Neutronium Alchemist - Consolidation nd-3

by Peter F. Hamilton

  The image showed Gerald was holding a spoon with both hands. Slowly and relentlessly he was flexing it, bending the stem just below the scoop. It was made of a strong composite, but Jansen Kovak could see the tiny white stress fractures crinkling the surface. Another minute and the spoon would break, leaving Gerald with a long spike which although not exactly sharp could certainly harm anyone caught on the end of a lunge.

  “Dr Dobbs,” Jansen datavised. “I think we have a problem with Skibbow.”

  “What now?” Dobbs asked. He had only just caught up on his appointments; yesterday’s episode with Skibbow in the lounge had wrecked his schedule. Skibbow had been recovering well up until that point. Bad luck his daughter had turned up again—certainly the timing, anyway. Although the fact she was still alive could eventually be worked into his therapy, give him a long-term achievement goal.

  “He’s smuggled a spoon out of the lounge. I think he’s going to use it as a weapon.”

  “Oh, great, just what I need.” Riley Dobbs hurriedly finished with the patient he was counselling, and accessed the facility’s AI. He retrieved the interpretation routine which could make sense of Skibbow’s unique thought patterns and opened a channel to the debrief nanonics. This kind of grubby mental spying was totally unethical; but then he had discarded the constraints of the General Medical Council all those years ago when he came to work for the Royal Navy. Besides, if he was to effect any kind of cure on Skibbow, he needed to know exactly what kind of demons were driving the man. Resorting to a weapon, however feeble, seemed extreme for Skibbow.

  The images were slow to form in Dobbs’s mind. Gerald’s thoughts were in turmoil, fast-paced, flicking between present reality and extrapolated fantasies.

  Dobbs saw the pale blue wall of the bedroom, fringed with the redness which came from squinted eyes. Feeling the spoon in his hands, the friction heat building up in its stem. Tired arm muscles as they pushed and pulled at the stubborn composite. “And they’ll regret getting in my way. God will they ever.”

  Image shift to—a corridor. Kovak screaming in pain as he sinks to his knees, the spoon handle jutting out of his white tunic. Blood spreading over his chest, drops splattering on the floor. Dr Dobbs was already sprawled facedown on the corridor floor, his whole body soaked in glistening blood. “Which is less than he deserves.” Kovak emitted a last gurgle and died. Gerald pulled the Weapon of Vengeance from his chest and carried on down the corridor. Sanatorium staff peered fearfully out of doors, only to shrink back when they saw who was coming. As well they might; they knew who had Right and Justice on his side.

  Shifting back—to the bedroom, where the damn spoon still hadn’t snapped. His breath was becoming ragged now. But still he persevered. A soundless mutter of: “Come on. Please!”

  Shifting—to the journey through Guyana, a confused blur of rock walls. Not actually knowing the geometry of the asteroid; but he’d find a way. Asteroid spaceports were always attached up at the axis. There would be trains, lifts . . .

  Back—when the spoon finally snaps, making his taut arms judder. “Now I can begin. I’m coming for you, darling. Daddy’s coming.”

  To—fly through space. Stars streaking into blue-white lightning outside the ship’s hull as he rushes to the strange distant habitat. And there’s Marie waiting for him at the end of the voyage, adrift in space, clad in those fragile white swirls of gauze, luscious hair blown back by the breeze. Where she says to him: “They’ll tell you that you shouldn’t have come, Daddy.”

  “Oh, but I should,” he replies. “You need me, darling. I know what you’re going through. I can drive the demon out. You’ll feel nothing as I push you into zero-tau.” And so he lays her gently down into the plastic coffin and closes the lid. Blackness eclipses her, then ends to show her face smiling up at him, twinkling tears of gratitude slipping from her eyes.

  Which is why he’s standing up now, slipping the jagged spoon handle into his sleeve. Calm. Take deep calming breaths now. There’s the door. Daddy’s coming to rescue you, baby. He is.

  Riley Dobbs cancelled the interpretation routine. “Oh, bugger.” He ordered Gerald’s debrief nanonics to induce somnolence within the fevered brain.

