“I know this world,” the figure intoned. “The taste of it, the shadows it casts in the metaspace realm. Coronade has multiple satellites.”
“Maybe it did once, but not now. Or maybe you have the wrong world. Use your senses, see.”
“I have been … locked away,” the entity said, as if by way of explanation.
The crude hack she and Ondo had found deep in the ship's systems. She said, “I don't know why someone did this to you, or whether you withdrew partly to protect your sanity, but it's time to emerge. Look at the situation we face. The vector I've plotted is our only chance to escape, and even its odds aren't that good.”
There was a pause, then a moment when it seemed to Selene that she sensed an opening up, the unfurling of a flower or the emergence of new life from its protective shell, maybe. She felt the breath of new air upon her face. This core had been locked away, deep in its sanctum sanctorum within the ship's Mind, and now it was pupating, emerging. Perceiving the galaxy as it was rather than how it should be.
“Coronade,” said the core after a moment. “It is, and yet it isn't.”
“Things change,” said Selene. “You see how the attacking ships manoeuvre? You have to let me fly.”
“The ships outnumber us by too much,” the core intoned. “They will destroy us.”
“No; there's a way.”
“There are gateways upon Coronade. The Gamma Spinwards Tunnel. We can go that way.”
“Gateways? What do you mean?”
“Coronade is a terminus on the nexus.”
The entity was confused, still struggling to come to terms with the reality it had shut itself off from. “Maybe it was once, but not anymore,” said Selene. “The planet's dead. And soon we will be, too, if we don't act. Just damn-well look.”
An image of the world appeared in the space between them, the sort of representation she and Ondo had used on the cartography deck. It was a world something like the original Coronade she'd seen in Ondo's first images: the same landmasses, the same violet oceans. Ships docking and undocking from permanent orbital stations. Then the images glitched, wavered, and the planet as it now was replaced it: the impenetrable muddy brown of its lifeless atmosphere.
She was about to say something, force the confused Mind to see what was before it, but something on the planet stopped her. A gap in the heavy atmosphere was opening up, a circle widening like the eye of a developing storm. It dilated until she could see a clear tunnel, walls vertical, leading down to the planet's surface. There was an island there, grey seas surrounding a circular speck of land. The broken remains of bridges radiated outwards, star-like, appearing to head away to unknown continents. Buildings or structures of some unknown sort stood upon the island, the circumference of which glowed with a blue light.
“What is this?” she said. “What are you showing me?”
“It calls to me,” said the ship. “The Gamma Spinwards Tunnel.”
“You're saying we can use this? Get away down there? That makes no sense.”
“We can go that way, through the metaspace tunnels.”
She tried to understand what it was telling her. There could be no gateway on the surface of a planet. Even if there were, the flaw was obvious: their speed was far too high to attempt such a manoeuvre. They'd closed in on the planet now; outside in the real universe they were nine seconds from closest approach. There was no way they could dump their velocity in time to attempt an atmospheric insertion. And she most definitely did not want to drive her ship at the surface of a dead planet because a broken Mind said it was a good idea.
She forced a part of her consciousness out of the virtual dimension to take in the realities of local space fully. Two, three seconds of real time ticked by, but she saw everything she needed to see. There was no hole in the planet's atmosphere; there was no escape route. The Dragon was showing her – what? – its dreams? Its memories? It didn't really matter. They still had only one shot at escaping.
She let herself be pulled back to the confrontation with the embodiment of the ship's core.
“This isn't real,” she said. “You know it. Give me control of the ship.”
The indistinct figure distorted, winding like the flames of a fire. Then, for the briefest moment, it snapped into absolute clarity, and she was looking into the face of a person. Sadness was clear in its wide eyes. Sadness and, she thought, confusion. What it was seeing did not make sense to it, and a part of it was afraid.
“Very well,” it said finally. “This is Coronade and this is also not Coronade. The galaxy turns and I have stayed still. Save us both, Selene Ada. Take us away from here.”
She thrust herself fully out of the core and back to the physical world, letting the telemetry flood into her mind. Six seconds. They were still pulling in sensor readings from the planet. It was patchy, but if they could stitch what they had together, fill in the gaps, they might be able to find something.
She focussed on the halo of Concordance craft, the looming presence of the dead world. They would brush the outer edges of its atmosphere, pick up the gravity assist. She ordered the slightest tweak to their trajectory, nudging the ship's course away from the planet by a thousandth of a degree. The ship responded perfectly. She had control.
Two seconds. One. Now. She acted, pulling the Radiant Dragon onto its new vector, curving away from the planetary plane in the opposite direction to their original trajectory. Down rather than up, as the planet-bound part of her mind still thought of it. There were Concordance ships there, closing in, but fewer of
