The Night's Dawn Trilogy

by Peter F. Hamilton

  Liol flashed Sarha an engaging grin. “You wouldn’t really use a dagger on me, would you?”

  She winked. “Depends on the circumstances.”

  “Fancy that, Joshua,” one of the serjeants said as the pair of them left the bridge. “There’s two of you.”

  Joshua glared at the bitek construct, then executed a perfect midair somersault and zoomed back into his cabin.

  * * *

  Alkad’s tranquillizer program wasn’t nearly strong enough to keep the claustrophobia at bay. Eventually she had to admit defeat and switch a somnolence program to primary. Her only thought as she fell into oblivion was: I wonder who will be there when I wake?

  The rendezvous was an elaborate one, which decreased the chances of success. But even that wasn’t her main worry. Getting out of Ayacucho undetected was the big problem.

  The asteroid had two counter-rotating spaceports, one at each end. The main one was used by starships and larger inter-orbit craft; while the second was mainly for heavy-duty cargo and utility tankers delivering fresh water and liquid oxygen for the biosphere. It was also the operations base for the personnel commuters and MSVs and tugs which flew between the asteroid and its necklace of industrial stations.

  Both were under heavy surveillance by agents. There was no chance of getting through the axial chambers and taking a commuter lift to the docking bays, so Voi had arranged for Alkad and herself to be shipped out in cargo pods.

  Lodi and another youth called Eriba, who claimed to be a molecular structures student, worked on a couple of standard pods in one of T’Opingtu’s storage facilities. They were converted into heavily padded coffins moulded to hold someone wearing a SII spacesuit. Both boys swore the insulation would prevent any thermal or electromagnetic leakage. The cargo pods would appear perfectly inert to any sensor sweep.

  Of course, the insulation meant that Alkad couldn’t datavise out for help if anything went wrong and nobody opened her pod. She believed she held her composure pretty well while she allowed them to seal her in. After that there was nothing but the tranquillizer program for the twenty minutes before she sought refuge in sleep.

  A tug was scheduled to take the cargo pods out to one of T’Opingtu’s foundry stations. From there they would be transferred to an inter-orbit craft that was heading for Mapire.

  Alkad woke to find herself in free fall. At least we got out of the asteroid.

  Her neural nanonics reported they were picking up a datavise.

  “Stand by, Doctor, we’re cracking the pod now.”

  She could feel vibrations through her suit, then the collar sensors were showing her slash-lines of red light cavorting around her. The top of the cargo pod came free, and someone in an SII suit and a manoeuvring pack was sliding into view in front of her.

  “Hello, Doctor, it’s me, Lodi. You made it, you’re out.”

  “Where’s Voi?” she datavised.

  “I’m here, Doctor. Mary, but that was horrible. Are you all right?”

  “Yes. Fine, thank you.” As well as relief for herself, she felt strangely glad the girl had come through unscathed.

  She made sure she had a secure grip on her crumpled old backpack before she let Lodi draw her out of the pod. Held in front of him, with the manoeuvring pack puffing out fast streamers of gas, she sank into the déjà vu of Cherri Barnes towing her back to the Udat. Then, space had been frighteningly empty, with so little light her collar sensors had struggled to resolve anything. Now, she was deep within Tunja’s disk, gliding through a redout blizzard. No stars were visible anywhere, the particles were too thick. Their size was inordinately difficult to judge, a grain of dust a centimetre from her nose, or a boulder a kilometre away, both looked exactly the same.

  Ahead of her she could see the waiting starship, its fuselage shining a dim burgundy, much darker than the particles skipping across it like twisters of interference in an empty AV projection. Two thermo-dump panels were extended, resembling slow-motion propeller blades as rills of dust swirled around them. The airlock hatch was open, emitting a welcoming beam of white light.

  She sank along it, relishing the return of normal colour. They entered a cylindrical chamber with grab hoops, utility sockets, harsh light tubes, environment grilles, and small instrument panels distributed at random. The sensation that reality was solidifying around her was inescapable.

