Directly ahead, Nova Arctis was steadily growing larger, though still barely more than a particularly bright pinp.r.i.c.k in the unending night. Very soon, the Piri Piri was due to flip on its axis mid-course, as a prelude to heavy deceleration. was due to flip on its axis mid-course, as a prelude to heavy deceleration.

The Piri's Piri's miniaturized probes, in the meantime, were sending back initial reports from orbit above Ikaria. She stared at blurred images of what looked like, yes, three more craft identical to the Theona derelict, but buried deep within a chasm on Ikaria's crater-pocked surface. miniaturized probes, in the meantime, were sending back initial reports from orbit above Ikaria. She stared at blurred images of what looked like, yes, three more craft identical to the Theona derelict, but buried deep within a chasm on Ikaria's crater-pocked surface.

The probes circled lower and lower in their orbits, gaining higher and higher definition images in the remaining time before Ikaria's gravity finally sucked them to their doom.

By now Corso had woken up.

'They're just the same as the first derelict we found, aren't they?' he commented.

'Looks that way. Have you noticed the course the Theona derelict is taking?'

Corso tapped at a console and stared up at a screen. The first derelict had now adjusted its trajectory to bypa.s.s Ikaria, clearly having set a course for the heart of the sun.

Corso pulled himself up with a strap and swore, his muscles bunching with tension. 'No, it'll get there too soon. We don't have enough time-'

'Stop panicking,' Dakota snapped. 'It's still too soon for it to make the jump. It could take hours, even days, right? a.s.suming it even can can make a jump once it's this deep inside a system.' make a jump once it's this deep inside a system.'

The most interesting aspect of not being real, Trader's virtual doppelganger had long concluded, was the lack of concern felt for one's own self-preservation.

The recesses of the derelict's information stacks were near infinite in their storage capacity, far surpa.s.sing just the satisfaction of mere curiosity. Within their depths Trader had discovered the acc.u.mulated knowledge of a culture that had undergone endless expansions and contractions within the Magellanic Clouds for very nearly two million years. Their empire had ruled countless worlds before collapsing into half-remembered dust, only to rise again with pa.s.sing aeons, and spreading yet further outwards.

The humans liked to call the cloud-dwellers 'Magi', and it was as good a name as any, given the miracles of which they were capable. But even so, some things had yet remained far, far beyond them. Their empire had been built with excruciating slowness, taking hundreds of millennia to spread incrementally across their galaxy at a sublight crawl. That empire had fought itself to the death a thousand times, as vast civilizations, locked into war with each other, failed to recognize their common ancestry until long after the combat was over.

In the meantime, the derelict hurtled towards its destination deep within the heart of Nova Arctis. The virtual Trader felt no concern, no sense of loss, and no fear over its own imminent destruction.

Here I am, embodied, within the mind of this craft, contemplating the end of my existence in a very short time indeed. Does that lack of concern deny me as a true thinking being, or is my ability to be aware of myself- to exist - -suggest that I am just as alive as the original me?

When these philosophical questions grew tiresome, Trader dived deep within the derelict's stacks and the endless realms contained therein-fully-fledged interactive environments representing a million worlds over a spread of uncountable aeons. He lived virtual centuries within these environments at an accelerated pace, while in the greater universe outside the derelict crawled towards its ultimate destination.

The tragedy was that the flesh-and-blood Trader would never know of the rich experiences being partaken of by his doppelganger. All evidence that the Magi culture had even existed had been deliberately destroyed some millennia before. Better to consign an entire civilization to the dust than risk the revelation that yet more caches might be found scattered throughout the cosmos.

The Magi had been seduced into destroying themselves.

They had stumbled across a hidden cache of high technology in much the same way as the humans had stumbled across their derelict starship. It had been buried in the heart of an asteroid, within a chamber of clearly artificial origin, seemingly a gift of sheer providence.

Trader idled a century away in the abyssal, kilometres-deep chambers of a world-library the Magi themselves had called Sadness of Lost Memories Recovered from Damaged Media. Sadness of Lost Memories Recovered from Damaged Media. Therein he found the stories of a hundred mighty interstellar civilizations to rival the Shoal and far beyond, of their rise and fall and rise again, like the steady beating of a G.o.d's heart-all lost in the depths of ancient time. Therein he found the stories of a hundred mighty interstellar civilizations to rival the Shoal and far beyond, of their rise and fall and rise again, like the steady beating of a G.o.d's heart-all lost in the depths of ancient time.

Of all the theories Trader had heard, ranging from the drily sober to the irredeemably insane, one appealed above all others. Not because it appeared to have any greater validity than any other theory, but because it scared him more than any other.

