“How we established ourselves was due entirely to circumstances,” Liol retorted. “My only prospect came from the Dorados Development Agency grants. And by God did I take it. Quantum Serendipity was built up from nothing. I’m self-made and proud of it, I wasn’t born with your kind of privileges.”
“Privileges? All Dad left me was a broken down starship and eighteen years unpaid docking fees. Hardly a plus factor.”
“Crap. Just living in Tranquillity is a privilege which half of the Confederation aspires to. A plutocrat’s paradise floating in the middle of a xenoc gold mine. You were never not going to make money. All you had to do was stick your hand out to grab a nugget or two.”
“They tried to kill me in that fucking Ruin Ring.”
“Then you shouldn’t have been so sloppy, should you? Earning your wealth is always only half of the problem. Hanging on to it, now that’s tough. You should have taken precautions.”
“Absolutely,” Joshua purred. “Well I’ve certainly learned that lesson. I’m hanging on to what I’ve got now.”
“I’m not going to stop you from captaining Lady Mac. But . . .”
“If it’s of any interest,” Sarha announced loudly. “We’ve emerged in the middle of a hostile electronic environment. I’ve got two of Nyvan’s SD networks asking for our flight authorization at the same time they’re saturating our sensors with overload impulses.”
Joshua grunted disparagingly, and returned his attention to the datavised displays from the flight computer. He chided himself for the lapse, it wasn’t like him not to pay attention to the jump emergence sequence. But when you’ve got a so-called brother with a lofriction conscience . . .
Sarha was right. Space between Nyvan and its orbiting asteroids was being subjected to a variety of powerful electronic disruption effects. Lady Mac’s sensors and discrimination programs were sophisticated enough to pierce most of the clutter; Nyvan’s SD networks were using archaic techniques, it was the sheer wattage behind them that was causing the trouble.
With Sarha’s help, Joshua managed to locate the network command centres and transmit Lady Mac’s standard identification code, followed by their official Tranquillity flight authorization. Only Tonala and Nangkok responded, giving him permission to approach the planet. New Georgia’s SD network, based at Jesup, remained silent.
“Keep trying them,” Joshua told Sarha. “We’ll head in anyway. Beaulieu, how are you doing tracing the Tekas?”
“Give me a minute more, Captain, please. This planet has a very strange communications architecture, and their usual interfaces seem to be down today. I expect that is a result of the network barrage. I am having to access several different national nets to find out if the ship arrived.”
On the other side of the bridge from the cosmonik, Ashly snorted bitterly. “Boneheads, nothing on this damned world ever changes. They always brag about how different they are to each other; I never noticed myself.”
“When were you here last?” Dahybi asked.
“About 2400, I think.”
Joshua watched Liol slowly turn his head to look at the pilot; his eyebrow was raised in quizzical dissension.
“When?” Liol asked.
“Twenty-four hundred. I remember it quite well. King Aaron was still on Kulu’s throne. There was some kind of dispute between Nyvan’s countries because the Kingdom had sold one of them some old warships.”
“Right,” Liol said. He was waiting for the punch line.
Lady Mac’s crew propagated dispassionate expressions right across the bridge.
“I’ve found a reference,” Beaulieu said. “The Tekas arrived yesterday. According to Tonala’s public information core it had an official flight authorization issued by the Dorados council. It docked at one of their national low orbit stations, the Spirit of Freedom, then departed an hour later; with a flight plan filed for Mondul. Four people disembarked, Lodi, Voi, Eriba, and Daphine Kigano.”
“Jackpot,” Joshua said. He datavised traffic control for an approach vector to the Spirit of Freedom. After the eighth attempt, traffic control confirmed contact through the jamming and gave him a vector.
* * *
Spirit of Freedom was Tonala’s main low-orbit civil spaceport, orbiting seven hundred and fifty kilometres above the equator. A free-floating hexagonal grid two kilometres in diameter and a hundred metres thick. Tanks, lounges, corridor tubes, thermal-dump panels, and docking bays were sandwiched between the framework of grey-white alloy struts, tapering spires extended out from each corner, tipped with a cluster of fusion drive tubes to hold the structure’s attitude stable.
