The Neutronium Alchemist

by Peter F. Hamilton

  Impossible to intercept or interfere, they linked Quinn into the equipment his teams had been setting up.

  Diagrams flashed up on the bridge screens as modulated information flooded back along the beams. Quinn entered a series of codes and watched in satisfaction as the equipment acknowledged his command authority.

  “Ninety-seven nukes on-line,” he said. “By the look of it, they’re rigging another five as we speak. Dumb arseholes.”

  “Is that enough?” Dwyer asked anxiously. Loyalty would probably not be any defence if things weren’t going precisely to plan. He just wished he knew what that plan was.

  Quinn’s grin was playful. “Let’s find out, shall we?”

  “No survivors,” Samuel said. “None.” His dignified face betrayed a profound sorrow, one hardened by the grey light of the snow-veiled landscape.

  For Monica the loss was heightened by the terrible remoteness of the event. A few swift diffuse flashes of light lost among the occluded sky above the convoy, as if sheet lightning were flaring amid the snowstorm.

  They had seen and heard nothing of the decimated flyers crashing on the eastern edge of the foundry yard.

  <> the Hoya told Samuel and the other Edenists. Fortunately the flyers’ shielding held out long enough for the transfer to complete.

  <> Samuel said. “But not their souls,” he whispered under his breath.

  Monica heard him, and met his gaze. Their minds were a unison of grief, less than affinity but certainly sharing awareness.

  “Practicalities,” he said forlornly.

  “Yes.”

  The car gave a fast unexpected lurch as the brakes suddenly engaged, then cut out. Everyone inside was flung forwards against their seat straps.

  “Electronic warfare,” shouted the ESA electronics expert who was riding with them. “They’re glitching our processor.”

  “Is it the possessed?” Monica asked.

  “No. Definitely coming through the net.”

  The car braked again. This time the wheels locked for several seconds, starting to skid across the slushy road before an emergency program released them.

  “Go to manual,” Monica instructed. She could see other cars in the convoy twisting and slithering across the dual roadway. One of the police vehicles hit the safety barrier and shot down the embankment into a frozen ditch, spraying snow as it went. Another of the big embassy cars thumped into the rear of Monica’s car, crunching some of the bodywork.

  The impact spun them around. Monica’s armour suit stiffened as she was shaken from side to side.

  “It’s not affecting Mzu,” Samuel said. “She’s pulling away from us.”

  “Disable the police cars,” Monica told the electronics expert. “And that bloody Calvert, too.” She felt a sincerely unprofessional glee as she ordered that, but it was perfectly legitimate. By separating herself and Mzu from the police and Calvert she was reducing the opportunity for interference in the mission goal.

  Their driver finally seemed to master the intricacies of the car’s manual controls, and they shot forwards, weaving around the other disorientated cars. “Adrian?” Monica datavised.

  “With you. Nobody here can origin that electronic warfare outbreak.”

  “Doesn’t matter, we’re on top of it.”

  “Calvert’s in front of us,” the driver said. “He’s right on Mzu’s tail, this hasn’t affected him at all.”

  “Shit!” Monica directed her shell helmet sensors to switch to infrared, and just caught the pink blob of Calvert’s car hidden by snow a hundred and twenty metres ahead of them. Behind her, two embassy cars were already pulling away from the stalled police vehicles, while another one was creeping along the verge, trying to get around.

  “Adrian, we’re going to need an evac. Fast.”

  “Not easy.”

  “What do you fucking mean? Where are the embassy’s Royal Marine utility planes? They should be on backup, for God’s sake!”

  “They’re both liaising with the local defence force. It would have been suspicious if I’d called them back.”

  “Do it now!”

  “I’m on it. You should have one there in about twenty minutes.”

  Monica thumped an armoured fist into the seat, splitting some of the fabric. The car was racing on through the snow, surprisingly stable for one under manual control. Four sets of headlights were visible behind them. A fast datavised review informed Monica they were all embassy cars, which gave her some satisfaction.

