The Saints of Salvation

by Peter F. Hamilton

  “Ainsley?”

  “Yes, he was here for some ultra-level security conference with Emilja. Now he’s going to have to come with us; there’s no way back to Nashua. For the love of God, Horatio, open the portal!”

  “I’m coming. I’ll be there in five minutes.”

  “Shit, 82 Eridani just went. Hurry!”

  He looked at the others. “The Olyix are here. I have a way offworld. I can take the four of you, but it’s now or never. You coming?”

  “Yes.” Niastus took the baby from a trembling Jaz. “Do we run?”

  “Fuck, yeah,” Horatio said. As he said it, the city’s sparse aurora of light died. Streetlights went off, along with all the house lights that didn’t have battery reserves. Behind them, the community exchange fell silent apart from a loud metallic buzzing of unbalanced pumps spinning erratically into shutdown.

  “Christ on a crutch,” Maria exclaimed. “You’re not joking, are you?”

  “No. Come on.” He started jogging toward Curtis Street. The others kept up with him, so he increased the pace. Voices emerged up ahead, questions shouted between rooms in the terraced houses. Curtains were opened, revealing lights that still had battery power; people pressed themselves against the glass to see what was happening.

  Then London’s always-precarious network crashed.

  It was stupid, but Horatio responded by looking upward again, as if appealing to ancient gods. Vast lightning webs seethed far overhead, cracking the sky open. He squinted into the frenzied glare. Something was moving at its heart—a dark-gray elongated oval shape that just kept growing. The lightning forks stabbing out of it were permanent now, clawing at the shield and expanding to create a single jagged sheet. It was as if daylight had returned; the whole gleamed under the terrible forces emitted by the huge alien ship.

  “Is that—” Maria gasped.

  “Yeah.” He’d slowed to take in the shocking manifestation; now he surged forward again, crossing into Curtis Street. It’s only a few hundred meters. Please!

  The light changed abruptly, shading to a disturbingly intense violet. Horatio had hoped he’d never see that light ever again: devil-sky. Huge patches of the shield were fluorescing from whatever beams the ship was firing down. It was much brighter than during Blitz2, and getting brighter.

  The shield would never hold against that, he knew.

  Jaz was whimpering as she and Niastus stumbled along together, shielding their eyes from the lightstorm above. She was young, only nineteen, Horatio remembered; Blitz2 had ended before she was even born. So she would’ve listened to her parents’ stories with healthy teenage skepticism and boredom; it was tough when we were young, you kids today have it so easy. Now reality was crashing against her senses with a brutality she’d never known.

  He veered over toward her. “It’s okay. Five minutes and we’ll be out of here. Just hang on, yes?”

  She nodded frantically, clutching at Niastus—her only dependable rock in the storm erupting around her.

  The devil-sky light vanished. Horatio felt a stab of pure panic, like boiling adrenaline flooding his brain. There was only one reason for that. He almost didn’t dare look upward yet again, but…

  The air provided a foretaste of what was about to come. There was still no wind, not even a breeze, but it seemed to squeeze him. Then he saw it, something moving in the sky—a dark column like a twister, but broken into segments. And moving fast, like airplanes used to, already several kilometers high. He stared in amazement. The apex of it was a crumpled building, bigger than the community exchange behind him, spinning its way upward, shedding hunks of wall, its panel roof twisting and disintegrating. Below it was a tail of debris: smaller buildings, inverted cascades of earth, even tree trunks. Something had reached down from the sky and pulled them up.

  Instinctively he knew what that building had been: shield generator. The Resolution ship had somehow reversed gravity and pulled the city’s only defense out by its roots. He spun around, seeing a couple of similar columns already peaking, the debris starting to curve groundward.

  “The wind’s going to hit,” Horatio shouted. “Find something to hold onto.” He looked along the street. There wasn’t much. A few dead trees, some iron bollards at the far end, where the road narrowed to feed into Bacon Grove. “Those!” He sprinted off toward the bollards. Above him the furious barrage of sheet lightning began to calm. With the glare reducing he could see there were two Resolution ships hovering over London. Crap, they’re huge. Clouds began to boil around their edges, slamming down toward the city.

