The Saints of Salvation [British Ed.]

by Peter F. Hamilton

  ‘You are such an odd fatalist.’

  ‘Yeah, I know.’

  Yirella glanced back at the displays playing within the windows. The huge flotilla of Calmissiles that were racing out into the gateway system was now over a quarter of a million kilometres away and spreading wide. Forty per cent of them were heading straight in for the gateway, while the remainder were targeting the ring, fanning out so they would cover every industrial station. Sensors were showing her thousands of Olyix ships accelerating towards the invaders from across the system. The majority were on course to intercept the wormhole terminus, while the rest were outbound to confront the Calmissiles.

  ‘Multiplying,’ Immanueel announced.

  Again, there were few visual clues, even from Ainsley’s sensor fronds, leaving Yirella to rely on the armada’s tactical network. The portals covering the Calmissile fuselages expanded out to half a kilometre in diameter. Hundreds of additional Calmissiles flew out of each one. It was like a firework starburst, but inverted, with lightsinks rather than dazzling flares. The newcomers also started accelerating away at a thousand gees. Five minutes later, they too expanded and released another batch of Calmissiles.

  ‘Half a million active portals effected,’ Immanueel said ten minutes later. ‘That should occupy their ships, if nothing else. We’ll have complete access to the entire system in twenty-four hours.’

  Despite having tens of thousands of ships and thousands of industrial stations in the ring, the Olyix seemed uncertain where to direct their forces. As Yirella predicted, every ship within an AU of the gateway headed there to defend it, while the remainder were dispersed to deal with the proliferation of Calmissiles.

  Approach speeds were a big factor. Resolution ships simply didn’t have the kind of acceleration that could catch the Calmissiles. They had to go for head-on interceptions, using entanglement suppression with supreme accuracy. The armada tactics were simple enough. If a Resolution ship was flying to intercept, the Calmissile would manoeuvre to strike it. While they were still ten thousand kilometres apart, the Calmissile fuselage portal would expand so that a battle cruiser next to the portal’s twin would open fire with graviton beams or ultra-powered X-ray lasers. If they missed, it didn’t matter; the Resolution ship would be travelling away from the gateway system at a velocity that would take too long to cancel before it could return to the ring or anywhere else it could be of use. The same went for a Calmissile that succumbed to suppression and broke apart from solar wind collision shock. It had diverted the Resolution ship from defending strategic assets, so it had achieved its goal.

  Despite the scale of the armada forces, and the importance of reaching the gateway, Yirella kept focused on the seven thousand Calmissiles that were heading in for the star. It wasn’t an obvious manoeuvre; their course vectors should be interpreted as taking them to the ring on the far side of the star from the wormhole terminus. But they were critical to the assault plan. In total, it would take them three hours to reach the corona, by which time the Olyix might realize their true goal. But if it did take them that long, she knew, it would be too late.

  Three major squadrons of mixed Resolution and Deliverance ships attacked the wormhole terminus as it sped across the system. Tactically, they faced the same problem as the ships trying to tackle the Calmissiles. Closing velocity gave them a single chance, and the armada could see them coming, plotting their trajectories with remarkable precision. Multiplying Calmissiles backed up by battle cruisers took care of two squadrons, while Ainsley’s phasefolded shield devastated the third.

  Eighty-seven Resolution ships were orbiting the huge star, thirty million kilometres above its equator and the titanic black power ring that was spinning fast above the fringes of the corona, stirring up a necklace of gigantic prominences. As the seven-thousand-strong formation of Calmissiles streaked in, their target now obvious, the Olyix finally responded to the incursion. Every ship they had within fifty million kilometres accelerated towards the threat at their full ninety-gee acceleration. Even if the Calmissiles punched a thousand holes through the power band, it wouldn’t have had much effect on such a vast structure, but the Olyix clearly weren’t taking any chances.

  ‘Too little, too late,’ Yirella murmured in satisfaction.

  The Resolution ships were good, and by now the Olyix were refining their techniques, clumping three Resolution ships together and triangulating the entanglement suppression effect. They started picking off the Calmissiles on the fringe of the formation, but the armada only needed one.

