The Saints of Salvation [British Ed.]

by Peter F. Hamilton

She took a slim harness cable from her belt and passed it around a thick pipe trunk. She pulled hard; it held. It’d probably take her weight, she decided.

  ‘Got one,’ Yuri said. ‘Organic conductor cable. Looks like a thick green vine, see? It leads to this unit here.’

  ‘I’ll check the other side,’ Callum said.

  ‘They’ll have a backup cable,’ Jessika said. ‘Probably more than one.’

  ‘And a backup membrane generator, too,’ Callum said. ‘Stands to reason. I would.’

  Kandara wanted to shout at them to hurry. Get a grip. They know what they’re doing.

  All across the hangar ceiling, the slim lighting strands began to get brighter. A lot brighter. Her suit helmet had to apply filters to block the glare.

  ‘Oh, Mother Mary!’ She brought the pistol up to cover the tunnel opening, squeezing so tight it was a miracle the grip didn’t shatter. Apertures along her jacket sleeves opened. The light was just as intense in the infrared spectrum, producing a uniform brilliance that jammed her sensors. Not a coincidence. ‘They’re coming!’

  She concentrated hard on the feed from the creeperdrone sensors. The tunnel illumination was as bright as the hangar, but there was no movement in there.

  ‘Alik.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Kill the nexus.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The neuralstratum nexus. Kill it. Now! We have to stop the onemind seeing what’s going on in here.’

  Her tactical monitor routines detected movement in the hangar behind Alik. She spun around, crouching –

  Gox Quint

  Salvation of Life

  I observed through the neuralstratum as the four little flying machines swooped across the hangar and struck the entrance membrane, stopping them in mid-air. With my gentle misdirection diverting the local nexus, the extraordinary sight didn’t reach the onemind. Even if it had, I don’t think the onemind would have paid any attention. The human armada was breaking out of the temporal distortions we’d ensnared them in. Now Resolution ships were being destroyed, as moments ago they had been the destroyers. That alone was profoundly worrying to the fullmind, absorbing every facet of its intellect. To me the arrival of the humans in such appalling force was indicative of its betrayal. How could our leadership have been so ignorant, so complacent, so fucking stupid?

  Our sacrosanct wormhole routes into the galaxy were lost. Our pious fleets decimated by terrible human weapons. Our hallowed enclave – the sacred core of our purpose, the reason we exist – invaded. Violated by animals who barely qualify as sentient. They brought a neutron star to kill our sun, for fuck’s sake.

  All because the fullmind would not deign to think the unthinkable: that we were not secure against the Neána and Katos and others whose ships had escaped being welcomed into our glorious pilgrimage.

  The truly pitiful fullmind orthodoxy: How could we have been chosen by the God at the End of Time if it did not believe us to be supreme? And how would our god not know, up there in the future, about any dangerous challenges that we would face? If we, its chosen ones, were placed under a genuine threat, it would warn us with another message, allowing us to eradicate that threat before it developed.

  Our fullmind believes it understood the divine. What bullshit arrogance! An arrogance that has condemned us. We have to prove ourselves to our god, not the other way around. Any fuckwit knows this.

  So now the exquisite history of the Olyix will be extinguished along with our existence. By humans. Humans! The dumbest species in the galaxy – subverted, manipulated and nurtured for millennia by the bastard Neána.

  That might be the fate that awaits my fellow quint, but I’m not going quietly into the darkness and barbarism of a galaxy denied our benevolence. I will not fail our god. I see another path for myself now.

  The Saints’ little flying drones can’t be an anti-arkship weapon; they’re too small. Besides, they would never dare damage the Salvation of Life, not with all the humans on board. So they must be some kind of communicator. There are thousands of arkships and Welcome ships here in limbo; the humans will not know which one is the Salvation of Life. The sneaky little shits hiding in here must be trying to call to their own kind for help, just as they did outside the gateway. Doing the same thing over and over again, because their inferior brains have no imagination.

  But they didn’t understand about the membrane and how it is strengthened to seal the atmosphere in now that the Salvation of Life rests in limbo. It stopped their drones. So they’ll have to come into the hangar themselves to cut the membrane power, or – given their basic mind – shoot the generator.

