Empire of Light

Ty tapped some commands into a terminal mounted next to a sheet of polycarbonate armoured glass, through which the alien remains were visible. A moment later a long robot arm slid out from a recess in the chamber's ceiling, turning this way and that as it reached downwards, its machine-fingers spreading wide, each one of them tipped with a different kind of probe or instrument. It came to a halt just a few inches above the dead alien's carapace.

Ty inhaled deeply and stared at the alien body through the glass. I've waited a long time for this, he thought, then he exhaled slowly.

He quickly typed more commands into the terminal, and in response the upper right corner of the window darkened to show an image of the Atn's remains as seen from directly above. After another moment, this image was replaced by a series of vague outlines rendered in grey, which constantly shifted and altered.

Ty pointed to the monochrome images. 'This is from a multisystem scan I managed to run on the thing's body before they locked me out of the lab,' he explained. 'X-ray, muon, the works. Look here.' He pointed to a black shadow at the core of the image. 'There's something lodged inside the Atn's carapace, but it's completely opaque to everything I can throw at it.'

'And that's the Mos Hadroch?' asked Corso.

'I'm rather hoping it is, yes,' Ty replied, glancing at the Senator.

Merrick was frowning, clearly distracted by something. 'It's the Mos Hadroch, all right,' she said. 'It's been sca

The two men stared at her.

'I'm serious,' she continued. Her eyes lost focus for a moment, and Ty thought she might faint. 'I think it's trying to find information about the swarm.'

'Maybe bringing you here wasn't such a good idea.' Corso began moving towards her.

She put up a hand. 'Wait, Lucas.'

'What does it want to know?' asked Ty, deeply fascinated.

She moved back against one wall, pressing a hand against the bulkhead behind her. 'The swarm's purpose,' she replied. 'Its reason for being.'

'Do you actually know that?' Corso asked, just beating White-cloud to it.

'Sure.' She shrugged. 'There are millions of swarms scattered all across the face of the universe, all in long-range contact with each other via tach-comms. They want to manipulate the underlying structure of reality.'

Corso laughed dismissively. 'Come on, that's ridiculous. Who ever-?'

'It's not ridiculous,' Ty interrupted him. 'Not if they're Wheeler-Korsh engines.'

Corso shook his head. 'Wheeler what?'

A hypothetical technology that manipulates the fundamental properties of space at its lowest possible level, where matter and information cease to be distinguishable,' Ty explained, glancing back into the chamber. He touched the terminal and several tiny cutting tools swung down until they almost touched the carapace. Wheeler-Korsh engines? Incredible. 'And if matter is only an expression of information,' he continued, 'then the universe itself is ultimately programmable, an infinitely complex computational system. Subatomic particles aren't really anything more substantial than a collection of data concerning spin, angle of momentum, location… that kind of thing. Some might say that this means there is no such thing as death, only iterations of a program that started ru

'That sounds almost like religion,' said Dakota.

Ty froze for a moment, realizing how close he was coming to describing Uchidanism. 'It's pure speculation, of course,' he said, turning and forcing a smile. 'Unless one actually finds a Wheeler-Korsh engine, in which case it ceases to be just speculation.'

'It sounds pretty far-fetched,' said Corso, glaring.

Ty ignored him. 'How did you find this out?' he asked Dakota.

'I tapped into the swarm's collective mind when I went out to investigate it,' she explained. 'It's how I found out about the Mos Hadroch.'

'Wait a minute,' said Ty. 'You said they communicated by tach-comms, but if they're spread all across the universe, how could they power the signals to reach that far? You'd need power on an astronomical level to pull off something like that.'

'I watched them use the energy of a nova,' she explained, 'just to power a signal to a swarm located in another galaxy.'

Both men stared at her in silence for several moments.

'I should be used to having you completely fuck with my head by now,' the Senator finally grumbled, then turned to look at Ty. 'Mr Driscoll, I think it's time we cut that thing open and looked inside, don't you?'

Ty nodded and set to work. Tiny precision plasma jets began to cut into the Atn's carapace with smooth efficiency. Multi-jointed manipulators reached down, securing pieces of metal shell as the jets sliced through them.

The internal biological components of the Atn had long since turned to dust, though Ty made a mental note to analyse the remains of the brain when he had the time and opportunity. There was a chance that useful data might have survived.

'I can't tell you,' he muttered, 'how much I've been looking forward to this.'

Once a large enough hole had been cut, Ty stepped away from the terminal, and the entrance to the isolation chamber slid open. 'Let's take a look,' he said, stepping through.

The three of them crowded inside the small space, which smelled of burned dust and hot metal. The Senator's earlier antipathy towards him appeared to have shifted into something like a grudging respect. It was Merrick that Ty could not make his mind up about: the news archives had carried accusations of murder and thievery. She struck Ty as someone who worked hard to keep her emotions under control, but certainly not the cold-blooded killer she had sometimes been made out to be.

'They're amazing creatures, the Atn,' said Ty, pulling on a pair of insulated gloves. The edges of the hole cut in the carapace still glowed faintly with trapped heat. 'There's strong evidence they've been around for longer than any other species we've come into contact with. Perhaps longer than even your Magi, Miss Merrick,' he added. 'And when we've shuffled off the galactic stage, they'll come wandering back through the empty ruins of our cities.'

'I wondered if maybe that was why they were entrusted with the Mos Hadroch in the first place,' said Dakota, watching as Ty squatted by the carapace. 'They operate on a timescale that pretty much beggars the imagination.'

'I think maybe we'd better get on with this, don't you?' said Corso with faint a

'Yes,' Ty agreed, reaching into a pocket and pulling out a slim torch.

He shone the light into the cavity and discovered that, as he suspected, the creature had been thoroughly gutted. The light played over something smooth, and he reached in past the jagged edges of the hole and touched it. To his surprise, it was very slightly warm to the touch. He shoved the handle end of his torch inside his mouth, to free his hands, then pushed both hands deep inside the cavity.

The object nestling inside the carapace was roughly conical in shape, its blunted point facing up towards him. Two bars like handles extended out and then upwards from the base of the cone, which at least gave him something to grab hold of.

Ty got a good grip on the object and lifted it out. Then Corso grabbed one handle, and together they lowered it to the deck. It was a pale cobalt-blue colour, and seemed to glow with a faint iridescence. There was something undeniably alien about the device, some nameless quality of otherness that sent a tingle of fear and excitement racing down Ty's spine.

Corso peered at it with clear alarm. 'It's not radioactive, is it?'

'Not according to the instruments,' replied Ty. 'If it was, we'd have known long before we even brought it on board. I don't know what could be causing that glow.'