Nova War.

Shoal Sequence 02.

by Gary Gibson.

Acknowledgements

With thanks to Jim Campbell for comments and suggestions.

And Emma Chou, for all the obvious reasons.

Prologue.

Orion-Perseus Arm/Milky Way.

32,000 light-years from Galactic Core/2,375 light-years from nearest edge of Consortium s.p.a.ce 0.15 GC Revs since Start of Hostilities (approx. 15,235 years [Terran]) Consortium Standard Year: 2542.

Inside a Shoal reconnaissance corvette, lost and hunted through a dense tangle of stars and hydrogen clouds a thousand light-years wide, a Bandati spy was being tortured by having his wings pulled off one by one.

In order to accommodate the prisoner, who was an air-breather, the bare steel vault of the corvette's interrogation chamber had been drained of its liquid atmosphere. Misted brine formed heavy, wobbling droplets in the oxygen/nitrogen mix that had replaced it, floating in the zero gee like tiny watery lenses.

The Bandati had been pinned to an upright panel placed in the centre of the chamber, where the floor dipped to form a shallow, stepped well. The Shoal-member known as Trader in Faecal Matter of Animals noted the enormous iron spike that had been driven through the creature's lower chest in such a way that he was held immobile without, to his surprise, immediately threatening his continued survival. Nonetheless, it was not difficult to discern from the Bandati's ceaseless struggling that he was in some considerable distress.

A sound like a hammer hitting metal set the bulkheads shaking briefly, announcing the successful circ.u.mvention of the corvette's shield defences by an enemy attack drone. Trader listened to the damage reports as they flooded in through a private data-feed, but nothing essential had been hit. Yet.

Cables had been fastened to the chamber wall directly above the scout's head, and hooks attached to the opposite ends of these cables had been inserted into the outermost edges of his five remaining wings. The tension in these cables pulled the wings wide, as if the Bandati were frozen in the act of gliding through the dense atmosphere of the world on which his kind had originated. Trader was reminded of a display he had once seen of small winged invertebrates, row after row of dried husks pinned to a wall, carefully mounted, labelled and categorized.

Clearly, the interrogators had been in a creative mood when they were ordered to extract as much information as possible from this spy.

Colour-coded projections floated in the air around the creature, simultaneously revealing his inner structure. The Bandati species were bipedal, about the same size and approximate shape as a young human adult and there the similarity ended. The scout's four primary limbs, apart from the wings, were long and narrow, the arms tapering to long, fine fingers, while his narrow, deceptively frail-looking frame was coated in fine dark hairs. The skull was like an oval laid on its side, the mouth small and puckered, while the skin, on closer inspection, had the appearance and texture of tightly coiled black rope. But the first first things one noticed above all else were the iridescent, semi-translucent wings that entirely dwarfed the rest of the creature's frame. things one noticed above all else were the iridescent, semi-translucent wings that entirely dwarfed the rest of the creature's frame.

If Trader had ever seen a terrestrial bat, he might have recognized a certain pa.s.sing resemblance. Even now, the scout's tiny mouth twisted in a shrill of agony as a shimmering blade of energy sliced into the ligatures and bony struts connecting one of his five remaining wings to his upper body.

The eyes, rather than being compound in the manner of the insects the Bandati had been partly modelled after, were round black orbs mounted in a fur-covered face that featured a variety of exotic sense organs designed tens of millennia before by the Bandati's legendary predecessors. Their lungs were equipped to draw in extraordinary quant.i.ties of oxygen to power them while in flight.

Trader watched the proceedings from a vantage point just outside the interrogation chamber's entrance, where the ship's liquid atmosphere was maintained at pressures substantial enough to crush an unprotected human should any have ventured within a few thousand light-years and was prevented from re-flooding the chamber by a shaped energy field spanning the entrance. Trader himself matched about half the body ma.s.s of a typical human, and took the shape of a chondrichthyan fish. His dark, compact body was tipped by multihued fins and a tail, which wafted slowly in the water all about him.

The Shoal interrogators within the chamber itself occupied bubbles of water prevented from dissipating by tiny disc-shaped field-generators that formed a protective sphere around each of them. Trader flicked one of his manipulator-tentacles, and in response dozens of identical discs freed themselves from nooks set into the walls around the entrance, whirling chaotically before each equidistant from the next finally forming the outline of another sphere with Trader at its centre.

He swam forward and through the barrier, the discs keeping pace and retaining the water he needed to breathe. Water splashed and pattered down onto slime-slicked metal as he entered.

