Empire of Light by Gary Gibson Read Free Book Online Page A

of a large fenced compound belonging to the permanent Consortium military presence stationed in the coreship. Rover-units with heavy armaments mounted on their backs surrounded it, while supply trucks and transports constantly arrived or departed. The corridors within teemed with black-suited troopers, their faces more often than not hidden behind visors.
    His first night in this cell had convinced him that he would not survive to see the morning. The single window above the toilet bowl looked out over a courtyard surrounded by a high concrete wall. An automated gun-tower equipped with IR and motion sensors stood on a skeletal tripod in one corner of the courtyard, while most of the rest of it was stacked with pallets containing emergency supplies, the spaces in between forming narrow corridors.
    Ty had watched as guards dragged three men in rags past this maze of pallets and towards the courtyard’s rear wall. One of the troopers raised a pistol to the back of the head of each in quick succession, dispatching them with quick and brutal efficiency. The pistol emitted a muted bass thump with each shot that Ty felt more than he heard.
    He had soon collapsed on to the plastic shelf and spent the rest of the night waiting for his own turn to come. He could imagine the cold biting wind on his face, the chafing of the plastic ties around his wrists, and his last sight of those cracked grey concrete walls before a single shot took out the back of his skull. Instead he woke to another day, and then another after that. But every night the same drama was repeated: one or more figures would be marched out to the rear of the courtyard and executed. Yet nobody ever came for him.
    Not until now.
    Kosac stepped over to the window and peered out. ‘Tell me,’ he asked, ‘how did you wind up with the Uchidans? I believe you grew up in the Freehold.’
    ‘I grew up on a farm, Mr Kosac. My father was murdered on the orders of a corrupt senator, and I had to stand and watch as an entire agricultural facility and several thousand acres of land that should have been my inheritance were stolen from my family.’ He shrugged. ‘After that, switching sides was easy.’
    ‘I see.’ Kosac stepped away from the window. ‘You trained originally in biotechnology, but switched careers. Why?’
    ‘After I arrived in the Uchidan Territories, I developed an interest in the Atn. They’re a form of extreme biotech, after all, engineered rather than evolved, so it wasn’t really that much of a career change. I obtained a Consortium-funded research grant and made a name for myself studying them. My work took me all across human-occupied space, and I spent several years far from home. But when the war with the Freehold became intractable, I found myself conscripted into Territorial Research and Defence when I finally returned.’
    ‘And so you did your duty, because of your faith in God?’
    Ty regarded him with a weary look. ‘Uchidanism has nothing to do with faith, Mr Kosac. It has much more to do with logical certainties and inescapable mathematical truths.’
    ‘Really,’ said Kosac, clearly unimpressed. ‘Perhaps you could elaborate for me.’
    ‘I’d rather not.’
    Kosac nodded briefly at his companion. Bleys stepped forward and grabbed Ty’s hair, then slammed the back of his head against the wall behind the shelf he sat on. Ty groaned and slithered on to the floor, tasting blood where he’d bitten his tongue.
    ‘Humour me,’ said Kosac.
    The two men waited while Ty pulled himself back up on to the shelf. He dribbled blood and Bleys handed him a handkerchief. Ty took it, pressing it to his mouth until he was ready to continue.
    ‘Uchidanism is . . . is based on objective observation and statistical probability.’
    ‘What probabilities?’
    ‘That life, by its very nature, always seeks to preserve itself within a universe that has a finite span, and that the ultimate endpoint of technological development is the direct manipulation