Exultant dc-2

by Stephen Baxter

  It had been decided to try hooking up the CTC processor to the control systems of the test rig’s GUTdrive engines. It was possible that the CTC’s greater processing speed would permit the refinement of the control of the spacetime wave fronts sufficiently to get the result the designers wanted. Commander Darc railed at the foolishness of hooking up one experimental technology to another, but the CTC had already proven itself, in control of the grav shield. And as Nilis said, “Compared to the rest of this lash-up, CTC is a mature technology.”

  The work proceeded fast. Torec had as much experience as anybody with CTC systems, and so she had been drawn back into the heart of the project. Pirius was left stranded on the observation deck of the corvette, watching the techs work on the modified rig. It was easy to spot Torec, with her bright red team leader’s armbands over her skinsuit.

  Nilis stood with him. He waved a hand in the air, and brought up Pirius’s old Virtual sketch of the Project. The path to the Prime Radiant, the Xeelee barricade around it were green, the asterisk that represented the Radiant itself was glowing red. “What do you think, Ensign? Is today the day when we will find a weapon to strike at the Prime Radiant itself?”

  Pirius was embarrassed by the hubristic sketch. “I hope so, sir.”

  Torec’s voice sounded softly in Pirius’s ear. “Are you watching? Three. Two. One.” Pirius pressed his face to the hull.

  Again he saw flexing spacetime permeate the crude rig of struts and GUTdrive engines, again those waves of distortion washed into the heart of the rig. But the distortions seemed stronger to Pirius this time, their crowding propagation somehow more urgent.

  Purple-white light flared at the center of the rig, a glaring pinpoint. The framework itself pulsed and flexed, and struts snapped. But the frame held, and that central pinpoint cast shadows over its complex structure. The pinpoint of light was a black hole. It was about as massive as a Conurbation dome, crushed into a space the size of an electron, glowing through Hawking evaporation at a temperature measured in teradegrees. It was working, then: he held his breath.

  For a second the black hole waited at the heart of the rig. The framework pulsed and cracked.

  And then the dazzling spark leapt straight out of the frame and hurled itself in a dead straight line across space to the Xeelee. When it hit, the nightfighter seemed to fold over on itself, as if crushed by a vast fist.

  For a long moment, nothing moved: the observers, Saturn’s broad disc, the crumpled Xeelee ship, the broken rig. Then, in Pirius’s monitors, remote cheering started.

  Nilis said, “My eyes. I think we’ve done it.” He snapped his fingers. On Pirius’s diagram, the crimson asterisk turned bright green.

  Conurbation 11729!

  Chapter 34

  It was a city known only by the number given to it by alien conquerors, but it was a number known throughout the Galaxy. This place had been the base of Hama Druz himself, twenty thousand years before. Ever since, it had been the beating heart of a human Galaxy.

  And it was here that Nilis and his team came to confront the mighty power that had ruled all mankind since Druz’s day, the Interim Coalition of Governance, seeking its blessing to establish a new Navy squadron and to equip it with upgraded ships, with CTC processors and gravastar shields and black hole cannons — seeking its blessing to take Project Prime Radiant to the center of the Galaxy itself.

  From the air the city looked almost ordinary, just another of the Qax’s inhuman clusterings of domes of blown rock. But the ancient blisters glittered with windows and balconies, the city was covered with a shining spiderweb of walkways and monorails, and steady streams of traffic, both intra- atmospheric and from space, washed through the ports that ringed the central dome cluster. The old Qax architecture was still the foundation of everything, but the sense of power here was palpable, even compared to the rest of Earth — power, and wealth.

  The flitter landed at a small pad outside the largest of the domes. It carried only Nilis and his two ensigns, in their best dress uniforms. But even so, blue-helmeted Guardians insisted on coming on board the ship and subjecting each of them to whole-body searches that lasted long minutes. This massive dome housed the principal headquarters of some of the Coalition’s most powerful ministries and agencies, and there were plenty of enemies of the Coalition who would wish to do harm here, given a chance — not just alien foe, but human rebels. Back in Arches Base, such a thing would have seemed no more than a theoretical possibility, but this was Earth. The ensigns submitted silently.

