The Hyperion Cantos 4-Book Bundle

by Dan Simmons

  “Coming up on the Uriel, sir,” said the midshipman pilot.

  De Soya nodded. The H.H.S. Uriel seemed a near-clone of the new Raphael, but as the wasp-shuttle decelerated closer, the father-captain could pick out the extra omega-knife generators, the added, glowing conference cubbies, and the more elaborate com antennae that made this vessel the flagship of the task force.

  “Docking warning, sir,” said the midshipman.

  De Soya nodded and took his seat on the number-two acceleration couch. The mating was smooth enough that he felt no jolt whatsoever as the connection clamps closed and the ship’s skin and umbilicals morphed around the shuttle. De Soya was tempted to praise the young midshipman, but old habits of command reasserted themselves.

  “Next time,” he said, “try the final approach without the last-second flare. It’s showing off and the brass on a flagship frown on it.”

  The young pilot’s face fell.

  De Soya set his hand on her shoulder. “Other than that, good job. I’d have you aboard my ship as a dropship pilot anyday.”

  The crestfallen midshipman brightened. “I could only wish, sir. This station duty …” She stopped, realizing that she had gone too far.

  “I know,” said de Soya, standing by the cycling lock. “I know. But for now, be glad that you’re not part of this Crusade.”

  The lock cycled open and an honor guard whistled him aboard the H.H.S. Uriel—the archangel, if Father Captain de Soya remembered correctly, that the Old Testament had described as the leader of the heavenly hosts of angels.

  Ninety light-years away, in a star system only three light-years from Pacem, the original Raphael translated into real space with a violence that would have spit marrow from human bones, sliced through human cells like a hot blade through radiant gossamers, and scrambled human neurons like loose marbles on a steep hillside. Rhadamanth Nemes and her clone-siblings did not enjoy the sensation, but neither did they cry out nor grimace.

  “Where is this place?” said Nemes, watching a brown planet grow in the viewscreen. Raphael was decelerating under 230 gravities. Nemes did not sit in the acceleration couch, but she did hang on to a stanchion with the casual ease of a commuter on her way to work in a crowded groundbus.

  “Svoboda,” said one of her two male siblings.

  Nemes nodded. None of the four spoke again until the archangel was in orbit and the dropship detached and howling through thin air.

  “He’ll be here?” asked Nemes. Microfilaments ran from her temples directly into the dropship console.

  “Oh, yes,” said Nemes’s twin sister.

  A few humans lived on Svoboda, but since the Fall they had huddled in forcefield domes in the twilight zone and did not have the technology to track the archangel or its dropship. There were no Pax bases in this system. Meanwhile, the sunward side of the rocky world boiled until lead ran like water, and on the dark side the thin atmosphere hovered on the edge of freezing. Beneath the useless planet, however, ran more than eight hundred thousand kilometers of tunnels, each corridor a perfect thirty meters square. Svoboda was one of nine Labyrinthine worlds discovered in the early days of the Hegira and explored during the Hegemony. Hyperion had been another of the nine worlds. No human—alive or dead—knew the secret of the Labyrinths or their creators.

  Nemes piloted the dropship through a pelting ammonia storm on the dark side, hovered an instant before an ice cliff visible only on infrared and amplification screens, and then folded the ship’s wings in and guided it forward into the square opening of the Labyrinth entrance. This tunnel turned once and then stretched straight on for kilometers. Deep radar showed a honeycomb of other passages beneath it. Nemes flew forward three klicks, turned left at the first junction of tunnels, dropped half a kilometer from the surface while traveling five klicks south, and then landed the ship.

  Here the infrared showed only trace heat from lava vents and the amplifiers showed nothing on the viewscreen. Frowning at the return on the radar displays, Nemes flipped on the dropship’s exterior lights.

  For as far as she could see down the infinitely straight corridor, the walls of the tunnel had been carved into a row of horizontal stone slabs. On each slab was a naked human body. The slabs and bodies continued on and on into darkness. Nemes glanced at the deep radar display: the lower levels were also striated with slabs and bodies.

