Salvation Lost

by Peter F. Hamilton

  “Del, it’s me, it’s Yirella. I love you, Del. I want to be with you.”

  “I love you, Yirella,” he whispered.

  “Del, power down your cohort. For me, my love. Let them rest.”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank fuck!”

  Something was shaking his body. Not the power of the message that was expanding to fill him. This was physical. It inflicted yet more pain.

  “Fintox!”

  “He’s gone, Tilliana. Decompression’s hitting us like a gas giant’s hurricane in here. Why didn’t he hold on to something?”

  “He’s dead. Suit telemetry flatlined.”

  “Is this neurothing going to kill Del, too?”

  “Listen to me, all of you, you need to linc your armor to your combat cores. They can hold you steady inside the decompression torrent. There are doors closing all along the passages that’ve been breached, but the vent is going to last for hours.”

  “Gone! They’ve all gone! All the forward squads, they were too close to the explosions.”

  “Did Fintox use the neurovirus to make the onemind do this? Did the metavayans betray us?”

  It was becoming difficult for Dellian to concentrate through the pain in his head. His mind was being crushed. Drowned. His thoughts were wrong, no longer all his own. The message was too powerful, and there wasn’t enough left of him to fight it. He couldn’t see Yirella at all. And somewhere close by his friends were bellowing in fright. “It’s all right,” he assured them. “The God will be there for us. I can feel its message coming.”

  “Del, stay with us. Can you understand me?”

  “No, no. Are you getting this? The three chambers they blew open, there are ships inside them. Launching. Oh, Saints, Resolution ships!”

  “Fuck! We’re dead. We’re all dead.”

  “No.” Dellian wasn’t sure if he managed to get the word out, to reassure everyone. He knew what was coming. The humans had tried this scheme so many times: the false species rising, the ambush, the fight, the invasion of the arkship, desperate to discover the location of the gateway. Their spirit was so bold, so exquisite. No wonder the God at the End of Time yearned for them.

  The message had arrived in full now, permeating his head in bright flame. Nothing could withstand such grace and love. It consumed him, became him. Bring me all your life, bring me all your light. Together we will see the universe reborn out of us.

  There was nothing else. Dellian opened his mouth, and screamed and screamed—

  * * *

  Fright rooted Yirella to the spot for a long moment. Then the old training, the kind she’d rejected, kicked in. Analyze. React. Don’t waste time to rationalize. Instinct is always true.

  Focus on the emergency comms icon. Captain Kenelm, hirself. Go.

  “This is Yirella, Bennu has been breached. I repeat, we have an alien spaceship coming through one of our portals.” Sending her live optik feed, focused on that oh-so-imposing shape gleaming in the cobalt light of the expansion portal’s rim. A rim that was now shrinking and dimming as the ship cleared it. “Type unknown. Size—” Breath snagged in her throat as her databud calculated the parameters. “Approximately two kilometers long, extremity width one point two kilometers.” Because she wasn’t sure those relatively flimsy wing-structures counted as fuselage.

  “Saints,” Kenelm said. “Yirella, we have three assault cruisers stationed in Bennu as reserves. Will you assume tactical command?”

  “Yes.” She stomped her foot down in anger. Saintsdamned training. React indeed! She had spent years priding herself on her rationality. Now one problem, and she was acting like Del in a party night brawl. Except problem didn’t even begin to cover this. So maybe she was the best person to tackle it.

  “Assigning command authorization,” Kenelm said. “They’re all yours, Yirella.”

  Senses expanded through her databud as the assault cruisers’ gentens established secure comms. The ships’ powerful scanners swept across the interloper, refining her hazy visual image and building a more comprehensive picture. Confirming size, and…“Saints!” The thing had the mass of a small moon. “It must contain some kind of neutronium structure, or a micro black hole. This is completely outside our knowledge base.” There was something wrong with space-time around the fuselage; quantum signatures were fluctuating erratically. Powerful gravity waves emanated from its rear section, propelling it forward effortlessly. She imagined tidal forces washing through her, making the toroid parkland’s lakes and streams spill over their banks.