  The hatch closed, and she clung to a grab hoop as air flooded in. Her SII suit flowed back into a globe hanging off the collar, and she was inundated with sounds.

  “We did it!” Voi was jubilant. “I told you I could get you out.”

  “Yes, you did.” She looked around at them, Voi, Lodi, and Eriba, so dreadfully young to be sucked into this world of subterfuge, hatred, and death. Beaming faces desperate for her approval. “And I’d like to thank you; you did a magnificent job, all of you.”

  Their laughter and gratitude made her shake her head in wonder. Such odd times.

  Five minutes later Alkad was dressed in her old ship-suit, backpack tight against her waist, following Voi into the Tekas’s upper deck lounge. The yacht was only large enough for one life-support capsule, with three decks. Despite the lack of volume, the fittings were compact and elegant, everything blending seamlessly together to provide the illusion of ample space.

  Prince Lambert was reclining in a deep circular chair, datavising a constant stream of instructions to the flight computer. Tekas was under way, accelerating at a twentieth of a gee, though the gravity plane was flicking about.

  “Thank you for offering us the use of your ship,” Alkad said after they were introduced.

  He gave Voi a sterling glance. “Not at all, Doctor, the least I could do for a national heroine.”

  She ignored the sarcasm, wondering what the story was with him and Voi. “So what’s our current status? Did anyone follow you?”

  “No. I’m fairly sure about that. I flew outside the disk for a million kilometres before I went through it. Your inter-orbit craft did the same thing, but on the other side. In theory no one will realize we rendezvoused. Even the voidhawks can’t sense what happens inside the disk, not from a million kilometres away, it’s too cluttered.”

  Unless they want to follow me right to the Alchemist, Alkad thought. “What about a stealthed voidhawk just outside the disk, or even inside with us?” she asked.

  “Then they’ve got us cold,” he said. “Our sensors are good, but they’re not military grade.”

  “We’d know by now if we were being followed,” Voi said. “As soon as we rendezvoused they would have moved to intercept.”

  “I expect so,” Alkad said. “How long before we can clear the disk and jump outsystem?”

  “Another forty minutes. You don’t rush a manoeuvre like this; there are too many sharp rocks out there. I’m going to have to replace the hull foam as it is; dust abrasion is wearing it down to the bare silicon.” He smiled unconvincingly at Alkad. “Am I going to be told what our mission is?”

  “I require a combat-capable starship, that’s all.”

  “I see. And I suppose that is connected with the work you did for the Garissan navy before the genocide?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, you’ll excuse me if I leave the party before that.”

  Alkad thought of the remaining devices in her backpack, and just how tight her security margin had become. “Nobody will force you to do anything.”

  “Nice to hear.” He gave Voi another pointed glance. “For once.”

  “What jump coordinate does this course give us?” Alkad asked.

  “Nyvan,” he said. “It’s a hundred and thirty light-years away, but I can get a reasonable alignment on it without using up too much fuel. Voi told me you wanted a planet with military industrial facilities, and wouldn’t ask too many questions.”

  * * *

  The last of the starships with official flight authorization had departed ninety minutes earlier when Joshua made his way out of the spaceport. Service and maint
enance staff had gone home to be with their families. Utility umbilicals supporting the remaining starships were becoming less than reliable.

  Three agents were loitering in the axial chamber, talking in quiet tones. They were the only people there. Joshua gave them a blasé wave as he and his escort of three serjeants emerged from the commuter lift.

  One of the agents frowned. “You’re going back in there?” she asked incredulously.

  “Try keeping me from a party.”

  He could hear the argument start behind him as the lift doors closed. Holomorph sticker cheerleaders began their chant all around him.

  “If she’s worried enough to question you openly, then the possessed must be gaining ground,” a serjeant said.

  “Look, we’ve been over this. I’m just going to check out the gig, and see if Kole has turned up. If she hasn’t, we head straight back.”

  “It would have been much safer if I’d gone alone.”

  “I don’t think so.” Joshua wanted to say more, but the lift was probably overloaded with nanonic bugs. He datavised the net for a channel to Lady Mac.

