“The Kiint stonewalled you, huh?” Joshua asked.
“Malva was very polite about it, but essentially, yes.”
Joshua settled back, gazing up at the domed ceiling. “Let me see. If a Tyrathca arkship encountered this God, then it has to be a long way off, a very long way. Not too much problem for a voidhawk, but . . . ah, now I get it. The antimatter.” Lady Mac’s inclusion was obvious now. Her delta-V reserve was currently five or six times greater than most Adamist warships, making her an obvious candidate to surmount the problem of galactic orbital mechanics. For starships, there’s a lot more than just distance to the gulf between stars. Ultimately, it is velocity which governs their design and finances.
Earth’s sun orbits the galactic centre roughly once every two hundred and thirty million years, giving it an approximate velocity of two hundred and twenty kilometres per second relative to the core. Other stars, of course, have different orbital velocities, depending on their distance from the core, so their velocities relative to each other are also different. Voidhawks can cope with the variance by tailoring their wormhole terminus to match a local star’s vector. It’s a manoeuvre which uses up an inconvenient amount of energy from the patterning cells; however, because they obtain their energy for free it doesn’t affect their commercial performance except in terms of recharging time. But for Adamist starship captains, that variance isn’t merely inconvenient, it’s a positive bane. The ZTT jump might provide a short cut across the interstellar gulf, but it cannot magically change inertia. A starship emerging from a jump has precisely the same vector it had when it started. In order to rendezvous with the planet or asteroid at its destination, its delta-V has to be altered to match. It’s a tedious process which uses up plenty of fuel; in other words, it costs money. And the further the stars are away from each other, the greater the velocity difference. For most Adamist starships, a flight right across the longest axis of Confederation space, a distance approaching nine hundred light-years, would use up over ninety per cent of their reaction drive fuel. Several marques would be incapable of the feat anyway. The limit is imposed because they all used fusion drives.
Antimatter, of course, provided a vastly superior delta-V. And the antimatter Lady Mac had taken on board from the Beezling was still in her confinement chambers. The First Admiral had given Samuel instructions for the secure military facilities at Jupiter to dispose of it. One of the five specialist ships qualified to handle the substance was still en route to Tranquillity.
“There is a high possibility that a long flight will be required to bring this task to a fruitful conclusion,” Wing-Tsit Chong said. “I congratulate you on your clarity of thought, young Joshua.”
Syrinx and Ione swapped a glance. “You’re going to let him use antimatter?” Mzu asked in surprise.
“A voidhawk and Adamist starship are a good pairing for this kind of assignment,” Syrinx said. “Both of us have strengths and weaknesses which complement the other. Providing the Adamist ship can manage to keep up with a voidhawk, of course.”
“Outperform, or outsmart?” Joshua asked civilly.
“All right,” Mzu said. “So why am I here?”
“We believed you might be able to help us analyse the nature of the Sleeping God,” Kempster Getchell said. “Especially if it turns out to be a high-technology weapon rather than a natural phenomenon, which is my field.”
Alkad glanced round at their faces, depressed when she knew she should have been flattered. “I had one idea,” she said. “Once. Thirty years ago.”
“One original insight,” Wing-Tsit Chong said. “Which is one more than most people have had, or ever will have. You have a mind which is capable of it. An ability which can innovate on such a level is an asset we cannot overlook.”
“What about Foulkes?” Alkad asked Samuel.
“If you agree to participate, I’ll speak with her. The non-contact prohibition placed upon you does not apply in this situation. You will be permitted to fly on this mission. However, I will accompany you along with Monica.”
“I’m flattered.”
“Don’t be. And please don’t interpret our continued presence as approval for what you did. It so happens, that there are sections of this mission which require the kind of ability which Monica and I specialise in.”
“How very enigmatic. Very well, if you think I’m the right person for the job, I’d be honoured to take part.”
“Good,” Ione said.
“But I’ll need Peter with me.”
“This isn’t a honeymoon cruise,” Samuel told her, reproachfully.
