A dot flashed with two lines leading off it. “It's here,” said Hessia, “which tells me that there are a lot of tunnels I don't know about. From your description, there must be ten or twenty intersection points on that planet alone. If I'd been aware of that, I'd have gone there a lot sooner. My theory is that Coronade was a central coordination point, from where these Tok built multiple construction or monitoring tunnels to target systems under enemy control. Systems at which they could then build their stellar mass injection gateways, like the one you used to escape.”
“There were seven cones at the dead star,” said Selene. “You only have three tunnels marked.”
“As I say, my knowledge is patchy. I have no idea where in the galaxy the other four endpoints are.”
“Does this mean you've been to Coronade now?”
“It does. I explained the significance of Coronade to my personal history. I obviously want to disprove the version of events that Concordance feed us with.”
“What's happening there now?” Selene had seen some telemetry from the nanosensor network, but it was frustratingly out of date.
“There's a lot of Concordance activity. They've put a secure halo of sixteen Cathedral ships around the planet, leaving no possibility of running a surprise incursion. Local space is swimming with their nanosensors and drones and beam-weapon stations. Something else, too: they've set up fixed rings of planetary-defence platforms, enough to ensure that every point in the sphere is covered by at least two. But the beam-weapon arrays on the platforms aren't directed outwards, they're sweeping the planet.”
“Planetary defence batteries pointing inwards,” said Ondo. “That's new.”
“They know about the tunnel entrances,” said Selene. “They might not know how to open them, and they might not know where they lead, but they know they're there.” She sent her own commands to the nav imaging arrays. Multiple regions of space lit up in red. Each one had at least one of the metaspace tunnels leading into it.
Hessia nodded her head, as if the map was familiar. “You see it. The tunnels and the regions of Dead Space are inextricably linked. It is something that became obvious very quickly when I started my research. I assume we know where every zone is, thanks to the navigational aversions built into just about every metaspace ship I've ever encountered. It's very clear that most of the tunnels I've been able to map either pass through one of the zones, or terminate within one. Every zone apart from one has a tunnel leading into it and then stopping, and the one that doesn't is probably like that because I haven't found the tunnel yet.”
“That makes sense from what we discovered,” said Selene. “The Dead Space regions were exclusion zones, no-go areas. The Tok quarantined off areas of space where the Morn were and used the tunnels to nova stars to destroy them.”
She glanced at Surtr, who neither agreed nor objected, judging by its lack of movement. The Aetheral had been even more taciturn than usual since their departure from Fenwinter, lost in some rumination.
“That's what I believe, too,” said Hessia, “and if the tunnels only terminated in the Dead Space zones, it wouldn't be too much of a problem since there are no known inhabited worlds within any of them. We have a much more urgent matter, though: the worlds outside Dead Space that are connected by the tunnels. Coronade is one, but there are others. And then we come to the uptick in Cathedral Ship activity. I've correlated all the data I have, and I've been able to identify that Concordance have scrambled fleets to a total of seven systems where there's a tunnel terminus. There obviously may be others that I simply don't know about.”
On the three-dimensional display, the seven systems flashed. The routes of their tunnels were also highlighted. All led to uninhabited zones in normal interstellar space.
“The question is, why are there tunnels to these systems?” Ondo mused. “The Tok clearly didn't need the structures to travel around. Why built these pathways outside of the Dead Space zones?”
Hessia said, “In my view, either these systems were once in regions of Dead Space that we no longer know about, or else the Tok had other enemies that they planned to destroy. We have no way of knowing how extensive the ancient wars were.”
Ondo said, “Or the Tok were being proactive, laying traps in systems where they thought the Morn might attack. Or they were experimenting, working out how to make the technology work.”
“What matters now is that these seven systems are in grave danger. Concordance have to be planning to use the tunnels to destroy these seven stars. That's what they've been doing: scrambling to unleash this attack, and defending each terminus so that no one is able to sabotage their efforts. I wish I'd worked out sooner that there are anomalous objects hidden beneath the surfaces of the stars, but it was only by correlating my data with yours that I discovered the truth.”
“Are any of the systems populated?” asked Selene.
“All of them are. Five are advanced enough to have Cathedral ships in orbit, and the chances are that no one on those worlds has any idea their star is compromised, that there are metaspace tunnel exits hidden beneath its surface. All those stars could be triggered into nova, and the people there would get little warning.”
“Seven stars with seven tunnels. I assume you've been to the other end of each as well?”
“Each would be a boring patch of void if you didn't know there was a gateway there. None have stars anywhere near, although all have relatively high densities of dust and plasma.”
“Did you find anything else?”
“I did: more Concordance ships. They're protecting both ends of the tunnels. At one there is something else, as well.”
A tactical map of the region of space at one of the tunnel entrances filled the display. It took Selene a beat to work out that the
