Let me try, Trader?
The great bulk of his body shuddered one last time, and became still.
She remained kneeling by him for a few more seconds, wondering why she didn't feel anything, not even vindication or triumph. Instead she only felt hollow, as if all this had been an anticlimax.
Finally she stood up and stepped past Trader's inert form and towards the drive-forge.
She had been able to hear the artefact from the moment she entered the chamber: a high-pitched ululation like a thousand amplifiers feeding back all at once, throbbing constantly from low to high. But she had a sense of an underlying order that hinted at something else, something vast and cool and powerful.
She stumbled to a halt just short of the forge, and watched as the artefact flowered open the way she had seen it do on Whitecloud's video recordings. The sound filled her head until she couldn't form a single coherent thought, hammering its way into her brain almost like something physical.
And, just when she thought the worst was over, she felt that same intelligence she had sensed earlier suddenly focus all its attention on her.
She stood again on a snow-blasted highway on Redstone, surrounded by the bodies of the dead. Found herself in a bar called The Wayward Dragon with Lin Liao, waiting for his sister to arrive. Looked across the rooftops of Erkinning along with half a dozen other students with whom she had lived and loved and warred, and none of whom she would ever see again after that night.
She was dragged back farther and farther, reliving memories that she thought she had lost for ever half a galaxy away, suddenly as real in that moment as if she were experiencing them for the first time.
The last image that came to her was that single glimpse of a street in winter, and the memory of her mother's hand laid on her head.
But this time, when she looked up, she saw her mother's face clearly.
Dakota came to, some indeterminate time later, to find herself sprawled on the chamber floor.
She pulled herself to her feet and stumbled closer to the drive-forge. The Mos Hadroch had unravelled yet more, like some multidimensional kaleidoscope expanding to surround her, penetrating deep inside her body until she had no idea where she ended and the artefact began.
And in that instant, she discovered the terrible price she was going to have to pay. 'That's another drone gone,' Lamoureaux cried hoarsely. 'And more scouts on the way!'
Corso looked up at the overhead display and saw that only one of the three godkillers guarding the cache remained and, by the looks of it, was charging up for an imminent jump. But now a constellation of pixels showed an enormous number of scouts were heading for the frigate. More than they could possibly fight off.
Lucas.
'Dakota?' Corso spoke out loud, unconsciously reaching up to touch the comms bead in his ear. He ignored the looks he received from the others.
Are you ready to jump out of the system?
'No, not yet. We won't be for some time. There's severe damage to the drive-spines, we've lost functionality in more than three-quarters of them. It's not looking good.'
You can still get away in time if you stick to short incremental jumps. As long as you can stay just ahead of the shockwave, you can gradually build up enough power for a long-range jump -particularly if you can get into the shadow of one of the outer gas giants. What's happening back there?
'The Emissaries' bigger ships are starting to jump out of the system, but I don't see how they can get more than a fraction of them away from here before it's too late. What's happening with the artefact? Did it work?'
I think so, yes.
'What do you mean you think so?'
It's going to be a little while yet before it takes effect.
'Then you need to get back here. Their main ships may be leaving, but we've got a force of their scouts currently on the way. Is the lander still operative?'
Lucas… I'm not coming back.
Corso stared across the bridge with a stunned expression. 'What?'
I'm not coming back. I can't.
'Bullshit, you just told me you activated the damn thing. We won, right? So now we can go home.'
No, Lucas. I have to stay here with the Mos Hadroch. I won't ever be going home. The artefact can't function unless it's merged with a living mind. In the meantime you need to get the Mjollnir as far away from here as possible.
Corso felt a sudden tightness in his throat. 'I won't allow this. There's always a way.'
Goodbye, Lucas. I'm glad we had a chance to know each other. She cut the connection before he could say anything more. Dakota felt numb, as if the reality of what was happening to her hadn't sunk in yet.
The artefact pulsed with light, all around her, inside her, even entwined with her. She had since lost all sense of her own body. She seemed to see the floor and walls of the chamber from a dozen different points of view simultaneously. Her mind was being unravelled like a piece of cloth slowly teased apart into disparate threads.
She slipped in and out of consciousness, as the hours passed like minutes. The artefact occasionally fed her glimpses of the Mjollnir, which had already started taking incremental jumps away from the cache, making the most of its remaining drive-spines. Hordes of scouts followed her, diving towards the frigate in a strategy all too reminiscent of the swarm's tactics. She could see that the frigate was taking heavy damage.
She sensed the artefact was beginning to approach some kind of peak of activity. The chamber began to shake, while a shell of burning energy surrounded the drive-forge. Lamoureaux gazed down at Martinez with haggard eyes. 'We can initiate one more jump, on your call,' he said. 'After that, nothing. I'm sorry.'
They had lived through hours of endless terror since their last communication with Dakota. The scouts had chased them throughout the night, tearing and hacking at the hull wherever the field-generators failed. The frigate had already executed more than half a dozen short-range jumps, but every time the scouts caught up eventually, materializing all around and diving inwards towards them with the mindless efficiency of machines. The star system might be doomed, but the Emissaries clearly weren't going to let them escape.
Martinez was sweating profusely, still being careful with his injured arm. A scout had reached as far as the bridge before being taken out by Perez and Martinez, both armed with pulse-rifles. The air still smelled of burnt wires and plastic.
'Do it anyway,' said Martinez. 'I don't want to have to stay-'
'Wait. Wait a second,' interrupted Lamoureaux.
The machine-head gripped the arms of the interface chair, staring at some point far beyond the bridge as if he couldn't quite believe what he was seeing.
'What?' said Corso, speaking for the first time since the scout had tried to cut its way in. Ever since they had successfully repelled it, he had remained collapsed in a seat, too weary and shell-shocked to say or do anything.
'Look,' Lamoureaux stuttered, pointing to the overhead display. 'Just look.'
They all stared up and saw the Emissary scouts were self-destructing.
'Perhaps it's just local,' Martinez mumbled.
'No,' insisted Lamoureaux vehemently. 'The last godkiller – it's burning.'
'It's Dakota,' Corso yelled, standing up at last. 'It has to be!'
Lamoureaux didn't say anything to that. He just stared past them all, like a blind man seeing visions, with sweat breaking out on his forehead.
'Ted,' asked Perez, 'what is it?'
Lamoureaux seemed at last to remember they were there. 'We've got bigger worries now,' he said gravely. 'I just picked up a second neutrino flux. The sun just went nova.' The nova mine had been in close orbit around the star for over fifteen hundred years. Before receiving its activation signal, it had drifted insensate and silent, outwardly little different from any other piece of random junk caught in a similar orbit, betraying its purposefulness only on those occasions when it activated dormant guidance systems in order to guide it away from any imminent collision.