Salvation Lost

by Peter F. Hamilton

  The shiver that ran down her flesh had nothing to do with air temperature as the information expanded. Invasion? she mouthed silently. It was unbelievable; too big, too shocking.

  “Ma’am?” a very nervous Anahita asked.

  Gwendoline took a moment and forced herself to concentrate. “You need to go home,” she said sharply. “All of you.”

  Her staff shared concerned glances.

  “What is it?” the normally mouse-timid Yana asked.

  “The shield is a precaution. There’s something odd happening at the alien arkship.” Even watching the massive interstellar ship split apart, she couldn’t quite bring herself to say it, as if that alone would make it real.

  “I’ll stay with you,” Anahita said.

  “No. All of you go. Now.” She didn’t add: Please. She wasn’t politely asking. If it was real, she couldn’t be lumbered with dependents. There would be protocols somewhere in the Connexion security G8turings on how to evacuate critical personnel and family in extreme emergency. Surely?

  The staff all exchanged another, more troubled look and trooped out of the orangery like children handed a school exclusion order. Gwendoline gave the formidable shield a lingering stare and started searching for a robe. Amusing herself with her own ineptitude, she wasn’t entirely sure which wardrobe they were kept in.

  “Call Loi,” she told Theano.

  “His altme is not responding. Would you like to leave a message?”

  Damn! She started to wonder if the alien ship they’d found on Nkya was somehow connected to this. Not wonder; worry. Security meant the whole Nkya assessment team was out of solnet contact, for ten days at least.

  Pressing her teeth together in reluctance, she made the grudging decision and said: “Call Horatio.”

  “Hi, babe,” he answered. “Are you in London? Are you seeing this? Isn’t it amazing? They haven’t had a shield practice for fifteen years.”

  Why? Why is he always such a bloody optimist? And sweet? Kind? “Horatio, darling, it’s not a practice.”

  “What? You’re kidding!”

  “No, I’m not. I’m at home, accessing high-level Connexion security reports. It’s the Olyix, Horatio. They’re hostile. Really very hostile. I think it’s going to be bad.”

  “Seriously? That sounds like a load of allcomments bollocks to me.”

  “Horatio!” she yelled. “The Olyix are going to invade. They’re going to cocoon us…or something. It’s not a joke. I’m frightened.” Somehow she’d wound up in front of the portal to the Mediterranean balcony. The beautiful honey sun had fallen below the horizon, leaving the stars twinkling in a placid night sky. One step, and she’d be away from the madness. Just one—

  “Shit, all right. I’m coming over, okay. Just…stay calm. I’ll be there.”

  “Careful,” she blurted. “There’s sabotage starting. Olyix agents are attacking the hubs.”

  There was a long pause, and she realized she hadn’t said: No. I don’t need you. I don’t want you here. I’m quite capable of taking care of myself, thank you.

  “I’ll watch out, don’t worry.”

  “Horatio, has Loi been in touch?”

  “Not for a couple of days. We had a drink a few nights ago; he said he’d managed to get himself selected as Yuri’s technical advisor for some exoplanet team, and he’d be out of solnet range some of the time. He was very excited about it. It’s a big deal for him.”

  “Yes. Yes, it is.” And damn Ainsley for sending him. He’s just a child.

  “Hey, don’t panic. Loi will be fine. He’s got his head screwed on right.”

  “You and Loi go drinking together?”

  “We meet up sometimes, yeah. When he’s not busy, which is pretty much always now that he works for Connexion. Why?”

  “Nothing. I’m glad, that’s all.”

  “Okay. I’ll be with you in a minute.”

  “I’ll authorize the penthouse to let you in.”

  She stood there for a moment gazing out at the balmy Mediterranean evening. That’s just a sweet illusion. What’s actually happening is real.

  Acknowledgment made her shiver, and she rubbed her arms. It wasn’t cold in the robe, but she started for the bedroom to find something nice to wear for when Horatio arrived. Maybe something a little…No! Don’t go there, woman. For heaven’s sake, we’ve both moved on like adults.

