The Night's Dawn Trilogy

by Peter F. Hamilton

  Now the white fire had gone, leaving him alone with its terrible legacy. The flesh from his leg had melted off. But his bones had remained intact, perfectly white. He could see his skeletal foot twitching next to his real one, its tiny bones fitting together like a medical text.

  The splintered remnants of the dock were burning with unnatural brightness, throwing capering shadows on the wall. Maynard turned his head, crying out as red stars gave way to an ominous darkness. When he flushed the involuntary tears from his eyes he could see the heavy door at the back of the court was shut.

  They hadn’t got out!

  He took a few breaths, momentarily puzzled by what he was doing in the dark, the waves of pain seemed to prevent his thoughts from flowing. The screams had died, along with every other sound except for the sharp crackling of the flames. Footsteps crunched through the debris. Three dark figures loomed above him; humanoid perhaps, but any lingering facet of humanity had been bred out generations ago.

  The whispers began, slithering up from a bottomless pit to comfort him with the sincerity of a two-timing lover. Then came the real pain.

  * * *

  Dr Gilmore studied the datavised image he was receiving direct from Marine Captain Rhodri Peyton’s eyes. He was standing in the middle of a marine squad which was strung out along one of the corridors leading to maximum security court three. Their machine guns and Bradfields were deployed to cover the engineering officers who were gingerly applying sensor pads to the door.

  When Dr Gilmore attempted to access the officers’ processor blocks there was no response. The units were too close to the possessed inside the courtroom. “Have they made any attempt to break out?” he asked.

  “No, sir,” Rhodri Peyton datavised. His eyes flicked to brown scorch lines on the walls just outside the door. “Those marks were caused when Lieutenant Hewlett was engaging them. There’s been nothing since then. We’ve got them trapped, all right.”

  Gilmore accessed Trafalgar’s central computer and requested a blueprint of the courtroom. There were no service tunnels nearby, and the air-ducts weren’t large enough for anyone to crawl down. It was a maximum security court after all. Unfortunately it wasn’t the kind of security designed with the possessed in mind. He knew it would only be a matter of time before they got out. Then there really would be hell to pay.

  “Have you confirmed the number of people in the courtroom?”

  “We’re missing twelve people, sir. But we know at least four of those are dead, and the others sustained some injuries. And Hewlett claims he terminated one of the possessed, Randall.”

  “I see. That means we now have a minimum of eleven possessed to contend with. That much energistic potential is extremely dangerous.”

  “This whole area is sealed, sir, and I’ve got a squad covering each door.”

  “I’m sure you have, Captain. One moment.” He datavised the First Admiral and gave him a brief summary. “I have to advise we don’t send the marines in. Given the size of the courtroom and the number of possessed, I’d estimate marine casualties of at least fifty per cent.”

  “Agreed,” the First Admiral datavised back. “The marines don’t go in. But are you certain everyone in there is now possessed?”

  “I think it’s an inevitable conclusion, sir. This whole legal business was quite obviously just a ploy by Couteur to gain a foothold here. That many possessed represent a significant threat. My guess is that they may simply try to tunnel their way out; I expect they’ll be able to dissolve the rock around them. They must be neutralized as swiftly as possible. We can always acquire further individuals to continue my team’s research.”

  “Dr Gilmore, I’d remind you that my staff captain is in there, along with a number of civilians. We must make at least one attempt to subdue them. You’ve had weeks to research this energistic ability, you must be able to suggest something.”

  “There is one possibility, sir. I accessed Thakrar’s report; he used decompression against the possessed when they tried to storm the Villeneuve’s Revenge.”

  “To kill them.”

  “Yes. But it does indicate a weakness. I was going to recommend that we vent the courtroom’s atmosphere. That way we wouldn’t have to risk opening one of the doors to fire any sort of weapon in there. However, we could try gas against them first. They can force matter into new shapes, but I think altering a molecular structure would probably be beyond them. It needn’t even be a chemical weapon, we could simply increase the nitrogen ratio until they black out. Once they’ve been immobilized, they could be placed into zero-tau.”

