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  ‘No bullshit, Megan – and I already accepted.’ A grin spread across his face. ‘Checked my account this morning and saw the sweetest line of zeros.’

  ‘The transfer will be handled by the Schellings’ own legal firm under the strictest secrecy,’ continued Sifra, ‘and the deal is cast iron, whatever happens. The Accord won’t be able to trace it or touch it, either. If you decide you want to be part of this, we’ll authorize that transfer immediately. Think about the opportunities that it could buy for a machine-head pilot.’

  ‘It’s enough to buy part-ownership in a ship,’ said Bash. ‘Hell, Megan, think what we could do if we pooled our money. Finance our own damn expedition.’

  ‘Just what in hell is it you’re planning to do?’ she asked Tarrant.

  ‘We first need to know if you’re in or not,’ said Sifra.

  Megan rolled her eyes. ‘In for what, exactly?’

  ‘A new expedition,’ said Tarrant, ‘deep into the galaxy – to find something called the Wanderer.’

  ‘What is it, precisely?’

  ‘You might regret asking me that question, Miss Jacinth, as it’s going to take me a while to explain.’

  She looked down at her hand, and noticed the bulb of Irish coffee it was still clutching. She had entirely forgotten it was there.

  She took a sip, then sat back, gazing off towards an image of Kjæregrønnested that was turning slowly on a screen at the far end of the lounge.

  ‘I’m all ears,’ she said.

  SIX

  Megan

  The story of the Wanderer had started, Tarrant went on to explain, with a discovery made on Alyeska.

  Until the discovery of the ruins beneath Alyeska’s ice, the Meridians had remained almost entirely unknown to mankind. Like the Shoal, they had once spread far and wide across the galaxy, leaving colonies on hundreds of worlds. But, unlike other starfaring species, the Meridians had never stumbled across a Maker cache, and so never acquired the means of faster-than-light travel. It would therefore have taken any one of their ships tens of thousands of years to travel from one end of their empire to the other.

  It rapidly became clear to the archaeologists studying their ruins that, despite this, the Meridians had nonetheless undergone a dramatic spike in technological and scientific development within a very short time frame. That meant either that the Meridians had indeed found a Maker cache – but somehow failed to take advantage of the faster-than-light technology contained therein – or that their newfound technological sophistication had arrived by some other route.

  What that route might be, Tarrant explained, had remained a mystery until the Schellings came into possession of data attributing this sudden spike to a machine-entity with whom a Meridian expedition had made contact. They had named this entity – which had apparently been roaming the galaxy for millions of years at sub-light velocities – the ‘Wanderer’.

  The Meridians had found the Wanderer willing to communicate, and even to trade information. It was, it seemed, looking for something. But as to what that might be, the Meridians either hadn’t asked or had failed to record the answer. Analysts working under strictest secrecy had cross-referenced the newly discovered data with the historical records of other known spacefaring species, quickly finding a correlation with the Atn, and even with the Shoal. They, too, it seemed, had had their own encounters with the Wanderer, albeit at a much later date.

  The more they dug, the stranger the story became. The Meridians recorded that the Wanderer had been on the losing side of some kind of war, but there were no records to indicate who that war had been fought against, or why.

  All of this was incidental, however, to the fact that the Wanderer had apparently been blessed with a cornucopia of knowledge far in advance of that possessed by the Meridians. For a species like the Meridians, however, knowledge was the only commodity of true value.

  The Schellings reasoned that if the Wanderer still existed, and if it could be persuaded to impart some of the same knowledge that had triggered a technological and scientific renaissance amongst the Meridians, then the entire balance of power would shift heavily in the Three Star Alliance’s favour – and then the Accord would finally be forced to come crawling.

  Megan finished her coffee and let the bulb float away from her. ‘But if this . . . thing, this Wanderer, is so advanced,’ she asked, ‘what could we possibly have to offer it in return, assuming it does even want to trade? It’s not just going to give us whatever we ask for without expecting something in return, is it?’

  She looked between the two men, noting that their expressions were suddenly neutral.