  Nerves and courage fired up, Gerald was reaching for the bedroom door when a wave of tiredness slapped into him with an almost physical force. He sagged, swaying on his feet as muscles became too exhausted to carry him. The bed loomed before him, and he was toppling towards it as darkness and silence poured into the room.

  “Jansen,” Riley Dobbs datavised. “Get in there and take the spoon away, and any other implements you can find. Then I want him transferred to a condition three regime; twenty-four-hour observation, and a softcare environment. He’s going to be a dangerous pain until we can wean him off this new obsession.”

  • • •

  Kiera Salter had dispatched fifteen hellhawks to the Oshanko sector of the Confederation to seed dissent into the communications nets of the Imperium’s worlds and asteroid settlements. That was three days ago.

  Now, Rubra observed eleven wormhole termini blink open to disgorge the survivors. Two bloated warplanes, and a sinister featureless black aeromissile-shape kept a loose formation with eight Olympian-sized harpies who flapped their way back towards Valisk’s docking ledges with lethargic, defeated wing strokes.

  I see the Emperor’s navy has lived up to its top gun reputation,rubra remarked in a tone of high spirits. Just how is troop morale coming along these days? That’s the eighth of Kiera’s little jaunts in which your hellhawks have taken a beating from unfriendly natives. Any grumblings of rebellion at the new regime yet? A few discreet suggestions that priorities ought to be altered?

  Screw you,dariat retorted. he was sitting on a small riverbank of crumbling earth, dark water flowing swiftly below his dangling feet. Occasionally he caught sight of a big garpike slithering past on the way to its spawning ground upriver. Five hundred metres away in the other direction the water tipped over a shallow cliff to splatter down into the circumfluous saltwater reservoir ringing the endcap. Out here among the habitat’s low rolling hills the eight separate xenoc grasses waged a continual war for primacy. As they all came to seed at different times of the year none ever won an outright victory. Right now it was a salmon-pink Tallok-aboriginal variety which was flourishing, its slender corkscrew blades tangling in a dense blanket of dry candyfloss which matted the ground. Back along the cylindrical habitat, Dariat could see the broad rosy bracelet fading to emerald around the midsection where the starscraper lobbies were; and in turn that rich terrestrial vegetation eventually petered away into the ochre scrub desert which occupied the far end. The bands of colour were as striking as they were regular; it was as if someone had sprayed them on while Valisk turned on a lathe.

  Of course, you wouldn’t actually know much about what’s happening to the subjects of Kiera’s politburo dictatorship these days,rubra continued pleasantly. You being a loner now. Did you know dear old Bonney was shouting for you yesterday? I whisked one of the non-possessed away from her clutches, put him on a tube carriage, and shot him off to one of my safe areas. I don’t think she was very happy about it. Your name came up several times.

  Sarcasm is a pitiful form of wit.

  Absolutely, my boy. So you won’t be letting it get to you, will you?

  No.

  Mind you, Kiera is having some success. The second hellhawk full of kids arrived this morning, looking for that bright new world she promised in her recording. Two dozen of them; the youngest was only nine. Would you like to see what was done to them so they could be possessed? I have all the memories, nobody tried to block my perception from that ceremony.

  Shut up.

  Oh, dear, is that a twang of conscience I detect?

  As you well know, I don’t care what happens to the morons who get suckered here. All I’m interested in is how badly I’m going to fuck you up.

  I understand. But then I know you better than Kiera does. It’s a pity you do
n’t understand me.

  Wrong. I know you completely.

  You don’t, my boy. You don’t know what I’m holding secret. Anastasia would thank me for what I’m doing, the protection I’m extending you.

  Dariat growled, sinking his head into his hands. He had chosen this spot for the seclusion it offered from Kiera’s merry band of maniacs. He wanted somewhere quiet to meditate. Free from distractions he could try to formulate a mental pattern which had the ability to penetrate the neural strata. But he wasn’t free of distractions, he never could be. For Rubra would never tire of playing his game; the insinuations, the doubts, the dark hints.

