The Elysium Commission

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  By now my screaming descent had registered on every planetary tracking system, but no one would have the time to react, not since my final approach had been planned away from any cities or PDF defense facilities, and any hastily fired missile would likely harm far too many innocents.

  I was at thirty thousand meters at the coastline, and fif­teen thousand as I passed north of Vannes. From there I had to steepen the descent and angle slightiy north, but I had Time's End locked in. The Classic Research facility's defense screens sparkled in the display, but against a scout at my speed, there wouldn't be much they could do, not with the mission profile and not until I was almost on top of them.

  By then, if they did hit the scout, the debris would shred the facility as thoroughly as an ultra-ex cluster.

  At fifteen klicks out, I began to spread the shields, piling up a shock wave before me. Then, at less than five klicks, beyond the effective accurate range of the hidden weapons and RPFs, I flared, hard, letting the atmospheric shock wave blast toward the Classic facility.

  Then I armed the remaining torp and fired.

  The reduced-yield warhead blew open a corridor strewn with debris, one that pointed toward the operations control center.

  My power reserves were almost gone when I dropped the scout the last two mei;ers onto the plaza on the west side of the crumbled walls of the Classic Research facility. I scram­bled out of the restraints, and, wearing space armor, headed for the lock. If I moved quickly, I might actually reach the center before anyone realized I was headed there.

  Then matters would get interesting.

  45

  In Elysium will all die living still an eternal lie.

  By Sabaten afternoon, we had the first indications that the Frankan installation was in place. By then, Legaar's pacing had become incessant, and his demands to know what was happening, the barking of a caged mastiff.

  "When will they be ready for us to act?"

  "How long?"

  "How long now?"

  "Not long." I'd kept saying that often and with less and less patience, if through the rotating shells of purpose and anticipation. Before long, all would be well, and I would be with Magdalena in Elysium, while Legaar Eloi would have to deal with his own fate, ending with a headstone as white as the skeleton of the Garden of Eden.

  "Projection field sweep," I ordered.

  Only with a field sweep could we provide the energy to get an accurate screen view of the Frankan pseudoasteroid holding the equipment soon to generate the Hawking field. Once the field reached full power, I could ensure that the Elysian universe would continue to inflate and supersede the poor remnant of the anthropic mess that had spawned it.

  "We're beginning to get the power lead, ser," called the first tech.

  "How soon before we can turn the beam on Thurene and leave?" asked Legaar. "Don't we need to leave?" His eyes twitched. "Don't look at me like that!"

  "Not that long, after all we've waited." I turned and kept my eyes on the screens and indicators. The one drawback of the technology was its need for hard conduits, physical en­ergy manipulation, and the avoidance of broadcast power and signal interference. "Two stans after we have full steady power."

  'Two stans? That's too long. We need to leave."

  That was unlike Legaar, but I supposed anyone could bend under strain, especially a bullyboy like the concupiscence king. "I can't change that. That's a tech requirement." I managed a long, slow breath, trying not to choke on the stench of metal and oil and the excessive scent in which Legaar had apparently been bathing himself since his return from Thurene.

  "It's too long."

  "Hawking field flow at ten percent," reported the lead tech, the one in the center seat. Almost a stan passed before he added, "eleven percent."

  "Come on," growled Legaar. "We need to go."

  Was he drooling from the corners of his mouth? Legaar Eloi? I hadn't seen tiiat before. His fingers dropped to the weapon at his belt, a sprayer-gun, the kind that destroyed everything within fifty yards with a fan pattern of expand­ing flechettes. He caressed the weapon before glaring at me once more.

  "Turn the projection field on Thurene as soon as you can."

  "I will. We don't have enough power yet, and the two fields aren't linked."

  Legaar was clearly becoming more unstable, and I just wanted to be rid of him, but I had to get to the projector controls to do that, and I needed an excuse to do so, because the techs were his. Sc were the security systems. In this, as in everything, timing was paramount. Even sleep navigates the tides of time.

