by Dan Simmons
“Transmissions from HS Niki Weimart, HS Terrapin, HS Cornet, and HS Andrew Paul have ceased,” reported Singh.
Barbre Dan-Gyddis raised a hand. “What about the other four ships, Admiral?”
“Only the four mentioned had FTL-comm capability. The pickets confirm that radio, maser, and wideband commlinks from the other four torchsips also have ceased. The visual data … ” Singh stopped and gestured toward the image relayed from the automatic picket ship: eight expanding and fading circles of light, a starfield crawling with fusion tails and new lights. Suddenly even that image went blank.
“All orbital sensors and fatline relays terminated,” said General Morpurgo. He gestured, and the blackness was replaced with images of the streets of Heaven’s Gate with the inevitable low-lying clouds. Aircraft added shots above the clouds—a sky gone crazy with moving stars.
“All reports confirm total destruction of the singularity sphere,” said Singh. “Advance units of the Swarm now entering high orbit around Heaven’s Gate.”
“How many people are left there?” asked Gladstone. She was leaning forward, her elbows on the table, her hands folded very tightly.
“Eighty-six thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine,” said Defense Minister Imoto.
“That doesn’t count the twelve thousand Marines who were farcast in during the past two hours,” added General Van Zeidt.
Imoto nodded toward the General.
Gladstone thanked them and returned her attention to the holos. The data columns floating above and their extracts on the faxpads, comlogs, and table panels held the pertinent data—numbers of Swarm craft now in-system, number and types of ships in orbit, projected braking orbits and time curves, energy analyses and comm-band intercepts—but Gladstone and the others were watching the relatively uninformative and unchanging fatlined images from the aircraft and surface cameras: stars, cloud tops, streets, the view from Atmospheric Generating Station Heights out over the Mudflat Promenade where Gladstone herself had stood less than twelve hours earlier. It was night there. Giant horsetail ferns moved to silent breezes blowing in from the bay.
“I think they’ll negotiate,” Senator Richeau was saying. “First they’ll present us with this fait accompli, nine worlds overrun, then they’ll negotiate and negotiate hard for a new balance of power. I mean, even if both of their invasion waves succeeded, that would be twenty-five worlds out of almost two hundred in the Web and Protectorate.”
“Yes,” said Head of Diplomacy Persov, “but don’t forget, Senator, that these include some of our most strategically important worlds … this one, for example. TC2 is only two hundred and thirty-five hours behind Heaven’s Gate on the Ouster timetable.”
Senator Richeau stared Persov down. “I’m well aware of that,” she said coldly. “I’m merely saying that the Ousters cannot have true conquest on their minds. That would be pure folly on their part. Nor will FORCE allow the second wave to penetrate so deeply. Certainly this so-called invasion is a prelude to negotiation.”
“Perhaps,” said Nordholm’s Senator Roanquist, “but such negotiations would necessarily depend upon—”
“Wait,” said Gladstone.
The data columns now showed more than a hundred Ouster warcraft in orbit around Heaven’s Gate. Ground forces there had been instructed not to fire unless fired upon, and no activity was visible in the thirty-some views being fatlined to the War Room. Suddenly, however, the cloud cover above Mudflat City glowed as if giant searchlights had been turned on. A dozen broad beams of coherent light stabbed down into the bay and the city, continuing the searchlight illusion, appearing to Gladstone as if giant white columns had been erected between the ground and the ceiling of clouds.
That illusion ended abruptly as a whirlwind of flame and destruction erupted at the base of each of these hundred-meter-wide columns of light. The water of the bay boiled until huge geysers of steam occluded the nearer cameras. The view from the heights showed century-old stone buildings in the town erupting into flame, imploding as if a tornado were moving amongst them. The Web-famous gardens and commons of the Promenade erupted in flame, exploded in dirt and flying debris as if an invisible plow were moving across them. Horsetail ferns two centuries old bent as if before a hurricane wind, burst into flame, and were gone.
