The Omega Solution

by Peter J Evans

  "-is in your hands, Judas Harrow." Godolkin stood up from the navigation throne. "I have been at these boards for three days, and no longer wish to see them. Maintain course for me, and I'll be back as soon as I have an answer."

  He headed for the hatch. As he reached it, he glanced back, and saw Harrow holding the beaker out to him.

  "Don't you want your coffee?"

  "You drink it, mutant. I'm not thirsty."

  He showered before heading for the Blasphemy's stateroom. Three days is a long time to go without moving, even for an Iconoclast First-Class. Needle-jets of scalding water took the dried sweat from his skin and the aches from his shoulders. The yacht had not been built for someone of his dimensions.

  On his way back up the spinal corridor he almost looked in on the girl, but decided to leave her be for the moment. She was probably still trapped within her own personal hell, and Godolkin knew that his appearance could be intimidating. It was supposed to be. It would do the child no good at all to see his seamed face glowering at her from the stateroom hatch.

  Child, he thought, as he walked on. Sixteen years-old. Gods, what had he been doing at that age? He could barely recall. Basic training, he guessed, or had that come before? To be honest, his early life was more or less lost to him. The Iconoclast part of him, of his history, was the only part that mattered.

  And the part that the Blasphemy had taken from him, when her fangs found his throat on Wodan.

  He forced the thought away, taking a controlled breath to calm himself. He had reached Durham Red's stateroom.

  In the time since Gadara she had painted the words "KEEP OUT" on the hatch, with a cartoon vampire face beneath, grinning around massive triangular fangs. Godolkin took another calming breath, then keyed the lock-panel set into the frame. "Mistress?"

  "Go away."

  Her voice through the panel's speaker sounded hoarse and tired. Unless Harrow had lied to him, it would be three days since she had fed. That was a long time for her - she usually took blood every day, although she could go longer, and sometimes used a synthesised substitute when there was no real blood to be had. She never liked it much, though. She'd once described it to Godolkin as being like a human trying to survive on cat food.

  Godolkin didn't know what a cat was, and hadn't cared to ask. "Is that an order, Blasphemy?"

  "Yes. No. Sneck, wait a minute, willya?" There was a pause, scuffling noises. Then, "Godolkin?"

  "I'm here."

  "I'm giving you an order now, okay? If you come in here, you are absolutely not to freak out. Understand?"

  "Thy will be done, mistress."

  The hatch slid open. Godolkin stepped through and saw what lay on Durham Red's gel-bed. He stared.

  "Blasphemy," he hissed. "I cannot believe- What is this?"

  She gave him a lopsided grin. "Souvenirs?"

  Godolkin forced himself still. The Blasphemy had ordered him to stay calm, and he had no choice but to obey. Even though his every instinct screamed out to scoop her "souvenirs" off the bed and smash them to atoms.

  Before him on the silken sheet stood six small canisters of dark metal, their outer shells seared black and studded with glassy fragments. Each had been opened, split along a hidden seam, and in front of them, laid out in a neat row, were six thumb-sized bars of crystal.

  Durham Red had brought Lavannos tech aboard Crimson Hunter.

  "This was not our intention," he said finally.

  "I know." She dropped down onto the edge of the bed, next to the canisters. She looked tired, her skin tight and grey on her bones. She must have gone the full three days without feeding. Perhaps she had been as driven as he these past seventy-five hours, concentrating on the task at hand to the exclusion of all else. Or, in her madness, simply forgotten to eat.

  Godolkin could not have cared less. "Was this your plan all along, Blasphemy? To save this technology rather than destroy it?"

  "No." She shook her head vigorously. "No, it wasn't like that. I'd already set the charges when I saw these. But something about them... I don't know. They're not all that different to data cores from my time, so..." She trailed off, and shrugged.

  "Why?" Godolkin asked.

  "You know why."

  "The location of Earth?"

  She didn't move, or speak. She didn't need to. The fate of her vanished homeworld had obsessed her since the Lavannos incident, when she had discovered that the frozen, ravaged little planet was once Earth's moon. And despite the awful calamity which had befallen Lavannos en route to the Shantima system, Durham Red still believed that the location of her lost home was inextricably linked to the translation drive project.

