Empire of Light

'I agree,' said Lamoureaux, nodding vigorously and gazing around at them all. 'We can't just turn around now – not this late in the day.'

'I'm sorry, sir,' added Perez, 'but, with the greatest respect, I'm with the others on this one.'

'We still have most of the drones,' Dakota pointed out, sweeping back the dark fringe of hair from her face. 'And the new field-generators, too. We can do this.'

Martinez stared at her like she was insane. 'Are you even listening to yourself? You already said the Emissaries know that we're on our way!'

'No, they only know where we are right now. And I don't see any reason to believe they have any idea exactly where we're headed, or that the Mos Hadroch even exists, let alone what it's capable of

A sudden alert sounded, an insistent beeping that cut off abruptly when Corso reached out and touched the console nearest him.

'Scouts,' he a

Martinez tightened his hands again into fists before opening them wide, peering down at them as if seeing them for the first time.

'I guess that clinches it, then,' he said, dropping his arms helplessly to his sides. 'We go on.' The frigate jumped again less than twenty minutes later, ru

Dakota took the interface chair for the jump procedure, fatigue washing over her like a dark tide.

She closed her eyes and let herself sink deep into the ship's data-space. As long as she could keep up concentration, she could stay awake.

The power of suns flowed out of the fusion reactors and then through the drive-spines, tearing a hole in the fabric of the universe. The stars twisted, then changed.

A flood of new data immediately began to stream in via the sensor arrays: spectral analyses, mass estimates, number of visible planets, evidence of technology. They were still at least half a light-day out from the main-sequence star at the system's centre, but they would get up close to the target world through the next couple of jumps.

Dakota was distantly aware of Lamoureaux guiding a small contingent of spider-mechs out on to the hull, intending to make a quick assessment of the hull-degradation.

Dakota activated the command structure that Moss had given her, and tried using it to locate Trader's ship. Before very long she got an automated response from the vicinity of a low-albedo object somewhere deep in the heart of the star system. She compared the object with the data she had received from Trader, and they matched. That meant they had reached the target cache.

She checked in on Lamoureaux once more, and found he was analysing video feeds scraped from the spider-mechs that had been sent into the hold. Pieces and fragments of hull-plate clung to those sections of the underlying skeleton that had survived the blast.

I can see the landers, she sent to Lamoureaux.

‹Yeah, they must have been at the farthest point in the hold from where Trader's yacht was when it jumped.›

Feeling a hand on her shoulder, she opened her eyes to see Corso bending over her.

'Do we know where we go from here?' he asked.

She nodded, her throat dry. 'The target cache is on a small planet in the i

'And how long before we get there?'

She let her head fall back against the head-rest, almost afraid to close her eyes in case she passed out from exhaustion.

'At least another hour before the drive is up to making another jump.' She raised a hand, stopping him before he could speak again. 'I know what you're going to say. The scouts will reach us before that, but it's just not possible to do it any sooner.'

'Then you're going to have to find a way to keep us safe from those scouts in the meantime.'

'Sure.' She nodded wearily. 'Of course.'

He studied her. 'How are you holding up?'

Dakota laughed weakly. 'Just barely.'

He started moving away, but she reached out to stop him. 'Wait. I need to show you something.'

She put on display the video feeds from the spiders.

'You can see how badly trashed the hold is, but Ted was right: those landers look like they survived pretty much intact.'

Corso nodded and stepped back down from the dais. 'Dan, come with me,' he said to Perez, then stopped, before he left the bridge, to look back at her. 'See what else you or Ted can discover before we arrive there,' he said.

'I'll send a spider out on to the hull to retrieve a couple of field-generators,' she said. 'If we're going to attempt a landing, we're going to need all the protection we can get.'

Corso nodded and left, with Perez following.

Dakota linked into the remaining Meridian drones and prepped them for combat. At the same time, she noticed it was early evening, shipboard-time. She settled back in the chair and wished she had asked Perez for another shot.

Whatever happened after this, she already knew it was going to be the longest night of her life. Trader swam through the dense, pressurized waters that filled his craft. Schools of tiny fish swam around him, and he snatched some up with his tentacles, devouring them as he studied the multicoloured projections all around him. The first jump had brought him within a few light-hours of the target system; subsequent jumps brought him closer to the i

Defensive networks pinged his yacht constantly as it accelerated inwards, but he had obtained automatic response codes, leached from captured Emissary vessels, which fooled the networks into thinking he was one of their own. They would see through it eventually – particularly once he got within range of the cache – but it would meanwhile get him close enough.

He entered the chamber in which he had placed the Mos Hadroch. It hung there in the air, suspended in a series of interlocking shaped fields. Its mass was much greater than might be expected, but of course much of that extra mass was hidden in nonlocal spatial dimensions.

His ship spoke to him: All propulsion systems are currently optimal. The local Emissary population is primarily located aboard habitats orbiting the fourth world. Local comms traffic implies they are engaging in one of their periodic purges.

Trader's fins shivered at the mention of the purges. The Emissaries were bad enough when it came to dealing with other species; they were hardly less harsh on themselves. Every now and then, they would set about destroying their weaker members in orgies of slaughter.

The ship provided him with images of the system's i

Even a cursory analysis made it clear that almost everything in this system was old. His yacht was still pulling in data from local data networks which did nothing but assure him of what he already knew, that this system was a backwater, and therefore only lightly guarded by the Emissaries' usual standards. ‹We're coming under fire out here. Can you get them off our tail?›

Working on it, Dakota sent.

She had folded the interface chair's long petals up around her, enveloping her in silence and darkness. She could see the suited figures of Corso and Perez through the eyes of a single spider-mech hovering in the twisted wreckage of the hold. One of them was using a welding torch to cut away wreckage blocking in a lander.