  She put her machine gun down and picked up a maser carbine, then undid her seat belt.

  “Now what?” Samuel asked as she leaned forward to get a better view through the windscreen.

  “Joshua Calvert, your time is up.”

  “Uh oh,” said the electronics expert. He looked up in reflex.

  Ashly approached the ironberg foundry yard from the west, following five minutes behind the Edenist flyers. The spaceplane’s forward passive sensor suite revealed the basics of the missile launch and dogfight. Then the X-ray lasers had fired from orbit. He held his breath as the sensors reported a microwave radar beam sweep across the fuselage. It came from the starships seven hundred kilometres above.

  Now is not a good time to die. Especially as I know what’s in store if I do. Kelly was right: screw fate and destiny, just spend the rest of time in zero-tau. I think I might try that if I get out of this.

  Nothing happened.

  Ashly let out a shudder of breath, finding his palms sweating. “Thank you whoever thought up low-visibility profiling,” he said out loud. With its top-grade stealth systems active, the spaceplane was probably invisible to any sensor on, or orbiting, Nyvan. His only worry had been an infrared signature, but the thick snow eradicated that.

  He ordered the spaceplane’s computer to open a secure channel to Tonala’s net, hoping no one with heavy weaponry would detect the tiny signal.

  “Joshua?” he datavised.

  “Jesus, Ashly, we thought you’d been hit.”

  “Not in this machine.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Thirty kilometres from the foundry yard. I’m about to go into a holding pattern. What’s happening down there?”

  “Some idiot used electronic warfare on the cars. We’re okay; Dick hardened our programs. But the police are out of it for the moment. We’re still on Mzu’s tail. I think a couple of embassy cars are behind us, maybe more.”

  “Is Mzu still heading for the foundry yard?”

  “Looks like it.”

  “Well unless the cavalry comes up over the hill, we’re the only pickup she’s got left. There’s nothing flying within my sensor range.”

  “Unless they’re stealthed, too.”

  “You’ve always got to look on the bleak side, haven’t you?”

  “Just being cautious.”

  “Well if they’re stealthed, I …” Ashly broke off as the flight computer warned him of another radar sweep emanating from the starships.

  The beam was configured differently this time, a ground scan profile.

  “Joshua, they’re hunting you. Get out! Get out of the car!”

  Every electronic warfare block in the embassy car was datavising frantic alerts.

  <> Samuel told Hoya and Niveu. There was little he could do to conceal his rising panic.

  Once, the knowledge that his memories would be held safely in the Hoya would have been enough for him. Now he wasn’t so sure that was all that mattered. <>

  The snow-lashed sky behind the car flashed purple.

  After tens of kilometres of entirely passive pursuit across the tundralike farmland, the Tonala security police had been caught out badly by the sudden electronic warfare attack. Of all the cars, theirs came off worst, leaving them scattered across both roadways as their surveillance suspects, quite infuriatingly, dodged ar
ound them as if they were nothing more than inconvenient roadcones. It took time for them to rally; processors had to be disengaged to allow the manual controls to be activated, officers from cars that had gone over the embankment or smashed into the barrier sprinted for cars that were still functional, swiping huge gobs of crash cushion foam from their suits. Once they had reorganized they began to drive fast after their quarry.

  It meant that their cars were still bunched together, supplying the Organization starships with the biggest target. Oscar Kearn, uncertain which one contained Mzu, decided to start there and eliminate the other cars one at a time until her soul was claimed by the beyond. With that, they would have won. Bringing her back, one way or another, was all that mattered. Now the spaceplanes had been destroyed, she would have to die.

  Fortunately, as an ex-military man himself, he had prepared his fallback options. So far Mzu had proved amazingly elusive, or just plain lucky. He was determined to put an end to that.

