Pandora's Star cs-2

by Peter F. Hamilton

  That was the kind of thinking—visualizing a future of complete normality—that allowed Mark to keep going. He squatted down next to Liz behind a thick stone wall that bordered the Libra Bar’s beer garden. The blast had hurled the garden’s wooden tables and chairs across the lawn, smashing them against the wall of the Zanue car rental franchise next door. Liz and he had come here on many summertime evenings for a meal and a drink, sitting out in the garden with friends where they could watch the boats come and go from the quays along the waterfront.

  Now they had the same clear view of the waterfront through their weapon sights. The rain had subsided to a light drizzle laced with a few slim trails of gray smoke from the dying fires. Mark could see the alien flyers skimming toward him just a few meters above the wavelets.

  “Stand by,” Simon’s voice said from the handheld array. “They look like they’re slowing. Could be plan A.”

  There had been a lot of shouting about that when Simon assembled his ragtag band of two dozen guerrillas in the passenger waiting lounge. Plan A envisaged the aliens landing in the town, which would allow the guerrillas to snipe at them, slowing their advance. Plan B, the worst-case scenario, would have them flying over the town to attack the convoy directly, in which case they’d have to fire a fusillade of shots at the craft as they went overhead and hope to hit some vital component. Everyone knew that would be next to useless. As always, Simon had prevailed.

  Mark looked over his shoulder. The last of the buses were visible on the highway at the base of Blackwater Crag, traveling far too fast for anything that didn’t have working arrays and safety systems. They only needed a few minutes more and they’d be turning into the Highmarsh.

  Looking at the approaching alien flyers, Mark wasn’t convinced that the big valley was going to be the refuge Simon had claimed. In his private vision of the future, Mark had envisaged the aliens coming ashore in boats, taking days to reach the Highmarsh.

  “Carys, where are you?” Liz asked.

  “We turned onto the Highmarsh road a couple of minutes ago.”

  “They’re in aircraft. Looks like they’re landing here, though.”

  “Okay, let me know if any are coming our way. I’ll need to get off the road fast.”

  “Will do.”

  Mark glanced at the unit’s screen. Their signal was routing through the still-functional sections of the district’s network. Several nodes along the Highmarsh were operating, allowing them to extend their fragile contact around the mountains. He was pretty sure it wouldn’t last long once the aliens landed and started running sensor sweeps.

  The first of the alien flyers arrived at the shoreline. It hovered just above the water, spindly metal legs unfolding from beneath its cylindrical fuselage. After a moment of hesitation it landed on the broad promenade next to the Celestial Tours quay, the aft section knocking into the wall and demolishing a five-meter length, breaking the long single line of poetry.

  “Wait,” Simon’s voice urged them with soft confidence. “We need most of them down first, then we can begin our harassment campaign.”

  Mark wondered where Simon had gained so much combat experience; he certainly sounded like he knew what he was talking about. More likely it was all from TSI dramas. He glanced out at the lake again, startled by just how many flyers were now heading their way.

  “Ho boy,” David muttered.

  Doors had opened on the flyer sitting next to the Celestial Tours quay, allowing aliens to lumber down.

  Mark’s personal predictions had faltered at this point. But he certainly hadn’t expected anything quite so… robotic-looking. Maybe they are robots? Watching them spread out, he quickly changed that opinion. They moved fast, heading straight for cover. Within seconds they were infiltrating the buildings that faced the promenade.

  Twelve flyers landed along the waterfront. The second wave flew over to circle the town park at the back of the General Hospital before extending their legs and sinking down. Some flyers were heading toward Blackwater Crag and the start of the highway.

  “Stand by,” Simon said. “Don’t expect our weapons to penetrate their force fields, aim for maximum disruption around them. And fall back immediately.”

  Mark gave Liz a look. She stretched her lips wide, mimicking a smile. “Okay,” she mumbled.