“We worked as a team putting the Alchemist together. It’s a synergistic relationship.”
“Somehow, I doubt that,” Ione said. “But for argument’s sake, I’ll permit you to ask him if he wants to accompany you.”
“So where were you thinking of sending us?” Joshua asked.
“Regretfully, you will have to go directly to the source,” Wing-Tsit Chong said. “Which is one of the reasons this mission is being assembled under the auspices of the Jovian security sub-Consensus. A thorough search of xenology records both at Jupiter and Earth have revealed absolutely no reference to the Sleeping God. The Tyrathca have never mentioned it to us before.”
“The source? Oh Jesus, you mean Hesperi-LN, the Tyrathca home planet?”
“Initially, yes. Waboto-YAU told us that it was another arkship which encountered the Sleeping God, not Tanjuntic-RI. Therefore, that arkship must have lasered the information to all the other Tyrathca arkships in the exodus fleet. We must hope that a recording of that message is still aboard Tanjuntic-RI. If you can find it, you may be able to establish the approximate location of the encounter.”
“That could be a long way off,” Joshua said. His neural nanonics started to access almanac and Tyrathca history files from memory cells, running them through a navigation program. The result rising into his mind in the form of gold and scarlet icons was both fascinating and alarming. “Hesperi-LN isn’t their genuine home planet, remember. It’s just the last colony world Tanjuntic-RI founded. Look, the original Tyrathca star, Mastrit-PJ, the one they escaped from is on the other side of the Orion Nebula. That puts it at least 1,600 light-years away. Now if we get real unlucky, and the arkship which found the Sleeping God was going in the opposite direction to Tanjuntic-RI, you’re talking twice as far.”
“We are aware of that,” Wing-Tsit Chong said.
Joshua sighed with indubitable regret. To take Lady Mac on such a voyage would have been awesome. “I’m sorry, there isn’t that much antimatter left. I can’t take the old girl that far.”
“We are aware of your starship’s performance capabilities,” Wing-Tsit Chong said. “However there is a supply of antimatter which you will be able to use.”
“You keep some here at Jupiter?” Joshua asked in what he figured was a casual voice.
“No,” Syrinx said. “A CNIS agent called Erick Thakara located a production station which may be supplying Capone.”
“Thakara—” Joshua’s search program located the appropriate file; he locked eyes with Ione. “Really? That’s . . . helpful.”
“With the 1st fleet somewhat overstretched, the First Admiral’s staff have asked for Jupiter’s voidhawks to tackle it,” Samuel said.
“Which they are preparing to do,” Wing-Tsit Chong said. “However, before the station is finally annihilated, you will be able to take on board as much antimatter as the Lady Macbeth’s confinement systems can handle.”
“Three thousand light-years,” Joshua murmured. “Jesus.”
“Meredith Saldana’s task force has a large contingent of Confederation Navy marines assigned to it,” Ione said. “They’ll secure the station for you once the personnel surrender to the voidhawk squadron.”
“What if the station operatives just suicide?” Joshua said. “They usually do when the Navy confronts them.”
“And take as many of us with them as they can,” Syrinx whispered.
/> “They will be offered a penal planet sentence instead of the usual death penalty,” Samuel said. “We can only hope that proves attractive enough to them.”
“All right, but even if we load Lady Mac with enough antimatter, the Tyrathca have ended communications with the Confederation,” Joshua said. “Do you really think they’ll allow us to search through Tanjuntic-RI’s electronic systems?”
“Probably not,” Samuel said. “But as we don’t intend to ask their permission, it doesn’t really matter, does it?”
7
You didn’t have to be attuned to the land like a possessed to know it was about to happen. Most of Ombey’s population was aware the time had come.
Day after day the news companies had been broadcasting sensevises from rover reporters covering the build up of Liberation forces. Everybody knew somebody who was connected to somebody who was involved in some way; from hauling equipment out to Fort Forward to serving drinks to Edenists in spaceport bars. Speculation on the current affairs programmes was deliberately vague about specific dates and precise numbers, even the communication net gossips were showing restraint in naming the day. Hearsay aside, the evidence was pretty solid.
