The Omega Solution

by Peter J Evans

  "It's true." The fat mutant bobbed his head, jowls flapping. "There are ground conflicts raging on four worlds that we have discovered, preparations for assaults on three more."

  Parmenas nodded vigorously. "These are worlds without populations, attacks without an enemy. The Iconoclasts fight each other."

  Red's head reeled. If this was true... "It's got to be a trap. Some kind of trick."

  "We believe it may be a kind of exercise, a series of wargames," said Enostine. "However, for the humans to do such a thing at the same time as the Conclave is in session, well, it's-"

  "Suicidal," muttered Red.

  "But we are already running out of time." The woman turned back to Dathan. "Sir, the first conflict is already over. The surviving Iconoclast troops on Lantius have been extracted, the bodies removed for burial. There are Harvester ships already in orbit."

  "You see?" Dathan spread his hands. "There'll never be a better time for this. Iconoclast forces in this sector are down by twenty per cent, maybe more, and the rest are in flux. We can get to the Conclave world, occupy it, show the Grand Cabinet what the Iconoclasts are trying to do. They plan to hijack the Conclave, but we'll be there first."

  "If you're right, if this is actually true..." Red met his gaze. "It could work."

  He smiled, teeth gleaming in the dim light. "So. You're with us?"

  She shook her head. "No."

  8. WARZONE

  "It's my fault," snarled Judas Harrow. "I should never have left her."

  He was on the bridge of Crimson Hunter, using the systems board to work on the data the Aranites had given him. He had been at the task for hours. During that time, Matteus Godolkin had kept the yacht at gravity-anchor above Lyricum, not yet willing to leave the gas-giant until he had an idea of where Durham Red might have been taken.

  That she had been taken was certain. Where, and by whom, remained a mystery despite the best efforts of the two men.

  During the power failures, most of the community's internal sense-engines had gone off-line. External scans had been unaffected, and the Aranites, as though trying to salvage some vestige of status from the situation, had uploaded tracking data from the time of the assault. Once he had given up trying to contact Red on the comm-linker Harrow, had worked at it feverishly, separating the multiple traces of spider and raider, mite and missile. Slowly, over the next standard day, he had been able to build up a picture of the assault on Weaver of Paths.

  As it turned out, the raiders had two vessels. They had jumped into the Lyricum system in frighteningly close formation, actually sharing the same jump point. If either ship had been a fraction off course they would have collided in jumpspace, emerging back in to the real universe as little more than free atoms. Making the manoeuvre successfully had been a feat of prodigious skill.

  Weaver of Paths must have realised they were under attack immediately. For a short time Harrow's dissection of the tracking data was made doubly difficult by the sheer number of missiles that had been launched. Luckily, within a second or two most of them had been destroyed in flight. In fact, Harrow was interested to notice that few, if any, of the raider's missiles had struck the Aranite spider.

  The Lyricum debris rings must have given up some wonders of defensive technology, in their time.

  The second ship was small, little bigger than a mite. While the larger vessel had fired boarding capsules and fought that brief and startlingly ineffective missile duel, the smaller craft had slid in unnoticed and attached itself to the spider, burning through a service hatch as it did so. While thousands of Aranite soldiers fought off the main assault, one squad of attackers had made it through to their objective. It was a classic, and highly effective, feint.

  Judas Harrow didn't believe a word of it.

  "They knew she was there." Harrow threw himself back in the systems throne. "And they knew just where she'd be. How else could they gain such information?"

  "Perhaps there are spies aboard." Godolkin was at the navigation board, sorting through lists of possible jump destinations. "The Harvesters on Elam might well have betrayed us, if we were recognised there. We know that Harvesters deal with Aranites on occasion. The bounty on the Blasphemy's head might have been too much of a temptation."

  "How could a spy remain aboard an Aranite community? Something tells me it would take more than a rubber mask and a talent for mimicry to stay undetected there..."

  Godolkin gave him a look. "If your theory is true, mutant, why would they have given us the very information that would incriminate them?"

  "Maybe they don't care. After all, precisely what can we do about it?"