  Small wonder, then, that she had fallen under the dark spell of these relics.

  "What would you know from this that you do not know already, Blasphemy?" He folded his arms. "Even if your Earth went the way of Lavannos, these crystals date from a time years before that."

  "I know," she sighed. "But-"

  "Assuming, of course, that anything remains in these trinkets but broken shadows. If their journey through Hell and back was not enough to wreck them, surely the Iconoclast bombardment must have been."

  "Maybe." It was an exhausted whisper.

  "Mistress, these relics are cursed. They bring madness and death to anyone who touches them. Look at yourself. When did you last feed?"

  "I was busy," she snapped. "They took longer to open than I'd thought."

  "And now you have opened them, what? We went to Gadara to destroy the last remnants of Lavannos. Instead, you have preserved the very data on which that devil-project was founded. The most dangerous part of the entire moon still remains, thanks to you. Our efforts on Gadara have been for nothing."

  Red looked up at him, eyes aflame. "No, Godolkin, not for nothing. I've got them, and the Tenebrae haven't. They're mad enough to try putting the whole thing back together again, to try moving planets around for fun. I'm not."

  She got up and put her hand on his shoulder. "Look, when I've read what's in them I swear on my life that you can personally put them on the deck and stomp them. Okay? You can dance a jig on the pieces, and me and Harrow will accompany you on kazoos."

  "Kazoos?"

  "But I've got to read them first. If I don't find out what I can, it will eat me up from the inside. I've spent too many nights thinking about this. I won't get another chance." She gave his shoulder an affectionate slap. "So do me a favour and keep an open mind, okay?"

  "An open mind is like an open wound, Blasphemy. Prey to infection." He gave the crystals one last glare. "But on condition that I, personally, get to crush them once you are done, I will assist you."

  "Good lad." She took a shaky breath. "While you're in such a helpful mood, there is one other thing I kind of need from you right now..."

  Iconoclast, he thought darkly, you should have seen this coming while it was still on the launch-pad. He turned his head away from her, exposing the side of his neck. "Do it, then. Drink me and be done with it."

  "You know," she breathed, "that's almost exactly what Tola said." Then: "Shit. I'd clean forgotten about her." She stepped back. "How's she doing?"

  "Not well." Godolkin dipped his head again. Perhaps he'd keep the blood in his veins a while longer. "In fact, it is for her sake that I am here."

  "And not mine?" Red gave him a tired smile. "I'm hurt, I really am. And just when we were getting on so well."

  The planet Elam was twenty hours away at cruising velocity. Godolkin let Judas Harrow take control of Hunter for that time. He preferred to keep an eye on the Blasphemy, and what she was doing with the info-crystals.

  If Red had assumed that reading the ancient data was going to be easy, she turned out to be sadly mistaken. After almost a whole standard day working on them in Crimson Hunter's cramped engineering section, all she could say for certain was that the crystals contained information. Vast amounts of it, untold terabytes in each core.

  And all of it completely inaccessible.

&n
bsp; The crystals, Godolkin was surprised to discover, had not been damaged. The canisters surrounding them must have been fantastically strong to have protected the delicate structures within from everything they had suffered. They had lasted five hundred years in the searing heat of some hellish, nameless other dimension, then five hundred more of icy cold in orbit around Mandus. They had been blasted by an Iconoclast kill-fleet, sent tumbling through space to be picked up by the Harvesters' gravity web, then finally split apart by the less-than-expert hands of Durham Red. And still they had survived.

  Red herself had viewed video footage in the Tycho operations room on Lavannos, images that must have been held in a crystalline matrix similar to this. The humans of that day had certainly built to last.

  The info-crystals were comprised of something called "active silicon". It was a product of Red's own time; a bizarre hybrid of liquid crystal and memory-plastic, a self-modifying substance with a built-in affinity for forming complex lattices within its own structure. Properly controlled, active silicon formed the basis for some of the most advanced computers ever built, quantum CPUs with endlessly mutable architecture.

