The Night's Dawn Trilogy

by Peter F. Hamilton

  Kiera gave a noncommittal moue. “And what about this fleet? Won’t you need a squadron to protect it from voidhawks at Toi-Hoi?”

  Al didn’t need to consult Luigi over that one, he could sense the hunger in the fleet commander’s mind. “Now you come to mention it, it might not be a bad idea.”

  “I’ll see to it,” Kiera said. “There should be another group of hellhawks returning to Valisk today. If I dispatch a messenger now, they should be back here within twenty-four hours.”

  “Sounds pretty damn good to me, lady.”

  Kiera raised her walkie-talkie, and pulled a long length of chrome aerial out of it. “Magahi, would you return to Monterey’s docking ledge, please.”

  “Roger,” a crackling voice said from the walkie-talkie. “Give me twenty minutes.”

  Al was aware of an uncomfortable amount of satisfaction in Kiera’s mind. She was pretty sure she’d just won something. “Couldn’t you just tell Magahi to go straight back to the habitat?” he inquired lightly.

  Kiera’s smile widened gracefully. It was the same welcoming promise which had ended the Deadnight recording. “I don’t think so. There’s a big security factor if we radio the order; after all there are still some spyglobes out there. I don’t want the Edenists to know Magahi is flying escort on a frigate convoy.”

  “Escort? What frigates?”

  “The frigates carrying the first batch of my antimatter combat wasps to Valisk. That was your part of the bargain, Al, wasn’t it?”

  Damn the bitch! Al’s cigar had gone out. Emmet said their stocks of antimatter were nearly exhausted, and the fleet needed every gram to insure success at Toi-Hoi. He looked at Leroy, then Luigi. Neither of them could offer him a way out. “Sure thing, Kiera. We’ll get it organized.”

  “Thank you, Al.”

  Tough little ironass. Al couldn’t decide if he respected that or not. He didn’t need any more complications right now. But he was awful glad that she was lining up on his side.

  He took another sidelong look at her figure. Who knows? We could get to be real close allies. Except Jez would kill me for real . . .

  The ballroom’s huge double doors swung open to admit Patricia and someone Al had never seen before. A possessed man, who managed to cringe away from Patricia at the same time as he scampered along beside her. Judging by the perilously fragile state of his thoughts he had only just come into his new body.

  He saw Al, and made an effort to compose himself. Then his eyes darted to the huge window. His discipline crumpled. “Holy cow,” he whispered. “It is true. You are going to invade Toi-Hoi.”

  “Who the fuck is this goofball?” Al shouted at Patricia.

  “His name’s Perez,” she said calmly. “And you need to listen to him.”

  If it had been anyone else who spoke to him like that, they would’ve been kiboshed. But Patricia was one he really trusted. “You’re shitting me, right?”

  “Think what he just said, Al.”

  Al did. “How did you know about Toi-Hoi?” he asked.

  “Khanna! I got it from Khanna. She told me to tell you. She said one of us must get through. Then she killed me. She killed all of us. No, not killed, executed, that’s what she did, executed us. Smash smash smash with the white fire. Straight through my brain. That bitch! I’d only been back for five minutes. Five goddamn minutes!”

  “Who told you, fella? Who’s this she you got the beef with?”

  “Jacqueline Couteur. Back in Trafalgar. The Confederation Navy got her banged up in the demon trap. I hope she rots there. Bitch.”

  Patricia smiled a superior I-told-you-so, which Al acknowledged frugally. He put his arm around Perez’s shaking shoulders, and proffered the man a Havana. “Okay, Perez. You got my word, the word of Al Capone, which is the toughest currency of all, that nobody here is gonna send you back into the beyond again. Now, you wanna start at the beginning for me?”

  29

  Earth.

  A planet whose ecology was ruined beyond repair: the price it paid for elevating itself to be the Confederation’s supreme industrial and economic superpower. Overpopulated, ancient, decadent, and utterly formidable. This was the undeniable imperial heart of the human dominion.

