The Neutronium Alchemist

by Peter F. Hamilton

  “Wrong God.” A chuckle drifted down the empty corridor.

  When Joshua landed just after midday local time, rumour was blanketing Harrisburg as thickly as the snow. It seemed to be the one weapon in the armoury of the possessed which was the same the Confederation over. The more people heard, the less they knew, the more fearful they became. One freak outbreak of urban mythology and entire populations would become paralysed, either that or regress straight into survivalist siege mode.

  On most worlds, government assurances and rover reporters on the scene managed to restart the engines of ordinary existence. People would creep sheepishly back to work and wait for the next canard of Genghis Khan riding a Panzer tank into the suburbs.

  Not on Nyvan. Here governments were the ones gleefully shooting out savage accusations at their old antagonists. A coordinated global response to the prospect of the possessed landing was never even considered, a realpolitik impossibility.

  As soon as they landed Joshua loaded a search request into the city’s commercial data core. The number of armed guards and lack of flights at the spaceport made his intuition rebel. He knew they didn’t have much time; the quiet approach—questions, contacts, money—would never work here.

  They hired a car and set off down hotel row, a potholed six-lane motorway which linked the spaceport to the city ten kilometres away. Only two lanes were cleared of snow, and there was hardly any other traffic.

  Dahybi used his electronic warfare detector block to sweep the eight-seater cabin for bugs. “Seems clean,” he told the others.

  “Okay,” Joshua said. “Our processor technology is probably more advanced than the locals, but don’t count on it for a permanent advantage. I need to find her as fast as we can, which is going to mean sacrificing subtlety.”

  As they approached the hotel they’d booked, Joshua datavised an update into the car’s control processor. The car swept past the hotel’s entrance, heading for the city.

  “There goes our deposit,” Melvyn complained.

  “It bothers me,” Joshua said. “Ione, are we being followed?”

  One of the serjeants was sitting at the back of the cab, pointing a small circular sensor pad through the rear window. “One car, possibly two. I think there are three people in the first one.”

  “Probably some kind of local security police,” Joshua decided. “I’d be surprised if they weren’t keeping tabs on foreigners right now.”

  “So what do we do about them?” Dahybi asked.

  “Not a damn thing. I don’t want to give them an excuse to interfere.” He accessed the car’s net processor and established an encrypted link to the spaceplane. “What’s your situation, Ashly?”

  “So far so good. I’ll have the electron matrices completely recharged in another three minutes. That’ll expand your options.”

  “Good. We’ll keep a channel open to you from now on. If the city’s net starts to crash, come get us. That’s our cut-off point.”

  “Aye, Captain. Lady Macbeth just fell below the horizon, so I’ve lost contact. Every civil communications satellite is out now.”

  “If their situation alters, they’ll change orbit and re-establish a link. Sarha knows what to do.”

  “I certainly hope so. Before I lost contact, Beaulieu told me four voidhawks have arrived. They’re heading for low orbit.”

  “They must have come from the Dorados,” Joshua decided. “Ashly, when Lady Mac comes back on-line, tell Sarha to monitor them as best she can. And let me know if any of their spaceplanes land.”

  The snowfall had thickened considerably by the time Joshua’s car reached the address his search program had identified for him. It reduced Harrisburg to a sequence of shabby granite streets that were hard to tell apart. Nothing was alive apart from people, wrapped in their insulated coats as they kicked their way through the pavement slush. Hologram billboards and neon signs were all that remained unaffected by the weather, flashing and morphing as always.

  “I should have brought Liol down,” Joshua muttered, half to himself. “He said he wanted a taste of exotic worlds.”

  “You’re going to have to come to terms with him eventually, Joshua,” Melvyn said.

  “Maybe. Jesus, if he just wasn’t such a pushy bastard. Can’t you tell him to lighten up, Ione? You spend a lot of time talking to him.”

  “It didn’t work before,” one of the serjeants said.

  “You’ve already told him?”

  “Let’s say I’ve been through the procedure earlier. He’s not the only one who needs to relax, Joshua. Neither of you are going to make any progress the way you both carry on.”

