The Naked God - Flight nd-5

by Peter F. Hamilton

  “I think I’d just say sorry to my parents,” Moyo said. “My life was such a waste.”

  “The children,” Stephanie said. She grinned knowingly at McPhee. “I want to see my children again.”

  They fell silent then, content to daydream what could never be.

  The sky suddenly brightened. Everyone apart from Moyo looked up, and he caught their agitation. Ten kinetic harpoons were descending, drawing their distinctive dazzling plasma contrails behind them. It was a conical formation, gradually expanding. A second batch of ten harpoons appeared above the first. Sunglasses automatically materialized on Stephanie’s face.

  “Oh shit,” McPhee groaned. “It’s yon kinetic harpoons, again.”

  “They’re coming down all around Ketton.”

  “Strange pattern,” Franklin said. “Why not fire them down all at once?”

  “Does it matter?” Rana said. “It’s obviously the signal to start the attack.”

  McPhee was eyeing the harpoons dubiously. The first formation was still expanding, while the blazing, ruptured air around their nose cones was growing in intensity.

  “I think we’d better get down.” Stephanie said. She rolled over, and imagined a sheet of air hardening protectively above her. The others followed her example.

  The harpoons Ralph had chosen to deploy against Ketton were different to the marque he’d used to smash Mortonridge’s communication net at the start of the Liberation. These were considerably heavier and longer, a design which helped focus their inertia forwards. On impact, they penetrated clean through the damp, unresisting soil. Only when they struck the bedrock below did their tremendous kinetic energy release its full destructive potential. The explosive blast slammed out through the soft soil. Directly above the impact point, the whole area heaved upwards as if a new volcano was trying to tear its way skywards. But the major impetus of the shockwaves radiated outwards. Then the second formation of harpoons hit. They formed a ring outside the first, with exactly the same devastating effect.

  Seen from above, the twenty separate shockwaves spread out like ripples in a pond. But it was the one very specific interference pattern they formed as they intersected which was the goal of the bombardment. Colossal energies clashed and merged in peaks and troughs that mimicked the surface of a choppy sea, channelling the direction in which the force was expended. Outside the two strike rings, the newly formatted shockwaves rushed off across the valley floor, becoming progressively weaker until they sank away to nothing more than a tremble which lapped against the foothills. Inside the rings, they merged into a single contracting undulation, which swept in towards Ketton, building in height and vigour.

  Annette Ekelund and the troops manning the town’s perimeter defences watched in stupefaction as the newborn hill thundered towards them from all directions. The surviving network of local roads leading away from the outskirts were ripped to shreds as the swelling slope flung them aside. Boulders went spinning through the air in long lazy arcs. Mud foamed turbulently at the crest while mires and pools avalanched down the sides, engulfing the frenzied herds of kolfrans and ferrangs.

  It grew higher and higher, a tsunami of soil. The leading edge reached Ketton’s outlying buildings, trawling them up its precarious ever-shifting slope. Defence trenches either slammed shut or split wide as though they were geological fault lines, their napalm igniting in third-rate imitation of lava streams. People diverted every fraction of their energistic strength to reinforcing their bodies, leaving them to bounce and roll about like human tumbleweed as the demented ground trampolined beneath them. Without the possessed to maintain them, the prim, restored houses and shops burst apart in scattergun showers of debris. Bricks, fragments of glass, vehicles, and shattered timbers took flight to clot the air above the devastation.

  And still the quake raced on, hurtling into the centre of the town. Its contraction climaxed underneath the charming little church, culminating in a solid conical geyser of ground fifty metres high. A grinding vortex of soil erupted from its pinnacle, propelling the entire church into the sky. The elegant structure hung poised above the cataclysm for several seconds before gravity and sanity returned to claim it. It broke open like a ship on a reef, scattering pews and hymn books over the blitzed land below. Then as the quake’s pinnacle ebbed, shrinking down, the church tumbled over, walls disintegrating into a deluge of powdered bricks. Yet still, somehow, the spire remained almost intact. Twisting through a hundred and eighty degrees, with its bell clanging madly, it plunged down to puncture the tormented crater of raw soil that now marked the quake’s epicentre. Only then, did its structural girders crumple, reducing it to a pile of ruined metal and fractured carbon-concrete.

