The Omega Solution

by Peter J Evans

  She dropped to the floor and scuttled under the table.

  The tablecloth was long, but not quite long enough. Red forced her fingertips into the wooden braces at one end of the tabletop, her boots into the corners of the other end, hauling herself up to hang suspended in mid-air. The cloth surrounded her like a white, exquisitely-pressed tent. She could see her own face reflected in the polished floor.

  The hatch opened, and the owner of those clicking boots walked in. Red held her breath, glad her hair wasn't as long as it might have been. She saw the boots go past her, heading for the door to the bedchamber.

  It was Enostine. No one else on Emissary could have legs that thin.

  She's going into Dathan's bedroom, Red thought, wishing she had a better grip with her fingers. What's she going to do - grab one of those mad books, or slip between the black silk sheets?

  As it turned out, the spindly mutant did neither. Red heard the chair scrape backwards, the one close to her head. She groaned inwardly as Enostine sat down.

  A minute passed. Two. Red's fingers were going numb. She put the weight on her left hand, moved her right to a better position. She wasn't sure how long she could keep holding herself up like this.

  The hatch opened again. Red heard Enostine get up. "Welcome back, my love."

  "Thank you," replied Xandos Dathan.

  So, Dathan was into tall girls. Red hadn't caught any signals between him and Enostine before, but they had probably become adept at hiding their feelings. Still, Red thought idly, if nothing else came of this little excursion at least she'd have some gossip for the boys.

  The two leaders sat down. Red heard their chairs being dragged in, saw the toes of Enostine's boots appear below her. "You're late. It was bad, wasn't it."

  Dathan sighed. "It's worse every time. He pleads so. I think he knows... Knows how short time is."

  "The time for pleading was over long ago, my love." The faint sounds of Enostine fiddling with her tableware. "Xandos... Your brother frightens me."

  Brother? Red's eyes widened. Was he part of a tech-team?

  "Pity, surely."

  "That too. But what he would be capable of, if he wasn't so..."

  "He got the brains," said Dathan quietly. "I was blessed with everything else. Lahmi is capable of nothing save what we allow him."

  "Your resolve isn't faltering, is it?" There was an edge to Enostine's voice.

  "No. I promise you, I know what must be done, and when the time comes I'll do it. Trust me."

  "A hard thing to come by, trust." Enostine made a small sighing noise. "Made more so by the presence of a human on board."

  "The Iconoclast? He's harmless. Neutered by his belief in the Saint's bite."

  "I wonder."

  "Why does he bother you so, my love? He has to obey her every whim. Surely there's no harm in her choice of pets?"

  "Godolkin's no pet, Xandos," she snapped. "Never forget that. The sooner he's gone from us, the better."

  Charming bitch, thought Red sourly.

  "Enough talk of the human. It'll ruin my appetite." Enostine's boots moved: she was leaning across the table. Red could imagine her long hands intertwined with Dathan's. "Did the parasites do what I couldn't?"

  Dathan chuckled. "You would have found it in time, sweet. But yes, we have it. The Conclave is being held on Irutrea."

  Red had to admit she was impressed. To data-mine an installation the size of Hermes Alpha, and come up with one specific piece of information inside a few hours... Even in her own time, that sort of thing could take days, depending on the encryption layers a tech needed to break through. The Iconoclasts would have made every effort to protect the Conclave's location, wouldn't they?

  Still, any survivors on board Hermes Alpha would have no chance of warning their masters elsewhere, not with the comms web down. Jubal wasn't the only one to put a lot of eggs in the one basket.

  Red blinked, forcing herself back to the present. Enostine was still congratulating Dathan. "We have it all. Our target, our weapon, our Saint... My love, it's all falling together!"

  "I know. By the grace of God, Enostine, we'll make this thing come about!"

  "By the grace of God... So the next target will be Kerioth?"

  "It will. Altashheth is too far away. Kerioth it must be."

  Kerioth... Red had heard the name, vaguely. An ice-world? Harrow had mentioned it some time ago.

  "My love?" That was Enostine again. "Favour me."

  "Anything."

  "Give the human a Banshee to fly against Kerioth. His own."

  "Enostine-"

  "It will keep him out of my sight. And, should he be martyred, I'll sleep easier. Ah!"

