Nova War Part 5

She twisted within her restraints once more, catching sight of the matt black of her activated filmsuit slithering across her bare skin, retreating back into her navel and sliding back between her thighs from where it had briefly emerged like night-stained mercury. She tasted its kiss as it slithered past her lips and back down her throat.

Back in her cell, when her filmsuit had failed to activate on her mental command, she'd wondered if the skeletal implants responsible for generating it had somehow been removed from her body without her knowledge.

It's still there, she realized, even through the pain. But why hadn't it worked that previous time? For a moment salvation had seemed so very close at hand, but her Bandati interrogator had somehow reversed the filmsuit's progress. she realized, even through the pain. But why hadn't it worked that previous time? For a moment salvation had seemed so very close at hand, but her Bandati interrogator had somehow reversed the filmsuit's progress.

'f.u.c.k you,' she mumbled, a deep core of bitter anger rising past the terror and pain. 'f.u.c.k you and your questions. I came here on board a ship. Where is it? Where is it?' Where is it?' she yelled. she yelled.

'We wish to know everything about the starship. It is not human. It is not Bandati. It is not Shoal, yet it travels between the stars.'

She spat straight into the creature's face. Probably the creature had no idea of the significance of the gesture, but for a very brief moment the action made her feel better.

When it lowered the pain-inductor to her forehead once more, she guessed it probably had a pretty good idea what her gesture had meant after all.

The next time she opened her eyes, she was back in her cell.

Fat raindrops pitter-pattered on the protruding lip beyond the door-opening as a fresh migraine a.s.saulted her like something trying to tear its way out through her skull. She clutched at her depilated scalp, her fear made all the worse for not knowing what was happening to her until, following long hours of agony, the pain began to subside. After a while, merciful sleep stole her away again.

She woke to notice a pipe sticking out of the inner wall. She rubbed the viscous liquid between her fingers and touched it to her lips. An overwhelming hunger made her . . .

She gripped the pipe in her trembling hands and felt a deep, instinctive terror.

Ambrosia.

Where had that word come from?

Dakota pushed herself back over to the far side of the cell and crouched on her haunches next to the door-opening, staring hungrily at the pipe, knowing it was her one and only source of sustenance.

If there was any one thing she could remember from her past life, it was the value of trusting her instincts.

Time pa.s.sed with excruciating slowness and select memories began to return to her; and with them came s.n.a.t.c.hes of what had happened to her at the bottom of a deep, sunlit shaft.

Her hunger and thirst became worse. Yet she couldn't rid herself of the terror that if she drank from the pipe, she would once again find herself back in that sunlit shaft. So she spent all her time hunkered down on the hard metal floor next to the door-opening, staring outside as the sun moved across the sky.

Her thoughts became clearer.

After some indeterminate amount of time had pa.s.sed, she turned her back on the city and carefully lowered herself over one side of the lip that extended beyond the only entrance. She pushed her bare toes into the deep grooves of the tower's wall, breathing hard, gripping handholds tightly.

Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s chafed against the edge of the metal lip, but she managed to cling on for a minute or two before pulling herself back in to safety, gasping and trembling from the effort. She'd become weak for lack of exercise, and the lack of food or water wasn't helping any either.

More headaches a.s.sailed her, each worse than the last. She whined like a kicked dog, curling herself up against the frame of the door as the evening drew on until a fitful sleep mercifully stole her away. She dreamed she was lost in some vast, depopulated metropolis, whose echoing streets felt so recently abandoned she could still hear the lingering voices of those who had once dwelled there.

She opened her eyes to warm rain drizzling down between the multiple towers. She crawled back out onto the lip, heedless of the sheer drop beyond, and caught the rainwater in her cupped hands, drinking it until her thirst was slaked. When she had swallowed enough, she caught more and used it to wash the grease from her skin, rubbing at her flesh with wet hands until it grew red from the friction.

Her dream of a city had not, in fact, been a dream, she now realized.

She recognized it as a tenuous contact with the derelict starship; the city streets she'd explored had been taken from its memory stacks. They were nothing more than the long-dead dreams of fallen empires, and yet she felt a powerful nostalgia for them, as if the experience of interacting with the starship's virtual worlds were more real than the here and now. More days pa.s.sed, and even as her strength failed, so Dakota's ability to communicate with the derelict starship grew. Her mind was carried far from the terrible racking agonies of her body whenever she slept.

The derelict meanwhile tapped into databases located throughout the tower within which she was trapped, and began to feed her details concerning her whereabouts. She discovered she was in a Bandati-controlled system called Night's End. The particular world she found herself on was Ironbloom, and the towers that surrounded her formed the city of Darkwater.

