The Neutronium Alchemist

by Peter F. Hamilton

  Two more of the possessed toppled over. Lennart sagged to his knees, hands clutching at his throat.

  “The navy must never know what we discovered,” Jacqueline said thickly.

  Perez looked up at her, too weak to plead. It wouldn’t have been any use, he realized, not against that mind tone.

  The shaped electron explosive charge sliced clean through the courtroom door with a lightning-bolt flash. There was very little blowback against the marine squad crouched fifteen metres away down the corridor. Captain Peyton yelled “Go!” at the same time as the charge was triggered. His armour suit’s communications block was switched to audio, just in case the possessed were still active.

  Ten sense-overload ordnance rounds were fired through the opening as the wrecked door spun around like a dropped coin. A ferocious blast of light and sound surged back along the corridor. The squad rushed forward into the deluge.

  It was a synchronized assault. All three doors into the courtroom were blown at the same time. Three sets of sense-overload ordnance punched in.

  Three marine squads.

  Dr Gilmore was still hooked into Peyton’s neural nanonics, receiving the image direct from the captain’s shell helmet sensors. The scene which greeted him took a while to interpret. Dimming flares were sinking slowly through the air as tight beams of light from each suit formed a crazy jumping crisscross pattern above the wrecked fittings. Bodies lay everywhere. Some were victims of the earlier fight. Ten of them had been executed. There was no other explanation. Each of the ten had been killed by a bolt of white fire through the brain.

  Peyton was pushing his way through a ring of nearly twenty marines that had formed in the middle of the courtroom. Jacqueline Couteur stood at the centre, her shape blurred by a grey twister that had formed around her. It looked as if she’d been cocooned by solid strands of air. The twister was making a high-pitched whining sound as it undulated gently from side to side.

  Jacqueline Couteur’s hands were in the air. She gazed at the guns levelled against her with an almost sublime composure. “Okay,” she said.

  “You win. And I think I may need my lawyer again.”

  Chapter 10

  There were nearly three thousand people in the crowd which assembled outside the starscraper lobby. Most of them looked fairly pissed at being summoned, but nobody actually argued with Bonney’s deputies when they came calling. They wanted a quiet life. On a planet they could have just walked away into the wilderness; here that option did not exist.

  Part of the lobby’s gently arching roof had crumpled, a remnant of an early battle during their takeover of the habitat. Bonney started to walk up the pile of rubble. She held a processor block in one hand, turning it so she could see the screen.

  “Last chance, Rubra,” she said. “Tell me where the boyo is, or I start getting serious.” The block’s screen remained blank. “You overheard what Patricia said. I know you did, because you’re a sneaky little shit.

  You’ve been manipulating me for a while now. I’m always told where he is, and he’s always gone when I get there. You’re helping him as much as you’re helping me, aren’t you? Probably trying to frighten him into cooperating with you. Was that it? Well, not anymore, Rubra, because Patricia has changed everything; we’re playing big boys’ rules now. I don’t have to be careful, I don’t have to respect your precious, delicate structure. It was fun going one on one against all those little bastards you stashed around the place. I enjoyed myself. But you were cheating the whole time. Funny, that’s what Dariat warned us about right from the start.” She reached the roof, and walked to the edge above the crowd.

  “You going to tell me?”

  The screen printed: THOSE LITTLE DEADNIGHT GIRLS THAT COME HERE, YOU REALLY ENJOY WHAT YOU DO WITH THEM, DON’T YOU, DYKE?

  Bonney dropped the processor block as if it were a piece of used toilet paper. “Game over, Rubra. You lose; I’m going to use nukes to crack you in half.”

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  Dariat hooked into the observation routines in time to see Bonney raise her hands for silence. The crowd gazed up at her expectantly.

  “We’ve got the power of genies,” she said. “You can grant yourself every wish you want. And we still have to live like dogs out in these shantytowns, grabbing what food we can, whipped into line, told where we can and can’t go. Rubra’s done that to us. We have starships for fuck’s sake. We can travel to another star system in less time than it takes your heart to beat once. But if you want to go from here to the endcap, you have to walk. Why? Because that shit Rubra won’t let us use the tubes. And up until now, we’ve let him get away with it. Well, not anymore.”

  <> Dariat said uncomfortably.

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  <> Dariat went over to the fire at the back of the cave. It had almost burnt out, leaving a pyramid of coals cloaked in a powder of fine grey ash. He stood looking at it, feeling the slumbering heat contained within the pink fragments.