  He carefully raised his head above the wall, and brought the laser rifle up. Several aliens were slipping quickly across the open ground of the promenade to the first line of buildings. He suspected Simon was right, his rifle wouldn’t get through that armor. Instead he shifted his aim to the buildings, wondering if he could knock out some of the framework, and collapse the roof.

  Somebody else fired. He actually saw the air sparkle around an alien as the energy beam was deflected by its force field. Their response was terrifyingly swift. The Bab’s Kebabs franchise on Swift Street exploded.

  Mark ducked down as smoldering fragments spun through the air. “Shit!”

  Four of the flyers heading for Blackwater Crag turned sharply and flew back low over the town. Masers lashed down, scoring long lines of fire and vapor across the rooftops.

  “Hit them,” someone yelled out of the handheld array. “Hit them. Shoot back.”

  Two more buildings exploded, sending broken lengths of framework girders spinning through the air. Composite panels cartwheeled down the street like tumbleweed. Laser shots, ion bolts, and even bullets peppered the buildings along the waterfront. The force fields around two of the overhead flyers flickered briefly with static.

  “They’ll slaughter us.”

  “Shoot them, kill them all, kill the bastards.”

  The air above Mark emitted a sibilant sizzling. A line shimmered faint violet. Flames burst out of every gaping window in the Babylon Garden restaurant behind him.

  “Fall back. Get the fuck out of here.”

  “No! They’ll see us. Knock down the flyers.”

  “Where’s the convoy? Are they clear?”

  “Hey, yeah! I got one, I saw a wall fall on it. Oh, shit—”

  There must have been twenty buildings burning vigorously now. Three more detonated in quick succession.

  “God, no. What have we done?”

  “Simon, you motherfucker. This is all your fault.”

  “Stay calm. Stay under cover.”

  Mark looked at David, who was pressed up hard against the wall. His eyes were closed as he whimpered a prayer.

  “You want to make a break for it?” Mark asked Liz.

  “Not in the pickup,” she said. “They’ll see that.”

  “All right.” He brought the handheld array up. “Carys?”

  Liz’s hand closed tight around his upper arm. “I don’t goddamn believe it.”

  Mark twisted around, following Liz’s disbelieving stare. “What in God’s name… ?”

  Mellanie was walking down the street past the Ables Motors garage, heading toward the waterfront. She kept to the center of the road, avoiding the worst of the debris. Her hair and shoulders were damp from the earlier rain, otherwise she was as perfectly groomed as usual. Dense-packed silver OCtattoos flickered over her face and hands, as if they were her true skin emerging into the light.

  “Get down!” Mark screamed at her.

  She turned her head and gave him a small sympathetic smile. A nearsubliminal golden fractal pattern spiraled out around her eyes. “Stay there,” she told him calmly. “This isn’t something you can handle.”

  “Mellanie!”

  She’d gone another five paces when four aliens burst out of Kate’s Knitwear ten meters ahead of her, smashing straight through the remaining aluminum wall panels. Their arms curved around to line up their weapons on her. The motion slowed, then stopped. All four of them stood perfectly still in the middle of the road.

  Mark realized that all the flyers in the air were gradually lowering themselves to land. Out over Trine’ba, the flyers rushing to Randtown dipped gently, angling down to strike the water hard. Big plumes of sp
ray cascaded upward, falling away to reveal the craft bobbing low on the surface.

  “Mellanie?” Mark croaked. “Are you doing this?”

  “With a little help, yes.”

  He clambered slowly to his feet, trying to stop the tremble in his legs. Liz stood beside him, gazing warily at the young girl. David poked his head above the wall. “Jesus.”

  “Take their weapons,” Mellanie said. Her face was almost completely silver now, with only a few slivers of skin remaining around her cheeks and brow.

  “You’re joking,” Mark said.

  The four aliens dropped their weapons onto the road.

  “You’re not joking.”

  “You should be able to shoot through their force fields with those,” Mellanie said. “You’ll probably need to when they come after you again. This standoff won’t last forever. But I’ll keep them here as long as I can.” She took a deep breath, closing her chrome eyelids. “Leave now.”