  "Power's dropping off, sers! It's gone."

  Something was wrong, terribly wrong, not that I wanted to blurt it out, but the power indicators from the Hawking field, the field that had been building so predictably and steadily, had vanished. They had not dropped or declined or surged. It was as if the field had not been there at all.

  Something attacked the Frankans. Yet there had been no sign of it. It was gone. The entire installation was gone, in­cluding the concealed ship, the pseudoasteroid, all as if they had never been. The sweep field revealed nothing, nothing at all.

  "Let me have the controls." I stepped forward. The lead tech moved, more than happy to let me take over when mat­ters were going wrong.

  "Fix it now!" ordered Legaar. "Whatever it is."

  "I'm looking into it." What I was really looking into was getting rid of him.

  "Ser! There's an inbound. Aimed directly at us, ser, from an orbital drop."

  Special Operations or the frigging Assembly space ser­vice! Legaar would have to wait. "Full screens!"

  "They won't stop something at that speed, ser!"

  "They'll slow it." I began to shift the field toward the in­coming.

  "What is it? You failed me!" Legaar lurched forward, grabbing the tech who had reported the incoming. Legaar was shuddering, almost in convulsions.

  Even before I could finish trying to refocus the projection field, I had the feeling that it was too late. The entire facility shuddered. Sections of the facade crumpled under the shock wave. Dust billowed from everywhere. With a ram­ble, the west end of the building peeled away, and sunlight mixed with more dust. The lights flickered and dimmed, then went out for a moment. I was glad the facility was hard conduit inside and out.

  Legaar was gibbering. "Take out Thurene! Take it out!" He held the sprayergun, pointed directiy at me.

  Things added up. It wasn't Legaar but a clone, and there was no help for it now.

  "Yes, ser. Here we go." The Legaar clone watched as I eased an edge of the field to where he stood. Then I twisted the field and flung tb; clone somewhere. Into the past, deep space, the future, it ddn't matter, so long as it was gone.

  The techs had vanished. Much good it would do them.

  I rechecked the power. The Hawking field was gone, but I had full power remaining from both Time's End fusactors, and that would have lo do.

  I would not have my loves lie wrecked, steered by the falling stars. Not now, not ever. Thurene and the real Legaar could scrabble on in their anthropic muddled mess of a uni­verse.

  Sitting at the field controls, I twisted the main rheostats to divert full power from both fusactors, wrenching it through the helices to create a here-now bridge to Elysium. To my right, the gateway shone as it shimmered into shape, a golden silver arch back to Migdalena.

  Thud. A figure in ;»old marched from out of the swirling dust, that line of demarcation where the corridor had been ended by the explosion that had ripped away the west end of the building. The shining figure looked like the ancient con­cept of a robot, for all that it was but an operative in space ar­mor. Still, the opera ave's steps were far swifter than any automaton and I could not swing the field to remove him and hold the gateway. All could do was set the timer to cut power to everything in twenty seconds. Once the gateway collapsed, they woull never locate me, for the coordinates had always been in rr.y head. That I had ensured.

  I set the time, then
rose and dashed through the gate, just ahead of the operative in space armor.

  Magdalena would be waiting ...

  46

  Following another to his or her heaven is a journey to hell.

  Even with the powerboosts of the space armor, it took me more than a few minutes to get out of the scout and up the ramps to the operations center from the rubble-strewn west end of the facility. Once there, I recognized the operations screens and boards immediately—even from the end of the corridor into which my last torp had provided an entry. Climbing over chunks of stone and brick and composite had me sweating heavily inside the armor. I wasn't about to take off the nanite-coated protection it provided.

  A single figure remained at the console. It was Maraniss. I saw no sign of Legaar Eloi or of anyone else. Maraniss's hands moved defdy across the dials, levers, and rheostats.

