Salvation

by Peter F. Hamilton

  “What good is that going to do?”

  “You don’t need to know.”

  “Like bollocks! I never asked for details, but we’re taking a huge risk here. For what? Cutting power to everyone’s air conditioner for a few hours?”

  “Problem?” Akkar asked. He was standing right behind her. She hadn’t noticed him approaching.

  “No,” she said. “I’m happy to help. I asked for this gig, remember. I just need some assurance this isn’t a token statement.”

  “It’s not,” Akkar said softly. “Trust me, Osha. Today is unique, and not because of Icefall. Today Water Desert has put a lot of its most expensive eggs in one basket. And thanks to Julisa’s skills, we’re going to crack them open. You will provide us with that window of opportunity.”

  Savi gave him a hard glance. “Okay,” she said. “That sounds more like it.”

  “Good luck,” he said. “All of you. We’ll meet back here in thirty-six hours.”

  As she left the garage, she saw Dimon handing out home-printed semiautomatic rifles to three other men. He saw her watching, and Savi gave him an approving nod. Dimon grinned in return.

  Outside, Savi, Ketchell, and Larik set off across town, avoiding Main Street and the crush of eager Icefall spectators.

  “I’ve got my team waiting for instructions,” Larik said. “How do you think we should deploy them?”

  “Deploy them?” Savi said. “We don’t. You heard Julisa; this is the three of us.”

  “Yeah, we have the primary task, sure,” Larik said. “But what happens if there’s a security patrol heading our way five minutes before we blast the fence? We need coverage. So whoever you think you are, you shut the fuck up and leave me to get on with my fucking job—of which you know fuck all. Clear?”

  “The hell with you, dickbrain,” Savi pressed back on a smile, enjoying the way she’d been designated a necessary pain. He didn’t realize it, but he now included her as part of the team. The only thing he’d suspect now was that she’d screw up. Posting lookouts might be a problem, though.

  She composed a message for Misra to send.

  Large group activity starting. Distraction protest planned for observation zone 10.45. I am on team assigned to blow the substation on Fountain Street. Explosives pre-set for 10.57 to take out fence. Transformers targeted for 11.03. Location of main target unknown. I’ve seen home-printed semiautomatics handed out to group members.

  Good work, came the answering micropulse. Do you know nature of main target?

  Savi thought back, Exact target unknown, but it’s a software attack, assembled by Julisa. The power cut will allow them access. Akkar said Water Desert has all its eggs in one basket. May be up to forty people involved.

  Thanks. Analyzing now. Watching you. Tarli.

  Savi kept her gaze level as they tramped through Kintore’s backstreets. But it was so tempting to look up at the sky and wave at whatever satellite or drone active ops was using to observe her.

  They met up with several of Larik’s team as they made their indirect way to the substation. Larik and Ketchell studied a street map of Kintore on their screen sunglasses and assigned people to various road junctions around Fountain Street. Savi immediately sent their locations to active ops.

  By twenty past ten, Kintore itself was practically deserted. Everyone who’d arrived to witness first fall was out at the observation zone, along with every local who was off duty. A news stream playing across Savi’s screen sunglasses showed her the guests, including Ainsley Zangari himself, taking their place on the VIP stand.

  Down in the Antarctic, the five Connexion harvester boats closed on V-71. Ex-navy frigates, their prows had undergone a drastic profile alteration during the refit. Instead of a sleek wedge shape, they were now bulging hemispheres ten meters wide, presenting the open maw of a portal to the frozen sea, like the mouth of a giant whale. Below the hull, two extra sets of newly installed propellers turned slowly, their huge electric motors powered from the global power grid via portal. They weren’t designed to give the harvesters extra speed. Rather, their phenomenal torque allowed them to push the vessel forward relentlessly.

  At just after ten thirty, the first harvester reached the sheer cliff of blue ice, its captain curving around so the portal rim grazed the surface at a thin angle, but then immediately sliced deeper inward. The propellers spun up, maintaining the ship’s speed and momentum as fractured ice began to fall into the portal. For a brief moment, desert sunlight shone out of the gaping hemisphere, then the front of the harvester was almost completely buried in the cliff. Yet it continued to churn along parallel to the ice, gouging out a nine-meter-wide gash. Behind it, the second harvester struck the cliff at a similar angle, its portal biting deep.

  In the desert observation zone, people squinted up into the glaring sapphire sky. The long, dark ovals of the airships maintained their positions a kilometer above the desert’s desiccated white grass and Mars-red soil, five klicks from the front of the VIP stadium. It was close enough to see everything.

  Gasps came from the crowd as a slim stream of glittering white splinters began to fall from the belly of an airship. It quickly grew wider, so that by the time the first few boulders of Antarctic ice smashed onto the desert, the flow was nine meters wide as it emerged from the portal slung below the airship. By that time, the second cascade of ice had begun from the neighboring airship.

  Cheering and enthusiastic applause filled the dry air. By ten forty, all five airships had solid white cataracts pouring out, catching the sunlight in a dazzling refraction blaze as they tumbled downward. On the ground below, the five ice cones began to grow upward and outward with remarkable speed, their surface a constant avalanche of shattered ice. Subzero vapor churned up out of them, flowing with the viscosity of oil. The wave front of fog obscured the land, billowing upward to thin out and disperse as the heat of the sun finally began to impact.

