“Is evaporating? You mean we’re leaking energy out of our atoms right now?”
“Yes. It would certainly explain why our electronic systems are suffering so much degradation.”
“How long till we dissolve into that stuff?” Tolton yelped.
“We haven’t determined that yet. Now we know what we’re looking for, we will begin calibrating the loss rate.”
“Oh shit.” He whirled round to face Dariat. “The lobster pot, that’s what you called this place. We’re not going to get out, are we.”
“With a little help from the Confederation, we can still make it back, atoms intact.”
Tolton’s mind was racing ahead with the concept now. “If I just fall apart into that fluid, my soul will be able to pull it back together. I’ll be like you.”
“If your soul contains enough life-energy, yes.”
“But that fades away as well. . . . Yours does, you had to steal more from that ghost. And those entities outside, they’re all battling for life-energy. That’s all they do. Ever.”
Dariat smiled with sad sympathy. “That’s the way it goes here.” He broke off and stared at a high corner of the cave. The physicists did the same, their expressions all showing concern.
“Now what?” Tolton demanded. He couldn’t see anything up there.
“Looks like our visitors have got tired with the southern endcap,” Dariat told him. “They’re coming here.”
* * *
The first of three Confederation Navy Marine flyers soared across Regina just as twilight fell. Sitting in the mid-fuselage passenger lounge, Samual Aleksandrovich accessed the craft’s sensor suite to see the city below. Street lighting, adverts, and skyscrapers were responding to the vanishing sun by throwing their own iridescent corona across the urban landscape. He’d seen the sight many times before, but tonight the traffic along the freeways was thinner than usual.
It corresponded to the mood reported by the few news shows he’d grazed over the last couple of days. The Organization’s attack had left the population badly shaken. Of all the Confederation worlds, they had supposed Avon to be second only to Earth in terms of safety. But now Earth’s arcologies had been infested, and Trafalgar was so badly damaged it was being evacuated. There wasn’t a countryside hotel room to be had anywhere on the planet as people claimed their outstanding vacation days or called in sick.
The flyer shot over the lake bordering the eastern side of the city and swiftly curved back, losing height as it approached the Navy barracks in the shadow of the Assembly Building. It touched down on a circular metal pad, which immediately sank down into the underground hangar. Blastproof doors rumbled shut above it.
Jeeta Anwar was waiting to greet the First Admiral as he emerged from the flyer. He exchanged a couple of perfunctory words with her, then beckoned the captain of the Marine guard detail.
“Aren’t you supposed to check new arrivals, Captain?” he asked.
The captain’s face remained blank, though he was strangely incapable of focusing on the First Admiral. “Yes, sir.”
“Then kindly do so. There are to be no exceptions. Understand?” A sensor was applied to the First Admiral’s bare hand; he was also asked to datavise his physiological file into a block.
“Clear, sir,” the captain reported, and snapped a salute.
“Good. Admirals Kolhammer and Lalwani will be arriving shortly. Pass the word.”
The Marine guard squad emerging from the flyer, and the two staff officers, Amr al-Sahhaf and Keaton, were also quickly vetted for signs of possession. Once they were cleared, they fell in around the First Admiral.
The incident put Samual Aleksandrovich in a bad frame of mind. On the one hand the captain’s behaviour was excusable; that the First Admiral would be a possessed infiltrator was inconceivable. Yet possession was still spreading precisely because no one believed their friend/spouse/child could have been taken over. That was why the Navy was leading by example, the three most senior admirals all taking different flyers to the same destination in case one of them was targeted by a rogue weapon. Enforced routine procedures might just succeed where personal familiarity invited disaster.
He met President Haaker in the barracks commander’s conference room. This was one discussion both of them had agreed shouldn’t be taken to the Polity Council just yet.
The President had Mae Ortlieb with him, which gave them two aides each. All very balanced and neutral, Samual thought as he shook hands with the President. Judging by Haaker’s unconstrained welcome, he must have thought the same.
“So the anti-memory does actually work,” Haaker said as they sat round the table.
“Yes and no, sir,” Captain Keaton said. “It eradicated Jacqueline Couteur and her host along with Dr Gilmore. However, it didn’t propagate through the beyond. The souls are still there.”
“Can it be made to work?”
“The principal is sound. How long it will take, I don’t know. Estimates from the development team range from a couple of days to years.”
“You are still giving it priority, aren’t you?” Jeeta Anwar asked.
“Work will be resumed as soon as our research team is established in its back-up facility,” Captain Amr al-Sahhaf said. “We’re hoping that will be inside a week.”
Mae turned to the President. “One team,” she said pointedly.
“That doesn’t seem to be much of a priority,” the President said. “And Dr Gilmore is dead. I understand he was providing a lot of input.”
“He was,” the First Admiral said. “But he’s hardly irreplaceable. The basic concept of anti-memory has been established; developing it furthers a multidisciplinary operation.”
“Exactly,” Mae said. “Once a concept has been proved, the quickest way to develop it is give the results to several teams; the more people, the more fresh ideas focused on this, the faster we will have a useable weapon.”
