Transmission: Ragnarok: Book Two

by John Meaney

  ‘I don’t think Earth is the target,’ he said. ‘I think it formed a convenient recruiting station.’

  ‘Recruits?’ said Pavel.

  ‘For whichever force’ – Max pointed into the galactic core – ‘has established this bridgehead, ready and waiting for the main enemy to come.’

  All of them stared at the holo.

  ‘Well,’ said Clayton finally, ‘at least there’s one good thing.’

  Their stares transferred to him.

  ‘Irreverent humour,’ said Kelvin, ‘is hardly what we need.’

  ‘No, but’ – Clayton gestured – ‘it’s what we’re good at, isn’t it? Us as a species, Max.’

  ‘Good at what?’

  ‘Good at warfare. Because that’s what this is, isn’t it?’

  In the holo, the spiral galaxy looked serene and eternal, destined never to change; and during any human lifetime, that illusion held true. Only on longer timescales, as Pavel had said, did the picture change, as the galaxy became a fragile-looking thing, small in the immensity of surrounding darkness, already altered at its heart, ripe perhaps for sundering apart.

  SIXTY-SEVEN

  MOLSIN, 2603 AD

  They burst from the quickglass floor, erupting upwards: Rhianna and Roger both. All around were screaming people, running but bypassing them, as Rhianna gestured a thick, curved, rising barrier into place. Beyond the panicked mob, the others were simply standing, the blue web of light joining their eyes.

  ‘We need to get through!’ yelled Rhianna. ‘Show everyone what this is.’

  Roger nodded. He jumped onto the top of the barrier, and she followed.

  ‘Ready?’ she said.

  ‘Yeah.’

  It threw them over the mob, pulsing and lengthening beneath their feet, propelling them high, then arcing down. They jumped clear less than two metres above the floor. Roger broke the momentum with a shoulder roll, feeling momentarily good about that; but Rhianna had been less spectacular in her landing, taking the impact by ordinary knee-bend, and she was first at the group of people: some fifty Fulgidi refugees, no more, frozen in place with the blue glow that terrified everyone.

  ‘It’s holo,’ she said, waving her tu-ring. ‘A simple holo illusion.’

  ‘Shit.’

  Rhianna did something, and the blueness simply faded out of existence. The people remained standing, still in whatever trance Helsen had induced.

  Roger took in a deep breath.

  ‘She was here,’ he said. ‘Helsen.’

  ‘You can smell her?’

  ‘Don’t ask me to explain. I think she went that way.’ He pointed to an exit behind Rhianna. ‘But I don’t think she’s close.’

  It was faint, the spoor: the evil he could taste more than smell. The combined roar of running people would not have buried the familiar discordant nine notes, not if the sound had been present; but there was no trace of it.

  Then waves of orange and black strobed across the hall’s high, neo-Baroque ceiling, its intricate walls and polished floor.

  ‘Bug out,’ said Rhianna. ‘Bug out now.’

  Quickglass began to boom, again and again, sounding a tocsin.

  ‘Why?’

  After all their breakneck rush to get here.

  ‘Seppuku bomb,’ she said. ‘They’re sacrificing the city.’

  No wonder there were no police officers present. The official response to a burgeoning new Anomaly would have to be all-out, to have a chance of being effective. Had the threat here been real, it was probably the one course of action likely to succeed: stand off and take out the danger, hard.

  ‘But I can’t leave Alisha,’ said Roger.

  ‘I can.’

  She stepped close, pressed her body against him, and kissed him.

  What?

  He heard from far away: ‘Sorry.’

  Bands of something bound him to her, close as if lovers; but her lips had delivered anaesthesia, not passion. Soft and melting, then: not her, but the floor beneath them.

  Dropping now.

  From a distance, but only from a distance, Emergency Disjunction was a beautiful process: cities propelled outward from cities, like some globular blossom dissipating seeds in all directions. Spars dissolved as sky-cities flew, attaining velocities they had never attempted before, pulling apart before it could happen.

