Salvation Lost

by Peter F. Hamilton

  The active baffle hulls of the assault cruisers deflected the energy beams with ease, while their own gravitation distortion batted away the majority of the shrapnel. X-ray lasers targeted the remaining antimatter missiles before they got anywhere near the attack cruisers. For all their power, Deliverance ships were not so capable. The assault cruisers launched Callumites: slender plasma rocket missiles encased in a teardrop-shaped portal. As they approached their targets, the Olyix retaliated with a prodigious number of energy weapons, missiles, and all-out kinetic barrages. None of it was any use. The attack—whether material or energy—simply passed through the hole in space that was the Callumite missile and flashed harmlessly out of its portal twin, orbiting low above Vayan’s star.

  In the last second before a Callumite struck a Deliverance ship, its portal fuselage expanded out to fifty meters, allowing it to slice a huge chunk out of the hapless ship, or even bore a hole clean through it.

  The battle was over in less than a minute, its conclusion a swath of highly radioactive debris flashing through space, each piece spewing its own scintillating ion tail from the unrelenting interstellar gas impacts. Assault cruisers closed on the arkship. A second wave of Deliverance ships shot out to meet them.

  Dellian watched the subsequent clash with trepidation. Any of the weapons the two sides were firing at each other now had the potential to wreck the arkship. All it took was one misaligned trajectory.

  Extreme radiation saturated the arkship’s surface, assailing the already damaged rock. It began to slough off rivers of rock fragments amid spurts of lava that twirled away into the abyss.

  “Saints, it’s like watching the Titanic hit the iceberg,” Dellian complained. “You know it’s going to sink, it’s just a question of when.”

  “After we get off,” Xante said.

  “Got to get on, first,” Janc chimed in.

  “We’re modeling the arkship’s overall integrity as fair,” Tilliana told them. “It should retain cohesion for another three hours.”

  “Unless the interstellar gas density increases,” Ellici said. “Increased impact ablation could accelerate its structural breakdown.”

  Dellian gave up. “Good to know.”

  “Don’t worry,” Tilliana said. “Now we’ve gone overt we’ve launched a batch of mark twelve sensor webs. They’re sampling space ahead of you. If there’s anything untoward out there we’ll be able to warn you in time.”

  “Better to know,” Uret said smugly.

  “Squads stand by,” Kenelm said. “We’re going to launch the first interception group.”

  Dellian felt only the smallest bout of envy, which he suspected would have been larger if it hadn’t been for the gland keeping him calm. Like St. Kandara. But he’d been the one who asked for the Fintox mission, so he had no right to complain about not being in the lead boarding party. For the life of him he couldn’t remember his reason at the time.

  The Morgan closed to within five hundred kilometers of the arkship and released its troop carriers. The flight consisted of bursts of acceleration and long stretches of freefall, tension interspaced with tedium. Dellian accessed his ship’s sensors to watch the approach. The arkship in its nebulous cloak of ablation impacts grew larger, providing a more detailed image of the melted, broken surface. It looked almost identical to the Salvation of Life—a solid-rock asteroid that the Olyix had carved into a relatively smooth cylinder forty-two kilometers long and eleven in diameter. The Morgan’s mark twelve web sensors sashayed around it, confirming there were four major internal cavities—three large ones, eight kilometers across, which would contain the biospheres full of life from the Olyix “homeworld,” proving the lie that it was slowly traveling between the stars. The fourth cavity was only four kilometers in diameter and housed the wormhole that connected the arkship to the Olyix enclave gateway. Smaller cavities, like bubbles in the rock, were grouped between the large biospheres: hangars and chambers full of life-support machinery, some that were nothing more than giant reservoir tanks.

  Escorted by attack cruisers, the lead troop carriers slipped into the cavelike holes at the arkship’s forward rim. The whole of Dellian’s squad watched keenly as their colleagues disembarked and began to advance down the endless maze of tunnels that linked the chambers. They were due to reach the wormhole generator in an hour and a half. Twenty minutes later Ovan reported the docking area was secure.

