The Consuming Fire (The Interdependency #2)(50)

Sherrill looked over to Marce. “It’s your show, Lord Marce.”

Marce thought about it. “I’d like to know when Dalasysla went dark,” he said. “That would give us some idea of what to expect for other habitats in the same situation.”

Hanton nodded. “I have an access log file here.”

“Just for the workstation?”

“There’s one of those, yes. There also another one here that looks to be for this ops center as a whole. This must have been the administrator’s workstation.”

“And it would have everything?”

“As long as there was power to it, sure,” Hanton said.

“Pull it up.”

Hanton pulled up the file. “Huh,” he said, a minute later.

“What is it?” Marce asked.

“I’m not sure you’re going to believe me if I tell you,” Hanton said.

“Try me.”

“Let me reorganize this to make it easier to understand.” Hanton did some typing for a minute, then waved Marce over to his screen. “I just dumped this data into a spreadsheet. It tallies logins by year. So, here’s the year before the Flow stream collapsed. Several thousand logins, because people are logging in and out every day, right. The year of the collapse, the same thing, and the year after that. Scroll down over the next twenty years, and the logins get fewer and fewer, because whatever shit is going down here, it’s pretty serious. Twenty-three years after, everything stops. If you were wondering when things got real bad, this is when.”

“Twenty-three years is not very long,” Sherrill said.

“No it’s not,” Hanton said. He scrolled again. “So, that’s it, right? No, it’s not, because look what happens fifty years out.” He pointed to a spate of logins.

“Somebody’s still alive,” Marce said.

“More than one, it looks like. Now, look.” Hanton kept scrolling. “Logins every few years until three hundred years ago. And then this.” For the next twenty years there were a massive number of logins. “Someone got Dalasysla back online. Or at least part of it back online.”

“Temporarily,” Marce said.

“Twenty years is a pretty long temporary, as far as temporary goes,” Hanton said. “And then after those twenty years, the same thing happens. The logins decrease and then drop off, this time after seven years.”

Marce peered into the screen again. “But not entirely.”

“No,” Hanton agreed. “Every few years again, for almost three hundred years.” He scrolled again. “Here. Here. Here. And on and on.”

“Until when?” Gamis asked.

“Until thirty years ago,” Hanton said. “That’s the last login. The last time anyone accessed this very room.”

“All right, so how is that possible?” Lyton asked. “This place is dead as a fucking rock.”

“I have no idea how it’s possible,” Hanton said. “I’m just telling you what the file is telling me. But it explains why the computer system hasn’t entirely degraded. Every time it boots up it runs a diagnostic and fixes the little problems that crop up over time.” He pointed over to the workstation. “It’s doing it now.”

“So Dalasysla is alive,” Marce said.

“Dalasysla, no,” Hanton said. “Lyton is right. This place is dead. Whoever was coming here was probably using this habitat for resources, and using the computer system to help extract them. But someone is still alive in this part of space. Or was, until thirty years ago.”

A voice popped into Marce’s ear. It was Roynold, back on the Bransid. “Marce, you there?”

Marce stepped away from Hanton and his workstation, put his hand to his ear to hear Roynold better, and was annoyed again by the presence of the helmet. “I’m here. Things are very interesting on Dalasysla, Hat.”

“Did you find evidence that someone’s still alive in the system?”

“Yeah, we did,” Marce said. “How did you know?”

“Because Captain Laure has been having her crew do a search for the other smaller habitats in the area.”

“And she found some?”

“She found lots. Three dozen.”

“And?”

“They’re all dead as Dalasysla. Cold like Dalasysla. Same ambient temperature as the rest of space.”

“Okay,” Marce said, confused.

“But then they found something else. Not a habitat, exactly. More like a tenner.”

“A spaceship.”

“Yes,” Roynold. “And here’s the thing about that tenner, Marce. It’s warm.”





Chapter

13

“A peace offering,” Senia Fundapellonan said as she entered Kiva Lagos’s office for her meeting. She reached over the desk to hand Kiva an object. Kiva took it; it was a bracelet of oxidized silver filigree, with golden brown topaz gems set in it.

“Don’t tell me,” Kiva said. “You went to a fair and knocked down the bottles. You had to choose between this and the stuffed elephant.”

“I didn’t choose. I just kept the elephant.”

“Okay, but why give me this?” Kiva asked, setting the bracelet down on the desk. “I’m not mad at you for not seeing me since our little meeting with the emperox. We’re not dating.”