  The entranced crowd waited for the final aspect of the promised miracle: to be enveloped by freezing mist in the middle of a desert. As the brilliant cloud rolled toward them, angry shouts began to rise above the background buzz of chanting and laughter. Placards were raised. Fireworks rockets zoomed unnervingly low over heads. Smoke bombs were thrown. Cheers turned to screams. Lines of riot-shield-equipped police and corporate security officers snaked through the throng. Stones began to rise in short arcs. The screams grew louder. Images playing across the big screens that had been set up across the zone to show everyone dramatic close-up shots of the harvesters and airships broke up into a mash of static.

  The crowd surged in random directions as people struggled to get away from the protestors. Police strove to get past them. Just as the chaos on the ground reached its peak, a colossal wall of fog rolled across the observation zone, blotting out the sun in a blast of cold so profound it seemed to suck oxygen from the very air. Then the panic frenzy really struck.

  * * *

  —

  Whoever named it Fountain Street clearly had a very misplaced sense of irony. Savi looked along the depressing track, with drab single-story prefab cabins on both sides, that led away from the intersection ahead of her. The compacted soil here probably hadn’t seen any free-flowing water this side of Earth’s last ice age. A double irony, she thought, considering what was visiting the desert today.

  It was definitely the poorer side of town, home to the laborers who sweated through the endless, changeless desert days performing Water Desert’s dirty, low-paid jobs. Their kids were left behind to find what fun they could amid the tired silvered boxes where they lived. One gang was playing basketball in an open area that passed for a park, trying to slam-dunk their ball into hoops on poles that were now leaning badly.

  Savi had her white paper mask on again, like Ketchell and Larik, who walked along with her. Nobody could see their faces. But that didn’t matter; all the kids and the few adul
ts sitting outside their homes knew they didn’t belong. Not that they cared.

  What do you want me to do? Savi asked active ops. When are you going to intercept?

  We are working on isolating the main target group. Continue with your mission.

  Confirmed, she sent back.

  Her apprehension was growing, and with it the thrill. What she was doing was going to take a lot of these people out of circulation. It was all that mattered to her. Talish would be proud. It was eight years now since her little cousin had been caught in the crossfire between the police and a radical group called Path of Light, as the militants stormed a government building in Noida. He had his cyber legs now, and an artificial kidney, but for three months the whole family had been immersed in an agony of waiting and praying around his hospital bed. Now Savi was playing her part in making sure no other innocents got hurt by psychotic ideologues who believed they had an absolute right to use force to achieve their goal.

  Arrest team moving into your area, active ops sent.

  They’re going to have to hurry. Only six minutes left.

  These are our own real special forces. You’re getting the red carpet treatment. Told you I’ve got your back.

  She smiled beneath her mask.

  They reached the end of Fountain Street. The substation was twenty meters ahead of them, a small square compound with a high gray metal fence around it, the base clotted with fast food wrappers and loose clumps of desert grass. She could hear the hum of the transformers as they fed power across the town and out to the airfield, keeping the air-con going and the civil engineering machines moving. Kintore’s consumption was phenomenal.

  It was twenty-three years since the China National Sunpower Corporation had dropped the first solarwell into the sun, a simple spherical portal that plasma poured into, whose twin was sitting at the bottom of a giant MHD chamber on a trans-Neptune asteroid. The solar plasma flared out of the chamber like rocket exhaust, its powerful magnetic field generating a phenomenal current in the chamber’s induction coils. In one masterful stroke of ingenuity, the Chinese had solved Earth’s energy drought. Now the entire planet’s power came from a multitude of solarwells, producing vast amounts of cheap energy at zero environmental cost.

  Ten fifty-two. Five minutes left to go, and they started loitering around the last houses. Three other roads ended in the same area. There was nothing on the other side of the substation other than the desert. Kids laughed and shouted behind them.

  Savi turned to Ketchell. “Have your people seen anything?” As he swung around she caught a glimpse of the shoulder holster he was wearing under his white cotton jacket, weighed down by a large automatic pistol. Oh, shit.

  “No. We’re clear. Let’s do this.”

  Some of the group with me are armed. Warn the arrest team.

  Will do.

  They began sauntering along the stony road. Savi put her hand into the bag and found the hexagonal switch. There was only a moment’s hesitation before she turned it. I hope to hell Julisa built this right. She pressed down, hearing the button click.

  Ketchell and Larik both glanced at her when she exhaled loudly. “It’s armed,” she said.

  Ten fifty-three.

  They reached the fence. Savi kept walking but unslung the bag. She dropped it at the base of a post.

  Without saying anything, the three of them picked up their pace. Thirty seconds later they reached the top of Rennison Road. They crouched down behind a flimsy fence marking out a prefab’s yard. Savi worried the thin composite might fragment in the blast, producing a blizzard of shrapnel. “Did anyone see us?” she asked urgently.

