Empire of Light

'We can manufacture new units, can't we?' asked Corso.

Lamoureaux pushed himself away from the table. 'I don't know if we can. It's going to take time to get the rest of the fabricators back online and up to full capacity, and we're pushing them to the limit as it is in manufacturing the new drive-spines. Full-body imaging gear like this is pretty advanced even for the fabricators we've got on board. It's not like knocking out gun-drones or spider-mechs.'

Corso gestured to Nancy to follow him out into the corridor, where they began conversing together in quiet tones.

Lamoureaux touched Dakota's elbow and she moved closer.

'This is going to make things harder for us both,' he said, keeping his voice low enough not to be overheard. 'It's going to seem like one of us did this so we couldn't be sca

'Don't take this the wrong way, Ted, but you were in charge of the ship when everything shut down. And you were also the first one here.'

'I've been up on the bridge the whole time until now, and I'd also say this damage was done during the outage.'

'All right,' she said. 'Does it feel to you like someone's trying to set us up?'

'If they are, they're doing a very good job – not that we were wi

'You know,' said Dakota, 'I came down here and ran a scan on myself the first chance I had after coming on board. Just to be sure. Anyway, I'm clean.'

The corner of Lamoureaux's mouth twitched slightly. 'I did the same thing. Also clean. Did you tell the others that?'

'You think they'd just accept our word for it?'

They pulled apart as Schiller and Corso re-entered the med-bay.

'Commander Martinez is on his way here,' Nancy a

She could have communicated with Lamoureaux via their implants, but her gut told her that Nancy would only become even more paranoid if she guessed what they were doing. So they waited in silence, trying to avoid looking directly at Nancy, while Corso checked data-files on the med-bay's terminal.

Martinez, when he arrived, studied the ruined equipment with a defeated expression. 'Well, looks like nobody's getting sca

'Or maybe one of them did it,' said Nancy, her eyes burning into Dakota's. 'It's what we're all thinking, isn't it?'

Dakota did her best not to flinch from her gaze. 'Or maybe you did it, Nancy,' she suggested. 'It's not like anyone doesn't know you've got a problem with me and Ted.'

'Oh, come on,' Nancy snapped, gripping her weapon closer to her chest. 'Nobody's going to smash this stuff to pieces unless they were scared of what it might reveal.'

'Shut the hell up, Nancy,' growled Martinez. 'I don't want to hear one more word of idle speculation.'

Nancy fell silent, but still looked defiant.

'Lucas,' Martinez continued, 'how long would it take for us to build some new diagnostic units?'

'We can't,' Corso replied wearily. 'I just checked the fabricator databases and the med-bay blueprints have all been wiped as well.'

Nancy's gaze once again settled on Dakota, as if she had just heard a piece of particularly damning evidence. 'Well, what do you know,' she murmured, and stepped back out of the room.

Corso stared after her with an alarmed expression. 'Eduard-'

'Don't worry about her,' Martinez interrupted quietly. 'She's not going to do anything stupid. She's just scared – like the rest of us.'

Scared people do dangerous things, Dakota almost observed, but thought better of it. Martinez declared the bay off-limits and sealed the room with Schiller's help, placing a couple of dedicated sensors on the door that would sound a full alert if anyone tried to enter without permission. Corso and Lamoureaux made their way back to the bridge together.

As soon as they were out of earshot, Lamoureaux pulled Corso to a halt. 'We have to talk about Whitecloud,' he said urgently.

Corso nodded, and rubbed the bridge of his nose. 'I think I know what you're going to say. He's the only other one on board with an implant, so maybe he can also be compromised.'

Lamoureaux nodded. 'Uchidan implant technology isn't so very different from what I've got in my head.'

'I thought the Uchidan technology was a lot more limited?'

'Sure, extremely limited,' Lamoureaux confirmed. 'No localized environmental data, no ability to interface with any machinery outside of a dedicated transceiver, and even then only in the crudest possible way. I could stand right next to him and I wouldn't be able to tell if there's anything lodged in his brain, but that wouldn't necessarily mean he isn't vulnerable to outside control. I mean, I don't know whether it can be done, but that's not the same thing as saying it can't.'

'You've got to admit,' said Corso, 'it'd be kind of ironic if that did turn out to be the case.'

'Ironic how?'

'He's at least partly responsible for what happened at Port Gabriel, so it'd be a kind of karmic justice, don't you think?'

'Maybe.' The corner of Lamoureaux's mouth twitched slightly. 'I'll have to admit I hadn't thought of that.'

Corso nodded in the direction they'd been heading. 'We should get back to the bridge now,' he said, pushing away from the bulkhead they had paused to rest against.

'Lucas, wait. I didn't just want to talk to you about Whitecloud.'

Corso grabbed a rung, before he could drift too far ahead. 'What then?'

'I mean Olivarri. Your aides asked me some questions about him when we were back at Ocean's Deep.'

'What kind of questions?'

'About who I might have seen him talking to.'

Corso frowned. 'Ray Willis was Olivarri's boss. He'd have told me if something was wrong.'

'I had the impression they were just feeling something out, like there was just the merest suggestion of irregularities. That's what Nisha said to me.'

'Why are you telling me this now?'

'It's not too late to send a signal back to Ocean's Deep. I don't know what's happened to Nisha or Yugo since the Legislate took over, but maybe one of them might still be in a position to help us run a deeper background check on him.'

'I don't know,' said Corso. 'It's going to use a lot of power to boost a signal that far.'

'Sure,' Lamoureaux agreed. 'But on the other hand we might find out why someone wanted him dead.'

Chapter Twenty-six

Over the next few days, Ty was surprised at how quickly normal routines reasserted themselves. When Nancy made an unexpected visit to the lab on the evening after the discovery of Olivarri's body, he had asked her questions even as he undressed her, until finally she pressed a finger against his mouth to forestall any further interrogation.

By the following evening, the last of the disrupted systems were back to normal, and Ty found himself scheduled to take part in the first of a series of hull-maintenance shifts, in the company of Martinez and Perez. As soon as they were outside, Ty made an excuse to head off in the direction of the stern, and a failing drive-spine, accompanied by a half-dozen spider-mechs.

He set the hull-clamps to retract, and waited until they had unlocked from around the spine, before setting the spiders to work in lifting it out of its socket. He then left them to it, making his way quickly to an emergency airlock close by.

Ty clambered inside and yanked the hatch shut after him, pulling his helmet off as soon as the air had finished cycling. Then he activated the airlock's inbuilt comms terminal.

This, he knew, was where he ran the greatest risk of being caught. Although he had been careful to pick out an airlock equipped with an imager-enabled terminal, the unscheduled tach-net link he was about to open might drain enough power to trigger an alert on the bridge, one that could in turn be traced back to his current whereabouts. But it was still a risk he was prepared to take.