The Saints of Salvation [British Ed.]

by Peter F. Hamilton

  The front door was another faux-Tudor monstrosity – all bulky panels with iron bolts driven through them. He took a strip of charge tape out of the cycle’s pannier, ready to apply it to the lock, when Tye reported the darkware had gained full control over the house network. Ollie drew his nerve-block pistol and ordered the front door to unlock. A soft click confirmed it had obeyed, and he kicked it open. Bursting in like some goon out of a Sumiko interactive pumped up his exhilaration. Nothing like the buzz he used to get on Legion raids, but still his confidence and focus were high.

  The wood-panelled hall was dark and long, ending in a broad, curving staircase. ‘Hey, motherfucker,’ he bellowed. ‘Come out. Now! I wanna talk to you.’

  Tye told him someone’s altme was connecting to a house network node upstairs, requesting an emergency link to the police G8Turing. ‘Response insertion,’ he ordered his altme. The icons changed, confirming he was the only response Schumder was going to get.

  ‘Dick move, Brandon Schumder,’ he said. ‘Even if you’d got through to the cops, my dark-ops team inside your house right now could slaughter any tactical squad before they reached the front door. Now get your arse downstairs like a good boy, or there will be consequences.’ The phantom faces escorting him smiled their approval as he imagined their reaction to Schumder’s panicked call for help.

  ‘Don’t shoot,’ a voice called from upstairs. ‘Please, we’re not armed.’

  Brandon Schumder shuffled into view at the top of the stairs. He was taller than Lolo, and so thin Ollie thought he might be ill. But then Mensi, his wife, was standing behind him, and she was almost as tall and equally thin. Ollie never could get over the way rich people lived. Cosmetics and anti-ageing procedures, sure – who wouldn’t if you had the money? – but shit like this was just creepy.

  ‘Get down here,’ he ordered.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Schumder said anxiously. He put a foot on the first step as if he expected it to electrocute him. ‘Take anything you want. Anything. We’ll open the safe for you.’

  ‘Keep coming.’

  Schumder was four steps from the bottom when Ollie shot Mensi with the nerve-block pistol. She juddered helplessly, a forced gagging sound coming from her throat, and started to collapse.

  ‘No!’ Schumder cried and struggled to catch her. He made it to the hall floor, the two of them going down in a tangle as Mensi’s weight drove him to his knees. Ollie shot him, too.

  Five minutes later, he’d used the duct tape to secure Mensi to a heavy dining-room chair, while Brandon was taped spread-eagled on the table. Ollie had run out of duct tape before the last leg was secured, so he had to cut off a curtain cord and use that. He waited until the nerve block had faded and they’d started to recover. Mensi began a miserable wailing until he went and stood in front of her, pressing the pistol to her temple.

  ‘This is a nerve blocker. It’s meant to incapacitate your body if I shoot you from a distance,’ he explained. ‘If I fire it now, at zero range, I might just as well be dropping your brain into a food blender. It will turn you into a zombie, and not the good kind. So be quiet. Understand?’

  She gave him a petrified look, the tears streaming down her face. But she clenched her jaw tight shut.

  Ollie went back to the table and looked down at Brandon.

  ‘You don’t have to do this,’ Brandon said. ‘I told you to take anything you want. Just please don’t hurt us.’

  ‘Okay,’ Ollie said. ‘You sound like a reasonable man. We both want to get this over as quickly as possible, with minimal pain, so this should be easy. You know, if my friend Lars was here, he’d enjoy beating seven types of crap out of you.’

  Brandon tensed up, a whimper escaping from his lips.

  ‘But Lars is dead.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Why?’ Ollie taunted. ‘You didn’t know him. Or did you?’

  ‘I don’t think so. No.’

  ‘No. But I’m trying to find the person I hold responsible, so you’ll understand why I’m anxious to get the right information.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re in banking, right? To be exact, the Reindal Commerzebank?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good, then I’ve got the right person.’ Ollie leant over, putting his face centimetres from Brandon’s. ‘Where does Karno Larson live?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Oh, shit. Wrong answer.’

  ‘But I don’t know . . .’