  The hatch had opened again. Red heard soft, subservient footfalls, the faint sounds of metal on metal, ceramic on glass.

  The food had arrived. Dathan and his stick-insect girlfriend were about to dine.

  Red listened to them for the next two hours, but everything else was small talk.

  It wasn't until she was in the Banshee, strapped into a flight cocoon behind Judas Harrow, that she started to get the feeling back in her fingers.

  "You were under the table for the whole time?" Harrow was incredulous. "Moon of blood, holy one - the strength."

  "Try saying 'the stupidity', and you'd be closer to the truth..." She rubbed her hands together, shoved them under her arms. "Sneck, I've got pins and needles now."

  The Banshee required only two crew. She had told Harrow everything she'd heard while they were going through pre-flight together, but Godolkin was in another vessel. His gunner had been chose by Enostine, and thus couldn't be trusted.

  "Holy one? I have to admit... Now you've heard Enostine talk about Godolkin in such a way, it makes me more suspicious about Orteus."

  "What, like she fixed it so she could get rid of him? I dunno..."

  "It was Enostine who gave Dathan the location of the battle-world. Probably the time of the Iconoclasts' arrival, too."

  "Mm."

  "And what of this brother?"

  "Yeah, that part was pretty snecking nasty. It sounded like-" Red stopped as she saw tell-tales blinking into life on her control boards. The Banshee was cleared for launch. "No, you're right. You and Godolkin. There's stuff here that doesn't add up. As soon as we get back, we'll check up on Tisiphone, okay? Find out what's really inside that thing."

  Harrow nodded. Red took a deep breath and gripped the Banshee's control collectives tight. At least she could feel them now. She flicked a tab, engaging the grav-lifters, and felt the vessel bob under her.

  "Meantime," she said grimly. "Let's go hunt some killship."

  13. SPACED

  Fifty gunships powered through jumpspace towards Kerioth, every one enclosed in its own little bubble of hellfire.

  Five of Xandos Dathan's battleships had spewed out a wave of ten Banshees each. The official designations for the waves were Alpha through Epsilon, but Durham Red had dismissed that soon after launch. "Sorry guys," she had broadcast on the general net. "I can't get my head around Greek. Give me a minute and I'll come up with something better."

  No one aboard the Banshees had been willing to disagree with their living saint, and so, just before they accelerated to superlight velocities, the five wings had been renamed Janet, John, Tom, Dick and Harry.

  Thus did Matteus Godolkin find himself strapped into the flight cocoon of Janet Four. "Think yourself lucky," the Blasphemy had told him later, over a private channel. "You could have been flying a Dick."

  Unlike almost everyone else in the sector, the Umbrae Nova still had communications. Unwilling to risk either the Accord relay web or the secret Tenebrae channels, Xandos Dathan must have invested in a private network of his own months before. A quantum-inseparability comms net spread between the pulsar and the hidden fleet, and out through jumpspace to the gunships and their support frigates.

  There wasn't much talking between the Banshees, not while the attack fleet was still in jumpspace. Godolkin him
self said nothing at all, preferring to use the time before battle to prepare himself mentally. He had memorised several volumes of Iconoclast scripture, and it gave him some comfort to bring the pages before his mind's eye, reading the blessed texts as clearly as though the books themselves were in the cocoon with him.

  His gunner, however, had other ideas.

  The man's name was Hophni. He was a hulking mutant with a misshapen head and vaguely reptilian features, and must, Godolkin surmised, have found the silence inside his own skull disturbing. He kept trying to fill it with speech.

  After his first few attempts at conversation were met with a cold silence, the mutant became angry. "Why will you not speak, Iconoclast? Humans are too good to talk to mutants, is that your way?"

  Godolkin hmphed. "It depends on the mutant."

  "Ha. I'll bet." Hophni roared a short laugh. "No doubt the Saint enjoys the full benefit of your human tongue."

  Godolkin gazed coolly down at the man. His cocoon was set somewhat higher than that of the gunner, surrounded by a half-ring of narrow, armoured viewports. Hophni only had his holoscreens to look at. "Perhaps you should offer her prayers, mutant. It might help quell your terror."

  "Terror? Curse you, Iconoclast, what are you saying?"