The Bandati spy was trembling, his remaining wings twitching feebly but still held in check by the hooks tearing through their gossamer-fine flesh. Blood from the prisoner's wounds stained the panel on which he had been so brutally mounted. One recently severed wing lay on the deck to one side, and Trader could see that the knot of muscle and tissue where it had been severed was blackened and burnt. A streak of green-blue liquid directly below the panel suggested that the spy had defecated involuntarily.

The Bandati chittered, and the Shoal-member responsible for running the interrogation studied the creature's response as it was automatically translated into some approximation of Shoal-speak. Trader watched as another interrogator operated a set of mechanical, vaguely arachnoid arms attached to a device mounted on the ceiling directly above the prisoner. The device's arms were variously tipped with blades, probes and the hissing jet of a blowtorch, this latter now directed towards another of the unfortunate Ban-dati's wings.

Seeing what was about to befall it once more, the Bandati struggled ever more feebly to escape. Trader ignored the increasingly desperate cries as he approached his old patron, Desire for Violent Rendering, who was supervising the entire interrogation.

'Ah, there you are.' Desire turned from where he had been quietly watching the proceedings. 'We've been enjoying ourselves here. What kept you?'

A second booming sound rolled through the air, and the bulkheads rattled yet again, while the harsh white lights dotted around the chamber flickered briefly. Trader noted a series of projections that hung in the air by Desire's side, complex real-time simulations and battle projections that ill.u.s.trated the swarm of Emissary hunter-killers slowly gaining on the corvette. Helpful colour-coded lines of trajectory and time-to-impact estimates provided a running commentary on their rapidly dwindling chances of survival, the longer they remained this deep inside enemy territory.

Trader's superluminal yacht had rendezvoused with the corvette barely an hour before, at a set of coordinates barely light-minutes distant from a small, rocky world const.i.tuting part of a system sufficiently nondescript to warrant only a catalogue number for a name. Nonetheless, it appeared that Emissary drones had been seeded there millennia before, and had been busily attempting to penetrate the corvette's defensive systems ever since its arrival.

Trader's yacht had been targeted immediately, and he had experienced some tense moments while his...o...b..ard battle-systems meshed with those of the corvette, allowing his ship to be drawn into the relative safety of the larger ship's main bay.

The Emissary drones employed offensive technologies ranging from the most primitive directed-energy weapons all the way up to subquantal disruptors, intended to tear holes in the corvette's shaped fields and allow tiny, nuclear-tipped missiles to reach the relatively fragile hull within. At the same time, a constant barrage of supercharged plasma rained down on the corvette, a strategy that was rapidly depleting the batteries powering its shields.

There were hundreds of drones, too many for the corvette, which had been designed to operate as a lightly armed escort to larger, better-equipped ships. And yet, Trader could see, the engineers aboard the corvette were trying to divert spare power from the shield batteries in order to reach jump speed more quickly. They clearly knew what they were doing, but it was a dangerous game to play.

'What kept me,' Trader replied to his superior's query with more than a touch of acid, 'was your failure to inform me that I'd be shot at the instant I got here.'

Ah, yes,' Desire acknowledged. 'That is is unfortunate. We caught up with this little fellow here' - as if in response, the Bandati screamed shrilly as another of his wings was fully severed from his body 'and the next thing we know is we're stuck in the middle of a b.l.o.o.d.y ambush. But the commander a.s.sures me we'll be out of here in no time.' unfortunate. We caught up with this little fellow here' - as if in response, the Bandati screamed shrilly as another of his wings was fully severed from his body 'and the next thing we know is we're stuck in the middle of a b.l.o.o.d.y ambush. But the commander a.s.sures me we'll be out of here in no time.'

'Presumably you brought me here to tell me how this Bandati managed to wander so far from his species' permitted territory' Trader wriggled his fins in a manner intended to imply a state of wide-eyed innocence bordering on imbecility. 'But do you think it's possible this ambush might be connected in some way?'

Under the wide curve of his belly, the General's manipulators twisted in an expression of nonchalance. 'We were merely unlucky. I'm sure I don't need to remind you we're still a long way from the zone of primary conflict.'

'You sent a secure transmission telling me you'd found something important,' Trader replied. 'Something that might change the outcome of the Long War?'

The General twisted his manipulators again, in the Shoal equivalent of a nod, before guiding Trader towards a more secluded corner of the chamber.

'Surely we don't need to hide from your own interrogators?' Trader protested.

'Forgive an old fish's habits, but I'd feel better if we spoke with at least the illusion of privacy' The General switched their comms mode over to a private one-to-one network, the timbre of his voice changing slightly as a result. 'We have a discovery of major importance here, my old friend. And it's not necessarily good news.'