As well as a port for commercial starships and cargo spaceplanes, it was also the flight hub for the huge tugs which brought down the metal mined from Floreso asteroid. Several of the heavy-duty craft were keeping station alongside the Spirit of Freedom as Lady Mac approached; open lattice pyramids with a clump of ten big fusion drive tubes at the tip, and load attachment points at each corner.
They were designed to ferry down four ironbergs apiece. Seventy-five thousand tonnes of spongesteel: incredibly pure metal foamed with nitrogen while it was still in its molten state. Floreso’s industrial teams solidified it into a squat pear shape, with a base that was scalloped by twenty-five gently rounded ridges. After that, the ironbergs were attached to the tugs for a three-week flight, spiralling down into a slightly elliptical two-hundred-kilometre orbit. For the last two days of the voyage, electric motors in the load attachment points would spin them up to one rotation per minute. In effect, they became the biggest gyroscopes in the galaxy, their precession keeping them perfectly aligned as they flew free along the final stretch of their trajectory.
Injecting the ironbergs into the atmosphere was an inordinately difficult operation for the tugs, requiring extreme precision. Each ironberg had to be at the correct attitude, and following its designated flight path exactly, so that its blunt base could strike the upper atmosphere at an angle which would create the maximum aerobrake force. Once its velocity started to drop off, gravity would pull it down in a steepening curve, which created yet more drag, accelerating the whole process. Hypersonic airflow around the scalloped base would also perpetuate the spin, maintaining stability, keeping it on track.
If everything went well—if the asteroid crews had got the internal mass distribution balanced right, if the injection point was correct—the ironberg would be aerobraked to subsonic velocity about five kilometres above the ocean. After that, nothing else mattered, no force in the universe could affect that much mass hanging in the sky in a standard gravity field. It fell straight down at terminal velocity to splash into the water amid an explosion of steam that resembled the mushroom cloud of a small nuclear bomb. And there it bobbed among the waves, its foamed interior making it buoyant enough to float without any aids.
When all four ironbergs from one tug had splashed down, the recovery fleet would sail in. The ironbergs would be towed into a foundry port ready to be broken up and fed to Tonala’s eager mills. An abundant supply of cheap metal, obtained without any ecological disturbance, was a healthy asset to the nation’s economy.
So not even the chaotic electronic war being fought between the SD networks was allowed to interrupt the operation. The tugs around the Spirit of Freedom continued to receive their regular maintenance schedule. SII-suited engineering crews crawled over the long struts, while MSVs and tankers drifted in close attendance. The service craft were the only other vehicles flying apart from Lady Mac. Joshua had a trouble-free approach, making excellent time. As they flew over the station, sensors showed him eleven other starships nestled snugly in the docking bays.
The inspection from port officers was one he was expecting; checking everyone on board for possession, then going through the life-support capsules and the two ancillary craft with electronic warfare blocks to make sure there were no unexplained glitches. Once they’d been cleared, Joshua received an official datavised welcome from Tonala’s Industry Ministry, with
an invitation to discuss his requirements and how local firms could help. They were also authorized to fly Lady Mac’s spaceplane down to Harrisburg.
“I’ll take a pair of serjeants, Dahybi, and Melvyn,” Joshua announced. “You too, Ashly, but you stay in the spaceplane in case we need evacuating. Sarha, Beaulieu, I want Lady Mac maintained at flight-ready status. Same procedure as before, we may have to leave in a hurry, so keep monitoring groundside, I want to be told if and when the crap hits the fan.”
“I can come with you,” Liol said. “I know how to handle myself if it gets noisy down there.”
“Do you trust my command judgement?”
“Of course I do, Josh.”
“Good. Then you stay up here. Because my judgement is that you won’t follow my orders.”
