The Neutronium Alchemist

by Peter F. Hamilton

  “Monsieur,” André acknowledged gracelessly.

  Madeleine didn’t press. Instead she began datavising the flight computer for systems schematics, assisting the captain with the fusion drive’s ignition sequence.

  Culey’s counter-rotating spaceport was a seven-pointed star, its unfortunate condition mirroring the asteroid’s general attitude to spaceworthiness statutes. Several areas were in darkness: silver-white insulation blankets were missing from the surface, creating strange mosaic patterns, and at least three pipes were leaking, throwing up weak grey gas jets.

  The Villeneuve’s Revenge was assigned an isolated bay near one of the tips. That at least was fully illuminated, internal spotlights turning the steep-walled metal crater into a shadowless receptacle. Red strobes around the rim flashed in unison as the starship descended onto the extended cradle.

  An armed port police squad were first through the airlock tube when it sealed. They rounded up André and the crew, detaining them on the bridge while a customs team examined the ship’s life-support capsules from top to bottom. The search took two hours before clearance was granted.

  “You put up a hell of a fight in here,” the port police captain said as he slid through the open ceiling hatch into the lower deck lounge where the possessed had stormed aboard. The compartment was a shambles, fittings broken and twisted, blackened sections of composite melted into queer shapes, dark bloodstains on various surfaces starting to flake.

  Despite the best efforts of the straining environmental circuit there was a nasty smell of burnt meat in the air which refused to go away. Nine black body bags were secured to the hatch ladder by short lengths of silicon fibre. Stirred by the weak columns of air which was all the broken, vibrating conditioning duct could muster, they drifted a few centimetres above the scorched decking, bumping into each other and recoiling in slow motion.

  “Erick and I saw them off,” André said gruffly. It earned him a filthy glance from Desmond Lafoe, who was helping the spaceport coroner classify the bodies.

  “You did pretty well, then,” the captain said. “Lalonde sounds as if Hell has materialized inside the Confederation.”

  “It has,” André said. “Pure hell. We were lucky to escape. I’ve never seen a space battle more ferocious than that.”

  The police captain nodded thoughtfully.

  “Captain?” Madeleine datavised. “We’re ready to take Erick’s zero-tau pod down to the hospital now.”

  “Of course, proceed.”

  “We’ll need you there to clear the treatment payment orders, Captain.”

  André’s cheerfully chubby face showed a certain tautness. “I will be along, we’re almost through with the port clearance procedures.”

  “You know, I have several friends in the media who would be interested in recordings of your mission,” the police captain said. “Perhaps you would care for me to put you in touch with them? There may even be circumstances where you wouldn’t have to pay import duty; these matters are within my discretion.”

  André’s malaised spirit lifted. “Perhaps we could come to some arrangement.”

  Madeleine and Desmond accompanied Erick’s zero-tau pod to the asteroid’s hospital in the main habitation cavern. Before the field was switched off, the doctors went through the flek Madeleine had recorded as she stabilized Erick.

  “Your friend is a lucky man,” the principal surgeon told them after the initial review.

  “We know,” Madeleine said. “We were there.”

  “Fortunately his Kulu Corporation neural nanonics are top of the range, very high capacity. The emergency suspension program he ran during the decompression event was correspondingly comprehensive; it has prevented major internal organ tissue death, and there’s very little neural damage, the blood supply to his cranium was sustained almost satisfactorily. We can certainly clone and replace the cells he has lost. Lungs will have to be completely replaced, of course, they always suffer the most from such decompression. And quite a few blood vessels will need extensive repair. The forearm and hand are naturally the simplest operation, a straightforward graft replacement.”

  Madeleine grinned over at Desmond. The flight had been a terrific strain on everyone, not knowing if they’d used the correct procedures, or whether the blank pod simply contained a vegetable.

  André Duchamp appeared in the private waiting room they were using, his smile so bright that Madeleine gave him a suspicious frown.

  “Erick’s going to be all right,” she told him.

