The Neutronium Alchemist

by Peter F. Hamilton

  Cochrane, McPhee, and Rana joined them.

  “Some terminally unfriendly looking dudes we have here,” Cochrane yelled above the thunder. The marines lining the barrier were motionless, while more were hurrying from the cluster of vehicles to reinforce them.

  “I’d better go and talk to them,” Stephanie said.

  “Not alone?” Moyo protested.

  “I’ll look a lot less threatening than a delegation.” A white handkerchief sprouted from Stephanie’s hand; she held it up high and clambered over the first set of barriers.

  Lieutenant Anver watched her coming and gave his squad their deployment assignments, sending half of them out to flank the road and watch for any other possessed trying to sneak over, not that they’d ever get past the satellites. His helmet sensors zoomed in for a close-up on the woman’s face. She was squinting uncomfortably at the light as she emerged from under the dappled shadow of the red cloud. A pair of sunglasses materialized on her face.

  “Definitely possessed, sir,” he datavised to Colonel Palmer.

  “We see that, thank you, Anver,” the colonel replied. “Be advised, the security committee is accessing your datavise now.”

  “Sir.”

  “There’s no other activity along the firebreak,” Admiral Farquar datavised. “We don’t think she’s a diversion.”

  “Go see what she wants, Anver,” Colonel Palmer ordered. “And be very careful.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Two of his squad slid a section of the barrier aside, and he stepped forwards. For all that it was only a hundred-metre walk, it lasted half of his life. He spent the time trying to think what to say to her, but when they stopped a few paces from each other, all he said was: “What do you want?”

  She lowered her hand with the handkerchief and gave him a cautious smile.

  “We brought some children out. They’re in the buses back there. I, um … wanted to tell you so you wouldn’t … you know.” The smile became one of embarrassment. “We weren’t sure how you’d react.”

  “Children?”

  “Yes. About seventy. I don’t know the exact number, I never actually counted.”

  “Does she mean non-possessed?” Admiral Farquar datavised.

  “Are these children possessed?”

  “Of course not,” Stephanie said indignantly. “What do you think we are?”

  “Lieutenant Anver, this is Princess Kirsten.”

  Anver stiffened noticeably. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Ask her what she wants, what the deal is.”

  “What do you want for them?”

  Stephanie’s lips tightened in anger. “I don’t want anything. Not in return, they’re just children. What I’d like is an assurance that you military types aren’t going to shoot them when we send them over.”

  “Oh, dear,” Princess Kirsten datavised. “Apologize to her, Lieutenant, on my behalf, please. And tell her that we’re very grateful to her and those with her for bringing the children back to us.”

  Anver cleared his throat, this wasn’t quite what he expected when he started his lonely walk out here. “I’m very sorry, ma’am. The Princess sends her apologies for assuming the worst. We’re very grateful to you for what you’ve done.”

  “I understand. This isn’t easy for me, either. Now, how do you want to handle this?”

  Twelve Royal Marines came back to the buses with her; volunteers, without their armour suits and weapons. The bus doors were opened, and the children came down. There were a lot of tears and running around in confusion. Most of them wanted a last kiss and a hug from the adults who had rescued them (Cochrane was especially popular), much to the amazement of the marines.

  Stephanie found herself almost in tears as the last batch started off down the broad road, clustering around the big marine; one of them was even being given a piggyback. Moyo’s arm was around her shoulders to hold her tight.

  Lieutenant Anver came over to stand in front of her and saluted perfectly (to which Cochrane managed a quite obscene parody). He looked badly troubled. “Thank you again, all of you,” he said. “That’s me saying it, I can’t datavise under the cloud.”

  “Oh, do take care of the little darlings,” Tina said, sniffing hard.

  “Poor Analeese has the most dreadful cold, none of us could cure her. And Ryder hates nuts; I think he’s got an allergy, and—” She fell silent as Rana squeezed her forearm.

  “We’ll take care of them,” Lieutenant Anver said gravely. “And you, you take care of yourselves.” He glanced pointedly out to the firebreak where a procession of vehicles was massing around the barrier to greet the children. “You might want to do that away from here.” A crisp nod at Stephanie, and he was walking back towards the barrier.