  It was also home.

  Quinn Dexter admired the images building up on the bridge’s holoscreens. This time he could savour them with unhurried joy. Their official Nyvan flight authority code had been accepted by Govcentral Strategic Defence Command. As far as anyone was concerned, they were a harmless ship sent by a tiny government to buy defence components.

  “Traffic control has given us a vector,” Dwyer said. “We have permission to dock at the Supra-Brazil tower station.”

  “That’s good. Can you fly it?”

  “I think so. It’s tough, we have to go around the Halo, and they’ve given us a narrow flight path, but I can handle that.”

  Quinn nodded his permission without saying anything. Dwyer had been a perfect pain in the arse for the whole voyage, making out how difficult everything was before the flight computer performed whatever was required with faultless efficiency. An extraordinarily transparent attempt to show how indispensable he was. But then Quinn knew the effect he had on people, it was part of the fun.

  Dwyer was immediately busy talking to the flight computer. Icons flurried over the console displays. Eight minutes later they were under power, accelerating at a third of a gee to curve southwards around the O’Neill Halo.

  “Are we going down to the planet first?” Dwyer asked. He was growing progressively twitchier in contrast to Quinn’s deadly calm. “I didn’t know if you wanted to take over an asteroid.”

  “Take over?” Quinn asked faintly.

  “Yeah. You know, bring them the gospel of God’s Brother. Like we did for Jesup and the other three.”

  “No, I don’t think so. Earth isn’t so arse backwards as Nyvan, it would never be that simple to convene the Night here. It must be corrupted from within. The sects will help me do that. Once I show them what I’ve become they’ll welcome me back. And of course, my friend Banneth is down there. God’s Brother understands.”

  “Sure, Quinn, that’s good. Whatever you say.” The communications console bleeped for attention, which Dwyer happily gave it. Script flowed down one of the screens, which only amplified his distress as he read it. “Hell, Quinn, have you seen this?”

  “God’s Brother gave me a great many gifts, but being psychic isn’t one of them.”

  “It’s the clearance procedures we have to comply with after we dock. Govcentral security wants to ensure no possessed are on board.”

  “Fuck that.”

  “Quinn!”

  “I do hope, I really fucking do hope that you’re not questioning me, Dwyer.”

  “Shit, no way, Quinn. You’re the man, you know that.” His voice was verging on hysteria.

  “Glad to hear it.”

  The Brazilian orbital tower sprouted from the very heart of the South American continent, extending fifty-five thousand kilometres out into space. When it was in Earth’s penumbra, as it was when the Mount’s Delta approached, it was invisible to every visual sensor. However, in other electromagnetic wavelengths, and particularly the magnetic spectrum, it gleamed. A slim golden strand of impossible length, with minute scarlet particles skimming along it at tremendous speed.

  There were two asteroids attached to the tower. Supra-Brazil, the anchor, was in geostationary orbit thirty-six thousand kilometres above the ground, where it had been mined to extract the carbon and silicon used in the tower’s construction. The second asteroid sat right at the tip, acting as a mass counterbalance to ensure the anchor remained stable, and damp down any dangerous harmonic oscillations in the tower which built up from running the lift capsules.

  Because Supra-Brazil was the only section of the tower that was actually in orbit, it was the one place where ships could dock. Unlike every settled asteroid it didn’t rotate, nor were there any internal biosphere caverns. Th
e three-hundred-metre-diameter tower ran cleanly through the rock’s centre; its principal structure perfectly black and perfectly circular. Positioned around the lower segment that stretched down to Earth were twenty-five magnetic rails along which the lift capsules rode, delivering tens of thousands of passengers and up to a hundred thousand tonnes of cargo a day. The other segment, reaching up to the counterbalance, supported a single rail, which was used barely once a month to ferry inspection and maintenance mechanoids to the individual section platforms.

  The surface of the asteroid was covered with docking bays and all the usual spaceport support equipment. After three hundred and eighty-six years of continual operation, and the tower’s steady capacity expansion, there wasn’t a square metre of rock left visible.

