Salvation Lost

by Peter F. Hamilton

  “That’s not what Kenelm’s going to do. It’s not a witch hunt. Saints, Yi, sie wants to help, to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

  “Legitimate routine screening to determine a flaw and permit a caring intervention to enable successful treatment to begin. There, does politician-speak sound better? And if sie thinks someone is falling into serious depression, what’s sie going to do? Enforce medication?”

  “Well, would you object to that? It’ll save someone’s life!”

  “Yes, it’s a technocrat solution. I’ve been there, Del. It takes more than happy juice and a month of therapy to get over this.”

  “So what do you suggest?”

  “I do have an idea, actually.”

  “No shit. Go on.”

  “I’d like you to back me up.”

  “Sure. Wait—what do you mean?”

  “I mean when I take it to the captain.”

  “Oh, Saints. How bad is it?”

  “Bad enough to prevent anyone else falling into the hole Rello fell down. Good enough for you?”

  * * *

  —

  Yirella asked Tilliana and Ellici to join her for support or constructive criticism—whichever they wanted to offer, no pressure. That left Dellian as the only male representative of the group, which wasn’t his ideal. It felt like he was the token representative for the squads.

  Captain Kenelm didn’t use hir formal office to meet them, instead choosing a table on a pleasant grassed terrace close to the wall of the toroid, where the ground started to rise up toward the geodesic windows above. A relaxing place, where all ideas and notions could be discussed openly and without prejudice.

  That lasted a good thirty seconds.

  “You want to let everyone dissatisfied with our mission leave us? To abandon ship?” Kenelm asked in astonishment.

  “It’s the obvious solution,” Yirella told hir.

  “How many are you planning on taking with you? I’ve discussed this with the Morgan’s medical department, you know. The amount of serotonin reuptake inhibitors they’re issuing to the squads is increasing; thank the Saints they’re not produced by the glands you got during your boosting or you’d be self-medicating out of your skulls the whole time. Yet despite all the new prescriptions the number of anti-authority incidents is building. Enough that I’m going to have to start being officially concerned.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Yirella said. “I’m facilitating this for you. This is a good solution.”

  “To the squad members getting depressed? How? And what’s that going to do to the morale of those who stay behind?”

  “Look, their own existence is the reason some of these men are having such a hard time accepting this life. The goal of devoting our lives to fighting the Olyix, however noble that may be, is proving too abstract to be cohesive.”

  “Is this what you’ve been pondering since Juloss?” Ellici asked.

  “Pretty much.”

  “And what did you decide?”

  “That it’s ironic. We can provide ourselves with every conceivable physical and material need, yet the one thing we lack is satisfaction. But I accepted it, because this is where our ridiculous circumstances have put us. It can’t be helped.”

  “If you can accept it, then everyone can.”

  “No,” Dellian said. “Yi is stronger and smarter than most of us—certainly me. And we’re not all the same. Individuality is what makes us human.”

  Yirella chuckled. “All that diversity of thought is probably what makes us so valuable to the Olyix and their emergent God. From what we know about them, they seem pretty uniform.”

  “I challenge the concept of them being a monoculture,” Tilliana said. “It might be more nuanced in the Olyix, but two minds, two perception points on the universe, will produce two different opinions.”

  “The Olyix share a goal,” Yirella replied. “That gives them their uniformity. But that’s not the point. What we have to do now is come up with something to stop any more tragedies like Rello. And putting together an explorer project might just do it.”

  “Might?” Ellici challenged.

  “We don’t live in a universe of certainties.”

  “I’m not sure I can agree to this,” Kenelm said. “I can’t lose squad members—maybe entire squads—to something so…whimsical.”

  “I find that disturbing,” Yirella said sharply. “You’d be prepared to have them suicide rather than take a course of action that might keep them alive?”

  “Alive, but not here. We need those men to capture an Olyix arkship, for Saints’ sake! That option must remain open no matter what it costs. Having them fly away in a starship on some great mission of exploration isn’t going to provide that.”

  “You’re assuming no omnia will join the departing faction?”

  Kenelm took a breath. “I find it unlikely, given that all omnia on the Morgan are volunteers. Dellian’s binary brothers are not. But as this is all hypothetical anyway…”

  “Exactly. I know these men, better than you. They’re my brothers, too. And this is what they need, something to give them a purpose, a glint of hope. Let me start work on what we’d need to build an explorer starship.”

  “Where would you even go?” Kenelm exclaimed.

  “We’ll sell it to them on finding a human society where they can live out the rest of their lives normally—whatever that is.”

  “I cannot authorize this. A rogue batch of humans flying around the galaxy looking for other human worlds? No! Just no.”

  “Look, all I’m proposing is the distraction the squads desperately need.” She sighed in vexation. “Yes, it’s a complicated proposal, and planning it will take a long time—years, by necessity.”

  Kenelm gave her a thoughtful stare. “You mean we’ll be able to identify them when they come forward to help you?”

  Yirella growled. “No! Absolutely not. We’re not hunting criminals. Please stop thinking like that! The prospect of having a worthwhile alternative to the Morgan’s mission will engage people. We’re dealing with feelings here, not practicalities.”

