But it would take time. Even with the weeks they spent travelling, first to rendezvous with the hated Arbenz and then on to whichever benighted system the derelict actually resided in, he could not be sure how long the task would take him.
He thought of Prometheus, stealing fire from the gods and receiving an eternal punishment for his efforts. The Shoal weren’t gods but they were close enough, in terms of their knowledge and power.
Corso leaned back, thinking aloud. ‘What if we get caught?’
‘Caught?’ Kieran’s voice was full of derision. ‘We are the Freehold, morally superior to any other civilization in human space. Failure is not an option.’
Corso immediately thought of the Uchidans, and the struggle of always pushing them back and back and back, on a world that had once belonged in its entirety to the Freehold.
‘Everyone knows what happens if we try and acquire technology the Shoal don’t want us to have,’ he insisted. ‘Total revocation of every colonial contract-it’s an impossible risk. Maybe we should…’
‘Should what, Mr Corso?’ came the reply in a menacing tone.
Every human-occupied- world stranded from each other for ever without the benefit of Shoal coreships shuttling between them, if we’re discovered.
Even if they weren’t discovered, and all went to plan, the Shoal would surely know if the Freehold were constructing a fleet of starships. What then? War with the Shoal? It would be like an army of ants taking on an orbital nuclear bomber. The risks were too enormous, too overwhelming.
‘How do we know no one else knows about this derelict? What if it’s a trick of some kind?’
Corso had voiced this last possibility despite its wildly paranoid tone. But Kieran’s rapid response suggested it had already been carefully considered.
‘A honey trap left by the Shoal, you mean?’ Kieran laughed with a harsh, rasping sound. ‘So they can catch us in the act and revoke their contracts with us? No, Mr Corso, it’s really not very likely.’
A wave of embarrassment washed over Corso and he stared mutely at the screens before him. ‘But there are risks. Unimaginable risks.’
‘Which is exactly why the Freehold are so well placed to deal with this discovery. It’s in our human nature to take risks, isn’t it? The manifestation of our warrior spirit? I’ll remind you, Mr Corso, that if all comes out well-and it will-you’ll be a member of the Senate, as well as a declared Hero who can decline to participate in the challenge system if he chooses and still retain his status as a Citizen.’
Corso nodded. ‘OK, another thing. Interface chairs are generally intended for use by machine-head pilots. So what’s it doing here?’
‘There’s a good chance a human machine-head will be able to interface with the derelict’s controls in the way a normal human cannot, once we have broken through the security blocks and into the ship’s core systems. Bellhaven Ghost technology appears to have close parallels with the means used by the Magi for piloting their craft.’
It took a moment for Corso to absorb this. ‘Let me get this straight. Are you telling me you’re intending to find yourselves a machine-head to fly this thing out from where you found it?’
‘Correct, Mr Corso. There isn’t the time to circumnavigate the derelict’s systems to allow a normal pilot to control it, but extreme circumstances require radical thinking, wouldn’t you agree?’
‘I’m just finding it hard to accept the idea of a man like Senator Arbenz actually hiring a machine-head to work for him. It’s… rather ironic, given recent history, wouldn’t you say?’
Corso could almost feel the anger and irritation coming at him down the comms link. ‘This is far from a laughing matter, Mr Corso. So just concentrate on the task at hand.’
‘How much are you going to tell the poor bastard anyway? What if he doesn’t want to do it?’
‘Leave that to us.’
Corso shook his head and bent down to peer again at the chair’s readouts. His mind whirled: a machine-head?
Whoever ended up piloting the derelict was going to find it about as pleasurable as walking into a nest of angry snakes.
And if Kieran’s reputation was all he had heard, there was every chance the experience might be deadly, too.
Eight
Trans-Jovian Space, Sol System, en route to Mesa Verde
A long, long time later, Dakota came to realize her biggest mistake had been opening the alien’s gift.
Whatever she’d expected to find when she investigated the box the Shoal-member had passed her, she hadn’t thought she would find herself holding a tiny and entirely anthropomorphic figurine handcrafted of wood and silver wire.
As she touched it for the first time, a slight stab of pain in the back of her head heralded the arrival of a severe headache. The pain was so sharp she even imagined she saw a spark of light, out of the corner of one eye.
She returned her attention to the figurine she held, trying to work out what seemed so dauntingly familiar about it, so much so it gave her a curiously queasy sensation in the pit of her stomach. Fine pieces of patterned paper surrounded the head and hips of a matchstick figure, suggesting a headscarf and skirt. The tiny, delicate arms were raised up as if in alarm, and the figure itself was mounted on a cross-shaped base.
It looked just like the kind of cheap folk art people bought on holiday, then left forgotten on some dusty shelf. For the life of her, Dakota could not begin to understand what significance the figurine might hold for the Shoal-member, or what significance the alien believed it might hold for her.
She placed the object on the instrument board in the command module of the Piri Reis, and stared at it for a while longer. Despite its innocuous appearance, something about it still chilled her.
Finally Dakota grew bored trying to understand it. As her Ghost tugged at her senses, she flicked over to an external view. A message icon was currently flashing over a display of Mesa Verde, another Shoal-boosted asteroid much like Bourdain’s Rock.
She put the message on display over the expanse of infinite black space extending beyond her ship, and felt a surge of relief at what she read there.
A long time ago (Dakota recalled) Mesa Verde had been a prison of sorts, one part of a loose confederation of human communities scattered throughout the asteroid belt and outer solar system. In the dark days before the invention of tachyon transmission and the subsequent first contact with the Shoal, people serving penal sentences had been exploited as cheap labour in mining operations. The mining still continued, of course-the need for raw ores was greater than ever. But the quality of life for most humans in the outer solar system had improved immeasurably, and Mesa Verde hadn’t been a prison for a long time.