  “Outside,” said the male sibling who had pulled Nemes from the lava on God’s Grove.

  Nemes did not bother with the air lock. Atmosphere rushed out of the dropship with a dying roar. There was a hint of pressure in the cavern—enough that she would not have to phase-shift to survive—but the air was thinner than Mars had been before it was terraformed. Nemes’s personal sensors indicated that the temperature was steady at minus 162 degrees centigrade.

  A human figure was outside waiting in the dropship’s flood-lights.

  “Good evening,” said Councillor Albedo. The tall man was impeccably dressed in a gray suit tailored to Pacem tastes. He communicated directly on the 75-megahertz band. Albedo’s mouth did not move, but his perfect teeth were visible in a smile.

  Nemes and her siblings waited. She knew that there would be no further reprimands or punishment. The Three Sectors wanted her alive and functioning.

  “The girl, Aenea, has returned to Pax space,” said Albedo.

  “Where?” said Nemes’s female sibling. There was something like eagerness between the flat tones of her voice.

  Councillor Albedo opened his hands.

  “The portal …” began Nemes.

  “Tells us nothing this time,” said Councillor Albedo. His smile had not wavered.

  Nemes frowned at this. During all the centuries of the Hegemony’s WorldWeb, the Three Sectors of Consciousness of the Core had not found a way to use the Void portal—that instantaneous interface that humans had known as farcasters—without leaving a record of modulated neutrinos in the fold matrix. “The Something Else …” she said.

  “Of course,” said Albedo. He flicked his hand as if discarding the useless segment of this conversation. “But we can still register the connection. We feel sure that the girl is among those returning from Old Earth via the old farcaster network.”

  “There are others?” said one of the males.

  Albedo nodded. “A few at first. More now. At least fifty activations at last count.”

  Nemes folded her arms. “Do you think the Something Else is terminating the Old Earth experiment?”

  “No,” said Albedo. He walked over to the nearest slab and looked down at the naked human body on it. It had been a young woman, no more than seventeen or eighteen standard years old. She had red hair. White frost lay on her pale skin and open eyes. “No,” he said again. “The Sectors agree that it is just Aenea’s group returning.”

  “How do we find her?” said Nemes’s female sibling, obviously musing aloud on the 75-megahertz band. “We can translate to every world that had a farcaster during the Hegemony and interrogate the farcaster portals in person.”

  Albedo nodded. “The Something Else can conceal the far-cast destinations,” he said, “but the Core is almost certain that it cannot hide the fact of the matrix fold itself.”

  Almost certain. Nemes noted that unusual modifier of TechnoCore perceptions.

  “We want you …” began Albedo, pointing at the female sibling. “The Stable Sector did not give you a name, did it?”

  “No,” said Nemes’s twin. Limp, dark bangs fell over the pale forehead. No smile touched the thin lips.

  Albedo chuckled on the 75-megahertz band. “Rhadamanth Nemes needed a name to pass as a human crewmate on the Raphael. I think that the rest of you should be named, if just for my convenience.” He pointed at the female. “Scylla.” Stabbing his finger at each of the males in turn, he said, “Gyges. Briareus.”

  None of the three responded to their christenings, but Nemes folded her arms and said, “Does this amuse you, Councillor?”

  “Yes,” said Albed
o.

  Around them, the atmosphere vented from the dropship curled and broiled like a wicked fog. The male now named Briareus said, “We’ll keep this archangel for transport and begin searching all the old Web worlds, beginning, I assume, with the River Tethys planets.”

  “Yes,” said Albedo.

  Scylla tapped her nails on the frozen fabric of her jumpsuit. “Four ships, the search would go four times as fast.”

  “Obviously,” said Albedo. “There are several reasons we have decided against that—the first being that the Pax has few of these archangel ships free to loan.”

  Nemes raised an eyebrow. “And when has the Core asked the Pax for loans?”

