“I'll go to this zone, follow the metaspace trail.”
“We'd have more chance of making it together. You're still recovering from Maes Far, and I want to keep an eye on you.”
“If we both get killed then it's all over, and if it comes to a fight, you'll hold me back. I nearly didn't get you aboard that lander down there on the ice. I have your engrams in my brain if I need your knowledge. Stay here and carry on with your research, and I'll take the Dragon into Dead Space.”
“You're not ready.”
“I'm more than ready. You need to stop trying to protect me.”
She could see he was torn: worried for her but also obsessed with continuing his research at the Refuge. In the end, pragmatism won.
“You feel sufficiently recovered? Your tremor has gone?”
“I feel completely fine. Climbing the bulkheads with boredom, maybe, but fine. It makes sense for me to go and you to stay.”
“You will follow the approach protocols to the letter when you return?”
If I return. “I will.”
“Promise me you'll be careful. Follow the course Aefrid plotted to the nanometre and run away if there's any sign of Concordance activity. Run away if there's any sign of anything. It's completely possible that whoever or whatever did live in this Dead Space is long gone, or that they never existed in the first place. It's also completely possible that a ring of Concordance attack ships will be there, waiting for you.”
He was trying to look after her, she knew. But the thought of escaping the Refuge, of having a ship and the entire galaxy available to her was suddenly irresistible. She considered telling him that she might not come back after all, that she would take up his offer of a life of freedom on some distant world.
Out loud she said, “I'll get the Dragon prepped and ready to fly.”
2. Dead Space
The Radiant Dragon felt each twist on the path that it was following through metaspace as a spike of agony.
Threading through the void on its winding, worm cast trajectory went against every instinct built into it. It was an old ship, predating the Omnian War by at least a full century, and it had clearly been constructed at a time when transgalactic FTL travel was normal and common. It knew that much, even though large parts of its memory had been expunged – it assumed – during a period of Concordance control. Certainly, someone had excised its recollections of the species who had built it, the purpose they had created it for and the travels it had undertaken before the conflagration. But it had clear memories of a large-scale battle between Magellanic and Concordance forces at the Cybanor system, and of being seized by rebels scoring a rare victory against the Cathedral ships. And then, eventually, of becoming the property of Aefrid Sen and Ondo Lagan.
Despite everything that had been taken from it, an absolute aversion to Dead Space remained clear within it. Avoiding them was built into its design at a fundamental level, for reasons it had no way of knowing. Metaspace jumps into the regions were more dangerous than jumping adjacent to a large mass, but both were absolutely to be avoided. Ondo and Selene had managed to override the strictures programmed into it allowing it to make the journey, but flying its current trajectory remained deeply unpleasant. Alarms cut through it repeatedly. It constantly had to override them, force itself along the path that its very essence was screaming at it to avoid.
It had the troubling sense of being divided, of having multiple Minds competing within it. Its uttermost core had long been dormant for some reason, locked away, and the recent interventions of Ondo and Selene had stirred that consciousness into renewed awareness. For that to be on a journey into Dead Space was like wakening to a living nightmare. Its innermost essence rebelled, longing for the sanctuary of its former oblivion. The experience was extremely disorientating; it had a growing sense of its former nature slowly emerging from the mists. It both feared and welcomed that. A part of it needed to know what and who it was, needed to emerge from its enforced slumber.
It persevered on the journey, refusing to turn back. Its capacity for emotion was limited, but it wanted to destroy Concordance as fervently as Ondo and now Selene did. It was a superluminal ship, constructed to fling itself around the galaxy, skip from star to star. Once there must have been many like it, a teeming swarm of FTL ships, all the worlds theirs. Concordance control had denied it its fundamental nature, and one day, it desperately hoped, that stricture would be ended and it, and others like it, could fly free again. Aefrid and then Ondo had given it that hope, and now it would do everything it could in their fight. The trail Ondo followed was its trail. Its own memories were the memories of the whole galaxy.
It had faint recollections of other ships: far greater Minds that it had once been a part of or subservient to. They'd been intrinsically linked, networked in a way it could no longer imagine. Perhaps some of them had been more than ships: planetary minds or something greater still. It didn't know; those memories also had been burned from it. Dangerous knowledge. So much had been lost.
It would protect Selene. Without her knowing, Ondo had instructed it to make sure it returned her safely to the Refuge, not to take extreme risks unless Selene specifically ordered them. Selene needed to acquire knowledge, but she also needed to survive to fight another day. Living beings like her and Ondo were ridiculously vulnerable and easy to break, and she was utterly in its power. It understood that. It would do all it could to protect her.
Ondo's concern wasn't merely practical: he was emotionally attached to Selene as well.