  Ollie stuffed a napkin into Brandon’s mouth, forcing a lot of the linen down. Brandon strained against it, making muffled gasps.

  ‘Remember,’ Ollie told Mensi. ‘One word from you and—’ He made a pistol with two fingers, and shot her with it.

  She whimpered in terror.

  This was the part Ollie had kept telling himself – promising himself – he could do.

  Right from the start he’d known that Brandon would be difficult. This was the kind of man who would’ve been given security counter-training by the bank, and there’d be fear, too – fear of giving up Karno, and what would happen to him if he did. Making him talk needed a whole new approach – and attitude. Ollie had never done that before.

  The Legion had concentrated on scams and raids. No one had got hurt – well, apart from the ones Lars had beaten to a pulp. But even Lars didn’t do this kind of thing. Tronde could have done it without hesitation, him with that unnervingly cold streak, and maybe Piotr, too. But they were dead, so it was all down to Ollie.

  He put the case he’d got from Rebecca The-L on the table next to Brandon and opened the lid. Brandon stopped moaning and tried to get a look at what was inside. Ollie slipped on the protective gloves and picked up the first synth slug. Its strange grainy coating sparkled in the weak light filtering through the windows.

  ‘Do you know what this is?’ Ollie asked.

  Brandon shook his head, his muted voice trying to protest.

  ‘It’s a synth slug.’ Ollie held it up as if seeing it for the first time. ‘And that sparkle is the artificial diamond bristles it grows, the same as we grow hair. You know what they say about diamonds, apart from being a girl’s best friend? The hardest natural substance there is. Cuts through anything. Really. Cuts.’

  Brandon froze, his chest heaving as he tried to yell in protest.

  ‘The slug doesn’t have a brain,’ Ollie said, ‘but it does have a bioprocessor cluster which allows me to control it.’ He pressed it against the sole of Brandon’s foot.

  This was it – the point where he’d either chicken out, or . . . He closed his eyes. Instead of Tye’s splash in his tarsus lens, all he could see were two cocoons: his brother Bik, and Gran.

  For a long moment he stood perfectly still. Then he activated the synth slug’s control icon. It started to wriggle against Brandon’s foot. The tiny diamond fibres gnawed through the skin, and blood began to seep out. Brandon was desperately trying to scream, the cords on his neck standing proud as he struggled against the tape holding him down.

  Ollie took out the second synth slug and pressed it to Brandon’s other foot. It squirmed about, chewing its way into the flesh.

  ‘The best thing about them is they can grind their way up through you very precisely,’ Ollie explained to a frantic, tormented Brandon. ‘To start with, I’ll get them to stay inside the bone, munching their way up the marrow. After all, I don’t want them to cut an artery or something critical; that way you’d bleed out and die before you told me what I want to know. And I really want to know where Karno Larson lives. But you’re a big, strong, determined bloke, ain’t you? Not some pussy who’ll squeal and give it up. So it’s going to take a while. After they’ve chewed all the leg marrow into soup, I’ll steer them into your ribcage. Don’t worry; I’ll keep them out of your spine. Gotta leave all those nerves intact, so you can feel what’s happening, yeah?’

  On the table, Brandon looked as if he was having a heart attack, writhing around so badly the tape was cutting into his wrists. Ollie ordered the s
lugs to pause. They were barely a centimetre inside Bandon’s feet, with blood and pulverized bone running out of the holes they’d gouged. He leant over, staring down at his captive.

  ‘Did you wanna say something?’

  Brandon was shouting so hard he even managed to dislodge the napkin slightly.

  Ollie put his finger to his lips. ‘Before I take the napkin out, I’m going to repeat the question: Where does Karno Larson live? If you say anything other than that – if you start swearing or threatening me – I won’t let you speak again until the slugs have reached your hip bones via your balls. Understand?’

  A near-hysterical Brandon nodded feverishly.

  So slowly it was a taunt, Ollie pulled the napkin out of Brandon’s mouth.

  ‘Docklands!’ Brandon yelled. ‘Karno’s in Docklands. Royal Victoria Docks, the Icona apartment block. Third floor. I promise! He never leaves any more, not since Blitz2 started. He’ll be there.’