* * *
It was dark in Jesup’s biosphere cavern now, a permanent joyless twilight, and cold. Quinn had ordered it so. The solartubes strung out along the axial gantry were producing an enfeebled opalescent glow, whose sole purpose was to show people where they were going.
As a result, an impossible autumn had visited the lush tropical vegetation. After a futile search twisting around on their stems in search of light, the leaves were yellowing. In many places they had begun to fall, their edges crisping black from the bitter air. Already the neat filigree of pretty streams was clogging with soggy mush, overspill channels were blocked, pools were flooding the surrounding ground.
The experience of accelerated decay was one which Quinn savoured. It demonstrated his power over his surroundings. No reality dysfunction this, making things different as long as you didn’t blink. This was solid change, irreversible. Potent.
He stood before the stone altar which had been built in the park, studying the figure bound to the inverted cross on top. It was an old man, which in some ways was good. This way Quinn confirmed his zero-rated compassion; only children held equal status.
His loyal disciples stood in a circle around him, seven of them clad in blood-red robes. Faces shone as bright as their minds, fuelled by greed and ominous desire.
Twelve-T was also in attendance, sagging with the formidable burden of merely staying alive. His maltreated head was permanently bowed now. No possessed was imposing change upon him, but he was becoming almost Neanderthal in his posture.
Outside the elite coterie the acolytes formed a broad semicircle. All of them were wearing grey robes with the hoods thrown back. Their faces illuminated by the unnaturally hot bonfires flanking the altar, a flickering topaz light caressing their skin with fake expressions.
Quinn could sense several ghosts standing among them. They were frightened and demoralized as always and, as he had discovered, utterly harmless. They were completely unable to affect any aspect of the physical world. Trivial creatures with less substance than the shadows they craved.
In a way he was glad they were attending. Spying. This ceremony would show them what they were dealing with. They could be tyrannized, he was sure, in that they were no different from any other human. He wanted them to realize that he would never hesitate to inflict what pain he could upon them if they chose not to obey.
Satisfied, Quinn sang: “We are the princes of the Night.”
“We are the princes of the Night,” the acolytes chorused, it was a sound similar to the threat of thunder beyond the horizon.
“When the false lord leads his legions away into oblivion, we will be here.”
“We will be here.”
The old man was shaking now, moving his lips in prayer. He was a Christian priest, which was why Quinn had selected him. A double victory. Victory over the false lord. And victory for the serpent beast. Taking a life for no reason other than you wished it, for the pain it would cause others.
Such sacrifices had always focused on authority and its enforcement. A spectacle to coerce the weak. In pre-industrial times, this rite might have been about the summoning of dark witchcraft; but in an age of nanonic technology man had long surpassed magic, black or white. The sect arcology had known and encouraged the value of image, the psychology of precise brutality. And it worked.
Who now among this gathering would stand to challenge him? It was more ordination than anything else, confirming his right to reign.
He held out a hand, and Lawrence placed the dagger in his palm. Its handle was an elaborate ebony carving, but the blade was plain carbotanium and very sharp.
The priest cried out as Quinn slid the tip into his paunchy abdomen. It deepened to a whimper as Quinn recited: “Accept this life as a token of our love and devotion.”
“We love you, and devote ourselves to you, Lord,” growled the acolytes.
“God grant you deliverance, son,” the priest choked. Blood was running down Quinn’s arm, splattering the altar. “Go fuck yourself.”
Lawrence laughed delightedly at the priest’s anguish. Quinn was immensely proud of the boy; he’d never known anyone to offer himself up to God’s Brother so unreservedly.
The priest was dying to the harsh cheers of the acolytes. Quinn could sense the old man’s soul rising from the body, twining like smoke in a listless sky to vanish through a chink in reality. He pressed himself forwards to lick ravenously at the ephemeral stream with a narrow black tongue, enraptured.
Then another soul was pushing back down the trickle of energy, surging into the body.
“Shithead!” Quinn spat. “This body is not for you. It is our sacrament. Get the fuck out of it.”
