to my brain or Ted's, your med-bay isn't programmed to factor them in.'

'Well, one way or another, there are changes.'

'Will Ted be okay?'

Corso shrugged. 'We won't know until the medbox is finished with him. How are you feeling?' he asked, looking at her with a curious expression.

'About what?'

'I know you were…'he struggled to find the right word '… attached to your ship; to the experience of being joined with it.'

'I'll deal with it,' she said abruptly. 'I'm not going to crack up like I did before.' She nodded towards the med-bay entrance. 'You said we should take a look at what we've gone to all this effort for. How about now?' Ty Whitecloud looked up at the sound of the lab's airlock cycling, and realized he still had no idea if the Senator's plan to hijack the frigate had been successful. He sat at the lab's primary console, sudden tension knotting the muscles of his back.

The i

Her eyes were wide and dark, and she hardly seemed to blink. Her hair stood up in spiked tufts, giving the impression of someone who didn't get much sleep, and she was attractive, in a half-starved-looking sort of way. Had she, he wondered, already been on board the frigate when they arrived?

'Dakota, this is Nathan Driscoll,' said Corso, fixing Ty with a peculiar stare, as if to put particular emphasis on Ty's nom de guerre. Corso had so far spoken to Ty only when absolutely necessary, and as on those occasions the Senator's distaste for him remained entirely evident. 'Nathan's responsible for the original research that led us to the Mos Hadroch. Without his help, we wouldn't have got this far.'

Ty nodded wordlessly to Dakota, and crossed his hands on his lap so that the ring he had been given by the Consortium agent, and which he wore on his right hand, was hidden under the left palm.

He heard that high-pitched static-like sound again, but it rapidly increased in pitch until it passed beyond his ability to hear it. He saw Merrick wince in that same moment, pressing the fingers of one hand against her temple.

She heard it too, he realized. A glance at the Senator confirmed that he appeared unaware of her distress.

'I think it's time we had a look at exactly what we came here for,' said Corso. 'Mr Driscoll?'

Ty nodded and stood up. 'This way,' he said. They passed through another room, then came to the isolation chamber containing the Atn's remains.