Marauder (47 page)

Eight long weeks after picking up their passenger, the Magi ship came within range of a red dwarf system where the Maker Swarm had paused on its journey. They were all feeling drained by the
enormous stress of waiting for the confrontation ahead, and tried to distract themselves in their own ways. Bash thus spent much of his time scanning the Accord’s tach-net relays for
information about home, catching up on news and, he claimed, trying to figure out what the hell to do with the rest of his life. Sometimes they talked but, when they did, she still had the uncanny
sense that his mind was somewhere else.

She could hardly blame him. They were a single ship going up against something capable of destroying entire civilizations, after all, and she had seen and suffered too much to be able to share
fully the Librarian’s apparent confidence in their Atn passenger.

The red dwarf grew closer with each successive jump, until finally they emerged into normal space about 30 AUs from the star, out towards the edge of the system. Even this far out, the local
environment proved to be infested with the Swarm’s countless components, all sucking up the energy necessary for their next mass jump across the Perseus Arm and closer to humanity.

As the Librarian informed her and Bash, there were somewhere in the region of three to four hundred million of the components. Each one was a single node in a distributed network that together
made up a single, vast machine intelligence.

And yet, thought Dakota, they still didn’t know
why
the Swarms had been set their task of laying traps for intelligent life. And, until they knew, nothing would change; for there
would always be Swarms, and other forms of life would always be threatened by them. What little Bash had gleaned from the Wanderer concerning the Swarm was, she felt sure, only one small part of a
far larger picture.

‘You have no idea how much being here terrifies me,’ said Dakota. They were inside a shared datascape, flying through a real-time simulation of the red dwarf system
and amidst the Swarm components in their millions. ‘The last time I got anywhere near this Swarm, I wound up dead.’

‘I don’t think it even knows we’re here,’ said Bash, his mood sombre now that he had seen exactly what they were up against.

Rather than being randomly scattered throughout the system, the greatest number of components were gathered around the star itself. They were arranged in distinct clusters, linked by rivers and
channels composed of others of their kind, streaming back and forth.

‘Don’t be fooled,’ she said with a shiver. ‘It knows we’re here.’

When Dakota first died – before waking in the Demarchy, prior to her escape and finding a new identity – she had gone in search of this very same Swarm. She had made the mistake of
bringing one of its components on board, only to discover too late how it had infiltrated the Magi ship she had then been piloting. In the last moments of that life, a copy of her complete
mind-state had been transmitted to other Magi ships – one of which had resurrected her.

And now she was back to confront the same Swarm a second time. She had, she realized, come full circle.

‘I wonder sometimes how many of me there are,’ she said quietly.

She felt rather than saw Bash’s frown. ‘What?’

‘Other versions of me,’ she said. ‘Other Dakotas.’

‘I don’t follow.’

‘Remember what I told you: the Magi ships all have copies of my mind stored deep in their memory banks. There could be other Dakotas wandering around right now, and I’d never
know.’

‘I’ll admit,’ said Bash, ‘I’d feel pretty strange if there were other versions of me out there, somewhere. But why on earth would it ever make more than
one
of you? Hell, having to deal with just the one seems bad enough.’

She swiped him with a ghostly virtual limb, and then remembered the Librarian discussing how it had simulated ways of dealing with the Swarm. She found herself wondering if a simulated Dakota
had taken part in any of them, and if that other her had known . . .

Dakota? Bash?
They both heard the Librarian calling to them, as if from far away.
It’s time.

They watched the Atn as it tumbled away from the Magi ship. They were far enough away from the red dwarf and the components swarming around it that the star wasn’t much
more than a particularly bright point of light amidst countless others. But a cluster of some tens of thousands of components was busily dismantling a small rocky planetoid for its raw materials,
and the Atn aimed itself towards them, soon disappearing out of range.

‘Now what?’ asked Bash.

‘Now we wait,’ said the Librarian, ‘for the infection to take root.’

