Stealing Light (27 page)

Something in the throb of the submersible’s engines had changed. They were slowing. The sonar maps on the displays showed a steep precipice that fell off into darkness: they were rapidly approaching the submerged slopes of a mountain. A strange, alien-looking shape was clearly visible dangerously close to the edge of the rocky precipice—not quite near enough for it to tumble over into the depths below, but almost.

It wasn’t long before the submersible shuddered to a halt. The hatch clanged open and Arbenz and Gardner took the lead, closely followed by the two ground-station staff. Kieran came last, behind Dakota and Corso.

They entered a steel-walled cylindrical tube immediately beyond the submarine. The sound of their boots clanging on the walkway echoed harshly, and Dakota winced, as if the sound were something physical and sharp driving into the soft tissues of her brain. Intermittent stabbing pains manifested in her shoulder and back, and she dug her nails into the palms of her hands until it hurt.

A screen bolted onto the wall at the far end of the passageway displayed an enhanced external view of the derelict. In profile the centre part of the craft resembled a fat teardrop, with a series of bumps around its hull, scattered with apparent randomness. There were no visible windows or any external instrumentation. Long curving spines, much longer than the central body, curved upwards and out, and Dakota suspected they were deceptive in their apparent fragility. It looked more like some piece of abstract sculpture than anything she might conceive of as an interstellar vessel. The passageway in which they now stood was also visible as a narrow snake of bolted-together segments connecting the submersible to the derelict itself. In terms of relative size, the submersible looked like a minnow escorting a whale.

‘This is your moment, Mr Corso,’ said the Senator, turning to face him. ‘You’re the expert here. Show us what you know.’

Lucas nodded and waited as the hatch leading into the derelict’s interior slowly swung open. Dakota saw another passageway beyond, but this had pale, mostly featureless walls, apart from long, twisted bands of some material that reminded her of muscles, around which the passageway walls appeared to have been moulded.

It was, in every way, profoundly alien, but strangely beautiful, too. The only thing marring this impression was an ugly rent torn out of one wall, where clearly human instrumentation had been inserted.

But the thing that struck her the most, as she followed the others inside, was that even though there was no apparent source of lighting, she could see perfectly well for the entire length of the passageway, up until it twisted out of sight.

After a moment’s hesitation, Corso moved ahead with a purpose that suggested he was already familiar with his surroundings. Dakota watched with the rest as he brought images up on a screen comprising part of the base staff’s crudely wired-in instrumentation, and saw what she guessed must be a map of the derelict’s interior. It didn’t take much guesswork to realize that the colour-coded corridors and rooms marked there represented only a tiny portion of the derelict’s interior.

Corso’s expression remained nervous and tense.
Something
still lurked within these walls, and Dakota could sense its intelligence somewhere deep behind the pale surfaces either side of her. The ubiquitous light made her feel increasingly vulnerable and naked. Without any shadows, where could any of them hide?

Corso tapped at a panel set below the screen, with expert ease. New images flashed up one after the other, appearing to be closed-circuit views of other parts of the derelict’s interior. Screeds of unreadable gibberish that she guessed were some form of alien language accompanied these images. After a moment her Ghost tentatively identified parts of the text as an archaic form of the Shoal machine language.

Corso took off his gloves, wiped his bare hands on his gel suit and muttered something to himself. It was already getting too warm for the gel suits: one more sign that the derelict’s main systems were still functioning.

‘OK,’ said Corso, pulling something out of his pocket. ‘Moment of truth time.’

He placed the object—a slender grey box scarcely larger than a human thumb—into a niche just below the screen. A moment later a faint but discernible hum filled the air. Dakota half-expected some monster to come rampaging down one of the corridors, angry at being woken from its aeons-long sleep. Instead, nothing happened bar a succession of new images and mostly incomprehensible data flickering across the screen like lightning.

The map of the derelict’s interior reappeared, except this time new corridors and rooms began appearing, shaded green where the original map was coloured blue. Arbenz and Mansell grinned and shouted in delight, and even Corso managed a shaky grin.

‘Good work, Corso,’ said Arbenz, clapping a hand on his shoulder. ‘Do we have access yet to the main deck or the engines?’