  “How would you know if a gas assault worked? They destroyed the sensors, we can’t see in.”

  “There are a number of electronic systems remaining in the courtroom; if the possessed do succumb to the gas those systems should come back on line. But whatever we do, Admiral, we will have to open the door at some stage to confirm their condition.”

  “Very well, try the gas first. We owe Maynard and the others that much.”

  * * *

  “We’re not going to have much time to get out,” Jacqueline Couteur said.

  Perez, who had come into Maynard Khanna’s body a few minutes earlier, was struggling to keep his thoughts flowing lucidly under a torrent of pain firing in from every part of his new frame. He managed to focus on some of the most badly damaged zones, seeing the blood dry up and torn discoloured flesh return to a more healthy aspect. “Mama, what did you do to this guy?”

  “Taught him not to be so stubborn,” Jacqueline said emotionlessly.

  He winced as he raised himself up onto his elbows. Despite his most ardent wishes, his damaged leg felt as if fireworms were burrowing through it. He could imagine it whole and perfect, and even see the image forming around reality, but that wasn’t quite enough to make it so. “Okay, so now what?” He glanced around. It was not the most auspicious of environments to welcome him back. Bodies were straddling the court’s wrecked fittings, small orange fires gnawed hungrily at various jagged chunks of composite, and hatred was beaming through each of the doors like an emotive X ray.

  “Not much,” she admitted. “But we have to look for some kind of advantage. We’re at the very centre of the Confederation’s resistance to us. There must be something we can do to help Capone and the others. I had hoped we could locate their nuclear weapons. The destruction of this base would be a significant blow to the Confederation.”

  “Forget that; those marines were good,” Lennart said grudgingly. He was standing in front of the judge’s bench, one hand pulling on his chin as he gazed intently at the floor. “You know, there’s some kind of room or corridor about twenty metres straight down.” The tiling started to flow away from his feet in fast ripples, exposing the naked rock below. “It won’t take long if we break this rock together.”

  “Maybe,” Jacqueline said. “But they’ll know we’re doing it. Gilmore will have surrounded us with sensors by now.”

  “What then?” asked one of the others they’d brought back. “For Christ’s sake, we can’t stay in here and wait for the Confederation Marines to bust down the door. I’ve only just returned. I’m not giving this body up after only ten minutes. I couldn’t stand that.”

  “Christ?” Jacqueline queried bitingly.

  “You might have to anyway,” Perez said. “We all might wind up back there in the beyond.”

  “Oh, why?” Jacqueline asked.

  “This Khanna knows of an ambush the Confederation Navy is planning against Capone. He is confident they will destroy the Organization fleet. Without Capone to crack new star systems open, we’re going to be stalled. Khanna is convinced the quarantine will prevent possession from spreading to any new worlds.”

  “Then we must tell Capone,” Jacqueline said. “All of us together must shout this news into the beyond.”

  “Fine,” Nena said. “Do that. But what about us? How are we going to get out of here?”

  “That is a secondary concern for us now.”<
br />
  “Not for me it bloody well isn’t.”

  When Jacqueline scowled at her, she saw beads of sweat pricking the woman’s brow. Nena was swaying slightly, too. Some of the others looked as if they were exhausted, their eyes glazing over. Even Jacqueline was aware her body had grown heavier than before. She sniffed the air suspiciously, finding it contaminated with the slightly clammy ozone taint of air-conditioning.

  “What exactly is the navy planning to do to Capone?” she asked.

  “They know he’s going to attack Toi-Hoi. They’re going to hide a fleet at Tranquillity, and intercept him when they know he’s on the way.”

  “We must remember that,” Jacqueline said firmly, fixing each of them in turn with a compelling stare. “Capone must be told. Get through to him.” She ignored everything else but the wish that the air in the courtroom was pure and fresh, blown down straight from some virgin mountain range. She could smell a weak scent of pine.

  One of the possessed sat down heavily. The others were all panting.