Dakota woke several hours later and knew immediately that something had changed. She sat up on her bed and locked into the ship’s senses, seeing the way the streams and
clusters of components surrounding the star had become fragmented and twisted out of shape. Space around the star was now filled with sparkles and blooms of light.

‘Do you see it?’ asked Bash, rushing into her cabin unannounced, with an excited grin on his face.

‘I see
something
,’ she said, pulling herself to her feet, ‘but I don’t know what it is.’

‘The damn thing’s at war with itself,’ he exclaimed, almost beside himself. ‘The components that haven’t been compromised by the Atn are attacking the ones that
have. That’s what all the light is – they’re shooting at
each other
.’

She closed her eyes and accessed the ship’s real-time simulation of the surrounding stellar environment. The ship had colour-coded those components that had been infected with a viral copy
of the Atn’s mind-state. They showed up red, while the unaffected components were indicated by tiny points of fluorescent white light. Something about those flowing and shifting patterns of
colour made her think of blood cells.

They watched in fascination as, over the next several hours, more than half of the Swarm was subverted and taken over by their Atn passenger. Each subverted component became a new recruit to its
enemy’s cause, quickly destroying or infecting its neighbours; brilliant beams of fusion energy flashed through the stellar night, destroying components in their thousands on either side.
Space around the star soon filled with glowing clouds of superheated debris, as the battle slowly approached its conclusion.

When Dakota finally emerged from her datascape, many more hours later, she went to find Bash in his quarters. He emerged from his own datascape looking weary but happy.

‘I can hardly believe what I’m seeing out there,’ said Dakota, taking a seat beside him on his bed.

‘We are pleased to say that matters are progressing even more satisfactorily than expected,’ said the Librarian, making her jump. She turned to see it had appeared as if from nowhere
at the far end of the room.

Bash stared at the entity, momentarily speechless, then shook his head. ‘You know,’ he groused, ‘one day I’d like to see you actually walk through the door instead of
just materializing out of thin air like that. Gives me the damn creeps.’

‘This is really how the Wanderer destroyed a Swarm?’ asked Dakota. ‘By altering one of its own components?’

The Librarian nodded. ‘Not so difficult, perhaps, since the Wanderer and the Swarm are so similar in many ways. A case of parallel technological evolution, each finding the same optimal
solution to a particular set of problems. The Atn were clearly the perfect delivery system for the exploit discovered by the Wanderer. Another few hours, and only ashes and wreckage will
remain.’

‘So why didn’t the Wanderer just grab one of that earlier Swarm’s nova drives back when it had the chance?’ asked Bash.

‘Current observations show each Swarm component destroys its drive before becoming fully compromised. Presumably that earlier Swarm did the same when the Wanderer attacked it.’

‘So if not for that,’ said Dakota, chilled at the thought, ‘the Wanderer might have got what it wanted long ago.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Bash, his expression jubilant. ‘We can go home now.’

She shared his joy, despite a bone-deep tiredness. The threat of the Swarm had been hanging over her for so long she barely knew how to adjust to its absence. With it destroyed, she could go home
to a people who might never know how close they had come to extinction.

But home to what?
she couldn’t help wondering, even as Bash reached out to pull her into a rib-crushing hug.

The air was much warmer here on the floor of the chasm, a full kilometre beneath Jarô’s surface. Dakota took off her heavy long-coat and glanced upwards, hoping to
catch a glimpse of the sky, but saw only a narrow strip of azure streaked with red and obscured by whirling vortexes of dust from the desert far above their heads.

Her gaze dropped lower, following the dark framework of a funicular railway that reached all the way from the upper rim of the chasm to its floor. She and Bash had travelled aboard one of those
cars, accompanied by such a cacophony of juddering gears and creaking metalwork that she had wondered if perhaps the whole thing might not simply fall apart around them before it sent them
plummeting to the ground.

