The Saints of Salvation

by Peter F. Hamilton

  When body five was eventually swept out into the vacuum of the enclave, it was wrecked, the brain barely functional. But the pain had gone. I swiveled around and around, seeing the elegant colors of the nebula clouds, then the vast curving shell of the Salvation of Life. Air streamed out of body five’s gills, forming a strange gray spiral as if someone were slowly wrapping a misty ribbon around me. Then the sight began to dim.

  I lost body five.

  There is only me left.

  A containment sheet had already begun to close off the tunnel, emerging from its dehiscent pod in a mass of muscular crenulations dewed with viscous yellow fluid. Once free, its movements started to speed up. I made a frantic effort to reach it and clambered around its edge while there was still room. It was the first of three sheets in the tunnel, each a short distance apart, all squeezing shut. The air surge reduced to nothing around me.

  I opened a tiny entanglement with the onemind, passively reading its thoughtstream. Alarm was dominating its consciousness—alarm at the incoming human fleet, alarm at the destruction of the power rings, alarm at the course of the neutron star, and alarm at events within its hangar. A company of reverent quint was on its way to embrace the surviving humans and inquire what they had been doing. It actually considered that they might hold information relevant to the situation outside; it even offered this option to the fullmind, who responded encouragingly.

  These dumb assholes.

  I prised my way through the second containment sheet and opened the reserve repository of space suits. The one I removed flowformed around me quickly. Its neurofibers imprinted on my nerves, making it one with my movements. I picked up the proton pistol and made my way back through the containment sheets and into the vacuum. I wouldn’t have long. The company would be here quickly, and they would be heavily armed, ready to subdue the remaining Saints.

  Several of the overhead biostructure’s luminescent strands had been damaged or simply ripped away by the frenzied depressurization, but there was enough light to see by. Nutrient fluids dripped from rips in the tubules, creating tacky puddles on the floor that were bubbling away in the vacuum. The corridor curved away ahead of me. I enhanced the space suit’s visual sensors into the far infrared and ultraviolet spectrum, then bundled in magnetic readers—the radiation monitor and radio detector. Without the perception points of my other bodies to accommodate, interpreting that many senses was profoundly easy. It was as if I had brought daylight into the tunnel, with a multitude of embellished colors painting every facet in distinctive tones.

  That’s why I noticed the infrared traces from fifty meters away. They were patches on the floor, their heat radiating back to ambient, but definitely human footprints. One person had come this way and then returned.

  I slowed. Up ahead, leading into the curve, the light from the strands was almost nonexistent, as if they’d been ravaged by the depressurization gale. And yet it was the only section to suffer like that.

  She was good, I’ll grant her that. I pushed myself against the wall and advanced carefully. There was a bright infrared glow coming from the gaps between a portion of the biostructure pipes. In there with it was a small, tight knot of magnetic flux lines—the kind a human weapon’s power source would emit.

  An ambush. Crude, but a decent attempt, given the circumstances.

  I moved fast, driving forward and bringing the proton pellet gun up, firing three shots directly at the heat source. The energy flare of their detonation overloaded the space suit sensors momentarily. It didn’t matter; the whole section of wall and biostructure was pulverized, with glowing embers jouncing along the floor to sizzle away in the puddles. There was so much infrared emission I had to reduce the sensitivity.

  I halted beside the new crater, with its lopsided rim surrounded by broken stems of biostructure gasping out puffs of vapor. On the floor was a tattered human armor jacket, missing an arm. A mangled maser carbine was attached to it by a strap. But there was no actual human, no shredded flesh nor burned bone, no boiling blood.

  Shit!

  I turned—tried to—but shock had numbed my legs.

  I am an Olyix quint, for fuck’s sake. I DO NOT suffer shock— Oh.

  SAINTS

  SALVATION OF LIFE

  It wasn’t the smartest thing Kandara had ever done, and she knew it, but by now she was past caring. Call it obsession, call it finishing the mission—no, call it what it was: straight-up vengeance. Humans were finally hitting back, just as the Strike plan had always envisaged.