  “What’s happening?” someone asked.

  “Radiation, I expect,” Jacqueline said. “They’re probably bombarding us with gamma rays so they don’t have to come in to deal with us.”

  “Blast a door open,” Lennart said. “Charge them. A few of us might get through.”

  “Good idea,” Jacqueline said.

  He pointed a finger at the door behind the judge’s bench, its tip wavering about drunkenly. A weak crackle of white fire licked out. It managed to stain the door with a splatter of soot, but nothing more. “Help me. Come on, together!”

  Jacqueline closed her eyes, imagining all the clean air in the courtroom gathering around her and her alone. A light breeze ruffled her suit.

  “I don’t want to go back,” Perez wailed. “Not there!”

  “You must,” Jacqueline said. Her breathing was easier now. “Capone will find you a body. He’ll welcome you. I envy you for that.”

  Two more of the possessed toppled over. Lennart sagged to his knees, hands clutching at his throat.

  “The navy must never know what we discovered,” Jacqueline said thickly.

  Perez looked up at her, too weak to plead. It wouldn’t have been any use, he realized, not against that mind tone.

  * * *

  The shaped electron explosive charge sliced clean through the courtroom door with a lightning-bolt flash. There was very little blowback against the marine squad crouched fifteen metres away down the corridor. Captain Peyton yelled “Go!” at the same time as the charge was triggered. His armour suit’s communications block was switched to audio, just in case the possessed were still active.

  Ten sense-overload ordnance rounds were fired through the opening as the wrecked door spun around like a dropped coin. A ferocious blast of light and sound surged back along the corridor. The squad rushed forward into the deluge.

  It was a synchronized assault. All three doors into the courtroom were blown at the same time. Three sets of sense-overload ordnance punched in. Three marine squads.

  Dr Gilmore was still hooked into Peyton’s neural nanonics, receiving the image direct from the captain’s shell helmet sensors. The scene which greeted him took a while to interpret. Dimming flares were sinking slowly through the air as tight beams of light from each suit formed a crazy jumping crisscross pattern above the wrecked fittings. Bodies lay everywhere. Some were victims of the earlier fight. Ten of them had been executed. There was no other explanation. Each of the ten had been killed by a bolt of white fire through the brain.

  Peyton was pushing his way through a ring of nearly twenty marines that had formed in the middle of the courtroom. Jacqueline Couteur stood at the centre, her shape blurred by a grey twister that had formed around her. It looked as if she’d been cocooned by solid strands of air. The twister was making a high-pitched whining sound as it undulated gently from side to side.

  Jacqueline Couteur’s hands were in the air. She gazed at the guns levelled against her with an almost sublime composure. “Okay,” she said. “You win. And I think I may need my lawyer again.”

  26

  There were nearly three thousand people in the crowd which assembled outside the starscraper lobby. Most of them looked fairly pissed at being summoned, but nobody actually argued with Bonney’s deputies when they came calling. They wanted a quiet life. On a planet they could have just walked away into the wilderness; here that option did not exist.

  Part of the lobby’s gently arching roof had crumpled, a remnant of an early battle during their takeover of the habitat. Bonney started to walk up the pile of rubble. She held a processor block in one hand, turning it so she could see the screen.

  “Last chance, Rubra,” she said. “Tell me where the boyo is, or I start getting serious.” The block’s screen remained blank. “You overheard what Patricia said. I know you did, because you’re a sneaky little shit. You’ve been manipulating me for a while now. I’m always told where he is, and he’s always gone when I get there. You’re helping him as much as you’re helping me, aren’t you? Probably trying to frighten him into cooperating with you. Was that it? Well, not anymore, Rubra, because Patricia has changed everything; we’re playing big boys’ rules now. I don’t have to be careful, I don’t have to respect your precious, delicate structure. It was fun going one on one against all those little bastards you stashed around the place. I enjoyed myself. But you were cheating the whole time. Funny, that’s what Dariat warned us about right from the start.” She reached the roof, and walked to the edge above the crowd. “You going to tell me?”

