Salvation Lost

by Peter F. Hamilton

  Wim stood up, hir long face animated. “The webs confirmed the gravitational disturbance. They’re originating from a point six thousand five hundred AUs out from the star. A single high-mass point, which is moving insystem at point one eight light speed—” A full-blown smile lifted hir lips. “And it’s decelerating. It’s an active arkship!”

  The rest of the table cheered. Wim held hir hand up. “More detailed analysis shows the arkship’s ion buffer cloud has yet to deploy, that they are still using a gravitational distortion effect to protect themselves from sub-C particle impact.”

  “And it’s definitely alone?” Ellici asked.

  “Nothing else is showing up on the webs’ scan. But remember, we’re dealing with a hollowed-out asteroid, forty kilometers long. That can hide a lot of surprises.”

  “And we will proceed accordingly,” Kenelm said. “They must have encountered a lure before, so I’m expecting defenses beyond anything the Salvation of Life was equipped with. Our attack cruisers will engage the enemy after the flood. If they can overcome whatever the Olyix have brought to the party, and only if, I will authorize the squads to board.”

  “What’s their deceleration speed?” Yirella asked.

  “One point two gees,” Wim said, “and that’s with a gravitonic drive. They’re running dark. Best estimate is another six to eight weeks before they switch to an ion cloud buffer and start to use their ‘primitive’ antimatter drive to arrive insystem. When the Salvation of Life arrived at Sol, they fired up the antimatter drive when they were a tenth of a light-year out. That gives the target civilization time to get over the shock of alien visitors and start sending polite first-contact radio messages.” Sie sat down fast.

  “We’ve found them a little later than I would have liked,” Kenelm said, “but we still have plenty of time to prepare the Strike. This assault is what we’ve been training for; we’re ready and we know what to do. Now: I want Tactical to determine the best interception point. We need to launch the flood mines within a week. Engineering, we halt all nonessential manufacturing in Bennu and focus on getting every destroyer up to full operational capacity. Squad leaders, you have two further training sessions. Nothing too demanding; I want everyone at peak fitness and no injuries. When we intercept, we’re going to concentrate on the wormhole mechanism. I want every byte of data in there. Our prize is the gateway coordinates. Once we have that, we have the enclave. I also want some quints for study. Alive segments, please. Yirella?”

  “Yes, Captain?”

  “The metavayan Neána—it’s put-up-or-shut-up time. Get me a definite answer. Will they let us have the neurovirus to help take out the arkship onemind?”

  “Understood. I’ll talk to them.”

  Dellian wondered if anyone else heard the edge in her voice. For the two years since the Neána arrived, Yirella had been leading an exhaustive diplomatic undertaking to convince them to share the neurovirus. They’d countered with polite equivocation. Oh, the visitors had helped advance some of the initiator systems, especially the biotechnology ones (which is why the superpastoral faction had risen among the Leavers). But as far as the neurovirus was concerned, maybe was as close as she’d gotten to an answer. She’d always been reluctant to push them. Dellian privately suspected—very privately—that she was a little too much in awe of them.

  “It’s too late to ask that question,” he said.

  Everyone looked at him. Some then threw a sly glance Yirella’s way.

  “Well, it is,” he insisted. “The Neána always warned us that we shouldn’t have any kind of direct brain–processor interface because it makes us susceptible to a neurovirus ourselves. Which is why we developed the whole munc program. But to use a neurovirus against the Olyix, we’d have to have that interface. We’d also have to familiarize ourselves with it and learn how to use it. With all respect, Captain, a couple of weeks isn’t long enough to do that.”

  “Convenient for them, though, isn’t it?” Ovan said. “The superweapon that could win us the most valuable information in the galaxy is somehow too dangerous for us to use. For the record, I’d take the risk of getting my brain burnt out by the Olyix if there’s a chance of it working on the arkship’s onemind. The hazard should be ours to take. They obviously don’t trust us.”

  “Are you saying the Neána aren’t as sympathetic as they claim?” Kenelm asked.