  Time for me to contribute to the active stage of the mission.

  So she’d turned off the gland and let her mind run free.

  And Mary, does it feel gooood.

  Unrestricted for the first time in decades. All she worried about now was being too confident. Or maybe that was the paranoia rising to the same levels as every other unchained psychosis. Whatever.

  As soon as she started up the corridor, she began to run through options. She didn’t have anything like the usual level of weapon systems that were her basic minimum for any sharp-edge op back in the day. Four peripherals: an upper-arm smart grenade launcher—good, but size constraints meant only three mid-energy grenades in the magazine; forearm kinetic barrel, with explosive bullets; forearm nerve-block emitter; and a wrist spool of monomolecule fiber. Even when the gland kept her calm and rational, she’d always had a deep distrust of the monomolecule—an invisible thread that could cut through a human body with the slightest pressure. Every dark-operative’s nightmare—especially if you didn’t have the correct sensors to warn you it was up ahead. Her tarsus lenses were ultra-grade; they should be able to see the Mary-cursed stuff if a strand got loose. But she was wearing her damned helmet, so that was no use. The kinetic was okay, but her magpistol with its wyst bullets packed a much bigger punch. The nerve-block was an unknown. (Jessika always said it should work on an Olyix, but it was as yet untested.) The grenades were a definite plus—or minus; they gave off a strong power signal if you had the right sensors.

  She ordered the launcher to eject all three grenades, wincing at the hiss of escaping air as the suit slit parted to let them out—a quick sting on the exposed skin. Once they were out, she placed them amid the pipe trunks. As a last resort, she could trigger them by remote and bring the whole place down on Odd Quint. Because it would come for her. She knew that. They might be different species, but it was easy enough to see your own kind in a mirror, however great the distortion. Her grin at the knowledge was feral. Somewhere up at the other end of the corridor, Odd Quint would be readying itself for their final encounter.

  So here she was in an alien arkship in a time-skewed enclave, where she’d arrived by traveling down a wormhole for fifty thousand light-years, ten thousand years after fleeing her home, battling a religious extremist alien with a grudge. Cool.

  Around her, the pipe trunks with their sporadic fern leaves and matting of lianas were sagging from the walls and ceiling, splintered and broken. They leaked sludge onto the floor where the vacuum boiled it away, making walking treacherous. The corridor curved away ahead, but she and Odd Quint would see each other from fifty meters away. So it would come down to being the fastest draw, like a pair of old Wild West gunslingers. What she needed was the ultimate in sophisticated hardware that human and Neána technology could produce. She studied the mass of alien biotechnology smothering the rock, a displacement primordial jungle at dusk. Or I could just go full human primitive—

  There were doubts—so many doubts—seething away in her brain. For the first thirty seconds, crammed upside down into a gap between pipe trunks in the ceiling, she’d felt elated. This was her true self—cunning and ready to unleash violence, heedless of risk. The state she was born to be in. But then flaws in the plan began to manifest, gnawing away at her confidence. Suppose Odd Quint didn’t have any infrared sensors? Because you really shouldn’t short out a maser car
bine’s power cell just to produce a thermal signature, as its safeties struggled to contain the feedback. That was never going to end well. Wrapping it in the armored jacket to contain the heat emission was also dumb. Suppose she needed the jacket for protection?

  So many things that could go wrong.

  Such a bad idea.

  But if it worked…

  Mary, this is why I needed the gland: clarity.

  Her position meant she couldn’t look along the corridor; all she could see was a small section of sticky floor directly underneath. Any sliver of her helmet exposed outside the irregular surface of tattered bark would have given her location away to the most simplistic sensor. So she waited in growing physical discomfort as her thoughts churned and her body grew hotter and hotter. Her environment suit’s thermal regulator was turned off so the heat her body generated couldn’t escape and betray her.

