Neutronium Alchemist - Consolidation nd-3

by Peter F. Hamilton

  “Goddamn, Luigi, you should see what you guys look like from here. It’s a powerhouse of a sight. I tell you, I wouldn’t want to wake up in the morning and find you in my sky. Those jerkhead krauts are gonna crap themselves.”

  “Count on it, Al.”

  “Okay, Luigi, take it away, it’s all yours. You and Patricia and Dwight take care now, you hear? And Jez says good luck. Go get ’em.”

  “Thank the little lady for us, boss. And don’t worry none, we’ll deliver for you. Expect some real good news a week from now.”

  The Salvatore ’s heat dump panels and sensor clusters began to retract down into their jump recesses, taking a long while to do so. Several times they seemed to stick or judder. The second ship in the formation began to configure itself for a jump, then the third.

  For another minute nothing happened, then the Salvatore vanished inside its event horizon.

  Aralia and Galega were instinctively aware of its spatial location, and with that the jump coordinate alignment could have only one solution. It’s Arnstadt,aralia told the Yosemite Consensus. They’re heading for Arnstadt.

  Thank you, Aralia,consensus replied. We will dispatch a voidhawk to alert the Arnstadt government. It will take the Organization fleet at least two days to reach the system. The local navy forces will have some time to prepare.

  Enough?

  Possibly. It depends on the Organization’s actual goal.

  When Aralia reviewed the images from the spy globes, another twelve ships had already followed the Salvatore. A further seven hundred and forty were gliding inexorably toward the Arnstadt jump coordinate.

  • • •

  “No, Gerald,” Jansen Kovak said. The tone was one which parents reserved for particularly troublesome children. His hand tightened around Gerald’s upper arm.

  He and another supervisory nurse had walked Gerald to the sanatorium’s lounge where he was supposed to eat his lunch. Once they reached the door, Gerald had glanced furtively down the corridor, muscles tensing beneath his baggy sweatshirt.

  Kovak was familiar with the signs. Gerald could drop into a frenzy at the slightest provocation these days; anything from an innocuous phrase to the sight of a long corridor which he assumed led directly to the outside world. When it happened, he’d lash out at his supervisors and anyone else who happened to be in the way, before making yet another run for it. The concept of codelocked doors seemed utterly beyond him.

  The corner of Gerald’s lip spasmed at the stern warning, and he allowed himself to be led into the lounge. The first thing he did was glance at the bar to see if the holoscreen was on. It had been removed altogether (much to the annoyance of other inmates). Dr Dobbs wasn’t going to risk triggering another incident of that magnitude.

  Privately, Jansen Kovak considered that they were wasting their time in trying to rehabilitate Skibbow. The man had obviously tipped right over the edge and was now free-falling into his own personal inferno. He should be shipped off to a long-term care institution for treatment and maybe some selective memory erasure. But Dr Dobbs insisted the psychosis could be treated here; and Gerald was technically an ESA internee, which brought its own complications. It was a bad duty.

  The lounge fell silent when the three of them came in. Not that there were many people using it; four or five inmates and a dozen staff. Gerald responded to the attention with a frightened stare, checking faces. He frowned in puzzlement as one woman with Oriental features and vivid copper hair gave him a sympathetic half smile.

  Jansen quickly steered him over to a settee halfway between the window and the bar and sat him down. “What would you like to eat, Gerald?”

  “Um . . . I’ll have the same as you.”

  “I’ll get you a salad,” Kovak said, and turned to go over to the bar. Which was his first mistake.

  Something smashed into the middle of his back, knocking him forwards completely off balance. He went crashing painfully onto the ground. Auto-balance and unarmed combat programs went primary, interfacing to roll him smoothly to one side. He regained his feet in a fluid motion.

  Gerald and the other nurse were locked together, each trying to throw the other to the ground. Jansen selected an option from the neural nanonics menu. His feet took a pace and a half forwards, and his weight shifted. One arm came around in a fast arc. The blow caught Gerald on his shoulder, which toppled him sideways. Before he could compensate, the back of his legs came into contact with Jansen’s outstretched leg. He tripped, the weight of the other supervisory nurse quickening his fall.