  Wind was already blowing fast down Bacon Grove when they reached the bollards. Horatio and Maria clung to each other around one of the posts, while Niastus and Jaz hugged tight, with their baby between them. Horatio braced himself as the noise of the storm’s leading edge impacting the ground struck. It was bone-shaking, riding a pressure wave that was almost strong enough to pull them apart. The heat was something else he hadn’t anticipated, making it hard to inhale.

  Windows all along the street shattered, the shards joining the thick airborne streams of roof slates. There was so much debris in the air that even the gigantic lightning halos around the Resolution ships were eclipsed, plunging the street back into a gray twilight. His clothes were flapping against his limbs, as if they were trying to pull free of him and take flight.

  With Maria’s face centimeters from his own, Horatio could see the frightened grimace sculpted into her features as she dug her fingers into his arms. He knew that she’d be seeing exactly the same expression on his face.

  “What do we do?” she yelled. It was barely audible above the howling wind.

  He winced as a denuded pine tree crashed to the ground fifty meters away and tumbled along until it was pinned against a wall; smaller branches vibrated until they snapped off, to be sucked back up into the churn of rubble above the rooftops. “This isn’t going to get any better,” he bellowed back. “We need to try and move.”

  Jaz looked at him in pure terror, but Niastus nodded.

  “Everyone hold on to each other,” Horatio said. “We crawl.” It was the best he could think of—present the smallest slimline profile to the wind. To stand up was to be snatched into the air.

  He estimated it wasn’t quite two hundred meters to the front door of his block. After the first few meters pushing hard against the gale, he wasn’t sure if he had the strength to make it. A frightening number of lethal shards were hurtling along Bacon Grove—slates, tree limbs, glass, cans, bags of rubbish splitting open to shed their contents like oversize artillery rounds. He didn’t even know how many times the ground trembled from seismic shock as some nearby building collapsed. Once, a two-seat cabez came rolling toward them like an oversize metallic football, crashing from side to side in sprays of shattered glass and ripped bodywork. They all had to scrabble aside to avoid it. The battered chassis missed Maria by less than a meter.

  Some eternity later, they reached the end of Bacon Grove. Horatio’s block was on the other side of the broad intersection. He couldn’t tell if the wind streaking along Grange Road was slightly slower. There was plenty of rubbish tumbling along; taxez bounced and gyrated past them. They watched as an unconscious woman rolled along the tarmac, her skirt acting as a sail, broken limbs flopping about, skin flayed raw, her face painted in blood. Horatio was pretty sure she was dead.

  “What the fuck is that?” Niastus cried.

  Horatio followed his frantic gaze upward, just knowing it was going to be bad. The nearest Resolution ship hanging low above London was spilling a dark waterfall from an open slot in its aft fuselage—a cybernetic pterodactyl shitting on the city. His tarsus lenses zoomed in as best he could, and the outflow resolved into a dense stream of globes.

  It had been twenty-five years since he’d last seen those shapes, and the sight of them made him whimper like a frightened child trapped i
n a looped nightmare. “Olyix hunting spheres,” he yelled as another taxez crashed past, twirling off into the Spar Gardens. “Move!” It was insanity—there were so many lethal fragments scything through the air along Grange Road—but he preferred to take his chances with them. They crouched low and scuttled forward, stopping once for a shop awning to cartwheel past. They ducked for a round table that spun and pogoed. Small particles were slamming into him constantly, impossible to see and dodge before they hit, but each one was like a kick from a pro cagefighter.

  Less than a minute and they made it to the other side, and clung to the shelter of the wall, where the wind had eased a fraction. Horatio’s knee was in agony where a chunk of masonry had hit him. Blood was running down Maria’s face from a nasty gash on her forehead. A weeping Jaz was supporting Niastus as he tried to stand upright, the baby clutched to her torso.

