Empire of Light

The next thing he knew, he was still inside the transport car, but his hands were grimy and his body stank of sweat like he had never once taken a shower.

There was something he had to remember… something important.

But, however hard he tried, it wouldn't come back to him.

Chapter Twenty-four

The Mjollnir jumped again only seven hours later, before dropping back into space several hundred light-years closer to the edge of the Orion Arm. Ahead lay the region of the Long War, the main battleground of the Shoal's fifteen-thousand-year conflict with the Emissaries, and beyond that the Perseus Arm.

Once the all-clear had sounded, Lamoureaux climbed back out of the interface chair and nodded to Corso.

'We're pushing it with these jumps, Lucas. Too many and too often. This ship wasn't designed for that kind of stress.'

Corso glanced towards him. 'Objection noted,' he replied, and returned his attention to the console before him.

Lamoureaux thought of saying something more, then changed his mind and left the bridge: there was no point telling Corso what he almost certainly already knew. More than twenty drive-spines had failed this time. New ones were already being manufactured, but if they kept failing at this rate the Mjollnir's jump capacity was going to be seriously compromised. Ty had paused in his work when the jump alert sounded, waiting quietly until the all-clear followed a minute later.

He dreaded the next time he might be assigned to a repair crew with Olivarri. Following their encounter, he had buried himself in his work, ru

He thought frequently of Nancy, of drowning himself in the taut muscular curves of her body. The more rational part of him would then like to catalogue the risks inherent in their affair, or remind him of the impossibility of it continuing after their return home. To his eternal surprise and consternation, the thought of the relationship coming to an end left him desolate.

He was still sitting there brooding half an hour later when the Mjollnir 's primary control systems and life-support suffered a catastrophic failure, and another, more urgent, alarm began to sound. Dakota had picked a cabin located outside the centrifuge, having spent too many years working and living in zero-gee conditions to ever really be able to sleep comfortably in gravity, simulated or otherwise. She was still lying there awake when the alarm sounded.

She instantly sat up and locked into the data-space, only to find that large parts of it had gone offline. It was like walking into a deserted house and finding that most of the doors had been locked.

A moment later she felt Lamoureaux pinging her from within the centrifuge.

‹Something bad's happened,› he sent. ‹Most of the physical systems just shut down, from what I can tell. Life-support, fusion reactors, bays and fabricators – none of them are responding even to basic queries.›

Do we have any idea what's going on?

‹Not yet, but I'm heading back to the bridge. Lucas was there when I left, so maybe he'll know something.›

To her considerable alarm, the lights suddenly flickered and went out. Emergency lighting kicked in a couple of seconds later, bathing her in a blood-red light. Some data trickled in from the exterior sensor arrays: nothing out of the ordinary was taking place outside the ship, which at least ruled out an external attack.

If we can't get the life-support back online, we're in deep shit, Ted. This is starting to look like-

‹Sabotage. I know. But don't jump to any conclusions just yet. This isn't the kind of thing you can pull off by just crossing a few wires here or there. Shutting down systems like these one at a time is one thing. But all at once? That takes some serious skill.›

Dakota pulled herself over to the door of her cabin and pressed her palm against its access panel. Nothing happened. She slammed the flat of her hand against it, then remembered there was a manual override accessible through a side panel.

She pulled it open and tugged at the lever behind it. Something clicked loudly and the door slid partway open to reveal a sliver of red-lit passageway beyond. Dakota prised at the open edge of the door with the fingers of both hands until it finally slid all the way open with a protesting whine.

She headed straight for the bridge. The quickest way there was to board a car at the nearest transport hub, about a minute's walk away, but they all proved to be out of action as well. Dakota peered in through the window of one car and saw red failure lights blinking spasmodically on its dashboard. She turned back and made her way to a corridor that led directly towards the hub. Once it was clear that the Mjollnir had suffered a sudden catastrophic systems failure, there was a part of Corso that was not surprised, and his first thought was of Trader.

Ever since Dakota had brought the Shoal-member on board, Corso had made sure that a discreet but constant eye was kept on his yacht. Although the frigate's internal surveillance system had been directed to survey the main hold at all times, Corso wasn't taking any chances. Both Willis and Schiller made frequent trips to the bay to check on Trader's ship in person. Corso couldn't say exactly what he was hoping they might find, but he wanted to send the alien a message that he was under constant surveillance.

He shut the alarm off, and the silence that followed fell across the bridge like a heavy, smothering blanket. He next used a console to project a highly detailed schematic of the Mjollnir overhead. Red dots blinked on and off up and down its length, identifying the depressingly numerous systems failures.

A groggy-looking Martinez entered the bridge, pulling a jacket on. 'What the hell just happened?' he demanded, striding over to join him.

'Take a look for yourself Corso waved towards the console.

Martinez leaned over its glassy surface and quickly sca

'I've never seen anything like this,' Martinez muttered, then peered over at the recently vacated interface chair.

'You're wondering if a machine-head could pull something like this off?' suggested Corso.

'Could they?'

'You told me yourself that the new security measures make it just about impossible for anyone with implants to take covert control without being directly plugged into the interface chair. And if either Ted or Dakota was responsible, the other would know.'

'That's the idea,' Martinez agreed. 'But the system's never really been tested properly, and I wasn't around when they carried out the most recent modifications. Do we have any idea where either Merrick or Lamoureaux are?'

Corso sighed. 'Right now I couldn't tell you where anybody is, Commander.'

'You do realize they're the first and most obvious suspects, regardless?'

Corso nodded irritably. 'Don't forget how hard we've been pushing the Mjollnir. We don't know what problems that might have caused. First that expedition to find the Mos Hadroch… then off again not much more than a week later. We're making longer, more frequent jumps than any human-built ship has ever performed before. We're having to carry out almost constant maintenance as it is.'

'No,' Martinez snapped. 'This is deliberate sabotage.'

'How can you be sure?'

'For God's sake, Lucas.' The Commander nodded towards the overhead schematic. 'Each and every subsystem has been targeted separately. Something like that takes conscious effort. Did you check the surveillance records yet?'