  White, incandescent, the sphere of explosion at the centre.

  But the expansion was not fast enough: four more of the inner nine were caught in the seppuku bomb’s devastation: Popper, Dalton, Gaussburg and Whitton, all damaged and already dying.

  In control rooms, senior officers let out sighs or curses as the case might be: five cities lost, therefore nine hundred and twenty-two – plus babies – saved. For several minutes, the emergency proper appeared to be over, traumatic though the coming aftermath would be: the cleanup, the relocation of people in cities not their own, the re-establishment of order.

  Then flame licked across the hulls of Penrose and The Big Aleph, and the news came in: more Anomalous centres were appearing, in cities where the authorities no longer had time to evacuate and order urban suicide. Only one response remained: sky-city after sky-city activated energy-weapon systems they had never used in anger, not before.

  Now, they let loose.

  Soon the warfare was all-out, or even worse than war: for each city fired upon every other city nearby, no longer knowing who the enemy was, therefore assuming all.

  Only the baby cities, unable to fight, floated clear of the conflagration.

  For a second, dropping through the toxic air, Roger had come round – Dubrovnik’s lower hull was receding overhead – and then a gold-and-cobalt-blue ship was underneath them, a dorsal opening appeared a second before they fell inside, then whatever had bound him to Rhianna was gone. But the impact against the control cabin floor was hard, knocking him into a state where he could not see though hearing remained. Perhaps for a few seconds he was out of it entirely.

  And then transition.

  Waking up to amber-tinted air, and the deep knowledge in every cell of his body that this was mu-space, and he and Rhianna were safe.

  Friss Reejan, in her quickglass bubble, fell clear of the awfulness above. As Lady Mayor of Deltaville, she had been the officers’ first priority in the evacuation process, getting her to the city’s edge where she toppled clear, encased in quickglass. Dry-eyed because she had to be, she commanded the extrusion of glider-wings, bringing the bubble’s flight under some kind of control. Soon her trajectory flattened out, at an altitude far lower than the lowest point of Conjunction.

  When she looked back, flames and dropping debris were all she could see.

  ‘My God. Oh, sweet God.’

  She looked at her hand. How incongruous: holding a bowl of orgasmousse from the fresh consignment, so much better than any other food. The officers had snatched her clear of a banquet, and she had not even let go.

  Behind her, the cities were gone.

  ‘Oh, God.’

  Using her fingers, she spooned all of the orgasmousse into her mouth. Immediate pleasure flooded through her, more intense than she had never known, wave after wave of sheerest joy. Eyes closed, whimpering, she formed control gestures.

  The wings melted back into the quickglass as it formed a vertical bullet-shape, driving straight down to the hydrofluoric acid ocean.

  Tannier hit Helsen with a hooking palm-heel, smashing her sideways.

  ‘You think we’re all fucking amateurs, bitch?’

  She was down on one knee. Most men would have been in coma.

  I’m going to kill you, Helsen.

  He was a professional, and he had picked up her trail through a tour de force of surveillance hacking that he would never be able to share with anyone; and he had intercepted her here, in a lonely chamber just inside the hull of Pneumos, too late to prevent the cascade of violence she had kicked off. Too late for normal procedures of arrest and detention then: just time for him to be the
executioner.

  ‘Piss off,’ she said.

  The floor ripped apart between them: a gap widening very fast. Already they were separated by a chasm too wide to jump across. He stared around, raising his arms to summon quickglass tendrils; but a rush of wind indicated the outer hull was splitting open, and then he was choking as Molsin’s toxic atmosphere mixed with city air.

  Shit.

  He saw Helsen throw herself out through the gap – good, she’s suicided – but then a shining hull told of something very different: a mu-space ship, and Helsen’s being dropped inside by a city tendril before the ship’s opening sealed up.

  It turned away, silver and red its colours; then it slammed out of existence.

  Escaped.

  He could choke here, throw himself out, or run back inside the city to prolong his end; but whichever way it went, this was it.

