The three of them crowded inside the small space, which smelled of burned dust and hot metal. The Senator's earlier antipathy towards him appeared to have shifted into something like a grudging respect. It was Merrick that Ty could not make his mind up about: the news archives had carried accusations of murder and thievery. She struck Ty as someone who worked hard to keep her emotions under control, but certainly not the cold-blooded killer she had sometimes been made out to be.
'They're amazing creatures, the Atn,' said Ty, pulling on a pair of insulated gloves. The edges of the hole cut in the carapace still glowed faintly with trapped heat. 'There's strong evidence they've been around for longer than any other species we've come into contact with. Perhaps longer than even your Magi, Miss Merrick,' he added. 'And when we've shuffled off the galactic stage, they'll come wandering back through the empty ruins of our cities.'
'I wondered if maybe that was why they were entrusted with the Mos Hadroch in the first place,' said Dakota, watching as Ty squatted by the carapace. 'They operate on a timescale that pretty much beggars the imagination.'
'I think maybe we'd better get on with this, don't you?' said Corso with faint annoyance.
'Yes,' Ty agreed, reaching into a pocket and pulling out a slim torch.
He shone the light into the cavity and discovered that, as he suspected, the creature had been thoroughly gutted. The light played over something smooth, and he reached in past the jagged edges of the hole and touched it. To his surprise, it was very slightly warm to the touch. He shoved the handle end of his torch inside his mouth, to free his hands, then pushed both hands deep inside the cavity.
The object nestling inside the carapace was roughly conical in shape, its blunted point facing up towards him. Two bars like handles extended out and then upwards from the base of the cone, which at least gave him something to grab hold of.
Ty got a good grip on the object and lifted it out. Then Corso grabbed one handle, and together they lowered it to the deck. It was a pale cobalt-blue colour, and seemed to glow with a faint iridescence. There was something undeniably alien about the device, some nameless quality of otherness that sent a tingle of fear and excitement racing down Ty's spine.
Corso peered at it with clear alarm. 'It's not radioactive, is it?'
'Not according to the instruments,' replied Ty. 'If it was, we'd have known long before we even brought it on board. I don't know what could be causing that glow.'
Suddenly Ty heard a sound, like whispers mixed with static, cutting through his thoughts and once again rising to a high-pitched whistle before fading to nothing. He glanced over at Dakota and saw her wince and cover her eyes with one hand.
'I can hear it again,' she murmured. 'The Mos Hadroch, I mean. I think something's just happened.'
Corso put up one hand to touch the comms-bead in his ear.
'That's fine, Dan,' he said after a few moments. 'Thanks for letting me know.'
He turned back to face them. 'Perez says half the primary data stacks just spontaneously rebooted themselves without explanation. It could be there's someone still hidden on the frigate and trying to sabotage us before we can jump out of this system.'
Dakota shook her head. 'No, it's the Mos Hadroch. I'm certain of it.'
'Then what the hell is it doing now?' Corso demanded.
'I think,' she replied carefully, 'it just wants to know who we are.'
Chapter Nineteen
Two hours later, the primary stacks had recovered, whereupon Dakota jumped the Mjollnir half a light-year outside the Redstone system. A day later the frigate jumped more than a hundred and fifty light-years, to a point deep inside the Hyades Cluster.
The frigate's astrogational systems started matching the local stellar population against maps of known stars, quickly identifying a reddish-orange star no more than two or three light-years distant as Epsilon Tauri.
Dakota left the bridge and made her way to a nearby meeting room, where the others were waiting. She smelled food as she entered, unfamiliar spices and odours that made her stomach growl. An image of Epsilon Tauri, the surrounding cluster spread out around it like a sprinkle of multicoloured diamonds, floated above a low table in the centre of the room. The room itself was oval-shaped, with low couches set against curving bulkheads and facing inwards towards the table. The only faces not present were Martinez and Lamoureaux, but Corso had told her they could expect to be decanted sometime in the next twenty-four hours.
Corso himself looked dog-tired and haggard. While Dakota had been busy prepping the Mjollnir for its jump, he and Schiller had got busy moving the bodies of the dead to the ship's morgue. Then they had a go at scrubbing the bloodstains off the deck.
Corso looked at her with raised eyebrows as she lowered herself on to a couch opposite him.
'I just put us about halfway across Consortium territory,' she told him, leaning back, her shoulders cramping with fatigue. 'We can jump again in another day or so, which should take us a long way outside the Consortium.'
Corso handed her a bulb containing some dark liquid. 'Here, Redstone coffee – guaranteed to wake you up.'
She took it and sniffed at it warily, then noticed Perez and Schiller were watching her carefully. She sucked at the straw for a moment, then her eyes widened and her face turned pale.
She dropped the bulb and succumbed to a coughing fit. Someone laughed. When her eyes had stopped watering, she could see that Corso was grinning at her.
'What,' she asked, 'the fuck is that?'
'There's this weed, see, grows in water-pipes and plumbing back home,' said Nancy Schiller. 'They've been brewing it up since the days of the first settlers. They made me drink a gallon of the stuff in one go when I first joined up.' She shook her head sadly and gazed at Corso. 'This girl wouldn't last an hour in any regular crew.'
Dakota started coughing again, and Corso passed her a glass of water. She swallowed it all in one go, to clear a little of the sour, gritty taste from her throat. When she looked up, Corso wore a conciliatory grin.
'So,' began Perez, looking around them, 'down to business. First question: do we get to fly a pirate flag on the ship? And second question: who wants to make it?'
'Don't be ridiculous,' said Schiller. 'I say we paint FUCK YOU on the side and just fly the damn thing into the sun of the first heavily populated Emissary system we find. Besides…' she added, pausing to take a long suck at a bulb, 'I can't sew. Can you?'
Perez shook his head sadly. 'They've got lots more suns where we're headed. I fear they won't miss just the one, Nancy.'
Schiller shrugged. 'Well, that's the flaw in my plan right there. Maybe you could wear an eyepatch, Dan.'
'If you wear a bag over your head, I'll think about it. What do you say, Senator?' Perez looked over at Corso. 'Should we pass a resolution that Nancy has to wear a bag over her head for the rest of the trip?'
Corso shook his head. 'I'd rather wait for Eduard to get better, as I think any bag-wearing decisions should stay strictly with him.'
Perez chuckled, and an awkward silence fell.
Corso put down his bulb – now half empty, Dakota noted – and leaned forward, hands resting on his knees, while making sure to catch each of their eyes in turn. Dakota watched as Driscoll drained a bulb of the foul concoction, and put it down empty with apparent satisfaction. Guy looks like he drinks it every day for breakfast. Maybe he was from Redstone, like the rest of them.
'All right,' said Corso, 'this meeting is about making sure we're all on the same page. That means us talking about what's up ahead.'