Bringer of Light (18 page)

Around her, Ifanna sensed confusion.

‘Such is my will and decree. This is the will of Heaven. The girls are to be sent into exile.’

She was not to be killed, nor yet given over to the priests for their pleasure. She would live.

‘What happened?’ asked Jarek sharply. ‘You say there was an accident: what sort of accident?’ He managed not to look at Nual as he spoke.
Christos, Taro
, he thought,
don’t you
dare
have got yourself killed, you stupid,
stupid
boy
.

Ain looked away for a moment, ‘Clarification,’ she said quietly. ‘Perhaps “accident” is not entirely accurate.’

‘Explain!’ snapped Nual.

‘This hab is very new; parts of it are still being . . . consolidated. It is possible an error occurred.’

‘What do you mean “an error occurred”? What sort of error?’

‘This individual cannot—’

‘You do not believe this accident was due to a fault in the hab’s fabric at all, do you?’ interrupted Nual.

‘No,’ said Ain miserably. ‘This lingua suspects it may have been matter-eaters.’

‘Matter-eaters? What the fuck are
matter-eaters
?’ Jarek didn’t try to curb his emotions: the lingua already believed Taro was more than a friend to him.

‘They are . . . You have a word—’ The lingua mastered herself. ‘This – I believe you call this technology a
nanite plague
? All that is known currently is that something ate through the outer shell of the hab before local failsafes neutralised the effect.’

‘Is there any danger now?’ asked Nual coldly.

‘No. The affected area has been isolated and the nanites deactivated.’

‘And what about the problems with the lights and the coms?’

‘When the nanite plague began, some of the hab’s internal systems experienced a— the—’ She stopped, then started again, ‘I believe your word is datastrike – this lingua is sorry for all this and for, for failure to act, and now to communicate properly!’

‘It’s all right,’ said Jarek, gently. It wasn’t the lingua’s fault.

‘It would have been quick,’ continued the lingua, ‘when they died. Very little suffering.’

‘Let us be clear about what has happened here,’ growled Nual. ‘At the same time as a datastrike affected the hab’s internal systems, nanites penetrated the hull in the area where Vy and Taro just happened to be, and it depressurised. Is that correct?’

‘Aye, exactly. The closed door you found saved the rest of the hab.’

‘Assuming this was not some internal problem with the hab – and the timing of the datastrike implies it wasn’t – then how did this nanite plague get here? Because you said we were safe!’ Jarek had never heard Nual so angry. For the lingua’s sake he hoped Ain wasn’t going to dissemble.

‘Apologies . . . this lingua truly believed the hab
was
safe! The exclusion zone was not violated: as far as can be ascertained no one approached the hab. Perhaps a micro-missile, too small for the hab’s sensors to detect or – or something planted beforehand, like the worm must have been . . .’ The lingua’s voice trailed off. She had obviously only just begun to consider the full implications of the attack for herself. It had to be an inside job.

She recovered herself a little and said, ‘All this lingua knows has now been imparted. Whatever else is discovered will also be shared.’

‘Who might have done this?’ asked Nual.

‘Currently there is no way of knowing. A number of patrons oppose your presence, but such an act . . . There will be consequences.’

Right now Jarek didn’t care about
consequences
, he cared about the life of his friend. And the longer the conversation went on, the more he began to believe that Taro really was dead. He found himself demanding, ‘I want to see Taro’s body. Vy’s too.’

‘Aye-okay, of course. This will happen as soon as external coms are restored and a retrieval mission can be organised.’

‘Make it a priority,’ said Nual fiercely, ‘and keep us informed.’ With that she swept off, leaving Jarek and the lingua standing in awkward silence.

Ain said, ‘This lingua should return to the core to oversee the repairs.’

‘Good idea.’

‘This individual again conveys sympathies. Your loss grieves th— grieves me.’

‘Please, just go.’

After Ain left, Jarek sat down on the ground. If he’d had the strength he might have gone after Nual, because she’d be feeling even worse than him, however well she hid it. He decided that for the sake of his sanity he was going to assume Taro wasn’t dead. When Ain produced the body . . . well, he’d cross that bridge when he came to it.

Even aside from the possible loss of Taro and Vy, they were in big trouble:
someone
had sabotaged their ‘safe’ haven. Jarek cursed his ignorance. He’d been thinking of the Aleph males as a single group who were broadly sympathetic to his cause, and that had been an enormous mistake. Not all of his enemies’ enemies were his friends.

He wondered if he’d always been so reckless. Perhaps he wouldn’t have let himself get into a situation like this, back before the Sidhe violated his mind and took away his memories. He still wasn’t sure he’d got all those memories back, but he did know he’d never been one to respect authority, and he believed he’d always been a bit crazy. But looking at the way old friends had treated him since he returned from Serenein, he suspected he’d become more extreme in his passions and less careful in his decisions. He couldn’t know for sure, of course; that was a question for philosophers. Or possibly for Nual, if he ever dared ask her to probe him to find out the truth . . .

The realistic garden included realistic morning dew, and it was seeping into his clothes. He stood slowly and then, his mind made up, took the quickest route to the airlock.

Before he reached the
Heart of Glass
Ain commed him. ‘This lingua earnestly hopes that you are not planning to leave.’ She sounded concerned, rather than angry.

