after they’d been abandoned.’
‘But you don’t believe that?’
Ty thought for a moment. ‘Let’s say that the overwhelming consistency with which their clade-worlds appeared to have been targeted suggested other explanations.’ Ty manipulated the images until some of the damaged text-spirals were aligned next to each other. ‘Some of these partial glyphs were taken from Crescent asteroids found after I went on the run. Bring them together with fragments taken from other Crescent asteroids, and there’s a clear match.’ Ty caused the fragmentary spirals to slide on top of each other until they clearly matched.
‘I’m still not sure what we’re looking at,’ said Willis.
‘These glyphs, when put together, refer specifically to the Mos Hadroch. They’re essentially a set of galactic coordinates referring to a region of stars a little over a thousand light-years away,’ Ty explained, his finger pointing to different parts of each spiral.
‘What about stellar drift?’ asked Lamoureaux.
‘The Atn coordinate system was designed to take that into account, and as a result it’s extremely reliable. The coordinates don’t so much refer to a single point in space as a projected path for a star or group of stars. I’ve identified a white dwarf system in the catalogues that matches the numbers very closely.’
‘That still leaves the question of what the Mos Hadroch is ,’ Willis remarked.
‘We need to get this back to Dakota fast,’ Lamoureaux muttered to Willis. ‘To Senator Corso as well.’
Ty looked between the two men, his throat suddenly tight. ‘You’re going out there, right?’
‘Where?’ asked Lamoureaux.
‘You’ve got material proof the Mos Hadroch is something tangible, with a defined location a thousand light-years from here. Until very recently a discovery like that was always going to be of purely academic interest, since the Shoal were never going to let us go that deep into the galaxy. But that’s all changed now, hasn’t it?’
‘That’s far from decided,’ Willis replied.
‘You lifted me out of Ascension, practically kidnapped me out of the hands of the security services. The Legislate is probably at your throats for that, am I right?’
Willis’s face was carefully blank, but the look on Lamoureaux’s face made Ty sure he was on the right track. ‘Get someone else to check the data if you like,’ Ty added, ‘but there’s no one better qualified. If you’re going out there, you’re going to need to take me with you.’
Chapter Six
When the attack came, it was swift, brutal and very nearly deadly.
With time, Dakota came to realize she had failed to pay proper attention to subtle changes taking place within the captured swarm-component. That it was a Trojan Horse became evident only with hindsight, its outwardly simple structure belying a technology far more sophisticated than she had even suspected.
The component had responded to Dakota’s careful probing of its memory banks by sending its own, undetectable feelers deep into the data cores of her Magi starship, entwining itself in the ship’s neural networks like a hand taking a firm grip on a living heart. At the same moment the swarm turned on her, the captured component launched its own, primarily informational attack from within.
Dakota spun through the starship’s limitless virtual depths, appalled by the wholesale vandalism the component had unleashed on her ship’s femtotech arrays, until she found Josef’s ghost waiting for her on the balcony of a library complex long since turned to dust and ruin.
‘Look,’ he said, gesturing at the sky.
Dakota gripped the balustrade and followed the direction of his hand, to see a black cloud of viral agents blotting out the sky.
She felt her insides grow cold and liquid. ‘There wasn’t any indication that the component was remotely capable of launching an attack like this! We analysed it inside and out. It just doesn’t make sense!’
She
‘But you don’t believe that?’
Ty thought for a moment. ‘Let’s say that the overwhelming consistency with which their clade-worlds appeared to have been targeted suggested other explanations.’ Ty manipulated the images until some of the damaged text-spirals were aligned next to each other. ‘Some of these partial glyphs were taken from Crescent asteroids found after I went on the run. Bring them together with fragments taken from other Crescent asteroids, and there’s a clear match.’ Ty caused the fragmentary spirals to slide on top of each other until they clearly matched.
‘I’m still not sure what we’re looking at,’ said Willis.
‘These glyphs, when put together, refer specifically to the Mos Hadroch. They’re essentially a set of galactic coordinates referring to a region of stars a little over a thousand light-years away,’ Ty explained, his finger pointing to different parts of each spiral.
‘What about stellar drift?’ asked Lamoureaux.
‘The Atn coordinate system was designed to take that into account, and as a result it’s extremely reliable. The coordinates don’t so much refer to a single point in space as a projected path for a star or group of stars. I’ve identified a white dwarf system in the catalogues that matches the numbers very closely.’
‘That still leaves the question of what the Mos Hadroch is ,’ Willis remarked.
‘We need to get this back to Dakota fast,’ Lamoureaux muttered to Willis. ‘To Senator Corso as well.’
Ty looked between the two men, his throat suddenly tight. ‘You’re going out there, right?’
‘Where?’ asked Lamoureaux.
‘You’ve got material proof the Mos Hadroch is something tangible, with a defined location a thousand light-years from here. Until very recently a discovery like that was always going to be of purely academic interest, since the Shoal were never going to let us go that deep into the galaxy. But that’s all changed now, hasn’t it?’
‘That’s far from decided,’ Willis replied.
‘You lifted me out of Ascension, practically kidnapped me out of the hands of the security services. The Legislate is probably at your throats for that, am I right?’
Willis’s face was carefully blank, but the look on Lamoureaux’s face made Ty sure he was on the right track. ‘Get someone else to check the data if you like,’ Ty added, ‘but there’s no one better qualified. If you’re going out there, you’re going to need to take me with you.’
Chapter Six
When the attack came, it was swift, brutal and very nearly deadly.
With time, Dakota came to realize she had failed to pay proper attention to subtle changes taking place within the captured swarm-component. That it was a Trojan Horse became evident only with hindsight, its outwardly simple structure belying a technology far more sophisticated than she had even suspected.
The component had responded to Dakota’s careful probing of its memory banks by sending its own, undetectable feelers deep into the data cores of her Magi starship, entwining itself in the ship’s neural networks like a hand taking a firm grip on a living heart. At the same moment the swarm turned on her, the captured component launched its own, primarily informational attack from within.
Dakota spun through the starship’s limitless virtual depths, appalled by the wholesale vandalism the component had unleashed on her ship’s femtotech arrays, until she found Josef’s ghost waiting for her on the balcony of a library complex long since turned to dust and ruin.
‘Look,’ he said, gesturing at the sky.
Dakota gripped the balustrade and followed the direction of his hand, to see a black cloud of viral agents blotting out the sky.
She felt her insides grow cold and liquid. ‘There wasn’t any indication that the component was remotely capable of launching an attack like this! We analysed it inside and out. It just doesn’t make sense!’
She
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