  During the last thirty years, Dariat thought he’d perfected patience to an inhuman degree. But now he was finding that a different kind of patience was required. Despite a herculean resolution he was beginning to question if Rubra really did have any secrets. It was stupid, of course, because Rubra was bluffing, running an elaborate disinformation campaign. However, if Anastasia did have some secret, some legacy, the only entity who would know was Rubra.

  Yet if it did exist, why hadn’t Rubra used it already? Both of them knew this was a struggle to the bitterest of ends.

  Anastasia could never have done anything which would make him betray himself. Not sweet Anastasia, who had always warned him about Anstid. Her Lord Thoale made sure she knew the consequences of every action. Anastasia understood destiny. Why did I never listen to her?

  Anastasia left nothing for me,he said.

  Oh, yeah? In that case, I’ll do a deal with you, Dariat.

  Not interested.

  You should be. I’m asking you to join me.

  What?

  Join me, here in the neural strata. Transfer yourself over like a dying Edenist. We can become a duality.

  You have got to be fucking joking.

  No. I have been considering this for some time. Our current situation is not going to end well, not for either of us. Both of us are at odds with Kiera; that will never change. But together we could beat her easily, purge the habitat of her cronies. You can rule Valisk yet.

  You used to control a multistellar industrial empire, Rubra. Now look what you’re reduced to. You’re pathetic, Rubra. Contemptible. And the best thing is, you know it.

  Rubra shifted his principal focus from the linen-suited young man, withdrawing to contemplate a general perception of the habitat. Bonney Lewin was missing again. That damn woman was getting too good at foxing his observation routines. He automatically expanded the secondary routines surrounding and protecting the remaining non-possessed. She’d show up near one of them soon enough.

  He didn’t agree,rubra said to the kohistan consensus.

  That is unfortunate. Salter is expending a great deal of effort to collect her Deadnight followers.

  Her what?

  Deadnight is the name which her subversive recording has acquired. Unfortunately a great many young Adamists are finding it seductive.

  Don’t I know it. You should see what she does to them when they get here. Those hellhawks should never have been allowed to collect them.

  There is little we can do. We do not have the capability to shadow every hellhawk flight.

  Pity.

  Yes. The hellhawks are causing us some concern. So far they have not been used in an aggressor role. If they were deployed in combat with Valisk’s armament resources behind them, they would pose a formidable problem.

  So you keep telling me. Don’t say you’ve finally come to a decision?

  We have. With your permission we would like to remove their threat potential.

  Do as you would be done by, and do it first. Well, well, you’ve finally started thinking like me. There’s hope for all of you yet. Okay, go ahead.

  Thank you, Rubra. We know this must be difficult for you.

  Just make damn sure you don’t miss. Some of my industrial stations are very close to my shell.

  Rubra had always maintained an above-average number of Strategic Defence platforms around Valisk. Given his semi-paranoid nature it was inevitable he should want to make local space as secure as possible. Forty-five weapons platforms covered a bubble of space fifty thousand kilometres in diameter with the habitat and its comprehensive parade of industrial stations at the centre. They were complemented by two hundred sensor satellites, sweeping both inwards and outwards. No one had ever attempted an act of aggression within Valisk’s sphere of interest—a remarkable achievement considering the kind of ships which frequented the spaceport.

  Magellanic Itg had manufactured the network, developing indigenous designs and fabricating all the components itself. A policy which had earned the company a healthy quantity of export orders. It also enabled Rubra to install his personality as the network’s executive. He certainly wasn’t about to trust any of his woefully ineffectual descendants with his own defence.

  That arrangement had come to an abrupt end with the emergence of the possessed. His control over the network was via affinity with bitek management processors that were integrated into every platform’s command circuitry. He hadn’t even realized he’d lost control of the platforms until he’d attempted to interdict the hellhawks when they first revealed themselves. Afterwards, he’d worked out that somebody—that little shit Dariat, no doubt—had subverted his SD governor thought routines long enough to load powerdown orders into every platform.