The theory held that the transluminal drive had been created by a race of beings responsible for the construction of the universe itself-a race generally referred to by the Magi as the Makers. The drives appeared to tap into the same infinite energy that fuelled the primordial chaos from which all reality had sprung: therefore it was not unreasonable to a.s.sume the drive had been a means by which those ancient G.o.dlike beings could tour their creation.

Unfortunately, after some billions of years had pa.s.sed, the Makers found rats in the cellar: life, in all its astonishing fecundity.

And so they had set out traps, nets cast wide and deep in the hopes of snagging the unwary.

If some of those ancient Magi cultures had bothered to check the records lost deep inside their own world-libraries, they might have been able to prolong their existence by the simple expedient of hunting down those carefully hidden caches of dangerous technology and destroying them before they were found by others, much as the Shoal had now been doing for almost the entirety of their recorded history.

It was only stunningly bad luck that the humans had discovered a Magi ship, rather than one of the original Maker caches.

Trader had been present during the Twelfth Schism, some seventeen millennia before (a mere stripling a few thousand years old. and only just beginning to grow weary of existence , when the Maker Cult had swept through the younger ranks of the Shoal ruling elite. Thousands had been put to death or a.s.sa.s.sinated over the next millennia to prevent knowledge of the star drive's destructive potential from becoming more widely known.

And if this star and all the ancient Magi ships hidden among its worlds were destroyed, how long before some other species discovered an actual Maker cache, before the Shoal could get to it first? This was the wearying reality-that the Shoal were only delaying the inevitable, galaxy-spanning conflict that even the Dreamers agreed must eventually come.

Let the stars die, Trader thought, drifting aimlessly through the long-dead shadows of a forgotten race. Let it all start again, until, a few billion years from now, other species rise from our ashes and wander through our own discovered memories and ancient ruins, wondering how we came to destroy ourselves so quickly, before themselves re-enacting that same history.

And then came a signal, disturbing its long years of idle wandering.

Finally it was time.

The Shoal AI prepared itself for non-existence.

The Agartha Agartha was closing on them, shadowing the was closing on them, shadowing the Piri Reis's Piri Reis's cross-system vector. Dakota had altered their trajectory so that they kept Ikaria between them and the star it orbited. This helped prevent the cross-system vector. Dakota had altered their trajectory so that they kept Ikaria between them and the star it orbited. This helped prevent the Piri Reis's Piri Reis's external systems from becoming overwhelmed by Nova Arctis itself as it spread across their viewscreens. external systems from becoming overwhelmed by Nova Arctis itself as it spread across their viewscreens.

They were deep into deceleration now, the last of the Piri's Piri's fuel blasting towards Nova Arctis, and bringing them into an insertion point for orbit around Ikaria. fuel blasting towards Nova Arctis, and bringing them into an insertion point for orbit around Ikaria.

As the hours had finally become days, Nova Arctis began to appear on their screens as a ball of yellow incandescence with a dark blemish at its centre. This blemish gradually grew as the hours pa.s.sed, turning the star into a halo of fire around the circ.u.mference of Ikaria as it grew larger and wider.

Long-range telescopes threw Ikaria's mottled, broken surface on to the Piri Reis's Piri Reis's screens as they dropped towards it, using filtering technology to pick out a visual map of a vast chasm on the approaching planet, the result of a ma.s.sive impact some billions of years before. It was a crack running two-thirds of the way around the dead world's equator. screens as they dropped towards it, using filtering technology to pick out a visual map of a vast chasm on the approaching planet, the result of a ma.s.sive impact some billions of years before. It was a crack running two-thirds of the way around the dead world's equator.

Their destination.

Dakota stared at the high-res video that floated in the air between the two acceleration couches. All they had to do was get down to that chasm, find a way on board one of the other derelicts, persuade it not to kill them, figure out how to fly it, and escape this system at light speed before the entire system detonated.

Easy.

She was conscious of Corso saying something to her.

'. . . the chasm those other derelicts are in?' He was pointing at the holo display between them. 'That thing makes the Vallis Marineris on Mars look like a furrow. Something must have hit that planet hard enough to just about crack it in half.'

Dakota shrugged. 'So?'

Corso sighed. 'Look closer.'

He gestured, and a 3D model of Ikaria replaced the video showing the chasm.

Its rotation was slow enough that a day on its surface was longer than one of its years. Sunlight crept over its horizon at a snail's pace, one hemisphere crisped by its extreme proximity to its parent star, the other dark and frozen until the inevitable arrival of a ferocious sunrise.

