The Omega Solution

by Peter J Evans

  "Jude? Hey, good to hear you! Did you find it?"

  "You could say that." He suddenly felt very tired. "I'll tell you about it later."

  "Great stuff. I'll give you the co-ordinates. Oh, and be careful when you come into the system. It gets a little hot around here."

  9. CUT OFF

  Red had to admit that "hot" was an understatement. Dathan's battlefleet was stationed around an active pulsar.

  It had been a star, a million years previously; an old star, reaching the very end of its life. When it was young it had been bright and strong, but as it reached its final stages the outer layers had ballooned out into a vast crimson ball, a red supergiant. Inside that roiling outer layer the star's core had yielded to gravity, begun collapsing in on itself, growing hotter and denser, using up the very last traces of its nuclear fuel. Finally, and quite suddenly, all fusion reactions within it stopped.

  The end took less than a second.

  The core temperature flashed to a hundred billion degrees as its iron atoms were hammered together. The delicate balance between the repelling forces of the atomic nuclei and the crushing power of gravity teetered, and fell in favour of repulsion. The core compressed, then recoiled. The resulting explosion tore the skin of the supergiant apart and flung the shattered, twisting debris into the void.

  The shell, a supernova remnant, continued to expand, and would for billions of years until entropy wiped the universe clean of it forever. For now it stayed, a great hazy ball of gas millions of kilometres across. And at its heart, spinning like an insane dervish, hung a livid, supercompressed cinder. A pulsar.

  Jets of exotic material streamed out from the cinder, pouring into space at close to the speed of light. Friction and the star's incredible magnetic field caused the jets to light up, whirling beacons visible for light years. But around these, in two wide cones, floods of x-rays seethed, invisible and lethal. Even the gravity-screens that protected starships from incoming weapons fire were no match for that awful radiation. If a ship strayed too far out of the pulsar's ecliptic plane its crew would have the flesh cooked from their bones.

  X-rays played merry hell with sense-engines, too. Dathan's fleet, hanging at grav-anchor three light-minutes away from the pulsar, were hidden both by the supernova remnant and the radiation cones. They could remain undetected for years.

  It was an unnerving thought. Red lay on the wide circular bed, fingers laced behind her head, staring up at the ceiling and imagining those lakes of X-rays raging above and below her. For Dathan to have found the place, and guided his first ships here all those months ago, was a stroke of genius.

  Genius. Red had no love of that word - it was dangerously overused. But Xandos Dathan would have had to be nothing less to assemble the Umbrae Nova. The army of ex-Tenebrae warriors, the hidden fleet, the plan he had to bring the Accord back to the way it should have always been... It was breathtaking.

  Red had been over and over Dathan's plans in her mind, and on the tactical simulations he had given her. He'd planned the thing in frightening detail. The series of staged attacks designed to weaken and cripple the local Iconoclast forces, while at the same time drawing them away from his real targets. Strikes against supply lines, communications, starship facilities. Hit and fade tactics, snipping away at the Iconoclast infrastructure until it fell apart.

  In normal times, he'd not have a hope of success.

  But these were far from normal times. Some sort of internal conflict was ripping away at the heart of the Iconoclast army. Hundreds of thousands of troops were being drawn away from their bases, leaving only skeleton crews. Millions more were in transit. It was as though the Iconoclasts had gone insane. The entire sector was in turmoil.

  And the Conclave, the gathering of officials and experts from all over the Accord, was going to be left wide open. Instead of rescheduling, the Iconoclasts had done nothing but move its location at the last moment. If they thought that was going to save them, they were making a suicidal mistake - Dathan's plans were flexible, his hand far-reaching. Once the new location had been pinned down the Umbrae Nova would be onto the Conclave like flies on shit.

  The only thing in the Iconoclasts' favour was time. It had taken Enostine's spy network months to find the original location of the Conclave. The spindly woman was, Red knew, worryingly efficient, but even she would have found discovering the new site impossible by normal means. This was the first, and perhaps the only time Dathan could make his plan work. Events had overtaken him. He'd already told her that he'd have preferred more time. Tisiphone wasn't capable of superlight travel yet, he wanted more ships, more people. He'd have liked to have contacted her by normal means, brought her on board by choice, not kidnap.