“Lances from a Sowers-class torchship,” Admiral Singh said into the silence. “Or its Ouster equivalent. ”
The city was burning, exploding, being plowed into rubble by the light columns and then being torn asunder again. There were no audio channels on these fatlined images, but Gladstone imagined that she could hear screams.
One by one, the ground cameras went black. The view from the Atmospheric Generating Station Heights disappeared in a white flash. Airborne cameras were already gone. The twenty or so other ground-based images began winking out, one in a terrible burst of crimson that left everyone in the room rubbing their eyes,
“Plasma explosion,” said Van Zeidt. “Low megaton range.” The view had been of a FORCE:Marine air defense complex north of the Intercity Canal.
Suddenly all images ceased. Dataflow ended. The room lights began to come up to compensate for a darkness so sudden that it took everyone’s breath away.
“The primary fatline transmitter’s gone,” said General Morpurgo. “It was at the main FORCE base near High Gate. Buried under our strongest containment field, fifty meters of rock, and ten meters of whiskered stalloy.”
“Shaped nuclear charges?” asked Barbre Dan-Gyddis.
“At least,” said Morpurgo.
Senator Kolchev rose, his Lusian bulk emanating an almost ursine sense of strength. “All right. This isn’t some goddamned negotiating ploy. The Ousters have just reduced a Web world to ashes. This is all-out, give-no-mercy warfare. The survival of civilization is at stake. What do we do now?”
All eyes turned toward Meina Gladstone.
The Consul dragged a semiconscious Theo Lane from the wreckage of the skimmer and staggered fifty meters with the younger man’s arm over his shoulder before collapsing on a stretch of grass beneath trees along the bank of the Hoolie River. The skimmer was not on fire, but it lay crumpled against the collapsed stone wall where it had finally skidded to a halt. Bits of metal and ceramic polymers lay strewn along the riverbank and abandoned avenue.
The city was burning. Smoke obscured the view across the river, and this part of Jacktown, the Old Section, looked as if several pyres had been lighted where thick columns of black smoke rose toward the low cloud ceiling. Combat lasers and missile trails continued to streak through the haze, sometimes exploding against the assault dropships, parafoils, and suspension-field bubbles which continued to drop through the clouds like chaff blown from a recently harvested field.
“Theo, are you all right?”
The Governor-General nodded and moved to push his glasses higher on his nose … stopping in confusion as he realized that his glasses were gone. Blood streaked Theo’s forehead and arms. “Hit my head,” he said groggily.
“We need to use your comlog,” said the Consul. “Get someone here to pick us up.”
Theo nodded, lifted his arm, and frowned at his wrist. “Gone,” he said. “Comlog’s gone. Gotta look in the skimmer.” He tried to get to his feet.
The Consul pulled him back down. They were in the shelter of a few ornamental trees here, but the skimmer was exposed, and their landing had been no secret. The Consul had glimpsed several armored troops moving down an adjacent street as the skimmer pancaked in for its crash landing. They might be SDF or Ousters or even Hegemony Marines, but the Consul imagined that they would be trigger-happy whatever their loyalties.
“Never mind that,” he said. “We’ll get to a phone. Call the consulate.” He looked around, identified the section of warehouses and stone buildings where they had crashed. Upriver a few hundred meters, an old cathedral stood abandoned, its chapter house crumbling and overhanging the riverbank
“I know where we are,” said the Consul. “It�
��s just a block or two to Cicero’s. Come on.” He lifted Theo’s arm over his head and onto his shoulders, pulling the injured man to his feet.
“Cicero’s, good,” muttered Theo. “Could use a drink.”
The rattle of fléchette fire and an answering sizzle of energy weapons came from the street to their south. The Consul took as much of Theo’s weight as he could and half-walked, half-staggered along the narrow lane beside the river.
• • •
“Oh damn,” the Consul whispered.
Cicero’s was burning. The old bar and inn—as old as Jacktown and much older than most of the capital—had lost three of its four sagging riverfront buildings to the flames, and only a determined bucket brigade of patrons was saving the last section.
“I see Stan,” said the Consul, pointing to the huge figure of Stan Leweski standing near the head of the bucket brigade line. “Here.” The Consul helped Theo to a sitting position under an elm tree along the walkway. “How’s your head?”