  When it was fifteen million kilometres above the star, the Calmissile stopped accelerating. Its fuselage portal expanded, and Ainsley slipped out. He fired eight missiles with quantum-variant warheads at the power band.

  ‘Eight?’ Yirella queried.

  ‘We have to be very certain,’ Ainsley replied, then slipped back through the portal to resume his escort duty at the wormhole terminus.

  The first two q-v missiles detonated squarely on the power band. It disintegrated so fast, the remaining six missiles never even had a target.

  She’d seen it before, but Yirella still watched in appalled awe as the power ring shattered and died, flinging out its uncountable multitudes of fragments, tumbling radiant daggers the size of Earth’s moon.

  All across the gateway system, the Olyix wormholes died, cutting them off from their galaxy-wide empire of sensor stations.

  ‘We did it!’ she exclaimed in delight. ‘It will take them centuries to build another power ring, and they’re locked into this system until they do!’

  Kenelm nodded cautiously. ‘Safer,’ sie said. ‘There are still thousands of Olyix stations out there, and look what we built with just the resources available on the Morgan.’

  ‘No,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘We’ve broken their grip. They’ll diverge now, just like we did. The monoculture is broken.’ And I’m going to make sure their god can’t restart it with another message.

  ‘The gateway is still intact.’

  She pulled the latest sensor data out of the tactical network. The gateway sphere was unaffected by the loss of the power ring. ‘We were pretty sure killing the power ring wouldn’t affect the gateway; it has to be powered from inside. So the corpus conjecture was right. There has to be another star in there.’

  ‘Which means this was a binary star?’

  ‘Yes. That . . . may be a problem.’

  ‘The nova?’

  ‘If we hit the enclave star with our neutron star, then the enclave boundary itself will fail. You’ll revert to a binary star system with one star going nova. That will probably trigger the second, too.’

  ‘So we’ll wind up with a supernova.’

  ‘High possibility, yes. And if it does, the radiation will kill everything for fifty lightyears. So we really have got to safeguard the wormhole terminus. It’s the only way any of us are getting out of this alive now.’

  ‘So let’s hope we can get into the enclave.’

  Now that the Olyix had learned how Calmissiles could be Trojans, allowing the armada ships access through them, their tactics changed. Deliverance and Resolution ships that had been racing to intercept Calmissiles heading for the ring abruptly diverted to head for the Calmissiles flying to the gateway, while thousands of the ships assigned to guard the gateway left their passive englobement formation to join the attack against the incoming forces.

  Calmissiles began to vanish from the tactical display at an increasing rate.

  Yirella frowned at the data. ‘How are they doing that?’ she asked.

  ‘Collision,’ Immanueel replied. ‘The ship oneminds are sacrificing themselves. The Resolution ships are aligning directly on the Calmissiles. That way, the suppression effect will definitely reach the Calmissile even though there will be no time for the Resolution ship to move out of the way.’

  ‘But we have a hundred and twenty thousand Calmissiles heading for the gateway. And us! They have . . .’

  ‘Twenty-eight thousand s
hips within reach,’ Immanueel said.

  ‘Saints! And they’re all going to suicide? They really are fanatics, aren’t they?’

  ‘Our Calmissiles will have to decelerate. Reduced closing velocity will give the Olyix forces a tactical advantage.’

  ‘But we still have a numerical advantage, right?’

  ‘For the gateway assault, yes. We can deploy another two multiple salvos, but ultimately they have more ships. We need to get inside the enclave before they arrive.’

  The armada used the remaining salvos when the Calmissiles closed to within twenty million kilometres of the gateway. That distance had become the Resolution ships’ killing field. At reduced velocity, the Calmissiles were far more susceptible to the suppression effect. Hundreds, then thousands, started to vanish from the tactical feeds. The remainder expanded their portals, and thousands more Calmissiles came flashing through. There were far too many for the Olyix to stop.

  Just before phase four was due to begin, Yirella opened Dellian’s icon. ‘How’s it going down there?’

  ‘It’s boring, and the armour itches.’

