The Naked God - Faith nd-6

by Peter F. Hamilton

  “I can see the logic in what you’re saying,” Korzhenev said. “But what about the Assembly and the Confederation Navy itself? They exist to protect all planets equally.”

  “Bottom line,” Lady Phillipa said, “is that he who pays the piper . . . and those of us in this room do pay a considerable amount. We’re not abandoning anybody, we’re restructuring policy to a more realistic response towards this crisis. If it could be solved quickly, then all we’d need is the quarantine and a few interdiction flights. As that quite obviously hasn’t happened, we are going to have to take the tough decision and settle in for the long haul. This is the only way we can offer those already possessed with any prospect of regaining their own identities one day.”

  “How many other star systems do you envisage joining this core-Confederation?” Prince Tokama asked.

  “We believe ninety-three systems have the kind of fully developed technoindustrial infrastructure to qualify for admission. We don’t envisage this as being a small elite. Our fiscal analysis shows that many stars would be able to sustain a modest but steady economic growth pattern between themselves.”

  “Do you envisage asking the Edenists to join?” Ku Rongi asked.

  “Of course,” the King replied. “In fact we took inspiration from them. After Pernik they have demonstrated an admirable resolution in safeguarding their habitats from infiltration. That’s precisely the kind of determination we wish to institute among ourselves. If the stage two planets and developing asteroids had done the same right from the start, we wouldn’t even be in this appalling position.”

  Jim Sanderson looked round the three other guests, then turned back to the King. “Okay, I’ll brief the President and tell him it gets my vote. It ain’t what I wanted, but at least it’s something practical.”

  “My honourable father will be informed,” Prince Tokama said. “He will need to bring your proposal to the attention of the Imperial Court, but I can see no problem if enough planets can be convinced.”

  Korzhenev and Ku Rongi gave their assent, promising to take the proposal to their governments. The King shook hands and had a few personal words of thanks with each as they were ushered out. He didn’t hurry them, but time was important; the next four senior representatives were due in an hour. Five Eighty-five Squadron had a busy three days scheduled.

  A hundred and eighty-seven wormhole termini opened with impressive synchronization a quarter of a million kilometres away from Arnstat, directly between the planet and its sun. Voidhawks emerged from the gaps and immediately established a defence sphere formation five thousand kilometres in diameter, scanning space with their distortion fields and electronic sensors for any sign of nearby technological activity. They detected the planet’s SD platforms, of course; a much-depleted network in the aftermath of the Organization’s successful invasion. Nonetheless, local sensor satellites had already discovered them, and the remaining high-orbit platforms were locking on. The SD network was reinforced by Organization fleet warships, of which there were a hundred and eighteen currently in orbit, along with twenty-three hellhawks and a token half-dozen new low-orbit platforms ferried in from New California which were principally used to enforce Organization rule on the ground. Their presence, especially in conjunction with the antimatter combat wasps which some of them carried, had effectively upgraded the planetary defence shield to the same level as it had been with a full SD network.

  Capone and Emmet Mordden were satisfied the Organization could defeat any task force of warships the Confederation sent in an attempt to reclaim space above the Arnstat. In any case, it was only the Organization’s dominance of that space which prevented the planet from being taken out of the universe by the possessed on the surface, effectively stymieing the First Admiral.

  True, there had been an considerable increase in lightning raids recently: voidhawks swallowing in to shoot off combat wasps and stealth munitions. But few of the missiles had ever hit a target; interception rate was over ninety-five per cent. The state of constant alert had given the crews operating the sensor satellites a high proficiency rating. Complemented by the hellhawks’ distortion fields, they were confident nothing could get close enough to the orbiting asteroid settlements or industrial stations to inflict any kind of serious damage.

  Nothing happened for the first two minutes after the voidhawks emerged. Both sides were searching for clues to see what the other was going to do. The Organization chief didn’t know what to make of it. A voidhawk force in this formation was normally a securement operation, enabling a larger fleet of Adamist warships to jump in with impunity. But a hundred and eighty-seven was a colossal number for a beachhead detachment, more likely to be the task force in its entirety. The distance was also puzzling: at the moment they were outside effective combat wasp engagement range. But antimatter combat wasps would give the Organization an advantage, allowing them to engage the attackers first as they flew in towards the planet.

  The voidhawks confirmed the Organization was unable to reach them—unless the hellhawks chose to swallow up for a confrontation. None of them did. More wormhole termini started to open. Then the first Adamist ship emerged in the middle of the defence sphere formation.

  Admiral Kolhammer was using the battleship Illustrious as his flagship. Its size permitted him to carry a full complement of tactical staff, and provided them with a fully fledged C&C compartment independent of the bridge. No ship in the Confederation Navy was better suited to coordinating an attacking force of this magnitude. Though even with the number of antenna which Illustrious boasted, the tactical staff were hard pressed to establish and maintain communication with all the thousand-plus ships under his command.

  Emphasising the monumental strength they represented, it took the task force over thirty-five minutes to complete their emergence manoeuvre. To the officers and crew of the Organization fleet it seemed as though the torrent of ships would never end.

