The Saints of Salvation

by Peter F. Hamilton

  “Oh, you beautiful Saints,” she whispered.

  Ahead was a huge white-spectrum star, looped by a splendorous ring that shimmered as if it were the child born of two diamond worlds colliding. But behind that was the true majesty of the Olyix homestar: the galactic core stretching halfway across space.

  Ainsley’s external sensors found the spectral gateway itself, two and a half AUs away.

  “At least it isn’t on the other side of the star,” Yirella said.

  “Still got to get there,” Ainsley retorted. “That’s going to be fun.”

  A second after Ainsley, the generator particles reached the terminus, producing their own negative energy to interface with the existing pattern that held the wormhole open. Just as they’d done back at the sensor station, they established control over the exotic matter structure even as the Olyix cut power to their own generators. The terminus remained open.

  Ainsley’s acceleration was so brutal he shone like the sun as the solar wind struck its discontinuity boundary. More than five billion perception fronds burst out from his hull, saturating space to provide unparalleled resolution. Seven Resolution ships were already closing on Ainsley at eighty gees. He selected a degenerator pulse, and a speck of ultradense matter collapsed into pure energy, which was channeled into seven beams. Seven Resolution ships detonated in glorious violence.

  A fraction of the overspill degenerator pulse energy transmuted into an omnidirectional radio blast. “Hello, motherfuckers,” Ainsley announced to the entire Olyix system. “The humans have arrived. Sorry we’re late. But now we’re here, let’s party.”

  As soon as the fronds went active, Yirella’s tactical display started to expand. “Oh, hell,” she grunted. “Are you seeing this?”

  “We expected nothing less,” Immanueel replied calmly.

  The fronds were now perceiving a spherical volume of space half a million kilometers in diameter, with the wormhole terminus at its center—a zone populated with eight hundred seventy-three Resolution ships. All of them were now in motion. Hundreds closest to the terminus were closing on it, while eighty converged into a battle formation to pursue Ainsley.

  Armada ships were swarming out of the wormhole, attack cruisers establishing a defensive perimeter around the generators, obliterating the Olyix systems and nearby ships. Missiles and graviton beams speared out from the incoming Resolution ships, countered by nucleonic barriers and antimatter missiles from the attack cruisers. Ultra-high radiation flooded out from hundreds of matter-annihilating explosions, creating a lethal energy storm around the wormhole terminus that reduced all unprotected mass to its subatomic particles, adding to the radiative deluge. Even the fronds’ perception failed amid the colossal overload. Continuous waves of missiles streaked through the chaos. Defense cruisers died, but still more of the armada poured out of the wormhole, reinforcing any gaps in the protective cordon they were establishing, while squadrons of heavy-duty battle cruisers plowed through the hypercharged arena to strike at the incoming Resolution ships. Controlled by corpus sub aspects, they were extremely maneuverable and extensively armored. After the first twenty encounters all resulted in the Resolution ships being destroyed, the remainder of the Olyix ships began to take evasive action. Waves of teardrop-shaped Calmissiles accelerated out from the tightly packed formation of battle cruisers, raking short-lived black contrails in their wake as they devoured the plasma they flew through. Within seconds of being fired, their acceleration wound up to an incredible thousand gees. The closest Resolution ships didn’t have time to react before the first salvo sliced clean through their fuselages. More distant Resolution ships increased their evasion tactics to watch the Calmissiles flash past, their colossal velocity swiftly taking them beyond the outermost shell of Olyix ships assigned to guarding the wormhole terminus. Some Resolution ships used suppression projectors, killing the Calmissiles’ entanglement, exposing the raw structure of the small vessels that were instantly vulnerable to both abrasion from ultra-velocity interplanetary dust and ordinary X-ray laser fire.

  “That’s good,” Immanueel said as they lost the eighteenth Calmissile. “We have the ranging on their suppression technology. Phase two deployment strategy is now being modified accordingly.”