“You’d have to assemble the teams, then bring them up to date on our results,” Captain Keaton said. “By the time you’ve done that, we will have moved on.”
“You hope,” she retorted.
“Do you have some reason to think the Navy researchers are incompetent?”
“None at all. I’m simply pointing out a method which insures our chances of success are significantly multiplied. A standard approach to R&D, in fact.”
“Who would you suggest assists us? I doubt astroengineering company weapons divisions have the necessary specialists.”
“The larger industrialized star systems would be able to assemble the requisite professionals. Kulu, New Washington, Oshanko, Nanjing, Petersburg, for starters, and I’m sure the Edenists would be able to provide considerable assistance; they know more about thought routines than any Adamist culture. Earth’s GISD has already offered to help.”
“I’ll bet they have,” Samual Aleksandrovich grunted. By virtue of his position he had an idea of just how widespread Earth’s security agency was across the Confederation stars. They had at least three times the assets of the ESA, though even Lalwani was uncertain just how far their networks actually reached. One of the reasons it was so difficult to discover their size was the network’s essentially passive nature. In the last ten years there had only been three active operations that CNIS had discovered, and all of those were mounted against black syndicates. Quite what they did with all the information their operatives gathered was a mystery, which made him cautious about trusting them. But they always cooperated with Lalwani’s official requests for information.
“It’s a reasonable suggestion,” the President said.
“It would also remove exclusivity from the Polity Council,” the First Admiral said. “If sovereign states acquire a viable anti-memory weapon they could well use it without consultation, especially if one of them was facing an incursion. After all, that kind of supra-racial genocide would not leave any bodies as evidence. Anti-memory is a doomsday weapon, our primary negotiating tactic. As I have always maintained,
it is not a solution to this problem. We must face this collectively.”
The President gave a reluctant sigh. “Very well, Samual. Keep it confined to the Navy for now. But I shall review the situation in a fortnight. If your team isn’t making the kind of progress we need, I’ll act on Mae’s suggestion and bring in outside help.”
“Of course, Mr President.”
“That’s good then. Let’s go face the Polity Council and hear the real bad news, shall we.” Olton Haaker rose with a pleasant smile in place, content another problem had been smoothly dealt with in the traditional consensus compromise. Mae Ortlieb appeared equally sanguine. Her professional expression didn’t fool Samual Aleksandrovich for a second.
* * *
For its private sessions the Confederation’s Polity Council eschewed secure sensenvirons, and met in person in a discrete annex of the Assembly building. Given that this was where the most crucial decisions affecting the human race would be taken, the designers had seen fit to spend a great deal of taxpayer’s money on the interior. It was the amalgam of all government Cabinet rooms, infected with a quiet classicism. Twelve native granite pillars supported a domed roof painted in Renaissance style, with a gold and platinum chandelier hanging from the centre, while swan-white frescos of woodland mythology roamed across powder blue walls. The central round table was a single slice of ancient sequoia wood, taken from the last of the giant trees to fall before the Armada Storms. Its fifteen chairs were made from oak and leather to a Nineteenth-Century Plymouth design, and new (each delegate was allowed to take theirs home with them after their term was over). Glass-fronted marbled alcoves displayed exactly 862 sculptures and statuettes; one donated by each planet in the Confederation. The Tyrathca had contributed a crude hexagonal slab of slate with faint green scratches on the surface, a plaque of some kind from Tanjuntic-RI (worthless to them, but they knew how much humans valued antiquity). The Kiint had presented an enigmatic kinetic sculpture of silvery foil, composed of twenty-five concentric circular strips that rotated around each other without any bearings between them, each strip was suspended in air and apparently powered by perpetual motion (it was suspected they were pieces of metallic hydrogen).
Lalwani and Kolhammer joined the First Admiral outside the council chamber, and the three of them followed the President in. Twelve chairs were already filled by the ambassadors currently appointed to the Polity Council. Haaker and Samual took their places, leaving the fifteenth empty. Although Ambassador Roulor was entitled to take the seat vacated by Rittagu-FUH, the Assembly had delayed formally voting to confirm his appointment. The Kiint hadn’t complained.
Samual sat down with minimum fuss, acknowledging the other ambassadors. He didn’t enjoy the irony of being called here in the same way he’d called them to request the starflight quarantine. It indicated events were now controlling him.
The President called the meeting to order. “Admiral, if you could brief us on the Trafalgar situation, please.”
“The evacuation will be complete in another three days,” Samual told them. “Active Navy personnel were given priority and are being flown to their secondary locations. We should be back up to full operational capability in another two days. The civilian workers are being ferried down to Avon. All decisions about refurbishing the asteroid will be postponed until the crisis is over. We’ll have to wait until it’s physically cooled down anyway.”
“What about the ships?” the President enquired. “How many were damaged?”
“One hundred and seventy three Adamist ships were destroyed, a further eighty-six are damaged beyond repair. Fifty-two voidhawks were killed. Human deaths so far stand at nine thousand two hundred and thirty-two. Seven hundred and eighty-seven people have been hospitalised, most of them with radiation burns. We haven’t released those figures to the media yet. They just know it’s bad.”