  Secondary tremors withdrew from the focal point, weaker than the incoming quake, but still resulting in substantial quivers amid the pulverised ruins. The quake’s accompanying ultrasound retreated, only to echo back off the valley walls. In ninety seconds, Ketton had been abolished from Mortonridge; leaving a two-mile-wide smear of treacherously loose soil as its sole memorial. Spears made from building rafters jabbed up out of the rumpled black ground, ragged lumps of concrete were interspersed with the mashed up remnants of furniture, every fragment embedded deep into the loam. Rivulets of flaming napalm oozed along winding furrows, belching out black smoke. A curtain of dust thick enough to blot out the sun swirled overhead.

  Annette raised herself to her elbows, fighting the mud’s suction; and swung her head slowly from side to side, examining the remains of her proud little empire. Her energistic strength had protected her body from broken bones and torn skin, though she knew that there was going to be heavy bruising just about everywhere. She remembered being about ten metres in the air at one point, cartwheeling slowly as a single storey cafй did a neat somersault beside her to land on its flat roof, power cables and plastic water pipes trailing from a wall to lash about like bullwhips.

  Strangely enough, through her numbness, she could admire the quake; there was a beautiful precision to it. Strong enough to wreck the town, yet pitched at a level that enabled the possessed to protect themselves from its effects. As dear Ralph had known they would. Self preservation is the strongest human instinct; Ketton’s buildings and fortifications would be discarded instantly in the face of such a lethal threat.

  She laughed hysterically, choking on the filthy dust. “Ralph? I told you, Ralph, you had to destroy the village first. There was no need to take it so fucking literally, you shit!” There was nothing left now to defend, no banner or cause around which she could rally her army. The serjeants were coming. Unopposed. Unstoppable.

  Annette flopped onto her back, expelling grit from her eyes and mouth. Her mouth puffed away, eager for much needed oxygen. She had never been so utterly terrified before. It was an emotion shining at the core of every mind littered around her in the decimated town. Thousands of them. The one aspect they had left in common.

  The trees had stood up and danced during the quake. They left the cloying mud behind with loud sucking sounds and pirouetted about while the ground rearranged itself. It was probably an impressive sight. But only from a distance.

  Stephanie had screamed constantly as she wriggled frantically underneath the carouselling boughs, ducking the smaller branches that raked the ground. She’d been struck several times, slapped through the air as if by a giant bat. Only the energistic power binding her body’s cells together had saved her from being snapped in two.

  Tina hadn’t been so fortunate. As the ground started to calm, one of the trees had fallen straight on top of her. It pushed her deep into the soaking loam, leaving only her head and an arm sticking out. She was whimpering softly as the others gathered round. “I can’t feel anything,” she whispered. “I can’t make myself feel.”

  “Just melt the wood away,” McPhee said quickly, and pointed. “Here to here. Come on, concentrate.”

  They held hands, imagining the scarlet bark parting, the hard dark wood of the trunk flowing like water. A big c
hunk of the trunk turned to liquid and splattered down on the mud. Franklin and McPhee hurried forward and pulled Tina out from the mud. Her hips and legs were badly crushed, blood was running out of several deep wounds, splintered bones protruded through the skin.

  She looked down at her injuries and wailed in fear. “I’m going to die! I’m going to go back to the beyond.”

  “Nonsense, babe,” Cochrane said. He knelt down beside her and passed his hand over one of the abdominal cuts. The torn flesh sealed over, melding together. “See? Don’t give me none of this loser shit.”

  “There’s too much damage.”

  “Come on, guys,” Cochrane looked up at the rest of the group. “Together we can do it. Each take a wound.”

  Stephanie nodded quickly and sank down beside him. “It’ll be all right,” she promised Tina. The woman had lost an awful lot of blood, though.

