quarters. Combined with the glow of sporadic electrical fires here and there, these lights gave the impression of a hellish grotto. She caught glimpses of the flash-frozen corpses of deer and horses floating near by, then they were gone, caught in a disintegrating maelstrom of dust and rock that was likely to grind them down to nothing.
Piri was feeding her news reports of the disaster, as local ships escaping from the Rock continued firing live feeds into the local tach-nets. Her Ghost subsequently picked out a description of a woman urgently being sought for questioning. A woman carrying illegal machine-head implants.
But I didn’t do anything, she protested within the safety of her own thoughts. Maybe they were talking about some other machine-head.
They were going to kill me. I had no choice . . .
But no choice as to what? She hadn’t followed through on her threat. She’d tried to bluff Moss, and failed pathetically.
But someone had followed through. She had absolutely no doubt the Rock had been destroyed by the same GiantKiller she’d transported here earlier.
The appalling notion that she had been set up oozed into Dakota’s thoughts like a pool of coagulating blood. People were looking for her, people who thought she was responsible for this outrage.
But who could be easier to blame than a machine-head, an illegal?
Old anger and frustration flared deep inside her thoughts. She remembered all too clearly the day they’d forcibly removed her original Ghost implants, after the fatal flaw in the technology had become clear. Just as vivid was the memory of her subsequent near-suicidal depression, a bleak period that had lasted several months. Then came her decision to acquire some crude black-market clones, furtively installed in a backstreet surgery, before slowly starting to piece her life back together.
Without doubt she was the perfect scapegoat, for no one really trusted machine-heads. Not after . . .
For a long moment, Dakota imagined her broken and beaten body being tossed aloft by a jeering mob.
Come and get me, Piri.
That’s fine, Piri. Just make sure you get here before my filmsuit runs out of juice.
She was drifting towards a boulder measuring about a hundred metres across. As she got closer, she recognized the tiles adorning part of its surface: it was a fragment of the Great Hall. Both she and it were moving in the same direction at roughly similar velocities, so she managed to land on it gently. She was about to push away again when she caught sight of a human body floating nearby—a partly naked woman, with the few remaining scraps of an evening dress still straggling from her torso.
The corpse’s eyes were glassy and frozen, the mouth open in a soundless scream. Dakota recognized her as the avatar of Pope Eliza.
As Dakota finally pushed off into the darkness her Ghost circuits tugged her gaze in a particular direction, where she saw light glinting from the rapidly approaching shape of the Piri Reis.
It would take days for her to shake the hideous memory of the avatar’s corpse from her restless dreams.
The Piri hove closer, changing from a dull silhouette barely visible against the stars to a grey hull comprised of three joined-up sections. From a distance it resembled a fat metallic insect. From the ship’s underbelly, a forest of grapples extended, seeking her out.
Dakota fell into her ship’s machine embrace, like a swaddled child falling into the arms of its mother. At that moment she became aware of the Shoal’s gift still clutched, by some miracle, in one black-slicked hand.
Five
Freehold Democratic State
Redstone Colony, 82 Eridani
Lucas Corso blinked, trying to stay alert, and focused again on the bleak landscape beyond the
Piri was feeding her news reports of the disaster, as local ships escaping from the Rock continued firing live feeds into the local tach-nets. Her Ghost subsequently picked out a description of a woman urgently being sought for questioning. A woman carrying illegal machine-head implants.
But I didn’t do anything, she protested within the safety of her own thoughts. Maybe they were talking about some other machine-head.
They were going to kill me. I had no choice . . .
But no choice as to what? She hadn’t followed through on her threat. She’d tried to bluff Moss, and failed pathetically.
But someone had followed through. She had absolutely no doubt the Rock had been destroyed by the same GiantKiller she’d transported here earlier.
The appalling notion that she had been set up oozed into Dakota’s thoughts like a pool of coagulating blood. People were looking for her, people who thought she was responsible for this outrage.
But who could be easier to blame than a machine-head, an illegal?
Old anger and frustration flared deep inside her thoughts. She remembered all too clearly the day they’d forcibly removed her original Ghost implants, after the fatal flaw in the technology had become clear. Just as vivid was the memory of her subsequent near-suicidal depression, a bleak period that had lasted several months. Then came her decision to acquire some crude black-market clones, furtively installed in a backstreet surgery, before slowly starting to piece her life back together.
Without doubt she was the perfect scapegoat, for no one really trusted machine-heads. Not after . . .
For a long moment, Dakota imagined her broken and beaten body being tossed aloft by a jeering mob.
Come and get me, Piri.
That’s fine, Piri. Just make sure you get here before my filmsuit runs out of juice.
She was drifting towards a boulder measuring about a hundred metres across. As she got closer, she recognized the tiles adorning part of its surface: it was a fragment of the Great Hall. Both she and it were moving in the same direction at roughly similar velocities, so she managed to land on it gently. She was about to push away again when she caught sight of a human body floating nearby—a partly naked woman, with the few remaining scraps of an evening dress still straggling from her torso.
The corpse’s eyes were glassy and frozen, the mouth open in a soundless scream. Dakota recognized her as the avatar of Pope Eliza.
As Dakota finally pushed off into the darkness her Ghost circuits tugged her gaze in a particular direction, where she saw light glinting from the rapidly approaching shape of the Piri Reis.
It would take days for her to shake the hideous memory of the avatar’s corpse from her restless dreams.
The Piri hove closer, changing from a dull silhouette barely visible against the stars to a grey hull comprised of three joined-up sections. From a distance it resembled a fat metallic insect. From the ship’s underbelly, a forest of grapples extended, seeking her out.
Dakota fell into her ship’s machine embrace, like a swaddled child falling into the arms of its mother. At that moment she became aware of the Shoal’s gift still clutched, by some miracle, in one black-slicked hand.
Five
Freehold Democratic State
Redstone Colony, 82 Eridani
Lucas Corso blinked, trying to stay alert, and focused again on the bleak landscape beyond the
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