  The door’s glass panels were cracked, but not yet shattered. It wouldn’t open. Horatio could see the frame was warped. “Together,” he told Niastus. They put their shoulders down and thumped against it. It held. They hit it again, finally shifting the obdurate frame. There was a terrific roar, and the air swirled violently. Horatio fell hard into the hallway, not understanding what had happened. Then he caught sight of the Olyix sphere streaking away along Grange Road—with things falling out of it. He looked down at the tarmac. Dozens of capturesnakes were lying there, starting to twitch. Of course they were the one thing the wind didn’t blow away.

  “Go!” he screamed and grabbed Jaz, pulling her inside. “Go, go. Upstairs.”

  The tips of the capturesnakes rose up like armored cobra heads, tracking around. Horatio pushed Niastus toward the stairs. “Help him,” he told Maria.

  “But you—”

  “Go. I’m right behind you.” Several capturesnakes started wriggling their way toward the open door. It would be useless trying to shut it, he knew. Jaz and Niastus had made it up the first few stairs. Maria gave him a desperate look, then turned fast and started heading up. “Come on,” she urged the others, half pushing, half lifting Niastus. “Second floor, number twenty-four. Move!”

  Horatio backed into the stairwell. It was reasonably narrow, brick walls and concrete stairs with metal rails. Obsolete ducts ran along the edge of the ceiling. He’d made it to the first turn when his altme finally got a signal from the portal. Gwendoline’s icon splashed into his tarsus lens display.

  “Horatio!”

  “I’m here. Almost at the flat. Thread up, for God’s sake. Now!”

  “Horatio…are you secure?”

  “There are capturesnakes. They’re chasing us. Don’t worry, I’ve got them.”

  “Horatio!”

  “Hurry!”

  “I…I’ll try.”

  “Try what?”

  “We can’t let any Olyix through, not even a capturesnake. It’s security.”

  “Fuck! I said I’ve got this. No capturesnake is coming through.”

  “Oh, Christ.”

  “Thread up!” He saw movement down in the hallway and pulled out his voltstick. It telescoped out to its full meter length. The bulbous end fizzed with purple static. He’d never been proud to carry it. After all, it was his job to reason and persuade the wilder kids—those who’d lost their way, who just needed some sympathy and guidance. Force was never the answer. But he knew those lost kids well enough to acknowledge some were beyond even his negotiating skills, and London was balanced so finely on the edge of anarchy. So…always the voltstick when he left the flat. A practical precaution.

  Two capturesnakes darted forward, undulating rapidly as they came up the stairs. His altme’s self-defense routine told him to strike the one on his left first. He jabbed down, catching it just behind the tip. The voltstick discharged in a brutal flash, and he was already swiping right. Another flash. Thin smoke puffed upward, drenching him with the smell of burnt plastic and oil fumes.

  “What the fuck was that?” Maria demanded.

  “I told you I’ve got this.”

  “I got clearance,” Gwendoline said. “We’re threading up.”

  “You’re a Zangari,” he told her. “I expected nothing less.” His altme highlighted another capturesnake squirming up the stairs. More were slithering into the hallway.

  Horatio waited until the next one was a single step below him, then swung the voltstick down. The capturesnake flipped to one side, then lunged forward at the same time the voltstick struck the concrete. It coiled around his ankle, grating against his skin. Bollocks, this is going to hurt! He brought the voltstick back, scrunching it into the rear of the capturesnake. Where it was wrapped around his ankle became a tight ring of searing hot lava. Horatio screamed at the vile burst of pain, instinctively jerking the voltstick away. The smoldering capturesnake twitched as he shook his leg, dislodging it. The next three were already on the stairs.

  Eyes watering from the pain, he started up the next flight of stairs. There was no light on the second floor, so his tarsus lenses had to switch to full infrared. He could see the scarlet and peach profile of the others stumbling onward to his flat. Behind him, glowing amber auroras lurked below the top stair, like small suns ready to begin the day.

  “One meter portal’s threaded,” Gwendoline said. “How much longer?”

  Maria was fumbling with the door lock.

  “Almost with you.” He stood square in the corridor, an immovable barrier between the stairs and his flat. Behind him, Maria finally got the door open. A wan emerald glow oozed out into the corridor.