  Kolhammer’s staff began datavising ships with new vectors as soon as they established contact. Fusion drives blinked on, powering the task force into a giant disk formation. So many plasma exhausts concentrated in one place produced a blazing purple-white haze brighter than the sun. People on the surface of the planet could see the attackers as a coin-sized patch flowering open against the centre of the dazzling photosphere, an unnerving portent of what was to come.

  Eight hundred Adamist warships formed the nucleus of the new attack formation, while five hundred voidhawks flocked around their periphery. Once their relative positions were locked, the main drives burst into life, accelerating the ships in towards the planet at eight gees. Voidhawks expanded their distortion fields and matched the acceleration of their technological comrades.

  The gigantic neuroiconic display wheeled slowly inside Motela Kolhammer’s mind, each ship a pinprick of golden light trailing a purple vector tag in a headlong rush to the solid bulk of the planet ahead, represented by a blank, ebony sphere. The strength of the planetary defence layers were illustrated by translucent coloured shells wrapped around the blackness. The ships still had some way to go before the outermost, yellow shell. And still neither side had fired a shot.

  The simulation put him in mind of a hammer descending on an egg, rendered with impossibly delicate artistry for what it actually portrayed. Even he was dismayed at the level of violence to be unleashed when those two forces collided in the physical world. Something he never expected. But the tradition of the Confederation Navy was to prevent exactly this kind of monstrosity from happening, not to instigate it. He couldn’t help the guilt which came from knowing this was happening because politicians considered the Navy had failed in their principal duty.

  Stranger than that, the knowledge and its burden was bearable because of those politicians. The very people who had declared the attack had made it possible to do so with minimal casualties—on the Navy’s side. By insisting on total success, the Polity Council had given Kolhammer the one thing all military commanders crave before battle is join
ed: overwhelming firepower.

  Kolhammer’s task force accelerated towards Arnstat at a constant eight gees for thirty minutes. When he gave the order for the starships to switch off their drives, they were still 110,000 kilometres out, just on the fringes of the outer SD network, and travelling at over 150 kilometres per second. Frigates, battleships, and voidhawks fired a salvo of 25 combat wasps each. Every drone was pre-programmed to operate in an autonomous seek-and-destroy mode. A perfect engagement scenario: any chunk of matter above Arnstat, from pebble-sized interplanetary meteorites to kilometre-long industrial stations, MSVs to asteroids, was classified as hostile. The Confederation Navy ships didn’t have to stay to supervise the attack over encrypted communications links, there would be no salvos of Organization antimatter combat wasps fired at their ships to counter, no 12-gee evasive manoeuvres. No risk.

  Adamist warships began to jump away. Wormhole interstices were prised open, carrying some of the voidhawks to their rendezvous coordinates. Only the Illustrious, 10 escort frigates, and 300 accompanying voidhawks remained to observe the outcome. All of them now decelerating at 10 gees as the armada of 32,000 combat wasps swept on ahead, accelerating at a full 25 gees.

  It was a clash which had one outcome from the moment it was instigated. Even with over 500 antimatter combat wasps available, the Organization could do nothing to stop the incoming weapons. Not only did the Confederation have an incredible weight of numbers on their side; the ever-increasing velocity at which they were approaching gave them an overwhelming kinetic advantage. Kills could only be achieved by a first-time direct hit; no defending submunition would have a second chance.

  The hellhawks swallowed out en masse without even bothering to consult Arnstat’s SD command. Organization frigates began to retract their sensor booms and communication dishes down into their hull recesses prior to jumping clear. Those assigned to low-orbit enforcement duty began to accelerate at high gees, striving for an altitude where they could use their patterning nodes successfully.

  Voidhawk distortion fields examined the pressure which the Organization frigates applied against space-time in order to escape. Each combination of energy compression and trajectory was unique, allowing for only one possible emergence coordinate. Three voidhawks swallowed away in pursuit of each Organization ship, with orders to interdict and destroy. With the Adamist warships needing several seconds after emergence to extend their sensors, the voidhawks would have a small window when their target was utterly defenceless. Kolhammer was determined none of them should return to New California to bolster Capone’s strength and add their antimatter to his stockpile.

  The combat wasps in the attacking swarm began to dispense their submunitions, stretching a dense filigree of white fire across space for tens of thousands of kilometres. Brief, tiny pulses of glowing violet gas spewed out at random as the SD network’s outer sensor satellites detonated. Then the explosions began to multiply as more and more of Arnstat’s hardware was obliterated. The swarm swept across the first of the planet’s four asteroid settlements circling above geosynchronous orbit, overwhelming its short-range defences. Kinetic spears and nuclear-tipped submunitions pummelled the rock, biting out hundreds of irradiated craters. Vast cataracts of ions and magma flared away into space from each impact, the asteroid’s rotation curving them sharply to wrap itself in a thick psychedelic chromosphere. Second-tier SD platforms and inter-orbit shuttles were caught next. They were followed by another of the asteroids. For a moment it looked as though the pure savagery of the weapons had somehow ignited a fission reaction within the rock’s atomic structure. The lush stipple of explosions melded into a single radiative discharge of stellar intensity. Then the light’s uniformity cracked. At its core the asteroid had shattered, releasing a deluge of molten debris, kicking off a wave of cascade explosions as each fresh target was intercepted by the submunitions.