A leaden weight sank to the very core of Trader's being, like a falling star plummeting to the depths of the Mother of Oceans. He knew immediately he wasn't going to like whatever the General had to tell him, because the old fool would never have dragged him all this way if Trader himself weren't already somehow deeply involved.

'Continue,' Trader replied at length.

'We have been tracking the movements of several Bandati scouts for some time now,' the General explained. 'They each separately boarded a coreship visiting a Bandati system known as Night's End, then exploited a flaw in our security protocols to smuggle themselves into areas of the galaxy not normally permitted to their species. Once we discovered the breach in security, we managed to keep track of our friend here through four different star systems and three different coreships before he briefly fell off our radar.'

Coreships were the means by which the Shoal ruled a substantial part of the galaxy, having jealously guarded the secret of faster-than-light travel for more than a quarter of a million years. They were planet-sized multi-environment starships, capable of carrying entire populations rapidly between different systems. The majority of species were rarely allowed to travel more than a few hundred light-years beyond their home systems, but with sufficient subterfuge, some might find the means to travel further.

'So a Bandati was sent to do a little illicit exploring, and slipped our attention,' Trader replied wearily. 'Is this all you have to show me?'

Desire ignored the implied reproach and gestured with one fin. In response, a solid-looking projection displaying a series of animated Shoal glyphs appeared in the air between their respective field-suspended spheres.

'It appears the Bandati Hive responsible for sending this spy somehow acquired the sh.e.l.l of a deceased Atn. Towards the end of his journey, he concealed himself within that sh.e.l.l, along with the cryogenic facilities to keep himself alive. Our best conjecture suggests the sh.e.l.l was subsequently ejected into interstellar s.p.a.ce during one of the coreship's scheduled stops for navigation checking. Since this particular scheduled stop was within a hundred or so light-years of here, it was apparently no great matter for an Emissary scouting party to pick him up by prior arrangement, once the coreship had departed.' The chamber shook once more, indicating that something had managed to slip past the corvette's defences. Trader checked with his yacht's battle systems and saw that something metallic and worm-like was digging its way through the corvette's hull. The machine began to melt and shatter as secondary defensive beam weapons targeted it with precision fire.

At least the corvette was almost ready to make the jump back into superluminal s.p.a.ce, and safety.

Trader brought his attention back to the interrogation chamber. He glanced over to see the Bandati spy still struggling wildly as yet another of his wings was messily severed from his body. Small globules of blood spun in the zero gravity, wreathed with dark, oily smoke from the effects of the blowtorch.

The Bandati abruptly ceased his agonized struggles and slumped forward, having almost certainly died of his injuries. All this effort for one insignificant creature, All this effort for one insignificant creature, Trader thought. He felt a curious and unpleasant tightening of the skin across the back of his tail, an instinctive reflex born of fear. Trader thought. He felt a curious and unpleasant tightening of the skin across the back of his tail, an instinctive reflex born of fear.

'An Emissary scouting party,' Trader repeated. That the Bandati should even have become aware of the Emissaries' existence was in itself a revelation to Trader. 'This makes no sense, General. Why would the Emissaries agree to such a thing? There's nothing the Bandati could possibly have to offer them.'

'Or perhaps, my dear Trader, they do do have something to offer. A Bandati Hive known as "Immortal Light" controls Night's End, and we know for an absolute fact that this Hive has been communicating with the Emissaries via encrypted tach-net transmissions. By the time we managed to break their encryption, their spies were already long gone on their way. This one' Desire swivelled within his briny sphere, and glanced at the still pinned but slumped body of the spy 'was returning from his liaison with the Emissaries when we apprehended him.' have something to offer. A Bandati Hive known as "Immortal Light" controls Night's End, and we know for an absolute fact that this Hive has been communicating with the Emissaries via encrypted tach-net transmissions. By the time we managed to break their encryption, their spies were already long gone on their way. This one' Desire swivelled within his briny sphere, and glanced at the still pinned but slumped body of the spy 'was returning from his liaison with the Emissaries when we apprehended him.'

Desire next indicated a secondary projection, which contained a schematic of a superluminal drone adapted to carry a single pa.s.senger. Apparently it was designed to self-destruct once it had returned the Bandati spy to the nearest coreship-linked system, but the corvette had intercepted the drone when it had dropped back into subluminal s.p.a.ce for a navigation check.

Since the Shoal jealously guarded the only means of travelling faster than light, any other civilization they encountered desiring to travel between the stars could do so only aboard the Shoal's own coreships. As far as the vast majority of such client races were concerned, the Shoal were the only species to have yet developed superluminal technology, anywhere within the galaxy.

