Empire of Light

Trader?

‹An unfortunate encounter with some Emissary scouts following us. Might I ask that you set some of the Meridian drones to defend us?›

Dakota closed her eyes and locked into the drones, immediately finding herself submerged in a chaotic whirl of data. The drones had reverted to their original programming, and were now fighting to push the Emissary scouts back down inside the cache.

She felt one of the Meridian drones die; they were a superior technology, but the Emissary scouts had the advantage of sheer numbers.

Dakota concentrated on protecting the yacht, keeping her eyes tightly closed and letting her limbs float out around her, her fingers jerking spasmodically as she directed her side of the battle raging outside. Trader's yacht looked tiny and fragile compared with the bristling black mass of the pursuing scouts. Yet more of the Emissary scouts were pouring out from the mouth of the cache, their skins flickering with multiple bright energies as they repelled tightly focused bursts of energy directed towards them. The hulls of the machines on both sides of the battle crackled as their outer layers were burned off, while the complex nanomolecular circuitry within attempted to repair the constant damage.

‹We're just about prepped for a short-range jump,› Lamoureaux sent to her. ‹Have you checked the monitors on Nancy's suit?›

Dakota swore silently to herself for not having thought of that already. She opened her eyes and quickly activated the data screen printed on the sleeve of the other woman's spacesuit.

It says she's absorbed more than fifty grey of radiation, Dakota sent in reply. She was far from sure whether even the wonders of modern medical technology could combat such a huge dose of ionizing radiation.

Nancy coughed, and Dakota studied the other woman's face. Her lips moved soundlessly, and her eyes had rolled halfway up into her head.

‹Okay, that's really not good,› Lamoureaux remarked.

Understatement of the fucking century.

‹Look, all we can do now is stick her in a medbox and hope for the best.›

I should have listened to her, Dakota sent. She had a better idea of the situation, and I didn't pay attention. I should have checked things out more thoroughly, instead of going barging into a situation I didn't understand.

‹Don't beat yourself up too much, Dakota. She wasn't exactly going out of her way to win your trust and respect.›

The yacht shook again. Trader, how much damage are we taking?

‹A considerable amount, I regret to say. I believe there might originally have been only a few scouts inside the cache, who would have used any available resources to build copies of themselves.›

How do you know?

‹The tactic is familiar. A few enter a defended territory, multiply rapidly, then attack from within.›

And knowing this helps us how?

‹The ones with antimatter cores are identifiable by the magnetic fields they use for containment. Those are suicide devices. The ones without antimatter cores control the rest.›

So if we can destroy the ones doing the controlling, we can stop the rest.

‹Precisely›

Dakota slowed her time frame until the seconds stretched out. She ran an analysis of the course of the battle so far, and noticed how just a dozen scouts kept themselves close to the cache, while all the rest pushed the attack aggressively. She watched as one of them dived towards a Meridian drone, detonating at the point of closest proximity, overwhelming the drone's wrapping of protective fields and a

It was time, she decided, to stop ru

As she drove the drones straight at the cache, several were a

‹Dakota, It's Ted. We've come up with an idea.›

I hope it's good.

‹There's a couple of scouts heading towards us. We might be able to take them out with the pulse-ca

You're assuming they haven't done that already?

‹Yeah, well, we still need to cut any potential losses. So here's what we're going to do: we'll jump now, and rendezvous with you at the following co-ords. Pass them on to Trader, and we'll meet you there later.›

We could wind up separated from each other by a long way, Ted. Maybe even by a couple of light-years.

‹Not if we make it just a small jump, like you did back at Redstone. That reduces the chances of wide separation. There's a binary system about twelve light-years from here that might be a good recognizable target.›

A moment later an image of the binary system materialized in Dakota's mind.

‹It's got about six satellites, so we'll aim for the fifth one out. Neither of us is going to hit the exact spot, but with luck we'll be in close enough range of each other to make a relatively fast rendezvous.›

What about Nancy? She needs emergency treatment, Ted – as in right now.

‹The consensus is we're taking too big a risk if we let those scouts get any closer. We're going to initiate that jump immediately.›

Consensus? You mean Corso and Martinez, don't you?

Lamoureaux didn't reply, but she could sense his tension and concern as if it were her own. Dakota pulled back into the real world, and she looked down again at Nancy. Her skin had reddened even more, and her lips trembled faintly.

Perhaps it was better she wasn't aware of what was happening. Dakota described the new plan to Trader. By now more than half the drones recovered from around the mouth of the cache had been destroyed.

‹Are any of the remaining drones recoverable?›

I don't think so, she replied. I could pull them back towards us, but all that'll do is draw the scouts straight to us.

‹Then we must abandon them.›

We have what we came for anyway. How long before we can jump?

‹Immediately.›

The frigate was already gone: it had slipped into superluminal space only seconds after she had spoken to Lamoureaux.

She switched her attention back to the cache. The scouts had rallied, throwing the last of their antimatter-equipped clones at the remaining Meridian drones with devastating effect.

Dakota opened her eyes and again checked on Nancy, thinking that, if she was lucky, she might live long enough to appreciate the irony of trying to save the life of a woman who'd like nothing better than to see her dead.

Time to go, Trader.

‹Initiating.›

The stars spun around the yacht and then, for one brief instant, vanished.

'That's it,' said Lamoureaux, leaning forward in the interface chair as he reached back both hands to massage his neck muscles. 'Twelve light-years, and just half an AU off-target.'

Corso nodded, looking up at the simulation of the system they had landed in as it floated beneath the ceiling. Each of the simulation's planets became gradually more detailed as additional data arrived from the hull's sensor arrays.

Martinez stepped away from the console he had been ma

The next several minutes slid by at a glacial pace. Corso glanced around the bridge, at displays of intercepted tach-net feeds originating from the Perseus Arm: most of it indecipherable gibberish.

Thirteen minutes after they had jumped, an alert sounded.

'They made it,' Lamoureaux exclaimed, his gaze fixed on some faraway point. 'I'm picking them up now.'

Martinez clapped his hands a couple of times, and Corso found himself gri