  Even with the Confederation quarantine operating, over six thousand ships a day were still using it, the majority of them from the Halo. They approached by positioning themselves ahead of the port, a long ribbon of diverse craft dropping down from a higher orbit. Navigation strobes and secondary drives produced twinkling cataracts of light as they split into a complex braid of traffic lanes a kilometre above the surface to reach their allocated bays. Departing ships formed an equally intricate helical pattern as they rose away into a higher orbit.

  Mount’s Delta slotted into its designated traffic lane, gliding around the vast stem of the tower to dock in the floor of a valley formed by pyramids of heat exchangers, tanks, and thermo-dump panels, three times the size of the Egyptian originals. When the docking cradle had drawn it down into the bottom of the bay, a necklace of lights around the rim came on, illuminating every centimetre of the hull. Figures in black space armour were secured around the bay walls, ready to deal with anyone trying to leave the ship by irregular means.

  “Now what?” Quinn asked.

  “We have to give the security service total access to our flight computer. They’re going to run a complete diagnostic to make sure there aren’t any unexplained glitches anywhere in the ship. They’ll also monitor us through the internal sensors at the same time. Once they’re satisfied there’s no glitch we’re allowed out into the bay. We have to undergo a whole series of tests, including datavises from our neural nanonics. Quinn, we haven’t got any bloody neural nanonics, and a starship’s crew always have them fitted. Always!”

  “I told you,” Quinn’s hollow voice said from deep within his hood, “I will deal with it. What else?”

  Dwyer gave the display a wretched stare. “Once we’ve been cleared, we’re put in a secure holding area while the ship is searched by an armed security team. After it’s cleared, we will be allowed out.”

  “I’m impressed.”

  Dwyer’s communications console was showing a demand from the port’s security service to access the flight computer. “What do we do?” he shrieked. “We can’t fly away, we can’t comply. We’re trapped. They’ll storm us. They’ll have projectile weapons we can’t beat. Or they’ll rip the capsule bulkhead open and decompress us. Or electrocute us with—”

  “You’re trapped.” It was only a tiny whisper, but it stopped Dwyer’s rant dead.

  “You can’t! Quinn, I did everything you asked. Everything! I’m loyal. I’ve always been fucking loyal to you.”

  Quinn extended an arm, a single white finger emerging from the end of his black sleeve.

  Dwyer threw out both hands. White fire screamed out of his palms to lash at the black-robed incarnation of Death. Bridge consoles flickered madly as corkscrews of pale flame bounced off Quinn, flashing through the air to bury themselves in bulkheads and equipment.

  “Finished?” Quinn asked.

  Dwyer was sobbing.

  “You’re weak. I like that. It means you’ll serve me well. I will find you again, and use you.”

  Dwyer evacuated his stolen body just before the first burn of pain smashed along his spinal cord.

  * * *

  The security team assigned to the Mount’s Delta knew something was wrong as soon as the starship docked. Its routine datavises began to drop out for seconds at a time. When the bay’s management officer tried to contact the captain there was no reply. A level one alert was declared.

  The docking bay and its immediate surroundings were sealed up and isolated from the rest of Supra-Brazil. One squad of combat officers and another of technical experts were rushed to the docking bay to complement the original team. Communications lines were opened to an advisory panel made up from senior commanders in the Govcentral Internal Security Directorate and the Strategic Defence force.

  Four minutes after it docked, the clipper-class starship’s datavises had returned to normal, but there was still no response from the captain nor any other member of the crew. The security advisory panel authorized the team to go to the next stage.