  He wanted to explain. How it was. How he didn’t feel quite so alone anymore, and how that left him troubled. How he wanted to welcome his brother, but at the same time knew him so well he didn’t trust him. To be honest with him would be seen as a weakness. Liol was the interloper. Let him make the first gesture. I saved his arse from the Dorados, I was the honourable one, and what thanks do I get?

  When he glanced around the car, he knew that anything he said which verged on truth would make him sound petulant. A year ago I would’ve told the lot of them to bugger off. Jesus, life was simpler then, when there was just me. “I’ll do what I can,” he conceded.

  Their car turned off the street and dipped down into an underground garage. The building it served was a ten-storey block with small shops at street level (half of them empty), and the upper floors given over to offices and design bureaus.

  “Going to tell us why we’re here now?” Dahybi asked as they climbed out of the car.

  “Simple,” Joshua said. “When you need a job doing fast and effectively, go to a professional.”

  The office of Kilmartin and Elgant, Data Security Specialists, was on the seventh floor. There was nobody behind the desk in the reception room.

  Joshua paused for a second, expecting a secretarial program to query them, but the desktop processor wasn’t switched on. The inner door slid open when he approached it.

  In a rash of optimistic bravado accompanying their firm’s launch, Kilmartin and Elgant had taken a fifty-year lease on sufficient floor space to house fifteen operatives. There were still enough desks for fifteen in the open-plan office; seven of them had dust covers thrown over processors which were fairly dubious even by Nyvan’s technological standards; four desks had niches where processors used to be; one patch of carpet showed imprints where a desk used to stand.

  Only one desk had a decent cluster of modern blocks, which shared the surface with a thoroughly dead potted plant. Two men were sitting behind it, staring intently into the hazy aura of an AV pillar. The first was tall, young, and broad-shouldered, sporting a long blond ponytail tied with a colourful leather lace. He wore an expensive black suit, tailored to provide maximum freedom of movement. He was not openly belligerent, but had a presence that would make people think twice before tackling him. The second was well into middle age, dressed in a faded grey-brown jacket, tufty chestnut hair askew. He looked as if he belonged behind the complaints desk in a tax office.

  They regarded Joshua and his odd delegation with mild surprise.

  Joshua looked from one to the other, slightly uncertain as intuition tickled his skull. Then he clicked his fingers decisively and pointed at the younger of the two. “I bet you’re the data expert and your friend handles the combat routines. Good disguise, right?”

  The aura from the AV pillar faded as the younger man tilted his chair back and put his hands behind his head. “Clever. Are we expecting you, Mr. … ?”

  Joshua gave a faint smile. “You tell me.”

  “All right, Captain Calvert, what do you want?”

  “I need to access some information, and fast. Can you manage that for me?”

  “Sure. Nationwide net access, no problem, whatever file you want. Hey listen, I know what this place looks like. Forget that. Talent isn’t something you can eyeball. And I’m so far on top of things I’m getting oxygen starvation.
Someone’s search program locates my public file, I know about it before they do. You came down from the Lady Macbeth an hour ago. One of your crew is still with your spaceplane. Want to know how much the service company is ripping you off for your electron matrix recharge? You’re in the right place.”

  “I don’t care. Money doesn’t concern me.”

  “Okay, I think we’ve reached interface here.” He turned to his colleague and muttered something. The older man gave him a disgruntled look, then shrugged. He walked out of the office, giving the two serjeants a curious glance as he passed.

  “Richard Keaton.” The athletic young man leaned over the desk, holding his hand out and smiling broadly. “Call me Dick.”

  “I certainly will.” They shook hands.

  “Sorry about Matty, there. He’s got enough implants to chop up a squad of marines. But he gets overprotective, and I don’t need him hovering right now. Smart of you to see which of us was which. I don’t think anyone’s ever done that before.”

  “Your secret’s safe with me.”

  “So what can I do for you, Captain Calvert?”

  “I need to find someone.”