  Then Ellici was yelling that there were cocooned humans inside the arkship. For a moment, shock made it impossible for Yirella to draw a breath.

  Calm down. Morgan will handle the arkship. Analyze this. Everyone is depending on you.

  But…Cocooned humans! Where have they come from?

  Stop it. Focus!

  She ordered the cruisers to approach the strange intruder, but not to go closer than a hundred kilometers. The ship wasn’t doing anything hostile. Anything else hostile, she corrected herself. Sneaking into Bennu wasn’t part of any friendly first contact contingency file she’d ever accessed, but some deep instinct was telling her it wasn’t Olyix. Instinct, pah! But if the Olyix had this level of technology, they wouldn’t be riding around in arkships anymore. Something close to fear goaded her.

  She expanded her tactical display to take in the whole of the Strike arena. She saw the treacherous arkship and the vulturous assault cruisers circling, the progress of the squads. The Morgan standing off, imperiously observing the mission’s progress. Dellian in the convener chamber, where Fintox was attempting to interface with the neuralstrata. That was where the action was.

  Her attention flicked back to the intruder. So why are you here, not out there? The portal it had come through was twinned to a portal in Sasras’s atmosphere, one they’d used to drop flood mines through. Therefore…“Ah!” She used her command authority to take control of every portal inside Bennu’s vast cavity.

  The lead attack cruiser aimed a communication maser at the ship. “This is Yirella, acting commander of Bennu forces. As you know how to subvert our portal management network, you understand our language. Please tell me who you are and why are you here. Your presence at this particular time is making us very nervous.”

  “Don’t be alarmed, kiddo. Like you, I got terrestrial humanity in my origin. I don’t have any hostile intent toward you. So, chill.”

  One of Yirella’s eyebrows rose in bemusement at the somewhat archaic speech pattern. “Good to know. Your arrival here and now is not a coincidence, though.”

  “No. Like you, I’ve been sitting around waiting for the arrival of an Olyix ship.”

  I knew it. She began to send instructions into the portal power network. “To what ends?”

  “The same as yours, of course. I want the location of the enclave’s gateway. And when I have it, I’m going to blow those motherfuckers out of existence.”

  “Who am I talking to? Are you the captain?”

  “I have no crew. I am the ship.”

  “You are a genten, then?”

  “Sorry, honey, but I left that level of thought behind a long time ago.”

  “I see. If your origin is terrestrial, then we would certainly consider sharing the information we extract from the Olyix ship.”

  “Yeah. About that. You need to be real careful with that arkship.”

  “We know. It appears that there are cocooned humans on board.”

  “Yeah, I wasn’t expecting that, either. Should have been, though. The Olyix are sneaky fucks, and they’ve gotten even sneakier since we fled Earth. I’m not sure your new Neána friends appreciate that. Their abode clusters are all independent. They don’t follow the evening news like some of us do.”

  “Thank you for the warning. But do you have any pro
of that you are not Olyix? Look at this from my point of view; you could easily be here to attack us.”

  “You’ll see for sure in a minute when I take down their goddamn arkship.”

  “You cannot destroy the arkship.”

  “Shit, girl, I’m not going to blow it up. I’m going to burn the onemind to death. After that, we can start thinking about what to do with its cargo.”

  “If you have been stealthed in Sasras’s atmosphere, then you’re here in Bennu as a stepping stone to the arkship. My sensors show me you’re currently traveling to a portal with a twin that will take you there. I assume our attack cruisers would be unable to prevent you from using it?”

  “You assume right, honey.”

  “Not quite. I can cut power to the portal and end the entanglement. In fact, I can cut the power to every portal. You’ll be trapped in here with me. And given you need a portal to reach the combat zone, you will not prevail, whatever your task is.”