  But after a thousand years buried within the crust of Lavannos, and their more recent pounding, something very odd had happened to the crystals. Perhaps in response to the possibility of losing their contents, the crystals had somehow become a fractal encryption of their own structure. They had mutated into something designed to hide and protect the information within. They had ceased to become libraries, and turned into fortresses.

  There was an irony to that which Godolkin found pleasing. Durham Red, however, was less than happy, as he told Judas Harrow a short time later. "She was about to crush them with her bare hands," he said. "I reminded her that the task had been promised to me."

  They stopped at the entrance to Hunter's fourth stateroom. For the past four days it had been home to one very frightened, and completely silent, Harvester girl.

  She was waiting for them as the hatch slid open. Godolkin was encouraged to note that she had already dressed herself for the transfer, donning the work-stained coveralls and long, pocket-studded robe that she'd been wearing when Harrow had brought her aboard. Harvesters wore no uniform or insignia to show them for what they were. But this utterly utilitarian outfit, devoid of decoration or unnecessary detail, marked her more clearly than any badge.

  The girl was slowly coming out of her nightmare, that much was certain. Language, however, was still an alien thing to her. She would not speak, would not react to the spoken word.

  This, Godolkin hoped, would pass in time.

  They led her out, to the rear of the spinal corridor. A trapdoor had opened there: the landing spine was down, creating a set of steps down from the corridor to the exit hatch. Unexpectedly, Durham Red was there waiting for them. "Hey," she said.

  Tola raised her head, just a fraction. Red stepped forwards and lifted the Harvester's face, gloved fingertips under her chin. "I'm not sure if you can understand me, kid. Maybe you will later. Just wanted you to know I've got my fingers crossed for you."

  Some ancient luck-ritual, Godolkin guessed. He said nothing.

  "I can't come down to see you off," Red was telling the girl. "They'd recognise me, and that could put you in danger. So if anyone asks, you never met me, okay? Trust me, it's safer."

  As she took her hand away, the girl's head dropped forward again. But Tola made an odd little pecking movement as it did. It might, just possibly, have been a nod.

  Red grinned and winked at her. Then she spun on her heel and headed back up the corridor.

  Godolkin watched her go. Behind him, Harrow cleared his throat. "Iconoclast?"

  "Take the girl down, Harrow. I'll follow."

  He heard them start to descend. When they were out of sight he reached around to the back of his belt, under the jacket he was wearing, and took out the plasma derringer. He checked the charge was set high, the battery full, the safety off. He'd have preferred to take his holy weapon, but that would have given his identity away. He carried a common gun, wore common clothes, hid his modified right eye under heavy goggles. Today he was a starship captain, and nothing more.

  Unless, of course, things went badly.

  Once the gun was concealed again, he turned to the steps and trotted down. Harrow was already keying the inner hatch open. He ducked under it as it slid up into its housing, and stepped aside to let Tola through. Godolkin joined them in the airlock, straightening his jacket, and closed the inner hatch to let Harrow open the outer. No one spoke.

  There was a heavy, complicated noise, the multiple impact of magnetic latches, and the armoured outer hatch split down the middle and swung apart. Wind battered through, and driving rain.

  Harrow winced and ducked his head against it. "Nice," he muttered. With that, he stepped out into the storm.

  Godolkin followed, making sure Tola was slightly ahead of him as she walked close to Harrow, and that both his companions would be free of his line of fire should anything untoward happen. He didn't think it would - and everything seemed above board. But one could never be certain.

  Away from Hunter's landing spine, the storm was clear to hit them as hard as it liked. They had set down on a coastline, a jagged shelf of wet grey rock that angled steeply into the ocean. There was no beach. The rock simply ended above lashing, leaping water.

  There was a hard wind coming in off the sea. The waves, foamed-topped and seething, were slapping so far up the stony shelf that they were almost hitting Hunter, and water was already falling from the yacht's wings in sheets. The air stank of salt and rotted weed.

