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
The two of them kept their promise, each taking turns to watch her carefully. They also made a point of being conspicuously armed at all times. But she could still hide herself away inside the astrogation chairs petals, the only place on board the Beauregard she felt remotely safe any more.
She had been there, the day before, when the Beauregard had suddenly come under the focus of a powerful and highly directional tach-net signal emanating from somewhere deep inside the C-H45k system.
According to Sifra, the Wanderer had followed the same strategy before, broadcasting a faster-than-light hailing signal towards the Kelvin once it had come within a few light years. She had thought immediately of the legends of Sirens calling ancient Greek ships to their ruin on treacherous rocks, but said nothing.
Sifra arrived on the command deck just then, parking himself in front of a console and thus disturbing her solitude. He glanced towards the folded petals of the astrogation chair.
Any luck deciphering that signal? he asked, as if nothing had changed on board.
She pictured her fingers wrapped around his throat. <No,> she replied. <It pretty much defies analysis. If it wasnt for the coordinates piggybacking on the signal, Id have said it was background noise, simply static.>
Are you sure thats not what it is?
<Any communications technology sufficiently advanced relative to our own is going to produce signals that are indistinguishable from noise as far as were concerned. Its like trying to pick up a standard tach-net signal using an analogue radio.>
Sifra nodded. Other species previously managed to figure out how to talk to it.
<We really need the kind of specialists they have back on Kjregrnnested. Theyd have been able to work something out.>
Well, said Sifra, thats the reason for all the back and forth with Kjregrnnested. Want to hear what theyve come up with?
She gritted her teeth. <Go on.>
He made a sweeping gesture across the top of his console, and in response more images appeared within her personal datascape. What she saw looked like an exercise in pointillistic chaos thousands of multi-hued dots arranged in no initially discernible manner, but recognizable as Meridian text.
<What is all this?>
He touched the console and some of the dots began to pulse with light. See the way the highlighted figures are arranged in a specific pattern? They found the same string of data in Shoal records concerning their own, later, encounter with the Wanderer. I want you to run an analysis on the signal and see whether theres any correlation.
It took mere moments to find the exact same pattern buried within the millions of petabytes of data currently being beamed towards them. Despite everything, Megan felt a rush of elation.
<Youre right. Theres a correlation.>
Our guess is that string is some kind of handshake protocol the Meridians as well as the Shoal used to identify themselves to the Wanderer.
<So what now?>