The rest of the security committee remained silent, startled by her apparent eagerness to discard taboos.
“We would still need a massive conventional army to occupy and hold the land we regained, and support the bitek constructs,” Ralph said cautiously.
“Yes.” The Princess was lost in thought. “You’ve certainly offered a valid proposal, Mr Hiltch. Unfortunately, as I’m sure you are aware, I could not conceivably approach the Edenists with such a request. The political implications of such an alliance would undermine some of the Kingdom’s basic tenets of foreign policy, a policy which has been maintained for centuries.”
“I see, ma’am,” Ralph said stiffly.
“I can’t petition them,” Kirsten said, enjoying herself. “Only King Alastair can do that. So you’d better go and ask my big brother for me, hadn’t you, Mr Hiltch?”
* * *
As soon as New California fell to the Capone Organization the Consensus of the thirty habitats orbiting Yosemite started preparing for war. It was a situation which had never before occurred in the five centuries since Edenism was founded. Only Laton had ever threatened them in the past, but he was one man; the staggering pan-Confederation resources they had were adequate to deal with him (so they considered at the time). This was different.
Adamists throughout the Confederation nearly always allowed prejudice to contaminate their thinking towards the Edenist culture. They assumed that as it was both wealthy and cloistered it would be if not decadent, then at least timorous. They were wrong. Edenists prided themselves in their rational approach to all facets of life. They might deplore violence, favouring endless diplomatic negotiations and economic sanctions to any form of conflict, but if there was no alternative, they would fight. And fight with a coldly logical precision which was frightening.
Once the decision was taken, Consensus began the job of coordinating the gas giant’s resources and priorities. The extensive clusters of industrial stations which surrounded each habitat were immediately turned over in their entirety to armaments manufacture. Component production was integrated by Consensus, matching demand to capability within hours, then going on to harmonize final fabrication procedures. Barely four hours after the operation started, the first new combat wasps were emerging from their freshly allocated assembly bays.
After conquering New California itself, Capone began his campaign against the system’s asteroid settlements. Consensus knew then it would only be a matter of time. Yosemite was the source of He3 for the entire system, the strategic high ground.
Perhaps if Capone had ordered an all-out assault on Yosemite as his first action he might have been successful. Instead, taking over the asteroid settlements was a tactical error. It allowed the Consensus precious days to consolidate the gas giant’s defences. Not even Emmet Mordden really grasped the awesome potential of an entire civilization converted to a war footing, especially one with Edenism’s technological resources. How could he? It had never happened before.
Voidhawks hovering seven hundred thousand kilometres above New California’s poles observed the three new squadrons being assembled among the fifty-three asteroids orbiting the planet. Their composition, numbers, and in some cases even the armament specifications were duly noted and relayed to Yosemite. Unknown to the Organization, the voidhawks were not the summation of the Edenist intelligence gathering operation, they simply coordinated the observation. Thousands of stealthed spy sensor globes the size of tomatoes were falling past the asteroids like a constant black snow. All the information they gathered was passed back to the voidhawks through affinity links with their bitek processors. The possessed couldn’t detect affinity, nor was it susceptible to either conventional electronic warfare or the interference by the energistic ability, all of which allowed the spy globes to reveal a minute by minute account of the buildup.
Had anyone in the Organization realized just how detailed the Edenist knowledge was, they would never have dispatched the starships.
Thirty-nine hours after Capone had given the go-ahead to try to capture the Yosemite cloudscoops, two of the three squadrons of ships docked in the asteroids departed. Consensus knew both the vectors of the ships and their arrival time.
Yosemite orbited seven hundred and eighty-one million kilometres from the G5-type star of the New California system. At a hundred and twenty-seven thousand kilometres in diameter it was slightly smaller than Jupiter, although its storm bands lacked the vigour normally associated with such mass; even their coloration was uninspiring, streamers of sienna and caramel meandering among the pristine white upbursts of ammonia crystals.