  Gerald yelled in pain as he landed on his elbow, only to be smothered below the bulk of the other nurse. When he raised his head the lounge door was five metres away. So close!

  “Let me go,” he begged. “She’s my daughter. I have to save her.”

  “Shut up you prize pillock,” Jansen grunted.

  “Now that’s not nice.”

  Jansen spun around to see the redheaded woman standing behind him. “Er . . . I. Yes.” Shame was making his face became uncomfortably warm. It also seemed to be enervating his neural nanonics display. “I’m sorry, it was unprofessional. He’s just so annoying.”

  “You should try being married to him for twenty years.”

  Jansen’s face registered polite incomprehension. The woman wasn’t an inmate. She was wearing a smart blue dress, civilian clothing. But he didn’t remember her on the staff.

  She smiled briskly, grabbed hold of the front of his tunic, and threw him six metres clean through the air. Jansen’s scream was more of shock than of pain. Until he hit the ground. That impact was pure agony, and his neural nanonics had shut down, allowing every volt of pain to flow cleanly through his nerves.

  The other nurse who was still wrapped around Gerald managed to get out one dull grunt of surprise before the woman hit him. Her fist shattered his jaw, sending a spurt of blood splashing across Gerald’s hair.

  By that time one of the other sanatorium staff in the lounge had enough presence of mind to datavise an alarm code at the room’s net processor. Sirens started wailing. A grid of metal bars started to slide up out of the floor, sealing off the open balcony doors.

  Three burly nurses were closing on the red-haired woman as Gerald blinked up at her in amazement. She winked at him and raised an arm high, finger pointing to the ceiling. A bracelet of white fire ignited around her wrist.

  “Shit,” the leader of the three nurses yelped. He nearly pitched over as he tried desperately to reverse his headlong rush.

  “It’s a fucking possessed.”

  “Back! Get back!”

  “Where the hell did she come from?”

  “Go for it, babe,” one of the inmates roared jubilantly.

  A rosette of white fire exploded from her hand, dissolving into a hundred tiny spheres almost as soon as it appeared. They smashed into the ceiling and walls and furniture. Sparks cascaded down as small plumes of black smoke squirted out. Flames began to take hold. Fire alarms added their clamour to the initial alert. Then the lights went out and the alarms were silenced.

  “Come on, Gerald,” the woman said. She pulled him to his feet.

  “No,” he squeaked in terror. “You’re one of them. Let me go, please. I can’t be one of you again. I can’t take that again. Please, my daughter.”

  “Shut up, and get a move on. We’re going to find Marie.”

  Gerald gaped at her. “What do you know of her?”

  “That she needs you, very badly. Now come on!”

  “You know?” he snivelled. “How can you know?”

  “Come on.” She tugged at him as she started towards the lounge door. It was as if the grapple arm of a heavy-load cargo mechanoid had attached itself to him.

  The steward raised his head above the bar to see what was happening. Various inmates and staff had dived for cover behind the furniture. The terrifying possessed woman was striding purposefully for the door, hauling a cowering Skibbow along. He datavised a codelock order at the door, then opened
an emergency channel to the net processor. It didn’t respond. His hand curled around the nervejam stick, ready to—

  “Hey you!” called the woman.

  A streamer of white fire smacked straight into his forehead.

  “Naughty,” she said grimly.

  Gerald gibbered quietly as the steward slumped forwards, smoke rising from the shallow crater in his temple. “Oh, dear God, what are you?”

  “Don’t blow it for me now, Gerald.” She stood in front of the door. The room’s air rushed past her, ruffling her long copper tresses. Then the air flow reversed, turning to a howling hurricane with a solid core. It smashed into the door, buckling the reinforced composite.

  She stepped through the gap, pulling Gerald after her. “Now we run,” she told him happily.

