Defensive systems that had lain dormant for centuries scanned both Dakota and Days of Wine and Roses as they pa.s.sed by, then closed down. They walked on, into the grand interior s.p.a.ce of the containment facility.

The interior of the building began to fill with a soft light. The derelict rising before them was so very different from those Dakota had encountered back in Nova Arctis. Those had been crippled, some of them almost beyond repair, even though one of them had transported her and Corso across light-years in a fraction of a moment.

The ship before her now was undamaged. Long, curving spines flared out from the rear of the craft until they almost brushed against the walls that surrounded it.

'And there are more of these?' Roses asked as they both stared up at it.

'More than anyone ever suspected,' she replied in a low voice. The building had the atmosphere of a long-abandoned cathedral. 'This is just the first of many'

'And you are the only one who knows where they are all hidden. I am not sure that I envy you, Miss Merrick.'

She was still leaning against the Bandati, feeling weak and shaky. The wound in her shoulder felt like a hot line of fire and itched abominably. 'Roses, once I've got you out of here, I need you to carry a message for me. Can you do that?'

The alien stared back at her, waiting for more.

'The rest of the Magi ships are on their way here to Ocean's Deep. All All of them. Some are coming from a long way off, so they won't get here for some time. But the first of them will get here in just a couple of hours.' of them. Some are coming from a long way off, so they won't get here for some time. But the first of them will get here in just a couple of hours.'

'But why bring them here?'

'Because I want to build a superluminal fleet that the Shoal don't have any control over. And I'm going to base it right here.' She smiled. 'I don't think there's going to be too many objections once everyone understands exactly what I could do with them.'

Days of Wine and Roses helped her climb the wide ramp that led up to the derelict's hull. They moved slowly, Roses holding her tight as Dakota made her pain-racked way upwards. All around they could see pieces of long-abandoned equipment scattered across the maintenance platforms that surrounded the ancient starship.

'I need to ask you a question,' Roses finally replied once they had come to a halt right beside the hull.

'Go on,' said Dakota, sinking gratefully to her knees. It was getting colder as the air became thinner. The area outside the facility was filled with the sound of metal shrieking under extreme stress, and of howling wind spilling out into the vacuum. The ring-segment around them was on the verge of disintegrating completely.

'The Shoal are powerful, but they share that power amongst themselves. There has never been, to my knowledge, any time when that kind of power was concentrated in the hands of one single individual. I had the opportunity to study human history during my time within the Consortium, and when it comes to the acc.u.mulation of great personal power, the outcome both for the individual concerned and those affected by that power is rarely favourable. History, Miss Merrick, is never kind to such people.'

Dakota gritted her teeth, feeling the anxiety and uncertainty that had been d.o.g.g.i.ng her every step threaten to overwhelm her. 'I know that,' she croaked. 'But I'm just trying my best to work out what to do as I go along. And until someone comes up with an idea I think is a better one, this is the way it's going to be.'

She tried to ignore the little voice inside her that insisted the Shoal would have made the precise same argument.

Dakota reached out and laid her bare hand on the derelict's surface. A thrill of intense pleasure swept through her at the touch, almost o.r.g.a.s.mic in its strength. It felt smooth and slick, as if the craft had been created only days before, and there was a slight give to it as if it were something organic: as if she were touching flesh, rather than the hull of a ship designed to move between worlds.

No, she thought, stroking her hands further along the pale surface and sensing a response from deep within; it was much more like touching the face of a long-lost lover.

She felt a faint tremor under her fingertips and drew back, peering upwards and from side to side. A dimple several metres across began to form on the skin, centred on where her hand had touched it. She stepped back, watching as this dimple rapidly deepened, turning into a concave bowl within seconds, then deepening further to take on the shape of a pa.s.sageway leading directly into the craft's interior.

'We need to get inside,' she said to Days of Wine and Roses, and finally let go of the alien's compact body. She pulled herself inside the ship, cursing under her breath at the pain in her shoulder. A soft, non-localized glow filled the air, illuminating branching corridors that were still forming as she watched.

She glanced back at Roses, who waited on the platform beyond. It wasn't hard to imagine his apprehension. 'Believe me when I say it's safe,' she a.s.sured him.

'It feels unpleasantly like stepping into the mouth of a very large animal,' he replied. 'Not an experience to be enjoyed, believe me.'

Dakota tried to control her impatience; she wanted to tear off her clothes and immerse herself in the derelict's pale flesh. 'I can still take you back to your own fleet, if you'd like.'

And what would I tell my Queen upon my return?' Days of Wine and Roses asked her. 'That I let you take away that which she values most? And what news would she then take to the Shoal?'