  “Let’s go,” Dellian told the troop carrier’s genten.

  They flew in alongside five other vehicles, each containing squads with specific extraction missions. There was a big semicircular cavern beyond the entrance, with five airlock doors wide enough for two Deliverance ships to pass through at the same time. Three of the doors were missing altogether, with the remaining two bent out of place. The inner doors at the far end had also been wrenched aside. Dellian wondered if it had happened from the flood cloud impact or if the Deliverance ships had broken through in a rush to defend the arkship.

  The hangar beyond the broken airlocks was so big its floor followed the curve of the arkship. It looked arboreal, with the walls and ceiling covered in a web of organic tubes that reminded Dellian of ancient tree trunks, with black bark deeply fissured. They must have taken decades to grow to that stature.

  The majority of the woody tubes had split open to spray oily fluids across the marble-like floor, where the puddles were still bubbling away merrily in the vacuum, creating wispy layers of vapor that gusted gently out through the gaping airlocks. He counted seventeen smashed-up Deliverance ships jammed against the walls. All of them had burn holes corresponding to assault cruiser X-ray laser shots, finishing the job. Three assault cruisers patrolled the hangar cautiously, backed up by hundreds of armored drones. It was their broad spotlight beams that provided the only illumination.

  “Are you ready for this?” Dellian asked Fintox through a private channel.

  “I am.”

  He wished he had some way of judging the metavayan’s state of mind the way he could from just reviewing his squad’s medical data in his optik. But then not even Yirella had anticipated a real Vayan body coming into existence, so he had to rely on Fintox simply being honest. That was hard.

  The troop carrier landed near a working internal airlock. The rear doors opened, and the squad’s combat cores rose off their cradles and coasted out. Amid the devastation of the hangar the cores were bluntly impressive, the central cylinder with its wasp-constriction now encrusted with an aggressive array of auxiliary weapon pods and drive units. Despite the added bulk they retained their agility as they slipped over and around the carrier in a frisky fashion. That playfulness told him the munc brains hadn’t entirely lost their glee along with their bodies.

  Dellian hurried down the side ramp. His boots clumped onto the hangar floor, kicking up embers and sticky fluid.

  “Ellici, what have you got for me?”

  “Motaxan has been reviewing sensor data. The front end of the arkship has taken heavy damage. We need you to head back toward the second chamber. There are some caverns between the two that are full of life-support systems; they should have a major nexus in them.”

  “Roger that.”

  He led the squad toward the working airlock, whose door was four meters high. Ovan’s squad was in charge of securing the hangar and the area immediately beyond. Suited figures, with their combat core cohorts hovering overhead, were examining larger chunks of wreckage.

  “We haven’t seen a living quint so far,” Ovan told them as they waited for the oval door to open. “Some bodies, though. Bagged up a couple ready for transport back to the Morgan.”

  “So where are they hiding?” Dellian asked.

  “Inside. Drones and lead squads are heading for the first chamber. They’ll find ’em soon enough.” He gave Dellian a thumbs-up, a gesture that didn’t work well in armored gauntlets.

  Three of
Dellian’s cohort hovered in front of the airlock door, shining their powerful lights on it. Ovan’s people had patched some kind of override control into the circuitry, which puzzled Dellian. The hinges looked like they were bands of raw muscle, oozing fluid from cracked capillaries. But the override was working, even though the door’s movement was ponderously slow.

  That made him cautious. “Janc, Uret, Falar: You’re point, each take half your cohort with you. Check the passage on the other side is clear.”

  “It is,” Ovan protested.

  “Sure.” He trusted Ovan, as he did all the squads, but these were his people. And the alien arkship was one creepy shambles with the-Saints-knew-how-many hostiles lurking in the shadows.

