Free Red Sun Bleeding by Stephen Hunt Page A

extensive use of smart matter. The Heezy .’
    Lana’s eyes narrowed. ‘They’ve been extinct for billions of years.’
    Zeno pointed to the passage behind them. ‘Careful tunnelling with water-knives and no explosives. That’s not mining. That’s archaeology .’
    Lana’s heart sank. Nobody knew much about the Heezy. But that was only because every time one of their artefacts, fossilized ships or long-abandoned settlements was discovered, the alliance moved in shut everything down and classified every rumour and report about the find within a light year exclusion zone. The one thing Lana did know was the same history that every spacer had on file. How the Triple Alliance had been fighting the Skein in a war seven-hundred years ago, and humanity and its two allied species had been badly losing against their nearly indestructible virtual enemy. Until a human colony dome had found something – a very nasty Heezy something – buried under the ice of Neptune. And whatever it was had given the alliance the capability to turn Skein systems into smouldering ruins, one by one, until the Skeins had finally had to acknowledge defeat. An uneasy peace that had lasted to the current day.
    ‘Every time,’ snarled Lana. ‘Every time we have anything to do with Dollar-sign Dillard…’
    Zeno shut his eyes, the same way he always did when consulting the compressed copy of the ship’s database he carried around in his head. ‘And Professor Sebba’s original PhD on Mars? The one area of study you’re almost guaranteed not to find practical work in unless you’re on a highly classified government secondment.’
    ‘Let me guess… the Heezy.’
    ‘Give the starship captain a cigar.’
    ‘It’s not too late,’ said Zeno. ‘We can turn back now. We don’t have to see what’s down there. The best thing that’s going to happen is the alliance fleet catches us and wipes our memories. The worse is that they stick everyone on the Gravity Rose in orange jump-suits and lock us up on asteroid-max in some system that doesn’t officially exist on any star chart.’
    ‘I haven’t got enough memories left I can afford to lose any more,’ sighed Lana. Not after the cursed cold-sleep accident had left her as a perpetual amnesiac when it came to her past. ‘But I’m damned if I’m heading back to the surface without knowing what Dollar-sign’s got his tame academic tunnelling into this dying world for.’
    ‘We’re playing with fire, Lana. I was around during the original alliance-skein war… making my last will and testament, given how the skein are not big on any machine life except their own existing in that perfect little post-singularity future they’ve got planned for everyone. This is universe-changing doodie they’ve drilled into this time.’
    ‘And the professor and Dollar-sign were planning to have us acting as the mules transporting it out to their buyers,’ said Lana. ‘No doubt well concealed under a couple of hundred tonnes of minerals.’
    ‘Yeah, they were,’ said Zeno.
    Lana felt like kicking the wall in rage. And the worse part of it all was how badly they were being short-changed. She’d thought that Dollar-sign was being generous with the amount he had paid them to make this run. But the kind of material you could drag out of a Heezy settlement – even half-fossilized and unoperational – you could trade for a small stellar empire in the Edge and think yourself hard done in that deal. And how the hell were they going to get out of this one? ‘Walking away would be the sensible thing to do, wouldn’t it? Find Calder. Get back to the ship. Jump out as fast as possible and let Dollar-sign find some other sap to run his interdicted antiques across the Edge.’
    ‘You read my mind, sister.’
    Hell . ‘Let’s go and see what’s down here, then.’
    They advanced down the newly formed passage, Lana trying to get a grip on her trepidation. A species that set-up shop deep under the world and only