  “They certainly seem to get off on this whole mystic guru shit,” Ovan retorted. “Who knows what their real motivation is? Saint Kandara was always a skeptic.”

  “The situation isn’t comparable,” Yirella said. “Saint Kandara was suspicious about everything because that was her nature. These Neána come from a different abode from the metahuman ones. They didn’t know we existed, which makes them suspicious and even fearful of us.”

  “Why?” Ovan asked. “How are we the bad guys suddenly?”

  “They’ve been shocked by our expansion policy. It’s understandable. If it continues unabated, terrestrial life will become unassailably dominant across the galaxy.”

  Ovan drummed his fingers on the table. “Just saying, that’s all. Convenient.”

  “Noted,” Kenelm said. “Yirella, is it realistic for us to count on using the neurovirus at this point?”

  “Dellian is correct,” she said. “We can’t. If it’s to be used in the assault, then one of the metavayan Neána will have to interface with the arkship neural structure. So Ovan’s question is actually reversed. Can we trust them? I’d say yes, given what Saint Jessika did for us. When we are in crisis, the Neána have always helped. And this is definitely a crisis.”

  “I prefer the term critical point, myself,” Kenelm said. “Crisis implies something we’re not prepared for. And we are most definitely prepared.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “If one of the Neána agrees to help us and deploy the neurovirus, I’d like to volunteer to take it onboard with my squad,” Dellian said. He ignored the other squad leaders flashing him jealous glances.

  Kenelm didn’t look remotely surprised. “Very well. Dellian, draw up a second assault profile for your squad that’ll get a metavayan to where it needs to go. Yirella, that’s down to you now. And if they continue to refuse to help, I want them isolated until after the assault is over.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “This is it then, everyone. May the Saints smile upon us, so that one day we might finally meet them.”

  There was another disagreement with Crina, this time about going outside onto the penthouse’s balcony, but eventually the bodyguard agreed, on condition that the carbon sheet be raised. By then Gwendoline had given up arguing—through sheer exhaustion, she told herself. Or maybe the way Horatio’s irritatingly superior smile just kept growing the whole time had something to do with it.

  So the anti-sniper sheet slid up just outside the balcony rail, and they stepped out into the cool morning air as a shield-diffused dawn rose somewhere out beyond the miscreation that was the Connexion tower in Greenwich. And after all that fuss she couldn’t even tell the sheet was there, the carbon was so thin. But tough. Enough to stop any kinetic attack short of a kilogram railgun harpoon, along with a mid-power maser carbine. If someone was that determined to kill her, they’d likely succeed anyway.

  She and Horatio had spent the night together, though it hadn’t all been the happy passion she’d wanted to banish her fear. First she’d accessed the feed from Kayli; the level of violence delivered by the warheads was shocking. They’d clung to each other under the duvet, watching the multiple explosions bloom in ultrafast sequence, eradicating every gram of human presence on the asteroid, then fracturing the rock itself. It was so overwhelming, so swift, it had shaken her confidence badly. That cool inner core that reassured her that, no matter how bad the invasion was, people would overcome—the ancient Blitz Spirit in every Londoner’s DNA—all dissolved in that p
rimeval burn of intense radiation.

  “We’re going to lose,” she professed bleakly to Horatio.

  Even his cheerful optimism had gone, flash-evaporated in nuclear hellfire. “What do they want?” he asked in bewilderment. “Those nukes are strong enough to take out half a continent.”

  “Us. They want us to join them on their pilgrimage to their God at the End of Time. We either go with them or we die.”

  “That is one extreme religion.”

  “I suppose the longer it’s been around, the stronger its hold on the culture that spawned it.”

  “I thought education was the solution to religion. There’s no way you can have a society as advanced as the Olyix without universal education.”

  “Face it,” she said, “we still have enough flat-earthers and other nutters. Besides, I don’t think you can equate Olyix culture to ours. They don’t even have their original bodies anymore.” She paused, considering what she’d just said, and the source of the information. “Actually, that’s what they told us, so it’s probably bollocks as well. We clearly don’t know anything about their true nature.”

  They waited, nestled together sweetly while the minutes counted down to a missile’s arrival at Yanat.