  “Since we need their money and their factories and their human resources to build the ships,” said Albedo without emphasis. “The second—and final—reason is that we want the four of you together in case you encounter someone or something impossible for one of you to handle.”

  Nemes’s eyebrow stayed up. She expected some reference to her failure on God’s Grove, but it was Gyges who spoke. “What in the Pax could we not handle, Councillor?”

  Again the man in gray opened his hands. Behind him, the curling vapors of fog first obscured and then revealed the pale bodies on slabs. “The Shrike,” he said.

  Nemes made a rude noise on the 75-megahertz band. “I beat the thing single-handedly,” she said.

  Albedo shook his head. The maddening smile stayed fixed. “No,” he said. “You did not. You used the hyperentropic device with which we supplied you to send it five minutes into the future. That is not the same as beating it.”

  Briareus said, “The Shrike is no longer under the control of the UI?”

  Albedo opened his hands a final time. “The gods of the future no longer whisper to us, my expensive friend. They war among themselves and the clamor of their battle echoes back through time. If our god’s work is to be done in our time, we must do it ourselves.” He looked at the four clone-siblings. “Are we clear on instructions?”

  “Find the girl,” said Scylla.

  “And?” said the Councillor.

  “Kill her at once,” said Gyges. “No hesitation.”

  “And if her disciples intervene?” said Albedo, smiling more broadly now, his voice the caricature of a human schoolteacher’s.

  “Kill them,” said Briareus.

  “And if the Shrike appears?” he said, the smile suddenly fading.

  “Destroy it,” said Nemes.

  Albedo nodded. “Any final questions before we go our separate ways?”

  Scylla said, “How many humans are here?” She gestured toward the slabs and bodies.

  Councillor Albedo touched his chin. “A few tens of millions on this Labyrinthine world, in this section of runnels. But there are many more tunnels here.” He smiled again. “And eight more Labyrinth worlds.”

  Nemes slowly turned her head, viewing the swirling fog and receding line of stone slabs on various levels of the spectrum. None of the bodies showed any sign of heat above the ambient temperature of the tunnel. “And this is the Pax’s work,” she said.

  Albedo chuckled on the 75-megahertz band. “Of course,” he said. “Why would the Three Sectors of Consciousness or our future UI want to stockpile human bodies?” He walked over to the body of the young woman and tapped her frozen breast. The air in the cavern was far too thin to carry sound, but Nemes imagined the noise of cold marble being tapped by fingernails.

  “Any more questions?” said Albedo. “I have an important meeting.”

  Without a word on the 75-megahertz band—or any other band—the four siblings turned and reentered the dropship.

  • • •

  Gathered on the circular tactical conference center blister of the H.H.S. Uriel were twenty Pax Fleet officers, including all of the captains and executive officers of Task Force GIDEON. Among those executive officers was Commander Hoagan “Hoag” Liebler. Thirty-six standard years old, born-again since his baptism on Renaissance Minor, the scion of the once-great Liebler Freehold family whose estate covered some two million hectares—and whose current debt ran to almost five marks per hectare—Liebler had dedicated his private life to serving the Church and given his professional life to Pax Fleet. He was also a spy and a potential assassin.

  Liebler had looked up with interest as his new commanding officer was piped aboard the Uriel. Everyone in the task force—almost everyone in Pax Fleet—had heard of Father Captain de Soya. The former torchship CO had been granted a papal diskey—meaning almost unlimited authority—for some secret project five standard years earlier, and then had failed at his mission. No one was sure what that mission had been, but de Soya’s use of that diskey had made enemies among Fleet officers across the Pax. The father-captain’s subsequent failure and disappearance had been cause for more rumor in the wardrooms and Fleet staff rooms: the most accepted theory was that de Soya had been turned over to the Holy Office, had been quietly excommunicated, and probably executed.

  But now here he was, given command of one of the most treasured assets in Pax Fleet’s arsenal: one of the twenty-one operational archangel cruisers.