The air pressure this far beneath the surface was sufficiently high to obviate the need for protective gear, or for even a breather mask to reduce the risk of anoxia, since the atmosphere was
otherwise entirely breathable. A town called Amuza Urbo nestled on the chasm floor, its buildings abutting or even climbing the steep walls, like ivy composed of steel and carbon. There was an
organic fluidity to the architecture, too, that made this comparison more than apt; for many of the buildings, she had learned, were the product of advanced gene tech, being the distant and highly
modified descendants of earth-bound trees and coral reefs.

The streets were packed with people dressed in brightly coloured finery, dancing to music that echoed off the lofty cliffs surrounding them. There were vendors everywhere, selling street food
that smelled exotic and enticing to Dakota.

‘Trust us to arrive in carnival season,’ she said, reaching up to wipe the sweat from her brow. She still felt too warm, even in the soft and light fabrics she had dressed herself in
before coming down from orbit. Her intention had been to look nondescript, but that ordinariness instead caused them both to stand out amongst the garish crowds.

She suddenly caught sight of a cluster of women equipped with huge multicoloured wings, which were clearly actual physical appendages rather than costumes. Some of them were dancing around with
a man she at first thought was dressed in a bird costume, before realizing that his beak and feathers were real.

Primal and strident, the rhythm of the music beat all around them, setting up a sympathetic vibration in her blood. As she inhaled a lungful of sweet smoke that tickled the roof of her mouth,
she glanced at Bash and he grinned back as if the last ten years had never happened.

‘Hard to resist, isn’t it?’

She nodded: it
was
hard to resist. She could smell raw
sans de sezi
in the air, and through the crowd caught a glimpse of a man – bright-eyed and ecstatic – leaning
against a wall as he laughed uproariously, his hands and mouth vividly stained orange from the narcotic spore.

‘Come on,’ urged Bash, grabbing her by the arm and pulling her into a tight knot of thrashing bodies gathered around a band performing with thunderingly loud amplification. A number
of the heaving, gyrating bodies around them wore so little clothing they might as well have gone naked for all the difference it made.

His broad, dark face split in a grin, Bash started to move in time with the beat, taking hold of her hand and whirling her around. She laughed, and just let the music take her, dancing for all
she was worth as he spun her around and around.

Then he lost his grip on her and she was immediately swallowed up by the warm, glistening bodies that pressed in all around. Another reveller caught hold of her outstretched hand, pulling her
close to him as they moved together, his eyes shining as his hips moved against her. For the first time in what felt like a very, very long time, she felt a flush of desire, for the warmth of
another body pressed tightly against her own.

But then she remembered why they had come here.

She flashed her newfound dancing partner a regretful smile, then pushed her way through the crowd until she found Bash again, drawing him out of the crush of bodies into a less crowded
sidestreet.

‘What do I keep telling you?’ said Bash, panting from his exertions. ‘You need to loosen up, Dakota. Cut yourself some slack.’

‘We’re here for a reason,’ she said firmly. ‘Remember?’

He cast a rueful glance towards the carnival throng. Thousands of lanterns had just been released, drifting up towards the mouth of the chasm on rising currents of warm air.

‘I remember,’ he replied. ‘I just hoped I might be able to change your mind about your . . . plans.’

She sighed. ‘We already talked about that.’

‘I know, but . . .’ He looked as if he was about to continue, but instead let out a dramatic sigh. He made a slicing gesture with the side of his hand which suggested
lead
on
. They made their way down a street that was both empty and dark.

Amuza Urbo was a purposely low-tech settlement, one of dozens scattered all across Jarô that deliberately made do without data-nets. Jarô itself was a world that people came to
because they were running away from something, or because they wanted to reinvent themselves, or often both – the same purpose Kjæregrønnested had once fulfilled for Dakota when
she had first become Megan Jacinth. And reinvention was something she had gained some expertise in.

She had hoped that by pretending she was someone else – by taking on the name of a dead girl – she could escape her past self. But now she understood more than ever that she was, and
always had been, Dakota Merrick.

They came eventually to an apartment building that looked as if it had half melted. Its walls sagged artfully, the corners twisting where they met the ground.