  "If the Blasphemy has been sold by the Aranites, they will learn what it is to fear."

  Harrow sighed. "Mindless optimism aside, it still leaves us no closer to discovering her whereabouts. Could your people have her?"

  Godolkin shook his head. "I have been monitoring Iconoclast information feeds. They are confused, as they have been for some days, but there is no mention of the Blasphemy bar the daily exhortations to curse her name. If she had been taken by the Iconoclasts, we would have learned of it by now."

  "All right, what about the jump data?"

  "If we assume the raiders jumped to an inhabited system, there are seven locations a ship of that capacity could reach."

  Harrow groaned. "Seven systems? Are we in such a dense area of the galaxy? I thought the smaller ship would have so little capacity-"

  "Yes, we are, and it does," Godolkin cut in. "However, if the two vessels were merely attempting a rendezvous, there would be no need for their destination to be inhabited. Raise the number of possible target systems to twenty-three."

  "Sneck!" Even with Hunter's enhanced sense-engines, it could take weeks to properly search just one system. And if the larger ship was now carrying the smaller, other jumps might have already taken place. Red could be halfway across the Accord by now.

  He got up. "Curse my weakness! I should have been with her."

  "Had I remained at her side," said Godolkin quietly, "I could have protected her."

  Harrow rounded on him. "And I couldn't, is that what you mean?"

  "That was not-"

  "What do you care anyway? With her gone, you're free! Released from the power of her vampire bite! You're no longer in thrall, Godolkin - at last, your soul is your own!" He leaned close to the big man. "Isn't that what you've wanted all this time?"

  Godolkin didn't face him, or even look up from his lists. "She lives still, Harrow. If she no longer had power over me I would feel it. I am not free, and therefore she is alive."

  "But that's what you want, isn't it? Freedom?"

  At that, the Iconoclast did turn. "Oh yes, Harrow, it's what I crave. Once the Blasphemy's hold on me is over, I'll be free. Free to wander the Accord, homeless and hunted, unable to rest. Knowing that both human and mutant have me marked for death, knowing that I am damned to my very soul." His odd-eyed gaze fixed Harrow mercilessly. "Why would I not look forward to that?"

  There was a long time when the only sound on Hunter's bridge were the soft murmurings of the instruments. Finally, Harrow moved away. "I'm sorry."

  "I need no man's pity, Harrow. And no mutant's."

  "You're right." Harrow pointed awkwardly towards the holoscreen. "About the systems, you're right. There's so many, we'll need to start searching right away. Which do you think-"

  "Save your energies, Harrow. She'll not be anywhere on this list." Godolkin touched a key, and the holoscreen faded out. "Those who took her would not be so careless."

  "So what can we do?"

  "Wait. Our only hope of finding the Blasphemy lies with her contacting us."

  Harrow raised an eyebrow. "And just how likely is that?"

  As he spoke, the comms board gave a soft chirrup and lit up. The Aranites, he thought. They have more lies for us. Nice timing.

  He keyed the audio. "This is Judas Harrow, of the Crimson Hunter. What do you have for me?"

  "How doe
s a big sloppy kiss sound?"

  Harrow almost choked. "Holy one?"

  "Yup. Back and ready to go. How are you boys doing?"

  "We are unharmed, Blasphemy." Godolkin was leaning close to the pickup. "Give us your location, and we will visit those who took you with cleansing fire."

  Harrow heard her laugh softly. "Keep it cool for the moment Godolkin, okay? I've got a job for you first."

  "What do you need us to do?"

  "I'm told there's a war on," she replied. "Go and take a picture of it for me."

  Orteus was relatively close to the Lyricum system. At Hunter's maximum speed the jump took four hours.

  It was a small world, no more than three-quarters of a standard planetary mass. Harrow had felt his weight drop as soon as he had switched off the yacht's artificial gravity. The feeling gave him a swoop of residual nausea, but that was mainly memory of what it had been like in the Aranite spider. After a few seconds, he was fine.

