The Neutronium Alchemist

by Peter F. Hamilton

  “I know that, you’re Lagrange Calvert.”

  Joshua smiled. “I knew it would come in useful one day. The thing is, we are looking for Alkad Mzu, but not because of any Omutan propaganda.”

  “Why then?”

  He took her hand in his, squeezing emphatically. “There is a reason, Shea, it’s a good reason, but not a very nice one. I’ll tell you if you really want to know; because if you’re anything like the person I think you are, you’d help us find her if you knew what’s actually going on. But if you’ll trust me on this, you don’t want to know. It’s up to you.”

  “Are you going to kill her?” she asked sheepishly.

  “No.”

  “Promise?”

  “I promise. We just want to take her back to Tranquillity where she’s been living since the genocide. As prisons go, it isn’t bad. And if we can get to her in time, it’ll save an awful lot of people. Maybe an entire planet.”

  “She’s going to drop a planet-buster on Omuta, isn’t she?”

  “Something like that.”

  “I thought so,” she said in a tiny voice. “But I don’t know where she is.”

  “I think you do. You see, we believe she’s with Voi.”

  “Oh, her.” Shea’s face darkened.

  “Yes, her. I’m sorry, this sounds painful for you. I didn’t realize.”

  “She and Prince Lambert had a thing. He still … well, he’d go back to her if she’d have him.”

  “This Prince Lambert is your boyfriend, the starship captain?”

  “Yes.”

  “Which ship?”

  “The Tekas.”

  “And it left Ayacucho today?”

  “Yes. Do you really think Alkad Mzu was on board?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Is he going to be in trouble with the authorities?”

  “I couldn’t care less about him. I just want to locate Mzu. Once I’ve done that, once she knows I’m on her tail and watching every move, the threat will be neutered. She’ll have to come back with me then. Now, are you going to tell me where the Tekas went?”

  “I’m sorry, I wish I could help, but he wouldn’t tell me where they were going.”

  “Shit!”

  “P.L. is flying the Tekas to Nyvan,” Liol said. He looked around inquiringly at the startled faces. “Did I say something wrong?”

  “How the bloody hell do you know where he was going?” Joshua demanded.

  “P.L.’s a good friend of mine; we grew up together. Quantum Serendipity has the contract to service the Tekas. He’s not the most experienced pilot, and Voi had given him a very odd manoeuvre to fly. So I helped him program the flight vector.”

  Chapter 05

  André Duchamp had half expected to be shot at by the Ethenthia asteroid’s SD platforms when the Villeneuve’s Revenge jumped into its dedicated emergence zone three thousand kilometres away. He certainly had a lot of explaining to do to the local defence command, followed up by testimony from the rover reporters. When he did finally receive docking permission he assumed the famed Duchamp forcefulness and integrity had won through again.

  What actually happened was that while he was busy claiming to be a defector from the Capone Organization, Erick opened a channel to the local Confederation Navy Bureau and asked them to press the local authority for clearance. Even so, the authorities were extremely cautious. Three SD platforms were locked on to the Villeneuve’s Revenge as it approached the spaceport.

  The security teams which ransacked the life-support capsules in search of treachery were exceptionally thorough. André put on a brave face as composite panels were split open and equipment modules broken down into component parts for high-definition scanning. The cabins hadn’t exactly been in optimum shape before. It would take weeks to reassemble the trashed fittings to comply with even the minimum of CAB flight-worthiness requirements.

  But Kingsley Pryor was hauled away by the emotionless officers from an unnamed division of the defence forces. A big credit bonus to the intrepid crew who had outsmarted Capone.

  The only possible flaw was Shane Brandes. So the Dechal’s fusion engineer was brought out of zero-tau while they were still on the approach phase and given a simple ultimatum: cooperate or you’re going to be a dead crewman who we’re in mourning over. He chose cooperation; explaining to the Ethenthia authorities why they’d abducted him in the first place would have been a little too confusing, he felt.