  The ironberg foundry yard pickup had been planned in some detail with Baranovich, its location and timing quite critical. Although Oscar Kearn hadn’t actually mentioned how critical to the newly allied Cossack, nor why. But he was satisfied that if things went bad for the Organization on the ground, Mzu would never survive.

  Firstly, the frigates would be overhead, able to initiate a ground strike. And if she somehow escaped that …

  While the Organization starships were docked with the Spirit of Freedom they had gained command access to the tugs delivering Tonala’s ironbergs for splashdown. A small alteration had been made to the trajectory of one tug.

  Far above Nyvan’s ocean, to the west of Tonala, an ironberg was already slipping through the ionosphere. This time, no recovery fleet would be needed. No ships would be employed to tow it on a week-long voyage to the foundry yard.

  It was taking the direct route.

  The first X-ray laser blast struck the police car which was lying down the embankment, hood embedded in the ditch. It vaporized in a violent shock wave, sending droplets of molten metal, roasted earth, and superheated steam churning into the air. All the snow within a two-hundred-metre radius was ripped from the ground before the heat turned it back into water. The other car abandoned on the road was somersaulted over and over, smashing its windows and sending wheels spinning through the air.

  The first explosion made Alkad wince. She glanced out of the rear window, seeing an orange corona slowly shrinking back down into the road.

  “What the hell did that?” Voi asked.

  “Not us,” Gelai said. “Not one of the possessed, not even a dozen. We don’t have that much power.”

  A second explosion sounded, rattling the car badly.

  “It’s me,” Alkad said. “They want me.”

  Another explosion lit up the sky. This time the pressure wave pushed at their car, sending it skidding sideways before the control processor could compensate.

  “They’re getting closer,” Eriba cried. “Mother Mary, help us.”

  “There’s not much She can do for us now,” Alkad said. “It’s up to the agencies.”

  The four voidhawks were in a standard five-hundred-kilometre equatorial parking orbit above Nyvan when Hoya received Samuel’s frantic call. Their position allowed them to shadow the Organization frigates which were strung out along a high-inclination orbit. At the time, only the Urschel and the Pinzola were above the ironberg foundry yard’s horizon. Raimo was trailing them by two thousand kilometres.

  Although it was four thousand kilometres from the Urschel and Pinzola, Hoya’s sensors could just detect the brilliant purple discharge in the clouds below the Organization frigates as they fired on a fourth car. The voidhawk began to accelerate at seven gees, followed by its three cousins. All four went to full combat alert status. A salvo of fifteen combat wasps slid out of Hoya’s lower hull cradles, each one charging away in a different direction at thirty gees, leaving the voidhawk at the centre of an expanding and dimming nimbus of exhaust plasma. After five seconds, the drones curved around to align themselves on the Organization frigates.

  Urschel and Pinzola had no choice but to defend themselves. Their reaction time was hardly optimum, but twenty-five combat wasps flew out of each frigate to counter the attackers, antimatter propulsion quickly pushing them up to forty gees. The frigates broke off their attack on the cars, realigning their X-ray lasers ready for the inevitable swarm of submunitions.

  Raimo launched its own salvo of combat wasps in support of its confederates, opening up a new angle of attack against the voidhawks. Two of them responded with defensive salvos.

  Over a hundred combat wasps launched in less than twenty seconds. The glare from their drives shimmered off the nighttime clouds below, a radiance far exceeding any natural moonlight.

  Despite the continuing electronic warfare emission from the SD platforms, none of the orbiting network sensors could miss such a deadly spectacle.

  Threat analysis programs controlling each network initiated what they estimated was an appropriate level of response.

  Officially, Tonala’s ironberg foundry yard sprawled for over eighteen kilometres along the coast, extending back inland between eight and ten kilometres according to the lie of the land. That, anyway, was the area which the government had originally set aside for the project in 2407, with an optimism which matched the one prevalent during Floreso’s arrival into Nyvan orbit three years earlier. Apart from the asteroid’s biosphere cavern, the foundry became Tonala’s largest ever civil engineering development.