  At last they were released, and Nilis led them into the dome itself.

  The tremendous enclosed space was flooded with light, and spectacular buildings soared in contemptuous defiance of the laws of physics. There were arches and T-shapes and inverted cones, their frames studded with inertial controllers and antigravity generators; some of them even floated. People hurried across the floor in streams, or along walkways that threaded through the air between the buildings. There was a hubbub of noise, a constant shouting; it was the sound of merged human voices, a million of them in this one dome alone.

  And above it all the gray Qax shell loomed, a rocky sky. Beneath its grand curvature, light globes clustered like stars. Some of the floating buildings nuzzled against the shell of the dome itself; perhaps they had penthouses built through the dome, to reach the sky.

  Pirius reached for Torec’s hand, and they clung to each other. It was a city designed for giants, not mere humans like themselves.

  Nilis hurried, barefoot as ever, his arms full of data desks. “We mustn’t be late. Mustn’t be late! All Luru Parz’s morally dubious arm-twisting has won us is a hearing before Minister Gramm and his subcommittee. It has to go well today, this latest war of words, or all our technological achievements will count for nothing.”

  At last Nilis brought them to a doorway. It was itself huge, but was a mere detail at the base of the building above it. This, said Nilis, was a center of the Grand Conclave itself, the Coalition’s supreme body.

  In the foyer they were subjected to yet more searches, by yet more Guardians. Nilis wasn’t allowed to take any equipment beyond here, and he had to download his data from his bots and data desks into copies provided by the Guardians. He had been prepared for this, but he fretted at the continuing delays.

  When they were released, they hurried across the foyer to a narrow, silver-walled elevator shaft. In this expensive machine there was no sense of acceleration; Pirius had no idea how high they climbed — or perhaps, descended.

  The doors slid back to reveal a conference room. Nilis hurried forward, muttering apologies for his lateness. Pirius and Torec followed more slowly, eyes wide.

  They were in another vast chamber, a rectangular box eight or ten meters high, and maybe a hundred meters deep. There must have been hundreds of people in this one room. It was dominated by a table, a single vast piece of furniture large enough to seat fifty. Every seat was occupied, with the portly figure of Minister Gramm at the head of the table, and his advisor Pila beside him. Behind those at the table itself were more rows of chairs; the attendees all seemed to have brought teams of advisors, in some cases stacked three or four rows deep. Bots hovered, drifting over the gleaming tabletop, serving drinks and topping up bowls of food.

  It wasn’t the size of the gathering that startled Pirius, though, but the decor. The shining tabletop was deep brown, and obviously grained. It was that strange substance called wood. More panels of the stuff covered the walls, and even the ceiling. Pirius had never seen wood before he had come to Sol system. Evidently, somewhere on Earth, trees still grew, and gave up their strange flesh to rooms like this; it was hard to imagine a more powerful statement of wealth.

  But the ensigns were dawdling, staring. Heads were beginning to turn, sophisticated mouths turning up with mocking smiles. Nilis frantically beckoned them. Shamed, Pirius and Torec hurried to the Commissary.

  Commander Darc was already here. Sitting bolt upright, evidently uncomfortable
, he ignored the ensigns. The three of them were Nilis’s only “advisors,” and rows of empty seats stretched behind them. But then, who else could Nilis have brought? Luru Parz, the jasoft? A Coalescent Archivist from Mars? A Silver Ghost? The marginal nature of Nilis’s project, and his motley crew of misfits, aliens, and illegals had never been more apparent than now, as it faced its greatest political test.

  Nilis sorted through his data desks. He said to the ensigns, “I will make the presentation today. You shouldn’t have to talk.”

  Pirius said fervently, “Good.”

  “As far as I’m concerned you two are here to make a point with your very presence. You are what this war is about. You may be asked questions; there’s nothing I can do about that. If so, confer with me or Commander Darc before answering. That’s quite acceptable in terms of the etiquette of meetings like this.”