  “Don’t do it, sweetheart. That would just be an inconvenience. And trust me, I’m not someone you want to inconvenience.”

  “If your thoughts are superior to a genten’s routines, then you will understand that I require evidence you are truly allied to us. Something considerably more substantial than talking like a refugee from pre-Olyix-era Earth.”

  “Actually, the one thing I wasn’t prepared for is you. Can’t you just take it on faith?”

  “Faith is not something those of us who flee for our lives have anymore. Try again. Try facts.”

  “I can blow you straight to hell if you interfere with that portal.”

  “Do that and all the power goes off. I’m not stupid.”

  “Yeah, beginning to see that. Okay, Commander Yirella, what would you consider proof?”

  “Please. You are ninety seconds out from the portal. I have to make that decision. Don’t—” Bright scarlet icons came on across her optik’s tactical display, demanding her attention. “Oh, no.”

  “Yirella,” Tilliana called, “we’ve got trouble here. Something’s wrong with the neurovirus. Del’s been caught in some kind of overspill, his medical readouts are going hot. The gentens don’t understand what it is.”

  Yirella expanded the feeds from Dellian’s squad. The convener chamber was lit by macabre green-tinged light emitted by leaves that sprouted from all the wooden pipes and creepers, a scene she could only associate with the shrine of some historical gothic death cult. Dellian was staggering about as if drunk, his gauntlets pressed against his helmet in a classic final breakdown pose. Overhead, his cohort of combat cores were flashing about like berserk hornets, constantly changing course, coming perilously close to crashing into walls and vats before darting away again. Fintox was motionless underneath a vat, his top-hat helmet stuck to a pillar, every limb extended and rigid as if he was being electrocuted. Squad members were running and ducking, trying to avoid being swatted by Dellian’s frenzied combat cores. In turn that was agitating their own cohorts.

  “They love us,” Dellian said.

  Yirella trembled from shock and rising outrage. The tenderness in his voice was one she thought was only ever directed at her.

  “You’ve scanned me,” the ship said. “You know how powerful I am. If I wanted to harm you, then you’d already be dead.”

  “That’s not the purpose of the Olyix,” Yirella told it flatly. “They never kill humans. They take us alive.”

  “Okay, the paranoia is healthy. But seriously, this time you’ve got to take me on trust.”

  “The one thing I can’t do.” She winced as Dellian began firing his suit gaussrifle. Metallic hydrogen bullets shredded the vats and pipes. Then his cohort opened fire, annihilating the same targets. The rest of the squad dived for cover.

  “Yirella,” Tilliana implored. “Calm him down! You can reach him.”

  “Del? Del, darling. It’s me. It’s Yirella. Del, power down the cohort. Let the dears rest so I can be with you. You and me. I love you. I want us to be together. Power them down, darling. Please.”

  She heard him call her name, sounding so confused.

  Three nuclear explosions blossomed on the arkship’s surface.

  It was on the edge of Yirella’s optik display, a visual feed from the Morgan. The tactical administration genten shrank the rest of the display until that was all she saw. A trio of solar-bright bubbles was emerging from midway down the massive cylinder. For an instant she thought the neurovirus had triggered the bombs, but she couldn’t see what that would achieve. Three massive plumes of vaporized rock streaked out into space, irradiated to an intensity only just short of the fusion blasts that created them. In their wake, the surface of the arkship now had a trio of craters with glowing edges.

  She heard a babble of frantic voices swamping the comms as the survivors called to one another, and the tactical supervisors tried to re-establish order. Her optik display snapped back to full overview. Yirella cried out when she saw nearly a quarter of the squads were missing. They’d all been on their way to the wormhole, in the passages winding underneath the second biosphere—where the fusion bombs had detonated.