  Almost directly between us appeared a shimmering arch, nearly three meters high and two in width. Golden white light poured from it. Maraniss turned in my direction, but I kept moving toward him. For an instant, he stared at me. Abruptly, his hands went back to the console, where he twisted a dial. Then he jumped from the seat and took three quick steps. He vanished through the archway.

  I ran toward it, then stopped. Ahead of me, veiled in a misty golden white light, stretched a city of white towers. Not a single concentric circle of shadows, but, instead, a whiteness as soft and as bright as new snow under a golden rising sun. I thought I saw a deep green sea to the right of one of the towers, but before I could be certain, the arch vanished, and I was looking at a greenish wall, splotched with dust and dirt.

  Had that city been Elysium? Had he used the projection field to reach it? How? Where was it?

  I shook my head. Those questions would have to wait. I turned back to the boards. At the very least I had to make sure that the projection fields were inoperative. Quickly, I dropped into the center seat, looking at the board. From what I could tell, the aial that Maraniss had turned had been a timer of some sort. I twisted it back on. Nothing hap­pened. I reset it to zero, then noted the toggle beneath it. I flipped the toggle. The boards came alive.

  Power was still available, then.

  I began the diagnostics that Carle and Shannon had ef­fectively programmed into me. After close to ten minutes, I had managed to manipulate the main projection field con­trols enough to create a small field just outside the damaged research facility. Moving it was clumsy, given the armor, and the delay between what I was doing and what appeared on the screens above the console boards. For all that, I wasn't about to remove the armor. It was the only protection I had. While I didn't sense anyone near, that could change any moment.

  Supposedly, I was to use the field to disable the power links, but that didn't iieem like a good idea with the rough­ness of my control. I could just as easily end up doing something that would blow up the fusactors or divert the power where it shouldn't be.

  The best idea I had was to use the field to destroy the boards themselves. That would be delicate as well, especially since I was still in an nor and sitting at the boards. I spent a few more minutes practicing, then took a deep breath.

  I stopped. The external sensors were relaying a sound I knew all too well, the unique vibrations of a Garda flitter. There weren't supposed to be any that close.

  The first rocket exploded near the west end of the build­ing. The second was on the east end. My guts told me it had to be Javerr, either in person or by remote. I didn't have time to verify that, and no comm link. My chances of getting out against a concerted rocket attack were slim and none.

  I had no idea how long the attack might continue or when other flitters might arrive and what they might do. My only practical option was to get rid of the flitter. I just hoped it was on remote rather than personally piloted, but, in a way, I didn't care. Frigging Garda idiots—or they had orders to get rid of me.

  I concentrated on the projection field, just sweeping it through the sky where I thought the flitter would be. The vibrations stopped.

  Reddish light flared everywhere, Then beams and ma­sonry began to rain down around me, and the entire board before me went dead. The lights went out as well.

  Before I could move from the console, something large and dark and heavy slammed into my armor.

  47

  Joy cannot be quantified.

  When I finally could see and think again, I was in a med-crib. Someone stood and looked at me. The blurry vision wore an earth-toned jacket. She stood out in the dimness.

  "Siendra?"

  "Yes. I'm here." ,

  "Good." I concentrated on looking up at her. After a mo­ment, my vision cleared. Siendra wore a cream blouse and a warm brown jacket. Her scarf was multicolored, with a hint of brilliant greens and blues. She had circles under her eyes.

  "How long?"

  "You've been in the medcrib for almost a week. It's evening on Jueven."

  I didn't want to deal with that. I was alive, and so was she. "You made it back." I fumbled and found the controls that elevated me into a half-sitting position. At that point, I realized that only monitors were connected to me. That was a good sign. I kept lqoking at her, taking in the line of her chin, the hazel eyes, die honest brown hair.

  "I'm not a shadowf

  "I wanted to make pure." How could I explain? "You were so set on taking me down too far. I couldn't let you do that."

  "You were incredibly arrogant, Captain. You threatened to rip holes in the coijvette."