  The ship had set down at the top of a ridge, looking out over a series of scrubby plains. Sheets of brackish water reflected a yellowish sky, as weak sunlight filtered through tainted clouds. "The database says this world used to be colonised," he said. "There were industrial facilities here, but the resources ran dry."

  "How long ago?" Godolkin was stalking along the edge of the ridge, using amp-goggles to scan the landscape.

  "A century."

  "Hmph." Godolkin looked back at him. "Harrow, this world has been empty for all that time. There is no war here."

  "I admit, it is a little quiet..."

  Quiet was an understatement. There was almost no animal life to speak of, other than clouds of biting insects. The weather was warm and damp, windless. He would have expected a thin atmosphere on such a small world, but on Orteus the air hung heavy against the skin, clammy.

  Hunter's sense-engines had picked up a few unusual mineral deposits on the way in. Harrow had landed near one of these, as there didn't seem to be anything else of interest on the planet, but so far he could find no trace of it. He shook the tracker he was holding and batted it with the heel of his hand. "Is this working?"

  "Harrow, this is a waste of time." Godolkin was striding past him, heading back for the ship. "If the Blasphemy was looking to this world for her proof, she will be disappointed. There is nothing here."

  "If only she'd told us what it was proof of..." Harrow gave the tracker a final shake. As he did so, it sounded a soft, ringing chime.

  He held it up. The machine was picking up a trace of the minerals Hunter had spotted, about fifty metres away. "Godolkin? I'm just going to check this reading, then I'll be in. Can you fire the drives up for me?"

  He trotted away, the rough ground crunching under his feet. Red hadn't sounded as though she was in danger, although she'd been very secretive. All she had told him and Godolkin was that the location of a battle had been given to her as proof, and that they were to verify it for her. That and the co-ordinates of this rancid little world had been the sum total of her explanation.

  Well, as Godolkin had said, there was no proof here.

  The tracker lit up and emitted a steady tone. Harrow stopped and looked around, seeing nothing unusual. Pale rocks and sand, a few knotted plants draped over the ground as though too tired to stand up, puddles of standing water.

  A waste of time. What kind of fool's errand had she sent them on? He scuffed the ground with the toe of his boot.

  It made a hollow scraping noise, and the sand slid away in a layer.

  Harrow dropped to one knee and used the edge of his hand to move more of the sand aside. There was something smooth there, a few centimetres down: a plastene sheet, rigid, coated in mimetic paint. "What in the world?"

  It took only seconds to find an edge. He brushed more sand and soil away in a line, finding a corner, and then another. The sheet was about two meters square. Harrow put his fingers into the gap between plastene and ground, and heaved upwards.

  Harrow saw what was underneath, and gaped. "Godolkin."

  His comm-linker buzzed. He snapped it free of his belt with one hand while dragging the sheet away with the other. "Godolkin. You've got to see this."

  "There isn't time--"

  "There are guns here." Harrow reached down into the square hole, brushing his hand across the burnished casing of a holy weapon. There were dozens of them in the pit, and other items besides. Anti-armour missiles, silver blades, explosives... "It's an Iconoclast weapons cache."

  "I tell you, Harrow, there is no time. Get back to the ship."

  "Why?" He glanced up, to where Hunter perched on its single landing spine. As he did so, something screamed deafeningly over his head.

  The sky was full of ships.

  Vessels were dropping down from the yellow clouds. They were big, slab-sided things, bulky with armour and the gaping snouts of antimat cannon. Iconoclast landing craft.

  Harrow leaped up and began scrambling back towards the ship. There was an awful sound from above him, a dry ripping of superheated air. A strip of ground between him and Hunter flew up and turned to fire.

  The shockwave bowled him over. He slid across the sand on his back, pelted with burning rubble, and saw the daggership that had strafed him whipping around for another pass. On the other side of the torn, blazing ground came a rising howl of grav-lifters.

  Godolkin was taking off.

  The daggership was coming right at him. Harrow jumped to his feet, getting ready to dodge again. Space assault ships often had difficulty tracking small targets on the first pass, but his chances of surviving the second were slim.