That was, of course, a lie.

The Emissaries were the Shoal's one real rival for dominance of the Milky Way. Unlike the Shoal, they had acquired their FTL technology directly from a Maker cache, and had used it to gain control of a substantial section of one spiral arm.

For the better part of the last fifteen millennia, the Shoal and the Emissaries had battled each other across a beachhead of star systems and nebulae positioned on the dust-wreathed edge of the spiral arm within which humanity's own home lay. The Emissaries had long ago crossed the relatively starless gulf from a neighbouring spiral arm, and the point at which their expansion met the borders of the Shoal Hegemony marked the primary zone of conflict that had become known as the Long War.

Occasional attempts at a negotiated peace between the two empires had only ever ended in treachery by one or the other side - and even more frequently in increased military action. The Emissaries had proven themselves to be as warlike as the Shoal could be treacherous.

Another impact rattled the bulkheads around them, harder this time. The sound of screeching metal cut through the damp air, and hull-breach alerts flickered at the edges of Trader's vision.

'Perhaps you had better cut to the chase, Desire.'

'Indeed.' Desire gestured, and the three-dimensional images floating in the air between them re-formed into a speeded-up simulation of a planetary system all too familiar to Trader in Faecal Matter of Animals. At the centre was Nova Arctis, a star that until recently had held many secrets, while coloured sigils indicated the positions of its many satellites, whipping around the star as if days and months were pa.s.sing within moments.

As Trader watched, the star expanded suddenly, simultaneously spinning off great loops of plasma that lashed through the simulated vacuum like million-centigrade whips, in a process that in real time would have taken hours rather than seconds.

Dakota Merrick.

The name came unbidden to Trader's thoughts. He had developed a certain affection for the human pilot, even as he had laid plans for her death and for the death of every other human unlucky enough to be in the Nova Arctis system at the time.

The star exploded suddenly, devastatingly. A great halo of light expanded outwards as Nova Arctis blew the majority of its plasma into interstellar s.p.a.ce, leaving behind a tiny, rapidly spinning core as sole testament to what had been. The coloured points representing the system's planets momentarily increased in brightness as the expanding ring of fire touched each one in turn. Entire worlds were then reduced to glowing cinders, swept away into history and in the process giving some of the highest-ranking members of the Shoal Hegemony their worst nightmare in a very long time.

Trader felt a curious chill at seeing so much primal power unleashed at once. That his virtual doppelganger secreted within Merrick's machine-head implants had helped bring this about filled him with awe.

Destroying Nova Arctis had been unpleasant but necessary, for the fledgling human colony there had stumbled across a Magi ship a faster-than-light vessel constructed by the same species from whom the Shoal had taken the secret of superluminal travel a quarter of a million years before. Those same humans had died to prevent the spread of a greater secret: that the star drive was also a weapon of appalling ferocity, one that his doppelganger had implemented to devastating effect.

'An entire star system destroyed: a middle-aged, main-sequence star that had absolutely no right to go about exploding all on its own. That's the kind of incident any one of our client species might well express considerable curiosity about, wouldn't you say?'

'I have no reason to think it was anything other than necessary,' Trader grated.

'Then you might be interested to know that the Immortal Light Hive recently came into possession of a Magi starship. A craft, my friend, with two humans on board.'

Trader remained silent at this revelation, and the General elaborated. 'Our Bandati spy turned out to have a variety of data encoded into strands of his genetic material. These have now been extracted observe.'

The image of Nova Arctis was replaced with that of another star system, this one almost obscured by a riot of sigils representing hundreds of communities and industrial complexes scattered throughout it. It was Night's End, home to Immortal Light.

The viewpoint zoomed in abruptly, first bringing into focus a small, heavily cratered moon orbiting a cloud-streaked gas-giant, and then a large industrial complex orbiting some hundreds of kilometres above the moon's equator. Hundreds of pressurized capsules were strung together, joined by gossamer transport tubes, the whole flimsy-looking structure encapsulating a number of fat-bodied helium dredgers. The viewpoint zoomed in a third time, to show another craft docked nearby that was quite unlike any of the other vessels.

Trader felt a sudden and unpleasant thrill as he recognized it: a ship of the ancient Magi fleet and looking the worse for wear.

Long, curving arms reached out from the craft's rear, as if grasping at something invisible. These were the drive spines, conduits that could rip time and s.p.a.ce open and throw the ship across light-years in an instant. Much of the craft's milky-white outer hull had been burned away particularly where it covered over the drive spines exposing the skeletal framework beneath.