  ‘You already have something in mind,’ she said slowly, ‘but you’re not going to tell me what it is – is that it?’

  ‘That has to stay a secret between me and Anil,’ said Tarrant, ‘and, of course, a few members of the Schelling family.’ He shrugged amiably. ‘Sorry.’

  Megan made a face. She never liked being kept in the dark. ‘You really think that if we can find this thing, it’ll really make that much of a difference to the Alliance?’

  ‘Just a few scraps of scientific knowledge gleaned from the Alyeska digs were enough to make the First Families enormously rich and powerful,’ said Tarrant. ‘Imagine, then, what the Wanderer could do for us.’

  Megan leaned back, her fingers tapping a staccato rhythm on her couch’s arm. Tarrant’s enthusiasm was infectious. ‘It still doesn’t give us back control over our fleets,’ she pointed out.

  Tarrant leaned towards her. ‘If this works out as well as we think it will, we’ll be returning home with enough advanced scientific data to revolutionize our society completely. We’ll be able to license that data to the Accord in return for full control of our fleet again. They’ll bend over backwards to give us what we want.’

  ‘At the very least,’ added Bash, ‘it has to be worth a shot. Otherwise, you and I are going to be stuck running automated mining traffic, or having to retrain for the Accord. And even if they do decide to let us pilot nova-class ships, it’s not going to be like it was before.’ He shook his head, slow and sombre. ‘Jumpy bureaucrats breathing down our necks all day, wanting everything we do filed in advance, and in triplicate – that’s not what I became a pilot for.’

  She turned to Tarrant. ‘Look, all of this sounds great, but there’s already a delegation from the Accord on its way here to oversee the handover.’

  ‘All the more reason not to waste any time,’ said Tarrant, his hands clenching into fists. ‘Let me be very clear about what we are proposing. We want to take the Beauregard – immediately – on a deep-space expedition to seek out the Wanderer, and then see if we can replicate what the Meridians managed on behalf of their own civilization.’

  ‘So, since we’re doing some straight-talking,’ said Megan, ‘I want to be absolutely sure of what you’re saying. You want to hijack the Beauregard, with my help, and you really have Otto Schelling’s backing for this?’

  ‘I can put you in touch with him right this second, if you’re still unconvinced.’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head, feeling a curious sensation of both terror and exhilaration at the scale of their plan. ‘I believe you. But how do we know the Wanderer is even still out there, or where exactly it is? It must have travelled a hell of a long way since it ran into the Meridians, even moving at less than light speed.’

  Tarrant made a practised gesture, and a map of the local stellar arm materialized overhead. ‘We narrowed down the Wanderer’s likely location to a number of possible target systems, extrapolating from its last recorded positions,’ he explained, as he indicated a star cluster that was clearly a very, very long way away. ‘Fortunately, the Atn and the Shoal recorded the coordinates of their own encounters with it, and that information let us extrapolate its probable direction and speed of movement.’

  ‘After this amount of time?’ She found herself unable to hide her scepticism. ‘So it could be anywhere.’

  Tarrant grinned. ‘O
rdinarily it’d be an impossibly long shot, yes. But the Meridians left some probes behind to track the Wanderer, and they’re still functioning.’

  ‘So you’re not just hoping it’s still out there.’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Tarrant. ‘We know it’s out there. We even sent out a pair of our own probes equipped with nova drives to perform a fly-by. Take a look.’

  The image of the spiral arm expanded, fading at the edges as the view rushed in towards a tight knot of several thousand stars that were identified by supplementary information as the Calafat-Holt Cluster.

  The view zoomed in again, slowing as it approached a nebula that made Megan think of what sunset in hell might look like. Supplementary data told her she was looking at a Wolf-Rayet star, a bloated ball of gas dozens of times larger than a standard Earth-type, and approaching the end of its life. It had been given the designation C-H45k.

  C-H45k was losing mass at an enormous rate, throwing off great sheets of burning plasma that obscured the star itself from sight. Any kind of approach to such a system was going to entail some fairly unique challenges.

  ‘It doesn’t seem to want to make it easy for anyone to drop by and visit, does it?’ she muttered.

