Incredibly, he could hear music coming from inside the hull breach: soft, mellow music that sounded tinny and distant in the echoing metal spaces of the bay.
'I have no idea,' Corso replied miserably. 'When I left the Piri, it was exactly as it was before.'
'If this craft presents any further danger to us, it will be destroyed.'
'No!' Corso whirled around to face Honey dew. 'I mean, no, that's not a good idea.'
He stared over at the Piri Reis, and at the deep rent in its hull. He was still thinking of the ship as some kind of escape route, but how would that even be possible? In its current condition, it wasn't much better than flying scrap.
But it was still the one place he could go where the Bandati couldn't.
'Look,' he said, improvising, 'I already told you I'd need to get back on board the Piri or I wouldn't be able to guarantee anything as far as the protocols go. How sure are you that what you've got from me already is enough to work with, Honeydew? What happens if you end up having to explain to that monster back there why you destroyed the one remaining source of the very protocols your Queen promised to it?'
Long seconds passed while Honeydew once again did an excellent imitation of a statue, a behavioural trait apparently common amongst the Bandati.
'Go back on board the Piri Reis,' Honeydew commanded. 'Find the source of this activity, and retrieve the rest of the protocols if you can. This time, we will remain at a distance.'
'You won't send any more soldiers after me?'
'No, but if you don't return within a reasonable time, I'll order the destruction of the ship regardless of whether or not you're still on board and take my chances with Emissary KaTiKiAn-Sha.'
Corso gaped at the alien. He has to be bluffing.
But there was no way to be sure. He only knew that they still needed him alive, at least for the moment. From that he could draw at least a faint glimmer of hope. Honeydew remained on the platform as it returned to the overhead bay, leaving Corso alone with the Piri Reis. The Piri responded by swivelling on its cushion of shaped fields until its forward nacelles faced more or less towards him.
It was uncomfortably like having a large and dangerous animal turn its attention on you.
Navigational lights continued to randomly flicker around the curve of the ship's hull, as Corso stepped once more across the field of burned corpses, still numb from his recent encounter with the Emissary.
As he approached, the primary airlock slid open for him once more. He paused for a moment, then stepped inside with an air of grim determination.
Nothing looked any different, but he could hear Dakota's sex toy stumbling around in her sleeping quarters. Was that thing somehow responsible for what was happening to the ship? He knew the device was limited as to how far it could get from its wall niche, but still…
Corso suddenly realized the ship had stopped shifting about in its cradle the moment he'd climbed inside. Like it was waiting for me.
After a minute's indecision, he hit up the navigation systems, found the controls for the lights and turned them off. He did the same for the internal speaker system, cutting off the music.
That was easy. Now what?
A display on the nav-board caught his eye, and he had to read it several times before it sank in that he was no longer in the Night's End system. According to the board, they were currently decelerating towards the centre of a new system. And yet he was suffering none of the typical effects of deceleration, nor had he been ordered into a gel-chair, and there had been no perceivable changes in the level of gravity.
Corso leaned back in the chair, arms folded, and tried to remember exactly what the Emissary KaTiKiAn-Sha had said to Honeydew. God's ship. Surely the only ship it could have been referring to was the Magi derelict.
And yet Honeydew had also mentioned something about coordinates – and referred to a ship located in a nearby system.
Corso stood up suddenly. How could he have been such an idiot? Honeydew had already told him that the Emissaries possessed superluminal ships. So, whatever system they were in now, the Emissaries had clearly transported them there.
But why do that, when the derelict was still back in Night's End?
Or had he himself made a mistake in assuming they'd been talking about the same Magi ship?
It was clear from Honeydew's exchange with the monster that the Emissaries had something roughly equivalent to a coreship, and the Bandati vessel had been taken inside it. It would certainly explain a few things, for coreships had some kind of inertia-dampening technology to negate the intense deceleration that always followed re-entry into normal space. There was no reason not to assume the Emissaries had something similar.
And then there was the question of how the Piri Reis could even have found out their current whereabouts, trapped as it was in the belly of the beast, let alone displayed the data on its nav-board…
'Lucas.'
Corso stiffened.
The voice came again, muffled by the intervening bulkheads. 'Lucas, it's me. Are you there? Can you hear me?'
It was Dakota's voice, apparently coming from her sleeping quarters behind. But she was still on Ironbloom – wasn't she?
He stepped away from the nav-board and crawled through the narrow space leading to the rear of the ship. But all that he found there was Dakota's sex toy standing near its wall-slot, fortunately this time considerably less priapic than it had been on their previous encounter.
Even so, it made him nervous enough to crouch just outside the cabin's entrance, ready to retreat quickly in case it made any sudden moves towards him. He wondered how on Earth Dakota had managed to live alone in the depths of space for so long with only such a creepy device for company.
'What have you done to my ship?' it now demanded – in Dakota's voice. Hearing her familiar tones emerge from the mannequin's throat was an unsettling experience.
'What have I done?' Corso laughed weakly. 'I haven't done anything. And… is that really you?'
'Yes, it's me.' There was a note of irritation in the reply. 'The Piri is telling me it's safe to talk now.'
'So where are you, Dakota? Are you still in touch with the derelict?'
'I destroyed the derelict, Corso.'
Corso worked his mouth silently, struggling to find an appropriate response.
'Wait,' he said finally. 'Just… start from the beginning. The last time we spoke we were stuck in that tower. Where exactly are you now?'
'In a system called Ocean's Deep, several light years from Iron-bloom. And so are you, if you didn't know already. I'm sorry about the… the…' the effigy raised a hand as if searching for a word, then lowered it a moment later. 'About the theatrics – the music and shifting the ship around. But, for the moment, it was the only way I could get a message to you without alerting anyone's suspicion. I didn't really think it would work, but-' The effigy shrugged, as if to say but here you are.
'I could have sworn you just said you destroyed the derelict?'
'I did – back in Night's End. I thought they'd either let me go or kill me for doing so, but at least there'd be nothing left to fight over. But I was wrong. Trader brought me here, inside a coreship.'
'Wait, you're with that thing that tried to kill us?' Corso slumped down onto the deck, then realized he was having a life-and-death conversation with a sex toy. 'And you destroyed the derelict.' He could say the words, yet couldn't bring himself to believe them. 'Then what the hell are we doing here?'
'I know this is complicated-'
'You're not kidding.'
'Just listen to me. I only just found out how Immortal Light discovered another Magi ship in this system, thousands of years ago.'
'Christ and Buddha, Dakota, how many of the things are there?'
'Just this new one that I'm definitely sure of. But I'm beginning to suspect there's more, Lucas. Maybe a lot more than even the Shoal know about.'