  “What exactly is he hoping to do?” Horatio asked.

  “Callum? I’m not sure.” Gwendoline used her family executive clearance to stream the images from Alpha Defense on the bedroom’s big screen. Privately, she also splashed the technical schematics across her tarsus lenses.

  The asteroid’s little maintenance and control station had been abandoned, Callum and Fang Yun evacuated, and its portal door back to Quoek shut down. Only the all-important data channels were open, with one of Alpha Defense’s G8Turings taking direct control of the six MHD chambers. When the missile was eighty thousand kilometers out, and closing at over twelve thousand kilometers per second, the G8 switched off the induction coils inside the MHD chambers that sucked energy from the flow. Freed from any form of resistance, the plasma plumes extended dramatically, stretching out for over four thousand kilometers as the temperature leaped upward, exceeding two hundred percent above the chambers’ safety limit. The missile fired eight warheads at Yanat, accelerating at two hundred and fifty gees. For the first few milliseconds they diverged from the missile’s direct collision course, spreading wide, before vectoring back sharply to line up on the distant rock, coming at it from eight different directions. Up ahead, the plasma plumes flared up to an intolerable brightness as they stabbed out.

  For an instant Yanat appeared to be an incandescent six-pointed star, expanding faster than any explosion wavefront. Then the G8Turing began to feed electricity from Earth’s grid straight into the last magnetic induction ring around the open throat of each MHD chamber, varying it in a precise pattern. The enormous magnetic field oscillated, pushing the plasma stream. At the throat, the variance was minuscule, but over the full length of the coronal jet, the movement was amplified so that the tip streaked from side to side in a huge arc.

  Yanat transformed from a spiky actinic astroblemish up to a full-blown sphere of raw sunlight. The first warhead hit the nebulous million-degree photosphere at over fifteen thousand kilometers per second. Its gravitonic distortion whorl deflected the colossal kinetic impact for fifteen picoseconds before collapsing under the energy implosion. The warhead, and its seven siblings, vaporized instantly, punching slender inverted prominences down toward Yanat before their disintegrating atoms were repelled, surging outbound again as insignificant ionic geysers.

  The larger, more powerful, missile itself survived the plasma impact a full seven milliseconds before it also failed. With the danger over, the G8Turing cut power to the magnetic coils, and the plasma jets returned to single titanic spears. A decomposing shell of elementary particles swept outward, its phantom presence absorbed by interplanetary space amid a deluge of hard radiation.

  “Yes!” Gwendoline yelled victoriously. She didn’t quite know how, but she was dancing about on the mattress, arms making wild karate chops in homage to the plasma jets. “Callum fucking did it!” Then she winced. The technical splash was telling her the bad news. One of Yanat’s MHD chambers was going into emergency shutdown, while two others were having their plasma flow reduced to cut back on the stress to badly abused components. “Well, we’ve still got some power from Yanat. Even if it’s the same percentage remaining from the others, we’ll have more than enough.” Her jubilation faded, and she sat down fast, bobbing about on the springy mattress. “Until they throw something else at us.”

  Horatio’s arm went around her. “But it’s their first setback, right? Let’s concentrate on that. They’re not omnipotent.”

  “No. They’re not. But it’s close, Horatio.”

  Theano’s splash showed her a missile approaching another MHD asteroid, Desten. One of Alpha Defense’s G8Turings assumed command of the MHD chambers, and wove another impenetrable web of starfire around it. The missile warheads exploded before they reached their target.

  Ten minutes later, with the eighth missile yet to reach its target, the Olyix changed tactics. The first warhead detonated as soon as it struck the protective cyclone of plasma. It created a minute, very short-lived gap, which the second warhead tried to penetrate. But the timing simply wasn’t good enough.

  “Gonna be a long night,” Gwendoline decided.

  The sex that followed wasn’t the best ever. But still it was sex, and what she wanted. Horatio fell asleep soon after, leaving her awake and accessing all the ultra-secret files she could coax out of her globalPAC contacts and the family council. Once she started doing that, seeing the full reality of the Olyix, she couldn’t sleep. She suspected she’d never sleep again.