  "No captains, no majors." I couldn't help smiting. Just see­ing her face exhilarated me beyond anything I'd felt in years. "You're stubborn. Yu wouldn't have listened otherwise.

  Success would have been nothing without you." My throat was so dry. I looked for water, or something. Siendra handed me a beaker.

  "Thank you." The water tasted so good, but I didn't take my eyes off her.

  "You would have risked Thurene?" Her voice held a mix­ture of something. Anger and amusement?

  "I never risked Thurene." I hadn't. On the vector I'd taken, if I hadn't made it, the scout would have obliterated the Classic Research facility and a goodly chunk of real es­tate around it, but that wouldn't have risked Thurene. The risks had come after I'd set down. "You know that."

  "You risked Thurene and yourself."

  Had I? Really? Probably. What could I say to that? "Better me than you." I tried to keep the tone light

  "Oh?"

  "Not a thousand ships, but a few topless towers did come down."

  "You'd risk yourself but not allow me that choice?"

  "I was selfish." I was. I would have found it hard to live if I'd survived and she hadn't. Now ... I could admit that was why I'd had to rescue Brooke. Except my feelings for Siendra were far stronger.

  "You'd better never call me Helena... or even Mar­guerite."

  "Never."

  "The scout was absolutely drained of power. You cut matters close."

  "Not as close as you would have." I couldn't help smiling as I looked at her.

  Her face remained pleasantly noncommittal.

  "Did it work? I mean, to keep the Assembly and the Frankans out of the system?"

  "There were complaints about all the power blackouts, but both the space service and the Frankans are treading gendy. The space service discovered just how large the massed Frankan fleets were and decided against attacking. The Frankans withdrew quietly. No one's saying why, but

  I imagine it has to do with the removal of a certain installa­tion without a trace."

  Her smile turned sardonic. I even liked that.

  'The official explanation is that a large section of a pri­vate estate was destroyed by an asteroid fragment in an un-tracked orbit that intersected the ecliptic almost vertically. The publicly available satellite tracking scans aren't precise enough for anyone to dispute that, and since Legaar Eloi isn't exactly popular, the destruction of his estate didn't exacdy raise public outrage."

  "Was he there?"


  "No." The enigmatic smile returned. "He and his brother Simeon were on Fininza. Both of them died of a virulent form of food poisoning. Either that or a Frankan assassination for default on a significant commercial loan. Such occur­rences are less than unusual on Firenza. No one is terribly upset."

  I couldn't help but wonder if Odilia had played a role in that. I doubted I'd ever know and wasn't sure I wanted to.

  "What about Marajniss?" she asked. "Do you know what happened to him? The Garda couldn't find any trace of him. Or of Officer Javerr. He was the one who led die follow-up."

  "Javerr was the one who put all the rockets into the ops-center while I was inside. He got caught in the backlash of the projection field." That was as good a way to put it as any and better than Javerf deserved. "Maraniss fled through the field. Somehow, he'd found or created a city with white towers. I think that was his Elysium. When I reached the ops-center, he was alone at the boards. There was an archway ... and golden white light was coming from it. He ran through the archway. I started to follow. Something told me to stop.

  I could see the city ahd a deep green sea. Then the archway vanished."

  Siendra nodded. She didn't even look skeptical.

  "Whatwasit?"Iaked.

  "Colonel Carle trunks he created a pocket universe. He would have used the Hawking field to inflate it to a full parallel universe."

  "And now?"

  "Without that kind of power, it will slowly deflate. No one knows how long that would take. Years, decades... centuries." She shrugged.

  "They can't locate it?"

  "The rockets destroyed enough of the center that the power links were severed. There were no coordinates stored anywhere. Besides, if the Hawking link had been completed, there was a good chance it might have started a deflation of our universe. No one wants to risk that by searching for it."

  "Universe savers ... that's us."

  "I'd rather we skipped the delusions of grandeur. Too many people have them as it is." _ She was right about that as well.