  “Très bon. He is a beautiful enfant. I always said so.”

  “He can certainly be restored,” the surgeon said. “There is the question of what kind of procedure you would like me to perform. We can use artificial tissue implants to return him to full viability within a few days, these we have in store. Following that we can begin the cloning operation and start to replace the AT units as his organs mature. Or alternatively we can simply take the appropriate genetic samples, and keep him in zero-tau until the new organs are ready to be implanted.”

  “Of course.” André cleared his throat, not quite looking at his other two crew. “Exactly how much would these different procedures cost?”

  The surgeon gave a modest shrug. “The cheapest option would just be to give him the artificial tissue and not bother with cloned replacements.

  AT is the technology which people use in order to boost themselves; the individual units will live longer than him, and they are highly resistant to disease.”

  “Magnifique.” André gave a wide, contented smile.

  “But we’re not going to use that option, are we, Captain?” Madeleine said forcibly. “Because, as you said when Erick saved both your ship and your arse, you would buy him an entire new clone body if that’s what it took.

  Didn’t you? So how fortunate that you don’t have to clone a new body, and all the expense that entails. Now all you are going to have to pay for is some artificial tissue and a few clones. Because you certainly don’t want Erick walking around in anything less than a perfectly restored and natural condition. Do you, Captain?”

  André’s answering grin was a simple facial ritual. “Non,” he said. “How right you are, my dear Madeleine. As ever.” He gave the surgeon a nod.

  “Very well, a full clone repair, if you please.”

  “Certainly, sir.” The surgeon produced a Jovian Bank credit disk. “I must ask for a deposit of two hundred thousand fuseodollars.”

  “Two hundred thousand! I thought you were going to rebuild him, not rejuvenate him.”

  “Sadly, there is a lot of work to be done. Surely your insurance premium will cover it?”

  “I’ll have to check,” André said heavily.

  Madeleine laughed.

  “Will Erick be able to fly after the artificial tissue has been implanted?” André asked.

  “Oh, yes,” the surgeon said. “I won’t need him back here for the clone implants for several months.”

  “Good.”

  “Why? Where are we going?” Madeleine asked suspiciously.

  André produced his own Jovian Bank disk, and proffered it towards the surgeon. “Anywhere we can get a charter for. Who knows, we might even avoid bankruptcy until we return. I’m sure that will make Erick very happy knowing what his recklessness has reduced me to.”

  ***

  Idria asteroid was on full Strategic Defence alert, and had been for three days. For the first forty-eight hours all the asteroid council knew was that something had taken over the New California SD network, and coincidentally knocked out (or captured) half of the planetary navy at the same time. Details were hazy. It was almost too much to believe that some kind of coup could be successful on a modern planet, but the few garbled reports which did get beamed out before the transmitters fell ominously silent confirmed that the SD platforms were firing at groundside targets.

  Then a day ago the voidhawk messenger from the Confederation Assembly arrived in the system, and people understood what
had happened. With understanding came terror.

  Every settled asteroid in the Lyll belt was on the same maximum alert status. The Edenist habitats orbiting Yosemite had announced a two-million-kilometre emergence exclusion zone around the gas giant, enforced by armed voidhawks. Such New California navy ships as had escaped the planetary catastrophe were dispersed across several settled asteroids, while the surviving admirals gathered at the Trojan asteroid cluster trailing Yosemite to debate what to do. So far all they’d done was fall back on the oldest military maxim and send out scouts to fill in the yawning information gap.

  Commander Nicolai Penovich was duty officer in Idria’s SD command centre when the Adamist starships emerged three thousand kilometres away—five medium-sized craft, nowhere near the designated emergence zone. Sensors showed their infrared signature leap upwards within seconds of their appearance. Tactical programs confirmed a massive combat wasp launch.

  Targets verified as the asteroid’s SD platforms, and supplementary sensor satellites.