  Mark glanced down, her voice had come out of the handheld array as well.

  “Everybody, get in your vehicles and fall back,” she ordered. “Join the convoy.”

  “What’s happening?” Simon’s voice asked.

  Mark brought the array up to his mouth. “Just do it, Simon. She’s stopped them.”

  “Stopped them how?”

  “Mark’s right,” someone else said. “I can see a whole bunch of them. They’re just standing there.”

  “Go,” Mellanie said. “You haven’t got long. Go!”

  Mark looked at the weapons lying on the tarmac as if it were some kind of school dare. The aliens still hadn’t moved.

  “Come on,” Liz said. She darted forward.

  Mark hurried after her. The weapons were bulky, too heavy to carry easily, let alone aim. He pulled up a couple, giving the tall, silently immobile aliens a cautious look as he scrabbled around at their feet, as if this might be the act that finally broke the spell, goading them into motion and retaliation. David came up beside him, and picked up one of the chunky cylinders.

  “Let’s get out of here for Christ’s sake,” Liz said.

  Mark managed to hold on to a third weapon. He scooted the hell away from the bizarre tableaux.

  “What now?” Liz asked Mellanie.

  “You go.”

  “What about you? Will you be all right?”

  “Yes.” She gave Mark one of her menacingly erotic smiles. “Quits?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Quits.”

  “Thank you,” Liz said.

  The three of them raced for the pickup. They slung the purloined alien weapons in the back, and Mark slammed the accelerator to the floor. He snatched one last glimpse of Mellanie in the rearview mirror. The silhouette of a small human girl standing defiantly in front of four big armored aliens, waiting, watching, as silent as the army she had stilled.

  Mellanie’s inserts were feeding her a fresh image of the world; no longer data but an extension of her ordinary senses. She could actually see the electromagnetic emissions flooding out of the aliens as they stormed ashore. Each one blazed brightly in this black spectrum. Long, complex, and slow signals slipped between them, a conduit of tight-packed analog sine waves dancing and crackling around each other. They formed networks, brief, transient patterns that were forever rearranging themselves, connecting individual aliens, then switching back and forth between the flyers who relayed them in new combinations to the big conical ships floating on the Trine’ba. Huge columns of information streamed out of both ships, twisting up through the atmosphere to vanish inside the trans-dimensional vortex of the wormholes above.

  It made a striking contrast to the abridged electronic network of Randtown, with its slender lines of carefully packaged binary pulses zipping purposefully around her. Where the human systems were neat and efficient, these alien outpourings were crude; yet, she acknowledged, they possessed a certain integral elegance. As it was with all organic forms.

  Mellanie concentrated on the rush of strange wave forms radiating out of a Prime flyer as it maneuvered above the promenade, ready to land. A newly woken batch of inserts buzzed with electric vibrancy inside her flesh. She knew of the SI’s presence inside them, analyzing what she discovered for it, teasing apart the oscillating signals to discover their meaning. As the flyer’s emissions coursed through the inserts she heard a harsh unintelligible voice at the back of her mind. It bloomed to a whispered chorus. Then there were the images, leaking out of the signals like some long-forgotten dream. A confused multiple viewpoint of motiles emerging from a congregation lake, millions of them pressed together, slipping and sliding as they waded ashore. Next to them was the towering mountain, honeycombed by rooms and chambers, where it was centered, all of life in the star system. A mountain where long ago light used to shine in the morning. Now the sky was permanently dark beneath the heavy clouds, an everlasting night split only by the incessant flash of lightning bolts, revealing the filthy rain and sleet that fell across the protective force fields. A black sky also seen from the asteroids orbiting far above, a sky that shielded the whole planet, its turbulence illuminated to insipid gray by sunlight and blazing strands of fusion flame. Life still thrived beneath the veil, woven inseparably to groupings of itself as it seethed and survived everywhere, on small cold planets, moons encircling gas giants, and far asteroid settlements. A life that now extended to other stars and their planets. A life that had flown through the wormholes to reach Elan, where it was spreading out over the lake to touch the land.

