Standard Consortium Date: 03.06.2538

25 kilometres south of Port Gabriel, Redstone Colony

Port Gabriel Incident +45 minutes

It was like waking up and finding you’d just sleepwalked through the gates of hell.

Dakota drew in a sharp breath, feeling like she’d first awakened into existence only a moment before. She stood stock still for several seconds, the touch of freezing rain clear and sharp on her skin.

Trying to take it all in.

Bodies were scattered all around her, under a slate-grey sky from which snow fell in sporadic squalls. Most had been cut down as they ran for safety. It was a scene of appalling carnage.

She remembered with dazzling clarity what it had felt like to kill them.

Her hands hung limply by her sides, Consortium-issue assault pistol still held in one fist. Fat-bellied Consortium transports rumbled far overhead, dropping down from orbit, looking to salvage something-anything-from the disaster of the assault.

The worst thing was that she remembered so much. Every moment, every scream, every death: it was something she was going to have to live with for the rest of her life.

That made the decision to kill herself a lot easier.

Dakota wandered away from the transport and the bodies of the Freeholder refugees it had been carrying, walking along the side of the highway and seeing where bodies had slumped into the snow-filled ditch running parallel to it.

A woman had died tangled up in the thick, hardy roots and foliage of a jugleaf bush. Dakota pulled her free, ignoring the plant’s sharp barbs that tore at her skin and survival suit. She laid the woman down on the side of the road, peering into her face. Middle-aged, motherly looking, a few strands of grey among the black roots on her scalp.

Dakota closed the dead eyes and remained kneeling by the corpse for a minute or so.

Finally she stood and looked around, listening to the rasp of freezing air coursing through the filtration systems in her breather mask, and felt her lungs heave into a scream that felt like it would never end.

Eventually her chest began to hurt from the exertion of screaming, and she stopped.

She started walking again, stripping off her survival suit bit by bit as she went. She dumped the suit in the roadside ditch, then pulled off her insulated undergarments, until she stood naked under the Redstone morning sky.

The subzero temperature was instantly numbing. She kept her breather mask on, however, because a quick death by asphyxiation in this alien atmosphere somehow felt too easy an end. Flecks of snow danced over the soft pale flesh of her bare shoulders, and against the close-cropped stubble of her scalp.

Dakota managed to stumble a few more steps, her vision blurring as she stared over towards the trucks and buses and long-distance haulers that had been carrying the refugees to safety. Some of them were burning, staining the Redstone sky with oily smoke.

She collapsed beside the statue of Belle Trevois, the Uchidan child-martyr, that stood in eternal vigil by the roadside. Its arms reached up into the air in a gesture that seemed all the more forlorn in such a lonely and desolate spot. The plinth was stained with ugly Freeholder graffiti.

Dakota realized death was very close, and curled up in a ball beneath the statue’s feet. From there she gazed up at its blank features.

Inside her head she could still hear the sound of running feet, the sound of the refugees’ screams as they burned.

Then she heard other voices-soldiers shouting to each other, coming closer.

Coming to rescue her.

City of Erkinning, Bellhaven Colony

Consortium Standard Date: 03.02.2536

Two years prior to Port Gabriel Incident

Dakota stared out over the distant rooftops of the shanties clustering beyond the city’s grim stone walls. The seven stars of evening shone down on her like an Elder’s blessing.

The instant she glanced up at the night sky, her new Ghost circuitry-freshly installed within her skull -unloaded a deluge of mostly useless information into her thoughts: without any effort she knew instantly how far away each star was, its declination in respect to the galactic equator, and how many planets and dark companions orbited each of them. A rich cornucopia of similar detail in relation to thousands of other stars, all scattered within a sphere hundreds of light years across and centred on Bellhaven, waited on the fringe of her mind. She imagined she was a spider at the centre of some vast cybernetic web, her implants like thousands of dainty multiple limbs that could reach out and tug suns and moons out of the sky for her to play with.

She pulled her gaze back down, her breath frosting in the cold night air after escaping from under the scarf wrapped tight up around her mouth and throat. A chill winter wind whipped across her freshly shaven skull where it emerged, exposed, from beneath the protection of the thick leather cap she had pulled over her head and ears. She glanced behind her to see Tutor Langley standing only a short distance away.

Langley wore a small goatee beard against his dark skin, and his long black coat resembled that of a preacher from some past century, its high stiff short collar pressing tight around his neck, while its skirt fluttered around his boots. It was a uniform intended to remind citizens of the authority of the City Elder’s controlling religious oligarchy.

Dakota noticed the expression on his face and flashed him a grin. She didn’t mind that her shaven scalp still looked bruised and battered from the surgeon’s intrusions.

In the streets far below the Garrison, on whose roof she stood, she could see people clustering at food stalls lining a busy crossroads she had wandered past a thousand times. She could just make out their faces gathered in a few small patches of light. Snatches of their conversation drifted up to her, along with the smell of cooking, making her hungry.

Dakota was suddenly aware how easily these odours could be broken down into specific categories. Words like hydrofysates, esters and caramelized sugars popped into her head, broken down into percentages that changed with each sudden gust of wind. Far below, people hid from the winter cold and rain under sheet-metal awnings, or warmed themselves around communal fusion heaters set up at each corner of the crossroads.

Jesus, Uchida, Buddha; these and a dozen more effigies glowed in incandescent hallucinatory colours from dozens of niches as they did in so many other parts of the city. They bestowed their luminous blessings on the fossilized layers of posters and public notices pasted over and over again on every available flat surface.

Just then she realized Marlie had joined her by the railing, her mouth wide in a grin under dark eyes.

‘Did you hear the latest about Banville? Now they’re saying he’s defected, gone over to the Uchidans, and abandoned his family in the process.’

‘Are you sure?’ Dakota replied. ‘Last I heard, they were claiming he was kidnapped.’

This was significant news. Banville was the scientist personally responsible for much of the cutting-edge Ghost tech on which the world of Bellhaven had long built its scientific reputation. Both Marlie and Dakota, and everyone else with Ghost implants, carried a piece of Banville’s work inside them.