  Thirteen hours after they docked, the last of Ethenthia’s security officers departed. André gazed around lugubriously at his bridge. The consoles were little more than open grids of processor boards; walls and decking had been stripped down to the bare metal; environmental ducts were making stressed whining sounds, and dirty condensation was building up on every surface.

  “We did it.” His clown face exhibited a genuine smile as he looked from Erick, to Madeleine, and finally Desmond. “We’re home free.”

  Madeleine and Desmond began to chuckle, sharing the realization. They really had come through.

  “I have a few bottles in my cabin,” André said. “If those thieving scum anglo police haven’t stolen them. We must celebrate. Ethenthia is as good a place as any to sit out this war. We can keep busy with some proper maintenance. I’m sure I can get the insurance to pay for some of this wreckage; after all, we’re war heroes now. Who will argue, eh?”

  “Tina might,” Erick said.

  The flatness in the voice dispelled André’s smile. “Tina who?”

  “The girl we killed on the Krystal Moon. Murdered, actually.”

  “Oh, Erick. Dear enfant. You are tired. You have done more work than most.”

  “Certainly more than you. But what’s new there?”

  “Erick,” Desmond said. “Come now, it has been a terrible time for all of us. Perhaps we should get some rest before we decide what to do next.”

  “Good suggestion. I admit I haven’t quite made up my mind what to do with you yet.”

  “What you are going to do with us?” André asked indignantly. “I think your medical modules are malfunctioning; your brain is being fed the wrong chemicals. Come, we will go to bed, and in the morning none of this will be mentioned again.”

  “Shut up, you pompous geek,” Erick said. It was the contemptuous indifference of the voice which shocked André into silence.

  “My problem is that I owe Madeleine and Desmond my life,” Erick went on.

  “But then, if you hadn’t been such an arsehole, Duchamp, none of us would ever have been put in the crazy position we were. That’s the kind of hazard I have to accept when I take on missions like this.”

  “Missions?” André didn’t like the cold passion which had suddenly overtaken his crewman.

  “Yes, I’m an undercover officer in the CNIS.”

  “Oh, fuck,” Madeleine grunted helplessly. “Erick … Shit, I liked you.”

  “Yeah. That’s my problem, too. I’m in a little bit deeper than I ever expected. We made a good team fighting the possessed.”

  “So now what?” she asked numbly. “A penal colony?”

  “After everything we went through, I’m prepared to make you an offer. I owe you that, I think.”

  “What sort of offer?” André asked.

  “An exchange. You see, I’m your case officer, I’m the one who decides if the Service prosecutes, I’m the one who provides the evidence that we attacked the Krystal Moon and killed a fifteen-year-old girl because you’re such an incompetent captain you can’t keep up the payments on a ship that isn’t worth ten fuseodollars.”

  “Ah! Of course, money is no problem, my dear enfant. I can mortgage the ship, it will be done for you by tomorrow. What currency do you—”

  “Shut up!” Madeleine bellowed. “Just shut the fuck up, Duchamp. What is it, Erick? What’s he got to do? Because whatever it is, he’s going to do it with a big smile on his fat stupid face.”

  “I want to know something, Duchamp,” Erick said. “And I
think you can tell me. In fact, I’m sure you can. Because it’s information which only the vilest, most deceitful pieces of shit in the galaxy are entrusted with.” He drifted over until he was centimetres from the captain. Duchamp had started to tremble.

  “What is the coordinate of the antimatter station, André?” he asked softly. “I know you know.”

  André blanched. “I … I cannot. Not that.”

  “Oh, really? Do you know why the Confederation is so unsuccessful in finding antimatter production stations, Madeleine?” Erick asked. “It’s because we can’t use debrief nanonics on people we suspect of knowing where they are. Nor can we use drugs, or even torture. It’s their neural nanonics, you see. The price of learning a station’s coordinate is a very special set of neural nanonics. The black cartel supplies them absolutely free of charge. Top-of-the-range, whatever marque you like, but always with one small modification. If they detect the owner is being subjected to any form of interrogation, such as debrief nanonics, they kamikaze. The only way the coordinate is passed on is voluntarily. So what is it, Duchamp?”