  I have to decide. I can’t beat Rubra. And Rubra will be destroyed by Kiera when she returns. For thirty years I would have welcomed that.

  Thirty fucking years. My entire life.

  But he’s willing to sacrifice his mental integrity, to join my thoughts to his. He’s going to abandon two centuries of his belief that he can go it alone.

  Tatiana stirred on the blanket and sat up, bracelets chinking noisily.

  Sleepy confusion drained from her face. “That was a strange dream.” She gave him a shrewd glance. “But then this is a strange time, isn’t it?”

  “What was your dream?”

  “I was in a universe which was half light, half darkness. And I was falling out of the light. Then Anastasia caught me, and we started to fly back up again.”

  “Sounds like your salvation.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Things are changing. That means I have to decide what to do. And I don’t want to, Tatiana. I’ve spent thirty years not deciding. Thirty years telling myself this was the time I was waiting for. I’ve been a kid for thirty years.”

  Tatiana rose and stood beside him. He refused to meet her gaze, so she put an arm lightly on his shoulder. “What do you have to decide?”

  “If I should help Rubra; if I should join him in the neural strata and turn this into a possessed habitat.”

  “He wants that?”

  “I don’t think so. But he’s like me, there’s not much else either of us can do. The game’s over, and we’re running out of extra time.”

  She stroked him absently. “Whatever you decide, I don’t want you to take me into account. There are too many issues at stake, big issues. Individuals don’t matter so much; and I had a good run against that Bonney. We annoyed her a lot, eh? That felt nice.”

  “But individuals do matter. Especially you. It’s odd, I feel like I’ve come full circle. Anastasia always told me how precious a single life was. Now I have to decide your fate. And I can’t let you suffer, which is what’s going to happen if Rubra and I take on the possessed together. I’m responsible for her death, I can’t have yours on my hands as well. How could I ever face her with that weighing on my heart? I have to be true to her. You know I do.” He tilted his head back, his voice raised in anger. “Do you think you’ve won?”

  <> Rubra said sadly. < you from achieving your inheritance. That’s what Anastasia was, for you and for me. Fate. You would call it an act of Thoale.>>

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  It wasn’t merely a hunting party Bonney was organizing. She was keenly aware that Dariat could always flee her in the tube carriages, while she was reduced to chasing after him in one of the rentcop force’s open-top trucks. If Dariat was to be caught, then she would first have to cripple his mobility.

  The crowd she had assembled was split into teams, given specific instructions, and dispatched to carry them out. Each major team had one of her deputies to ensure they didn’t waver.

  Every powered vehicle in the habitat set out from the starscraper lobby, driving along the tracks through the overgrown grass. Most of them travelled directly to the other camps ringing starscraper lobbies, coercing their occupants into Bonney’s scheme. It was a domino effect, spreading rapidly around Valisk’s midsection.

  Kiera had wanted the tubes left alone so that when they moved Valisk out of the universe the transport system could be brought back on-line to serve them. Bonney had no such inhibitions. The possessed made their reluctant way into the starscraper lobbies, and down into the first-floor stations. There they combined their energistic power and started to systematically smash the tube tunnels. Huge chunks of polyp were torn out of the walls and roof to crash down on the magnetic guide rail. Power cables were ripped up and shorted out. Carriages were fired, adding to the blockages and sending thick plumes of black smoke billowing deep into the tunnels. Management processor blocks were blasted to cinders, exposing their interface with Valisk’s nerve fibres. Wave after wave of static discharges were pumped at the raw ends, sending what they hoped were pulses of pure pain down into the neural strata.

  Bolstered by their successful vandalism, and Rubra’s apparent inability to retaliate, the possessed began to move en mass down into the starscrapers. They sent waves of energistic power surging ahead of them, annihilating any mechanical or electrical system, wrecking artefacts and fittings. Every room, every corridor, every stairwell, were searched for non-possessed. Floor by floor they descended, recapturing the heady excitement and spirit of the original takeover. Unity infected them with strength. Individuals began to shapeshift into fantastic monsters and Earthly heroes. They weren’t just going to flush out the traitor enemy, they were going to do it with malevolent finesse.

  Hellhawks fluttered up from the docking ledges and began to spiral around the tubular starscrapers: an infernal flock peering into the bright oval windows with their potent senses, assisting their comrades inside.