  He sent a couple of his own cohort through with Falar. When the inner door opened they showed him a honeycomb of passages and small chambers, whose weave of branches and fronds and conduits was jumbled and fractured. Drones and combat cores fanned out, verifying the area was clear.

  The rest of the squad escorted Fintox through. The drones were advancing through the maze, seeking out the broad passages that led down the length of the arkship.

  “SR three is the one we think you should take,” Tilliana told them. “It seems to be one of the major transport routes that runs the whole length of the arkship—at least, they did in the Salvation of Life. If we’re right, that’ll take you to a life-support compartment between the first and second biochambers. Motaxan thinks there’ll be a nexus in there.”

  “Roger that,” Dellian said, studying the tactical chart that was growing rapidly as the drones and squads penetrated deeper into the arkship. “Okay, people, this way.”

  SR 3 was triggering another déjà vu moment. It was the same layout as the tunnel system Feriton Kayne had walked down on his fatal mission in the Salvation of Life. “Do you think Feriton was telling the truth about where the tunnels led?” Dellian asked Ellici.

  “His debriefing couldn’t go far off-truth,” Ellici replied. “The Olyix probably caught him sneaking around in the tunnels, because we know the obelisks and fourth biochamber he said he saw were a lie. But the early recon teams established the general layout before his mission.”

  Dellian focused on the woody pipes that ran high along the tunnel walls in long, twisting knots. “Great. So he got ambushed in something like this?”

  “Come on,” Janc said. “He was a spy creeping around in the dark. We’re a squad in armor suits with cohorts of combat cores, backed up by a fleet of assault cruisers with enough firepow—”

  “Don’t say it!” Xante called out.

  “Say what?”

  Dellian chuckled at the mock innocence in Janc’s voice.

  “Saints, don’t make me say it!” Xante exclaimed.

  “Need to know,” Uret taunted.

  “I don’t understand,” Fintox said. “What do some of you not wish to be said?”

  “They are joking to relieve tension,” Ellici said. “Traditionally in a situation like this, nobody should ever say—”

  “No!”

  “—what can possibly go wrong?”

  The comms were flooded with a deluge of jeering.

  “It doesn’t count if I say it,” Ellici protested. “I’m not there.”

  “That is humorous?” Fintox asked.

  “It used to be called tempting fate,” Dellian said. “And that was a serious thing. Then it got badly overused by Earth’s drama industry, so it became funny. But some people still think it is serious.”

  There was a long pause. “I do not think I fully comprehend human psychology,” Fintox announced.

  “You and me both,” Dellian muttered.

  The tunnel was reasonably wide, but not enough to accommodate clumps of combat cores, so they had to glide through it in single file, the squad all spaced out. Dellian had kept Janc on point duty, with drones and a half dozen combat cores flying on ahead of him. Then the rest of the squad followed in a line, with combat cores between them. Dellian was in the middle of the line with Fintox by his side. As they went on, they found sections of the tunnel illuminated by a pale pink light shining out of long leaves that sprouted from the tubes.

  “Squads are engaging with armed quints,” Tilliana informed them.

  “Where?” Dellian asked.

  “The entrance to the first biosphere. The quints are in huntspheres, and using high-powered weapons. Combat cores are taking them out, but it’s difficult. They’re bedded in good and putting up a hell of a fight. Anyone would think they didn’t want us in there.”

  “Del,” Janc called, “there’s a big room up ahead.”

  “Wait for the rest of us,” Dellian told him. “we’ll check it out together.”

  The tunnel opened into a high circular junction, with three more tunnels leading away into the gloom and a five-meter archway filled with mist that flowed out along the floor, dissipating quickly. It left the walls slick with condensation and slim lines of frost.

  Dellian’s suit sensors reported the mist was nitrogen at minus twenty-five degrees Celsius. “Cryogenic leak?”

  “Looks like it,” Ellici said. “That ties in with the chamber being part of life support. They’d need a decent reserve of atmosphere gases.”