'Listen to me, Roses. The Shoal were only ever here because they could use the presence of the Emissaries as an excuse to make a pre-emptive strike against them, using weapons that can do to other star systems what Trader did to Nova Arctis. You were p.a.w.ns in a much bigger game we all all were but that's over now.' were but that's over now.'

Roses didn't reply, so she continued. 'Your Queen was right that she couldn't trust the Shoal, even if she left it all a bit too late. The point is, it seems the Emissaries already had their own nova weapons, when the Shoal had a.s.sumed they didn't.'

Roses' wings twitched spasmodically. 'But that means-'

'It means a nova war just like the one in the Greater Magellanic Cloud has started, but here, here, in our own galaxy. The Emissaries are already retaliating, destroying Shoal-controlled systems across the border between their empires. But the fighting's going to come our way before long, and unless we find a way to deal with it we're all going to be wiped out of existence. Bringing every last available Magi ship still in existence here to Ocean's Deep is one part of a possible solution I have in mind.' in our own galaxy. The Emissaries are already retaliating, destroying Shoal-controlled systems across the border between their empires. But the fighting's going to come our way before long, and unless we find a way to deal with it we're all going to be wiped out of existence. Bringing every last available Magi ship still in existence here to Ocean's Deep is one part of a possible solution I have in mind.'

Roses still hung back. 'How could you you possibly know such things?' possibly know such things?'

'Blame these implants' she reached up and tapped the side of her skull 'in here. They do all the work, in conjunction with all this,' she went on, casting a significant glance around them. 'Even now, there's encrypted tach-net traffic flashing back and forth between the coreship here and the ones in other systems. The derelict is tapping into it, and feeding the main details to me.'

'I . . . see.' Roses finally stepped fully inside the Magi ship, and the hull sealed itself behind him. Doors had now appeared, leading off from the newly formed pa.s.sageway.

'As I told you, there are serious consequences to my aiding you,' Roses informed her. 'Though there are non-aligned Hives who might accept me.'

Dakota nodded. 'In the meantime, this ship is inertialess, like the coreships, so you should be comfortable enough. There's . . .' She peered further down the softly glowing corridor at the outlines of doors that had appeared just in the last minute or so. The derelict had predicted her train of thought, as always. 'There's a room modelled after a Bandati habitat through there,' she informed him more decisively. A door slid open, as if at her unspoken command.

Roses moved down the corridor and peered inside. 'Dakota, I've seen some very strange things in my life, and some of them frightened me very much. But I don't think any of them frightened me quite as much as you do.'

Once Roses had entered his quarters, darkness fell around Dakota. The ship's flesh pressed around her, swallowing her whole and drawing her into itself. There was that same brief moment of animal terror she remembered from the first time she'd physically merged with a Magi ship. But that fear soon pa.s.sed, and she awoke to the expanded perceptual range of the Magi ship. She sensed, felt, heard what it did.

She was its navigator.

Welcome home, said a voice. said a voice.

A welter of images and ideas flooded over her, chief amongst them an external view of the ring-segment. It was finally coming apart as it accelerated towards the black hole. They had only minutes left, at most.

The Librarian fed her an image of the derelict blowing the ring-segment apart in order to allow them to escape.

No, she replied. she replied. First we have to deal with Moss, and then we deal with Trader. First we have to deal with Moss, and then we deal with Trader.

'Swimmer in Turbulent Currents.'

Moss opened his eyes, then closed them again. He was obviously hallucinating. 'My name is Hugh Moss,' he said quietly.

Beneath him the ground rumbled. A few more seconds and the ring would . . .

'Look at me, Swimmer.'

He opened his eyes to find Dakota looking down at him. She appeared to be in far better shape now than during their recent encounter.

'Too late,' he told her.

'You have to call your yacht back.'

'Another few minutes and this ring-segment is going to shatter into a thousand pieces. When that happens, I will die. When that happens, my yacht will slip into superluminal s.p.a.ce, and reappear in the heart of this system's star. And then . . . boom. boom.'

He squinted up at Dakota. Some hidden sense told him he was seeing a form of projection.

'I'm speaking to you through your implants, Hugh. I'm on board the Magi ship now. So tell me what happens after? You destroy this system, and everyone and everything in it, and then what? Revenge is one thing, but what exactly is it you think you'll have achieved? The coreship would be long gone from Ocean's Deep before its sun blew. The same goes for pretty much anyone and everyone who can get away from here, and that includes Trader.'

Moss sat up gingerly from where he'd been lying curled up and waiting for death. 'You wouldn't even be asking me these questions,' he replied, 'if you were able to stop me. Have you been trying to compromise my yacht's systems?'