  The remaining four of my bodies abandoned their assigned tasks and headed for the hangar.

  If the fullmind cannot stop the neutron star – and it doesn’t believe it can – it will impact the enclave sun. The power rings and exotic matter rings will be destroyed, and ultimately the sun will nova, along with the sun outside. Everyone will have to leave – or die. In such a situation, the human fleet will no doubt devote themselves to saving our limbo ships. Their emotion-driven devotion to those who have not yet converted to our god’s grace is a profound strategic weakness – yet another of their failings.

  They don’t deserve the life this universe bestowed.

  And I am clearly the one our God at the End of Time has chosen to deliver divine retribution upon those who have enabled this catastrophe. If I am to maintain my purpose here and now, it will be to fight the profane invaders until the end. Every one of them killed now will be one less who lives to contaminate the time of our god.

  The Saints must have some kind of surveillance devices in the hangar.

  I couldn’t be sure they hadn’t seen me, even though I’d done nothing to betray my objective. So I planned for that. They’d watch the tunnel I was in to see if I came back. The schema of routes through the Salvation of Life is easy enough to follow. The hangar had twelve different entrances. I excluded the one the flying machines came out of and picked four others.

  The quartet of my bodies arrived and made their way along them, watching keenly for any sign of the despicable intruders. It didn’t take long. My perception inside the neuralstratum revealed the five Saints – awkward, badly evolved beasts scuttling out of a crack in a tunnel wall, wearing primitive pressure suits. They had a couple of fake server creatures with them, not Olyix in manufacture. I recognized the technology: creeperdrones. The criminal filth I utilized on Earth deployed similar machines in raids and petty fights.

  My quartet of bodies moved gingerly down the tunnels I selected, edging close to the hangar. Only three of the humans were carrying real weapons: two pistols and a maser carbine. There were also some long powerblades, which would be useless in a fight against me. The weapons my bodies were carrying were considerably more powerful, but I knew from our last encounter that Kandara was extremely dangerous. I’ll have to be cautious around that one.

  My quartet approached the hangar. Ahead of me, two of the Saints guarded the tunnel I was searching when the armada arrived; the other three were examining the area around the membrane generators. I activated my weapons and prepared to shoot. The Saints weren’t aware my quartet was almost on them, which gave me an advantage. But first I wanted to give myself an even better advantage. I extended my influence within the local nexus, no longer just passively misdirecting its perception filters but adapting the autonomic routines.

  I ordered the hangar’s light level to rise to its maximum. My quartet raced forwards into the glare while the humans were still confused. Body two emerged first, firing a multi-blade kinetic at Alik Monday, who was crouched beside the tunnel entrance. One of the FBI agent’s legs was severed above the knee; the other was badly flayed by the cloud of spinning blades. He toppled over, spraying blood.

  Human bodies: such a flawed evolution pathway. No other species we’ve welcomed has such a high nutrient fluid circulation pressure.

  I lost body two. Kandara had been crouched beside Ali
k Monday and reacted with a speed we weren’t expecting, returning fire with a pistol she was carrying. Bitch!

  Body two was struck and its internal organs were abruptly shredded. I felt shock and the impossible intimation of supreme pain – dulled by knowing it wasn’t real. But I’m still infected by human autonomic routines from my time – too, too long – running missions on Earth, when I incorporated their gross bodies into my quint, and even grosser thoughts into my mind to help me blend into their culture.

  Kandara shot body two with a wyst bullet. Its legs lost rigidity, and it fell to the hangar floor. The weight on impact ripped the damaged midsection skin apart, and it burst open, sending out a sticky wave of pulped tissue.

  My remaining four bodies all froze in shock. That’s a fucking human reflex – again. No true Olyix should do that. I have got to purge myself properly once this is over.

  Then I lost contact with the local nexus. The hangar light dropped to normal levels. I didn’t understand what had happened. Did the nexus fail? Or . . . had the onemind discovered my mis-direction? But its thoughtstream remained fixated on the approaching armada.