  ‘Cheers, fella,’ Ollie said, and stuffed the napkin back in. He retrieved the synth slugs and dropped them back in the case. He grinned cheerfully at a weeping Mensi and walked out through the front door. He managed to take five steps along the drive before he doubled over and threw up onto the gravel.

  Delta Pavonis

  9th December 2206

  Eight AUs beyond the star’s outer cometary belt, the rim of the circular portal glowed a rich cobalt blue as it expanded out to fifty metres in diameter. An Olyix mid-level transport ship flew out of the opening – a truncated cone sixty metres long and thirty wide, its fuselage a dark burgundy colour that absorbed what little light there was. Thin purple ion plumes gusted out of gill-like vents near the rear, and it began to accelerate at a steady one point three gees.

  ‘Gravitonic drive at seventy per cent,’ Jessika Mye announced cheerfully.

  Sitting opposite her in the pearl-grey virtual chamber that was the Avenging Heretic’s bridge, Callum saw her lips twitch in amusement. He wondered just how much of that was real. The nervecapture routine could be adjusted for reaction sensitivity, either toning down or emphasizing every expression and tic the emotional state produced. Like Alik and Yuri, Callum couldn’t be arsed with it; faffing about with crap like that was just a higher-resolution version of choosing an expresme icon for solnet comms. He’d stopped doing that when he was fifteen.

  Same with the bridge, which was as basic as you could get. Five consoles with wraparound screens, and flight controls so simple they could have come from the late twentieth century. They didn’t exist, of course; this virtual was being fed into his brain via a cortical interface. Soćko had designed it for them, warning it was dangerous. If the Olyix ever gained access to the Avenging Heretic’s network, the onemind could subvert their minds with a neurovirus.

  ‘So we’d better not get caught,’ Alik had replied levelly at the planning meeting; that had been eighteen months ago.

  Callum watched the data on his console screen, the colourful wave motions of graphs and icons similar to a tarsus lens splash. When he focused on them, the rest of the bridge drifted away, leaving him at the centre of pure information. Space this far out from Delta Pavonis was relatively clear, confirmed by the minimal impacts against the protective distortion field around the ship. Mass sensors confirmed there was nothing other than hydrogen atoms and a few grains of carbon within a thousand kilometres of the hull. Power flow from the fusion generators into the systems seemed to be okay, and the network was glitch free.

  ‘Who’s first?’ Jessika asked.

  The information fell back into the console screen, and Callum was looking around at the other four chairs. They were laid out in a simple pentagon, with Kandara on his right, then Jessika, Alik and Yuri. All of them had spent the last year training for the flight, trying to get their heads around the gravitonic drive and wormhole theory. Their collective age didn’t help; new concepts didn’t sit well in old brain cells. But slowly they’d come to control the simulations without screwing up too badly.

  ‘I’ll go,’ Callum said.

  Alik laughed. ‘You owe me fifty,’ he told Yuri.

  Yuri looked glum.

  ‘What?’ Callum asked.

  ‘Mr Save-the-world-twice-before-lunch,’ Alik gloated. ‘Of course you’d want to fly this fucker. Feel the glory again.’

  ‘Hey, I was in emergency detox for eight years, a century ago. I gave up my adrenalin junkie days when I left. I want to get this right because we have to. And I didn’t hear you two pussies racing to volunteer.’

  Kandara rolled her eyes. ‘Boys, boys.’

  Callum didn’t think her nervecapture routine was turned up, either.

  ‘Take it, Callum,’ Jessika said. She and Kandara exchanged a smirk.

  The control columns on Callum’s console went active. He placed his hands on them. It was a strange feeling. He wasn’t holding the ergonomic handles, which was the vision being fed into his mind. Instead his nerves sensed patterns like slow-moving currents of water. The screen’s information closed in on him again, and he shifted the patterns, perceiving the gravitonic drive’s energies reformatting. The Avenging Heretic’s vector altered. Navigational data expanded, and he started plotting a new course, shifting a shoal of cursors by thought alone. Is my visual focus doing that?