‘No, I’m, not.’ Tempting though it was, he had no idea what he’d end up running into if they bugged out now. ‘I’m going to my ship, as I told you I was. But just as a matter of interest, what would happen if I did undock? Would I be shot down?’

‘Of course not!’ Ain sounded shocked. ‘I told you yesterday, space weapons are not permitted.’

She was right; she’d said that any patron who owned weapons capable of intruding into another’s domain would be jumped on by the ruling Consensus. She hadn’t said anything about localised comp viruses or nanite plagues, he noted. ‘Tell that to whoever killed Taro and Vy,’ he said, and cut the connection. There: he’d said it, admitted Taro might really be dead.

Back on the ship, he went over the logs in detail, as much to distract himself as because he expected to find anything. Whoever had checked his comp must have either had access to serious antisurveillance tech, or free access to the ship’s systems: the airlock camera didn’t show anyone coming aboard, and the bridge logs claimed the ship had been locked down and empty since they’d arrived. He went deeper, trying to unravel exactly what had happened on his ship while it had been at the mercy of their hosts.

At last he found the hack that had looped the surveillance feed, though he had no idea how he could recover the missing eighty minutes’ footage. He’d be willing to bet his visitor was a Sidhe male’s avatar.

The sensor log didn’t flag up anything suspicious, though that might just be because it had been tampered with too. Though he was no expert – he had the comp and coms knowhow to run his ship – he spent a while reviewing the sensor feed anyway, checking for suspicious movements. The delivery system might not have been visible from here, as the nanite attack occurred on the far side of the hab, but he left the system on full sensitivity, just in case.

Still feeling paranoid, he checked the com system – and was surprised to find a problem. According to the log, the ship’s coms had gone offline some time during the night, and come back only when Nual had commed him to wake him up. But the ship’s system was completely independent – so
no way
did it just happen to randomly fail at
exactly
the same time that the shit hit the fan on the hab. So what had happened, Jarek wondered: had the males hacked into his ship remotely? He thought that unlikely, given the
Heart of Glass
’s old-fashioned design. Why would they even need to, when they could easily have boarded the ship and planted a timed glitch into his coms system, synced to the datastrike on the hab’s comp and the nanite plague inception.

So it was beginning to look like whichever male had checked the ship’s navcomp to make sure Aleph’s coordinates had been removed was almost certainly also the one responsible for the attack on the hab – and for killing Taro and Vy.

Should he tell Ain about his suspicions? Maybe later – but Nual needed to know now. He decided not to ask her to come to him; given the recent violation of his ship’s systems, the
Heart of Glass
didn’t feel like such a safe space right now. Instead he suggested they meet in the garden; he had a wilfully naïve idea that the hab’s surveillance might not be as close there.

He found her sitting on an ornamental bench, looking pensive. She stood as he approached and opened her arms, her face full of sympathy. For a moment he was confused, then he remembered:
he
was meant to be the one in pain,
she
the one offering comfort.

As she hugged him, he projected silent sympathy, and her response hit him like a stim-hit laden with despair. Tears flooded his eyes as her anguish spilled over into his mind. He didn’t fight it, or stop her using him to express her grief.

When the worst of the emotional backwash had passed she thought to him,

he responded.

Her mental cry made him flinch, and he pulled away. Nual’s eyes were damp, but her expression remained impassive .

Nual, still outwardly calm, steered him to the seat, where she sat next to him, holding his hand while he sniffed out loud and spoke in silence, communicating his discoveries so far.

Finally he said out loud, ‘I’m moving back to the ship, Nual. Ain isn’t happy about it, but that’s tough.’

‘A very sensible move,’ she said, letting go of his hand. ‘I think I may join you shortly.’

Back on the
Heart of Glass
, Jarek dug out his portable bug-sweeper kit – most freetraders carried one on board, to reassure not-entirely-reputable potential customers looking to trade not-entirely-legal cargo that though they might be meeting in not-exactly-secure places, whatever was said would nonetheless be entirely confidential.

He’d checked the bridge and was halfway through the rec-room when his com beeped – not an incoming call, but an alarm: his sensors had picked up something anomalous. He raced back up the ladder, but when he checked the console, he could at first see nothing obvious. He wound back the log, getting it to project a composite image into the holocube, but it took him a moment to work out what he was seeing. It looked like one of the ships lurking at the edge of the exclusion zone, on the far side of the hab, was on the move. It appeared to be heading this way.

He commed Ain. ‘Listen, are the hab’s external sensors up and running?’

‘They have not been a priority,’ she started. ‘This lingua has been trying to fix the external com system in order to request your companions’ remains. Allow me to check now . . . Aye-okay, the system has reset, so passive detection is functioning.’

‘Then would you mind checking what’s going on at—’ Jarek paused, unsure whether his coordinate system would mean anything to the Alephan; finally he settled on, ‘—just inside the exclusion zone on the far side of the hab from my ship.’

‘Wait a moment, please . . .’

Jarek wasn’t sure how long she considered a moment to be, but it felt like at least a minute had passed before he called, ‘Ain?’ unable to stand the wait any longer, ‘Ain, is there a problem?’

Her voice was very small when she finally replied, ‘Aye. There certainly is.’