  ‘Oh, poor you. But at least everything’s going according to plan.’

  ‘If it’s going according to plan, why did I have to be in armour for a day before we reach the gateway?’

  ‘Wow, peak miserable. If things hadn’t gone according to plan, the wormhole would’ve collapsed, the Morgan would’ve been dumped back into spacetime somewhere close to the gateway star, and ten thousand Resolution ships would be hunting us down. So suck it up, you in your luxury comfort blanket, mister.’

  ‘You have a very weird concept of luxury.’

  She grinned. ‘Not at all. The croissants this morning were the wrong shade of golden; so there you are: I share your suffering.’

  ‘Oh, great Saints!’

  ‘The battle cruisers are portalling to the gateway in two minutes.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m watching the tacticals. It’s looking good.’

  ‘Loss numbers are top end of the projection, which I don’t like, but yes. So far we’re holding it together.’

  ‘You’re going to monitor the squad, aren’t you? When we go in, I mean.’

  ‘Monitor, yes. But that’s it.’

  ‘I know. Tilliana and Ellici are the best. It’s just, you’re my guardian angel, that’s all. You know that.’

  ‘I’ll be watching.’

  Thousands of Calmissiles were decelerating to rendezvous around the ephemeral gateway. Seven Olyix fortress stations were orbiting above it, along with a final defensive shell of nine thousand Resolution ships. Every Calmissile expanded its portal, and armada battle cruisers started to fly through.

  The fight lasted for two hours. Debris and energy eruptions saturated the space around the gateway, which at times glimmered as bright as the star as it refracted the actinic explosions in short-lived unsymmetrical waves. But by the time the wormhole terminus and Ainsley matched orbit, there were no Olyix left within ten million kilometres of the gateway. Tens of thousands of Resolution ships were en route from across the entire system.

  ‘They’re abandoning everything,’ Yirella said. ‘Most of their stations in the ring have only got a few dozen defenders left.’

  ‘It’s going to be tough protecting the gateway once we’re through,’ Kenelm conceded. ‘If we can get through.’

  ‘The defenders only have to cover us for a while – just enough for us to put phase four in motion.’

  ‘Our sensor probes report the boundary to be open,’ Immanueel said. ‘The interface is a simple pattern of negative energy that does not appear to be harmful.’

  Yirella regarded the shimmering orb with immense distrust. ‘That strikes me as unlikely. There’s got to be something on the other side to attack us when we pass through.’

  ‘Yes, but not yet. Time is slower inside the enclave. They might only just be registering our appearance. It will take days, if not longer, in their timeframe, to assemble a defence fleet.’

  ‘Once we’re inside, it won’t take so long. We’ll all be in the same time flow.’

  ‘Yes, but until we’re through we have an advantage.’

  Yirella reviewed the hordes of approaching Resolution ships. The numbers were bad news. ‘We have to safeguard the wormhole terminus. It’s our only route out of this system afterwards.’

  ‘Acknowledged,’ Immanueel said. ‘Once the neutron star has exited, we will withdraw the terminus from this system at high acceleration. At the very least, the Olyix will have to split their forces. We conclude that most will enter the enclave in pursuit.’

  ‘Okay. So when are we going in?’

  ‘Right now,’ Ainsley said.

  Yirella felt her heart rate bump up. Fighting their way across the gateway system had been tense, but she had confidence in their warships and tactics. This, though – this was truly a step into the unknown.

  She used her neural interface to pull in as much real-time tactical data as she could. Battle cruisers were taking up position outside the gateway, with large particles flowing out of the wormhole terminus. As soon as they emerged, their copper coating swirled away to reveal weapons platforms, adding to the protective layers that were building up.

  ‘See you on the other side,’ Ainsley said.

  She wanted to say, Wait, no, be careful – just something that might help, might let him know she cared. But the big white ship accelerated smoothly and slipped easily through the shimmering surface. Seconds later, a stream of armada battle cruisers followed. The wormhole terminus was manoeuvred until it was holding position a mere two kilometres above the gateway’s ethereal surface. Thousands more battle cruisers accelerated out of the wormhole and vanished immediately into the enclave.