  Yirella watched more than five hundred Calmissiles dwindle away out into the star system, difficult even for the sensor fronds to follow. Only their internal communication links allowed the armada tactical network to track them.

  After a minute of flight, during which he eliminated nineteen Resolution ships, Ainsley increased his acceleration up to two hundred eighty gees and vectored around in a massive parabola until he was heading straight back toward the wormhole terminus, powering headlong for the formation of a hundred seventy Resolution ships that had been chasing him. Even though she knew what was about to happen, Yirella found herself gripping the arms of the café seat.

  With twenty-five seconds before he reached the Resolution ships, Ainsley triggered another degenerator pulse. This time, his entire energy output was routed directly into a monster electromagnetic discharge, temporarily blinding the multitude of sensors tracking him, denying his opponents critical data for a couple of seconds.

  “Oh, Saints,” Yirella moaned. She could see Ainsley’s course vector as he streaked back toward them; he was going to fly past the wormhole terminus with barely two thousand kilometers’ separation distance at a terrifying speed. If this doesn’t work…

  Ainsley brought the ultradense matter shield up from energized suspension to deployment status. At that point, he was seventeen thousand kilometers from the formation of Resolution ships and closing fast. When he reached fifteen, he triggered the shield.

  The shield massed roughly the same as a medium-size moon. In its phasefolded state, it was a disk thirty meters in diameter and one centimeter deep. It unfolded at point-nine-five light speed, expanding out to eighty thousand kilometers in diameter and one hundred microns thick. Boosted quantum equilibrium ensured every compositional atom shared the same state, unifying them.

  The Resolution ships didn’t have any time to vector away; they crashed into what was in effect a two-dimensional moon with a closing velocity in excess of nine hundred kilometers a second. Their impacts were simultaneously distributed and absorbed by the entire mass. Star-hot debris plumes were bulldozed out of the way by the shield’s unstoppable inertia, forming relativistic rivers across its surface before cascading over the edges.

  Five seconds after the last impact, Ainsley refolded it.

  Yirella let out an involuntary scream as she watched the incredible shield rushing at deadly speed toward the wormhole terminus. It eclipsed the entire galactic core, smothering the blazing star; even most of the glittering ring was obscured. Some animal level of her brain told her such a thing couldn’t possibly be real.

  Then it shrank away as fast as it had emerged, and Ainsley swept past the wormhole terminus. Three seconds later, the shield sprang out again. Dozens of Resolution ships inbound toward the wormhole smashed apart as it plowed through them, graviton beams and antimatter impacts useless against its artificial structure.

  “Told you it’d work.” Ainsley chuckled. “The Katos really know how to manipulate matter.” He folded the shield away again and performed another three-hundred-gee maneuver back to the wormhole terminus. “You guys ready?” he asked the corpus humans.

  “Confirmed,” Immanueel said. “Beginning phase three.”

  The generators holding the wormhole open began to accelerate at two hundred fifty gees, heading for the gateway. The armada cruisers englobing it matched their speed. Ainsley took up his point position again. Another salvo of Calmissiles was launched, racing on ahead to form up in a protective umbrella to intercept the incoming Olyix ships.

  “Ten hours to reach the gateway,” Yirella said. “There’s a lot that can go wrong in that time.”

  “Not just fo
r us,” Kenelm replied. “Our attack profile will force the Olyix to divert resources away from us.”

  “I was never sure about this part,” she admitted. “If it was me defending the enclave, I’d throw everything I had into preventing us from reaching the gateway. If we kill the enclave, it’s all over. They can take the other losses.”

  “I disagree. If we destroy their wormholes, the galaxy will have millennia before they can venture out again in their obscene crusades. That will give newly evolving species a chance to become starfaring, and for the Neána to make contact first.”

  “Yeah,” she mused. “About that…I’m not so sure being subtly manipulated by the Neána is necessarily the best option for anyone.”