Her face remained impa.s.sive, and a smile tricked its way into one corner of his mouth. 'That turned out to be harder than you thought it would, didn't it?'

A lot harder. Remember, Trader did this to you, Hugh no one else.'

Moss remained silent.

There was an almighty crack, like thunder, and they both glanced up at the ring's ceiling far overhead. Cracks were spreading across it, and a series of explosions sounded in the distance amid the steady whine of venting atmosphere.

'I have a suggestion,' she said, looking back down at him. 'By way of a trade.'

'Go on.'

'I know you can still call your yacht back and if you do, I can help you find Trader, wherever he goes. He's initiated a nova war against the Emissaries. Remote superluminal drones were scattered across the border between your two empires and used to destroy key systems.'

Moss still said nothing. But she could tell he was listening carefully as she described the Emissaries' response for his benefit.

Moss frowned. 'That isn't-'

'Possible? That the Emissaries would turn out to have had nova weapons all along? Of course it is.'

'And Trader?'

'Right at the centre of things or, at least, that's according to what I've been able to find out.'

He stared at her. 'Trader's not in this system any more,' Dakota continued. 'But I can make sure you find him long before the Hegemony does, because all he's going to be doing from now on is running.'

'No. The Shoal will still take him back,' Moss replied, a faraway look in his eyes. 'He's stayed alive this long. Now they'll need him to survive this war.'

'Not from what I've found out. They're actively hunting him down.'

Moss was looking at her with, Dakota realized with amus.e.m.e.nt and not a little horror, a certain respect. 'All that power in your hands, all those secrets. And they could have been mine.'

'It's not for you, Hugh. There are things you don't know things neither the Shoal nor the Emissaries are even aware of. Things that will make all the difference. The outcome of this war isn't decided. I couldn't stop it starting, but there's a chance I can help bring it to an early end with minimal devastation and loss of life. It would, however,' she added, 'be at enormous cost to the Hegemony'

'Is that so.' He smiled thinly, pale skin stretched tight over hard bone. 'The yacht is recalled. Now tell me what I need to know. Tell me how I can find Trader.'

Dakota nodded faintly, and the knowledge he needed was suddenly there in his head. 'His yacht's ident,' she added. 'Trackable across light-years, if you know how to look.'

'I will hold you to your word, Dakota Merrick,' Moss said. 'But if you ever stand between me and Trader, I will hunt you down. And when I find you, I will make a symphony of your pain.'

Dakota smiled thinly. 'There's a small dock nearby with some escape pods stored in it. Use your field-bubble if the air runs out before you get there.'

Before very long, an escape pod launched from the ring-segment, burning hard g's to put distance between itself and the blaze of radiation that surrounded the black hole. Far below, but looking close enough to touch, continent-sized clouds drifted around the equator of Leviathan's Fall.

Just as the escape pod accelerated away, the ring-segment blew apart, transformed instantly into an expanding cloud of debris. A second and far larger ship, with long spines spreading out around its body, emerged from the cloud, picking up speed as it too accelerated away.

Just south of the Seven Stars of Evening, though invisible from the surface of Bellhaven, a starship materialized several AUs out from the sun. It had a lozenge-shaped body with long, curving drive-spines that lent it a sinuous appearance, and it carried precisely two pa.s.sengers.

Dakota gazed towards the distant light of her home world and felt a burst of nostalgia, promising herself in that moment that, yes, she would would return to those familiar rain-slicked and cobbled streets. One day. return to those familiar rain-slicked and cobbled streets. One day.

But first she had to make sure she'd still have a home to return to.

Lower equatorial orbital s.p.a.ce around Bellhaven was, as Trader had pointed out, thick with junk, some of it potentially deadly, some of it still active. Surveillance satellites in higher orbits, and around other planets in the system, picked up the Magi ship's gravitic pulse immediately, and started firing alerts back to their respective governments on Bellhaven, announcing that the newcomer was clearly no coreship.

The primary question in Dakota's mind was whether Trader would activate the nuclear platforms still floating high above the surface of Bellhaven. The Magi ship, after all, could hardly be of use to him any more, not now he was almost certainly being hunted for starting a war he was supposed to prevent. Dakota knew the Shoal-member well enough, however, not to give him the benefit of the doubt.

She got her answer before long. All around Bellhaven, military s.p.a.ceports and air bases went on full alert as...o...b..tal platforms supposedly long since decommissioned suddenly came to life, launching missiles towards the cloud-streaked skies below. The missiles were linked both to each other and to their respective launch platforms by a series of dedicated tach-net transceivers located in unmanned bunkers deep beneath the planet's surface.