  ‘Any response?’ Yirella asked desperately.

  ‘None,’ Immanueel replied. ‘I have no contact with any aspects of my corpus self that have gone through. In fact, this aspect group is now in a minority; our intellect is shrinking. It is an unusual circumstance, and one I find disconcerting. Being separated into two conscious entities is unnatural.’

  Yirella exchanged a look with Kenelm. Having Immanueel confess that was somehow demoralizing.

  Most of the armada was now inside the enclave. Or through the gateway, anyway, she told herself. Oh, Saints, what if it’s the most elaborate trap in the universe? What if any species that manages to break free of the initial invasion is lured here? What if—

  The Morgan accelerated forwards, quickly clearing the wormhole. Within seconds its nose was entering the tenuous photonic bubble of the gateway. She couldn’t intervene. She couldn’t stop this now even if she used every network subversion she possessed.

  ‘Ohhh, shit!’

  Eyes jammed shut to deflect the agonizing death blow as fire and fury ripped the Morgan apart.

  Nothing.

  She looked around. Tactical displays were building swiftly as the Morgan regained contact with the armada and . . . Ainsley. Yes!

  But there was surely something wrong with the visual image; the cafe windows were showing a swirl of colourful clouds. It was as if they’d emerged into a gas giant’s atmosphere. Which she knew was wrong. She just couldn’t judge the perspective – to start with.

  ‘Great Saints, it’s a nebula,’ she gasped.

  ‘You made it, then?’ Ainsley said.

  Yirella let out a long breath of relief. ‘That we did. So what local intelligence have you got for us?’

  ‘Even my sensor fronds are having trouble seeing through this murk. They’re spreading out now, so we should get a more comprehensive picture, but it’s not easy. The good news is that there aren’t many ships in here, and none of them are close to us. The star has got two power bands wrapped around it, and some other bands above them, which I’m guessing are the exotic matter generators creating this place. There’s only one planet in here, a gas giant; that’s the patch of the nebula that looks like it’s on fire. It’s got a massive energized ion tail, and thousands
of small moons in a polar orbit, which I’m assuming are arkships. Should be able to get some decent resolution on that soon.’

  ‘And the Olyix have no large force of ships here?’ Yirella asked. That just didn’t seem possible.

  ‘This is one big thick nebula, kid. There could be anything hiding in here, especially if it’s not under acceleration. I am detecting some odd . . . twinkles appearing.’

  ‘Twinkles?’

  ‘Points of light that appear, then vanish. Random distribution.’

  ‘Radiation impacts on nebula particles?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Are they a potential threat?’

  ‘Still unknown. Any more dumb questions?’

  She pressed her lips together, not quite in amusement.

  ‘We will dispatch a trio of battle cruisers to the nearest twinkle coordinate to investigate,’ Immanueel said. ‘But the rest of the armada needs to move now. The Olyix will soon be arriving in force behind us. We will set a course for the gas giant. That will suffice until our knowledge base of the enclave expands.’

  *

  The transmitter drone lifted on three small thrusters, each one producing a tiny spire of icy blue static below its fuselage. It slowly rose to head height, then steered itself carefully around the cavern.

  ‘That’ll do,’ Yuri said. ‘It works.’ In his mind, reluctance was warring against eagerness. To get this done. To finish it. But as he had learned so painfully during his career, rushing into a hostile situation never produced a good result.

  ‘Man,’ Alik grumbled. ‘The Wright brothers had a bigger first flight than that.’

  ‘To be fair, they had a bigger beach,’ Calum said. ‘And we’ve had centuries of flight experience since then.’

  ‘I’m sure the brothers would be very proud of all of you,’ Jessika said. ‘But there are a hell of a lot more human ships in the enclave now. They’re starting to move away from the emergence point. We need to do this.’

  Yuri eyed the three other transmitter drones lying on the rumpled rock floor. ‘How many should we send?’

  Callum gave him a puzzled look. ‘Well . . . all of them, of course. We’re not going to get a second chance.’