  Torec whispered, “I thought we were only presenting to Minister Gramm.”

  Nilis sighed. “I’m afraid life here at the center of the Coalition is a little more complicated than that, child.”

  Gramm, as Minister of Economic Warfare, served on something called the War Cabinet. Under the chairmanship of a Grand Conclave member called the Plenipotentiary for Total War, this subcommittee was dedicated to the prosecution of the Xeelee war in all its aspects. Now Gramm had been appointed head of the interagency committee which had been given the responsibility of overseeing Nilis’s Project Prime Radiant.

  “But most of the great agencies have representatives on our oversight committee,” Nilis said cynically, “as they do on most initiatives that might affect their interests. Around this table there are ambassadors from the Army and Navy, the Guardians, the Ministry of Psychological Warfare who do their best to outguess the Xeelee, with no notable success, and some of the specialist guilds like the Communicators and Engineers and Navigators, and the Surveyors of Revenues, and the Auditor General’s Office. Even the Benefactors are here! — though I don’t see what our greenships have to do with their free hospitals and dole handouts. And of course, there are representatives of the many arms of the Commission for Historical Truth. Gramm, as chair of the committee, has a lot of sway. But any decision is a collective one.”

  Darc grunted. “It’s amazing the Coalition doesn’t collapse under its own bureaucracy. And look at all those black robes.” Glancing around the table, Pirius saw that the few martial uniforms, like Darc’s, were far outnumbered by the glum robes of Commissaries; they seemed to swarm through the big room, a black-clothed plague. Darc said, “We are at war. But we seem to divert an awful lot of our energies to policing our own ideological drift.”

  Nilis said sternly, “This is politics, Commander.”

  “Hmmph. Give me combat any day!”

  Minister Gramm hammered at the tabletop with a gavel — a wooden hammer on a wooden table, a remarkably archaic gesture. The susurrus of conversation around the table died. Without preliminaries, Gramm called on Nilis to make his opening remarks.

  Nilis lumbered to his feet, a smile fixed on his lined face. His voice was forceful. But Pirius could see the beads of sweat on his neck.

  Formally speaking, this was just another stage in the decision-making process: the mandate actually to go to war with this new weapon would not be given today. All this committee was being asked to approve was to release a further tranche of funding — granted a much bigger tranche, as Nilis was asking to establish a new Navy squadron equipped with his new technology at the center of the Galaxy. But still, Pirius knew it was the most important decision point in the project’s uncertain progress so far.

  The Commissary quickly sketched the objectives of Project Prime Radiant. He set out his familiar argument that striking at the Prime Radiant, a target “logically upstream” of the many secondary targets in the Core, would if not finish the war, then at least shorten it. He described the problems to be overcome if that ultimate target was to be hit, and set out his three proposals for doing so: the use of gravastar shielding to defeat the Xeelee’s ability to see the strike force coming before it even set off; the revolutionary CTC processors to outmaneuver the Xeelee’s last line of defenses; and the black-hole cannon to strike at Chandra itself. All this was illustrated with Virtual displays, technical summaries, maps of the war zone, and bits of imagery from the Project’s work so far.

  Pirius thought he spoke well, uncharacteristically avoiding excessively technical language. And Nilis included plenty of spectacular action images, such as shots of Pirius Blue’s jaunt to Chandra, the captive Xeelee ship being baffled by the grav shield, and finally yielding to the black hole cannonade. For armchair generals, he always said, there was nothing so impressive as a bit of footage of actual hardware.

  He drew it together in a simple graphic summary — more sophisticated than Pirius’s old asterisk diagram, but not much. Then he sat down, visibly trembling, and mopped his brow. “Now for the hard part,” he whispered.

  Gramm said there would be a recess before detailed questioning began. But he opened the floor for first reactions.

  A Commissary raised a finger. With a head like a skull, and paper-thin flesh stretched tight over angular bones, he was one of the oldest people Pirius had ever seen — aside from Luru Parz, of course — older than anyone was supposed to get, according to the Doctrines. He seemed to be so prominent in this company he didn’t need to introduce himself.