  There was a sudden whipping sound, a streak of light, and the daggership flashed apart. Harrow saw the forward section of it break up around an expanding ball of flame. Godolkin had taken it with a flayer missile.

  Hunter slid sideways through the air, dropping until the foot of the landing spine crunched sickeningly onto the sand. Harrow dived for it, trying not to think about how much damage Godolkin might have just done to the gyros, and tumbled into the hatch. "I'm in! Go!"

  The hatch slammed shut. The floor tipped under him, sending him sprawling up the steps. He found his balance and belted up the last few even as they started to collapse behind him. A second after he had jumped up into the spinal corridor the landing spine was gone, folded away like metal origami.

  He suddenly got a few kilos heavier. Godolkin had switched the artificial gravity back on.

  Harrow ran to the bridge and hurled himself into the command throne. Godolkin was at the navigation board, hauling on the manual flight controls. Tracks of smoke and fire were ripping through the sky outside the viewports. "I think," the Iconoclast grated, "we have found the Blasphemy's proof."

  "Better late than never."

  "A matter of opinion." Godolkin wrenched the controls to port. Harrow felt the ship yaw horribly under him, even with the dampers on. "How many are there?"

  "I don't have the time to count, mutant. Perhaps you would be so kind?"

  Harrow called up a sense-readout. "Forty, fifty... Moon of blood, a hundred landing craft, either in orbit or already on the surface. What is this?"

  "The daggerships," snarled Godolkin. "How many vessels are actually firing at us?"

  "Just six."

  "Just?" There was a massive impact, and the yacht skated sideways. "Six could well be enough."

  Harrow yelped. "Have they hit us?"

  "The fact that you are alive to ask me that denotes a near-miss." Godolkin nodded at the weapons control board. "Use the remaining missile. Try to keep them off our tail until we can make orbit."

  "I'll do my best." Harrow keyed the board to his station and saw the holo-display spring to life in front of him, filled with the forward view. Grey-blue sky, just beginning to darken to black. Long streamers of antimat fire ripping past like ragged beads of fiery yellow light.

  The view was jerking and sliding as Godolkin fought to keep the daggerships from getting a target lock.

  Harrow bro
ught up the missile icon, then swivelled the display one hundred and eighty degrees. The view became a field of turgid brown clouds. He could see Hunter's tail at the centre, the dark, spined shapes of the daggerships behind, antimat bursts streaking towards him.

  Hunter was fast, one of the fastest commercial vessels available, but the daggerships were alpha-class military interceptors. And they were gaining.

  The dark shapes were weaving all over the screen as Godolkin hauled the ship about. "Iconoclast! On my signal, hold your position for one second."

  "We'll be dead in one second."

  "Then hold it for half. Now."

  Godolkin's hand froze on the flight control. Harrow stabbed out at the holoscreen; he touched a daggership, the missile icon, the fire control. "Done."

  Antimat fire sliced past the hull. Harrow snatched his hands back from the boards as residual charge snapped sparks up through his fingers, heard Godolkin snarl as the same voltage hammered into him.

  The holo-display flickered. When it was steady again, it showed the daggerships peeling desperately away.

  The interceptors had been holding their course for maximum intercept speed. When Godolkin had stopped moving Hunter about for that vital half-second, Harrow had been able to get a perfect target-lock, and launched the flayer missile from the forward tube.

  It had changed course ahead of them, spinning on its axis, then powering at full speed into the lead daggership. Harrow saw an interceptor struck in the flank as it tried to turn away. It puffed out jets of fire from every seam in its armour, then vanished in a cloud of billowing fire. A second ship, flying too close, was caught by debris and began to veer off course.

  "Orbit," said Godolkin curtly. "Engaging light-drives."

  Harrow settled back in his seat and felt the surge of power as Crimson Hunter tore a hole in the face of the universe.

  The daggerships didn't follow them into jumpspace. Once Hunter accelerated to superlight, it was safe.

  Harrow left Godolkin to make a series of random jumps, covering their trail, and opened up a communications window on the cipher-key Red had given him. "Holy one?"