  Keaton raised a forefinger. “If I could just interrupt. First, there is my fee.”

  “I’m not going to quibble. I might even pay a bonus.”

  One of the serjeants tapped a foot pointedly on the worn carpet.

  “Nice to hear, Captain. Okay then; my fee is one flight off this planet on the Lady Macbeth, just as soon as you leave. Destination: who cares.”

  “That’s an … unusual fee. Any particular reason?”

  “Like I said, Captain, you came to the right place. This might not be the biggest firm in town, but I fish the data streams. There are possessed on Nyvan. They’ve already taken over Jesup, that wasn’t just propaganda by our upstanding government. The electronic warfare barrage in orbit? That was cover to help them get down here. There aren’t too many in Tonala yet—not according to the Special Investigation Bureau, anyway. But they’re spreading through the other countries.”

  “So you want to be gone?”

  “I sure do. And I figure you won’t be here when they reach Harrisburg, either. Look, I won’t be any trouble on board. Hell, shove me into zero-tau, I don’t mind.”

  Joshua didn’t have the time to argue. Besides, taking Keaton with them actually reduced the risk of exposure. A flight off Nyvan wasn’t such a high price. “You bring only what you’ve got with you; I’m not waiting while you go home to pack. We don’t have any slack built into our mission profile.”

  “We have a deal, Captain.”

  “Very well, welcome aboard, Dick. Now, the person I want is called Dr Alkad Mzu, alias Daphine Kigano. She arrived on the starship Tekas last night with three companions. I don’t know where she is or who she might attempt to contact; however, she will be trying to stay hidden.” He datavised over a visual file. “Find her.”

  Twenty thousand kilometres above Nyvan, the Organization frigate Urschel emerged from its ZTT jump. It was swiftly followed by the Raimo and the Pinzola. They were nowhere near a designated emergence zone, but only the four voidhawks were aware of their arrival. None of Nyvan’s gravitonic-distortion detector satellites were functioning; the waves of electronic warfare assaults had crashed them beyond repair.

  After five minutes assessing the local situation, their fusion drives came on, pushing them towards a low-orbit injection point. Once they were on their way, Oscar Kearn, the small flotilla’s commander, concentrated on the eternal, beseeching voices crying into his head.

  Where is Mzu? he asked them.

  The possessed among the crew, including Cherri Barnes, joined his silky cajoling, adding to the tricksy promises he made. Theirs was a multiple chant which hummed through the beyond, a harmonic passed between every desperate soul. It agitated them, its very existence a taunt; plots and scheming were an exquisitely tortuous reminder of what lay on the other side of their dreadful continuum, what they could partake of once again if they just helped.

  Where is Mzu?

  What is she doing?

  Who is with her?

  There are bodies waiting for worthy hosts. Millions of bodies, out here among the light and air and experience, held ready for Capone’s friends.

  One could be yours. If—

  Where is Mzu? Exactly?

  Ah.

  When they reached a five hundred kilometre orbit, each of the frigates dispatched a spaceplane. The three black delta-shapes sliced down through Nyvan’s atmosphere, their tapering noses lining up on Tonala, hidden behind the planet’s curvature seven thousand kilometres ahead.

  Oscar Kearn ordered the frigates to manoeuvre again, and they began to raise their orbit.

  “This really doesn’t look good,” Sarha said. “The sensors are showing three of them. I don’t think their transponders are responding to the station.”

  “You don’t think?” Beaulieu queried.

  “Who knows? Those bloody SD platforms are still at it. I doubt we could pick up an em pulse through all this jamming.”

  “What are their drive exhausts like?” Liol asked.

  Sarha ignored the datavised displays inside her skull long enough to fire a disgusted glance at him. The three of them were alone on Lady Mac’s bridge. All the remaining serjeants were down in B capsule, guarding the airlock tube. “What?” There were times when he was a little bit too much like Joshua, that is: quite infuriating.

  “If there are possessed on board, they’ll be affecting the ship’s systems,” Liol recited. “Their drives will fluctuate. The recordings from Lalonde taught us that. Remember?”