  “What did he mean?” Tina asked querulously.

  “Wowee.” Cochrane let out a long breath. “We like did it, man, we showed the forces of bad vibes not to mess with us.”

  Moyo kissed Stephanie. “I’m very proud of you.”

  “Ugh,” Cochrane exclaimed. “Don’t you two cats ever stop?”

  A smiling Stephanie leaned forwards and kissed him on his forehead, getting hair caught on her lips. “Thank you, too.”

  “Will somebody tell me what he meant,” Tina said. “Please.”

  “Nothing good,” McPhee said. “That’s a fact.”

  “So now what do we do?” Rana asked. “Go round up another group of kids? Or split up? Or settle that farm we talked about? What?”

  “Oh, stay together, definitely,” Tina said. “After everything we’ve done I couldn’t bear losing any of you, you’re my family now.”

  “Family. That’s cosmic, sister. So like what’s your position on incest?”

  “I don’t know what we’ll decide,” Stephanie said. “But I think we should take the lieutenant’s advice, and do it a long way away from here.”

  ***

  The spaceplane rose out of Nyvan’s stratosphere on twin plumes of plasma flame, arching up towards its orbital injection coordinate a thousand kilometres ahead. Submunitions were still peppering space with explosions and decoy flares, while electronic warfare drones blasted gigawatt pulses at any emission they could detect. Now its reaction drive rockets were on, the spaceplane was no longer invisible to the residuals of the combat wasp battle.

  Lady Macbeth flew cover a hundred kilometres above it, sensors and maser cannon deployed to strike any missile which acquired lock-on. The starship had to make continual adjustments to its flight vector to keep the spaceplane within its protective radius. Joshua watched its drive flaring, reducing velocity, accelerating, switching altitude. Five times its masers fired to destroy incoming submunitions.

  By the time the spaceplane had reached orbit and was manoeuvring to dock, the sky above Nyvan had calmed considerably. Only three other starships were visible to Lady Mac’s sensors, all of them were frigates belonging to local defence forces. None of them seemed interested in Lady Mac, or even each other. Beaulieu began a thorough sensor sweep, alert for the inevitable chaotic showers of post-explosion debris which would make low orbit hazardous for some time to come. Some of the returns were odd, making her redefine the sweep’s parameters. Lady Mac’s sensors shifted their focus away from the planet itself.

  Joshua slid cleanly through the hatchway into the bridge. His clothes had dried out in the hot air of the spaceplane’s cabin, but the dirt and stains remained. Dahybi’s ship-suit was in a similar state.

  Sarha gave him an apprehensive glance. “Melvyn?” she asked quietly.

  “Not a chance. Sorry.”

  “Bugger.”

  “You two did a good job up here,” Joshua said. “Well done, that was some fine piloting to stay above the spaceplane.”

  “Thanks, Josh.”

  Joshua looked from Liol, who was anchored to a stikpad by the captain’s acceleration couch, to Sarha, whose expression was utterly unrepentant.

  “Oh, Jesus, you gave him the access codes.”

&nb
sp; “Yes, I did. My command decision. There was a war up here, Joshua.”

  It wasn’t, he decided, worth making an issue out of, not in view of everything else that was happening. “That’s why I left you in charge,” he said. “I had confidence in you, Sarha.”

  She frowned suspiciously. He sounded sincere. “So you got Mzu, then. I hope it was worth it.”

  “For the Confederation I suppose it is. For individuals … you’d have to ask them. But then individuals have been dying because of her for some time now.”

  “Captain, please access our sensor suite,” Beaulieu said.

  “Right.” He rolled in midair, and landed on his acceleration couch. The images from the external sensor clusters expanded into his mind. Wrong.

  They had to be wrong. “Jesus wept!” His brain was already acting in conjunction with the flight computer’s astrogation program to plot a vector before he’d fully admitted the reality of the tide of rock descending on the planet. “Prepare for acceleration, thirty seconds—mark. We have to leave.” A fast internal sensor check showed him his new passengers hurrying towards couches; images superimposed with purple and yellow trajectory plots that wriggled frantically as he refined their projected trajectory.