The ambassadors were silent for a long moment.
“How many starships belonged to the First Fleet?” Earth’s ambassador asked.
“Ninety-seven front-line warships were lost.”
“Dear God.” Samual didn’t see who muttered that.
“Capone cannot be allowed to get away with an atrocity of this magnitude,” the President said. “He simply cannot.”
“It was an unusual set of circumstances,” Samual said. “Our new security procedures should prevent it happening again.” Even as he spoke the words, he knew how pathetic it sounded.
“Those circumstances, possibly,” Abeche’s ambassador said bitterly. “What if he dreams up some new course of action? We’ll be left with another bloody great disaster on our hands.”
“We’ll stop him.”
“You should have expected this, made some provision. We know Capone had antimatter, and he has nothing to lose. That combination was bound to result in a reckless strike of some kind. Jesus Christ, don’t your strategy planners consider these scenarios?”
“We’re aware of them, Mr Ambassador. And we do take them seriously.”
“Mortonridge hasn’t delivered anything like the victory we were expecting,” Miyag’s ambassador said. “Capone’s infiltration flights have got everybody petrified. Now this.”
“We have eliminated Capone’s source of antimatter,” the First Admiral said levelly. “The infiltration flights have stopped because of that. He does not have the resources to conquer another planet. Capone is a public relations problem, not the true threat.”
“Don’t tell me we should just ignore him,” Earth’s ambassador said. “There’s a difference between confining your enemy and not doing anything in the hope he’ll go away, and the Navy has done precious little to convince me it’s got Capone under control.”
The President held a hand up to prevent the First Admiral from replying. “What we’re saying, Samual, is that we have decided to change our current policy. We can no longer afford the holding tactics of the starflight quarantine.”
Samual looked around the hard, determined faces. It was almost a vote of no confidence in his leadership. Not quite, though. It would take another setback before that happened. “What do you propose to replace it with?”
“An active policy,” Abeche’s ambassador said hotly. “Something that will show people we’re using our military resources to protect them. Something positive.”
“Trafalgar should not be used as a casus belli,” the First Admiral insisted.
“It won’t be,” the President said. “I want the Navy to eliminate Capone’s fleet. A tactical mission, not a war. Wipe him out, Samual. Eliminate the antimatter threat completely. As long as he still has some, he can send one Pryor after another sneaking through our defences.”
“Capone’s fleet is all that keeps him in charge of the Organization. If you take that away, we’ll loose Arnstat and New California. The possessed will take them out of the universe.”
“We know. That’s the decision. We have to get rid of the possessed before we can start to deal with them properly.”
“An attack on the scale necessary to destroy his fleet, and New California’s SD network will also kill thousands of people. And I’d remind you that the majority of crews in the Organization ships are non-possessed.”
“Traitors, you mean,” Mendina’s ambassador said.
“No,” the First Admiral said steadily. “They are blackmail victims, working under the threat of torture to themselves and their families. Capone is quite ruthless in his application of terror.”
“This is exactly the problem we must address head on,” the President said. “We are in a war situation. We must retaliate, and swiftly or we will lose what little initiative we have. Capone must be shown we are not paralysed by this diabolical hostage scenario. We can still implement our decisions with force and resolution when required.”
“Killing people will not help us.”
“On the contrary, First Admiral,” Miyag’s ambassador said. “Although we must deeply regret the sacrifice, eradicating the Organization will give us a muc
h needed breathing space. No other group of possessed has managed to command ships with the same proficiency as Capone. We will have returned to the small risk of the possessed spreading through quarantine-busting flights, which the Navy should be able to contain as you originally envisaged. Eventually, the possessed will simply remove themselves from this universe entirely. That is when we can begin our true fight back. And do so under a great deal less stress than our current conditions.”
“Is that the decision of this Council?” Samual asked formally.
“It is,” the President said. “With one abstention.” He glanced at Cayeaux. The Edenist ambassador returned the look unflinchingly. Edenism and Earth held the two other permanent seats on the Polity Council, awarded because of their population size and formed a powerful voting bloc; they were rarely in disagreement over general policy. Ethics, of course, nearly always set the Edenists apart.
“They’re inflicting too much damage on us,” Earth’s ambassador said, adopting a measured tone. “Physically and economically. Not to mention the disintegration of morale propagated by events like Trafalgar, and unfortunately our arcologies. It has to be stopped. We cannot show any weakness in dealing with this.”
“I understand,” the First Admiral said. “We still have the bulk of Admiral Kolhammer’s task force available in the Avon system. Motela, how long would it take to deploy them?”
“We can rendezvous the Adamist warships above Kotcho in eight hours,” Kolhammer replied. “It will take a little longer for affiliated voidhawk squadrons to gather. Most could join us en route.”
“That will mean we can hit Capone in three days’ time,” Samual said. “I would like some extra time to augment those forces. The tactical simulations we’ve run indicate we need at least a thousand warships to challenge Capone successfully in a direct confrontation. We’ll need to call in reserve squadrons from national navies.”
The Night's Dawn Trilogy Page 340