Corso shook his head. ‘No, I didn’t expect to this early, but it’s still a lot more than we could reasonably have expected.’

Arbenz looked ecstatic regardless. Even Kieran Mansell’s normally stony features retained a satisfied smile.

‘Now,’ said the Senator, ‘we need to test the machine-head interface.’

Dakota stared first at Arbenz, and then at Corso, but he avoided her gaze, a flicker of shame crossing his tight-lipped expression.

Arbenz’s glee settled back into the more familiar, unctuous smile. ‘Lead on, Lucas.’ He turned to Dakota. ‘I mean it when I say you’re going to like what we’ve got waiting ahead for you. You’re going to fly this thing back to Redstone for us.’

Dakota merely nodded in a daze.

Corso filled the silence with a string of nervous patter as he led them further down the passageway and deeper into the belly of the beast. What appeared to be small service robots raced ahead of them, apparently scouting out the intersections and twists ahead.

‘Whoever the ship was built by, they definitely weren’t Shoal. But they did have close contact with them. There are translation protocols embedded in the derelict’s operating systems that allow communication between machinery belonging to both species. It’s like a Rosetta Stone, a key to understanding who they are and where they came from.’

‘Did they have a name?’ asked Dakota, as they came to a fork in the corridor where another screen had been inserted into a hole ripped in the corridor wall.

‘Not that we’ve been able to discover, no,’ Corso replied. ‘But we’ve been calling them the Magi.’ He glanced at the screen and turned right: the rest of them followed.

Dakota’s skin prickled in anticipation of the unexpected.

They came to a stop at an intersection where Corso raised his hand. Directions had been scrawled on cards epoxied to the walls. Dakota saw rounded doorways, which looked more melted than constructed, leading into interior spaces.

‘This is where we managed to tap into a major control subsystem,’ Corso explained, nodding to one of the doorways. Dakota could see tools scattered by the entrance.

Corso turned to Arbenz. ‘From here on in, it’s new territory. I can’t guarantee there’ll be no unexpected problems if we go any further than this.’

Kieran nodded. ‘The derelict has already proved it can kill, Senator. Perhaps it would be best if you turned back for now.’

Arbenz shook his head. ‘If something was going to go wrong, experience shows it would have happened by now. Besides, this part of the derelict is secure, isn’t it, Kieran?’

After a moment’s hesitation, Kieran nodded. ‘This area is code blue, so we believe it’s safe. But there are no firm guarantees.’

‘That’s good enough for me. Mr Corso, you’ll find the technicians have already installed your updates. The interface chair is ready.’

Corso nodded hesitantly.

Arbenz turned to the two station staff that had accompanied them. ‘Lunden, Ivanovich. I want you to make sure the code green areas are safe for the technical teams to enter. Follow standard procedure and, for God’s sake, don’t lose sight of each other like those others did.’

The two men saluted and moved off. Arbenz next turned to Gardner. ‘David, we have some matters to discuss.’ He turned to Corso last. ‘I want you to test the interface now. We’ll be waiting here.’

Corso nodded, looking distinctly nonplussed. He motioned to Dakota to follow him. She glanced at Kieran, and realized he’d have no hesitation in hurting her again if she didn’t co-operate.

She followed Corso into the room, which was wide, with a low ceiling and completely featureless. In the centre of the room stood an interface chair identical to the one on board the
Hyperion.
Cables led from its underside through gouged-open holes in the floor.

Corso touched a button on the side of the interface device and its petals folded smoothly down, revealing the seat within.

‘I swear on my life you won’t come to any harm,’ Corso assured her, glancing back towards the doorway as he did so. ‘I’ve run tests again and again. This thing—the derelict, that is—it’s designed specially to be operated by a machine-head. Or at least something very like it.’

Dakota touched her hand to one of the chair’s folding petals and nodded.

‘You don’t look surprised,’ said Corso.

‘An alien equivalent of a machine-head, is what you mean.’

In truth, she wasn’t surprised. She’d already guessed there was some kind of commonality between her and whatever had originally piloted this craft. It was the only explanation for the sensations she’d been experiencing ever since they’d landed.