  The Iconoclast war had forced his hand.

  But, as always, he had a plan. If all went well, the location of the Conclave would be common knowledge long before it got under way.

  A sudden chiming wrenched Red from her thoughts. She sat up. "Jude?"

  Harrow's voice, transmitted through the room's hidden speakers, sounded tired. Ever so slightly shell-shocked. "We've just been given clearance to land, holy one."

  "Great. I'll be right down. You okay?"

  "We are unharmed, holy one. Although you might want to ask your new friends about the possibility of a re-spray."

  Red reached Emissary's landing bay before Crimson Hunter landed. She had planned to head right down to the deck and greet her companions in person, but the guards stationed there stopped her. The membrane, they told her, had been engaged.

  That didn't sound good at all. A lot of big warships were fitted with a membrane, a kind of permeable forcewall that could cover an open landing bay, keeping the air in but allowing solid objects through with almost no resistance. They were an emergency measure only - any fluctuation in power and the membrane could shut down or lose cohesion, evacuating the bay in seconds. The device was only used when an incoming ship was too badly damaged to use a landing lock.

  One of the guards showed Red to an observation chamber, high over the deck. Dathan was already there, waiting for her. "They're just lining up."

  "Have you seen the ship? What's wrong with it?" She put her nose to the viewport, trying to see Hunter come through. All she saw was the rippling green glow of the membrane.

  Abruptly, Hunter's rounded nose pushed through, a ring of emerald light expanding over the hull-metal as it parted the membrane. She saw the missile tube Harrow had fitted, the enhanced sense-engines, the domed underside of the carapace which held the bridge.

  The white paintwork, unbroken up to that point, went suddenly black.

  The ship seemed to pause slightly, as if unwilling to show its blemishes, then surged ahead. Red suppressed a gasp as she saw how close Hunter had come to being torn open - the entire starboard flank had been scored down to the inner plating. "Oh sneck," she breathed.

  Dathan made a sound of disbelief. "And they risked a superlight jump with their ship in such a condition? You have dedicated companions, Durham Red."

  "They'd die for me," she replied absently.

  Hunter was through the membrane now, moving past her, but wallowing like a wounded thing. She saw the landing spine unfold from its belly, the thin slab of plating hinging down from the rear of the ship, unfolding until it was a long box hung at forty-five degrees, splayed at the lower end into the foot and exit hatch. Thrusters flickered under the folded wings. The ship dropped horribly, the landing foot scraping metal off the deck. For an awful moment Red thought the ship was going to topple over, but then the gyros kicked in and it settled.

  She let out a long breath, and then turned and headed for the hatch. "I'm going down there."

  "Please holy one, wait until they close the lock."

  His words met her back. She was already clattering down the steps that led to the landing deck.

  Hunter's hatch was swinging open as she ran towards it. Harrow and Godolkin were in the airlock. As she got closer she could see that Godolkin's skin,
his colourless hair, were blackened with soot, and Harrow's jacket had seen better days. "Jesus, what happened to you two?"

  Godolkin stepped out of the exit hatch, jumping down onto the deck. The foot-ramp hadn't deployed properly, leaving a half-metre gap. "There was a burn-through during the last jump."

  "Sneck." A burn-through was usually lethal. If the hull gave way while in superlight and the raw stuff of jumpspace blowtorched through... The two men were lucky not to have ended up ripped to atoms.

  Behind Hunter, the primary bay lock was grinding closed, shutting off the green glow of the membrane. Deck crew were running out from their emergency stations.

  "Are you both okay?"

  Harrow nodded. "Physically, yes. But it was rather interesting for a while."

  "We sustained damage on Orteus," said Godolkin, glowering. "The ship was landed and powered down when the Iconoclast ground-forces arrived. There were daggerships. We owe our lives to Harrow's skill with a flayer missile."

  "You saw the troops arrive?" That was Dathan, striding up behind Red. She looked round as he spoke.