  “It’s an option—which is more than most species get at the moment. Besides which, we’re talking about immediate tactics. The Olyix oneminds will have to decide how badly they want to keep the wormhole network. My guess is: pretty bad.”

  “Saints, I hope so. The more I’m reviewing our sensor data, the bigger their resources seem to be.” She looked away from the tactical displays to see Kenelm’s tense expression.

  “They’ve been actively running this crusade for a couple of million years,” sie said. “Even if they’ve plateaued or stagnated—whatever you want to call it—they’ve had all that time to prepare for an assault. Because they knew damn well that someone would eventually come here to challenge them.”

  “It doesn’t matter now. If we win, the galaxy will be free of them. If we lose, well…we won’t be around to care.”

  “You are such an odd fatalist.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  Yirella glanced back at the displays playing within the windows. The huge flotilla of Calmissiles that were racing out into the gateway system was now over a quarter of a million kilometers away and spreading wide. Forty percent of them were heading straight in for the gateway, while the remainder were targeting the ring, fanning out so they would cover every industrial station. Sensors were showing her thousands of Olyix ships accelerating toward the invaders from across the system. The majority were on course to intercept the wormhole terminus, while the rest were outbound to confront the Calmissiles.

  “Multiplying,” Immanueel announced.

  Again, there were few visual clues, even from Ainsley’s sensor fronds, leaving Yirella to rely on the armada’s tactical network. The portals covering the Calmissile fuselages expanded out to half a kilometer in diameter. Hundreds of additional Calmissiles flew out of each one. It was like a firework starburst, but inverted, with lightsinks rather than dazzling flares. The newcomers also started accelerating away at a thousand gees. Five minutes later, they too expanded and released another batch of Calmissiles.

  “Half a million active portals effected,” Immanueel said ten minutes later. “That should occupy their ships, if nothing else. We’ll have complete access to the entire system in twenty-four hours.”

  Despite having tens of thousands of ships and thousands of industrial stations in the ring, the Olyix seemed uncertain where to direct their forces. As Yirella predicted, every ship within an AU of the gateway headed there to defend it, while the remainder were dispersed to deal with the proliferation of Calmissiles.

  Approach speeds were a big factor. Resolution ships simply didn’t have the kind of acceleration that could catch the Calmissiles. They had to go for head-on interceptions, using entanglement suppression with supreme accuracy. The armada tactics were simple enough. If a Resolution ship was flying to intercept, the Calmissile would maneuver to strike it. While they were still ten thousand kilometers apart, the Calmissile fuselage portal would expand so that a battle cruiser next to the portal’s twin would open fire with graviton beams or ultra-powered X-ray lasers. If they missed, it didn’t matter; the Resolution ship would be traveling away from the gateway system at a velocity that would take too long to cancel before it could return to the ring or anywhere else it could be of use. The same went for a Calmissile that succumbed to suppression and broke apart from solar wind collision shock. It had diverted the Resolution ship from defending strategic assets, so it had achieved its goal.

  Despite the scale of the armada forces, and the importance of reaching the gateway, Yirella kept focused on the seven thousand Calmissiles that were heading in for the star. It wasn’t an obvious maneuver; their course vectors should be interpreted as taking them to the ring on the far side of the star from the wormhole terminus. But they were critical to the assault plan. In total, it would take them three hours to reach the corona, by which time the Olyix might realize their true goal. But if it did take them that long, she knew, it would be too late.

  Three major squadrons of mixed Resolution and Deliverance ships attacked the wormhole terminus as it sped across the system. Tactically, they faced the same problem as the ships trying to tackle the Calmissiles. Closing velocity gave them a single chance, and the armada could see them coming, plotting their trajectories with remarkable precision. Multiplying Calmissiles backed up by battle cruisers took care of two squadrons, while Ainsley’s phasefolded shield devastated the third.

