The Night's Dawn Trilogy

by Peter F. Hamilton

  Garth held up his arms, and made the sign of the inverted cross. “With flesh we bond in the night,” he intoned.

  The acolytes started a low, mournful chanting, swaying softly in unison.

  “Pain we love,” Garth told them. “Pain frees the serpent beast. Pain shows us what we are. Your servants, Lord.”

  He was almost in a trance state as he spoke the words, he’d said them so many times before. So many initiations. The coven had a high turnover, arrests, stim burnouts, fights. But never drop outs.

  Indoctrination and discipline helped, but his main weapon of control was belief. Belief in your own vileness, and knowing there was no shame in it. Wanting things to get worse, to destroy and hurt and ruin. The easy way forward . . . once you give in to your true self, your serpent beast. All that started right here, with the ceremony.

  It was a deliberate release of sex and violence, an empowerment of the most base instincts, permitting little resistance. So easy to join, so natural to immerse yourself in the frenzy around you. Indulge the need to belong, to be the same as your brethren family. An act which gave the existing acolytes that fraternity.

  As to the initiates, they passed through the eye of the needle. Fear kept them in place at first, fear of knowing how exquisitely ugly the sect really was, how they would be dealt with if they disobeyed or attempted to leave. Then the cycle would turn, and there would be another initiation. Only this time it would be them showing their devotion to God’s Brother, revelling in the unchaining of their serpent beast. Doing as they had been done by, and enraptured by the accomplishment.

  Whoever had designed the ritual, Garth thought, had really understood basic conditioning psychology. Such elemental barbarism was the only possible way to exert any kind of control over a Downtown savage. And there was no other sort of resident here.

  “In darkness we see You, Lord,” Garth recited. “In darkness we live. In darkness we wait for the true Night that You will bring us. Into that Night we will follow You.” He lowered his arms.

  “We will follow You,” the acolytes echoed. Their rustling voices had become hot with expectation.

  “When You light the true path of salvation at the end of the world, we will follow You.”

  “We will follow You.”

  “When Your legions fall upon the angels of the false lord, we will follow You.”

  “We will follow You.”

  “When the time . . .”

  “That time is now,” a single clear voice announced.

  The acolytes grunted in surprise, while Garth spluttered to a halt, more astonished than outraged at the interruption. They all knew how important he considered the sect’s ceremonies, how intolerant of sacrilege. Only true believers can inspire belief in others.

  “Who said that?” he demanded.

  A figure walked forward from the back of the temple, clad in a midnight-black robe. The opening at the front of the hood seemed to absorb all light, there was no hint of the head it contained. “I am your new messiah, and I have come among you to bring our Lord’s Night to this planet.”

  Garth tried to use his retinal implants to see into the hood, but they couldn’t detect any light in there, even infrared was useless. Then his neural nanonics reported innumerable program crashes. He yelled: “Shit!” and thrust his left hand out at the robed figure, index finger extended. The fire command to his microdart launcher never arrived.

  “Join with me,” Quinn ordered. “Or I will find more worthy owners for your bodies.”

  One of the acolytes launched herself at Quinn, booted foot swinging for his kneecap. Two others were right behind her, fists drawn back.

  Quinn raised an arm, his sleeve falling to reveal an albino hand with grizzled claw fingers. Three thin streamers of white fire lashed out from the talons, searingly bright in the gloomy, smoke-heavy air. They struck his attackers, who were flung backwards as if they’d been hit by a shotgun blast.

  Garth grabbed one of the serpent candlesticks, and swung it wildly, aiming to smash it down on Quinn’s head. Not even a possessed would be able to survive a mashed brain, the invading soul would be forced out. Air thickened around the candlestick, slowing its momentum until it halted ten centimetres above the apex of Quinn’s hood. The serpent’s head, which held the candle, hissed and closed its mouth, biting the rod of wax in half.

  “Swamp him!” Garth shouted. “He can’t defeat all of us. Sacrifice yourself, for God’s Brother.”

  A few of the acolytes edged closer to Quinn, but most stayed where they were. The candlestick began to glow along its entire length. Pain stabbed into Garth’s hands. He could hear his skin sizzling. Squirts of greasy smoke puffed out. But he couldn’t let go; his fingers wouldn’t move. He saw them blister and blacken; bubbling juices ran down his wrists.

  “Kill him,” he cried. “Kill. Kill.” His burning hands made him scream out in agony.

  Quinn leant towards him. “Why?” he asked. “This is the time of God’s Brother. He sent me here to lead you. Obey me.”

  Garth fell to his knees, arms shaking, charred hands still clenched round the gleaming candlestick. “You’re a possessed.”

  “I was a possessed. I returned. My belief in Him freed me.”

  “You’ll possess all of us,” the magus hissed.

  “Some of you. But that is what the sect prays for. An army of the damned; loyal followers of our darkest Lord.” He turned to the acolytes and held up his hands. For the first time his face was visible within, pale and deadly intent. “The waiting is over. I have come, and I bring you victory for eternity. No more pathetic squabbling over black stimulants, no more wasting your life mugging geriatric farts. His true work waits to be done. I know how to bring Night to this planet. Kneel before me, become true warriors of darkness, and together we will rain stone upon this land until it bleeds and dies.”