  “Okay.” Dellian activated several weapons. His cohort did the same. “Janc, Uret, you’re on. The rest of us are behind them, hexagon formation. Xante, cover Fintox and watch the rear. Janc, scout it.”

  A dozen drones and two combat cores nudged forward into the mist. Visually there was nothing; the entire chamber was full of the subzero fog. Active sensors sliced through it, building up a map.

  Dellian followed Uret’s combat cores through the archway, his optik providing an overlay outline. The chamber was stadium size, with huge cylindrical tanks lined up along one wall. Pipes and heat exchangers took up plenty of floorspace.

  The flood cloud impact had punished the tanks severely, dislodging them from their fixings. They’d knocked against one another, opening up various splits from which liquid nitrogen was still spraying. The air was thick with mist as a result, its temperature still dropping. Dellian’s cohort slowly pushed their way through it, picking up on his tension to swing their noses about as if they were sniffing for scent.

  “What’s this cold going to do to the arkship’s neural seams?” Dellian asked.

  “The temperature will be an inhibitor,” Fintox said. “Many of the seam’s cells will be damaged and dying. It will be difficult to make a flawless interface to the nexus here. I suggest we find another location, one with an unharmed nexus.”

  “Okay. Tilliana, where do we go?”

  “Wait one,” Tilliana said. “Del, I want you to check the—”

  “Power source emerging,” Janc called.

  The sensor sweep splashed the errant appearance across Dellian’s tactical display. Three more materialized, growing out of nowhere, magnetic and electromagnetic emissions expanding, temperature points erupting as if someone had pulled a veil back.

  “Saints, where did…”

  Several cryogenic tanks burst apart, sending a vast wave of liquid nitrogen sloshing across the chamber. Combat cores floated serenely above it, but the squad in their suits were buffeted by the vigor of the surge. Foaming liquid came up to Dellian’s waist, pushing hard. His suit’s strength resisted it, though the floor had become treacherously slippery. He was shoved back several meters before his shoulder thudded into a column of bent piping, steadying him. His cohort followed the motion instinctively, tightening up protectively above him.

  Sensors showed five huntspheres rising out of the wrecked tanks. Dellian’s databud picked up an all-frequency radio broadcast.

  “Dear humans, you are welcome even though your intent is misguided. Please join us of your own volition. We love you, and wish only to elevate you to the final revelation of the G
od at the End of Time. Do not believe the lies your predecessors have cursed you with. Our voyage is the destiny and reward for all sentient species. We are happy to address any fears you may—”

  Dellian smiled brightly inside his helmet as a feeling of complete satisfaction buoyed him up. “Hi, guys,” he said. “Go fuck yourselves.”

  One of the huntspheres fired an incredibly powerful violet energy beam at him. His suit surface turned silver, reflecting the beam to score a burning line across the chamber wall. Lava squirted down, adding to the vehemence of the boiling liquid nitrogen.

  “Guess where we learned that tech trick from?” Dellian taunted. “Your cold, dead corpses that litter Earth even today. Now, you surrender calmly to us and we’ll let you live.”

  “Dear human, have you not yet understood? We live forever. With or without you.”

  “Okay, then, Saint Kandara says hello.” He opened fire. His combat cohort joined in. The chamber was instantly filled with the kinetic blitz of gaussrifles pumping hypervelocity metallic hydrogen bullets into the huntspheres at a ferocious rate. The spheres burst apart, their shattered, dying components throwing out a hellish blast wave that succeeded in knocking the squad off their feet. Glowing wreckage plunged down into the retreating tide of liquid nitrogen, along with burning quint flesh that immediately flash froze into raggedy glistening lumps as it hit the listless liquid.

  Dellian laughed victoriously as he went with the force of the blast, rolling smoothly to his feet after it passed. Quick check on the tactical display, and all the squad were intact, medical telemetry good.