  It’s all too soon. Maura, I should never have—

  Then scarlet light was blazing.

  <>

  <>

  <>

  <>

  Sapphire blue, as the surroundings changed. A cabin, with air that did not choke him; and three more traceries of living light.

  ‘Wait,’ he managed. ‘I can’t survive in mu-space.’

  Not conscious, anyhow. But they did not seem to hear him.

  Oh, frigging God.

  He stood up, stared at the metal bulkhead, then crouched.

  Oh, Maura.

  And lunged headfirst against the—

  SIXTY-EIGHT

  MU-SPACE, 2603 AD (REALSPACE-EQUIVALENT)

  Piet Gunnarsson and his ship were basking in the golden void, meditating on the distant strings of black fractal stars, glad to be back in the universe where they belonged. It was a rest period, and he had already slept. Here, strictly, they had nothing to do.

  In realspace there had been Fulgor to watch over, from what they had hoped was a safe distance. However deadly the possibility of attack from the planet-locked Anomaly, there was always a tedium to hanging in realspace. Here, the opposite was true: simply relaxing involved a resonance with mu-space energies that made him-and-ship fully alive.

  Far off, Alice’s ship floated, and beyond her the others from their shift. A replacement sequence of ships was hanging in realspace to observe the hellworld of Fulgor.

  **Someone’s in a hurry.**

  That was Alice.

  **I see them.**

  No ID signals were evident, but the ship was flying hard – her hull silver and scarlet, translated to realspace colours. Not a vessel that Piet recognized. It would be past them in seconds.

  Another signal came in from Alice.

  **No response to hails and pings.**

  On this geodesic, the newcomer could transit into realspace and pop out close to Fulgor. Piet’s stomach churned as he sank into ship-interface, and he-and-ship powered up their weapon systems.

  **You can’t be serious.**

  Alice again, but ship-and-Piet did not reply, because they knew how ferocious was the intent behind their orders: to let nothing leave or approach the realspace hellworld.

  **Σ Γ 7 ≡ Ψ 9 **

  Piet-and-ship felt the signal activate their recognition module. Entanglement collapsed to reveal the corresponding eigenmessage:

  Priority Aleph. Admiral on board.

  He-and-ship allowed their weaponry to relax as the other ship sped past, flared with light, and disappeared from the golden void.

  **Ours not to reason why, Piet.**

  **Nobody tells us nothing.**

  In Aeternum, the double negative implied an infinite mutual recursion akin to paradox, while the counter-rhythm of the nouns formed a twisted pun. It was enough for Alice to transmit a chuckle without words.

  But Piet was not amused by his own joke, because he could see no reason why a lone admiral would fly straight towards the most unpredictable of danger zones.

  On the other hand, Piet had his orders.

  I’m not going to fail in my duty.

  If he had been more alert days earlier, he would have followed the evacuation fleet to Fulgor and helped refugees get clear before the Anomaly took over. Then, he had not been civic-minded, and the shame would remain for ever.

  So I’ll do what I’m told.

  In a subjective hour, he would be back in realspace, on watch once more.

  Observing the enemy.

  Because when it boiled down to it, the Anomaly was simply that.

  The enemy.

  SIXTY-NINE

  FULGOR, 2603 AD

  It had evolved. It continued to evolve.

  Its billions of constituent, pinpoint components, had once been independent minds. Buried deep inside were flimsy theories from Its ancestral species, such as: in the absence of a vast plurality, evolution could not progress: a solitary, unitary organism could only grow. Yet It continued to change in ways tiny life-forms could not contemplate, unable to fully grasp the strong coupling between emergent resonance and natural selection. It spread across the face of Its world. Soon, It would become Its world; only solitude was necessary.

  And then, something disturbed Its isolation.

  The ship that landed was silver and scarlet. Using archaic, ancestral communication modes, it broadcast this message:

  **We wish to help. We wish to help you spread.**

  For many nanoseconds, It contemplated the primitive semantics; then it received a further signal.