  Sifra chuckled. ‘Just the same thing we were thinking.’

  ‘This isn’t a mere hop or a skip you’re talking about,’ said Megan. ‘You’re talking about a trip of more than fifteen thousand light years. I can think of maybe only a handful of expeditions that have travelled that far. In fact, you’re talking at least half a year just to get there.’

  ‘Then we need to set out straight away, Miss Jacinth,’ said Tarrant. ‘And the Beauregard is already stocked with every resource it needs for a long-range mission.’

  Megan nodded. At least that explained the final, mysterious cargo shipment. ‘All right, then. Let me see it.’

  ‘Pardon me?’

  ‘The Wanderer,’ she said. ‘You said there was a fly-by. I want to see what it looks like.’

  Tarrant glanced at Sifra, who shrugged. ‘All right,’ said Tarrant.

  More images appeared. At first, all Megan could see was a black outline against a field of stars. But then she pulled the projected data into her personal datascape, the lounge around her briefly fading from her sight.

  She could make out a massive central body, dark grey and black, with what appeared to be numerous arms extending outwards from its central mass. It made her think of nothing less than the knotted roots of a tree that had just been ripped from the soil and exposed to the daylight. She might have assumed the branch-like structures were drive-spines, if she hadn’t just been informed that the Wanderer travelled at sub-light speeds.

  The images sent a trickle of ice running down her spine. There was something about those branching structures that made it look as if the Wanderer were reaching out for her, like some ragged and hungry beast amidst a forest of stars.

  She exited her datascape, and was aware of Tarrant looking at her expectantly. ‘Well?’ he asked.

  ‘All right,’ she said, ‘I’m impressed. But what makes you so sure I won’t turn your offer down?’

  ‘Psychological profiling says you won’t,’ said Tarrant. ‘And, besides, Mr Bashir assured us that you wouldn’t.’

  ‘Having two machine-head pilots is standard operating procedure for any long-range expedition,’ said Sifra, ‘and this one is no different. And, as we’ve already pointed out, the rewards are extremely generous.’

  ‘No,’ said Tarrant, studying her, ‘she’s not really interested in the money. It’s just like Mr Bashir said: life for a machine-head in the Accord means being tightly controlled and entirely dependent on the mercies of a distant bureaucracy. But the Alliance was never about that.’ He leaned towards her, his gaze intent. ‘This is your chance to get back the life you wanted – before it’s lost forever.’

  Something made it hard for her to pull her eyes away from his. It was uncomfortably as if he could see right inside her, to all the insecurities she worked so hard to keep hidden.

  ‘But . . . just the four of us?’ she asked, looking around at the other two.

  ‘It’s not as if we don’t know that just one machine-head could keep a ship like this running indefinitely,’ said Tarrant, sitting back again. ‘I’d obviously prefer to take along a full team of specialists, but there isn’t the time for that, and there’s too much risk that it would lead to us being discovered before we set out. Not only that, but it’s absolutely imperative that none of this is in any way attributable to the Schellings – or any of the First Families, for that matter. We need to make this look as if we just cut and run.’

  Cut and run. Just take the Beauregard and pilot her fifteen thousand light years, in search of some ancient ship travelling on an unknown quest.

  The whole idea was impossibly romantic, and – she was forced to admit – more than a little appealing.

  But it was impossible, of course. Surely he knew that?

  ‘You do know that all the Alliance’s ships are equipped with failsafes, don’t you?’ she said. ‘They’re there to prevent machine-heads like me from doing precisely what you’re suggesting. As soon as someone down in Ladested realizes I’m taking the Beauregard out of orbit without authorization, they’ll shut me down remotely.’

  ‘And Otto Schelling, as the primary financier behind the Beauregard and its sister ships,’ said Tarrant, ‘has the ultimate responsibility for that override. We won’t be stopped.’

  ‘I need more than just your word on that,’ she said.

  Tarrant nodded. ‘I’d check the current authorization flags, if I were you.’