  Together they would flush him out. It was only a matter of time now.

  Dariat sat opposite Tatiana in the tube carriage they took from the southern endcap. “We’re going to put you in one of the spaceport’s emergency escape pods,” he told her. “It’s going to be tough to start with, they launch at about twelve gees to get away fast. But it only lasts for eight seconds. You can take that. There’s a voidhawk squadron from Kohistan standing by to pick you up as soon as you’re clear.”

  “What about the possessed?” she asked. “Won’t they try and stop me, shoot at me or something?”

  “They won’t know what the hell’s going on. Rubra is going to fire all two hundred pods at once. The voidhawks will swallow in and snatch your pod before the hellhawks even know you’re out there.”

  A smirk of good-humoured dubiety stroked Tatiana’s face. “If you say so. I’m proud of you, Dariat. You’ve come through when it really counts, shown your true self. And it’s a good self. Anastasia would be proud of you, too.”

  “Why, thank you.”

  “You should enjoy your victory, take heart from it. Lady Chi-ri will be smiling on you tonight. Bask in that warmth.”

  “We haven’t won yet.”

  “You have. Don’t you see? After all those years of struggle you’ve finally beaten Anstid. He hasn’t dictated what you’re doing now. This act is not motivated by hatred and revenge.”

  Dariat grinned. “Not hatred. But I’m certainly enjoying putting one over on that witch queen Bonney.”

  Tatiana laughed. “Me too!”

  Dariat had to grab at his seat as the carriage braked sharply. Tatiana gasped as she clung to one of the vertical poles, hanging on frantically as the lights began to dim.

  “What’s happening?” she asked.

  The carriage juddered to a halt. The lights went out, then slowly returned as the vehicle’s backup electron matrix came on line.

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  Dariat hooked into the neural strata’s observation routines to survey the damage. The starscraper station was a scene of violent devastation.

  Smouldering lumps of polyp were chiselled out of the tunnel by invisible surges of energy; the guidance rail writhed and flexed, screaming shrilly as its movements yanked its own fixing pins out of the floor; severed electrical cables swung from broken conduits overhead, spitting sparks.

  Laughter and catcalls rang out over the noise of the violence.

  A rapid flick through other stations showed him how widespread the destruction was.

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  A schematic of the tube network appeared in Dariat’s mind. <>

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  The lights dipped again as the carriage slid forwards slowly.

  “Well?” Tatiana asked.

  Dariat began to explain.

  Starscrapers formed the major nodes in the habitat’s tube network; each of them had seven stations ringing the lobby, enabling the carriages to reach any part of the interior
. Individual stations were identical; chambers with a double-arch ceiling and a central platform twenty metres long which served two tubes. The polyp walls were a light powder-blue, with strips of electrophorescent cells running the entire length above the rails. There were stairs at each end of the platform, one set leading up to the starscraper lobby, the other an emergency exit to the parkland.

  In the station ahead of Dariat, the possessed finished their wrecking spree and went off up the stairs to start searching the starscraper. As Rubra predicted, they left two of their number behind to watch over the four tunnel entrances. Smoke from the attack was layering the air. Flames were still licking around the big piles of ragged polyp slabs blocking the end of each tunnel. Several hologram adverts flashed on and off overhead; an already damaged projector suffering from the proximity of the possessed turned the images to a nonsense splash of colours.

  Given that the fire was dying away naturally, the two possessed were somewhat bemused when, seven minutes after everyone else left, the station’s sprinklers suddenly came on.

  Dariat was three hundred metres down the tube tunnel, helping Tatiana out of the carriage’s front emergency hatch. The tunnel had only the faintest illumination, a weak blue glow coming from a couple of narrow electrophorescent strips on the walls. It curved away gently ahead of him, putting enough solid polyp between him and the station to prevent the two possessed from perceiving him.

  Tatiana jumped down the last half metre and steadied herself.

  “Ready?” Dariat asked. He was already using the habitat’s sensitive cells to study the pile of polyp they would have to climb over to get into the station. It didn’t look too difficult, there was an easy metre and a half gap at the top.

  “Ready.”

  <> Dariat said.

  The two possessed guards had given up any attempt to shield themselves from the torrent of water falling from the sprinklers. They were retreating back to the shelter of the stairs. Their clothes had turned to sturdy anoraks, streaked with glistening runnels. Every surface was slick with water now: walls, platform, floor, the piles of polyp.