  As the sanatorium was operated by the Royal Navy the guards were armed. It didn’t make any difference, they weren’t front-line combat troops. Whenever one of them got near to Gerald and the woman she would use her white fire to devastating effect. The asteroid’s internal security centre could trace her position purely because of the wave of destruction she generated around herself. All electronics and power circuits were ruptured by flares of white fire, doors were simply ripped apart, environmental ducts were battered and split, mechanoids reduced to slag. She did it automatically, a defensive manoeuvre burning clean any conceivable threat in front of her. Crude but effective.

  The asteroid went to an immediate status two defence alert. Royal Marines were rushed from their barracks to the sanatorium.

  But as with all asteroid settlements, everything was packed close together, and made as compact as possible. It took the woman and Gerald ninety seconds to get from the lounge to the sanatorium’s nearest entrance. Sensors and cameras in the public hall caught her emerging from the splintered door. Terrified pedestrians sprinted from the vicious tendrils of white fire she unleashed; it was almost as though she were using them as whips to drive people away from her. Then the images vanished as she hammered at the net processors and sensors.

  The Royal Marine commander coordinating the emergency at least had the presence of mind to shut down the lifts around the hall. If she wanted out, she’d have to walk. And when she did, she’d run smack into the marines now deploying in a pincer movement around her.

  Both squads were edging cautiously down the public hall, hurrying civilians out of the way. They approached the sanatorium’s wrecked entrance from opposite directions, chemical projectile rifles held ready, electronic warfare blocks alert for any sign of the distortion pattern given off by a possessed. When they came into view of each other they froze, covering the length of the hall with their rifles. No one was left between them.

  The squad captain of one side shouldered his weapon. “Where the fuck did she go?”

  “I knew they’d stop the lifts,” the redhead said in satisfaction. “Standard tactics for dealing with the possessed is to block all nearby transport systems to prevent us from spreading. Bloody good job they were on the ball today.”

  Gerald agreed, but didn’t say anything. He was concentrating on the rungs in front of his face, not daring to look down.

  The possessed woman might have smashed open all the doors in the medical facility, but once they were out in the hall she had stood in front of the lift doors and made a parting motion with her hands. The lift doors had obeyed, sliding open silently. After that they had started to climb down the ladder set in the wall of the shaft. There wasn’t much light to see where he was putting his hands and feet, just some sort of bluish radiance coming from the woman above him. Gerald didn’t want to see how she was making it.

  It was cold in the shaft, the air tasting both wet and metallic. And silent, too, the darkness above and below swallowing all sounds. Every minute or so he could just make out another door in the shaft wall; the buzz of conversation and tiny slivers of light oozing around the seals.

  “Careful,” she said. “You’re near the bottom now. Ten more rungs.”

  The light increased, and he risked a glance down. A metal grid slicked with condensation glinted dully at the foot of the ladder. Gerald stood on it, shivering slightly and rubbing his arms. Mechanical clunks started to rumble down from above.

  The possessed woman jumped nimbly past the last two rungs and gave him an enthusiastic smile. “Stand still,” she said, and put her hands on either side of his head, spreading her fingers over his ears.

  Gerald quivered at her touch. Her hands were starting to glow. This was it. The start of the pain. Soon he would hear the demented whispers emerging from the beyond, and one of them would pour into his body again. All hope would die then. I might as well refuse, and let her torture kill me. Better that than . . .

  She took her hands away, their internal glimmer fading away. “I think that should do it. I’ve broken down the debrief nanonics. The doctors and police would only use you to see where we were and what we were doing, then they’d send you to sleep.”

  “What?” He started to probe his skull with cautious fingers. It seemed intact. “Is that all you did?”

  “Yes. Not so bad was it?” She beckoned. “There’s a hatch here which leads to the maintenance tunnels. It’s only got a mechanical lock, so we won’t trigger any processors.”

  “Then what?” he asked bleakly.

  “Why, we get you off Guyana and on your way to Valisk to find Marie, of course. What did you think, Gerald?” She grasped the handle on the metre-high hatch and shoved it upwards. The hatch swung open, revealing only more darkness behind.