‘Right.’ Corso looked at her strangely.

She began to climb into the chair, then hesitated. ‘What’s to stop me flying away with this thing, right now, if I can control it?’

She watched as Corso blinked a couple of times. ‘There’s a . . . failsafe installed. Ultimate control devolves to us.’

She couldn’t be sure if he was telling the truth, but she would have to be very careful when it came to testing the limits of whatever Corso chose to reveal to her.

She climbed between the steel petals and took her seat. Corso leaned in close to her, making adjustments to the neural cap, his chin hovering close in front of her as he worked. He smelled of cold sweat.

‘This . . .
place
creeps me out,’ she muttered. ‘The way the light comes from everywhere.’

He finished his adjustments and stepped back. ‘It’s still only a ship, though, just a very old one. Now listen to me,’ he whispered, leaning in again as he stepped around behind the chair and tapped at an open panel. The others were out of sight in the corridor, but she could still hear the murmur of their voices. ‘I saw you studying the Magellanic Clouds back on the bridge of the
Hyperion.’
he said, keeping his voice low. ‘I’ve been trying to figure out where this thing derived from originally, and I’ve got good reasons to think that’s exactly where it came from.’

‘The Magellanic Clouds?’

‘So imagine my surprise when I saw what I saw that time.’

Dakota twisted her head around to try and see him. ‘I swear, Lucas, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I really, really don’t.’

He sighed and shook his head. ‘Fine.’

‘Lucas,’ she whispered, ‘I
mean
it.’

It was obvious he didn’t believe her.

‘OK,’ she replied wearily. ‘So you think this thing
does
date from the same time as the Magellanic Novae?’

Corso’s expression became wary. ‘Looks that way.’

‘If you’re seriously suggesting this thing came all the way from a neighbouring galaxy, it would have taken centuries to get here, transluminal drive or not.’

‘Yeah, well, that’s another reason I more or less discounted it at first. Why come all this way at all? But when I saw . . .’ He glanced at her and sighed again.

‘Look, there’s no longer any question what direction it came from. The real question is, how far did it come?’

‘But why come all that way in the first place?’ she echoed. ‘What would make them want to . . . oh.’

‘Exactly. If they were running away from something, it would have to have been pretty bad to make them put so much distance between them and whatever drove them into leaving.’

‘Like a lot of stars blowing up?’ she said.

He moved back round in front of her and shrugged, apparently satisfied with the minute adjustments he had just made. ‘Until I find out more, it’s still only speculation.’ He stepped back.

‘Are they going to let either of us live once we’ve done our jobs?’ she asked. ‘Do you really want a man like Arbenz to get his hands on a working transluminal drive? What makes you think the Shoal won’t just raze your people entirely from the surface of Redstone once they know what you’ve done?’

‘There’s a dead man’s handle built into the chair,’ he explained, ignoring her questions. ‘There,’ he said, pointing. ‘If anything unexpected happens, take your fingers off it, and it breaks the connection.’

‘Just supposing for a second your failsafe decides not to work and you can’t prevent me suddenly assuming full control of this vessel. What will you do to stop me?’

‘Answer one, either the
Agartha
or the
Hyperion
would shoot you down before you got up sufficient power, and that’s assuming you can somehow blast your way through a couple of kilometres of ice we’ve still barely managed to scratch the surface of. Two’—he flashed her a sardonic grin—‘nobody, including yourself, actually knows how to operate a transluminal drive.’

‘We have to talk, Corso.’ It didn’t take much effort to inject the right degree of urgency into her words. ‘I
don’t know
what happened to Josef Marados. I swear I had nothing to do with that. Whatever Arbenz has been saying to you, he’s not intending to let either of us live.’

‘I already told you, I don’t have any choice in the matter. So you’re telling me Arbenz is lying when he claims someone’s been altering the shipboard records to cover your tracks?’

Dakota couldn’t find a reply that didn’t sound thoroughly incriminating.

‘Fine.’

She saw Corso’s expression change as his eyes flicked towards the entrance. Dakota glanced over and saw Kieran had stepped inside.