  Besides, she needed to have a plan. It would probably be safer for them in the Greenwich tower, and easier to evacuate from there. But not without Loi.

  Reports were coming in from official sources now—governments making cautious announcements about taking precautionary measures, that the Olyix may not be benign, that communications to Salvation of Life had been cut, that we’re doing everything we can to verify the situation. Panic’s going to hit real soon, she thought. The allcomments were flaring up to peak psychotic frenzy.

  Theano splashed a house icon. Her private portal to the Greenwich tower had just been powered down by Connexion security as a “precautionary measure.”

  “Oh, fuck.” The security department really was taking this seriously. She asked the London office what plans were in place to safeguard senior executives and Zangari family members. PROTOCOL PENDING, came the answer. ALL EXECUTIVE LEVEL EMPLOYEES REQUIRED TO INITIATE PRIVATE RESIDENCE SECURITY SYSTEMS TO HIGHEST LEVEL, AND REMAIN WITHIN PROTECTED ZONE. NO READMITTANCE TO CONNEXION FACILITIES UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

  She told Theano to activate the penthouse security procedures and went into the lounge to wait for Horatio. Standing in the central bay window, she looked out across the Thames. All the terrace parties on the ziggurat opposite had stopped. When she looked down, she could see dozens of luxurious houseboats moored along the bank below. Several of them had people moving around on deck, and she realized they were preparing to cast off. Where do you think you’re going? They’d never get through the shield; it sealed off the river east and west of the city. The authorities only ever held a shield practice at low tide, and it lasted no more than fifteen minutes, purely because of the water. Inside the shield, the water that was in the river channel would continue to run east, to the lowest point, where the shield acted as a dam. While outside, at the western edge, all the old London reservoirs at Wraysbury had been enlarged to cope with the Thames overspill as the shield cut off the river flow into the city. The deep circular basins now had enough capacity to hold six hours’ worth of the river emptying into them before they breached, and at that point the floodwater would start to spill around the edges of the shield as it sought a new route to the sea.

  Once again she looked down the hallway, where the light from the Mediterranean balcony had sunk to a tender gloaming.

  Loi’s icon splashed into her tarsus lenses, bumping up her heart rate.

  “Loi, darling, are you all right?”

  “Yeah, Mum, I’m fine. Don’t worry. Look, I’m with Yuri Alster in New York, so I’ve only got a few seconds. You know about the Olyix invasion, right?”

  “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “Yes! They should have sent you security warnings. Follow them. Okay?”

  “I will.”

  “I know you, Mum. You think these things don’t apply to you, but they do today. Please; this is life or death. The Olyix are coming for us. All of us.”

  “I know. I understand.”

  “Good. So switch on every security gadget you have. Then go on to the penthouse’s backup power. It’s internal, and it’ll last for months. And whatever you do, stay in the London part of the penthouse. Do not go through into any of your other rooms, especially the offworld ones. It’s important, Mum.”

  At any other time she would have laughed, but Loi’s intensity was as frightening as the news coming in over the feeds from her high-level contacts. “Who’s the parent here?”

&nbs
p; “They’re about to shut down unnecessary portals to save power, and portalhome doors are top of that list.”

  “Why do they need to save power?”

  “We think the Olyix are going to hit the power supply to Earth. They need to immobilize us so they can capture us, and Earth is still home to over seventy percent of the human race.”

  “Oh, my god!”

  “It’s okay. Just stay put. We’ll have a clearer picture of what’s happening in a day or so. And we have allies; they know what to do.”

  “Allies? What do you mean?”

  “I can’t say any more. Just trust me, Mum. But we’ll be okay, you and me, I promise. They’ll never get all of us.”

  “Your father’s on his way here.”

  “Really? Er…That’s great. It makes things a lot easier. I’m going to get the Greenwich office to assign you a bodyguard, too, just to make sure you stay safe. When people realize what’s actually happening, it might get ugly.”

  “I don’t need a bodyguard.”

  “Mum, just this once, let me do what’s necessary.”