  "Saw them? Shit, Dathan, they almost got their arses cooked off."

  "Had we arrived slightly later, we could have observed from a distance," said Godolkin, his voice dangerously quiet. "The flight-plan we were given was flawed."

  "Forgive me." Dathan spread his hands. "I was assured. I mean, I didn't realise your vessel would be so fast."

  "Its capabilities were transmitted to you."

  Dathan frowned, obviously not used to Iconoclasts talking back at him. "I'll make sure it's fixed."

  "You snecking better," Red rounded on him, furious. "You don't know how close you just came to screwing this up. I do this thing with these two at my back, or not at all, get it? If anything had happened to them because of your bad timing, you'd have been eating vacuum right now, and I'd have been out of here."

  She prodded him sharply in the chest. "Don't balls it up again, Dathan." With that, she turned her back on him. "Anyway, guys, it's great to see you. Come and have a drink, and I'll explain the whole thing..."

  Later, as the three of them sat together in the briefing hall, Godolkin confessed to being more than puzzled. "He could do this alone, Blasphemy. I have studied his tactics and, given the current situation, they appear sound. Why risk your involvement?"

  "Because I'm so lovely?" His blank expression made her grin. "Kidding. Look, as far as I can tell I'm here to do the messiah thing, jolly his people along a bit when the fur starts flying. If I'm leading from the front, he can rely on mutant religious fervour to carry the day while he stays at home and holds the plan together."

  Harrow leaned across to her. "Holy one, you told me on Vadis that you would never be our messiah."

  "Not to the Tenebrae, no."

  "So why the Umbrae Nova?"

  "Because they're trying to put together a real, balanced peace for the Accord, not slaughter every human being alive. Trust me, there's a difference." She saw movement at the rostrum. "Hold up, the Fat Controller's here."

  Dathan's chief of starship operations was called Jubal - he was the rotund mutant commander from the council chamber. Red watched him waddle onto the wide podium and settle into a throne next to a small control board.

  The briefing hall was considerably smaller than the council chamber had been, but followed much the same layout. Instead of a table at the centre was the hexagonal rostrum, surrounded on five sides by rows of bench seats. It was like an amphitheatre, with Jubal at centre stage.

  The hall was half-full of mutants; starship commanders and squad leaders from Dathan's specially-trained marine force. The marines were lead by the grotesque Sibbecai, and Red was unnerved to see the eyeless mutant sitting a few benches away.

  "The time of the first engagement is at hand," began Jubal. "This mission will denote the pace and direction of all those that follow. Should we succeed, we will not only learn the location of the Conclave, but we will cripple all Iconoclast communications in this sector."

  Jubal tapped a control, and a spherical holodisplay sprang to life above the rostrum. A graphic filled it, an ungainly congress of globes and cylinders. "Your objective is the Hermes Alpha communications hub. This construct is the centre for quantum-inseparability messaging throughout the sector. Once this is shut down, all broadscan comms for one hundred light-years will cease. Iconoclast relay stations will be useless. Only needle-beam messages will be possible. This will strangle the enemy's tactical network."

  Starship icons began to appear around the comms hub. "The plan is three-fold," Jubal continued. "A secondary assault force will attack from jump points arranged around bearing zero-nine-zero, drawing any Iconoclast ships away - we have been informed by commander Enostine that the hub is only lightly protected at present. Once the way is clear, the primary force will jump in from bearing two-three-zero and supress the hub's on-board defences. The boarding party, led by commander Sibbecai and Saint Scarlet herself, will then take the hub."

  At the name of the Saint, there was a murmur around the chamber. Red felt quite a lot of people looking at her, and shrank back on her bench.

  One of them was Godolkin. "You have volunteered for this deathtrap?"

  "Yeah. Don't be mad, Godolkin - I volunteered you, too."

  Sibbecai stood up. "The boarding force will split into two sections. My marines will lead a technical team into the hub's data storage areas, and find the location of the Conclave. Saint Scarlet's force will concentrate on knocking out the generators."

  Red raised a hand, and instantly felt slightly foolish. She put it down again. "Commander Jubal, I have a question. Do the tech teams know what the sneck they're doing?"

