Paranoia began to spin new webs inside her mind. The alien had given her the statuette while she was still on board Bourdain’s Rock. Was it possible, she wondered, that the statuette might contain something within it that allowed Bourdain to keep track of her?
No, too paranoid, she thought, shaking her head. The concept of an alien collaborating with Bourdain in some way raised a thousand more questions than it provided answers. And yet…
And then she remembered noticing an imager on the bridge of the Hyperion.
If there was anything hidden inside the figurine, then that would be the best way to find it. The easier solution would be simply to destroy or get rid of it, but that overwhelming feeling there was something desperately important about the object continued to haunt her.
She cursed herself as an idiot for not considering an imager scan earlier. At the very least doing so would keep her preoccupied until she had a better idea what exactly had happened back on Mesa Verde.
She stepped through the door of her quarters into the corridor beyond, the figurine squeezed securely into a jacket pocket.
Twelve
Redstone Colony
Consortium Standard Date: 01.06.2538
3 Days to Port Gabriel Incident
Dakota snapped awake to hear the duty klaxon blaring like Satan’s own alarm clock. She stumbled out of her cot-Severn mumbling behind her, only just beginning to stir-and collapsed to her knees beneath the window, gripping her head in her hands until the pain of the headache began to ebb. The last lingering fragments of her dream faded with it.
Frequent migraines were a worrying sign. They could get worse, much worse, and sometimes the only cure for a machine-head was to have the implants removed altogether. The idea of life without her Ghost was already unthinkable.
Finally, as the pain faded to nothing, Dakota stood up and let her forehead touch the icy windowpane. She stared outside to the spot where the altercation had taken place the night before. Fresh snow had fallen, obliterating any history.
Then the second klaxon sounded, and Severn finally jerked upright with a surprised snort.
Less than twenty minutes later, Dakota felt another sharp stab of pain in her temple as they both made their way to the mess hall. It felt like tiny, fire-breathing dragons were rampaging through her skull, but there and gone in an instant.
‘Shit. Dak, you OK?’ Severn put a hand on her shoulder as she leaned her head against a wall.
‘No… I don’t know, Chris. I think I need to see someone.’
He offered to accompany her to the medical labs, but she waved him off, suddenly not wanting any company at all. She was nervous enough about this morning’s mission, and didn’t feel too much like breakfast anyway.
‘Sounds like a standard circuit-induced migraine to me.’
The doctor was a youngish man with dark curly hair. Her Ghost informed her his name was O’Neill. She lay back in something that looked like Hieronymous Bosch’s idea of a dentist’s chair, staring up at the ceiling beyond the curving plastic of the scan unit. The chair was angled so far back, she suspected she might slide right out of it and headfirst on to the floor, had she not been tightly strapped in place. Her head was held immobilized as tiny, needle-like devices rotated on well-oiled arms around her scalp, interrogating her implants. Ultrasound images were projected on a nearby wall.
‘Well, it felt worse than any fucking circuit headache I’ve ever had before,’ Dakota complained bitterly.
O’Neill shook his head. ‘See, this is exactly why they should keep machine-heads apart as long as possible. With so many of you gathered together like this, if one’s got any kind of a problem, the rest of them will pick it up in no time.’
‘I know Chris Severn’s been having the same problem. Anyone else?’
O’Neill hit a button and the chair back rolled up with a soft hum. ‘You’re not the first this morning,’ he agreed, while a nurse undid the straps and helped her down.
Dakota watched him carefully, noting his tight-lipped expression. ‘Then is it safe to go ahead with our scheduled missions? Shouldn’t we be investigating this?’
‘Yeah, we should. But there’ll be shit to pay if we have to pull back now. We’ll be losing a vital “window of opportunity”, as they like to say upstairs.’
Dakota was scandalized. ‘And this comes from Commander Marados?’
O’Neill paused for a moment with his mouth open. ‘No, higher, I think,’ he finally admitted.
‘It just seems a bit dubious.’
‘Well,’ O’Neill touched her elbow to lead her out the room, ‘that’s the military for you. One big, happy, bureaucratic family. If anything goes wrong, it’s always somebody else’s fault.’
Dakota stopped at the door and glared back at him accusingly.
‘Look,’ said O’Neill, ‘there’s really nothing to worry about, OK? Otherwise orders would have come down from Command to postpone the mission. If they’re happy, we’re happy.’
Perhaps, Dakota thought, as she walked away, she should have mentioned the hallucinations as well.
She had dreamed of angels with wings. They had drifted down to alight in the centre of a town marketplace she remembered from her childhood. Warmth and beauty and a sense of welcoming had been carried in the opalescent radiance of their perfect golden skin. One, a woman with long flowing hair and an expression so kind that Dakota had wept even in her sleep, floated just millimetres above the cobbled ground, regarding her with infinite compassion.
The angel had spoken to her in some strange, incomprehensible dialect that somehow translated into perfect meaning the instant she heard it.
On waking that morning, she hadn’t been able to recall a single word the angel had said. But the sense of having been somewhere real was sufficiently strong to leave her with an overwhelming sense of loss.
Dakota hesitated, and thought about turning back. But what exactly could she tell O’Neill? That she had experienced a particularly vivid dream? She would only be making a fool of herself.
Instead she continued on her way. O’Neill surely knew what he was doing, and orders were indeed orders. The med-tech would have just reprimanded her for wasting his time. The dream itself was only that, a dream-perhaps brought about by her general state of anxiety in the run-up to the assault on Cardinal Point.