The type of cargoes raining down on the planet had changed. Combat gear was slowly being replaced by heavy-duty civil engineering equipment, ready to repair the expected damage to Mortonridge and provide additional support infrastructure for the occupying forces. The personnel arriving at Fort Forward were also subject to a shift in professions. Just under a million serjeants had been sent from Jupiter, along with nearly a quarter of a million marines and mercenaries from across the Confederation. The Liberation army was essentially complete. So now it was the medical teams being ferried down from orbit, civilian volunteers complementing entire mobile military hospitals. Estimated casualty figures (both military and civilian) were strictly classified. But everyone knew the twelve thousand medical staff were going to suffer a heavy workload. Eighty voidhawks had already been assigned evac duties, spreading the wounded around facilities in the Kingdom and its allies.
Throughout the seventh day following Princess Kirsten’s visit, Ralph Hiltch and his command staff studied the figures and displays provided by the AI. The neuroiconic image which accumulated in his mind kept expanding as more information was correlated. By late afternoon, his conscious perception point seemed to be hanging below a supergalaxy of multicoloured stars, which threatened to make him giddy as he tried to examine it in all directions at once. Despite its coherence, what he really wanted was more training time, more transport, more supplies, and definitely more intelligence assessments of the terrain ahead. But essentially, his army was as ready as it would ever be. He gave the order for final stage deployment to begin.
Over half of the serjeants and their back-up brigades had already left Fort Forward. The previous two days had been spent mustering at their preliminary positions offshore. Nearly a hundred islands around Mortonridge’s coast had been taken over as temporary depots; from reefs which barely showed above the waves to resort atolls dotted with luxury hotels. Where there were no convenient scraps of land, huge cargo ships had been hurriedly converted into floating docks, and anchored thirty kilometres from the shore.
For the first stage of the coastal assault, the army was scheduled to use boats. They were actually going to storm ashore, wading through the waves and up onto the sand, almost in homage to a great many of the incarnations from the past they were facing. Ralph wasn’t prepared to risk flying even the simplest of aircraft into the energistic environment over Mortonridge, not until after they’d dealt with the red cloud at least.
The remainder of the Liberation ground forces emptied out of Fort Forward in massive convoys, spreading out along the firebreak in thousands of multi-terrain vehicles. There was no attempt at secrecy, no hugging the cover behind ridges and hills. The squads drove through the encroaching twilight and into the night; the nimbus of their massed headlight beams creeping like an anaemic dawn along the horizon paralleling the firebreak.
Across Xingu, a civil curfew order was enacted once again, with the police put on full alert. Although they were fairly sure no possessed were left outside Mortonridge, the continent’s authorities were taking Annette Ekelund’s threat of sabotage very seriously. When dawn arrived, no civilian would be allowed out onto the streets. People grumbled and groaned, and datavised protests to local news shows, remembering what a nuisance the curfew had been last time. It was almost a bravado show of defiance. In the main, they just settled back and accessed the show.
High above the planet, the Strategic Defence centre on Guyana began coordinating the Royal Navy’s part of the assault. Thrusters flared on low orbit weapons platforms, refining their new orbits. A flotilla of three hundred voidhawks also began to accelerate, synchronizing their distortion fields to rise away from the planet in a long curve.
The psychic pressure mounting against Mortonridge shifted from faint intimation to blatantly unmistakable.
* * *
To casual observation, Chainbridge was still a busy town. When Annette Ekelund reached a slight ridge a couple of kilometres from the outskirts, she stopped the sturdy country rover she was driving and looked back over her shoulder. Hundreds of lighted windows shone out across the lame farmland, burning steady against the flickering crimson waves scattered down from the lumbering cloud roof. The buildings were warm, too, warm enough to fool any perfunctory sensor scans into believing they were occupied. But no one was left there, her command group was the last to leave.