'There are places on the dark side where that trench goes down very, very deep: maybe eight or ten kilometres. We could hide down there if the derelict does blow the star.'

Dakota couldn't hide her incredulity. 'Hide?' 'Hide?' She laughed. 'From a She laughed. 'From a nova) nova) Lucas, we're practically next door to the star as it is. If you shouted it would probably hear you. Ikaria would be vaporized.' Lucas, we're practically next door to the star as it is. If you shouted it would probably hear you. Ikaria would be vaporized.'

'But not immediately.' As Corso replied, his eyes were bright with an unpleasant mania from the quant.i.ties of stimulants he'd been pumping into his blood stream just in order to stay alert. 'That could take up to a day or two, right? In the meantime we might be able to buy ourselves at least a few extra hours down inside that chasm.'

Dakota tried to frame a suitable reply, but it was getting harder to find the words. Instead, she just shrugged her shoulders and looked away, overwhelmed by a sense of increasing hopelessness. She was at a point where she wasn't even sure if she really cared whether she lived or died, just so long as events came to some kind of conclusion.

Each of them was turning into a basket case while the other one watched.

Readings showed the incipient transluminal energies crackling around the hull of the Theona derelict, and the possibility had occurred to Dakota that coreships rarely approached the inner part of any system they visited for reasons other than the ones most often a.s.sumed. Perhaps the Shoal were simply nervous about getting too close to any star while they were on board a transluminal vessel.

It seemed incredible that something so tiny could cause so much destruction, yet as Dakota sank further and further into the dreamlike thoughtscape of the remaining Magi ships on Ikaria, she found it harder to deny.

Then there was the question of physically landing on the surface of Ikaria. If Corso were not so stressed and so thoroughly doped to the eyeb.a.l.l.s, he might have been aware of the obvious problem: the Piri Piri was simply not designed to land on any planetary body; they barely had enough fuel to make the approach into orbit and, even if they could somehow make a landing, the stresses involved would tear the little ship apart. was simply not designed to land on any planetary body; they barely had enough fuel to make the approach into orbit and, even if they could somehow make a landing, the stresses involved would tear the little ship apart.

So they were going to have to think of something else.

Whenever Dakota closed her eyes, instead of darkness, she saw alien starscapes; vast citadels spread across the faces of entire worlds; and great world ships that dwarfed even the Shoal's own interstellar craft.

'The derelict!' Corso shouted hoa.r.s.ely. 'It's gone. It's off the screens!'

Dakota switched her attention to a tracking view. The Theona derelict was indeed gone from every reading.

The Agartha, Agartha, however, was still marked on a map of the system by an advancing red line, still shadowing the however, was still marked on a map of the system by an advancing red line, still shadowing the Piri Reis Piri Reis at every step. It was following them into Ikaria's dark side, just as she'd expected. at every step. It was following them into Ikaria's dark side, just as she'd expected.

Part Three

Thirty.

Nova Arctis was a standard G2 cla.s.s star, mostly hydrogen and helium and a scattering of trace elements that had been moving in its long, slow orbit around the galactic core, accompanied by the other stars of the Orion Arm, for the better part of three and a half billion years. It might easily have expected to last five or six billion more before entering its red giant phase, at which point it would have slowly expanded to swallow the majority of the rocky worlds that comprised its inner system.

A moment before Corso noticed the Theona derelict was gone, a sh.e.l.l of exotic energy formed around the ancient Magi craft, tearing a hole in the universe, through which it then fell. The translation into transluminal s.p.a.ce produced gravitational shock waves that rippled outwards, precisely as if a planetary body had materialized within the inner system and then disappeared again within the s.p.a.ce of a single moment.

If the men and women in charge of administrating the Consortium had known what Corso and Dakota now knew, they would have understood that a coreship penetrating this deep into any populated system could only ever represent an act of war.

The Theona derelict rematerialized deep within the core of the star, a swirling ma.s.s of fusing hydrogen and helium that burned at fifteen million degrees.

By this point, Trader had stretched subjective time aboard the derelict to its absolute limit. He witnessed the violent plasmas penetrating the hull like bright tentacles, vaporizing the exterior of the craft in a millionth of a second.

From Trader's accelerated point of view, the superheated plasma moved at a leisurely yet measurable pace. He felt the derelict's systems shutting down around him as the vessel was reduced to a collection of free component atoms, merging with the violent thermonuclear dance beyond the evaporating hull.

The Shoal AI wondered, in the sliver of eternity before it ceased to exist, if it was the first intelligent creature ever to die directly within the core of a star.

