‘Go on.’
‘Because the Shoal found another cache there: the same kind of thing the Magi once stumbled on. It’s the one explanation that helps everything else make sense.’
Corso looked thunderstruck. ‘But a solar system is a big place, Dakota. Why-?’
‘Even the Shoal can’t search through every solar system in the galaxy. Easier to wait until one becomes inhabited, and then scour it thoroughly for evidence of a cache. Even if they don’t find one at first, they know they’re going to be frequent visitors there aboard their coreships, since no one can get to that world except through them. And this gives them plenty of time, in the long run, to survey every last boulder and grain of sand within a system. So when they found one in the Uchidan home system, they didn’t want any witnesses, and they weren’t taking any chances whatsoever.’
Corso shook his head and looked away. ‘Maybe you’ve got something there.’
‘No, Lucas, I’m more sure of this than I’ve ever been of anything.’
‘So,’ he asked carefully, ‘what are you proposing we do now?’
She studied him carefully as she spoke. ‘I don’t know. I really don’t know. At first I just didn’t want Arbenz to get his hands on that Theona derelict, and now I realize you don’t either. But there’s even bigger reasons now to make sure he doesn’t win this.’
‘That’s a given, but it’s not what I meant,’ Corso replied. ‘Say, for argument’s sake, you got your hands on that derelict. Do you destroy it like the Shoal presumably want, or do we take possession of it and make humanity into a true star-faring species?’
‘I’m still not sure,’ Dakota admitted. ‘But right now our priority is staying alive. Your Senator has that fleet to deal with, and I don’t know who’s going to win the fight, but once it’s over, the survivors are going to come after us.’
‘Now you’re going to tell me just why it is we’re headed into the inner system.’
‘Do you remember when I came to you in the medical bay, and I said the derelict had fired out some kind of signal at the same time it attacked you?’
‘Yes,’ he said guardedly. ‘But I never had the chance to find out what that was all about.’
‘It looks like our derelict isn’t alone: it might have been part of a fleet. Well, that transmission was fired directly toward Nova Arctis’ innermost world, Ikaria.’
Corso took a moment to absorb this information. ‘But you don’t actually know anything’s there,’ he said finally.
‘It’s a chance.’
‘A chance at what?’ Corso protested. ‘There’s nowhere for us to go. You saved my life. I’m grateful for that.’
‘We’ll never get control of the derelict that’s on Theona,’ Dakota replied, ‘but I’ve got reason to think we might do better with whatever other derelicts are on Ikaria. Maybe, if we’re very lucky, we can survive this one.’
Corso stared at her, speechless.
She grinned. ‘But, if you’d rather turn back and surrender…’
Corso shook his head. ‘No, Let’s just maintain this course. At least we’ll gain ourselves some breathing space before the fusion piles give out.’
Twenty-seven
Bourdain’s fleet fell into the Nova Arctis system like a swarm of avenging silver angels, the hull of his centre ship bristling with plasma weapons focused on the silent shape of the Hyperion, still locked into its tight orbit around Theona.
They had crossed the system at the highest speed possible, and were currently locked into a high-gee deceleration, their engines pointed in-system as they braked hard to avoid overshooting the gas-giant Dymas altogether. Warriors in dull-grey liquid body armour were couched in racked acceleration couches inside the two accompanying craft.
The three ships began to turn as they came out of deceleration, each slowly spinning around until they dropped towards Theona nose-first, their automated weapons systems swivelling to maintain their line of fire on the Hyperion itself and the base on the moon’s surface, far below.
Arbenz frowned, glancing across the bridge to where Kieran still maintained his post at a console. Gardner sat a little way off, in a couch at one end of the bridge area, watching them both with a contemplative look. Contemplating how to get rid of us, more than likely, the Senator mused.
Kieran looked up. ‘Sir, I’m concerned about what that woman Merrick said, about the Shoal placing software spies inside the Hyperion’s stacks-’
‘We can worry about that later,’ Arbenz responded dismissively. ‘Right now, we have this fleet to contend with. In the meantime, I’d love to know who was responsible for leaking information about the derelict’s existence to Bourdain.’
‘Senator?’
Arbenz glanced over at Gardner, who was peering down at a comms console with apparent fascination.
‘What is it, Mr Gardner?’ he snapped, his voice full of irritation.
‘It’s the derelict, Senator. You might want to take a look at this.’
Arbenz turned to Kieran, who then brought up what Gardner was seeing to the main screens.
There were severe tremors evident on Theona, bad enough to rupture the ice, and all centred on the derelict. The officer in charge of the surface base had already ordered an evacuation.
Doubt assailed Gregor Arbenz for the first time in a very, very long while. Things were starting to move far faster than he would have anticipated.
The staff and troopers stationed inside the Theona base had barely a few seconds to register what at first appeared to be a major ‘quake. Then they registered nothing at all, when the base, along with several cubic kilometres of ice and rock, was vaporized in an instant, leaving the churning ocean below exposed to the stars and the cold of space for the first time in half a billion years.
A hole had appeared in the pristine white surface of Theona, a vast chasm with foam churning at its bottom, as water boiled on contact with the near vacuum of the moon’s atmosphere.
From the centre of it all arose a shape like a nightmarish expressionist sculpture of a squid, carried upwards by incandescent bursts of energy. Water cascaded from its hull, freezing instantly and shearing off in great sheets, as the derelict fought its way through the clouds of debris and superheated steam that rose in a great mushroom above Theona’s fractured horizon.