  “If it makes you happy. Can you at least get me one who’s young and good looking? Boy or girl, I’m not fussy that way.”

  “Mum!”

  She grinned.

  “I’ve got to go,” he said. “Just please stay safe until we—”

  “Until we what?”

  “We’ll probably have to leave.”

  “London?”

  “Earth, Mum. Earth. Forever. If our information’s right, there are more Olyix ships on their way. A lot of them.”

  “All right, darling. You take care, too. You need to promise me that.”

  “I will.”

  “I love you, Loi.”

  “Love you, too, Mum.”

  The link ended, and she gave the hallway’s open portal doors a final forlorn look. “Shut them all down,” she ordered Theano. “And implement isolation security; activate the nonlethal boundary weapons.”

  * * *

  A desperate Ollie was looking right at Piotr when it happened. The target laser flashed a tiny ruby-red dot on Piotr’s temple, and the back of his skull blew off. Gore and blood and bone fragments detonated in a grisly spume. Some of it splattered over Ollie as he dived for the tarmac. He hit numbingly hard, screaming in shock and revulsion.

  They were on the perimeter road around the Croydon relay station—a big rectangular area of crumbling concrete, out of which rose the thrumming carbon-black slabs of high-voltage transformers and relays laid out in rows like giants’ tombstones. It was protected by a triple fence whose five-meter height was topped by sensor globes and wisps of deadly monomolecule strands. Thick pearl-white pillars in the fence runs contained weaponry that was supposed to be sub-lethal.

  The raid had started smoothly. Their darkware had corrupted the rare civic sensors surrounding the station, then began insinuating its way into the internal network. Squirrel creeperdrones scampered over the fences, clinging to them strategically, ready to burn through the boron-reinforced bladewires, while synth pigeons flew silently overhead, their fat bellies stuffed with countermeasure gadgets and chaff. Cats with nerve-block emitters prowled around the Legion acting as sentinels and first-line defense in case any human guard should stumble upon them.

  Five of the glaring border lights shining down onto the perimeter road had dimmed obediently at Adnan’s subversive command as the Legion sneaked forward out of the overgrown sprawl of long-abandoned allotments on the station’s southern side. The road was still illuminated in the section they’d chosen to enter through, but the reduced light level made certain surfaces hard to distinguish.

  Like his five friends, Ollie was modeling one of those certain surfaces: a stealth one-piece suit with a hood. The matte-gray fabric had a kind of negative shimmer that made the edges hard to define even in modest daylight, while its synthesized molecular structure passively absorbed microwave radar pulses and the sonar beams from motion detectors. Thermally it was background-ambient, so the Legion presented as mobile blind spots to the infrared cameras.

  They reached the outer fence and huddled down at the foot of it. Ollie was doing his best to ignore the enormous city shield curving kilometers above their heads. Tye was muting the solnet paranoia about invading Olyix—the official (pathetically unbelievable) Sol Senate explanation. The altme was also struggling to filter down the overwhelming theories shouted from allcomments. That madness included sentient Turings rebelling against their human masters, the Kim cult detonating their long-lost nukes, perhaps an uprising of suicidal ultragreens saving the Gaia Goddess Earth from the human race by genociding everyone. Take your pick, the tinfoil hat preachers demanded. No doubt about it, somewhere out beyond the reassuringly thick shield walls, a storm of pure crazy was winding up to strike.

  It didn’t matter; all that crap was just background rumble now. Ollie was focused on the raid with a purity that had delivered him unto the ultimate buzz. This was his peak, the final master play, the one that would pay for his breakout from Copeland Road and carry the family away into freedom.

  “Status?” Piotr asked.

  Ollie hadn’t stopped studying the tactical display for the last fifteen minutes. All their drones and attackware were moving into final position. The station’s security network was quiescent, suppressed by their malware. Each tricky factor he’d calculated was clicking into place with precision.

  “Good to go,” he replied.

  “Then get us in,” Piotr told Tronde.