  Bodies three, four and five laid out a continuous fire pattern, strafing the areas where the Saints had been. They’d scattered; Kandara and Yuri were returning fire from the cover of tunnel entrances. Body three was hit, a leg wound. I spun it around fast, galloping as best I could for the tunnel it’d just emerged from. So nearly made it –

  Bullets penetrated the brain. I lost body three from unity.

  Motherfuckers!

  I was using body five to hammer the area around the hangar entrance with proton pellets. Callum and Jessika Mye, the Neána metahuman, had taken cover there. Long sections of the hangar’s biostructure erupted in static-blasted splinters and liquid. Lightning bolts snapped down from the ceiling as the pellets’ energy sought to equalize, gouging out smoking punctures in the rock floor. I shifted body five’s aim and shot one of the little dark drones. The machine’s power cell detonated instantly, its blastwave sending everyone – bodies four and five, and all the Saints – tumbling across the floor.

  Unity ended.

  I was alone in body five. Not possible. I knew body one was safe, away from the hangar; I could not be reduced to just one unless body four had been eliminated. Yet I only had this single body. I saw body four scramble upright fifty metres away from me. We looked at each other. In a crazy gesture, I extended my manipulator flesh towards it. And it was doing the same. Yet our thoughts could not connect.

  Some of my manipulator flesh was still gripping the proton pellet gun. I struggled upright, hunting for a target. One of the little creeperdrone fakes was on the ground beside body four, its legs already bending to right itself. I brought the pistol around, target locks bracketing the device. But before I could fire and blast the thing apart, a small green flame flickered out of an anatomically incorrect orifice on its upper body.

  Body four swayed around, juddering as if it was being physically assaulted by invisible foes. Its manipulator flesh formed a long tendril ending in an elongated sucker. I watched, helpless, as it began to clout the sucker against a small dripping wound on its upper body, as if trying to slap out a fire. No injury that small should conjure up such a frantic reaction. Body four’s legs began to jolt about, kicking wildly. Its manipulator flesh expanded in random surges, the tendril losing cohesion.

  I knew it was experiencing the impossible: agony. But Olyix quint do not feel pain. Our bodies are too advanced. We do not suffer like basic animals, like . . . humans.

  I shot the creeperdrone. The proton pellet demolished it in a blaze of scorched tatters. It must have been carrying an entanglement suppressor. The thoughts of body one and body four reunified with mine. Thank fuck for that. We became full Gox quint again. No . . . part of us was dying; we could feel our brain dissolve as the toxin bit deep into our cells, spreading like wildfire. Precious memories that only that body contained were lost, ripped away into darkness.

  It was not pain but terror body four felt. Terror at the outrage, as every memory it had left fled into the brains of bodies one and five. That terrible jumble of chaotic routines and recollections that was Gox, all of us past – Gox-Li, Gox-Mandy, Gox-Esfir, Gox-Suzanne, Gox-Namono, Gox-Yua, Gox-Azucene, Gox-Renpa, Gox-Keerthi, Gox-Niomi, Gox-Myriana, Gox-Galina, Gox-Annukka, Gox-Ornella, Gox-Chailail – the behaviour routines, the very essence of the human females we had subsumed to act their role, transforming into the perfect quint human body: Cancer. We were all one, yet utterly discordant amid the turmoil of distress and fear. I felt no physical pain, but from our alien origin I knew true dread.

  I tried to scream at the torturous death body four was suffering. Body four’s manipulator flesh sent up hands, human hands, shaking them in fury at the universe.

  ‘What is happening?’ the Salvation of Life onemind demanded, for I had let my mental guard down. ‘Why are you in that hangar? What are humans doing there? How did they get inside me?’

  ‘FUCK YOU!’ I retaliated amid my anguish. ‘You did this to us. You! I told you the humans were still here. I fucking told you.’

  ‘Gox quint, restrain yourself.’

  I made a supreme effort to regain equilibrium, squeezing the alien demons back into their correct place, deep, deep in my beautiful, perfect Olyix mind. They are nothing to me – instructions on subterfuge, an open book I once let fall, glimpsing pages fluttering in the dying light, a few meaningless phrases. Nothing more. Not real. Not me.

  I banished entanglement with the Salvation of Life. I renounced it as the useless failure it was.