At Dakota's command, the Magi starship penetrated Bellhaven's military security networks with ease, locating the network of transceivers in a matter of seconds. New override commands began firing out towards the missiles, deactivating them before they could reach their targets.

One missile thundered across the damp morning skies above the city of Erkinning, before suddenly shattering into fragments that were strewn across a thousand square miles. Others crashed into shallow seas or came down in scattered pieces across mountains and remote valleys, the contents of their nuclear-tipped warheads sending Geiger counters quietly ticking in university departments and surveillance labs all around the planet.

The Magi ship, meanwhile, began to accelerate once more, swinging past a small green-grey gas giant ringed by a dozen small rocky moons, and boosting on a long curving trajectory that would have carried it out of the ecliptic plane if its superluminal drive hadn't engaged once more, sending it back to Ocean's Deep.

Autonomous hunter-killers were meanwhile still tracking each other through the asteroid belts of Ocean's Deep, their numbers gradually dwindling through a process of mutual attrition. Localized defensive units...o...b..ting the coreship dealt with anything that came too close, while Shoal drones dived in turn towards the G.o.d-killer.

Encounters between manned craft were short, brutal and deadly; the Emissaries had by now destroyed most of the Immortal Light fleet with targeted strikes. Their ruined and lifeless husks, still sparkling with intermittent fires, spun slowly through the endless starry night.

And then, something remarkable happened.

A few minutes after the Magi ship rematerialized in the Ocean's Deep system, as mysteriously as it had departed the better part of a day before, the Emissary attack drones scattered for more than a light-minute's distance around the G.o.dkiller all shut down at the same time, leaving the G.o.dkiller itself wide open to direct attack. The nearest of the Shoal's hunter-killer drones launched towards it unchallenged, immolating itself in a strategic strike against a jump-spine.

More such strikes quickly followed.

The G.o.dkiller began to accelerate in the direction of the outer system, trailed by a wake of offensive drones boosting to catch up with it. Manned Shoal vessels that had been maintaining their distance took advantage, launching yet more drones in their thousands and setting them to chase the G.o.dkiller like jackals running down exhausted prey.

The Emissary vessel was exhausting its fuel in a desperate bid to achieve jump speed, despite serious damage to several of its spines. The Shoal drones came in firing, their particle beams and pulse-lances raking the remaining jump-spines and leaving the target crippled and venting atmosphere. More drones struck fragile plasma conduits and sun-hot energy spilled out, consuming the G.o.dkiller from the inside out. Light blazed from deep within its hull.

But it wasn't quite over.

A single, unmanned drone equipped with a superluminal drive launched from the G.o.dkiller in the moments just before its destruction. The drone boosted to high relativistic speeds within seconds, skipping past the marauding hunter-killers and out of detectable range, as it jumped out of normal s.p.a.ce.

At that time, none of the forces in the system could have guessed where the drone might be heading. But when comms traffic from Night's End fell abruptly silent several hours later, it didn't take long to realize what had happened.

Monitoring systems dotted around Ironbloom picked up a sudden gravitic pulse, rapidly triangulating the location, trajectory and speed of a superluminal drone that had materialized barely half an AU out from Night's End's sun.

The drone took a few minutes for calibration and navigational checking before initiating a chain reaction deep within its drive, then it briefly slipped back out of normal s.p.a.ce. It rematerialized near the star's core, protected for a few millionths of a second by a sh.e.l.l of exotic energy surrounding it.

The sh.e.l.l collapsed almost at once, reducing the drone to a smear of white-hot plasma and laying bare the n- n-dimensional discontinuity that had formed within its drive. The discontinuity's interaction with normal s.p.a.ce triggered a runaway phase change, and a sphere of absolute nothingness expanded through the core at the speed of light, tearing it apart and generating a lethal storm of singularities. These spun throughout the star's convection layer, disrupting billion-year-old heat flows, and sending great spumes of heat and radiation spilling out from the surface and across tens of millions of kilometres.

The star began to shrink, a process that was soon going to end in its destruction.

Priority alerts automatically triggered deep within the navigational complex of a coreship that had only just materialized in the outer reaches of the Night's End system. The coreship was still busy decelerating, its guidance systems directing it towards a cl.u.s.ter of mining habitats...o...b..ting a gas giant called Bluegas, three light-hours out from Night's End's sun.

Lines of communication throughout the system were pushed to capacity as the news leaked out that something was happening to the sun. The neutrino burst caused by the initial phase change had been detected, but its significance was understood only by the Shoal-members dwelling within the coreship's central ocean.