  Megan dived back into her datascape just long enough to ascertain that numerous fail-safes had indeed been disabled. She blinked, feeling numb. It meant she could literally take the Beauregard anywhere she wanted.

  ‘Why ask me to do this now?’ she exclaimed. ‘Why not yesterday, or a week ago?’

  ‘We didn’t have everything we needed, a week ago,’ said Tarrant. ‘And that didn’t leave us much time.’

  There’s no turning back, she told herself, feeling a sense of standing on the edge of a precipice.

  ‘Whatever data you have about the Wanderer,’ she said, ‘I’ll need to see all of it.’

  Tarrant nodded, as if he’d been expecting her to say just that. ‘We’ll upload everything we’ve got to the Beauregard’s data banks, the moment you give your answer.’

  She glanced at Bash, noting his hopeful expression.

  ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘let’s do it.’

  SEVEN

  Megan

  2763 (the present)

  The morning after Megan found herself locked into a basement room on Avilon alongside Bash, Sifra appeared in their cell in the company of the Freeholder, who had Megan’s satchel slung over his shoulder.

  She had been asleep, curled up on the cold hard concrete next to Bash’s cot, when they entered. Sifra held an antique Consortium-era assault pistol in one hand, and she saw he still affected a straggly blond goatee, although there were now a few silver streaks. His hair still stuck up in places, giving him the appearance of someone perpetually in the process of just waking up.

  He gazed down at her, then nodded with satisfaction. ‘Good work, Luiz,’ he said to the Freeholder, then grabbed Megan by the arm, hauling her to her feet.

  He pressed the barrel of the pistol against her neck and guided her towards the corner of the room farthest away from Bash.

  ‘Hello, Megan,’ said Sifra. ‘Long time no see. Were you surprised to discover I was still alive?’

  She found it hard to swallow with the gun pushed against her throat. ‘How did you do it, Anil? I left you and Gregor for dead. Didn’t the Wanderer try and finish you off?’

  ‘It lost interest in us,’ said Sifra, ‘because we no longer had what it wanted. We were stuck out there on the wreck of the Beauregard for very nearly two years, and all thanks to you. Two whole years before General Schelling was able to send out a r
escue drone. Plenty of time for me to think about what I’d do if I ever met you again.’

  ‘General Schelling?’ She laughed because, the last she’d heard, the former president of the Three Star Alliance had been reduced to the status of a wanted fugitive. ‘That’s rich. And how is the evil old fucker these days?’

  Sifra responded by driving his free hand into her belly. She felt her legs give way beneath her, and she slumped back onto the floor.

  Sifra stood over her, breathing hard. Shut your smart mouth, Megan, she told herself.

  ‘Luiz,’ said Sifra over his shoulder. ‘Let’s see what’s in that bag of hers.’

  Luiz emptied the contents on to the floor, then bent down to pick up Kazim’s security override device, handing it to Sifra.

  Sifra held the device up before her face. ‘I know you got this from a friend of yours,’ he said. ‘Arturo Kazim, shipping agent and part-time sans de sezi dealer.’

  Megan looked away. ‘It doesn’t matter where I got it from,’ she replied in a voice now a monotone. ‘It doesn’t work.’

  Sifra nodded, and let the device fall back on to the floor with a clatter. ‘On the contrary,’ he said, ‘it works just fine.’

  Megan looked up at him, confused. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

  ‘Arturo was working for me,’ he said, clearly relishing her look of shock. ‘He got well paid for it, too.’

  Megan stared at him, refusing to accept this betrayal. ‘That’s impossible.’

  ‘Money talks, Megan. Kazim gave you that device on my orders. He told you it would allow you to pass safely through Avilon’s security cordon, but in reality it was programmed to hack the security systems in such a way that I myself, rather than Avilon’s civil authorities, would be informed of your arrival.’

  She stared up at him, feeling sick.

  ‘I know all about how you built up a nice little business acting as a go-between for men like Kazim and their counterparts on Morgan’s World and Al-Jahar,’ Sifra continued. ‘I know just how long you’ve been planning to come and rescue Bash here – ever since Kazim told you, on my orders, that he was still alive.’