  The screen printed: THOSE LITTLE DEADNIGHT GIRLS THAT COME HERE, YOU REALLY ENJOY WHAT YOU DO WITH THEM, DON’T YOU, DYKE?

  Bonney dropped the processor block as if it were a piece of used toilet paper. “Game over, Rubra. You lose; I’m going to use nukes to crack you in half.”

  Dariat, I think you’d better listen to this.

  What now?

  Bonney, as usual. But things have just acquired an unpleasant edge. I don’t think Kiera should have left her unsupervised.

  Dariat hooked into the observation routines in time to see Bonney raise her hands for silence. The crowd gazed up at her expectantly.

  “We’ve got the power of genies,” she said. “You can grant yourself every wish you want. And we still have to live like dogs out in these shantytowns, grabbing what food we can, whipped into line, told where we can and can’t go. Rubra’s done that to us. We have starships for fuck’s sake. We can travel to another star system in less time than it takes your heart to beat once. But if you want to go from here to the endcap, you have to walk. Why? Because that shit Rubra won’t let us use the tubes. And up until now, we’ve let him get away with it. Well, not anymore.”

  Passionate lady, Dariat said uncomfortably.

  Psycho lady, more like. They’re not going to disobey her, they wouldn’t dare. She’s going to marshal them together and send them after you. I can’t keep you ahead of an entire habitat of possessed hunting you. For once, boy, I’m not lying.

  Yeah. I can see that. Dariat went over to the fire at the back of the cave. It had almost burnt out, leaving a pyramid of coals cloaked in a powder of fine grey ash. He stood looking at it, feeling the slumbering heat contained within the pink fragments.

  I have to decide. I can’t beat Rubra. And Rubra will be destroyed by Kiera when she returns. For thirty years I would have welcomed that. Thirty fucking years. My entire life.

  But he’s willing to sacrifice his mental integrity, to join my thoughts to his. He’s going to abandon two centuries of his belief that he can go it alone.

  Tatiana stirred on the blanket and sat up, bracelets chinking noisily. Sleepy confusion drained from her face. “That was a strange dream.” She gave him a shrewd glance. “But then this is a strange time, isn’t it?”

  “What was your dream?”

  “I was in a universe which was half light, half darkness. And I was falling out of the light. Then Anastasia c
aught me, and we started to fly back up again.”

  “Sounds like your salvation.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Things are changing. That means I have to decide what to do. And I don’t want to, Tatiana. I’ve spent thirty years not deciding. Thirty years telling myself this was the time I was waiting for. I’ve been a kid for thirty years.”

  Tatiana rose and stood beside him. He refused to meet her gaze, so she put an arm lightly on his shoulder. “What do you have to decide?”

  “If I should help Rubra; if I should join him in the neural strata and turn this into a possessed habitat.”

  “He wants that?”

  “I don’t think so. But he’s like me, there’s not much else either of us can do. The game’s over, and we’re running out of extra time.”

  She stroked him absently. “Whatever you decide, I don’t want you to take me into account. There are too many issues at stake, big issues. Individuals don’t matter so much; and I had a good run against that Bonney. We annoyed her a lot, eh? That felt nice.”

  “But individuals do matter. Especially you. It’s odd, I feel like I’ve come full circle. Anastasia always told me how precious a single life was. Now I have to decide your fate. And I can’t let you suffer, which is what’s going to happen if Rubra and I take on the possessed together. I’m responsible for her death, I can’t have yours on my hands as well. How could I ever face her with that weighing on my heart? I have to be true to her. You know I do.” He tilted his head back, his voice raised in anger. “Do you think you’ve won?”

  I never even knew we were fighting until this possession happened, Rubra said sadly. You know what hopes I had for you in the old days, even though you never shared them. You know I never wanted anything to spoil my dreams for you. You were the golden prince, the chosen one. Fate stopped you from achieving your inheritance. That’s what Anastasia was, for you and for me. Fate. You would call it an act of Thoale.