The thirty Edenist habitats orbited sedately three-quarters of a million kilometres above the equator, their tracks perturbed only by gentle resonances with the eight large innermost moons. It was that radial band where the Consensus had concentrated its new defensive structure. Each of the habitats was englobed by beefed-up Strategic Defence platforms; but given the demonstrated ruthlessness of the attackers, Consensus was attempting to prevent any Organization ships getting near enough to launch a combat wasp salvo.
With the vectors identified and timed, Consensus redeployed twelve thousand of the combat wasps out of the total of three hundred and seventy thousand it had already seeded across the gas giant’s equatorial zone. Their fusion drives ignited for a few minutes, putting them on a loose interception trajectory with the area of space the attackers were likely to emerge in. A hundred of the patrolling voidhawks were moved closer.
The first seven attackers to emerge, as per standard tactics programs, were all front-line navy rapid-response frigates. Their mission was to assess the level of opposition, and if necessary clear the incoming squadron’s designated emergence zone of any hostile hardware. Even as their event horizons vanished, leaving them falling free, twenty-five voidhawks were accelerating towards them at ten gees. Distortion fields locked on, ruining the equilibrium of space around their hulls, preventing any of them from jumping clear. Combat wasps were already shooting over the intervening distance at twenty-five gees. The frigates immediately launched defensive salvos, but with their sensors hampered by the energistic flux of their own crews, the response was too slow in coming, and even when it did they were hopelessly outnumbered. Each of the frigates was the target of at least a hundred and fifty combat wasps, streaking in at them from every direction. At most, they could fire forty defenders. To have stood a good chance they would have needed close to five hundred apiece.
Within a hundred seconds all seven frigates were destroyed.
Ten minutes later, the rest of the Organization’s starships started to emerge from their ZTT jumps. Their predicament was even worse. They were expecting the specialist frigates to have established a defensive perimeter. It took time for an ordinary Adamist starship to deploy its sensor clusters and scan local space for possible danger; time which in this case was lengthened by malfunctioning equipment. When the sensors finally did relay an image of the external arena, it seemed as though a small galaxy was on the move. Yosemite was almost invisible behind a sparkling nebula of fusion drives; thousands of combat wasps and tens of thousands of submunitions were generating a fraudulent dawn across half of the colossal planet’s nightside. And the nebula was contracting, twin central whorls twisting lazily into two dense spires which were rising inexorably towards the emergence zones.
One by one, the Organization starships crashed against the terrible, moon-sized mountains of light, detonating into photonic avalanches which tumbled away into the yawning darkness.
* * *
Two hours later, the voidhawks on observation duty above New California reported that Capone’s third squadron was leaving the orbital asteroids. When they were a quarter of a million kilometres above the planet, the starships activated their energy patterning nodes and vanished. Consensus was puzzled by the vector; they weren’t aligned on any known inhabited world.
* * *
Not even the ending of the physical threat had brought any r
elief to the turmoil in Louise’s head. They had flown all the way into orbit to dock with the Far Realm without any problem, although Furay had grumbled constantly about bits of machinery going wrong on the ascent.
The starship itself wasn’t quite as impressive as she’d been expecting. The interior was like servants’ quarters, except made out of metal and plastic. There were four spheres grouped together in a pyramid shape, which the crew called life-support capsules, and that was the total available living space; apparently the rest of the ship inside the hull was solid machinery. Everything was so dreadfully small—tables, chairs, bunks; and what wasn’t being used had to be folded away. And to complete her misery, free fall was an utter nightmare.
It was ironic. As Genevieve had perked up during the spaceplane flight, so Louise had felt gradually worse. As soon as the rocket engines finally cut out, leaving them floating free, Genevieve had yelled delightedly, releasing her webbing and hurtling around the cabin, giggling as she bounced and somersaulted. Even Fletcher, after his initial alarm at the sensation, had relaxed, smiling cautiously as he attempted a few simple gymnast manoeuvres with Genevieve cheering him on.
