Well, pretending they were just another unmanned drone clearly hadn't worked, for it became clear to Dakota that a large number of enemy drones were gradually converging on them the deeper they moved into the asteroid region. She glanced over at Roses, not an easy proposition given she was wedged deep into a gel-chair. She caught sight of her own reflection in expressionless eyes like obsidian mirrors.
'Dakota, can you do what you did back at Ironbloom? Can you take direct control of this ship?'
'Maybe… I don't know. I needed the derelict to do that.'
'I was under the impression that your implants did the work.'
'Yes, but I wiped them back in Nova Arctis.'
'Why?'
'Too long, too complicated. After that, the derelict – the one that brought me to Night's End – replaced the wiped software with its own version.'
'And the derelict in this system? Can you use that?'
Dakota curled her fists in frustration and kept her voice level as she replied. 'Listen, if I could control it, I would, and this time I'd tell you, but…'
'Yes?'
'But it's like it won't talk to me.' She tried to affect a helpless shrug, but that was impossible in her tight restraints. 'I can… I can feel it out there, and sometimes I can see through its eyes, different objects scattered all throughout this system – but that's it. It won't respond when I want it to actually do something for me.'
'Then we are lost already.'
'No, it knows I'm here. I just… I just have to figure out how to get it to listen to me.'
Dakota closed her eyes and felt the same sudden outwards rush she'd felt only seconds before. And, as her consciousness bloomed again, she once more had a sense of something ancient lost in the darkness – but somewhere much, much further away than the Ocean's Deep system. It was like swimming down into the sea until the light was gone and a heavy black pressed all around you… and you suddenly realized you weren't alone.
Following that first fleeting contact made on their arrival, the Ocean's Deep derelict had fallen silent, manifesting now as little more than a brooding, dimly sensed presence. It made Dakota feel like some medieval pauper seeking shelter in a castle, only to find the drawbridge raised and the windows darkened.
'Well, in any case, our defensive drones are more than capable of dealing with an attack,' Roses was explaining when she opened her eyes again. She wondered which one of them he was trying to reassure.
'From what – other Bandati drones? Those things hunting us are Emissary. Last I heard, they're on a technological par with the Shoal. Have the Bandati ever taken on something like that?'
'No,' Roses admitted, 'but then again maybe you shouldn't judge a battle before it's started. The local asteroid bodies should help confuse the enemy, and our own defensive drones are designed to give off exactly the same heat and radiation signatures as this scout-ship. Even if they know we're here, by the time they figure out exactly where we are we'll already be at the station.'
'And if that doesn't work?'
'All we can do, Dakota, is watch and wait.'
Watch and wait?
Boredom overcame fear as the hours passed, and Leviathan's Fall expanded from a pale bright dot to a growing circle. The scout-ship and its accompanying drones performed a complicated dance, accelerating, braking and suddenly changing position, though spread out over millions of cubic kilometres. The tedium was enlivened only by sudden, unpredictable accelerations and equally violent braking manoeuvres that slammed them into their respective gel-chairs.
Dakota even fell asleep for a short while, albeit fitfully. It had been days since she'd really slept properly. She finally snapped awake during a particularly brutal manoeuvre. A sharp, acid stench suddenly filled the cabin, and Dakota twisted around in terror, trying to see where the fire was coming from. No smoke, nothing; just that all-pervasive smell of electronics burning.
'It's only an alert,' Roses told her, by way of reassurance.
'What is? For God's sake, I can smell something burning!'
'That is the alert,' Roses informed her with what she imagined was a degree of impatience. 'It means we're going to come under attack at any second.'
The craft shook around them and Dakota held her breath, petrified, her thoughts filled with an overwhelming desire to get out of this cramped scout-ship…
Except there was nowhere to go. A dozen Emissary hunter-killers had meanwhile boosted from rock to rock, communicating with each other over their own, ever-shifting communications network before they stumbled on the scout-ship.
They had already catalogued tens of thousands of black-body objects ranging in size from boulders to mountains, before finally capturing one of the scout-ship's defensive drones – identified by the sudden pulse of its rapid-acceleration systems. One of the hunter-killers tore the drone apart with machine-mandibles, drawing the components into the interior of its own, larger body, while simultaneously decrypting and analysing the data traffic still flowing to and from the drone's transceiver in order to try and identify the scout-ship's precise location.
The hunter-killers shared their data, and then turned their attention to one particular region of the sky. They didn't have to wait long before their strategy bore fruit. Their sensors had picked up a flare of fusion energy consistent with a craft big enough to carry organic passengers.
They moved towards the scout-ship's location, vectoring in on their prey like sleek black hounds chasing an elusive quarry through a Stygian forest. The scout-ship accelerated hard for several seconds, then started to judder around them, just as every screen in the tiny cabin flared white and died. A fresh slew of alerts went off a bare second later.
Dakota glanced over at Roses with a questioning look.
'That was unpleasantly close,' he confirmed.
Her mouth felt bone-dry. 'Can we try to get away from them?'
'I don't know. There's at least a dozen of them, and there are more on the way. I'm not sure there's any way we can slip them.'
An icy calm slid over Dakota. She had come too far, been through too much, just to lose now.
But who was to say anything in the universe gave a damn what she wanted?
'We're being targeted again,' Roses informed her, in unchangingly bland machine tones. 'I don't see how we can get out of this. I'm sorry.'
Sorry? Dakota wanted to scream, to reach out with invisible fingers and tear the approaching missiles out of the eternal night and throw them straight back towards the Emissaries – back towards Trader, who was still out there somewhere, and still dangling the threat of genocide over her home world.
She wanted to She heard a sound like a gong, and suddenly remembered the scent of honeygrass from a school trip to one of Bellhaven's largest hydroponic farms. Something was dazzling her, too, like a torch pointed directly into her eyes.
She reached out Shielding her eyes with fingers spread against the sunlight, she peered up at an intensely blue sky. Soft winds tugged at her hair and she lowered her gaze, seeing the honeygrass spreading out towards an endless horizon.
The scout-ship was gone. For a moment she wondered if she was on some world in the Ocean's Deep system, but that was impossible…
The derelict?
She laughed, because the Ocean's Deep derelict had finally spoken to her more directly than at any time since her arrival in its system.
It had lowered its drawbridge.
She turned, and saw the familiar spires of a Magi library-complex rising out of a distant horizon, reaching up and beyond the clouds.
She looked around, trying to find a clue as to where she would go next.
Of course, she was still on the scout-ship, only moments from death, but the simulated worlds inside the Magi ships could provide endless experiences like this within a single moment.