  They circled her, and laid on their hands. Power was exerted, transmuted by the wish to heal and cleanse. That was how Sinon’s squad found them, kneeling as if in prayer around one of their own. Tina was smiling up placidly, her pale hand gripping Rana, their fingers entwined.

  Sinon and Choma approached cautiously through the jumbled trees, and levelled their machine guns at the devout-seeming group. “I want all of you to lie down flat, and put your hands behind your head, now,” Sinon said. “Do not attempt to move or apply your energistic power.”

  Stephanie turned to face him. “Tina’s hurt, she can’t move.”

  “I will accept that claim for the moment, providing you do not try to resist. Now, the rest of you lie down.”

  Moving slowly, they backed away from Tina and lowered themselves onto the mushy loam.

  You can come forward,sinon told the rest of the squad. They appear to be compliant.

  Thirty serjeants emerged from the tangle of branches and twigs, making remarkably little sound. Their machine guns were all trained on the prone figures.

  “You will now leave your captured bodies,” Sinon said.

  “We can’t,” Stephanie said. She could feel the misery and fear in her friends, the same as that found in her own mind. It was turning her voice to a piteous croak. “You should know by now not to ask that of us.”

  “Very well.” Sinon took his holding stick out.

  “You don’t have to use those things, either,” Stephanie said. “We’ll go quietly.”

  “Sorry, procedure.”

  “Look, I’m Stephanie Ash. I’m the one that brought the children out. That must count for something. Check with Lieutenant Anver of the Royal Kulu marines, he’ll confirm who I am.”

  Sinon paused, and used his processor block to query Fort Forward’s memory core. The image of the woman certainly appeared to match, and the man with flamboyant clothes and a mass of hair was unmistakable.

  We can’t rely on what they look like,choma said. They can forge any appearance they want.

  Providing they cooperate, there is no reason to use unnecessary force. So far they have obeyed, and they know they cannot escape.

  You’re far too trusting.

  “You will get up one at a time when instructed,” Sinon told them. “We will escort you back to our field camp where you will be placed in zero-tau. Three machine guns will be trained upon you at all times. If any order is refused, we use the holding sticks to neutralize your energistic ability. Do you understand?”

  “That’s very clear,” Stephanie said. “Thank you.”

  “Very well. You first.”

  Stephanie climbed cautiously to her feet, making sure every motion was a slow one. Choma flicked the nozzle of his machine gun, indicating the small track through the collapsed trees. “Let’s go.” She started walking. Behind her, Sinon was telling Franklin to get up.

  “Tina will need a stretcher,” Stephanie said. “And someone will have to guide Moyo, he’s damaged his eyes.”

  “Don’t worry,” Choma said gruffly. “We’ll make sure you all get to the camp okay.”

  They emerged from the trees. Stephanie looked at where Ketton had been. A dense cloud of dark-grey dust churned over the annihilated town. Small fires burned underneath it, muted orange coronas shining weakly. Twenty slender purple lines glowed faintly in the air above, linking the cloud with the top of the atmosphere. Streaks of lightning discharged along them intermittently.

  “Bloody hell,” she murmured. Thousands of serjeants were walking along the valley floor towards the silent, murky ruins. The possessed cowering within knew they were coming. Raw fear was spilling out of the dust cloud like gaseous adrenaline. Stephanie’s heart started to beat faster. Cold shivers ran along her legs and up her chest. She faltered.

  Choma nudged her with his machine gun. “Keep going.”

  “Can’t you feel it? They’re frightened.”

  “Good.”

  “No, I mean really frightened. Look.”

  Glimmers of burgundy light were escaping through gaps in the dust cloud. Billowing tendril-like wisps around the edges were flattening out, becoming smooth and controlled. The shield against the open sky was returning.

  “I didn’t think you were stupid enough to try that again,” Choma said. “General Hiltch won’t permit you to hide.”

  Even as he spoke an SD electron beam stabbed down through the clear air. A blue-white pillar two hundred metres wide that struck the apex of the seething roof of dust. It sprayed apart with a plangent boom, sending out broad lightning forks that roamed across the boiling surface to skewer into the mud. This time, the possessed resisted. Ten thousand minds concentrated within a couple of square miles, all striving for the same effect. To be free.