  Sarha didn’t trust herself to answer directly. Yes he was like Joshua, gallingly right the whole time. “I’m not sure our discrimination programs will be much use at this distance. I can’t get a radar lock to determine their velocity.”

  “Want me to try?”

  “No thank you.”

  “When Josh said don’t give me access to the flight computer, I don’t think he meant I wasn’t supposed to help you survive an assault by the possessed,” Liol said peevishly.

  “You will be able to ask him directly soon,” Beaulieu said. “We should be over Ashly’s horizon in another ninety seconds.”

  “Those ships are definitely heading for a rendezvous with the Spirit of Freedom,” Sarha said. “The optical image is good enough for a rough vector analysis.”

  “I’d like to point out that the three highly similar ships which appeared at the Dorados before we left were all from New California,” Liol said.

  “I am aware of that,” Sarha snarled back.

  “Jolly good. I’d hate to be possessed by anyone I didn’t know.”

  “What are the voidhawks doing?” Beaulieu asked.

  “I don’t know. They’re on the other side of the planet.” Sarha was uncomfortably aware of the perspiration permeating her shipsuit. She datavised the conditioning grille above her for some cool, dry air—cooler, dryer air. And to think, I’d always been slightly envious about Joshua having command of a starship. “I’m disengaging the airlock,” she told the other two. “Station staff might try to come on board once they realize those starships are heading here.” It was a logical action.

  And actually doing something made her feel a whole lot better.

  “I’ve got the spaceplane beacon,” Beaulieu announced.

  “You’re still intact, then?” Ashly datavised.

  “Yeah, still here,” Sarha replied gamely. “What’s your situation?”

  “Stable. Nothing much is moving at the spaceport. The four Edenist flyers arrived half an hour ago. They’re parked about two hundred metres away from me right now. I tried datavising them, but they’re not answering. A whole group of people set off into town as soon as they landed. There were cars here waiting for them.”

  The flight computer signalled that Joshua was coming on line. “Any signs of possession on the planet yet?” he asked.

  “I
’d have to say yes, Captain,” Beaulieu told him. “The national nets are suffering considerable degrees of dropout. But there’s no real pattern to it. Several countries don’t have a single glitch.”

  “They will,” Joshua datavised.

  “Joshua, three Adamist starships appeared an hour ago,” Sarha datavised.

  “We believe they sent some spaceplanes or flyers down to the planet; they were in the right orbit for it. Liol thinks they’re the same Organization ships that were at the Dorados.”

  “Oh, well, if the starflight expert says so …”

  “Josh, those frigates are heading for this station,” Liol datavised.

  “Oh, Jesus. Okay, get clear of the station. And, Sarha, try to get a positive ident.”

  “Will do. How are things your end?”

  “Promising, I think. Expect us … today, what … outcome.”

  “I’m losing the link,” Beaulieu warned. “Heavy interference, and it’s focused directly at us.”

  “Josh, let me have access authority for the flight computer. Sarha and Beaulieu are being overloaded up here, for Christ’s sake. I can help.”

  “… think … mummy’s boy … on my ship … fucking … because I’ll … first … trust …”

  “Lost them,” Beaulieu said.

  “The frigates have started jamming us directly,” Sarha said. “They know we’re here.”

  “They’re softening up the station for an assault,” Liol said. “Give me the access codes, I can fly Lady Mac away.”

  “No, you heard Joshua.”

  “He said he trusted me.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Look, you two have to operate the on-board systems, monitor the electronic warfare battle, and now you’ve got to watch the frigates as well. If we launch now they might think we’re going to defend the station. Can you fly Lady Mac and fight at the same time as everything else?”

  “Beaulieu?” Sarha asked.

  “Not my decision, but he does have a point. We need to leave, now.”

  “Sarha, Josh is all emotionally tangled up when it comes to me. Fair enough, I didn’t handle him well. But you can’t endanger his life and ours on a single bad decision made from ignorance. I’ll do my best here. Trust me. Please.”