  I watched body four topple to the ground. Dead.

  Movement amid the smoke and ruins of the hangar. Yuri was advancing cautiously, slinking between the irregular protrusions of biostructure. I blasted away in his direction with both weapons. Answering shots streaked through the smoke and static blasts. Rock chips and shards of biostructure whirled around body five. Several struck, causing insignificant damage.

  I ducked body five back into the tunnel and ran fast, keeping low. But it is not body five any more. It is body two. I am no longer quint, quad or trio; I am duo now. And that will never change, not now the last day of the Olyix has arrived.

  Do not laugh, humans. I hear you. I taste your bitter joy. Deep inside my mind where your contemptible remnants cower. I know you. But this is your end, too. For this is the time of my glory.

  I killed one of those bastard Saints, injured others. She will never let that lie, not Kandara. Soon she will follow me into the lonely vastness of the arkship – my home for centuries. Fool that I was, I loved it for all that time, and so its schema is embedded in my mind. Now it will become my killing field.

  Saints

  Salvation of Life

  Kandara skidded across the hangar floor, boots ploughing debris and sticky nutrient fluid away. She came to a stop, crouching over Alik. She stared aghast at his stump, the ruined leg beside it. Blood was pumping out of both in great gouts.

  Oh, sweet Mother Mary, nobody has this much blood in them.

  Deadened fingers clawed at the medipac on her thigh. It was so ridiculously small, and Alik’s godawful injuries would challenge an entire ER crash team.

  ‘Need help!’ she yelled. ‘Bring your medipacs. Now! Alik? Oh, Mary! Alik, can you hear me?’

  Somewhere behind her, Yuri was still firing his pistol into the corridor where the last quint had vanished.

  Alik’s body juddered weakly as he coughed. The seals on his collar clicked open and the helmet dropped off to one side, clattering onto the rock.

  Kandara had seen death claim people before, seen the desperation and loss in their eyes. And here it was again.

  Zapata used its field medic routines to analyse the damage and splashed up a triage sequence on her tarsus lens.

  That’s not going to be enough.

  ‘Hey, you free tonight?’ Alik whispered. Blood dribbled out between his lips.

  ‘Don’t talk!’ S
he shoved the first emergency tourniquet clamp directly onto the tattered end of his femoral artery. It annealed to the artery and contracted, slowing the blood loss but not stanching it altogether. The second clamp was hard to pull out of the medipac. She shook it free angrily and slammed it into the gore of the horrific gash on his remaining leg, trying to manoeuvre it onto the source of the blood. Her suit gauntlets were never intended for a task this delicate; she was sure she was just causing more damage.

  Medical diagnostics from Shango, his altme, splashed across her tarsus lens, turning her world disaster red. The tourniquets didn’t seem to have made any difference. Jessika arrived, her medipac already open. As Kandara attached another tourniquet to the leaking femoral artery, Jessika applied a bladder of bloodsub to Alik’s neck, a vampire jellyfish going for his jugular. ‘We need to keep his organs oxygenated,’ she said as the bladder started to contract. ‘This is going to take all the bloodsub we’ve got.’

  Kandara read the combination of drugs Zapata wanted fed to Alik and plugged a pharma module directly into the plasma bladder. It was difficult; hot tears were distorting her tarsus lens, warping its displays. Alik’s icon splashed across the deepening red view.

  ‘Stick with the mission,’ his calm voice spoke directly into her head. ‘Get the message out where we are.’

  ‘I’m going to get you into the cave,’ Kandara told him. ‘It’ll be okay. The initiators can help. You’ll be fine, Alik.’

  The medical display flashed critical alerts as Alik’s organs started to fail. His eyes rolled upwards.

  ‘Je-zus, Kandara,’ he sent over the interface, ‘grant a dying guy his wish. Blow the membrane, get the drones outside, then go kill that sonofabitch Odd Quint for me. Kill it good, all its motherfucking bodies. You got that?’

  ‘I’m on it, just as soon as we get you stable.’

  ‘No!’ His body shook feebly. ‘I fucking want this.’ A big glob of blood oozed out of his mouth, and the hard muscles his face had been remade with finally turned slack.