But not her. Oh, no. She’d been wretchedly sick three times during the rendezvous, what with the spaceplane juddering around the whole time. It had taken her several tries to learn how to use the sanitation tube provided for such instances, much to the disgusted dismay of the others in the cabin.
She had then continued to be sick, or at least have the stomach spasms, after they floated through the airlock tube into the starship’s tiny lounge. Endron, the ship’s systems specialist who doubled as medical officer, had towed her into the sick bay cubicle. Twenty minutes later when the horrid warm itch inside her stomach faded, and some kind of cool fluid was sprayed into her mouth to rinse away the taste of vomit, she began to take stock for the first time. Her ears felt funny, and when she touched one she could feel something hard cupped around the back of it.
“That’s a medical nanonic,” Endron told her. “I’ve put one package behind each ear. Don’t try and take them off, they’ve knitted with your inner ears. It ought to solve your balance problem.”
“Thank you,” she said meekly. “I’m sorry to be so much trouble.”
“You’re not. If only your sister was as quiet as you.”
“Oh. I’m sorry. Is she being a nuisance?”
He laughed. “Not really. We’re just not used to girls her age on board, that’s all.”
Louise stopped fingering the medical package. When she brought her hand away she saw a strange green bracelet on her wrist; it was made from a substance like lustreless polythene, an inch wide and about half an inch thick. There was no join, it was solid. On closer inspection she saw it had fused to her skin, yet it wasn’t painful.
“Another package,” Endron said dryly. “Again, don’t touch it, please.”
“Is it for my balance as well?”
“No. That one is for your other condition. It will keep your blood chemistry stable, and if it detects any metabolic problem starting from free-fall exposure it’ll datavise a warning to me.”
“Other condition?” she asked timidly.
“You did know you were pregnant, didn’t you?”
She closed her eyes and nodded, too ashamed to look at him. A complete stranger knowing. How awful.
“You should have told Furay,” he remonstrated gently. “Free fall exerts some strong physiological changes on a body, especially if you’re unaccustomed to it. And in your state, you really should have been prepared properly before the spaceplane took off.”
A warm tear squeezed out from under her eyelids. “It’s all right, isn’t it? The baby. Oh, please, I didn’t know.”
“Shush.” Endron’s hand stroked her forehead soothingly. “The baby is just fine. You’re a very healthy young girl. I’m sorry if I frightened you; like I said, we’re not used to passengers. I suppose it must be equally strange for you, too.”
“It’s all right, really?”
“Yes. And the nanonic will keep it that way.”
“Thank you. You’ve been very kind.”
“Just doing my job. I’ll have to consult some files about your diet, though, and check what food stocks we’ve got on board. I’ll get back to you on that one.”
Louise opened her eyes, only to find the cabin blurred by liquid stretching across her irises. A lot of blinking cleared it.
“Let’s get you mobile again,” Endron said, and released the seal on the straps holding her down on the couch. “Though you’re not to whizz about like your sister, mind.”
His tone was identical to Mrs Charlsworth’s. “I won’t.” The rest of the sentence died on her lips as she caught sight of him. Her first thought was that he was suffering some kind of terrible affliction.
Endron’s head was ordinary enough. He was a man in his late fifties, she guessed, with a short crop of fading black, curly hair and cheeks which appeared almost bloated, eradicating wrinkles. However, his body . . . He had very broad shoulders atop an inflated rib cage, she could actually see the lines of individual ribs under his glossy green ship-suit. She’d seen holograms of terrestrial sparrows at school, and the anatomical arrangement put her in mind of that puffed-out bird. His chest was huge, and very frail-looking.
“Not seen a Martian before, huh?” he asked kindly.
Furious with herself for staring, Louise turned her head away. “I’m not sure. Do all Martians look like you?”