  The blasts seemed to have goaded Dellian to a frenzy. He was shooting continuously, completely at random. Around him, the convener chamber’s atmosphere was howling out through the entranceways. Drones were being sucked along, to crash their way down the passage outside; only the combat cores were holding steady, their miniature gravitonic drives straining against the erratic gravity and punishing wind. Several of Dellian’s shots struck his friends as they clung to pipes. The armor held, but she knew it wouldn’t withstand repeated hits.

  “Del, it’s me, it’s Yirella. I love you, Del. I want to be with you.”

  “I love you, Yirella.”

  “Del, power down your cohort. For me, my love. Let them rest.”

  “Yes.”

  A moan of relief escaped her mouth as he stopped shooting.

  “Commander Yirella, you need to let me through,” the intruder ship said.

  The tactical display showed her it was poised in front of the expansion portal that would take it out to the arkship—and the Morgan. Her control of the power feed was solid, though the genten reported the processors were being subjected to a dangerously effective darkware attack. The rate her code locks were failing gave her about another minute before she lost control of the power supplies altogether.

  “I can’t,” she said.

  “My perception fronds are showing me your colleagues attacking the arkship are in deep shit. I can help. Can you?”

  “It’s all right,” Dellian said. “The God will be there for us. I can feel its message coming.”

  “Great Saints,” Yirella said. “What have they done to him?”

  The new craters in the arkship possessed dark centers, a lightless depth defying the gaudy radiance shining out of the molten rims. A multitude of vapor jets came squirting up out of the gloom, as if the arkship were a creature losing its arterial lifeblood.

  The Morgan was directing a squadron of its attack cruisers inward, scanning the dark caverns that had been exposed. Each one had a large shape moving outward, rising away from the curving surface.

  Yirella groaned. “Resolution ships.”

  “New type,” the intruder said. “Bigger and more powerful than the ones in my records. Let me through. They will systematically break the Morgan up into chunks and capture the crew before they round up the surviving squads. Then they’ll come for you in here. Is that what you want?”

  “No,” Dellian said. “We will live forever with the Olyix guiding us.”

  Tears threatened to blur Yirella’s vision. I’ve lost him. We’ve lost. And with that understanding came absolute clarity. The tactical display showed her some kind of negative energy beam stabbing out of the first of the giant Resolution ships. Two assault cruisers crumpled, s
hrinking to perfect black spheres ten centimeters in diameter. The collapsed matter hung there inert for an instant, then began to glow purple as the spheres suddenly inflated out again. Their growth rate accelerated into a colossal explosion that saturated local space with hard radiation as particles broke into pure energy.

  Yirella issued her order through the Bennu command network. “Go through,” she told the ship. “Help us.”

  The expansion portal rim shone with sapphire light as unrestricted power flowed into it.

  “Yirella, what have you done?” Ellici yelled.

  “The only thing that’s left,” she replied calmly. “We have nothing to lose anymore.”

  * * *

  Finally! That Yirella kid was a pain, but she came to her senses in the end. Aaaand I’m through, relative emergence velocity thirteen percent light speed. Interstellar crap glows green and violet as it smacks into my quantum discontinuity boundary. Up ahead the Judas arkship is crowned in a violet glow as it plows through the scattered hydrogen atoms that inhabit space out here. Ambushing the ambushers. Smart tactic.

  But humans on the exodus flight have been running the same lure/ambush strategy for too long now—by about six thousand years. What the fuck did the dumbasses expect?

  The three upgrade-Resolution bastards are soaring out of their lair. Attack cruisers closing on them. Jesus! Graviton beams. That’s trouble. My discontinuity boundary should be resistant. But let’s not put that to the test today.

  So now the Morgan’s throwing all its attack cruisers at them. Crazy humans. They’ve just seen what the Resolution ships can do. It might make sense as a holding action if Morgan was turning to run. There were portals back in Bennu that reached tens of light-years away. It could have got out free. But no. The captain is obviously a stickler for noble tradition. One for all and all for one—and all that crap. Nice sentiment, but it will get them killed one of these days.