‘But why would Bourdain send someone to try and stop us?’ said Kieran, gripping the edge of the table with both hands. ‘Or are you telling us Bourdain already knows about the derelict?’
Gardner shook his head. ‘You’re looking for the wrong answers. Let’s recap on some recent events: first, Bourdain’s new world detonated in an act of apparent terrorism. Then Mala Oorthaus showed up looking for work that would take her safely out of the Sol System.’
Arbenz didn’t look convinced. ‘You were the one responsible for hiring her, David. Why didn’t you check all this out back then?’
‘I did,’ Gardner stated flatly. ‘But we were pressed for time, and machine-heads aren’t easy to come by any more, remember? All I knew about her came through Josef Marados, and it turns out he was murdered just before our departure from Mesa Verde.’
As Corso listened to this in mute shock, Kieran suddenly leaned forward, tapping at the air. Corso’s solar system disappeared, to be replaced by screeds of media information: news feeds regularly updated via the tach-net transponders. Corso watched as Kieran ran a fast search through the Mesa Verde public archives.
He looked up again with a shake of his head. ‘Senator, I’ve been constantly monitoring events back on Redstone and within the Sol System, and can find no reports of any such incident. Something like that couldn’t possibly have escaped my attention.’
‘News feeds can be falsified,’ Gardner pointed out. ‘Marados was in charge of a major financial operation working in and out of the black market, and when someone like that dies, particularly when it’s a nasty, violent death, word gets out one way or another. And remember what I said-I have my own sources of information, outside of official channels. This whole thing stinks of someone covering their tracks, especially if you assume Bourdain’s assassin in fact came looking to kill the Oorthaus woman.’
Arbenz looked thunderstruck. ‘But why would Bourdain send someone to… are you saying she might be responsible for what happened to Bourdain’s Rock?’
‘Why not say just that? But we don’t know for sure, of course.’ Gardner’s smile was as dry as his voice. ‘But, you said it yourself: we still need her. Whether she likes it or not.’
On the edge of the Nova Arctis system, the coreship dropped out of transluminal space for a bare few minutes, but long enough for the Hyperion to lift up from its docking facility on a shimmering platform constructed of shaped fields and artificial gravity, before finally exiting through one of the many openings in the coreship’s outer crust.
The frigate went into immediate deceleration as it pulled away from the vast Shoal vessel, which dwindled rapidly as it accelerated back to jump speed.
Dakota sat in a web of data at the heart of the bridge, watching the way space warped around the coreship as it slipped back into transluminal space in a flurry of exotic particles. At last, she knew their destination: Nova Arctis. This system had only been a number in a catalogue until the Freeholders decided to give it that name.
In the meantime, there were questions for Dakota to ponder, that in turn raised more questions rather than answers.
Such as, who had killed Severn?
Severn had obviously survived his encounter with Moss-if he hadn’t, she would have known, immediately. Yet several days ago, his life-signal-dim as it was, given he was some kilometres away in the heart of Ascension-had ceased. She’d woken from a dream at the time, her own heart pounding, filled with an inexplicable sense of loss, until she had realized what her Ghost was telling her.
It was hard to believe. They’d hardly set eyes on each other more than a few times in the years since Port Gabriel, but the knowledge of his death gripped her innards and filled her thoughts with a deep sense of mourning, despite his betrayal of her.
Chris, dead.
At first she assumed he must have finally died of the injuries sustained during his fight with Moss. But then she’d had the Piri Reis worm its way into the maintenance programs for a local medical storage facility in Ascension, and then discovered the truth. Severn had been messily executed by unknown assailants, after being hauled out of his medbox.
Whoever was responsible, they’d been thorough, and particularly brutal.
It was possible Arbenz was behind this, or perhaps Moss hadn’t been the only agent Bourdain had sent aboard the coreship. But also Severn had led a dangerous life, and had any number of enemies in a city still deeply divided by the aftermath of the civil war. Any one of them could have been responsible.
Nonetheless, it was beginning to feel as if a lengthening trail of death led straight towards her. First the massacre on the Rock, then Josef Marados, and now Severn. It was enough to make a person very scared -and very, very paranoid.
With a start, Dakota remembered Corso’s garbled suggestion that someone might have entered the Hyperion without any of them knowing. At first she’d considered such an idea to be ridiculous. There were few areas of the frigate that Dakota, via her Ghost circuits and Pot’s systems, hadn’t accessed or subjugated to her will in some way.
A few parts of the Hyperion remained effectively invisible to her, because Arbenz still retained sole control over certain higher-level systems. Was it possible someone else had found a way to get on board? Someone far sneakier and deadlier even than Moss: an intruder who could somehow avoid or alter the security logs, and then murder her in her sleep?
This ship had too many shadows for its own good. Dakota’s senses prickled apprehensively as she found her way through its musty, darkened corridors and drop shafts. She checked and rechecked the vessel’s security logs, including her own illegal alterations. There were, indeed, curious omissions or glitches that had nothing to do with her efforts, incredibly easy to miss if she hadn’t been looking for something just a little bit unusual.
She couldn’t dismiss either the possibility that someone-or something-had gained access to the logs without her knowledge. Dakota shivered at the thought.
But surely it simply wasn’t possible. Only another machine-head could possess that level of skill.
She thought often of some of the few words she had exchanged with Corso: his revelation that he was aboard the Hyperion only under severe duress. It revealed a streak of honesty in him-or so she believed-that made him substantially different from the others aboard.
Regardless of that, ever since their return from Ascension she had been avoiding him, afraid he might still betray her. He owed her absolutely nothing, after all.