She felt the derelict so immensely more powerful than she'd previously realized slowly extend its influence throughout the planet's interconnected communications systems, like a virus subverting a living body to its own dark purpose. She discovered that the derelict was being held in an orbital facility, under conditions of the utmost secrecy, in another part of the Night's End system. She saw great swirls of cloud through the derelict's senses, the surface of a gas giant seen from close up: clearly the facility orbited one of its moons. She witnessed Bandati engineers attempting to penetrate the derelict's outer hull, with limited success.

Even in sleep, she started in surprise when she discovered the Piri Reis Piri Reis was there as well, held within the same facility. was there as well, held within the same facility.

When she woke the next day, Dakota realized with some considerable shock that she was no longer alone in her cell.

A figure crouched in the corner, near the ambrosia-pipe. She rolled up onto her knees, heart hammering. She couldn't make out the intruder's face at first.

Then the figure stood up and came into the light, moving with an uncertain gait. He stood as if trying to hide his nakedness from her. She studied the square jaw, too-wide nose, and permanently furrowed eyebrows that looked as if their owner had been born worrying.

'Lucas?'

Four.

Several days after his narrow escape from Immortal Light's treacherous security forces not to mention nearly being eaten by a very angry giant worm Remembrance of Things Past found himself in the outermost part of the Night's End system, on board a Shoal coreship that had recently arrived there on a scheduled stopover.

As coreships went, it was far from the largest, measuring a mere one hundred and sixty-five kilometres around its equator. It was large enough, however, to produce powerful gravitic ripples that gave away its location to monitoring systems spread throughout the system. The coreship's total population a mixture of Bandati, humans and a few other species, some of them sequestered according to the Shoal's complex rules regarding inter-species contact barely numbered in the hundreds of thousands.

Remembrance had been lifted, barely conscious, from an Immortal Light war-dirigible by an extraction team put together under the express directions of the Queen of Darkening Skies Prior to Dusk. He had subsequently been bundled into a human-owned but unmanned cargo ship that attained orbit less than one-tenth of a solar rev later.

Casualties during the extraction had fortunately been light: one member of the extraction team had been killed, while another had been seriously wounded by incendiaries, losing a wing and thus scheduled to spend considerable time in medical care until it could be regrown.

Remembrance himself had been put into a drug-induced coma before being placed inside a cramped transport pod packed with pale crimson ona ona leaves officially destined for the atmosphere-gardens and helium-refineries of the outer system. Flexible polyurethane-coated cables held him safe during the high-gee liftoff. leaves officially destined for the atmosphere-gardens and helium-refineries of the outer system. Flexible polyurethane-coated cables held him safe during the high-gee liftoff.

Once safely inside the coreship, he was removed from the pod by the Queen of Darkening Skies' personal team of physicians. They carefully unbound his wings, then cycled chemical neurosuppressors out of his bloodstream while he remained comatose. By this point the injuries he'd sustained in the last hours of his mission were almost entirely healed, with the help of forced-acceleration cell-probes injected into his vascular system.

When Remembrance finally woke, he found himself in shipboard quarters with pale dappled walls, which exuded a constantly cycling series of scents that filled him with a nostalgic longing for home. He soon discovered that he was aboard the royal yacht of the Hive of Darkening Skies Prior to Dusk, itself carried deep beneath the coreship's crust.

The yacht his Queen's flagship was a three-hundred-metre-long rapid-orbit cruiser equipped with field-based defensive systems that appeared to all but the most aggressive intrusion systems to be only lightly armed, with a pair of external force-cannons mounted fore and aft. The yacht sat in its own cradle beneath the pillar-supported outer crust of the coreship, in a field-walled chamber more than a dozen kilometres wide and whose atmosphere and gravity matched that of the Bandati home-world. Beyond lay more chambers tailored to the specific needs and requirements of others of the Shoal's client-species.

For a few moments, he had thought he might be far away from the Night's End system.

'I'm afraid we're still there, my dear Remembrance,' he was informed by Wind Sighing Through Leaves, the Senior Court Physician and one of the Queen's most trusted advisers. 'We will probably remain here for several revs, local measure.'

Wind Sighing was dressed formally, the tips of his wings decorated with a hair-thin filigree currently fashionable in many Bandati royal courts. Semi-translucent streamers were attached to this filigree, their length an indication of the wearer's real or perceived standing within a court. The physician stared down at him from his ceiling perch, the longest streamers trailing right down to the floor and wafting gently each time his wings flexed.

'I see. Thank you, Physician,' Remembrance replied as medical technicians fussed around him, removing the last of his support straps and medical monitoring devices. 'How much longer do I have to stay here?'