  “So this starship is never actually going to happen?”

  “It might have to eventually,” she conceded. “That’s the danger with a project like this. It will build up a good head of steam. Ultimately the design will be complete. All I’m doing with this is buying you time and rebuilding morale. What you have to do is hope that the Olyix arrive before we’re ready to feed the design into Bennu’s fabrication systems.”

  Kenelm clamped hir fingers onto the side of hir head—a theatrical gesture but a true reflection of inner apprehension. “So you’re just delaying the problem?”

  “Psychological issues are not the kind of problems that have a definitive solution. If we do nothing, the current situation will only get worse.”

  “Saints,” Kenelm sighed. “Okay, apart from the explorer starship, are there any other ideas?”

  “Hibernation,” Ellici said. “Biologic support chambers can suspend a human body for a long time. At the very least, you could usefully get three decades. If an Olyix arkship hasn’t shown up by then, they probably know Vayan is a trap. And if that’s the case, they’ll send a battle fleet into the system at relativistic speed and obliterate everything—I would.”

  “You’re focusing on the practical again,” Yirella said. “Sure, we can put squad males on ice, but you’re back to the original problem: you have to know which ones. And you’re not addressing the fundamental issue, which is the sense of hopelessness our mission has created for some people. If anything, hibernation confirms their outlook. You’d essentially be saying: Yes, we know this Strike is a long shot—and rubbing it in that they’re not as worthy as those that don’t get shoved into a suspension chamber.”

  “The Strike is a certainty,” Ken
elm said. “It’s the time that it may take that’s unpredictable.”

  Yirella gave hir an awkward glance. “No, Captain. There is no guarantee the Olyix will show up at Vayan.”

  “You designed the Vayan lure. It’s a bit late to start questioning it now.”

  “I’m not questioning the lure itself. It’s the timing that bothers me.”

  “What’s wrong with the timing?”

  “We’re late in the exodus era. How many times have the Olyix been lured to a planet, only to find us waiting for them?”

  “Plenty,” Kenelm said. “That’s why we—you!—made Vayan effectively perfect. Even a stealthed spy satellite in low orbit will see a real civilization down there. The detail you’ve provided is fantastic.”

  “Yes, but they’re still going to be extremely cautious when they approach. They might even have abandoned using their friendly arkship strategy. Maybe the first we’ll see of them is an armada of Redemption ships.”

  “We’re ready for both scenarios,” Ellici said. “We know exactly what we can strike effectively, and what we have to run from.”

  “Wait,” Dellian said. “There’s a retreat option?”

  “If the circumstances are extreme, then yes,” Kenelm said. “This is not a suicide mission. Should the Olyix arrive in overwhelming force, the Morgan will portal into deep space and fly clear.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “It’s just a contingency, Dellian. And I’d appreciate you not sharing that with the other squads.”

  “But…if the Olyix are expecting us, where would we go?”

  “Juloss advised me to use the Neána option. Withdraw into deep space, and build habitats in the dark, where no one will ever find us.”

  “Saints!” Dellian muttered. “I hate that idea. That’s giving up.”

  “That’s keeping the human race alive,” Kenelm said, “and allowing them to carry on looking for a different method of defeating the Olyix.”

  “The exploration starship would provide us with another option if we ever have to face that situation,” Yirella said eagerly. “This completely justifies it.”

  “Possibly,” Kenelm said. “There are a lot of variables.”

  “If we go ahead with your explorer starship idea, what would you tell everyone the mission goal is?” Tilliana asked. “If you want people to self-justify leaving us and the Morgan behind, then it’s going to have to be spectacular. I’m not sure offering them another generation world like Juloss is going to cut it.”

  Yirella grinned. “The explorer starship will search for Sanctuary.”

  “Oh, come on!”

  “It’s perfect. Everyone believes in it.”

  “Many do; some do not. And if it does exist, we don’t know where it is. That’s the point of Sanctuary. It’s beyond the ability of the Olyix to find.”

  “Which is a perfect mission for an explorer starship. We know the legend is in our own lineage. Somewhere between here and Earth there must be an abandoned terraformed planet where the legend started. And we can track it down. That’s our grand voyage, the offering of hope. A difficult but not impossible quest with the ultimate golden prize at the end: the idyllic life they’re denied by staying here.”

  “Great Saints! Earth is over six thousand light-years away. Maybe.” Tilliana glanced at Captain Kenelm for confirmation.

  “About that,” sie said. “The exact stellar coordinates are in the Morgan’s genten. They’re not classified, because the Olyix certainly know them.”

  “A relativistic starship could travel that distance in two decades of ship’s time. Not that it would go all the way back to Earth. We’re stopping to explore abandoned worlds along the way, right?”

  “Nobody in our lineage ever traveled relativistically across a thousand light-years of interstellar space, never mind six thousand,” Tilliana said. “We always send portals out ahead and jump through them. And the portal ships only reach point eight five C.”

  “Yeah,” Yirella said with a big smile. “So our starship is going to take some big-ass design work, huh?”

  Tilliana gave Ellici a confused look and shrugged.

  “Actually,” Ellici said, “I quite like it.”

