Chapters (50)
- Cover
- MARAUDER
- HISTORICAL ARCHIVES SUBSECTION C/5 category ALPHA
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- FORTY-ONE
- EPILOGUE
- TIME LINE
- SHOAL TRILOGY
- EVENTS FOLLOWING EMPIRE OF LIGHT AND PRECEDING MARAUDER
- Acknowledgements
- Also by Gary Gibson
<Shes with Martha Stiles.> She decided that with Tarrant monitoring this conversation, now was not the best time to mention what had happened to the rest of the outposts staff. <Listen . . . Tarrant wants me to tell you something. Thats why hes letting me talk to you now.>
<What is it, Gaby?>
<Schelling has placed a nova mine in orbit around Bellhavens sun. Hes going to detonate it if you dont stay away from the Wanderer.>
Gabrielle realized that Megans presence had slipped away even while shed been talking, just like a radio signal fading in and out.
<. . . things happening,> sent Megan, suddenly fading back in. <I think the Wanderer might be starting to . . .>
The signal faded, then died. Gabrielle could still sense Szymurski as a distant presence.
<Megan?> asked Gabrielle in a panic. <Are you still there?>
<. . . want with Bellhaven?>
Silence fell. Then, deep in her gut, Gabrielle knew something was wrong. Very wrong.
THIRTY-SIX
Megan
The Wanderer struck without warning and, even though Megan had been prepared for such an attack, it came with startling swiftness.
She reclined on a cantilevered chair of metal and plastic with her eyes closed, in a grey-tiled communications room that probably hadnt even existed until a few moments before she entered it.
The Wanderer is aggressively testing our defences, the Librarian informed her. It appears to be recomputing the underlying informational structure of space-time within the body of our ship.
How is that even possible? she asked.
It has some means of temporarily redefining certain physical constants on a quantum-scale level, said the Librarian.
Youre saying it can alter reality?
On a minute and highly localized scale, yes.
But why?
In order to subvert and access our memory banks, it replied.
Megan shifted her subjective experience of time until the universe beyond the ship came, from her point of view, to a near standstill. She swam through the ships memory, and saw that great swathes of it had fallen forever dark and silent as they were consumed by the informational equivalent of a forest fire. Cancerous pockets, under the apparent influence of the Wanderer, sprang up in their place only to be swiftly isolated and destroyed by the Librarian.
Eventually, the Wanderer withdrew its attack. Outwardly, nothing had changed; both it and the Magi ship continued their separate, apparently serene orbits around the moon.
How bad is the damage? she asked, coming back into normal time.
The ship has sustained severe damage, said the Librarian, and is in an even more greatly weakened state than before.
She remembered all those long hours shed spent kneeling by Bash in his quarters, communing with the Marauder via a mind-to-mind link. I thought it and I had an agreement.
Our current prognosis is that it was merely testing our defences to ascertain whether we were weak enough to overcome.
It really cant be trusted, can it?