  The squirrels tightened their grip on the dangerously sharp wires of the fence, their activeblade claws powering up to cut through—

  Bright light stabbed down from above as half the displays in Ollie’s tarsus lenses juddered into static. Stealth suits or not, the Legion were abruptly casting long shadows across the ground as they dropped to a crouch, twisting to search out their opponents.

  “DON’T FUCKING MOVE,” God’s voice boomed down from the sky.

  “Move!” Piotr bellowed. “Blitz the bastards.”

  Ollie’s surviving icons showed him Adnan slamming their darkware into plague-level activation and using the digital trauma to order a universal power cut to all the station’s auxiliary systems, tripping every breaker. The dazzling light pinning them down flickered epileptically. At that point, Ollie instinctively started to run. It was the way Piotr ordered it, his commanding voice; Ollie couldn’t help responding. Self-preservation was running a slow second.

  Two paces and he managed to slow, twisting around toward Piotr, ready to shout: “No. Wait.” Because he knew they’d walked right into an ambush, and with all the shit going down out there beyond the shield, every police force on the planet was going to be overhyped to psychotic paranoia. In horror he saw peripherals bulging up from Piotr’s arms, burning their way through the fancy light-eluding cloth.

  Piotr let loose a barrage of three-sixty covering fire, kinetic and maser.

  They blew his brains out for it.

  Ollie hit the ground, stunned by the impact and Piotr’s corpse collapsing behind him. The lights went down, finally broken by the darkware. Back out along the perimeter road, the drone cats were racing toward the incoming armored figures, nerve-block generators initiating. Overhead, pigeon drones were detecting bulky urban tactical drones dropping down.

  “Blitz them!” Adnan yelled. “Hit ’em with everything all at once.”

  Ollie seemed to have lost all rational thought. Regardless, Tye took only milliseconds to engage the tactical override. Every piece of hardware and software Ollie commanded went off as one.

  Noon-bright strobe flares. Active and passive chaff. Kinetics. Darkware unchained. Nerve-block pulses. Explosives in the creeperdrone squirrels detonated—an almost synchronized sequence. The blast wave flattened Ollie again, hammering him onto the road. Above him the
sky had become a resplendent firework show, glaring clouds of red and green strobe flares mushrooming out in anger. The ambush team’s tactical drones were spinning wildly, spitting out sparks. Out on the edge of his vision, he saw armored figures racing toward them, dodging perceived or imaginary dangers.

  “Move,” Gareth shouted.

  Their cats leaped against the incoming armor suits, emitting nerve-block discharges that made limbs spasm, stomachs heave, and lungs convulse.

  Somehow Ollie scrambled to his feet. Instinct again, urging him back into the low jungle of the lost allotments. His friends were sprinting at his side now—except Lars, who altered course, heading for the nearest armored figure.

  “Fuck, Lars, don’t!” Gareth called.

  But if he heard, Lars didn’t give a shit for sane advice. He slammed into the man, the two of them tumbling over and over. They stopped and traded blows. Lars split his knuckles pummeling the solid breastplate, having zero effect. Then a fast punch broke a couple of his ribs and sent him sprawling over backward. The dark figure followed, kicked, which spun Lars around. Head kick. Drop down, and amplified arms were closing around Lars’s over-muscled chest. Ollie could hear the agonized cry from Lars as the armor suit began to crush him.

  Then, impossibly, Lars broke out of the enhanced hold and grabbed his opponent’s neck and shoulder. Fuck, how strong is he? He lifted the man high and threw him, then jumped on top. Bloody hands grabbed the blank helmet, lifted and pounded, smashing it repeatedly against the tarmac.

  Gareth started to run toward Lars, shouting at him to stop, to move. He was halfway there when the wyst bullet punched through his lower back and detonated inside him. His arms were flung outward from the initial impact, back arching, and he toppled to the ground, a jelly of shredded organs gushing out of every orifice.

  One of the ambush team was crouching on the perimeter road, arm raised, a thin integral forearm barrel extended over the wrist. He seemed to be having trouble holding the pose; every limb was shaking from the nerve-block pulses.