  Gerald felt like crying. His head was all funny, hot and light, which made it very hard for him to think. “Why? Why are you doing this? Are you just playing with me?”

  “Of course I’m not playing, Gerald. I want Marie back to normal more than anything. She’s all we have left now. You know that. You saw the homestead.”

  He sank to his knees, looking up at her flat-featured face and immaculate hair, trying desperately to understand. “But why? Who are you to want this?”

  “Oh, dearest Gerald, I’m sorry. This is Pou Mok’s body. It takes up far too much concentration to maintain my own appearance, especially with what I was doing up there.”

  Gerald watched numbly as the copper hair darkened and the skin of her face began to flow into new features. No, not new. Old. So very very old. “Loren,” he gasped.

  Chapter 15

  After five centuries of astounding technological endeavour and determined economic sacrifice by the Lunar nation, the God of War, Mars, had finally been pacified. The hostile red gleam which had so dominated Earth’s night skies for millennia was extinguished. Now the planet had an atmosphere, complete with vast swirls of white and grey clouds; blooms of vegetation were expanding across the deserts, patches of sepia and dark green vegetation staining the tracts of rust-red soil. To an approaching starship it seemed, at first, almost identical to any other terracompatible planet to be found within the Confederation’s boundaries. Disparities became apparent only when the extent of the remaining deserts was revealed, accounting for three-fifths of the surface; and there was a definite sparsity of free water. Although there were thousands of individual crater lakes, Mars had only one major body of water, the Lowell Sea, a gently meandering ribbon which wrapped itself around the equator. Given the scale involved it appeared as though a wide river were flowing constantly around the planet. Closer inspection showed that circumnavigation would be impossible. The Lowell Sea had formed as water collected in the hundreds of large asteroid-impact craters which pocked the planet’s equator in an almost straight line.

  Population, too, was one of the planet’s quirks: a phenomenon which was also visible from orbit, provided you knew what to look for. Anyone searching the nightside for the usual sprawling iridescent patches of light which marked the kind of vigorous human cities normally present after five centuries of colonization would be disappointed; only six major urban areas had sprung up so far. Towns and villages were also present amid
the rolling steppes, but in total the number of people living on the surface didn’t exceed three million. Phobos and Deimos were heavily industrialized, providing homes for a further half-million workers and their families. They at least followed a standard development pattern.

  Apart from stage one colony planets in their formative years, Mars had the smallest human population of any world in the Confederation. However, that was where comparisons ended. The Martian technoeconomy was highly developed, providing its citizens with a reasonable standard of living, though nothing like the socioeconomic index enjoyed by Edenists or the Kulu Kingdom.

  One other aspect of mature Confederation societies missing from Mars was a Strategic Defence network. The two asteroid moons were defended, of course; both of them were important SII centres with spaceports boasting a high level of starship traffic. But the planet was left open; there was nothing of any value on its surface to threaten or hold hostage or steal. The trillions of fuseodollars poured into the terraforming project were dispersed evenly throughout the new biosphere. Oxygen and geneered plants were not the kinds of targets favoured by pirates. Mars was the most expensive single project ever undertaken by the human race, yet its intrinsic value was effectively zero. Its real value was as the focus of aspirations for a whole nation of exiles, to whom it had become the modern promised land.

  None of this was readily apparent to Louise, Genevieve, and Fletcher as they observed the planet growing in the lounge’s holoscreen. The difference from Norfolk was apparent (Genevieve said Mars looked worn-out rather than brand-new) but none of them knew how to interpret what they were seeing in geotechnical terms. All they cared about was the lack of glowing red cloud.

  “Can you tell if there are any possessed down there?” Louise asked.

  “Alas no, Lady Louise. The planet lies far outside my second sight. All I can feel is the shape of this doughty ship. We could be alone in the universe for all the perception I have.”

  “Don’t say that,” Genevieve said. “We’ve come here to get away from horrible things.”