'Not much longer,' Wind Sighing replied, dropping down to the floor. There was a sniffiness to his chittering. 'You're entirely healthy; all systems optimal, as they say. However, the Queen has requested that you attend a . . . a private private audience immediately on recovering consciousness.' The physician produced a tiny bottle, containing the scent Remembrance had requested. 'Here you are.' audience immediately on recovering consciousness.' The physician produced a tiny bottle, containing the scent Remembrance had requested. 'Here you are.'

Remembrance accepted it, discerning a reason for the Physician's sudden chilliness. Normally the Queen's most trusted advisers who of course included Wind Sighing would be present during any debriefing, in order to offer comment and suggestions. But something in the Physician's manner suggested whatever the Queen now had to say to Remembrance required absolute secrecy without the presence even of her most trusted courtiers.

Remembrance now stood up for the first time in days, while wall-mounted monitors painted images of his internal organs in the form of a multi coloured kaleidoscope that blurred as he moved. A technician entered and unbandaged his wings. He flexed them carefully, feeling a rush of sensation as he spread them, twisting his head round to see the scars where fire and bullets had ripped through fragile, coloured flesh. The iridescent lines patterning his wings were discoloured where the flesh had recently healed.

'A word of caution before your audience, Remembrance,' the Physician asked. 'It has been . . . some time since you spoke with her.'

'I'm sure things haven't changed so much in the Court since then.'

'No but you you have. I wished to ask a question concerning your current name-scent. I believe you came by it during your amba.s.sadorial duties in the Consortium?' have. I wished to ask a question concerning your current name-scent. I believe you came by it during your amba.s.sadorial duties in the Consortium?'

'Yes.'

'It's certainly exotic, but . . . I don't quite understand it. How exactly do you represent it in words?'

The description a scent might gain when transcribed into written form could be a matter of some artistic licence; scent-based communication was one of the few racial characteristics that had endured through the turbulent centuries of the Bandati's Grand Reformation, several millennia before.

'My spoken name is "Remembrance of Things Past". Do you find it inappropriate?'

'Not at all,' the Physician replied. 'As I say, it's . . . well, distinctive.'

'Thank you,' Remembrance replied blandly. 'Is there anything else?'

The Physician stared at him for a moment with obvious chagrin, clearly searching for some strategy that would gain him even a morsel of insight into the reason for Remembrance's private audience with their Queen. Remembrance could have happily told him there was none to give.

'No, Remembrance,' the Physician replied, his tone resigned. 'It is time for your audience. Please accompany me.'

'Of course.' He followed Wind Sighing through the yacht until they came to the Royal Chamber. The decor throughout was typically conservative: curving walls of yellow-gold dotted with artificially grown amethysts and emeralds that winked and glistened under multihued glow-globes floating close to the ceiling.

A security drone slid out of its niche, focusing recording instruments and weaponry on Remembrance while maintaining a discreet distance. He entered an antechamber guarded by a single warrior-cla.s.s Bandati, wings clipped and pierced with symbols of rank, and his artificially enhanced muscles bulging until they seemed almost grotesque.

The warrior sniffed Remembrance's credentials, then bade him enter the Queen's chamber alone.

The Royal Chamber, by necessity, demanded the most s.p.a.ce within the yacht. The Queen of Darkening Skies Prior to Dusk herself towered above Remembrance of Things Past, the main part of her bulk resting in a hammock-like construction of wires and fabric built to take the weight of her gigantic frame.

Small-bodied attendants their scent organs surgically blocked to prevent over-exposure to the valuable oils that constantly issued from the Queen's glands stood upon wheeled ladders that were, in turn, pushed by other attendants. Yet more of them carried waste material away in barrows, while others were engaged in grooming her, removing scales of dead skin from her vestigial wings, or collecting the valuable scent as it dripped from her pores, before then carrying it away in decorative ceremonial cups each of which might easily be a thousand years old.

The Queen's eyes glistened as she turned to regard Remembrance of Things Past. As ever, he experienced a frisson of l.u.s.t such as he had not enjoyed since his last audience with her long ago.

A wheeled platform was rolled into the centre of the chamber, until it stood directly before the Queen, and finally all her various attendants scurried away through doors or hatches, leaving her alone with Remembrance. He stepped forward and clutched the first handhold on a ladder leading to the top of the platform, and began pulling himself upwards, suddenly heedless of his injuries. He soon found himself face to face with the morbidly corpulent features of his Queen.

'My beautiful knight,' she chittered, her breath wheezing with a deep resonance from having to work its way up through such a formidable bulk. 'How long has it been?'

'Too long, my lady,' he replied, barely able to manage the words as her scent wove its intoxicating magic on him. 'Too long. Wind Sighing, I think, was uncomfortable that he could not be present.'