  “Who the hell are they?” Gwendoline demanded.

  The tips of three capturesnakes rose up above the top stair. Horatio struck a pose, holding the voltstick ready to thrust and parry as if he were channeling some buccaneer ancestor. They launched themselves at him—two writhing across the floor, one somehow scooting along the wall. The tactical routine gave him the best attack strategy, the angles to thrust and stab, optimum time between the strokes. Perfect had he still owned those glorious long-ago adolescent football field reflexes.

  He hit the one on the wall easily. The tarsus lens dimmed automatically to protect his optical nerve from the flash, but he saw the capturesnake drop and shudder in eerie death throes. He missed the next, but the swipe carried on in a powerful arc and caught the third straight on. Vision dimmed again for the flash, at the same time something hit his left knee with bewildering force. He crashed to the ground, the air knocked from his lungs.

  “Horatio?” Maria cried.

  “Fucking go!” he yelled back at her. “Gwendoline, they’re my friends.” Even he could hear the raw pleading in his voice.

  “I can’t,” Gwendoline said.

  “They’ve got a baby!”

  “Oh, motherfucker.”

  Horatio didn’t hear anything else; her voice vanished behind a wave of pain from his leg. Adrenaline coupled with raw panic overrode his body’s muscle lock, and he stared down his trembling torso. The capturesnake had wound around both knees like a sinuous manacle, its tip puncturing the skin, allowing it to tunnel up through the quadricep muscle. He could see it pushing its way deeper into him and screamed in shock. Once again he brought the voltstick down, thrashing at the obscene alien device in frenzied horror. The pain of the discharge was excruciating, forcing him to stop in tears after the third or fourth strike. Panting on the ground, he saw the capturesnake was dead, or at least inert. His leg was numb, which he knew wouldn’t last. He reached down and gripped the awful thing, pulling…It took an age to yank it free amid unbelievable pain. A frightening amount of blood gushed out of the wound. But far worse than that was the sensation of something moving inside him, pushing along his femur toward his groin. The capturesnake had performed its function, injecting him with a blob of Kcells, the start of cocooning. His stomach heaved, and he grew faint.

  Hands gripped his shoulders and started to drag
him back, out of the corridor and into the flat. When he looked up, he saw Maria’s manic grin as she tugged him along. Beyond her, at the far end of his lounge, an innocuous circular portal was standing vertically on spindly mechanical legs, showing a bright green room on the other side. He gazed numbly at the apparition from a lost past.

  Jaz was on all fours before it, passing her baby through the circular portal.

  “I’m coming,” Horatio told Gwendoline.

  “We’ve got the baby,” she replied.

  Niastus pushed Jaz, and she started to crawl through the portal. Horatio clenched his teeth at another wave of pain firing up from his leg. The clump of Kcells the capturesnake had violated him with was moving again. “I’m going to need a medical team,” he said.

  “On their way.”

  Niastus started to clamber through the portal. A capturesnake dropped onto Maria’s head. She screamed, shuddering about as if she’d been electrocuted. It fell off her, and Horatio swatted it with the voltstick. Four more were rushing into the flat. The corridor floor outside was swarming with a whole pack of them, dark shells glistening in the jade light.

  “Horatio!” Gwendoline called.

  “Go,” he begged Maria. The lead capturesnake leaped forward. He struck it perfectly with the voltstick, surprised and disappointed at how weak he seemed to have become. Something bit his foot. He saw a capturesnake had penetrated his boot leather to jab into his ankle. More capturesnakes were slinking forward quickly, as if they could sense his growing vulnerability. He slashed about wildly with the voltstick. “Go. Please.”

  She stared at the approaching pack of capturesnakes in horror. “No.”

  “Live for me.”

  “Horatio!”

  A capturesnake speared his abdomen. He brought the voltstick down on it in a classic hara-kiri stab. His back arched up, muscles rigid as he received the full blast of the voltstick. The universe was growing fainter, somehow receding in every direction. “Go.”

  “I love you,” Gwendoline said.