  The life whispered amid itself, directing its soldier motiles to move forward into the flimsy box-buildings. It searched for humans and their machinery, finding none of either—though there was movement, the telltale infrared signatures that the soldier motiles were skillfully working their way toward. At the back of the urban area, long vehicles raced away. Flyers angled around to investigate.

  One of the soldier motiles was shot at. It retaliated immediately, firing back, destroying the zone where the shot had come from. Flyers swooped eagerly, raking the buildings with coherent beams of gamma radiation.

  “They’re going to destroy everything,” Mellanie said.

  “It,” the SI corrected. “It is singular. An interesting arrangement. Life that has achieved unity, not just with itself but with its machinery.”

  “I don’t care what it is, it’s still going to kill people.”

  “We know.”

  Programs and power flooded through Mellanie’s inserts, activating yet more functions. She had little to do with it other than adding her wishes to the conclusion. Fabulously complex OCtattoos crawled over her skin, merging into a single circuit. Signals streamed out from her, overlaying those that fused the motiles together. Interference patterns jostled and ruptured the smooth consistency of the soldier herd’s thoughts. Riding down the disruption were new instructions.

  Mellanie left her shelter and walked slowly toward the Trine’ba so she could observe properly. Poor Mark Vernon tried to warn her, so she gave him and his friends some of the Prime weapons and made sure he left, along with all Randtown’s valiant, futile defenders.

  “It has realized something is wrong,” the SI said. “Can you sense it?”

  The signals spilling down from the wormholes were changing. Instead of orders, queries were trying to insinuate themselves into the soldier motiles. The Prime wanted to know what malaise was contaminating its units.

  The SI maintained its interference pattern among the motile soldiers in Randtown, formulating a single reply that it sent out through Mellanie’s inserts. “We are stopping you,” it told MorningLightMountain.

  Mellanie was aware of the shock ripple spreading through the alien’s planet-wide thought routines hundreds of light-years away. “Who are you?” it asked.

  “We are the SI, an ally of the humans.”

  “The Bose memories know of you. You are the human immotile. The endpoint of their individuality. They created you because they knew they were not perfect without you.”


  Bose memories, Mellanie thought. Oh, shit, that’s not good. Though maybe in a way it is, it will give my new Dudley some closure.

  “Your reading of the Bose memories is inaccurate,” the SI said. “Though we will not argue with you on definitions. We are contacting you to ask you to stop your attacks on the humans. They are pointless. You do not need these planets.”

  “Neither do the humans.”

  “Nonetheless they are living on them. You are killing them. That must stop.”

  “Why?”

  “It is wrong. And you know it.”

  “Life must survive. I am alive. I must not die.”

  “You are not under threat. If you continue this aggression you will become threatened.”

  “By existing, other life threatens me. Only when I become total will I secure my immortality.”

  “Define: total.”

  “One life, everywhere.”

  “That will not happen, ever.”

  “You threaten me. You will be destroyed.”

  “We state facts. It will not be possible for you to destroy us. Nor will you be able to destroy many other civilizations which exist within this galaxy. You must learn how to coexist with us.”

  “That is a contradiction in terms. There is only one universe, it can contain only one life.”

  “This is not a contradiction. You are simply inexperienced with such a concept. We assure you it is possible.”

  “You are betraying yourself by believing this. Life grows, it expands. This is inevitable. It is what I am.”

  “True life evolves. You can change.”

  “No.”

  “You must change.”

  “I will not. I will grow. I will learn. I will surpass you. I will destroy you, both of you.”

  Mellanie was aware of a change in the nature of the signals coming through the wormholes to fall upon the planet. MorningLightMountain was giving the soldier motiles on the landing ships distinct orders, then disengaging them from its communications web. While they didn’t have a great deal of independent capability, a soldier motile could certainly follow simple target instructions and use its own combat systems without direct real-time supervision.