  “Yes, Joshua?” Dahybi responded.

  “Certain people out here are getting twitchy about the possessed. I want you to monitor the asteroid’s internal systems: transportation, power, environment, the net, everything. If any of them start downgrading I want to know right away.”

  “Okay.”

  Joshua glanced at the rigid, expressionless face of the nearest serjeant. Right now he really wanted Ione to confide in, to be able to ask her opinion, to talk things through. If anyone knew how to handle awkward family, it was her. Some deep-buried prejudice prevented him from saying anything to the serjeants. “One other thing, Dahybi. Call Liol, tell him to get himself over to the Lady Mac right away. Give him a passenger cabin in capsule C. Don’t let him on the bridge. Don’t give him any access codes for the flight computer. And make sure you check him for possession when he arrives.”

  “Yes, Captain. Take care.”

  A datavise couldn’t convey emotional nuances, but he knew Dahybi well enough to guess at the amused approval.

  “You accept his claim, then?” Ione asked.

  “The DNA profile seems similar to mine,” Joshua said grudgingly.

  “Yes, I’d say ninety-seven per cent compatibility is roughly in the target area. It’s not unusual for starship crews to have extended families spread over several star systems.”

  “Thank you for reminding me.”

  “If your father was ever anything like you, then it’s possible Liol isn’t your only sibling.”

  “Jesus.”

  “I’m just preparing you for the eventuality. Kelly Tirrel’s recording has enhanced your public visibility rating by a considerable factor. Others may seek you out in the same way.”

  He pulled an ironic face. “Wouldn’t that be something? The gathering of the Calverts. I wonder if there are more of us than there are Saldanas?”

  “I very much doubt it, not if you include our illegitimates.”

  “And black sheep.”

  “Quite. What do you intend to do about Liol?”

  “I haven’t got a clue. He’s not touching the Lady Mac, though. Can you imagine having board meetings every time to decide her next destination? It’s the opposite of everything I am, not to mention the old girl herself.”

  “He’ll probably come to realize this. I’m sure you can come to some arrangement. He appears to be quite smart.”

  “The word is smarmy.”

  “There’s very little difference between you.”

  The lift dropped him off in a public hall a couple of hundred metres from the Terminal Terminus club where the benefit gig was being played. Not everyone was obeying the governing council’s request to stay put at home. Kids filled the hall with laughter and shouts. Everyone was wearing a red handkerchief on their ankle.

  For a moment Joshua felt disconnected from his own generation. He had formidable responsibilities (not to mention problems); they were just stimheads sliding around their perpetual circuit from one empty good time to the next. They didn’t understand the universe at all.

  Then a couple of them recognized Lagrange Calvert and wanted to know what it was like rescuing the children from Lalonde, and had there really been possessed in Bar KF-T? They were peppy, and the girls in the group were giving him the eye. He began to loosen up; the barriers weren’t so solid after all.

  The Terminal Terminus looked like some kind of chasmal junction between tunnels. Big, old mining machines were parked in arching recesses, their conical, worn-down drill mechanisms jutting out into the main chamber. Obsolete mechanoids clung to the ceiling, spider-leg waldos dangling down inertly. Drinks were served over a long section of heavy-duty caterpillar track.

  A fantasy wormhole squatted in the centre, a rippling gloss-black column five metres wide stretching between floor and ceiling. Things were trapped inside, undefined creatures who clawed at the distortion effect in desperate attempts to escape; the black surface bent and distended, but never broke.

  “Very tasteful, under the circumstances,” Joshua muttered to a serjeant.

  A stage had been set up between two of the mining machines. AV projectors powerful enough to cover a stadium stood on each side.

  One of the serjeants went off to guard an emergency exit. The remaining two stuck by Joshua.

  He found Kole standing with a group of her friends under one of the mining machines. Her hair had been woven through with silver and chrome-scarlet threads, which every now and then made it fan open like a peacock tail.

  He paused for a moment. She was so phony; rich without Dominique’s cosmopolitan verve, and absolute trash compared to Louise’s simple honesty.