  It started off in a promising enough fashion. First came a small coastal port to berth the tugs which recovered the ironbergs from their mid-ocean splashdown. With that construction under way, the engineers started excavating a huge seawater canal running parallel to the coastline. A hundred and twenty metres wide and thirty deep, it was designed to accommodate the ironbergs, allowing them to be towed into the Disassembly Sheds which were to be the centrepiece of the yard. The main canal branched twenty times, sprouting kilometre-long channels which would each end at a shed.

  After the first seven Disassembly Sheds were completed, an audit by the Tonalan Treasury revealed the nation didn’t require the metal production capacity already built. Funds for the remaining Disassembly Sheds were suspended until the economy expanded to warrant them. That was in 2458.

  Since then, the thirteen unused branch canals gradually choked up with weeds and silt until they eventually became nothing more than large, perfectly rectangular saltwater marshes. In 2580, Harrisburg University’s biology department successfully had them declared part of the national nature park reserve.

  Those Disassembly Sheds which did get built were massive cuboid structures, two hundred metres a side, and very basic. An immense skeletal framework was thrown up, bridging the end of the branch canal, then cloaked in flat composite panels. A vertical petal door above the canal allowed the ironberg egress. Inside, powerful fission blades on the end of gantry arms performed a preprogrammed dissection, slicing the ironberg into thousand-tonne segments like some gigantic metal fruit.

  A second network of smaller canals connected the Disassembly Sheds with the actual foundry buildings, allowing the bulky, awkwardly shaped segments of spongesteel to be floated directly to the smelter intakes.

  The desolate land between the Disassembly Sheds, foundry buildings, and canals was crisscrossed by a maze of roads, some no more than dirt tracks, while others were broad decaying roadways built to carry heavy plant during the heady early days of construction. None of them had modern guidance tracking cables; foundry crews didn’t care, they knew the layout and drove manually. It meant that any visitors venturing deep into the yard invariably took wrong turnings. Not that they could ever get lost, the gargantuan Disassembly Sheds were visible for tens of kilometres, rising up out of the featureless alluvial plain like the blocks some local god had forgotten to sculpt mountains out of during Nyvan’s creation. They made perfect navigational reference aides. Under normal
conditions.

  The road was over eighty years old; coastal winters had washed soil away from under it and frozen the surface, flexing it up and down until it snapped. There wasn’t a single flat stretch anywhere, a fact disguised by fancifully windsculpted drifts of snow. Alkad’s car lumbered along at barely more than walking pace as the suspension rocked the body from side to side.

  They’d driven into the yard at a dangerously high speed along the roadway. A fifth car had been wiped out behind them, then the blasts of energy from space seemed to stop. Alkad datavised the car’s control processor to turn off at the first junction. According to the map she had loaded into her neural nanonics memory cell, the Disassembly Sheds were strung out across the yard’s northern quadrant.

  But as she was rapidly discovering: the map is not the territory.

  “I can’t see a bloody thing,” Voi said. “I don’t even know if we’re on a road anymore.”

  Eriba peered forwards, his nose almost touching the windshield. “The Sheds have to be out there somewhere. They’re huge.”

  “The guidance processor says we’re heading north,” Alkad said. “Keep looking.” She glanced out of the back window to see the car following her bouncing about heavily, its headlight beams slashing about through the snow. “Can you sense Baranovich?” she asked Gelai.

  “Faintly, yes.” Her hand waved ahead and slightly to the left. “He’s out there; and he’s got a lot of friends with him.”

  “How many?”

  “About twenty, maybe more. It’s difficult at this distance, and they’re moving about.”

  Voi sucked her breath in fiercely. “Too many.”

  “Is Lodi with them?”

  “Possibly.”

  A massive chunk of machinery lay along the side of the road, some metallic fossil from the age of greater ambitions. Once they’d passed it, a strong red-gold radiance flooded over the car. A faint roar made the windows tremble.