  “Who did that?” he asked.

  “No idea,” Sarha said. “It happened during the battle, we didn’t even know until afterwards. But it sure as hell wasn’t random combat wasp strikes.”

  “I’ll monitor the drive tubes,” Joshua said. “Sarha, take systems coverage, please. Liol, you’ve got fire control.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Liol said.

  It was a strictly neutral tone. Joshua was satisfied with that. He triggered Lady Mac’s fusion drives, bringing them up to a three-gee acceleration.

  “Where are we going?” Liol asked.

  “Bloody good question,” Joshua said. “For now I just want us out of here. After that, it rather depends on what Ione and the agents decide, I expect.”

  There must be someone who knows. One of you.

  We know it is real. We know it is hidden.

  Two bodies await. A male and a female. Youthful, splendid. Do you hear them? Do you taste them? Pleading for one of you to enter them. You can.

  All the riches and pleasures of reality can be yours again. If you have the admission price, one tiny piece of information. That’s all.

  She didn’t hide it by herself. She had help from somebody. Probably many.

  Were you one?

  Ah. Yes. You. You are being truthful. You know.

  Come then. Come forwards, come through. We reward you with—

  He cried out in wonder and misery as he struggled his way into the victim’s agonized nervous system. There was pain, and shame, and humiliation to cope with; tragic, terrible pleas from the body’s true soul. One by one, he faced them down, mending the broken flesh, suppressing and ignoring the protest, until there was only his own shame left. Not so easily abandoned.

  “Welcome to the Organization,” said Oscar Kearn. “So, you were part of Mzu’s mission?”

  “Yes. I was with her.”

  “Good. She’s a clever woman, that Mzu. I’m afraid she’s eluded us once again, thanks to that traitor bitch Barnes. Even so, only the amazingly resourceful can duck an ironberg when it’s falling on their heads. I didn’t realize what I was dealing with before. I don’t suppose she would have helped us even if we had caught her. She’s like that, tough and determined. But now her luck’s run out. You can tell me, can’t you? You know where the Alchemist is.”

  “Yes,” Ikela said. “I know where it is.”

  Alkad Mzu floated into the bridge, accompanied by Monica and Samuel. She acknowledged Joshua with a small twitch of her lips, then blinked when she saw Liol. “I didn’t know there were two of you.”

  Liol grinned broadly.

  “Before we all start arguing over what to do with you, Doctor,” a serjeant said. “I’d like you to confirm the Alchemist does or did exist.”

  Alkad tapped her toe on a stikpad beside the captain’s couch, preventing herself from drifting about. “Yes, it exists. And I built it. I wish to Mary I hadn’t, now, but the past is past. My only concern now is that it doesn’t fall into anybody’s hands, not yours, and certainly not the possessed.”

  “Very noble,” Sarha said, “from someone who was going to use it to kill an entire planet.”

  “They wouldn’t have been killed,” Alkad said wearily. “It was intended to extinguish Omuta’s star, not turn it nova. I’m not an Omutan barbarian; they’re the ones who kill entire worlds.”

  “Extinguish a star?” Samuel mused in puzzlement.

  “Please don’t ask for details.”

  “I propose Dr Mzu is taken back to Tranquillity,” the serjeant said. “We can formalize the observation to insure she doesn’t pass the information on. I don’t think you will anyway, Doctor, but intelligence agencies are highly suspicious entities.”

  Monica consulted Samuel. “I can live with that,” she said. “Tranquillity is neutral territory. It isn’t all that different to our original agreement.”

  “It isn’t,” Samuel agreed. “But, Doctor, you do realize you cannot be allowed to die. Certainly not until the problem of possession has been resolved.”

  “Fine by me,” Alkad said.

  “What I mean, Doctor, is that when you are very old, you must be placed in zero-tau to prevent your soul from entering the beyond.”

  “I will not give anyone the Alchemist technology, no matter what the circumstances.”

