If only there were some way for her to steal the derelict out from under the noses of not only the Shoal, but the Freehold as well. But even if she found a way… what would be the consequences for the human race, of acquiring such embargoed technology? Would she bring the wrath of the Shoal hegemony down on her entire species?
A functioning transluminal drive would open up the stars to mankind… but the subsequent vengeance of the Shoal might mean the end of the Consortium.
Yet it was clear there was something more going on here. What Corso had accused her of made no sense: she had not been studying maps of the local galaxy cluster. Shortly after his challenge, she’d had her Ghost scan the bridge records, and found nothing amiss outside her own secret tweaks and alterations.
But why would Corso lie? She couldn’t help but think back to the many weird glitches occurring since she had first boarded the Hyperion: the way the Freehold vessel had reacted when she tried to scan the alien’s trinket on the imager plate; the almost seamless alterations to the ship’s records that she had assumed until now had been made by Arbenz, or one of his men, for reasons unknown.
And then there was the way the beta copy of Piri’s mind she’d uploaded to the Hyperion had spoken to her-that curious grammatical inflection so reminiscent of the speech pattern of the Shoal-member she had encountered at Bourdain’s Rock.
She’d been carefully avoiding thinking about the implications of that impression too much. She might just have imagined it. Anything else filled her with crawling horror.
She snapped back out of her train of thought to see Corso arguing with Arbenz.
‘Senator, we have no idea what kind of infrastructure, what kind of know-how, the Magi used to build either this ship or its propulsive systems. Taking the derelict out of Nova Arctis is one thing. Replicating the technology is something on a whole bigger scale. This is technology millennia ahead of our own. At the moment we just don’t know enough.’
‘So what do you suggest?’ asked Gardner.
‘Take our time, years if necessary,’ Corso replied immediately. ‘Pick the derelict apart piece by piece. Establish a permanent research base here as a cover. We were intending to move our entire population to Newfall over the next few decades anyway…’
Arbenz bristled, his anger clearly mounting. ‘We are at war, Mr Corso. We are engaged in a battle for survival. If we can’t take this thing apart and understand how it works, we don’t deserve to keep Redstone, or Newfall either, for that matter.’
‘I think,’ Corso replied, obviously choosing his words very carefully, ‘that there are people in the Senate who might see things otherwise. Technically, you require the authority of the full governing board before-’
‘They’re not here!’ Arbenz bellowed, his face contorting in rage. ‘This is a God-given opportunity to raise ourselves up. Either we succeed in what we do here, or at the very least we die with honour before the eyes of God.’ Arbenz made an apparent attempt to cool down. ‘That’s final. I won’t tolerate any further dissent.’
Dakota had already caught sight of Gardner’s face and wondered, not for the first time, exactly what had driven this businessman to think he could engage in a profitable relationship with Freeholders. At this moment he looked aghast.
‘Senator,’ said Gardner suddenly, ‘I’ll ask you, with the greatest respect, to shut the hell up.’
‘Gardner…’
It’s falling apart, thought Dakota. They’ve been down here only, what, a couple of hours? And already it’s falling apart.
Gardner was insistent. ‘Without my financial and technical backup, you have nothing, Senator, nothing. I’m tired of being constantly sidelined because of your petty, parochial political arguments. If there’s any way to exploit or make sense of whatever we find on board this ship, it’ll be my research teams, my contacts that will bring it about. Do you understand me? You don’t have the resources. I do.’
‘You may have the resources,’ Arbenz replied acidly, ‘but you do not have the will.’
‘This is a joint mission,’ Gardner continued. ‘If anything happens to me, if I fail to get in touch with my business partners at designated times, your chances of being able to either do anything or go anywhere with this ship are nil. You understand that, don’t you?’
Dakota tensed, waiting to see which way things would swing now. But Arbenz simply smiled as if they were all friends and the past few hours of argument and threats had never happened. There was something very unsettling in that smile.
‘I think we’ve seen enough here for today,’ Arbenz said, turning his attention from Gardner to Corso instead. ‘What’s our next move on the technical front?’
‘The calibrations check out OK. Now I just need to fine-tune the interface so Mai-so Dakota can work on controlling the derelict. Once we reach that point, we’ve got a good chance of being able to explore the whole of the ship without getting killed.’
‘Good work, Mr Corso. Remember, we need to work as fast as possible.’
Corso looked thoughtful. ‘I can get a lot of work done right away.’
‘Fine.’ Arbenz nodded. ‘Meanwhile we’ll return to the surface. Kieran, I want you to stay here with Corso and keep an eye on things. Anything unusual happens-anything you suspect might be life-threatening-I want you to evacuate immediately. There’s no sense in taking unnecessary risks if you don’t have to.
‘As for you,’ he said, turning finally to Dakota, ‘you’re going back on board the Hyperion until we need you again. Don’t try anything that would make us unhappy, as you’d only get hurt.’
She couldn’t keep the quaver out of her voice. ‘You can’t kill me, Senator. You need me too much.’
‘That’s true,’ Arbenz replied with a mirthless smile. ‘But we can make things bad enough that you’d wish we had.’
Nineteen
Dakota sat still as a statue aboard the submersible as it rose back up through the frozen inky depths. She felt numb, withdrawn, while Gardner and Arbenz chatted quietly together in their seats. She now sat alone, to the rear of them, ignored and happy to be ignored.
What if she was wrong, she wondered? What if, despite their barbaric, murderous ways, the Freehold could actually pull this off?
People had long dreamed of finding some way to steal the transluminal technology from the Shoal or, better yet, develop their own. It was almost a childhood dream, a power fantasy brought suddenly screaming into real life.