  Now, four hours later, standing out on the balcony, a thick ocean-green cashmere pashmina wrapped around her shoulders against the cool air, she and Horatio stared across an unnervingly quiet city. Below her, the Thames had been reduced to a sluggish brown ribbon of water winding along the center of glistening mudflats. Now that the shield to the west had successfully sealed off the river, all the water left inside the city had flowed away down the sloping land to the east, where it was lapping along the lowest stretch of the shield, desperate to find its way to the sea beyond. Here at Chelsea, its departure had grounded all the fashionable houseboats moored along the Cheyne Walk jetty, leaving them leaning at alarming angles. Normally, by this hour, flocks of drones would be airborne above the boats, easing their way along a complex grid of authorized air lanes across the city. This morning, pigeons and parakeets had reclaimed their natural airspace, outnumbering their mechanical rivals for the first time in over a hundred and fifty years. Only the occasional police soloflyer drifting along the skyline convinced her the Olyix hadn’t already snatched London’s population away overnight.

  Theano splashed a faint white spiderweb graphic, directing Gwendoline’s gaze up into the southern sky where the MHD constellation had been a comforting aspect of the firmament throughout her life. The city shield was diffracting the low sunlight, smearing its rose-gold shimmer across the dome in wavering strands like moonlight reflected on a midnight lake. Even so, it lacked the intensity to obscure the curving band of vivid stars that spanned the horizon. They were still up there, shining reassuringly, a spray of tiny sparks arranged so neatly in their orbital arc out beyond Neptune.

  Her splash was showing the ongoing assault by Olyix missiles. Of the 3,500 MHD asteroids, 119 had been targeted in the last four hours. The Olyix had continued to refine their tactics; now several warheads synchronized their detonations against the protective plasma buffer in an attempt to pry open a gap that others could get through. It wasn’t very successful, with only one in seventeen attacks managing to destroy an asteroid—more luck than precision. But the Olyix had numbers on their side. According to the information she’d received from the family senior council, they had effectively unlimited resourc
es. The MHD asteroids would all be destroyed in the end. It was just a question of time.

  Horatio sipped a mug of coffee; his free arm went around her shoulder. “Which one is Kayli?”

  Theano’s graphic highlighted it for her, still a steadily gleaming pinpoint.

  “That one.” She pointed, which probably wasn’t accurate enough, but he’d be looking in the right section of sky when it happened. “I guess that’s what you call ghostlight. It died four hours ago, but we can still see it.”

  “Twinkle, twinkle, little star,” Horatio muttered. “Now I know what you really are.”

  Theano started a countdown in Gwendoline’s splash. She put on a pair of Rabbian sunglasses—last season’s must-have ski resort accessory—and held up a pair of Zabroki sunglasses for Horatio. “You’ll need them,” she told him and tried not to smirk when he put on the glitzy frames.

  Her chest tightened as the last seconds flicked away. When it happened, it was like an old-style flashbulb going off in the heavens, except this lasted for several seconds before dwindling rapidly. And despite those grade five sunglasses, Gwendoline was still left blinking away a dancing purple afterimage.

  “Bloody hell,” Horatio exclaimed. “How much radiation is hitting us from that? I mean, if the light’s that strong…”

  “We’re okay. It’s thirty AUs away, remember; that’s why the light’s taken so long to get here. And the atmosphere and city shield are enough to protect us from what’s left of the gamma spike.”

  “Okay. If you’re sure….”

  She took her Rabbians off and gave him a haunted smile. “The Yanat lightshow isn’t for another ninety minutes. But it’s not going to be anything like that. Just maybe double the brightness for a minute.” She glanced down at the weirdly deserted embankment street. “There’ll be spectators coming out for that, I’m guessing.” When she turned, Crina was standing just outside the balcony doors wearing wraparound mirrorshades. She took them off, and there was no expression on her face. So professional—except Gwendoline read that as shock. Yesterday the whole planet had been devoured by news, speculation, and more than a hint of skepticism. Today, reality was going to bite hard.