The possibility that she might have to ditch her ship after the destruction of Bourdain’s Rock had always been there in her mind. But she felt like a hermit forced to leave her cave after a lifetime of solitude-and ever since Port Gabriel, the Piri Reis had been a pretty good substitute for a hermit’s cave.
She curled up against the warm fur inlay that coated the interior of her ship and felt like an agoraphobic who’d just woken to find someone had strapped a parachute to her back and thrown her out of an aircraft.
‘Dakota?’ She heard the effigy calling her name softly. She stood up and walked through into the welcome darkness of her sleeping quarters, and let the effigy slide its warm, flesh-like arms around her. Its fingers pried at her clothes, gently peeling them away before tugging her downwards and planting soft, dry kisses on her belly and breasts.
She stroked the smooth, hairless dome of its head as it pulled itself up and slid her arms around its shoulders, feeling its weight press down on her. All the while she couldn’t help thinking that there had to be a way to get around Josef’s demands.
It was her they were hunting for, not the Piri Reis.
When the solution finally came to her, she had to wonder why it took her so long to think of it.
Nine
Redstone Colony
Consortium Standard Date: 01.06.2538
3 Days to Port Gabriel Incident
An arrhythmic thump beat a tattoo inside Dakota’s head, and she closed her eyes until its migraine-like effect passed. It was still the middle of the night, but the street lighting beyond the window projected dappled stripes through the blinds of her quarters, painting them across the wall opposite.
Chris Severn shifted beside her. ‘What’s up?’ he asked sleepily, shifting naked beside her in the narrow cot. She watched fascinated as the tattoos covering his back twisted like something alive, animated by the shifting of the muscles beneath. Along with a lot of the other machine-heads, they had been put up in a building originally intended to house the maintenance staff for the skyhook. ‘Headache again?’
Dakota nodded, unwilling to speak in case it brought back the pain. It felt like a bad hangover, except she hadn’t been drinking.
It was obvious from the pained look on his face that Severn was suffering in precisely the same way. This worried her, even though that kind of synchronicity between machine-heads wasn’t so unusuaclass="underline" get enough machine-heads together in one room, and it was like being stuck in the middle of an electronic shouting match. Their Ghosts remained in continuous intercommunication, even when they themselves were asleep. This constant sharing of information and data sometimes manifested as shared minor tics or physical reactions amongst machine-heads in close proximity.
But one advantage lay in the fact that whatever one of them learned, pretty much all the rest would know, or could be granted access to. It was the development of technologies such as these that had helped make Bellhaven-and a man like Howard Banville-so very essential to the Consortium.
And if Severn was suffering in the same way as she was, it was reasonable to conjecture that everyone else in the building would be too.
Dakota was about to slide back down alongside his lithe nakedness when she heard voices from somewhere outside. So instead she slid out of the cot and stepped over to the window, whereupon Severn grunted in annoyance and twisted around until he faced the wall, burying his head in a pillow.
From the outside their building was an unremarkable grey concrete block set in a radial street a kilometre or so from the skyhook’s main base. Peering out, she saw two groups of men standing together at the junction with a side street about fifty metres away. Something about their gestures made it clear they were involved in some kind of argument with each other.
‘They’re crazy, you know,’ muttered Severn from somewhere behind her, his voice muffled by the pillow. ‘Totally fucking nuts.’
‘How do you know it’s Freeholders out there?’
‘Who the fuck else is it going to be?’ he mumbled.
Dakota scanned the network of active Ghost circuits throughout the town and noted that the Consortium security services were already aware of the gathering. She’d been initially worried about Uchidan infiltrators, and had immediately glanced round to locate her side-arm, but it looked like this disturbance was something relatively innocuous.
She watched as one man from each group stepped forward, until the pair of them stood face to face. They gesticulated wildly, faces distorted with fury. Their compatriots meanwhile stood in a loose circle around them under the street lights, wearing the heavy gear essential to surviving the freezing cold.
Dakota watched as one of the two men at the heart of the exchange slapped the other hard across the face, dislodging his breather mask. The sound of mocking laughter reached her ears.
Severn finally got up out of the cot. With an exaggerated sigh, he leant his chin on her shoulder, following her gaze. ‘You can see why Commander Marados doesn’t want the Freehold involved in this operation at all, can’t you?’
Dakota nodded, only half-listening to him. She’d heard about the death-matches the Freehold favoured. The whole notion was simultaneously barbaric and ludicrous, and it was a reminder of just why their bizarre society had been shuffled from port to port before finding its way here.
‘What’s the point in all this fighting?’ she asked. ‘They’ve already got an enemy to contend with.’
Severn pressed himself up behind her, his hands sliding around her waist and up towards her breasts, making her smile. But, despite what she thought were her better instincts, she wanted to see what might happen outside. If this was more than some minor street brawl-if this really was a challenge, as she suspected (hoped?), what would happen?
Dakota was shocked to discover her throat was dry with the anticipation of bloodshed.
Severn’s fingers began to drift downwards, but Dakota failed to respond. After a few more seconds he finally got the message and pulled back with another sigh.
‘Bloodthirsty, ain’tcha?’ he said, patting her on the shoulder.
Her skin prickled with the cold. Everywhere on Redstone was cold. She suspected that in some warped way it was a reason why the Freeholders wanted to live here. They didn’t seem the kind of people who would thrive in a tropical, sunny environment.
‘Hey, not bloodthirsty. Just curious.’
The Freehold was scheduled to lead an assault on Cardinal Point, a highly fortified Uchidan settlement about two thousand kilometres north-west of the skyhook, where it was believed Banville was currently being held captive. The Consortium were technically present here in a purely advisory role, but the Freeholder troops would be flown in aboard Consortium craft, piloted by Consortium military staff, with orbital reconnaissance and support from the Consortium also.