  "Only a frightened man talks when no one is listening." Godolkin let his gaze settle on the viewports, at the spinning firestorm outside. "Every time you open your mouth, the stench of fear assails me."

  "I am not afraid."

  "Then it must be your breath."

  At that, Hophni's babble was replaced by a furious silence. Godolkin was quite pleased by that.

  A tunnel of fire still surrounded the ship, the seething inferno of jumpspace. The last time Godolkin had seen it so close it had been trying to burn its way through Crimson Hunter's hull. Normally, it was kept away from a ship's hull by the power of the light-drives. But if, as had happened on Hunter, the drives became unbalanced due to damage, tongues of raw jumpspace fire could lick inwards, searingly hot.

  Almost as hot as the fires they were about to visit on the Kerioth shipyard.

  The flight-board began chiming an alarm. Godolkin silenced it and renewed his grip on the collectives. "Terminal deceleration in one minute."

  "It speaks at last." Hophni began pressing keys. "Charging fusion lances. Torpedoes are on line, activating warheads and guidance trackers. So, before we decelerate, Iconoclast, tell me - what is it like?"

  "What is what like?"

  "Her bite. I know she's tasted you. It's legend." Hophni twisted to leer up at him. "Is it wonderful?"

  "Strike your targets, mutant, and you might yet find out." He pressed the collective's comm key with his thumb. "Flight leader, this is Janet Four. We are weapons-hot and ready to go sublight."

  "Glad to hear it." The Blasphemy was no doubt getting similar messages from forty-eight other pilots at once. "People, we drop out in thirty seconds. We'll come in fast and close - the frigates will be a bit behind, so the shipyard won't pick up their warp-echoes until we're stuck in. And remember, aim for those drive-linkages - anybody who takes out two killships like that gets a bonus prize!"

  Godolkin rubbed the side of his neck, absently, then returned his hands to the controls. The actual deceleration would be handled automatically. His job would begin once the gunship had returned to the universe.

  "Be ready, gunner. We are in the lead wave. Our targets may appear swiftly."

  "You do your part, Iconoclast, and I'll do mine."

  The control board gonged. Godolkin looked out into the fires of jumpspace and saw dark at the end of the tunnel. A second later, Janet Four jolted hard under him.

  Space rushed forward to fill his view.

  The shipyard was ahead of him, a huge, rough-edged cylinder. At this distance it looked almost solid, but that was an illusion. Godolkin knew the configuration of this class of shipyard by heart - twenty circular decks stacked one on top of the other, each one ten thousand metres across and toothed like a cogwheel. The spaces between the teeth were the docking bays, cut-outs three kilometres long, wide enough for a killship to ease in nose first. On the decks themselves would be a profusion of gantries and modules, scaffolds and fabrication units, turning the spaces between cogs into a deadly maze.

  Behind the cylinder, the frosty globe of Kerioth glowered whitely like a shocktrooper's modified eye.

  Tactical holos had appeared around his cocoon. He could see the other vessels in his wing, the way they had shifted to form a broad arrowhead. He hoped none of the other pilots would be foolish enough to try to hold formation once they were among the killships.

  The shipyard was growing, almost filling his forward viewports. One of the holos switched to an aft view which showed billows of orange fire jet out of nowhere, emitting the big, blunt noses of the frigates.

  The Banshees were coming up on the cylinder obliquely. Godolkin could see the town-sized control complex at the close end, the long communication spires pointing past him. He wondered if the techs inside the complex were even now trying to contact High Command, shouting uselessly into their pickups. With the comms web down, Kerioth was completely alone.

  On the wide, circular end deck, panels were sliding open in complicated sequence. Only kilometres away now, Godolkin could see multiple phalanx turrets sliding up from the depths. "Godolkin to all Banshees. Prepare for incoming fire."

  The turrets opened up. Antimat bolts hammered out towards him, but Janet Four was already too close: Godolkin looked to his right and saw the outer deck drop away. He was coming up on the first cog.

  It was empty.

  The cut-outs gaped, their scaffolds and towers folded aside. Godolkin brought up a holo for magnification, sent his view soaring up along the cylinder.

  The holo chirped as it found a killship, outlined the dreadnought in green. Another, two more. And that was all. "Blasphemy, we have been misled. This facility is almost deserted."