“Yep. So you’d better get used to it. This is an SII line ship after all, the rest of the crew are the same as me. Except Furay of course; that’s why he’s on board. We couldn’t fly the spaceplane down to terracompatible planets. Can’t take the gravity.”
“How . . .” She wasn’t sure if this was really a fit subject to discuss so casually. It was almost as though they were talking about a terminal illness. “Why are you like that?”
“Geneering. It’s very deliberate, dates back a while. Even with terraforming we don’t have a standard atmosphere on Mars. Our ancestors decided to meet the problem halfway. As we’re a Communist society, naturally everyone got the modification to expand our lung capacity; and that was on top of the earlier adaptations we made to ourselves to survive in the Moon’s gravity field.”
“The Moon?” Louise asked, trying to sort things out in her mind. “You lived on the Moon first?”
“It was the Lunar nation which terraformed Mars. Didn’t they teach you that at school?”
“Uh, no. At least, we haven’t got to it yet.” She decided not to question him on the communism bit. Given Daddy’s opinion on that topic, it would make life a little too complicated right now.
He was smiling gently at her. “I think that’s enough history. It’s nearing midnight, Norwich time. Perhaps you’d better get some sleep, yes?”
She gave him an eager nod.
Endron coached her in the elementary movements necessary to get about in free fall. Speed was not a requirement, he insisted, arriving safely and accurately at your destination was. And you must be careful of inertia, it creates huge bruises.
With his encouragement she made her way into the life support capsule they’d been allocated: a lounge five yards to a side, made from grubby pearl-grey composite walls which were inlaid with several instrument panels with tiny orange and green lights winking below their dark glass surfaces. Plastic doors which were like a kind of solidified liquid flowed apart to reveal three “cabins” for them to sleep in (the wardrobes she had in her Cricklade bedroom were larger). There was a bathroom in the upper deck at which Louise took one look and promptly recoiled, vowing not to go to the toilet again until they were safely back on a planet.
Genevieve shot up to embrace her as soon as she glided through the ceiling hatch. Fletcher smiled a welcome.
“Isn’t this truly wondrous!” the little girl proclaimed. She was floating with her toes six inches off the decking, spinning like a ballerina. Two ponytails stood out at ri
ght angles from her head. When she spread her arms wide her speed slowed. A neat toe kick, too quick to follow, and she soared up to the ceiling, clasping a grab hoop to kill her movement. Enchanted eyes smiled at Louise. “Bet you I can do seven somersaults before I reach the floor.”
“You probably can,” Louise said wearily.
“Oh.” Genevieve’s face was instantly contrite. She levitated back to the decking until she was level with Louise. “I’m sorry. How are you feeling?”
“Fine now. And it’s time for bed.”
“Oww, Louise!”
“Now.”
“All right.”
Endron proffered the girl a squeeze bulb. “Here, it’s a chocolate drink. Try it, I’m sure you’ll like it.”
Genevieve started sucking eagerly on the nozzle.
“You are recovered, lady?” Fletcher asked.
“Yes. Thank you, Fletcher.”
They looked at each other for a long moment, unaware of Endron watching them.
One of the instrument panels let out a quiet bleep.
Endron scowled and drifted over to it, anchoring himself on a stikpad. “Shoddy components,” he muttered.
Fletcher gave Louise an apologetic grimace, mildly embarrassed. “I can’t stop it,” he said in a whisper.
“Not your fault,” she whispered back. “Don’t worry. The ship still works.”
“Yes, lady.”
“That was nice,” Genevieve announced. She held out the empty squeeze bulb and promptly burped.
“Gen!”
“Sorry.”
With Endron showing her how the cabin fittings worked, Louise finally got Genevieve into bed; a heavily padded sleeping bag stuck to the decking. Louise tucked her sister’s hair into the hood and kissed her gently. Genevieve gave her a drowsy smile and immediately closed her eyes.
The Night's Dawn Trilogy Page 159