  **Give us some of your people, and we will take them with us.**

  This needed no thought. It would miss a handful of internal components no more than a human might regret a shed skin-cell. Using a level of detailed control It had not needed for some time, It directed several of Its human components to walk towards the waiting ship.

  An opening melted in the hull, and a ramp flowed out. In single file, Its components ascended and went inside.

  **We give our word.**

  There was no need for It to answer.

  SEVENTY

  LABYRINTH, 2603 AD (REALSPACE-EQUIVALENT)

  Jed and Rhianna were with him, but he could hardly perceive their presence. Even before the wall melted open, he could sense her inside, and knew how much had changed, how much he had missed by being away on Molsin.

  I’m here.

  The space was as vast as ever, but now she seemed to fill it. Stately in a way she could never have managed before, she floated closer: magnificent and huge and beautiful: black and webbed with both scarlet and gold, all power and manoeuvrability. Roger touched her lower hull with his hand.

  You’re so beautiful.

  And I’m yours.

  Tears blurred everything.

  Yes.

  A tendril came down, ready to lift him aloft, to take him inside her for the maiden flight.

  I’m ready.

  For the flight?

  And the rest.

  The moment stretched out as the tendril took hold of him around the waist.

  Rest?

  I have my mother’s memories.

  Oh.

  She lifted him up.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This stanza, which I’ve quoted in chapter 35, is from one of the Hávamál collection of poems as translated by R.I. Page, and printed in Page [1995]. Though the verses were not gathered until the late Viking Age, many date from earlier times.

  Medium wise should a man be,

  Never too wise.

  No man should know his fate in advance;

  His heart will be the freer of care.

  Many thanks to the volunteer staff at Bletchley Park and others who have told me more than I can use here. Massive gratitude to Andrew Jenkins, Mark Williamson and James Winters for encouraging feedback. And infinite love and thanks, as always, to Yvonne for getting me through it.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Barnes, M., A New Introduction to Old Norse, Viking Society for Northern Research, University College London, 3rd Edition, 2
008

  Copeland, B.J. et al., Colossus: The Secrets of Bletchley Park’s Code-breaking Computers, Oxford University Press, 2006

  Crossley-Holland, K., The Norse Myths, Pantheon Books, 1980

  Fairbairn, Capt. W.E., Get Tough!, Paladin Press, 1979 (original pub. 1942)

  Fölsing, A., Albert Einstein, Penguin Books, 1998

  Hawkins, J., On Intelligence, Holt, 2004

  Hodges, A., Alan Turing: the Enigma, Vintage, 1992

  Jeffery, K., MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service, Bloomsbury, 2010

  Kanigel, R., The Man Who Knew Infinity, Abacus, 1991

  Laughlin, R.B., A Different Universe, Basic Books, 2005

  Law, M., The Pyjama Game, Aurum, 2007

  Navarro, J., What Every Body Is Saying, HarperCollins, 2008

  Ornstein, R., The Right Mind, Harcourt Brace, 1997

  Page, R.I., Chronicles of the Vikings, The British Museum Press, 1995

  Page, R.I., Runes, The British Museum Press, 1987

  Parker, A., Seven Deadly Colours, Free Press, 2005

  Reid, J.M., The Atomic Nucleus, Penguin Books, 1972

  Poundstone, W., Prisoner’s Dilemma, Oxford University Press, 1993

  Rhodes, R., The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Penguin Books, 1988

  Sanmark, A., Sundman, F., The Vikings, Lyxo, 2008

  Shirer, William L., The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Arrow Books, 1998

  Strogatz, S., SYNC, Hyperion, 2003

  Taylor, P.B., Auden, W.H., The Elder Edda, Faber and Faber, 1969

  West, N., GCHQ: The Secret Wireless War 1900–86, Coronet, 1987

  Yourgrau, P., A World Without Time, Basic Books, 2005

  Articles on Telegraphy and on World War II in the 1956 edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica were also helpful.

  Also by John Meaney from Gollancz:

  Bone Song

  Dark Blood