  “Thank you,” Yirella said.

  The three girls turned to Kenelm.

  “It doesn’t have to work,” Yirella said. “It just has to sound plausible. Something that’ll keep our disenchanted men occupied.” She gave Dellian a pointed glance. “So they don’t spend all their time beating the crap out of one another.”

  “Hey, thanks.”

  Kenelm nodded. “You have to make it very clear that it will be difficult and dangerous. It will also take years to plan before we start building.”

  “Wait,” Dellian said. “Are you saying you will build this thing?”

  “I’m acknowledging that dangling the prospect of Sanctuary in front of people is possibly our best option at the moment. Yirella is right; procrastination and delay are the solution to our current problem with the squads. But, by its nature, that procrastination can only be temporary. If the Olyix don’t show up by the time the design work is finished, then I cannot renege on the deal. My authority would be trashed, and the Morgan’s Strike mission with it. So this starship design has to be the toughest project we’ve ever undertaken. You’ll uncover so many problems and flaws that you’ll need to redesign it a million times a week. Understood?”

  “Yes, Captain,” Yirella said happily.

  “Okay, then this conversation never happened. You start talking about your idea in public, spread it around the squads, and see if they share your enthusiasm. And should you get enough people excited, you can conspire with them to ambush me with a formal proposal at a ship’s council meeting. Make sure you have enough votes to carry it.”

  “That’ll take months of politicking among the squads,” Tilliana said with a growing smile.

  “So it will.”

  It wasn’t on the benefits list when Gwendoline signed up, but membership in the globalPAC was presenting her with a front-row seat for the end of the world. The Alpha Defense sensors drifting furtively around the Salvation of Life were relaying remarkably clear images. An hour after it had split into two, the gap between its two parts was already ten kilometers and still increasing. Sunlight probed the interior like a slow-motion dawn, revealing the big cavity that had been exposed to space. She thought it resembled a sheer-walled crater whose ribbed surface glittered with exotic tessellations, as though Olyix technology was crafted out of chalcedony rock. Odd indigo sparks flittered within the shadowed depths, pulsing out cascades so fleeting they might be illusory.

  The globalPAC’s concurrent tech analysis suggested those flickers could be Cherenkov radiation—which meant she was actually looking directly into the throat of a wormhole. A technology decades, if not centuries, ahead of anything humans could build.

  Something moved inside the darkness, gliding smoothly up the center of the cavity into the sunlight.

  “Holy crap,” Gwendoline muttered.

  The Olyix ship that emerged from the wormhole throat was unexpectedly striking, like a manta ray crossed with a supersonic jet—but huge. Its dull blue-black surface was ruffled with hundreds of small fins that were retracting even as she watched, transforming the fuselage into a sleek aerodynamic body eight hundred meters long. She didn’t understand why it was so streamlined, not for interplanetary spaceflight. The few human spaceships that operated in the Sol system were blunt, functional affairs: a spine of girders with modules clamped on and a fusion rocket at the rear, while the relativistic interstellar ships striking out into the galaxy were simple teardrop shapes riding a vast, angry spear of plasma that came directly from the heart of a sun. Their shells were also portals, holes into which any dust crossing the ship’s path simply fell through to be ejected by the portal’s t
win light-years behind. But this Olyix ship was something else altogether, its smooth shape bestowing a menacing purpose. So she wasn’t entirely surprised when it performed a nimble twist and shot out through the widening gap between the two sections and into clear space, rotating lazily as it emerged from the Salvation of Life’s umbra. There was no visible rocket exhaust, no solar-bright plasma or flaring blue chemical flame. It maneuvered as if it really were an aircraft flying basic aerobatics, a nonchalant display of power and ability that was deeply intimidating.

  Gravity wave manipulation, zero-point Lorentz force, maybe quantum field propulsion—so claimed the globalPAC’s concurrent tech analysis stream. Gwendoline ignored it; they were nerds arguing over a Hong Kong sci-fi interactive’s plot points. Admittedly nerds with Nobel physics prizes, but still nerds. The theory behind the drive was irrelevant. It was the potential that was scaring the shit out of her. Alien invasion. Humans’ consistent terror image for generations.

  Another of the big delta shapes was rising out of the arkship’s open end. Three more. Then some smaller craft came zipping into view, glowing celadon cylinders with fluctuating carmine spirals spinning along their length, as if they were screwing themselves through space. At least they had some kind of exhaust—a weak contrail of fluorescent blue fog. Energized helium, the Alpha Defense sensors reported.

  The new ships emerged in a huge swarm that went on and on, tightly packed and moving with uniform fluidity as they spilled out of the gap then split into distinct murmurations that began to accelerate away hard.

  Another wave of the delta craft followed, four or five at a time now. Gwendoline sat in her leather sofa, waiting for the deluge to stop. A small icon in the corner of her tarsus lenses counted them off. After two hundred had appeared she told her altme, Theano, to end the sensor splash. It was too much for her. This wasn’t the invasion she’d braced herself for, a titanic struggle between roughly equal opponents, plucky underdog humans fighting back valiantly. This was an overwhelming violation that would wipe her species from existence.