  Even though she was expecting something like it, the explosions caught her by surprise. Kandara yipped in shock—a sound that was alarmingly loud inside the helmet. Every muscle turned rigid as the nest of pipe trunks surrounding her rocked. Her whole body juddered downward a few centimeters as the stems comprising her tangled nest slackened off.

  She held her breath, knowing this was the crux. Below her was a quint in a gray space suit that looked as if it were made from fish scales, walking cautiously toward the pulverized wall—exactly where she’d wedged the jacket. She fired the nerve-block. Her hands let go of the pipe trunks she was holding, and she bent forward, straining to push her head out of the nest. Brittle, smoldering strands snapped around her shoulders, and she wound up with her whole torso hanging down while her legs strained to anchor her. The sight that greeted her was upside down, revealing the quint quaking as it stood over the shredded armor jacket.

  She brought both arms up, target graphics splashing into her tarsus lenses. Peripheral kinetics shot the weapon Odd Quint was holding, smashing it apart. Simultaneously, her magpistol fired three times, sending a wyst bullet into three of its legs. They blew apart in gouts of flesh and space suit scales, sending Odd Quint toppling to the ground.

  Kandara gripped the sturdiest pipe trunk with both hands and eased her legs out, allowing her to drop to the ground in a smooth dismount. In front of her, Odd Quint’s two remaining legs were skittering wildly, but all the motion did was spin it around. Her altme switched on her suit radio, even though she suspected Odd Quint’s suit didn’t even have radio. And to hell with any part of the arkship that could pick up the signal.

  “Bleeding out through your leg stumps, huh? That’s a bad way to go. I know. Let me help.” She brought up the power machete and swung the blade. Her aim was true, severing one of Odd Quint’s remaining legs.

  The crescent of manipulator flesh that was still intact rippled in torment, trying and failing to form appendages. Kandara swung the machete again, taking off its final leg. “I’ve spent my life taking down fanatics. Humans, Olyix; we’ve both got sick fucks like you ruining everything for the rest of us. And you all make the same mistake. You think our decency makes us weak, makes us easy targets. Do you still think that?”

  She brought the machete around, ready to slice off some of the manipulator flesh. On the wall, the few surviving tatters of leaf fronds fluttered in the wind.

  Wind?

  A gust of atmosphere blew along the corridor. It was weak, lasting barely a couple of seconds, but it had to come from somewhere—like an emergency pressure door opening and closing.

  Oh, sweet Mary.

  Jessika’s icon splashed across her tarsus lens. “It’s coming, Kandara. The onemind is sending something into the hangar for us. Get out of there. Now!”

  Kandara fired her magpistol into Odd Quint, five wyst bullets mashing every internal organ and finally its brain.

  Her tarsus lens splashed the helmet sensor image of the corridor behind her as she jogged away from the dead quint. Right where it curved into a vanishing point, jagged shadows were flowing along the bulging walls. She sprinted past the grenades, then triggered them.

  Debris slammed into her back, sending her sprawling painfully across the dark slick of simmering fluids. Several caution icons splashed amber, but her suit integrity held. She forced herself up onto her knees, wincing at the pain. When she twisted around, the corridor was blocked by a pile of rubble.

  “Are you okay?” Jessika asked.

  “Just about. I stopped them. And, Jessika, I got it. I killed the bastard that shot Alik.”

  “All right. We’ve put a pressure balloon on Cal’s arm. It should hold. You need to get back here.”

  “Yeah. On my way.”

  It took an effort, but she managed to get up onto her feet. She swayed around—although maybe it was the corridor wobbling around her. She couldn’t be sure.

  Chunks of rock rolled down the pile blocking the corridor. “Huh?” She blinked, trying to understand what she was seeing. More rock was rolling down, pushed out of the scree by dark worms.

  “Oh, Mother Mary.”

  The worm shapes fell out of the holes they’d made and started slithering along the ground; more started to wriggle through behind them. There must have been hundreds of the things. She’d seen them enough times on feeds from Earth’s cities right after their shields collapsed. Capturesnakes.

  Kandara turned and ran.