“Hurts.”
“I’ll be right back with help,” said the Consul and moved as quickly as he could down the narrow lane toward the men.
Stan Leweski stared at the Consul as if he were a ghost. The big man’s face was streaked with soot and tears, and his eyes were wide, almost uncomprehending. Cicero’s had been in his family for six generations It was raining softly now, and the fire seemed beaten. Men shouted up and down the line as a few timbers from the burned-out sections sagged into the embers of the basement.
“By God, it’s gone,” said Leweski. “You see? Grandfather Jiri’s addition? It’s gone.”
The Consul grabbed the huge man by his shoulders. “Stan, we need help. Theo’s over there. Hurt Our skimmer crashed. We need to get to the spaceport … to use your phone. It’s an emergency, Stan.”
Leweski shook his head. “Phone’s gone. Comlog bands are jammed. Goddamn war is on ” He pointed toward the burned sections of the old inn. “They’re gone, by damn. Gone.”
The Consul made a fist, furious in the grip of sheer frustration. Other men milled around, but the Consul recognized none of them. There were no FORCE or SDF authorities in sight. Suddenly a voice behind him said, “I can help. I have a skimmer.”
The Consul whirled to see a man in his late fifties or early sixties, soot and sweat covering his handsome face and streaking his wavy hair. “Great,” said the Consul “I’d appreciate it.” He paused. “Do I know you?”
“Dr. Melio Arundez,” said the man, already moving toward the parkway where Theo rested.
“Arundez,” repeated the Consul, hurrying to keep up. The name echoed strangely. Someone he knew? Someone he should know? “My God, Arundez!” he said. “You were the friend of Rachel Weintraub when she came here decades ago.”
“Her university advisor, actually,” said Arundez. “I know you. You went on the pilgrimage with Sol.” They stopped where Theo was sitting, still holding his head in his hands. “My skimmer’s over there,” said Arundez.
The Consul could see a small, two-person Vikken Zephyr parked under the trees. “Great. We’ll get Theo to the hospital and then I need to get to the spaceport immediately.”
“The hospital’s overcrowded to the point of insanity,” said Arundez. “If you’re trying to get to your ship, I suggest you take the Governor-General there and use the ship’s surgery.”
The Consul paused. “How did you know I have a ship there?”
Arundez dilated the doors and helped Theo onto the narrow bench behind the front contour seats. “I know all about you and the other pilgrims, M. Consul. I’ve been trying to get permission to go to the Valley of the Time Tombs for months. You can’t believe my frustration when I learned that your pilgrims’ barge left secretly with Sol aboard.” Arundez took a deep breath and asked a question which he obviously had been afraid to ask before. “Is Rachel still alive?”
He was her lover when she was a grown woman, thought the Consul. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m trying to get back in time to help her, if I can.”
Melio Arundez nodded and settled into the driver’s seat, gesturing for the Consul to get in. “We’ll try to get to the spaceport. It won’t be easy with the fighting around there.”
The Consul sat back, feeling his bruises, cuts, and exhaustion as the seat folded around him. “We need to get Theo … the Governor-General … to the consulate or government house or whatever they call it now.”
Arundez shook his head and powered up the repellors. “Uh-uh. The consulate’s gone, hit by a wayward missile, according to the emergency news channel. All the Hegemony officials went out to the spaceport for evacuation before your friend even went hunting for you.”
The Consul looked at the semiconscious Theo Lane. “Let’s go,” he said softly to Arundez.
The skimmer came under small-arms fire as they crossed the river, but fléchettes merely rattled on the hull and the single energy beam fired sliced beneath them, sending a spout of steam ten meters high. Arundez drove like a crazy person—weaving, bobbing, pitching, yawing, and occasionally slewing the skimmer around on its axis like a plate sliding atop a sea of marbles. The Consul’s seat restraints closed around him, but he still felt his gorge threaten to rise. Behind them, Theo’s head moved loosely back and forth on the rear bench as he surrendered to unconsciousness.