  Pirius was shocked when the very first question was directed at him, not Nilis.

  “I’d like to ask our hero ensign what he thinks of this.” The old man’s voice was soft as a whisper. “Would he be willing to fly this lash-up into the Xeelee nest?”

  Pirius glanced at Nilis and Darc; Nilis shrugged.

  Pirius stood. Every face turned to him, the hard expressions of military commanders, the softer curiosity of the swarming black-robed Commissaries. “Sir, I would say—”

  “What, what? Speak up!” A ripple of laughter passed around the room.

  Pirius cleared his throat. “Sir, this technology is unproven in battle. That’s obviously true. But we are proposing many more proving stages before it is deployed. It will require courage to take such a new weapon into battle. I have no doubt that many will give their lives trying. But try we will.”

  Nilis gently patted Pirius’s back.

  The old Commissary nodded. “All right, Ensign. One thing we are not short of is the courage of our soldiers. But this melange of ancient and possibly illegal technologies — how can it work? Put it this way. If this was such a bright idea, why didn’t somebody think of it long ago?”

  Pirius knew he should consult Nilis before replying. But he had heard such comments many times since becoming involved with Nilis’s project, even from military personnel. He said forcefully, “Sir, what’s behind your question is: if this is a good idea, why didn’t the Xeelee have it first?” There was an ominous silence. “I think some people believe that if it didn’t come from the Xeelee it can’t be any good — that Xeelee technology must be better than ours, simply because it is Xeelee. But if we think like that, it’s a recipe for defeat.” The old Commissary’s mouth was round with shock. What am I saying? “With due respect, sir,” he gabbled, and sat down hastily.

  Gramm was glaring across the table at him. “Commissary Nilis, I suspect your pet soldier has already lost your case for you — or won it. In any case we must go through the motions. Two-hour recess.” He slammed his gavel on the table.

  On the way out, Pirius was the target of amused stares. But Nilis, furious, wouldn’t even look at him.

  When the committee reconvened, the grilling was ferocious.

  The points raised by the military agencies, Pirius thought, were mostly fair. The representatives of the Green Army and the Navy asked detailed technical questions. Nilis was able to field most of these, others he passed to Darc and the ensigns. When a question came his way, Pirius made sure he referred to Nilis and Darc first — not that the Commissary would have given him any choice. Tore
c answered more than Pirius, and did so well, Pirius thought enviously — calmly, with no visible sign of nerves, and yet with a control and discipline that Pirius himself had so obviously lacked.

  Toward the end of this session, though, with the military representatives still dominating the proceedings, the questioning took a direction that puzzled Pirius. Points were raised about how the technologies could be applied on other battlefields than the very center. There was a great deal of maneuvering, too, about how each military force would place representatives in the project.

  When the meeting broke again, Nilis snorted. “What a distraction! It’s been a tactic of my opponents all along, to divert my discoveries to lesser targets — to waste this unique possibility.”

  Pirius frowned. “But the commanders are just doing their jobs, aren’t they, Commissary? They have to think through the options—”

  Commander Darc shook his head. “What is going on in this room is politics, remember. The Navy and the Green Army, to name but two, have been at each other’s throats since they were founded.

  And the individuals around this table all have their own career strategies, their own rivalries and ambitions. Now they are maneuvering, you see. If our technology is promising, they each want to get hold of it for themselves to further their own careers. If our Core assault does go ahead, and it happens to go well, they will want to take the credit. Conversely, if it goes wrong, as I suspect most of those here believe is likely, they don’t want to be blamed.”

  Torec was angry. “Maybe it would be better if we put our effort into fighting the Xeelee rather than each other.”

  Darc laughed, not particularly unkindly. “Of course there will be honest doubts, too. I tell you, Commissary, there are many serving officers who don’t like your Project just for the feel of it. This fiddling with physics: it’s more like a Ghost project than anything humanity would devise. It has their glistening sheen all over it — that might be our biggest obstacle of all.”