  The random discharges of the SD beam were slowly tamed. Jagged forks compressing into garish rivers of electrons that formed a writhing cage above the dust. Carmine light brightened underneath. Fear turned to rapture, followed swiftly by determination. Stephanie stared across at the clamorous spectacle, her mouth open in astonishment, and pride. Their old unity was back. And with it came a formidable sense of purpose: to achieve the safety that so many other possessed had obtained. To be gone.

  The red light in the cloud strengthened to a lambent glare, then began to stain the ground of the valley floor. A bright circular wave spreading out through the mud and sluggish water.

  “Run,” Stephanie told the confounded serjeants. “Get clear. Please. Go!” She braced herself as the redness charged towards her. There was no physical sensation other than a near-psychosomatic tingle. Then her body was glowing along with the ground, the air, her friends, and the hulking bodies of the serjeants.

  “All right!” Cochrane whooped. He punched the air. “Let’s go for it, you crazyass mothers.”

  The earth trembled, dispatching all of them to their knees again. Sinon tried to keep his machine gun lined up on the nearest captive, but the ground shook again, more violently this time. He abandoned that procedure, and flattened himself. All the serjeants in the Ketton assault linked their minds through general affinity, clinging to each other mentally with a determination that matched their grip on the ground.

  “What is happening?” he bellowed.

  “We’re like outta here, man,” Cochrane shouted back. “You’re on the last bus out of this universe.”

  Ralph watched the red light inflate out of the dust cloud. Datavises from SD sensors and local occupation forces spread around Catmos Vale relayed the image from multiple angles, granting him complete three hundred and sixty degree coverage. He knew what it looked like from the air, from the ground, even (briefly) as it engulfed marines who were following close behind the serjeants. But most of all, he just stared ahead as it poured out across the valley.

  “Oh my God,” he breathed. It was going to be bad. He knew that. Very bad.

  “Do you want a full SD strike?” Admiral Farquar asked.

  “I don’t know. It looks like it’s slowing.”

  “Confirmed. Roughly circular, twelve kilometres across. And they’ve got two thirds of the serjeants
in there.”

  “Are they still alive?” Ralph asked Acacia.

  “Yes, General. Their electronics have collapsed completely, but they’re alive and able to use affinity.”

  “Then what—” The ground shifted abruptly below his feet. He landed painfully on his side. The programmable silicon buildings of the camp were jittering about. Everywhere, people were on their knees or spread-eagled.

  “Shit!” Acacia shouted.

  A sheer cliff was rising up vertically right across the valley floor, corresponding to the edge of the red light. Huge cascades of mud and boulders were tumbling down its face. The red light followed them down, pervading the rock, and growing brighter.

  Ralph refuted his instinct. What he was seeing was just too much, even though he knew they’d done this to entire planets. “They can’t,” he cried.

  “But they are, General,” Acacia replied. “They’re leaving.”

  The cliff was still ascending. Two hundred metres now, lifting with increasing confidence and speed. It was becoming difficult to look at as the light turned scarlet, casting long shadows across the valley. Three hundred metres high, and Ralph’s neural nanonics had crashed in the backwash of the blossoming reality dysfunction. On the ground around him, the battered blades of grass were wriggling their way back upwards again, shedding their cloak of mud to turn the camp into a verdant parkland. Fallen trees bent their trunks like the spine of an old man rising from his chair, cranking themselves upright again.

  The vivid red light began to diminish. When Ralph squinted against it, he could see the cliff retreating from him. It was five hundred metres high, moving away with the majestic serenity of an iceberg. Except it wasn’t moving, he realized. It was shrinking, the red light contracting in on itself, enveloping the island of rock which the possessed had uprooted from Mortonridge to sail away into another universe. As it left he could see its entire shape, a flat-topped inverted cone wrapped with massive curving stress ridges that spiralled down to its base, as if it had unscrewed itself from the peninsula.