  Harrow said something, his voice lost to the storm, and pointed. He had spotted the Harvester camp. Godolkin, with his sight augmented and eyes shielded by the goggles, had seen it already. It was very like that on Gadara; a closely-assembled cluster of temporary buildings. The only permanent structure was the massive lock-store, and although most of the camp was set away from the sea's edge, a series of cranes and derricks had been set up on the rocky shelf.

  The camp seemed lower than that on Gadara, the buildings more slope-sided. As though the foul weather was beating them flat.

  The Harvesters' ship, Fortune and Glory, crouched on an area of flat rock nearby. In design it was similar to the ill-fated Venture, but this vessel was much larger. If Venture had carried forty-eight Harvesters, the group that called Fortune and Glory home could easily have been twice the size.

  With luck, it was about to get one greater.

  They were met at the entrance to the camp. Six uncomfortable-looking Harvesters closed in on them as they drew near, levelling frag-rifles. Godolkin noticed that two of them still had the safeties on. These were workers who had drawn the short straw, not professional guards.

  He kept his hands loose at his sides while Harrow made his introductions. If either of those safeties came off, he'd paint these rocks with blood.

  Luckily, no carnage was necessary. The Harvesters had been expecting them, or at least the people they claimed to be. Within minutes he, Judas Harrow and the girl were in out of the rain.

  There was a small office built next to the camp's command centre. The three of them were shown in, then left alone. Godolkin scanned the place quickly, judging the area, the layout, the best means of escape and what could be used as cover. It was reflex for him, a relaxing ritual.

  Moments later, the door from the command centre swung open, admitting a man and a woman.

  They were dressed in similar garb to Tola - grubby coveralls, long overgarments covered in pockets and clip-points, soft caps with flip-down visors to protect their eyes from the light of cutting beams. Godolkin looked them up and down, saw from the way their clothes hung that the woman had a pair of knives strapped inside her coat, and the man had secreted a weapon in exactly the same way he had.

  That made him feel slightly more comfortable about these people. He'd not be handing the girl over to fools.

  "Mikah Tallon?" the man asked
. Harrow stepped forwards.

  "That's me, Hets. And this is my captain, Johann Fahn."

  The man clasped Harrow's hand. "Well met, Het Tallon. I'm Abael Langstromm, and this is Dorcas, my wife. Captain Jether apologises for not being able to greet you personally, but he's overseeing the salvage personally today. This accursed weather is making things difficult." He took off his cap and ran a hand back through short, greying hair. "We had a crane fold this morning. Damn near flattened me."

  "Really?" said Harrow. "What is it that's worth so much trouble?"

  Langstromm gave a rather wolfish grin. "The Iconoclasts took some pirates in orbit around Elam, and at least one of the privateers came down on this coastline. As to whether it's all worth it, I'll let you know once we discover if the pirates lost their ship before they took a booty, or after."

  The woman gave him a nudge. "We have guests, beloved, not customers! I'm sorry, Hets, this isn't the kind of business we should be discussing. There are more pressing matters at hand."

  "Indeed." Godolkin drew Tola forwards. "Child?"

  Langstromm's face went grim. "Gods," he breathed. "So young..."

  "And she has seen much. Will you take her?"

  "The crew of the Venture," said Dorcas quietly, "were our rivals, but not our enemies. We'll honour them by taking care of her." She reached out and took Tola's hand. "Well met, Tola Sineon. Welcome to Fortune and Glory."

  An expression flickered across Tola's face, one that might have been the seed of a smile. She gave Harrow and Godolkin a final, fractional tip of the head, then allowed Dorcas to lead her away.

  They all watched her go. "She'll still not speak?" asked Langstromm.

  "A temporary affliction. The horror has robbed her of language, but not her wits. It will pass."

  "I'm sure it will." He slapped the cap back onto his head. "Well, can I offer you hospitality, Hets?"

  Harrow shook his head. "Thank you, Het Langstromm, but we have a launch window. As long as we know the girl is in safer hands than ours, we'll go on our way happy." He threw a glance at Godolkin. "As happy as we ever get, anyway."