  Nicolai datavised the fire command computer to retaliate. Electron and laser beams stabbed out. The hastily assembled home defence force fleet—basically every ship capable of launching a combat wasp—was vectored onto the intruders. By the time most of them had got under way the attackers had jumped away.

  Another four starships jumped in, released their combat wasps, and jumped out.

  The assault was right out of the tactics flek, and there was nothing Nicolai could do about it. His sensor coverage had already degraded by forty per cent, and still more was dropping out as combat wasp submunitions stormed local space with electronic warfare pulses. Nuclear explosions were surrounding the asteroid with a scintillating veil of irradiated particles, almost completely wiping out the satellites’ long-range scanner returns.

  It was becoming increasingly difficult to direct the platforms’ fire on incoming drones. He didn’t even know how many surviving salvos there were anymore.

  Two of the defending ships were struck by kinetic missiles, disintegrating into spectacular, short-lived streaks of stellar flame.

  Nicolai and his small staff recalled the remainder of the fleet, trying to form them into an inner defensive globe. But his communications were as bad as the sensor coverage. At least three didn’t respond. Two SD platforms dropped out of his command network. Victims of combat wasps, or electronic warfare? He didn’t know, and the tactics program couldn’t offer a prediction.

  The platforms were never really intended to ward off a full-scale assault like this, he thought despairingly. Idria’s real protection came from the system’s naval alliance.

  A couple of close-orbit detector satellites warned him of four starships emerging barely fifty kilometres from the asteroid. Frigates popped out, spraying combat wasps in all directions. Eight were aimed at Idria’s spaceport, scattering shoals of submunitions as they closed at thirty-five gees. Nicolai didn’t have anything left to stop them. Small explosions erupted right across the two-kilometre grid of metal and composite. Precisely targeted, they struck communications relays and sensor clusters.

  Every input into the SD command centre went dead.

  “Oh, shit almighty,” Lieutenant Fleur Mironov yelled. “We’re gonna die.”

  “No,” Nicolai said. “They’re softening us up for an assault.” He called up internal structural blueprints, studying the horribly few options remaining. “I want whatever combat personnel we have positioned in the axial spindle tubes, they’re to enforce a total blockade. And close down the transit tubes linking the caverns with the spaceport. Now. Whoever’s left out there will just have to take their chances.”

  “Against the possessed?” Fleur exclaimed. “Why not just fling them out of an airlock?”

  “Enough, Lieutenant! Now find me some kind of external sensor that’s still functioning. I must know what’s happening outside.”

  “Sir.”

  “We have to protect the majority of the population. Yreka and Orland will respond as soon as they see what’s happened. And Orland had two navy frigates assigned to it. We only have to hold out for a couple of hours. The troops can manage that, surely. The possessed aren’t that good.”

  “If Yreka and Orland haven’t been attacked as well,” Fleur said dubiously. “We only saw about a dozen ships. There were hundreds in the asteroids and low-orbit station docks when the possessed took over New California.”

  “Jesus, will you stop with the pessimism, already? Now where’s my external sensor?”

  “Coming up, sir. I got us a couple of thermo dump panel inspection mechanoids on microwave circuits. Guess the possessed didn’t bother targeting those relays.”

  “Okay, let’s have it.”

  The quality of the image which came foaming into his brain was dreadful: silver-grey smears drifting entirely at random against an intense black background, crinkled blue-brown rock across the bottom quarter of the picture. Fleur manipulated the mechanoids so that their sensors swung around to focus on the battered spaceport disk at the end of its spindle.

  The spaceport was venting heavily in a dozen places, girders had been mashed, trailing banners of tattered debris. Eight lifeboats were flying clear of the damaged sections. Nicolai Penovich didn’t like to imagine how many people were crammed inside, nor how they could be rescued. Vivid white explosions shimmered into existence against the bent constellation of Pisces. Someone was still fighting out there.

  A large starship slid smoothly into view, riding a lance of violet fusion fire. Definitely a navy craft of some kind, it was still in its combat configuration; short-range sensor clusters extended, thermo dump panels retracted. Steamy puffs of coolant gas squirted from small nozzles ringing its midsection. Hexagonal ports were open all around its front hull, too big for combat wasp launch tubes.