“The downtown’s a mess!” Arundez shouted over repellor roar. “I’ll follow the old viaduct to the spaceport highway and then cut across country, staying low.” They pirouetted around a burning structure which the Consul belatedly recognized as his old apartment building.
“Is the spaceport highway open?”
Arundez shook his head. “Never make it. Paratroopers have been dropping around it for the last thirty minutes.”
“Are the Ousters trying to destroy the city?”
“Uh-uh. They could have done that from orbit without all this fuss. They seem to be investing the capital. Most of their dropships and paratroopers land at least ten klicks out.”
“Is it our SDF who’s fighting back?”
Arundez laughed, showing white teeth against tanned skin. “They’re halfway to Endymion and Port Romance by now … though reports ten minutes ago, before the comm lines were jammed, say that those cities are also under attack. No, the little resistance you see is from a few dozen FORCE:Marines left behind to guard the city and the spaceport.”
“So the Ousters haven’t destroyed or captured the spaceport?”
“Not yet. At least not as of a few minutes ago. We’ll soon see. Hang on!”
The ten-kilometer ride to the spaceport via the VIP highway or the skylanes above it usually took a few minutes, but Arundez’s roundabout, up-and-down approach over the hills, through the valleys, and between the trees added time and excitement to the trip. The Consul turned his head to watch hillsides and the slums of burning refugee camps flash by to his right. Men and women crouched against boulders and under low trees, covering their heads as the skimmer rushed past. Once the Consul saw a squad of FORCE:Marines dug in on a hilltop, but their attention was focused on a hill to the north from which there came a panoply of laser-lance fire. Arundez saw the Marines at the same instant and jinked the skimmer hard left, dropping it into a narrow ravine scant seconds before the treetops on the ridge above were sliced off as if by invisible shears.
Finally they roared up and over a final ridgeline, and the western gates and fences of the spaceport became visible ahead of them. The perimeter was ablaze with the blue and violet glows of containment and interdiction fields, and they were still a klick away when a visible tightbeam laser flicked out, found them, and a voice over the radio said, “Unidentified skimmer, land immediately or be destroyed.”
Arundez landed.
The tree line ten meters away seemed to shimmer, and suddenly they were surrounded by wraiths in activated chameleon polymers. Arundez had opened the cockpit blisters, and now assault rifles were aimed at him and the Consul.
“Step away from
the machine,” said a disembodied voice behind the camouflage shimmer.
“We have the Governor-General,” called the Consul. “We have to get in.”
“The hell you say,” snapped a voice with a definite Web accent. “Out!”
The Consul and Arundez hastily released their seat restraints and had started to climb out when a voice from the back seat snapped, “Lieutenant Mueller, is that you?”
“Ah, yes, sir.”
“Do you recognize me, Lieutenant?”
The camouflage shimmer depolarized, and a young Marine in full battle armor stood not a meter from the skimmer. His face was nothing more than a black visor but the voice sounded young. “Yes, sir … ah … Governor. Sorry I didn’t recognize you without your glasses. You’ve been hurt, sir.”
“I know I’ve been hurt, Lieutenant. That is why these gentlemen have escorted me here. Don’t you recognize the former Hegemony Consul for Hyperion?”
“Sorry, sir,” said Lieutenant Mueller, waving his men back into the tree line. “The base is sealed.”
“Of course the base is sealed,” Theo said through gritted teeth. “I countersigned those orders. But I also authorized evacuation of all essential Hegemony personnel. You did allow those skimmers through, did you not, Lieutenant Mueller?”
An armored hand rose as if to scratch the helmeted and visored head. “Ah … yes, sir. Ah, affirmative. But that was an hour ago, sir. The evacuation dropships are gone and—”
“For God’s sake, Mueller, get on your tactical channel and get authorization from Colonel Gerasimov to let us through.”
“The Colonel’s dead, sir. There was a dropship assault on the east perimeter and—”
“Captain Lewellyn then,” said Theo. He swayed and then steadied himself against the back of the Consul’s seat. His face was very white under the blood.