  “They’ll kill me,” André whimpered. He made to reach out and clasp Erick’s shoulder, but his hand fisted just before contact and drew back.

  “Did you not hear? They’ll kill me!”

  “Fucking tell him!” Madeleine shouted.

  “Non.”

  “It won’t be a penal colony after the trial,” Erick said. “We’ll take you away to a quiet little laboratory deep in Trafalgar, and try and see if this time we can beat the kamikaze mechanism.”

  “They’ll know. They always find out. Always!”

  “One of the stations is supplying Capone with antimatter. That means the cartel has already lost it to the possessed, so they’re not going to care. And what about you? Do you care, do you want Capone to keep winning? And if he does beat us, what do you think he’ll do with you when he finally catches up with you?”

  “But suppose the station I know of isn’t the one?”

  “The only good antimatter station is one which has been destroyed. Now what’s it going to be? The CNIS lab? The cartel? Capone? Or do I load a no further action code in your file? Make your mind up.”

  “I despise you, anglo. I want your precious Confederation to die right in front of you. I want your entire family possessed and made to fuck animals. I want your soul trapped in the beyond for all time. Only then will I have justice for what you and your kind have done to me and my life.”

  “The coordinate, Duchamp,” Erick said impassively.

  André datavised the star’s almanac file over.

  Lieutenant Commander Emonn Verona, the CNIS’s head of station on Ethenthia, sat behind his desk and stared at Erick in what was almost a state of reverence. “You have the name of the next system Capone intends to invade, and an antimatter station coordinate?”

  “Yes, sir. According to Pryor, Capone is going to send his fleet to the Toi-Hoi system.”

  “Good God. If we can ambush that fleet, we’ve got the bastard cold. He’ll be finished.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Right. This bureau’s only goal now is to get your information back to Trafalgar. There aren’t any navy ships stationed here; I’m going to have to signal the Edenist habitats orbiting Golmo and request some voidhawks. That’s fifteen light-hours away.” He eyed the exhausted captain whose skin seemed to be half nanonic packages; the medical ancillary modules fastened to his belt had several orange LEDs winking on them. “We ought to have a voidhawk here within sixteen hours. That’ll give you some time to have a decent rest first.”

  “Thanks. All of us got pretty strung out searching the ship for that nuke.”

  “I’ll bet. Are you sure you want to drop the charges against Duchamp?”

  “Not really. But I gave my word, even though that means nothing to a man like him. Besides, he knows the navy has a file on him now, he knows we’ll be watching him, he’ll never trust another crew member again. He’ll never be able to fly another illegal flight again. And given the state of that ship, and his own abilities, he isn’t going to be able to make enough from legal charters to keep going. The banks will take the Villeneuve’s Revenge off him. For someone like him, that’s worse than a penal colony or the death sentence.”

  “I hope I never get you at my court-martial,” Emonn Verona said.

  “He deserves it.”

  “I know. What do you want to do about Pryor?”

  “Where is he now?”

  “He’s being remanded in custody. There are any number of charges we can bring. I can’t believe a Confederation Navy officer turned like that.”

  “It will be interesting to find out the reason. I think there’s a lot more to Kingsley Pryor than we know. The best course would be for me to take him back to Trafalgar. He can be debriefed properly there.”

  “Okay. I’m going to step up security around the bureau, and I don’t want you to leave it until the voidhawk arrives. There’s a spare office you can use to sleep in, my executive officer will show you. And I’ll organize a medical team to examine you before you depart.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Erick stood up, saluted, and walked out. Emonn Verona had been fifteen years in the navy, and undercover officers like Erick Thakrar still unnerved him.

  The office light panel dimmed for a few seconds, then flickered annoyingly up to its full brightness. Emonn Verona gave it a resigned glare: the damn thing had been getting worse for a couple of days now. He made a note in his neural nanonics general file to get an engineer in once Thakrar was safely on his way.