“It’ll keep the blighters tied up for a while,” Delvan assured her. He was sitting in the passenger seat beside her, clad in his old khaki uniform, a discreet row of scarlet and gold ribbons on his chest.
In the back seat, Soi Hon veiled a sneer. He, too, had reverted to type: dark jungle fatigues and a felt bush-ranger hat. “For at least a quarter of an hour.”
“Would you like to return to the beyond fifteen minutes early?” Delvan enquired lightly.
“Any time we delay them is good time,” Annette told the pair of them. She took the brake off, and accelerated down the secondary road. They were heading for Cold Overton, a small village eighty kilometres away. Their field command centre; picked virtually at random by Soi Hon, central but not strategically so, adequate road links, surrounded by thick forest. It was as good as any, not that they’d be staying long. Fluid tactics was the key to this campaign.
Soi Hon clapped Delvan on the shoulder. “And this is our time, eh? You and I both. Onward to death and glory.”
“There is no glory here.” Delvan spoke so quietly, the others could only just hear him against the bass grumble of thunder.
“Don’t tell me you’re having second thoughts?”
“I heard my men wailing at night,” the old soldier replied emotionlessly. “The ones left out in No Man’s Land, left behind to drown in puddles of their own blood; the ones that weren’t vomiting their lungs up from that devilish gas. Screaming for us to help them, more frightened at being alone than they were of being shot.”
“You Christians, you always take life so personally. We’re here by accident, not design. Nothing is ordained, you are only what you make of yourself. You can never go back, the past doesn’t change. Stop thinking about it. The only part of history which matters is the future.”
“It broke my heart, not being able to help them. Good, decent men; boys a lot of them. I swore I’d never get involved in such madness again. They called it total war. But it wasn’t, it was total bloody murder. Insanity had become a disease, and we all caught it. Twice in my lifetime my nation sent its youth out to die for a just cause, to protect ourselves and our way of life.” He smiled frigidly at the eco warrior. “And now here I am once again. Seven bloody centuries later. Seven hundred years, and nothing has changed. Not one damn thing. I’m fighting to preserve myself and my new life. A righteous war with me on the side of the angels, even though they’ve become fallen angels. And I can alrea
dy hear the screams, God help me.”
“All I hear is our victory song,” Soi Hon said. “The voice of the land is louder and stronger than any human cry. This is our place, we are at one with it. We belong here. We have a right to exist in this universe.”
Delvan closed his eyes and tipped his head back. “Lord forgive me I am such a fool. Here we all are, embarking on a crusade to storm the very gates of Heaven Itself in our desperation. What a monumental folly. I shall smite at the dark angels massed against us, crying for death, for only in death will we ever find peace. Yet You have already revealed that death is not our destiny, nor ever can be.”
“Wake up, old man. We’re not fighting God, we’re fighting an unjust universe.”
For the first time since his return from the beyond, Delvan smiled. “You think there’s a difference?”
* * *
The island was enchanting, its botany and geology combining into the kind of synergistic idyll which was the grail of Edenist habitat designers. Inland, there were craggy rocks hosting long white waterfalls, and thick lush forests choked with sweet-scented flowers. The shore comprised cove after cove, their pale gold sands gleaming under the azure sky; except for one, where the offshore reef crumbled under the foaming breakers to give the sands an exquisite fairydust coating of pink coral. It appealed to humans on a primal level, urging them to slow down and spend time just soaking in nature. As a reward for their worship, time itself would expand and become almost meaningless.
Even in his current existence, Sinon wished he was staying longer than their eighteen-hour stopover. Five thousand serjeants had descended on this tiny jewel of land glinting in the ocean, along with their equipment and support personnel. Marines were camped ten to a room in the resort hotels; gardens and tennis courts had been requisitioned as landing pads; and the coves were harbours for a hundred of the regiment’s landing boats. All day, the boats had taken their turn to nuzzle the shore, extending their forward ramps so that jeeps and light trucks could drive on board. Now, in the evening, the serjeants were finally embarking.
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