Two millionths of a second after the derelict had materialized within the core of Nova Arctis, a vast burst of neutrinos shot outwards as the core of the craft's superluminal engines collapsed. Then followed a phase change-a shift in the fundamental properties of the matter immediately surrounding the derelict, which now spread outwards in the form of a devouring black sphere, transforming the fifteen-million-centigrade plasma into something much closer to the primordial energy from which the universe itself had been born.

Yet barely more than a few seconds had pa.s.sed since the ancient starship had materialized within Nova Arctis. At its point of maximum expansion, the phase-change volume encompa.s.sed several tens of thousands of kilometres within the star's core. It began to collapse as the cosmological constant rea.s.serted itself.

It made no difference to the fact that Nova Arctis was doomed. The final legacy of Trader's virtual doppelganger came in the form of a whirling storm of singularities spinning outwards from the wreckage of the phase-change bubble, adding hugely to the destruction already wreaked.

Arbenz and Kieran had enjoyed a narrow escape from the Hyperion, Hyperion, moments before its destruction. There had been barely seconds to spare as they had crammed themselves into an escape vehicle and launched away. A few hours later, they were brought on board the moments before its destruction. There had been barely seconds to spare as they had crammed themselves into an escape vehicle and launched away. A few hours later, they were brought on board the Agartha Agartha in time to witness the in time to witness the Hyperion's Hyperion's final plummet down towards Theona's surface, which was now entirely wreathed in white clouds. final plummet down towards Theona's surface, which was now entirely wreathed in white clouds.

Following the destruction of Bourdain's fleet, the path of action had appeared to be clear. But that changed irrevocably when the derelict had disappeared on its way into the inner system, even as the Agartha Agartha began falling along an almost identical trajectory. began falling along an almost identical trajectory.

On the bridge of the Agartha, Agartha, Senator Arbenz gripped a railing tightly as he witnessed the derelict's disappearance. Just then a roaring sound, like a waterfall, filled his head and occluded his thoughts. Senator Arbenz gripped a railing tightly as he witnessed the derelict's disappearance. Just then a roaring sound, like a waterfall, filled his head and occluded his thoughts.

'Perhaps.' he muttered quietly, to no one in particular, 'we deserve to die.'

'Senator?'

He turned to see Kieran's puzzled frown. Mansell had been speaking with a very grim-faced Captain Liefe, commander of the Agartha, Agartha, and heir to one of the Freehold's most powerful ruling families. Liefe, like Kieran, had lost much back home because of the recent coup. and heir to one of the Freehold's most powerful ruling families. Liefe, like Kieran, had lost much back home because of the recent coup.

Liefe wasted no time. 'Senator, the derelict that took off from Theona has just disappeared from every sensor system. It's clearly jumped into transluminal s.p.a.ce-'

'I know.'

Liefe nodded. 'But we've been continuing our a.n.a.lysis of Ikaria, and we're definitely picking up extremely low-powered encrypted telemetry that matches that of the derelict. There's clearly something else down there.'

Arbenz nodded. Along with the rest of the Agatha's Agatha's crew, Liefe knew nothing of the derelict's more destructive capabilities, or that its disappearance might very well mean it had dived into the heart of Nova Arctis itself. crew, Liefe knew nothing of the derelict's more destructive capabilities, or that its disappearance might very well mean it had dived into the heart of Nova Arctis itself.

He caught Kieran's eye, and saw the same thoughts mirrored there. If Liefe suspected that the entire system might be about to detonate, he might not continue performing his duty to the best effect.

Arbenz blinked his tiredness away. They might have just minutes still to live-or days. There was no way of knowing, but that didn't mean inaction.

'Then that settles it.' he said, speaking more to Kieran than Liefe. 'We destroy the remaining derelicts before they too have a chance to jump out of this system. Similarly, we destroy the machine-head woman's craft before it can manage to rendezvous with any of them. That's clearly what she's planning.'

Liefe blinked, looking perplexed.

'Senator-'

'Remember who's in charge here, Captain,' Arbenz replied mildly. 'Kieran here will be overseeing the operation.'

Arbenz saw the shudder that pa.s.sed through Liefe as Kieran caught his eye. The latter's deadly reputation extended far.

Emotionless b.a.s.t.a.r.d, thought the Senator, not without admiration. A machine in flesh-and-blood form, all the way to the bitter end. thought the Senator, not without admiration. A machine in flesh-and-blood form, all the way to the bitter end.

'Senator, I must-'

He cut Liefe off again. 'We lost the first derelict because we were careless with the machine-head pilot. We were infiltrated, right from the very start. That doesn't mean we can allow our enemies to win what we have lost.'

Liefe wasn't a coward. His voice became more determined as he turned his back on Kieran.