  Reassigning his perception and responses to integrate with the ship’s network was still a work in progress. Jessika had said that eventually they wouldn’t even need the bridge simulacrum; control would be an autonomic thought. Callum considered she might have been a bit generous in her assessment of how adaptive they were.

  The variable portal they’d come through was now three thousand kilometres behind them. Eighteen thousand kilometres away, a dark rubble pile asteroid was tumbling along its lonely orbit. Acceleration vectors materialized in the navigation data, and Callum began to shape the drive patterns to match them, putting the ship on a course that would end in a rendezvous.

  ‘Nicely done,’ Yuri said.

  The Avenging Heretic accelerated to two point two gees. There were some fluctuations in the thrust, which Callum did his best to get under control. His manipulation of the patterns wasn’t as proficient as he’d have liked.

  ‘Don’t overcompensate,’ Jessika said. ‘Keep the alterations smaller and smoother. The routines are adaptive; they’ll learn your style.’

  Callum did his best to quash an instinctive defensiveness; she was advising, not criticizing. The oscillations in the drive levelled out.

  They took it in turns to fly the Avenging Heretic: Yuri decelerating for rendezvous; Kandara manoeuvring around the frozen asteroid; Alik taking them back to the portal. Callum felt Alik had a way to go before he was as proficient as the others but didn’t say anything.

  Jessika brought them back through the portal and onto the cradle in Kruse Station. Atmosphere began to vent back into the big chamber.

  Callum looked around the bridge, and suddenly the effort of de-tanking was depressing. ‘We could just stay here until the next test flight.’

  ‘No way,’ Kandara said. ‘We’re going to be spending a long time in these tanks. And I, for one, am not adding to that.’ Her image imploded in a silent cloud of pixels.

  ‘The design crew needs to run analysis on the tanks,’ Jessika said. ‘This is the first time they’ve been used on an actual flight. Simulation runs can only tell us so much.’ She shrugged and vanished.

  Yuri’s grin was so wide he must have had his nervecapture routine turned up to eleven.

  ‘Disengage the suspension tank,’ Callum told Apollo, his altme. The neural interface routines were now good enough to read his vocalization impulses directly. Besides, he couldn’t use his voice peripheral – not with an oxygen nozzle filling his mouth.

  Feeling seeped back into his brain, along with the thick, gurgling sound of fluid draining out of the suspension tank. The frame holding him juddered slightly, and then there was a solid floor under his feet. A long strip of green and amber medical icons splashed across
his tarsus lens, and he blinked his eyes open.

  Directly ahead of him was the curving glass wall of the tank, smeared in clear fluid. With full body sensation returned, he could feel the droplets all over his skin and sneezed them out of his nose. The tube in his mouth wriggled outwards, creating a moment of panic. Serpent down my throat. He started to gag as the end pulled free of his lips, dripping goo around his feet. More icons flashed and turned green. Umbilicals disconnected from his navel sockets with popping sounds. The metallic tubes coiled away into the top of the tank. Then he was trying not to grimace as the waste pipes withdrew.

  Final icon warning, and he braced his feet. The frame released him, and the glass wall parted to let him out. He was standing on a metal grid in the Avenging Heretic’s central chamber – a cylinder twenty metres high, divided into three sections by the grid floors. The ship had been heavily modified from its Olyix design and refitted with five suspension chambers. Human equipment and materials had supplanted the original walls, producing a metallic tube cluttered with blank system cabinets that made Callum think of a twentieth-century submarine. The emphasis was on function rather than the elan of twenty-third-century design, while the disturbingly coffin-like tanks seemed to have been resurrected from the period of history occupied by the Inquisition.

  ‘You were in a hurry to get out of there,’ Callum said to Kandara as they waited for Alik and Yuri to climb down the ladder to the lower deck.

  ‘And you’re okay in that white bubble?’ she asked curiously.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘I’m not. We need to refine it. A lot.’

  ‘It does its job.’

  ‘Callum, we’re going to be spending years together in the bridge simulacrum. I need to not get spooked every time.’

  ‘We can add some texture. Like you say, we’ll have plenty of time to try out new designs.’