'And the two humans?'

'Here.' The General gestured again. The Magi ship faded, replaced by two figures one instantly recognizable, the other only slightly less so.

The first was Dakota Merrick, of course, small, with a narrow frame, short dark hair curling around her ears. The other human was Lucas Corso, citizen of a violent and marginalized human society known as the Freehold. It seemed that his government had charged him, against his will, to unlock the derelict Magi ship's secrets.

Both were immobilized, strapped onto gurneys in a chamber. Several Bandati clung to the sides of pillars standing here and there throughout the chamber, while others were leaning over the two humans.

'And are they still alive?' Trader asked his superior, in as nonchalant a manner as possible.

'Yes,' Desire replied. 'Immortal Light have been trying to extract information from them ever since they appeared rather unexpectedly on the edge of their Hive's system, in the Magi ship.'

'Then the Bandati may already know too much,' Trader observed mournfully. 'They may already know that the superluminal drive is a weapon, and I'm guessing the miserable winged b.a.s.t.a.r.ds mean to trade that knowledge to the Emissaries.'

For all their aggressive forays into Hegemony territory, the Emissaries during all their millennia of interstellar travel had apparently failed to discover the star drive's destructive potential.

'That,' Desire agreed, 'would appear to be the most reasonable conjecture. In which case, we could soon be facing a nova war of unprecedented proportions one that could destroy our entire civilization. Based on the evidence we've extracted from our Bandati spy here, the Emissaries want direct proof of what Immortal Light claim to possess. They intend to send a covert expedition deep into our territory with the simple purpose of verification. Given the circ.u.mstances, one might easily find justification for a pre-emptive strike against the Emissary forces ma.s.sed on our borders.'

Trader's head swam for a moment. 'We should not be discussing this in such close quarters to your crew,' he snapped.

The rulers of the Shoal Hegemony had long held back from using nova weapons against the Emissaries, for fear it would give them the clues they needed to start developing their own, thereby escalating the conflict to mutually destructive levels. Yet at the same time there remained the very real concern that the Emissaries might discover the truth any day now; and if such a day ever came, the Shoal would be facing its greatest challenge.

Pre-emptive escalation was a phrase only rarely heard, usually whispered in darkened corners or in secluded high-level meetings. It was the notion of carrying out a pre-emptive nova strike against the Emissaries, in order to destroy their beachhead in the Orion Arm in one single devastating blow. And when those responsible were called to account . . . they would need to prove the absolute necessity of their actions, and let history judge them if necessary. was a phrase only rarely heard, usually whispered in darkened corners or in secluded high-level meetings. It was the notion of carrying out a pre-emptive nova strike against the Emissaries, in order to destroy their beachhead in the Orion Arm in one single devastating blow. And when those responsible were called to account . . . they would need to prove the absolute necessity of their actions, and let history judge them if necessary.

The General twisted his manipulators in a.s.sent. 'You needn't worry, Trader. Our secrets remain quite secret here. I'm sure you will agree, given the circ.u.mstances, that we appear to be in precisely the kind of crisis that calls for clear minds to take unpleasant but necessary action, regardless of how drastic it might appear to the outside observer.'

'And of course, it would be necessary for the ultimate weight of responsibility to be carried on the fins of one single Shoal-member,' Trader added, the sarcasm clear and sharp in his words.

'We both serve many masters, Trader. They must remain nameless by necessity. Otherwise, there might be speculation about a vast and ancient conspiracy to suppress certain truths from the greater population of the Shoal, which might ultimately destabilize the Hegemony. And that would never do, would it?'

No, d.a.m.n you, it wouldn't. 'No doubt you've volunteered me for the job.' 'No doubt you've volunteered me for the job.'

'I'd say you've been preparing for this job all your life,' Desire replied. 'You've advocated a pre-emptive strike yourself often enough. Can you think of anyone else who could be trusted with such a task?'

Trader briefly enjoyed a fantasy of the General being tortured by his own interrogators. 'Our goal is to preserve our race, preserve the Hegemony, and preserve the peace.' Trader paused before continuing. 'Regardless of the costs.'

Desire twisted his manipulators in a gesture of grim agreement. 'Regardless of the costs,' he echoed. 'Our secret is finally out, Trader. Therefore our strategy must be swift, retaliatory and brutal. We propose destroying the Emissaries' primary systems along their beachhead in this spiral arm. We would thus set the skies ablaze, but only for a short while.'

And yet, Desire, think of the scale of such destruction. It would be enormous.'

'Indubitably But not sufficient to bring the Shoal to an end -or so the Dreamers say'