The skin on the priest’s upside-down face began to flow like treacle. The features twisted themselves through a hundred and eighty degrees so that the mouth was superimposed on the forehead. Then the skin hardened again and the eyes snapped open.
Quinn took a pace back in surprise. It was his own face staring at him.
“Welcome to the beyond, you little prick,” it told him. Then it smiled wickedly. “Remember this part?”
A streamer of white fire lashed out of the knife which was plunged deep into the priest’s chest. It struck Twelve-T’s right arm, puncturing his chrome and steel wrist. The smoking mechanical hand dropped to the floor, fingers waggling as if they were playing piano keys. His wrist joint was reduced to a jagged bracelet of metal with green hydraulic fluid spraying out, and the frayed end of a power cable fluttering about.
“Do it!” the forged face yelled.
Twelve-T lunged towards Quinn, shoving his broken arm forwards. A mad smile cracked his face.
Lawrence wailed: “No,” and flung himself into Twelve-T’s path.
The broken wrist joint rammed into Lawrence’s throat. A bright spark of electricity twinkled at the end of the ragged power cable as it touched the boy’s skin.
Lawrence shrieked as his whole body silently detonated into sunlight brilliance. He froze with his arms still outstretched, a frantic expression etched on his face. The light was so fierce he became translucent—a naked angel bathing in the heart of a star. Then his extremities began to shrivel, turning black. He had time to shriek once more before the internecine fire ate him away.
The dreadful light shrank, revealing a patch of baked earth and droppings of fine white ash. Twelve-T lay next to it where he had stumbled, the fall jolting his brain out of his half skull like wine from a goblet. It was rolling over the grass.
“Ah well,” said the forged face. “I guess we both lost this time around. Be seeing you, Quinn.” It began to untwist, reverting to the priest’s startled death rictus. The incursive soul flowed away, retreating into the beyond.
“COME BACK!” Quinn roared.
There was a last ironic laugh, and his tormenter was gone.
For all his power and strength, there was nothing Quinn could do. Absolutely nothing. His impotence was an agonizing humiliation. He screamed, and the altar shattered, sending the priest’s battered body tumbling. The acolytes began to run. Quinn kicked Twelve-T’s brain, and the grisly organ burst apart, sending a splat of gore across his terrified disciples. He turned back and discharged
a bolt of searing white fire into the priest’s remnants. The body ignited instantly, but the flames were only an effete mockery of the incendiary heat which had consumed Lawrence.
The disciples shrank away as Quinn sent blast after blast of white fire into the pyre, reducing the body and the crumbling stones to radiant magma. When they reached the boundary of light given off from the bonfires, they too turned and fled after the acolytes.
Only the ghosts remained, safe from the fury of the black-robed figure in their secluded lifeless realm. After a while they saw him sink to his knees and make the sign of the inverted cross on his chest.
“I will not fail you, my Lord,” he said quietly. “I will quicken the Night as I promised. All I ask as the price of my soul is that when it has fallen you bring me the fucker who did this.”
He rose and made his way out of the park. This time he was truly alone. Even ghosts quailed before the terrifying thoughts alight inside his head.
* * *
Hoya was the first of the four voidhawks to emerge above Nyvan. Niveu and his crew immediately began scanning the local environment for threats.
“No ships within twenty thousand kilometres,” he said, “but the SD networks are shooting off electronic warfare blitzes at each other. Looks like the nations are in their usual confrontational state.”
Monica accessed the sensor suite in the voidhawk’s lower hull, and the starfield projected into her mind came alive with vivid coloured icons. Two more voidhawks were holding formation a hundred kilometres away. As she watched, another wormhole terminus opened to disgorge the fourth. “Are we being targeted by the platforms?” she asked. She appreciated the way the Edenists unfailingly spoke out loud in her presence, keeping her informed. But their display symbology was very different to that used by the Royal Navy, she hadn’t quite mastered the program yet.
The Night's Dawn Trilogy Page 218