  “I’m sure that is your intention at the moment. But how will you feel after a hundred years trapped in the beyond? A thousand? And to be indelicate, the choice is not yours to make. It is ours. You lost the right to self-determination when you built the Alchemist. If you give yourself enough power to make a galaxy fear you and what you can achieve, you abrogate that right to those whom your actions affect.”

  “I agree,” the serjeant said. “You will be placed in zero-tau before you die.”

  “Why not just put me in now?” Alkad said crustily.

  “Don’t tempt me,” Monica said. “I know the kind of contempt you moron intellectuals hold the government services in. Well listen good, Doctor, we exist to protect the majority so they can run around living their lives as decently and as best they can. We protect them from shits like you, who never fucking stop to think what you’re doing.”

  “You didn’t protect my bloody planet, did you!” Alkad yelled back. “And don’t you dare lecture me on responsibility. I’m prepared to die to stop the Alchemist being used by anybody else, especially your imperialist Kingdom. I know my responsibilities.”

  “You do now. Now you realize what a mistake you made, now people are dying just to keep your precious arse safe.”

  “Okay, that’s it,” Joshua said loudly. “We’re all agreed where the doc is going, end of discussion. Nobody is going to start shouting about moral philosophy on my bridge. We’re all tired, we’re all emotional. Pack it in, the pair of you. I’m going to plot a course to Tranquillity, you go to your cabins and cool off. We’ll be home inside of two days.”

  “Understood,” Monica said through clenched teeth. “And … thank you for getting us off. It was—”

  “Professional?”

  She almost snapped back at him, but that grin … “Professional.”

  Alkad cleared her throat. “I’m sorry,” she said apologetically. “But there is a problem. We can’t go straight back to Tranquillity.”

  Joshua massaged his temple and asked: “Why not?” if only to stop Monica from flying at Mzu’s throat.

  “The Alchemist itself.”

  “What about it?” Samuel asked.

  “We have to collect it.”

  “All right,” Joshua said in a far-from-reasonable tone. “Why?”

  “Because it isn’t secure where it is.”

  “It’s managed to stay secure for thirty years. Jesus, just take the secret of its location to
zero-tau with you. If the agencies haven’t found it by now, they never will.”

  “They won’t have to look anymore, nor will the possessed, especially if our current situation continues for more than a few years.”

  “Go on, we may as well hear it all.”

  “There were three ships on our strike mission against Omuta,” Alkad said.

  “The Beezling, the Chengho, and the Gombari. Beezling was the Alchemist’s deployment vessel, I was on board; the other two were our escort frigates. We were intercepted by blackhawks before we could deploy the Alchemist. They destroyed the Gombari, and hit us and the Chengho pretty badly. We were left for dead in interstellar space. Neither of us could jump, and the nearest inhabited star was seven light-years away.

  “After the attack, we spent a couple of days repairing our internal systems, then we rendezvoused. It was Ikela and Captain Prager who came up with the eventual solution. Chengho was smaller than Beezling, it didn’t need as many energy patterning nodes to perform a ZTT jump. So the crew removed some of the Beezling’s intact nodes and installed them in the Chengho. We didn’t have the proper tools for that kind of job; and then the nodes had different power ratings and performance factors, they had to be completely reprogrammed. It took us three and a half weeks, but we did it. We rebuilt ourselves a ship that could make a ZTT jump—not very well, and not very far, but it was functional. That was when things started to get difficult. The Chengho was too small to take both crews, even for just a small jump. There was only one life-support capsule, and it could hold eight of us at a push. We knew we couldn’t risk a flight back to Garissa, the nodes would never last that long, and we guessed that Omuta would have launched some kind of big attack by then. After all, that’s why we’d been dispatched in the first place, to stop them. So we jumped to the nearest inhabited star system, Crotone. The idea was that we’d charter a ship and get back to Garissa that way. Of course, when we arrived at Crotone, we heard about the genocide.

  “Ikela and Prager had even formulated a worst case option. Just in case, they said. We’d brought some antimatter with us on the Chengho; if we sold that together with the frigate it would fetch millions. Assuming the Garissan government no longer existed, we would have all the money we needed to operate independently for decades.”