  Pressed deep into his acceleration couch by air molecules heavier than lead, Motela Kolhammer watched the results through a combination of optical sensor datavises and tactical graphic overlays. The two were becoming indistinguishable as reality began to imitate the electronic displays. Distinct shells of light were enveloping the planet as clouds of plasma cooled and expanded. It was low orbit, inevitably, where the largest number of vehicles, stations, and SD hardware was emplaced. Consequently, when the submunitions tore through them, the resultant blastwaves became a mantle of solid light that sealed the entire planet away from outside observation.

  Beneath it, wreckage fell to earth in bewitchingly attractive pyrotechnic storms. Streaks of ionic flame tore through the upper atmosphere, a sleet of malignant shooting stars heating the stratosphere to furnace temperatures. A potent crimson glow rose up from the clouds to greet them.

  Illustrious raced 80,000 kilometres over the south pole as the possessed on the ground chanted their spell. First warning came when the planetary gravity field quaked, warping the battleship’s trajectory by several metres. The shroud of light around Arnstat never faded; it merely changed colour, rippling through the spectrum towards resplendent violet as it contracted. Optical-spectrum sensors had to bring several shield filters on line during the last few minutes as the source shrank towards its vanishing point.

  Motela Kolhammer kept one optical sensor aligned on the accusingly empty zone as the battleship’s radar and gravitonic sensors scanned space for any sign of the planet’s mass. Every result came in negative. “Tell our escort to jump to the task force rendezvous coordinate,” he told the tactical staff. “Then plot a course for New California.”

  Sarha fell through the open hatchway into the captain’s cabin, ignoring the dark composite ladder and allowing the half-gee acceleration to pull her down neatly onto the decking. She landed, flexing her knees gracefully.

  “Ballet really missed out when you chose astroengineering at university,” Joshua said. He was standing in the middle of the room, dressed in his shorts and towelling off a liberal smearing of lemon-scented gel.

  She gave him a hoydenish grin. “I know how to exploit low-gee to my advantage.”

  “I hope Ashly appreciates it.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Humm. So how are we doing?”

  “Official end of duty watch report, sir. We’re doing the same as yesterday.” Her salute lacked efficiency.

  “Which was the same as the day before.”

  “Damn right. Oh, I tracked down the leak in that reaction mass feed pipe. Somebody slacked off when the tanks were installed in the cargo holds, a junction was misaligned. Beaulieu says she’ll get on it later today. In the meantime I isolated the pipe; we have enough redundancy to keep the flow at optimum.”

  “Yeah, right, fascinating.” He balled the towel and chucked it in a low arc across the cabin. It landed dead centre on the hopper’s open throat and slithered down.

  She watched it vanish. “I want to keep the fluid volume up. We might wind up needing it.”

  “Sure. How were Liol’s jumps?” He already knew, of course; Lady Mac ’s log was the first thing he’d checked when he woke up. Liol had completed five jumps on the last watch, each essentially flawless according to the flight computer. That wasn’t quite the point.

  “Fine.”

  “Humm.”

  “All right, what’s the matter? I thought the two of you were getting on okay these days. You can hardly fault his performance.”

  “I’m not.” He fished a clean sweatshirt out of a locker. “It’s just that I’m asking a lot of people for advice and opinions these days. Not a good development for a captain. I’m supposed to make perfect snap judgements.”

  “If you ask me a question about guiding Lady Mac I’ll be worried. Anything else . . .” Her hand waved limply, wafting air about. “You and I bounced around in that zero-gee cage enough to start with. I know you don’t connect the same way most people do. So if you want help with that, I’m your girl.”

  “What do you mean, don’t connect?�
��

  “Joshua, you were scavenging the Ruin Ring when you were eighteen. That’s not natural. You should have been out partying.”

  “I partied.”

  “No, you screwed a lot of girls between flights.”

  “That’s what eighteen-year-olds do.”

  “That’s what eighteen-year-old boys dream of doing. Adamist ones, anyway. Everyone else is busy falling helter skelter into the adult world and desperately trying to find out how the hell it works, and why it’s all so difficult and painful. How you handle friendships, relationships, breakups; that kind of thing.”

  “You make it sound like we have to pass some kind of exam.”

  “We do, though sitting it lasts for most of your life. You haven’t even started revising yet.”

  “Jesus. This is all very profound, especially at this time of the morning. What are you trying to tell me?”

  “Nothing. You’re the one that’s troubled. I damn well know it’ll be nothing to do with our mission. So I guess I’m trying to coax you into telling me what’s on your mind, and convince you it’s okay to talk about it. People do that when they’re close. It’s normal.”

  “Ballet and psychology, huh?”