Yet during his own subsequent interrogation by Kieran, he had clearly lied about what had happened in Severn’s bar. On the few occasions they crossed paths she had seen the sympathetic way he looked at her, those furtive glances when he thought she wasn’t paying attention.
It had been a long, long time since Dakota had felt comfortable with the thought of intimacy with another human being-long and lonely years with no one to trust. But a lifetime of betrayal didn’t lend itself to a sudden acquiescence to physical desire or momentary lust. So she kept to herself, and avoided Corso, making occasional trips back to the cargo bay and the Piri’s effigy, in order to assuage her tension via brief, erotic encounters, while always wary of the turmoil in her heart and in her mind.
Seventeen
Redstone Colony
Consortium Standard Date: 03.06.2538
Port Gabriel Incident -2 Hours
The Consortium task force tore through Redstone’s stratosphere on tails of bright plasma. The rising sun dazzled the powered dust-mote lenses that followed in their wake as they pumped terabytes of real-time visual data to Orbital Command as well as to the Circus Ring on the surface.
Severn was a distant presence, seventeen kilometres east of Dakota, as they rose over the limb of the horizon, a pinprick of nervous humour and black wit hovering among a legion of Ghost-boosted consciousnesses, each node in constant communication with all the rest.
What each of them sensed, Dakota also sensed. What each of them knew, Dakota knew immediately, according to a complex hierarchy known as a threat/ significance tree, almost without her being fully conscious of the process.
From moment to moment, Dakota was aware of…
… Alejandro Najario, running constant threat analyses from the command deck of the Winter’s Night, ignoring the bickering, and sly, bemused comments of the Freehold troops locked into their launch restraints in the rear of his dropship.
… Tessa Faust, another pilot, checking her screens and altering her delta vee. She was tired, her head sore from a bad headache she’d suffered the night before.
… Chris Severn, alert and sharp, constantly monitoring the transceiver relays that had been used to compromise the Uchidan early-warning system.
Severn had been right, of course, about her on-off relationship with Josef Marados. It hadn’t taken long before Josef had again zeroed in on Dakota, and she herself, of course, had been a willing collaborator in his seduction.
She could still smell the scent of his skin, in her thoughts, from last night. Her concern over Severn’s jealousy was offset by the knowledge of his own separate, developing relationship with Tessa Faust.
‘I noticed the Shoal-member in the Circus Ring,’ Dakota had muttered, lying naked under the bare arm Josef had cast over her. ‘What’s it here for?’
‘Privileged information,’ replied Josef, in a sleepy post-coital mumble.
‘Oh, bullshit.’ Dakota jabbed him with an elbow. Dawn light leaked through the blinds. ‘It’s here to watch from the sidelines, isn’t it? Isn’t it bad enough they started this whole business in the first place?’
Josef sighed and pulled himself around until he faced her. ‘What are you up to now, recruiting for the Uchidans?’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, you know exactly what I mean.’
‘Dak, we all know about the Treaty Clause, but we still have a job to do.’
‘There’s something that really bothers me. It’s the names those things give themselves.’
‘The Shoal?’ Josef cast her an incredulous look. ‘They’re aliens, Dakota. That’s what aliens do: alien stuff. You’re on a fast ride to nowhere if you start trying to figure out how their minds work.’
‘I’m not so sure.’ Dakota pushed herself up on one elbow. Further sleep had suddenly become a distant prospect. ‘Understanding what they say is one thing, but sometimes… it’s like they’re having a massive joke at our expense. I couldn’t believe it when I heard what that thing calls itself.’
Josef shifted on to his back, and closed his eyes. At first Dakota thought he’d fallen asleep again, but after a moment he replied: ‘I’ll have to admit Trader-In-Faecal-Matter-Of-Animals isn’t a name that promotes much respect.’
‘But that’s just it,’ Dakota said, punching a pillow in exasperation. ‘They’re laughing at us. They don’t need us, but we need them really badly.’
‘OK, granted. But what can we do?’
Dakota made an exasperated sound and let her head fall back on the pillow. They were both staring up at the ceiling now.
‘You know, I feel like a fish out of water here. I don’t feel like I belong. It’s like I shouldn’t really be here.’
‘What do you mean?’ Josef asked.
‘I’m from Bellhaven, remember. I didn’t exactly volunteer to be here.’
Josef nodded with apparent sympathy, the circumstances being well known throughout the Consortium.
The first generation of Bellhaven colonists had put into action an extensive terraforming programme designed to increase the mean global temperature of their new world. When the first of the civil wars broke out a few decades later, the terraforming process had collapsed into disarray. The Elders, once they emerged victorious, had been forced to seek aid from the Consortium in order to reinstate the process-seeking aid, in fact, from the very Devil they had chosen to escape from when they had first arrived on Bellhaven.
The price for that help had been considerable. Since long before Dakota’s time, Bellhaven had gained a powerful reputation for innovation in the development of machine-head technology. In return for making Bellhaven more habitable, the Consortium demanded -and got-special concessions that included the acquisition of native-trained machine-heads for peacekeeping purposes.
Dakota had never previously seen herself as a soldier. She was, after all, a machine-head, someone who could endow mute machinery with her human intelligence. She had successfully avoided thinking too hard about what the Bellhaven technology treaties meant for her. Yet here she was, far from home, wondering just who she was meant to be.
In the moments before waking that morning, Dakota had found herself in an unfamiliar city, wearing a long pale dress with sleeves that trailed on the ground. Buildings rose like steel dandelions far into a pale blue sky, as if reaching out to ensnare a sun that beat down with not only warmth and heat, but also love and kindness and wisdom.
The idea of looking into that bright incandescence had terrified her. So she had kept her eyes downcast, knowing the light was alive, intelligent, that it knew everything about her that could possibly be known: every thought and action and desire she had ever felt or acted upon, good or bad.