  With the power off, there was no way of regaining control through the bitek processors. Every platform would have to be reactivated manually. Which was exactly what Kiera had done. Spacecraft had rendezvoused with the platforms and taken out Rubra’s bitek management processors, replacing them with electronic processors and new fire authority codes.

  A new SD Command centre was established in the counter-rotating spaceport, outside Rubra’s influence. He couldn’t strike at that like he could the starscrapers. The possessed technicians who reactivated the network were convinced they had made it independent, a system which only Kiera and her newly installed codes could control.

  What neither they nor Dariat quite appreciated were the myriad number of physical interfaces between the neural strata and Valisk’s communications net. The tube trains and the starscraper lifts were the most obvious examples, but every mechanical and electronic utility system had a similar junction, a small processor nodule which converted fibre optic pulses to nerve impulses and vice versa. And Magellanic Itg not only built Valisk’s communications net, it also supplied ninety per cent of the counter-rotating spaceport’s electronics. A fact which even fewer people were aware of was that every company processor had a back-door access function hardwired in, to which Rubra alone had the key.

  Within seconds of the possessed establishing their new SD command channels he was in the system. A delicious irony, he felt, a ghost in the ghosts’ machinery. The devious interface circuits he’d established to gain entry couldn’t support anything like the data traffic necessary to give him full control of the platforms once more, but he could certainly do unto others what they’d done to him.

  On the ready signal from the Kohistan Consensus, Rubra immediately sent a squall of orders out to the SD platforms. Command codes were wiped and replaced, safety limiters were taken off line, fusion generator management programs were reformatted.

  In the commandeered spaceport management office used to run the habitat’s SD network, every single alarm tripped at once. The whole room was flooded with red light from AV projectors and holoscreens. Then the power went off, plunging the crew into darkness.

  “What the holy fuck is happening?” the recently appointed network captain shouted. A bright candle flame ignited at the tip of his index finger, revealing equally confounded faces all around him. He reached for his communications block to call Kiera Salter, dreading what she would say. But his hand never made it.

  “Oh, shit, look ,” someone cried.

  Severe white light began to flood in through the office’s single port.

  In forty-five fusion generators the
plasma jet had become unstable, perturbed by rogue manipulations in the magnetic confinement field. Burnthrough occurred, plasma striking the confinement chamber walls, vaporizing the material, which increased the pressure a thousandfold. Forty-five fusion generators ruptured almost simultaneously, tearing apart the SD platforms in a burst of five million degree shrapnel and irradiated gas.

  You’re clear,rubra told the waiting fleet.

  Three hundred wormhole termini opened, englobing the habitat. Voidhawks shot out. Two hundred were designated to eradicate the industrial stations, depriving Kiera of their enormous armament manufacturing base. The bitek starships immediately swooped around onto their assault vectors. Kinetic missiles flashed out of their launch cradles, closing on the stations at sixteen gees. Each salvo was aimed so that the impact blast would kick the debris shower away from the habitat, minimizing the possibility of collision damage to the polyp shell.

  The remaining hundred voidhawks were given suppression duties. Flying in ten-strong formations they broadcast affinity warnings to the thoroughly disconcerted hellhawks sitting on the docking ledges, ordering them to remain where they were. Sharp ribbons of ruby-red light from targeting lasers made the ledge polyp shimmer like black ice speared by an early morning sun. Refracted beams twisted around the alien shapes perched on the pedestals as the voidhawks strove to match their discordant vectors with the habitat’s rotation.

  Closer to the habitat, cyclones of shiny debris were churning out from the ruined industrial stations. Victorious voidhawks dived and spun above the metallic constellations, racing away ahead of the perilous wavefront of sharp high-velocity slivers. The hellhawks sat on their pedestals, observing the carnage with mute impotence.

  Exemplary shooting,rubra told the kohistan consensus. Just remember when this is all over, you’re paying Magellanic Itg’s compensation claim.

  Three hundred wormhole interstices opened. The voidhawks vanished in an extraordinary display of synchronization. Elapsed time of the attack was ninety-three seconds.