  Jubal raised an eyebrow at her, above his round goggles. "Holy one?"

  "Sorry, commander," she grinned. "It's just that there are going to be people on that hub who aren't going to like us molesting their comp-stores. Are we going to have to keep an army of Iconoclasts at bay while the techs do their stuff?"

  Sibbecai aimed his ruin of a face at her. "Your concerns echo mine, Saint. However, our scientists have developed parasite devices, to drain the hub of information in minutes at most. By the time you have placed your charges, the Hermes Alpha's entire data store will be ours."

  "Still...We've not only got to get into a heavily-armed space station and blow it up from the inside, but we've got to protect a team of boffins while we do it. Great..."

  "The mission will be perilous," agreed Godolkin. "I would suggest using the Tisiphone for the main assault."

  Jubal looked uncomfortable. "The troop ship is, I'm afraid, not yet fully functional."

  "It had better be soon," snapped Sibbeccai, his exposed teeth clattering together. "The Conclave is almost upon us."

  "I am assured you will have it by then, commander." The round mutant wiped a hand across his face. He was sweating. "In the meantime, let us continue onto tactical mission data..."

  "Rushed," he told Durham Red later. "Forgive me, Saint Scarlet. But the whole thing's just a damned scramble."

  They were on the bridge of the Persephone, Jubal's flagship. It was a battleship of similar design to the Emissary, one of eight in the main group - as starship chief, Jubal was leading the main assault, and it was making him sweat.

  Red was beginning to agree, but she hadn't expected one of Dathan's inner council to be voicing that opinion on the open bridge. "Steady on, big guy."

  He dabbed at his smooth face with a silken cloth. "Dathan is too certain of his own abilities, too trusting of that witch Enostine. I've commanded battlegroups for the Tenebrae, holy one. I took the tithe fleet at Broteus. I know what I'm about."

  "Never doubted it."

  "We should have a back-up plan. I don't trust Enostine and her spies - what if the hub is better protected than she says?"

  The throne was on a raised dais, looking out onto the broad expanse of Persephone's bridge. Once again, Red had been surprised at just how big starship bridges were in th
is time. Back in her day they'd been just about large enough for the captain to pace a few metres without hitting his head on something. In the Accord, flying a starship was like sitting inside a small cathedral.

  She had been with Jubal since launch, preferring to see what was going on from the bridge, rather than waiting on the boarding craft and fretting it out with the rest of the grunts. Leave that to Godolkin.

  "Hey," she told Jubal. "A little faith here? Enostine's timing might be a bit off-whack, but she seems okay. We've got sixty ships in two battlegroups, and the Iconoclasts should have bugger-all." She gave the fat man's throne a slap. "Piece of cake!"

  His tiny, pursed mouth twisted in a smile. "Have a care, holy one. You're sounding a lot like Dathan these days."

  "He sort of rubs off on a girl..." Red had a comms headset clipped over her hair. She touched a pad on its side. "Jude, how are you doing?"

  Judas Harrow was stationed on the Xerxes, the flagship of the diversionary force, at her insistence. She wanted to know what was going on everywhere. Hopefully, with a friendly face on the second battlegroup she'd be able to cover a few blind spots.

  "We are seconds away, holy one. Launching sense-probes now."

  The sense-probes were fired by Tenebrae vessels while they were still in jump. They made instantaneous scans as soon as they returned to realspace, sending their reports back by needle-beam and then self-destructing before their own jump points even closed. It enabled Tenebrae commanders to launch flayer missiles while still at superlight velocities, the key to their devastating surprise attacks. Dathan had obviously decided to keep that little bit of doctrine alive in the Umbrae Nova.

  "Probes out." A pause, then: "Destruct sequences initiated, holy one. Forces around the hub are as expected - transmitting to you."

  Red found herself gripping the corner of Jubal's throne quite hard.

  "Flayer missiles away, all ships," Harrow reported. "Terminal deceleration." Rattling sounds. Xerxes had obviously dropped out of jumpspace with a slight phase imbalance.