Corso nodded. ‘OK, another thing. Interface chairs are generally intended for use by machine-head pilots. So what’s it doing here?’
‘There’s a good chance a human machine-head will be able to interface with the derelict’s controls in the way a normal human cannot, once we have broken through the security blocks and into the ship’s core systems. Bellhaven Ghost technology appears to have close parallels with the means used by the Magi for piloting their craft.’
It took a moment for Corso to absorb this. ‘Let me get this straight. Are you telling me you’re intending to find yourselves a machine-head to fly this thing out from where you found it?’
‘Correct, Mr Corso. There isn’t the time to circumnavigate the derelict’s systems to allow a normal pilot to control it, but extreme circumstances require radical thinking, wouldn’t you agree?’
‘I’m just finding it hard to accept the idea of a man like Senator Arbenz actually hiring a machine-head to work for him. It’s… rather ironic, given recent history, wouldn’t you say?’
Corso could almost feel the anger and irritation coming at him down the comms link. ‘This is far from a laughing matter, Mr Corso. So just concentrate on the task at hand.’
‘How much are you going to tell the poor bastard anyway? What if he doesn’t want to do it?’
‘Leave that to us.’
Corso shook his head and bent down to peer again at the chair’s readouts. His mind whirled: a machine-head?
Whoever ended up piloting the derelict was going to find it about as pleasurable as walking into a nest of angry snakes.
And if Kieran’s reputation was all he had heard, there was every chance the experience might be deadly, too.
Eight
Trans-Jovian Space, Sol System, en route to Mesa Verde
A long, long time later, Dakota came to realize her biggest mistake had been opening the alien’s gift.
Whatever she’d expected to find when she investigated the box the Shoal-member had passed her, she hadn’t thought she would find herself holding a tiny and entirely anthropomorphic figurine handcrafted of wood and silver wire.
As she touched it for the first time, a slight stab of pain in the back of her head heralded the arrival of a severe headache. The pain was so sharp she even imagined she saw a spark of light, out of the corner of one eye.
She returned her attention to the figurine she held, trying to work out what seemed so dauntingly familiar about it, so much so it gave her a curiously queasy sensation in the pit of her stomach. Fine pieces of patterned paper surrounded the head and hips of a matchstick figure, suggesting a headscarf and skirt. The tiny, delicate arms were raised up as if in alarm, and the figure itself was mounted on a cross-shaped base.
It looked just like the kind of cheap folk art people bought on holiday, then left forgotten on some dusty shelf. For the life of her, Dakota could not begin to understand what significance the figurine might hold for the Shoal-member, or what significance the alien believed it might hold for her.
She placed the object on the instrument board in the command module of the Piri Reis, and stared at it for a while longer. Despite its innocuous appearance, something about it still chilled her.
Finally Dakota grew bored trying to understand it. As her Ghost tugged at her senses, she flicked over to an external view. A message icon was currently flashing over a display of Mesa Verde, another Shoal-boosted asteroid much like Bourdain’s Rock.
She put the message on display over the expanse of infinite black space extending beyond her ship, and felt a surge of relief at what she read there.
A long time ago (Dakota recalled) Mesa Verde had been a prison of sorts, one part of a loose confederation of human communities scattered throughout the asteroid belt and outer solar system. In the dark days before the invention of tachyon transmission and the subsequent first contact with the Shoal, people serving penal sentences had been exploited as cheap labour in mining operations. The mining still continued, of course-the need for raw ores was greater than ever. But the quality of life for most humans in the outer solar system had improved immeasurably, and Mesa Verde hadn’t been a prison for a long time.
The asteroid had instead become a centre of commerce and shipbuilding, mostly unmanned ore-freighters. In the pre-Shoal days, the asteroid had floated naked to the vacuum, its surface riddled with slag and excavation mounds left over from the construction of internalized living quarters. Or so Dakota was informed by the moodily grey and black images hanging on the walls of the tube leading from Mesa Verde’s docking ports as the spoken testimonials of long-gone prisoners whispered out from hidden circuitry in the picture frames.
The asteroid’s surface was visible all around through panoramic windows. Palms waved in an artificially induced breeze stirring up the air that wrapped around Mesa Verde’s mottled surface like a blanket. Multiple tiny suns shone down through the containment fields, their light and warmth falling on tended gardens and open plazas.
Dakota focused on keeping calm. There were hidden security devices everywhere, scanning her inside and out every step of the way. Lenses the size of dust-motes, and recording devices invisible to the naked eye, moved around her in a cloud, even probing beneath her skin to verify her ID.
Her new ID, she remembered. She wasn’t Dakota Merrick any more, and wouldn’t be for a long while. Her Ghost worked overtime balancing out her internal neuro-pharmacology, suppressing any detectable signs of anxiety-anything that might lead Mesa Verde’s security to suspect she might, say, be carrying a mini nuke in her gullet, or a timed virus woven into her DNA.
Dakota’s Ghost also worked overtime in order to disguise its own existence. She could sense it hovering in her mental background, calculating risks and strategies nanosecond by nanosecond.
All of this was good, but it was nice to have a little extra too: like someone on the inside of Mesa Verde’s administrative body helping her out, invisibly altering records and allowing her to pass through security procedures without unnecessary altercation.
Dakota was making good on old contacts.
What neither she nor her Ghost had predicted, though, was the presence of real, live, human customs officers. That was entirely unexpected.
On encountering them, Dakota hesitated only for a moment, before pushing on with a determined stride. The two men wore the uniforms of the Consortium military detachment permanently stationed on Mesa Verde, and each had a force stick holstered on his hip. They were talking with a pair of priests who had obviously also just disembarked.