  Liebler was surprised at de Soya’s appearance: the father-captain was short, dark-haired, with large, sad eyes more appropriate to the icon of a martyred saint than to the skipper of a battlecruiser. Introductions were made quickly by Admiral Aldikacti, the stocky Lusian in charge of both this meeting and the task force.

  “Father Captain de Soya,” said Aldikacti as de Soya took his place at the gray, circular table within the gray, circular room, “I believe you know some of these officers.” The Admiral was famous for her lack of tact as well as for her ferocity in battle.

  “Mother Captain Stone is an old friend,” said de Soya, nodding toward his former executive officer. “Captain Hearn was a member of my last task force, and I have met Captain Sati and Captain Lempriere. I have also had the privilege of working with Commanders Uchikawa and Barnes-Avne.”

  Admiral Aldikacti grunted. “Commander Barnes-Avne is here representing the Marine and Swiss Guard presence on Task Force GIDEON,” she said. “Have you met your exec, Father Captain de Soya?”

  The priest-captain shook his head and Aldikacti introduced Liebler. The commander was surprised at the firmness in the diminutive father-captain’s grip and the authority in the other man’s gaze. Eyes of a martyr or no, thought Hoag Liebler, this man is used to command.

  “All right,” growled Admiral Aldikacti, “let’s get started. Captain Sati will present the briefing.”

  For the next twenty minutes, the conference blister was fogged with holos and trajectory overlays. Comlogs and ’scribers filled with data and scribbled notes. Sati’s soft voice was the only sound except for the rare question or request for clarification.

  Liebler jotted his own notes, surprised at the scope of Task Force GIDEON’s mission, and busy at the work of any executive officer—getting down all the salient facts and details that the captain might want to review later.

  GIDEON was the first task force made up completely of archangel-class cruisers. Seven of the archangels had been tasked to this mission. Conventional Hawking-class torchships had been dispatched months earlier to rendezvous with them at their first sally point in the Outback some twenty light-years beyond the Great Wall defensive sphere so as to participate in a mock battle, but after that first jump, the task force of seven ships would be operating independently.

  “A good metaphor would be General Sherman’s march through Georgia in the pre-Hegira North American Civil War in the nineteenth century,” said Captain Sati, sending half the officers at the table tapping at their comlog diskeys to bring up that arcane bit of military history.

  “Previously,” continued Sati, “our battles with the Ousters have either been in the Great Wall no-man’s-land, or on the fringes of either Pax or Ouster space. There have been very few deep-penetration raids into Ouster territory.” Sati paused in his briefing. “Father Captain de Soya’s Task Forc
e MAGI some five standard years ago was one of the deepest of those raids.”

  “Any comments about it, Father Captain?” said Admiral Aldikacti.

  De Soya hesitated a moment. “We burned an orbital forest ring,” he said at last. “There was no resistance.”

  Hoag Liebler thought that the father-captain’s voice sounded vaguely ashamed.

  Sati nodded as if satisfied. “That’s what we hope will be the case for this entire mission. Our intelligence suggests that the Ousters have deployed the vast bulk of their defensive forces along the sphere of the Great Wall, leaving very little in the way of armed resistance through the heart of their colonized areas beyond the Pax. For almost three centuries they have positioned their forces, their bases, and their home systems with the limitations of Hawking-drive technology as the primary determining factor.”

  Tactical holos filled the conference blister.

  “The grand cliché,” continued Sati, “is that the Pax has had the advantage of interior lines of transport and communication, while the Ousters have had the defensive strength of concealment and distance. Penetration deep into Ouster space has been all but impossible due to the vulnerability of our supply lines and their willingness to cut and run before our superior strength, attacking later—often with devastating effect—when our task forces venture too far from the Great Wall.”

  Sati paused and looked at the officers around the table. “Gentlemen and ladies, those days are over.” More holos misted into solidity, the red line of Task Force GIDEON’s trajectory out from and back to the Pax sphere slicing between suns like a laser knife.