‘Lots of volcanoes here,’ she replied. ‘All that activity spews ash into the air, and that counterbalances the warming effect of a thick atmosphere, stopping too much heat getting to the ground. So it’s never likely to get very warm.’
Several minutes later they passed through a complex of airlocks and into the command centre itself, which looked like it had started life as a storage facility of some kind, judging by the signs still on the walls. Propaganda posters displayed cartoons of enormous muscular men carrying guns, who were standing in defiant protection of equally idealized homesteads. One such slogan read: ‘Citizenship Is Worth Fighting For’.
And these, she thought with a sour feeling in her gut, are the people we’re supposed to be helping.
The corridors were busy with Consortium staff moving about purposefully. Three separate groups of guards checked their IDs at different checkpoints. Dakota wondered if the paranoia levels normally ran so high.
Severn squinted at her. ‘Banville, he came from your world, right?’
‘Worked on the latest generation of Ghost implants, then lit out. You know the story.’
‘The twist would be if it turned out he went off of his own free will, don’t you think?’
Dakota shook her head. ‘No, that would simply make him a traitor.’
Severn laughed. ‘Guess we’re doing the right thing, then.’
‘Maybe. It’s just that…’
They both paused, as a piece of information entered their minds simultaneously via their Ghost implants. They turned to look at each other.
Severn now wore a shit-eating grin. ‘Josef Marados is in charge of our debriefing, then? Guess you’d better keep your legs closed tight.’
‘Why?’
‘Guy’s got a reputation, is all.’
Dakota held Severn’s gaze. ‘You sound jealous.’
He gave her a long look up and down, as they resumed walking. ‘He gets anywhere near you, damn right I’ll be jealous.’
Seven
En route to Sol System from Redstone, aboard Freehold frigate Hyperion
Lucas Corso moved about cautiously in his diving gear, while skirting the edges of a hydrothermal vent in the ocean floor, trying to remember that hundreds of tonnes of simulated liquid pressure were meant to be bearing down on him. The brilliant lights built into his suit blazed through the abyssal darkness, illuminating the ridge ahead.
He shuffled towards the edge of this ridge, noting the way the alien derelict teetered on the edge of an abyss that fell away into bottomless depths. The derelict, he thought, looked like some sculptor’s impressionistic rendition of a giant squid, with long spines curving out from a relatively smaller central body. But even that core part of the derelict loomed several storeys above his vantage point.
Some of the spines looked badly damaged, presumably by the impact of landing. Where the hull material had been torn away from their tips, a bone-like structural latticework was visible beneath.
Peering down over the side of the ridge and into the depths beyond-or as far as he could see, before the range of his lights gave out-set Corso’s stomach churning. He was clearly standing at the mouth of a deep vent that had probably been in place for several million years. And if the calculations were correct, the real derelict-as opposed to this onboard simulation-had rested by the vent for over a hundred and sixty thousand years.
Yet it was still intact, and according to Kieran Mansell at least, defensive systems were still running somewhere inside it.
The ocean above him only existed because the moon on which the derelict had been found orbited a Jovian-scale gas-giant, accompanied by a score of similar bodies ranging in size from mere boulders all the way up to minor planets. The magnetic field of the moon interacted with that of its gas-giant parent like a colossal dynamo, heating the moon enough to keep its ocean liquid under a dense cap of ice several kilometres thick.
A good hiding place, he reckoned, for the last surviving secrets of a dying race.
Kieran’s voice came through to him via the comm.
‘Quite something, isn’t it? Observe that line of lights just ahead of you. They’re there to guide you into the derelict’s entrance. But I’m afraid the way in is a little close to the drop.’
Corso saw that the airlock-flush with the derelict’s hull-had been installed on a tiny overhang above the precipice, with a frail-looking ladder leading up to it. Simulation or not, his legs had decided they didn’t want to get any closer.
‘So I see. Is it safe?’
‘This is a training simulation, Mr Corso.’ There was something taunting in Kieran’s voice. ‘Relax, you wouldn’t really fall. Besides, we should have a pressurized tunnel in place by the time we get to go on board the real thing. Then we won’t have to worry about being swept over the edge.’
‘Then why the hell do I need to wear this damn suit?’
‘Because I say so.’
Corso cursed silently, picturing a thousand unpleasant deaths for Kieran Mansell. He dug up the nerve to shuffle closer to the edge, feeling the deadly mental pull of that bottomless hole. Where does it come from, that urge to jump into an abyss?
He tried his best to keep his eyes on the rock beneath the feet of his powered pressure suit, but in his mind’s eye all he could see was the eternal blackness below.
It had taken a few days for Corso to orient himself to his sudden change in status from embattled Freeholder to temporary resident of a craft designed to travel from star to star. The Hyperion was vast, large enough to carry whole populations-which it had done, centuries before, when his people had first fled to Redstone at the height of the Migration Century. Of those original five colony ships, only three now remained-the Hyperion, and two others.
It soon became clear that the Hyperion had seen better days. Rather than deal with the time and cost of making repairs, large sections of the frigate had been closed down and depressurized. The crew was minimal, a half-dozen individuals put in charge of the maintenance of a behemoth craft that had once ferried thousands across unimaginable light years. Corso saw very little of them, as Kieran insisted on keeping them apart for what he deemed security reasons.
However, it became rapidly obvious that, unlike much of the rest of the craft, the weapons systems had been kept thoroughly up to date. The Hyperion was bristling with guns and automated defensive systems. Yet the Shoal-members who crewed the coreship, in which the Hyperion was currently cradled for its long voyage to the home system, appeared to be unconcerned with the presence of this heavily armed warship within their vessel’s interior.