  Scale was hard to judge, but Nicolai estimated it at a good ninety metres in diameter. “I think that’s a marine assault ship,” he said.

  The main drive shut off, and blue ion thrusters fired, locking it in to position five hundred metres away from the spindle which connected the non-rotating spaceport with the asteroid.

  “I’ve placed a couple of squads in the spindle,” Fleur said. “They’re not much, some port police and a dozen boosted mercenaries who volunteered.”

  “Horatio had it easy compared to them,” Nicolai murmured. “But they should be able to hold. The possessed can’t possibly mount a standard beachhead operation. Their bodies screw up electronics, they’d never be able to wear an SII suit, let alone combat armour. They’re going to have to dock and try and fight their way along the transit tubes, that’s going to cost them.” He checked the external situation again, seeking confirmation of his assessment. The big ship was holding steady, with just intermittent orange fireballs spluttering out of the equatorial vernier thruster nozzles to maintain attitude.

  “Get me access to sensor coverage of the spaceport, and check on our internal communications,” Nicolai ordered. “We may be able to coordinate a running battle from here.”

  “Aye, sir.” Fleur started to datavise instructions into the command centre’s computer, interfacing their communications circuits with the civil data channels which wove through the spaceport.

  Shadows began to flicker inside the ship’s open hatches. “What the hell have they got in there?” Nicolai asked.

  The inspection mechanoids turned up their camera resolution. He saw figures emerging from the ship, hornets darting out of their nest. Dark outlines, hard to see with the mushy interference and low light level.

  But they were definitely humanoid in shape, riding manoeuvring packs that had enlarged nozzles for higher thrust. “Who are they?” he whispered.

  “Traitors,” Fleur hissed. “Those NC navy bastards must have switched sides. They never did support independent asteroid settlements. Now they’re helping the possessed!”

  “They wouldn’t. Nobody would do that.”

  “Then how do you explain it?”

  He s
hook his head helplessly. Outside the spindle, the fast, black hornets were burning their way in through the carbotanium structure. One by one, they flew into the ragged holes.

  ***

  Louise was actually glad to return to the quiet luxury of Balfern House.

  It had been an extraordinary day, and a wearyingly long one, too.

  In the morning she’d visited Mr. Litchfield, the family’s lawyer in the capital, to arrange for money from the Cricklade account to be made available to her. The transfer had taken hours; neither the lawyer nor the bank was accustomed to young girls insisting on being issued with Jovian Bank credit disks. She stuck to her guns despite all the obstacles; Joshua had told her they were acceptable everywhere in the Confederation. She doubted Norfolk’s pounds were.

  That part of the day had proved to be simplicity itself compared to finding a way off Norfolk. There were only three civil-registered starships left in orbit, and they were all chartered by the Confederation Navy to act as support ships for the squadron.

  Louise, Fletcher, and Genevieve had taken their coach out to Bennett Field, Norwich’s main aerodrome, to talk to a spaceplane pilot from the Far Realm, who was currently groundside. His name was Furay, and through him she had gradually persuaded the captain to sell them a berth. She suspected it was her money rather than her silver tongue which had eventually won them a cabin. Their fee was forty thousand fuseodollars apiece.

  Her original hope of buying passage directly to Tranquillity had gone straight out of the window barely a minute after starting to talk to Furay. The Far Realm was contracted to stay with the squadron during its Norfolk assignment; when the ship did leave, it would accompany the navy frigates. No one knew when that would be anymore, the captain explained.

  Louise didn’t care, she just wanted to get off the planet. Even floating around in low orbit would be safer than staying in Norwich. She would worry about reaching Tranquillity when the Far Realm arrived at its next port.

  So the captain appeared to give in gracefully and negotiate terms. They were due to fly up tomorrow, where they would wait in the ship until the squadron’s business was complete.