  ***

  Right from the start, Gerald Skibbow had disliked asteroid settlements.

  They were worse than an arcology; the corridors were claustrophobic, while the biosphere caverns had a forced grandeur which lessened them considerably. Those initial impressions had come from Pinjarra, where the Quadin had left him.

  It hadn’t taken long, even for someone as ingenuous as himself, to find out that despite the quarantine, nongovernmental cargoes were still arriving at Pinjarra from outsystem. They didn’t arrive on starships, though, Quadin was virtually the only one docked to the asteroid’s spaceport, the rest were inter-orbit craft. Hours spent in the bars which their crews used gave him an outline of the operation, and a name: Koblat. An asteroid which was open to quarantine-busting flights, acting as a distribution hub for the Trojan cluster. A berth on an inter-orbit ship returning empty cost him five thousand fuseodollars.

  It was the starships Gerald wanted, whose captains might conceivably accept a charter to Valisk. He had money in his Jovian Bank credit disk; so perhaps it was his manner which caused them all to shake their heads and turn their backs on him. He knew he was too anxious, too insistent, too desperate. He’d made progress in controlling the extremes of his behaviour; there were fewer tantrums when his requests were refused, and he really tried to remember to wash and shave and find clean clothes. But still the captains rejected him. Perhaps they could see the ghosts and demons dancing inside his head. They didn’t understand. It was Marie they were condemning, not him.

  This time he had come very close to screaming at the captain as she made a joke of his pleas. Very close to raising his fists, to punching the truth and the need into her.

  Then she had looked into his eyes and realized the danger caged in there, and her smile had emptied away. Gerald knew the barman was watching closely, one hand under the bar to grip whatever it was he used to quell trouble. There was a long moment spent looking down at the captain as silence rippled out from her table to claim the Blue Fountain. He took the time to think the way Dr Dobbs said he should, to focus on goals and the proper way to achieve them, how to make himself calm when his thoughts were febrile with rage.

  The possibility of violence passed. Gerald turned and made for the door.

  Outside, naked rock pressed in on him, creating a sense of suffocation.

  There were too few light panels in the corridor. Hologram signs and low
-wattage AV projections tried to entice him into other clubs and bars.

  He shuffled past, reaching the warren of smaller corridors which served the residential section. He thought his rented room was close, the signs at every intersection were confusing, numbers and letters jumbled together; he wasn’t used to them yet. Voices rumbled down the corridor, male laughs and jeers, the tone was unpleasant. They were coming from the junction ahead. Dim shadows moved on the walls. He almost stopped and turned around. Then he heard the girl’s cry, angry and fearful at the same time. He wanted to run away. Violence frightened him now. The possessed seemed to be at the heart of all conflicts, all evil. It would be best to leave, to call others to help. The girl cried out again, cursing. And Gerald thought of Marie, and how lonely and afraid she must have been when the possessed claimed her. He edged forwards, and glanced around the corner.

  At first, Beth had been furious with herself. She prided herself on how urban-wise she was. Koblat might be small, but that didn’t mean it had much community spirit. There were only the company cops to keep order; and they didn’t much bother unless they’d had their bung. The corridors could get tough. Men in their twenties, the failed rebels who now had nothing in front of them but eighty years work for the company, went together in clans. They had their own turf, and Beth knew which corridors they were, where you didn’t go at any time.

  She hadn’t been expecting any trouble when the three young men walked down the corridor towards her. She was only twenty metres from her apartment, and they were in company overalls, some kind of maintenance crew. Not a clan, nor mates coming back from a clubbing session. Mr. Regulars.

  The first one whistled admiringly when they were a few metres away. So she gave them the standard blank smile and moved over to one side of the corridor. Then one of them groaned and pointed at her ankle. “Christ, she’s wearing one too, a deadie.”

  “Are ya gay, doll? Fancy giving that Kiera one, do ya? Me too.”

  They all laughed harshly. Beth tried to walk past. A hand caught her arm.

  “Where you going, doll?”