  A datalink umbilical jacked into a socket on the starship’s hull. The GISD’s most powerful decryption computers were brought on line to crack the flight computer’s access codes; it took less than thirty seconds. The nature of the bridge’s modified processors and programs were obvious: customized to be run by possessed. Almost simultaneously, the sensors began relaying their images from the interior of the small life-support capsule. There was nobody inside. However, there was one anomaly whose cause wasn’t immediately apparent. A thick red paste was splashed across almost every surface in the bridge. Then an eyeball drifted past one of the sensors, and that mystery was solved—leaving a bigger paradox. The blood hadn’t yet congealed. Some one or thing on board had slaughtered the crew member only minutes ago. GISD could not permit an unknown threat to remain at large; if the possessed had developed a fresh method of attack it had to be investigated.

  An airlock tube extended out from the side of the bay. After arming themselves with chemical explosive fragmentation grenades and submachine guns, five GISD combat officers advanced through it to the life-support capsule. Each of them encountered a small squall of cold air in the tube as they pulled themselves along, barely noticeable through their armour.

  Once inside, they opened every storage locker and cabinet to try to locate the missing crew members. There was nobody to be found. Even the flight computer confirmed no atmosphere was being consumed.

  An engineering crew from the port was sent in to strip down the life-support capsule. It took them six hours to remove every single fitting, including the decking. The advisory council was left with an empty sphere seven metres in diameter with severed cables and hoses poking through sealed inlets. A meticulous examination of the flight computer records, evaluating power consumption, command interfaces, fuel expenditure, and utilities usage showed that there must have been two people on board when the Mount’s Delta docked. But DNA analysis on the blood and tissue smearing the bridge showed it had all come from one body.

  The Mount’s Delta was powered down, and its cryogenic tanks emptied. Then the entire ship was slowly and methodically cut up into sections, from the support framework to the fusion generators, even the energy patterning nodes. No unit or module bigger than a cubic metre was left intact.

  The media, of course, soon discovered the “ghost flight” from Nyvan; and rover reporters swarmed around the bay, demanding and bribing information from anyone they could find connected to the security operation. It wasn’t long before they managed to gain legal access to a sensor in the bay itself thanks to two judges whose motives were somewhat financially inclined. Several tens of millions of people in Earth’s arcologies started accessing the investigation directly, watching the starship being cut up by mechanoids, and waiting eagerly for a possessed to be captured.

  * * *

  Quinn saw no reason to stay inside the dry deprivation of the ghost realm once he had passed unseen through all the security checks; he rematerialized and sat in a luxurious active contour leather seat in the lift capsule’s Royale Class lounge. He was near one of the panoramic windows, which would allow him to watch the dawn rise over South America as he descended vertically towards it at three thousand kilometre
s an hour. With his hawkish, stressed face and expensively conservative blue silk suit he slotted perfectly into the character of an aristocratic businessman.

  For the last quarter of the journey down the tower he sipped his complimentary Norfolk Tears, which was continually topped up by a stewardess, and gave the AV projector above the cocktail bar an occasional glance. Earth’s media companies competed enthusiastically to update him on the progress of the search through the dissected components of the Mount’s Delta. If the rest of the lounge wondered at his intermittent guffaws of contempt, Earth’s obsessive cult of personal privacy forbade them from enquiring as to the reason.

  * * *

  Jed spent most of the voyage sitting on the pine floorboards in the Mindor’s lounge, gazing out at the starfield. There had never been a time in his life when he felt more content. The stars themselves were beautiful seen like this, and every now and then the hellhawk would swallow through a wormhole. That was exciting, even though there wasn’t much to see then, just a kind of dark grey fog swirling around outside that was never quite in focus. Coupled with the sense of invulnerability generated by riding in the hellhawk was the anticipation of Valisk, never stronger than now.

  I did it. For the first time in my life I set myself a solid goal and saw it through. Against some pretty nasty odds, too. Me and all the other kids from nowhere, we made it to Valisk. And Kiera.

  He had brought his modified recording of her, although he no longer needed it. Every time he closed his eyes he could see that smile, thick soft hair falling over her bare shoulders, perfectly rounded cheeks. She would congratulate him personally when they arrived. She must, because he was the leader. So they would probably get to talk, because she’d want to know how difficult it was for them, how they had struggled. She would be sympathetic, because that was her nature. Then perhaps—