  DELLIAN’S SQUAD

  ENCLAVE

  Dellian was doing his best not to let his worry show. Body posture easy; he was in his armor, clamped into the troop carrier’s rack, an immobile nonhuman metallic statue. Nobody could read anything from that. Voice, though…that might be a giveaway. So he only talked to the squad in short, emotionless sentences. Because no one will be able to tell anything from that. Right?

  It had all been going according to plan. Arrival in the enclave star system. Flying through the gateway. Deploying the troop carrier. That was when the weird crap began. They lost comms with the Morgan and the rest of the armada, except for other troop carriers, and even that contact was intermittent.

  Then Yirella contacted the troop carrier and ordered them back into the Morgan, where they’d be safe. Delight at hearing her voice, knowing she was okay, was immediately blunted by the rest of the tactical situation. The Olyix had done something to the enclave, creating temporal havoc within the armada. Resolution ships had come pouring through the gateway to devastate the helpless corpus warships. And worst of all, Tilliana and Ellici were in the clinic. They were okay, Yirella assured the squad, but needed treatment. She was taking over tactical.

  Another reason Dellian was glad he was inside his suit: He knew he’d be swapping perturbed glances with the rest of the squad. Yirella was brilliant, and frighteningly determined, but maybe not the best to be directing them under pressure. And pressure didn’t come any greater than this.

  The whole squad cheered when Ainsley destroyed the power rings, killing the enclave, but Dellian’s command channel showed him the terrible price that victory came with. He didn’t share it with the squad; he couldn’t allow them to be distracted when they arrived at an arkship.

  Yirella ordered the troop ships to launch again. Then came the truly crazy news, which he immediately dismissed as an Olyix trap—and a nasty one, too.

  “The Saints are dead,” he told her over the secure channel.

  “Our analysis of the message gives it a seventy percent probability of being genuine. It was Saint Kandara.”

  “The Olyix have had ten thousand years to put a perfect fake together.”

  “But why bother?” she argued. “We’re here. We’re going to put our squads into the arkship. If it’s a fake message, we’ll know right away.”

  “Yeah, when the arkship explodes and takes all of us out with it.”

  “Again, what’s the point, Del? They must know we’re going to win this part of the campaign. We will take the a
rkships. And they’d know we’d be skeptical of any message, especially one that cuts off. All that’s going to do is make you even more alert and cautious when you get on board the Salvation of Life.”

  “When I get on board?”

  “I can assign that hangar to someone else.”

  He gritted his teeth in dismay. He’d lived with that image of the Avenging Heretic dying in a flaring nuclear hell for too long. It was his reality. This news was opening up old wounds, and the worry that he was setting himself up for an emotional fall. But if there’s a chance, however tiny…

  “Thanks,” he said. “I appreciate that.”

  “You’re welcome. Stand by.”

  The Morgan altered its trajectory slightly, curving around to match orbits with the source of the brief message. The arkship in polar orbit that was supposed to be the Salvation of Life did match the parameters of every record from old Earth. Not that it was much different from any of the other arkships and welcome ships encircling the gas giant.

  The armada battle cruisers flew on ahead to attack the Deliverance ships that were clustered protectively along the polar orbit. Dellian watched the clashes. They seemed so irrelevant—small flashes of bright white light, as if the last twinkles were flaring their way to death. It seemed remote, somehow. The troop carrier’s sensors were providing him with an excellent image of the planet’s gargantuan magnetic bow wave wings. In contrast to the carnage the armada was inflicting, he found them utterly beautiful, shining like multiple halo wings as the world circled endlessly through this strange realm.

  “The defense ships have been cleared,” Yirella told him. “You’re go for entry.”

  The troop carrier accelerated in toward the massive cylinder of rock, bringing back too many memories. Small explosions were blooming all across the rock as the attack cruisers destroyed the Salvation of Life’s defense systems. Now that they were close, there were patterns in the rock—strata lines and small craters that corresponded to the old records. The jagged rim where the rear quarter had been separated to reveal the wormhole terminus was an exact match.