  “All quiet,” Larik said. He started putting in a pair of foam earplugs.

  “Damn,” Savi grunted. “You got any spare?”

  He gave her another of his contemptuous glances and handed her a couple. She squeezed the first plug and started to worm it in. Something moved across the stony ground behind her. She stared in disbelief. A football was rolling out of Fountain Street heading straight for the substation. “No,” she whispered.

  Ketchell looked at her; then he saw the ball and his eyes widened in shock. “Shit.”

  The ball was only a few meters from the fence, and a boy was trotting along behind it; he was maybe eight or nine years old.

  “No.” Savi stood up. “No, get back.”

  “Stay down,” Ketchell growled at her.

  “Get away,” Savi yelled. “Away!”

  The boy looked around, seeing a woman wearing a white plastic mask waving frantically. He cocked his head and carried on following his ball.

  “Fuck!” Savi screeched. All she saw now was Talish, lying in his hospital bed, with so many tubes and organ support machines inserted into his flesh he’d ceased to become purely human. She started running.

  “No!” Larik bellowed behind her.

  The boy had almost reached the ball, which was rolling to a halt a couple of meters from the fence, level with the abandoned shoulder bag. He turned again, his expression growing uncertain as Savi sprinted hard toward him. “Get away, get away,” she yelled frantically.

  He didn’t know what to do. He took an uncertain step back, away from the wild eyes of the crazy woman. Then he realized she wasn’t going to stop, that she was going to run right into him. He turned and started to run.

  She flung her arms around him, picking him up despite his frightened wail and thrashing limbs. She kept running, desperate to build distance between her and the bag.

  Savi saw a flash, then nothing—

  * * *

  —

  The waiting room for the surgical wards was neutral in every respect. Pale gray carpet, white walls, with twin floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over nighttime Brisbane. Two rows of back-to-back settees were lined up down the center, their cushions thick and comfortable enough for worried families to spend the night curled up on them. High quality vending machines and a big wallscreen silently running news streams completed the décor.

  Yuri Alster had been waiting in it for more than an hour, but refused to sit. It meant his deputy, Kohei Yamada, couldn’t sit, either, which clearly pissed him off no end. They were the only two in the waiting room.

  Finally, long after midnight, the Reardon family came out of Ward Two. Ben Reardon was a short, bulky man in his early forties, with a bald head and a face that looked like it had been squashed flat. He seemed angry, which Yuri suspected was a permanent expression. Ben was employed running the machines that dug out the Icefall canals—tough work that he was well suited to. Dani, the current girlfriend, was barely twenty. A cliché relationship, Yuri decided, endorsed by her short denim skirt, showing off heavily tanned thighs, and a cheap green sport shirt that had the Alcides café logo on both sleeves.

  They walked down the corridor on either side of nine-year-old Toby Reardon’s wheelchair, as the boy was pushed along by a ward nurse. Ben scowled as Yuri stood in front of them.

  “What do you want?” he asked, exhaustion and fear giving him a raspy voice.

  “Just a couple of questions for Toby,” Yuri said as pleasantly as he could. He winked at the boy, whose cheeks and right arm were covered in patches of medskin. There was a cast holding one leg rigid, too.

  “No way,” Ben snapped. “We’ve answered every question a dozen times.”

  “I’m not police,” Yuri said. “I’m from Connexion Security.”

  “Clear off, mate. Come back in a week. My boy got blown up. You understand that? He’s nine years old, and the bastards blew him up!”

  “I know. And Connexion’s medical plan covers your family, even for this. That’s worth a minute, surely?”

  Ben took a step forward, his fists bunching. “Are you threatening me?”

  “I’m asking you to do the right thing.”

  “I don’t mind, Dad,” Toby said.


  “We’re going home!”

  “A few questions and you won’t see me again, okay? I can arrange for an extra week’s paid leave, which you can spend here in the city, or maybe in a Gold Coast resort—next to the sea. Be nice, that. Big change from Kintore. You can be with Toby while he recovers. That’s something we all want, isn’t it?”

  Ben hesitated, clearly hating himself for being tempted.

  “It’d be good,” Dani said tentatively.

  Ben ignored her. “How about it, big fella?” he asked Toby. “Only if you’re up to it.”

  “Game on, Dad.”

  Ben glared at Yuri. “Be quick.”

  “Sure.” Yuri knelt down so his face was level with Toby’s. “Did the doctors fix you up okay?”

  “Yeah. I guess.”

  “So, you were playing football, right?”

  “Yeah, with some of me mates. It’s my ball, see. Dad gave it to me. I think it’s gone now. I didn’t see it after.”

  “I’ll get you another one,” Ben said.

  “Was all this happening at the end of Fountain Road?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And what happened?”

  “Jaze kicked it. Hard, like. I went to bring it back.”

  “From the electric station?”

  “Yeah, it didn’t go in or nothing. Honest. Dad’s told me it’s dangerous in there.”

  “Your dad’s quite right. So you got the ball?”

  “No. This woman was shouting, stuff like ‘no’ and ‘go away.’ She ran at me.”

  Yuri held up a small tablet, which was showing Savi’s picture. “Is this her?”