'Wind Sighing will know the details of our business before very long, but for the moment what we have to discuss must remain between you and me. I have been watching you closely, Remembrance. There are remote visual scans showing your escape from the slopes of Mount Umami. These images, scavenged from an Immortal Light security network, are enjoying a brisk trade as a bootleg, and to many within the upper echelons of our Hive you are a hero.'

And yet, Remembrance knew, such an act of open confrontation would lead only to a renewal of the ancient conflict between the two Hives.

He clicked in annoyance. 'That is of great concern to me, my Queen, since my mission was always, by necessity, of a most secret nature. If word of my exploits has become public, I can only consider myself to have failed further in my duties. If necessary, I will seek-'

'Hush, my knight,' the Queen replied, reaching out with one enormous, fleshy arm to brush at an uninjured wing. He shook with near-uncontrollable desire at her touch. 'I myself was responsible for the release of the images. It is done by way of a message to my hateful sister: one of my own outwitting the best of her own Hive, despite apparently overwhelming odds. This cannot help but demoralize and sow discontent amongst her own royal advisers. For such remarkable bravery, I am most proud of you.'

'Yet, my Queen, it only makes my work that much harder. We still have not ascertained the origin of the Giantkillers-'

'And nor will we, at least for the moment,' she interrupted.

Remembrance twitched his wings in confusion, but remained silent as she continued.

'You covertly accessed their highest-security databases, in order to track Alexander Bourdain to the maul-worm's lair, did you not?'

'Yes, but not without difficulty. I used subversion routines created by your finest programmers, and found your sister's own security forces were actively protecting Bourdain from us. We had to funnel the routines through secure channels and covertly download the contents of entire data stacks in order to-'

The Queen made a gesture of annoyance. 'You found more than you bargained for, Remembrance. There was other information of far greater interest contained within their stacks.'

Remembrance could not contain his surprise. 'There was?'

'As necessary as it was for you to find the source of the Giantkillers, even that is not reason enough for me to come personally to Night's End for the first time in three millennia and in strictest secrecy'

'I see.'

'To be specific, Remembrance, it appears my dear sister the Queen of Immortal Light is involved in much more than mere technology-smuggling. It appears she may have entered into negotiations with a species known as the Emissaries.'

'I . . . am not familiar with that name.'

'They are one of the Shoal's best-kept secrets: a rival interstellar empire with its own faster-than-light technology, viciously expansionist and constantly encroaching upon the Shoal's own domain. The Shoal have their own good reasons for hiding the very existence of the Emissaries. I myself encountered an Emissary, a very long time ago, when I was barely a young proxy, and the possibility of an alliance between our race and theirs seemed at that time less than remote.'

Remembrance stared at her. 'You met met these creatures?' these creatures?'

'And pray you never have to,' she added. 'They are . . . formidable. And not so congenial as the Shoal, by a very long way.'

'I see.' It was an enormous revelation; coming from anyone but his Queen he would have taken the story as an outright lie. And yet 'Why did this alliance not take place?'

'Put simply, we had nothing to offer them and they had nothing as yet to gain. We might as well have been pre-Reformation primitives offering gla.s.s beads to the Shoal.'

Remembrance clicked and chittered to himself for a moment, while thinking out loud. 'Then your sister presumably does does have something to offer them now?' have something to offer them now?'

'Correct, my dear Remembrance. The Queen of Immortal Light has been smuggling couriers into extremely distant areas of the galaxy not normally permitted to our species.'

'And they managed that without the Shoal even becoming aware of it?'

'As far as we know, yes, although, from what we gather, at least one of their envoys disappeared en route. My sister clearly has something unique to bargain with this time round. Something that's hidden, I believe, within this very system.'

l.u.s.t faded in the face of overwhelming curiosity. 'Something hidden. What?'

The Queen paused briefly. 'The details will be ready for you before your departure. You have a new mission, Remembrance, one of the most vital urgency, and it requires you to return to Ironbloom at once.'

'The peace between you and your sister is over, I fear.'

'You are correct, Remembrance. Too much is at stake now to allow the filial bonds of sister Hives to interfere. One piece of vital information concerns two humans currently being held in the city of Darkwater. There is extremely good reason to believe they are closely involved with these matters, so they will be the focus of your next mission.'

The vast, fleshy arm reached out once again and stroked Remembrance's wings, making him shiver with delight. 'We will need to trans.m.u.te you,' she murmured, 'as Immortal Light know your current scent too well. You will have a new ident.i.ty.'

'I have a scent and name ready,' Remembrance replied quickly, producing the bottle the Physician had given him. He opened the tiny flask and held it before his Queen.