  "I see it. Sneck, what the hell's going on?"

  Godolkin's Banshee was travelling at a kilometre a second. He was already past the first cog, coming up on the second. "There may be others on the far side, closer to Kerioth."

  "Hold up..." Indicators blinked on Godolkin's board. The Blasphemy had acquired a target.

  Her Banshee, Janet One, was on his portside and just ahead. Beyond, in a cut-out on the next deck, was the familiar spined shape of a dreadnought, looking odd and stunted from below. Empty spaces showed to either side.

  The Blasphemy's gunship spat a long trail of vapour, freezing to glittering dust in the vacuum. The trail arced ahead, massively fast, stretching out to an invisible point in the far distance...

  A spot of white light appeared on the killship's flank.

  In an instant it was too bright to look at, its searing brilliance flooding the cockpit with glare. It shrank out a second later, but in its place was an expanding ball of fire, a cloud of debris. Godolkin saw the explosion growing, expanding until it completely covered the drive linkage - that narrow point of contact between the vertical engine assembly and main hull.

  The two sections of the ship were starting to drift apart as the Banshees raced past it.

  "All right!" Durham Red gave out a small whoop of triumph. "Okay, people. It looks like we've come a long way for nothing, but every ship we take down is one less on our arses when we get to Irutrea. So split up and frag 'em."

  The Banshees began to spread apart, every pilot hunting for targets. Godolkin gripped the collectives hard and yanked them left, throttling up the main drive. He heard Hophni shout in surprise, felt the shuddering deceleration as Janet Four span on its axis and belched fusion flame up the cylinder. In seconds Godolkin's speed had halved: he pulled the nose of the gunship up, letting momentum and the thundering force of the drive push him between two of the cogs.

  He was coming in at a new angle, the decks to port and starboard. Shadow passed on either side.

  "Damn you, human!" Hophni was twisting in his cocoon, sna
rling up at Godolkin. "What are you doing?"

  "Taking a short cut." The inter-deck space was full of scaffolding towers and fabrication blocks, vast drums of fuel and coolant. Support gantries ran from one cog to the next: kilometres ahead, the thick core of the cylinder loomed like the trunk of some cyclopean tree. It was ringed with viewports, and Godolkin was suddenly reminded of the leg of the Aranite spider, rising over him, metal skyscrapers jointed and set walking between the stars.

  Gantries scanned past on either side, huge towers, walls of plate steel. He was working the controls constantly now, nudging the collectives this way and that, executing tiny thruster burns to keep the Banshee moving inwards between the decks. The core cylinder went past under his boots, phalanx turrets popping out to track him as he passed. Weapons fire tore through the space behind Janet Four's drives.

  The guns were man-operated, and too slow to track the Banshees. Had there been hunger-guns in the shipyard, life would have been far more difficult.

  The core was behind him, the obstacles thinning out. Godolkin triggered a burst from the drive again, and spun the Banshee to decelerate as it raced out from between the cogs. Light spilled in through the viewports, and his tracking holo began to chirrup. It was finding new targets already.

  Very few of them were on the cylinder. Godolkin gave a snarl of fury. "It's a trap."

  Iconoclast warships were bearing down on the shipyard.

  "Blasphemy, there is a picket fleet approaching your position - they must have been on the far side of Kerioth."

  "What? The comms web is still down. How did they know we were here?"

  "The explosion. Neutrino flare from the nuclear warhead." Godolkin wrenched at the collectives, pulling the Banshee back towards the cylinder in a wide, fuel-hungry arc. "I count four dreadnoughts, seven corvettes, three light cruisers."

  The rear-view holo went yellow. The lead ship, a corvette, had activated its hunger-guns.

  Antimat fire blasted past in great searing pulses, striking the edges of the shipyard decks and tearing away huge sprays of debris. Godolkin could feel the static charge through the collectives as the bolts ripped close. Hophni was howling at him, telling him to get between the decks before they were blown apart, but Godolkin had no intention of taking Janet Four back through that maze, not while there were hunger-guns shredding the place. He aimed the Banshee's nose at the corvette and throttled the main drive as high as it would go. "Mutant! Ready one torpdedo!"