  Louise.

  Kole caught sight of him and squealed happily, kissed him, rubbed against him. “Are you all right? I accessed what happened after I left.”

  He grinned brashly, the legend in the flesh. “I’m fine. My . . . er, cosmoniks here are a tough bunch. We’ve seen worse.”

  “Really?” She cast a respectful eye over the two serjeants. “Are you male?”

  “No.”

  Joshua couldn’t tell if Ione was annoyed, amused, or plain didn’t care. On second thought, he doubted the latter.

  Kole kissed him again. “Come and meet the gang. They didn’t believe I’d hooked you. Mother, I can’t believe I hooked you.”

  He braced himself for the worst.

  From her vantage point lounging casually on a coolant feed duct a third of the way up the side of a mining machine, Monica Foulkes watched Joshua greeting Kole’s posse of friends. He knew exactly the attitude to take to be accepted within seconds. She took a gulp of iced mineral water as her enhanced retinas scanned the young faces below. It was hot wearing the chameleon suit, but it gave her the skin tone of Ayacucho’s Kenyan-ethnic population; “foreign agents” were about as popular as the possessed right now. Except Calvert, of course, she thought sorely, he was being greeted like a bloody hero. Her characterization recognition program ran a comparison against the youngsters she was scanning, and signalled a ninety-five per cent probable match.

  “Damn!”

  Samuel (now black-skinned, twenty-five years old, and wearing jazzy purple sports gear) looked up from the base of the mining machine. “What?”

  “You were right. Kole has just introduced him to Adok Dala.”

  “Ah. I knew it. He was Voi’s boyfriend up until she dumped him eighteen months ago.”

  “Yes yes, I can access the file for myself, thank you.”

  “Can you hear what’s being said?”

  She glanced down contemptuously. “Not a chance. This place is really filling up now. My audio discrimination programs can’t filter over that distance.”

  “Come down please, Monica.”

  Something in his tone halted any protest. She slithered down the pitted yellow-painted titanium bodywork of the mining machine.

  “We have to deci
de what to do. Now.”

  She flinched. “Oh, God.”

  “Do you believe Adok Dala will know where Voi is?”

  “I don’t think so, but there’s no guarantee. And if we snatch Dala now, it isn’t going to make a whole lot of difference as far as official repercussions are concerned. He’s hardly going to complain about being taken off Ayacucho, is he?”

  “You’re right. And it will prevent Calvert from learning anything.”

  Joshua’s neural nanonics reported a call from Dahybi. “Two voidhawks from the defence delegation have just left the docking ledge, Captain. Our sensors can’t see much from inside the bay, but we think they’re keeping station five kilometres off the spaceport.”

  “Okay, keep monitoring them.”

  “No problem. But you should know that Ayacucho is suffering localized power failures. They’re completely random, and the supervisor programs can’t locate any physical problem in the supply system. One of the news studios has gone off-line, as well.”

  “Jesus. Start flight prepping Lady Mac; I’ll wind things up here and get back to you within thirty minutes.”

  “Aye, Captain. Oh, and Liol has arrived. He’s not possessed.”

  “Wonderful.”

  Kole was still clinging magnetically to his side. No one she’d introduced him to had mentioned Voi. His original idea had been to ask them about Ikela’s murder and see what was said. But now time was running out. He looked around to find out where the serjeants were, hoping Ione wasn’t going to make an issue of pulling out. Hell, we gave it our best.

  The compere was striding out on the stage, holding her arms out for silence as the rowdy crowd cheered and started catcalling. She started into her spiel about the Fuckmasters.

  “This is Shea,” Kole told him.

  It was hard for Joshua to smile; Shea was tall and skinny, almost identical to Voi’s size and height. He datavised his electronic warfare block to scan her, but she was clean. What he saw was real, not a chameleon suit. It wasn’t Voi.

  “This is Joshua Calvert,” Kole boasted, raising her voice against the rising whistle of the giant AV projectors. “He’s my starship captain.”