  Eighty-seven Resolution ships were orbiting the huge star, thirty million kilometers above its equator and the titanic black power ring that was spinning fast above the fringes of the corona, stirring up a necklace of gigantic prominences. As the seven thousand strong formation of Calmissiles streaked in, their target now obvious, the Olyix finally responded to the incursion. Every ship they had within fifty million kilometers accelerated toward the threat at their full ninety-gee acceleration. Even if the Calmissiles punched a thousand holes through the power band, it wouldn’t have had much effect on such a vast structure, but the Olyix clearly weren’t taking any chances.

  “Too little, too late,” Yirella murmured in satisfaction.

  The Resolution ships were good, and by now the Olyix were refining their techniques, clumping three Resolution ships together and triangulating the entanglement suppression effect. They started picking off the Calmissiles on the fringe of the formation, but the armada only needed one.

  When it was fifteen million kilometers above the star, the Calmissile stopped accelerating. Its fuselage portal expanded, and Ainsley slipped out. He fired eight missiles with quantum-variant warheads at the power band.

  “Eight?” Yirella queried.

  “We have to be very certain,” Ainsley replied, then slipped back through the portal to resume his escort duty at the wormhole terminus.

  The first two q-v missiles detonated squarely on the power band. It disintegrated so fast, the remaining six missiles never even had a target.

  She’d seen it before, but Yirella still watched in appalled awe as the power ring shattered and died, flinging out its uncountable multitudes of fragments, tumbling radiant daggers the size of Earth’s moon.

  All across the gateway system, the Olyix wormholes died, cutting them off from their galaxy-wide empire of sensor stations.

  “We did it!” she exclaimed in delight. “It will take them centuries to build another power ring, and they’re locked into this system until they do!”

  Kenelm nodded cautiously. “Safer,” sie said. “There are still thousands of Olyix stations out there, and look what we built with just the resources available on the Morgan.”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “We’ve broken their grip. They’ll diverge now, just like we did. The monoculture is broken.” And I’m going to make sure their God can’t restart it with another message.

  “The gateway is still intact.”

  She pulled the latest sensor data out of the tactical network. The gateway sphere was unaffected by the loss of the power ring. “We were pretty sure killing the power ring wouldn’t affect the gateway; it has to be powered from inside. So the corpus conjecture was right. There has to be another star in there.”

  “Which means this was a binary star?”


  “Yes. That…may be a problem.”

  “The nova?”

  “If we hit the enclave star with our neutron star, then the enclave boundary itself will fail. You’ll revert to a binary star system with one star going nova. That will probably trigger the second, too.”

  “So we’ll wind up with a supernova.”

  “High possibility, yeah. And if it does, the radiation will kill everything for fifty light-years. So we really have got to safeguard the wormhole terminus. It’s the only way any of us are getting out of this alive now.”

  “So let’s hope we can get into the enclave.”

  Now that the Olyix had learned how Calmissiles could be trojans, allowing the armada ships access through them, their tactics changed. Deliverance and Resolution ships that had been racing to intercept Calmissiles heading for the ring abruptly diverted to head for the Calmissiles flying to the gateway, while thousands of the ships assigned to guard the gateway left their passive englobement formation to join the attack against the incoming forces.

  Calmissiles began to vanish from the tactical display at an increasing rate.

  Yirella frowned at the data. “How are they doing that?” she asked.

  “Collision,” Immanueel replied. “The ship oneminds are sacrificing themselves. The Resolution ships are aligning directly on the Calmissiles. That way, the suppression effect will definitely reach the Calmissile even though there will be no time for the Resolution ship to move out of the way.”

  “But we have a hundred and twenty thousand Calmissiles heading for the gateway. And us! They have…”

  “Twenty-eight thousand ships within reach,” Immanueel said.

  “Saints! And they’re all going to suicide? They really are fanatics, aren’t they?”

  “Our Calmissiles will have to decelerate. Reduced closing velocity will give the Olyix forces a tactical advantage.”