  Garth screamed again. All that was left now of his fingers were black bones soldered to the candlestick. “Kill him, shitbrains!” he roared. “Smash the fucker into bedrock, curse you.” But through eyes blurred with tears he could see the acolytes slowly sinking to the floor in front of Quinn. It was like a wave effect, spreading across the temple. Wener was the closest to Quinn, his simple face alive with admiration and excitement. “I’m with you,” the lumbering acolyte yelled. “Let me kill people for you. I want to kill everyone, kill the whole world. I hate them. I hate them real bad.”

  Garth groaned in mortification. They believed him! Believed the shit was a real messenger from God’s Brother.

  Quinn closed his eyes and smiled in joy as he gloried in their adulation. Finally, he was back among his own. “We will show the Light Bringer we are the worthy ones,” he promised them. “I will guide you over an ocean of blood to His Empire. And from there we will hear the false lord weeping at the end of the universe.”

  The acolytes cheered and laughed rapturously. This was what they craved; no more of the magus’s tactical restraint, at last they could unleash violence and horror without end, begin the war against the light, their promised destiny.

  Quinn turned and glanced down at magus Garth. “You: fuckbrain. Grovel, lick the shit off my feet, and I’ll allow you to join the crusade as a whore for the soldiers.”

  The candlestick clattered to the ground, with the roast remains of Garth’s hands still attached. He bared his teeth at the deranged possessor standing over him. “I serve my Lord alone. You can go to hell.”

  “Been there,” Quinn said urbanely. “Done that. Come back.” His hand descended on Garth’s head as if in anointment. “But you will be of use to me. Your body, anyway.” His needle-sharp talons pierced the skin.

  The magus discovered that the pain of losing his hands was merely the overture to a very long and quite excruciating symphony.

  2

  It was designated Bureau Seven, which somewhat inevitably for a government organization was acronymed down to B7. To anyone with Govcentral alpha-rated clearance, it was listed as one of the hund
reds of bland committees which made up the management hierarchy of the Govcentral Internal Security Directorate. Officially its function was Policy Integration and Resource Allocation, a vital coordination role. The more senior GISD Bureaus produced their requirements for information and actions, and it was B7’s job to make sure none of the new objectives clashed with current operations before they designated local arcology offices with carrying out the project and assigned funds. If there was any anomaly to be found with B7, it was that such an important and sensitive responsibility did not have a political appointee assigned to run it. Certainly the chiefs of Bureaus 1 through 6 changed with every new administration, reflecting fresh political priorities; and several hundred minor posts among the lower Bureaus were also up for grabs as a loyalty reward to the new President’s retinue. Again, no junior positions were available in B7.

  So B7 carried on as it always had, isolated and insular. In fact, just how insular would have come as a great shock to any outsider who investigated the nature of its members—that is, a shock in the brief period left to them before being quietly terminated.

  Although the antithesis of democracy themselves, they did take the job of guarding the republic of Earth extremely seriously. Possession was the one threat which actually had the potential not just to overthrow but actually eliminate Govcentral, a prospect which hadn’t arisen for nearly four hundred and fifty years, since the population pressures of the Great Dispersal.

  Possession, therefore, was the reason why a full meeting of all sixteen members had been convened for the first time in twelve years. Their sensenviron conference had a standard format, a white infinity-walled room with an oval table in the centre seating their generated representations. There was no seniority among them, each had his or her separate area of responsibility, the majority of which were designated purely on geographical terms, although there were supervisors for GISD’s divisions dealing in military intelligence.

  An omnidirectional projection hung over the table, showing a warehouse on Norfolk which was burning with unnatural ferocity. Several museum-piece fire engines were racing towards it, along with men in khaki uniforms.

  “It would appear the Kavanagh girl is telling the truth,” said the Central American supervisor.

  “I never doubted it,” Western Europe replied.

  “She’s certainly not possessed,” said Military Intelligence. “Not now, anyway. But she’d still have those memories if she had been.”

  “If she’d been possessed, she would have admitted it,” Western Europe said indolently. “You’re building in complications for us.”

  “Do you want a full personality debrief to confirm her authenticity?” Southern Africa asked.

  “I don’t think we should,” Western Europe said. He absorbed the mildly polite expressions of surprise the representations around the table were directing at him.

  “Care to share with us?” Southern Pacific asked archly.

  Western Europe looked at the Military Intelligence supervisor. “I believe we have crossover from the Mount’s Delta?”

  Military Intelligence gave a perfunctory nod. “Yes. We confirmed that the starship was carrying two people when it docked at Supra-Brazil. One of them slaughtered the other in an extravagantly gory fashion right after docking was completed, the body was literally exploded. All that we can tell you about the victim is that he was male. We still don’t know who he was, there’s certainly no correlating DNA profile stored in our memory cores. I’ve requested that all governments we’re in contact with run a search through their records, but I don’t hold out much hope.”

  “Why not?” Southern Pacific asked.

  “The Mount’s Delta came from Nyvan; he was probably one of their citizens. None of their nations remain intact.”

  “Not relevant, anyway,” said Western Europe.

  “Agreed,” Military Intelligence said. “Once we’d stripped down the Mount’s Delta, we ran extremely thorough forensic tests on the life support capsule and its environmental systems. Analysis on the faecal residue left in the waste cycle mechanism identified the other occupant’s DNA for us. And this is where the story gets interesting, because we have a very positive match on his DNA.” Military Intelligence datavised the sensevise’s controlling processor, and the image above the table changed. Now it showed an image taken from Louise Kavanagh’s brain a few minutes before the warehouse was fired; a young man with a pale, stern face, dressed in a jet-black robe. The viewing angle was such that he looked down on the members of B7 with a derisory sneer. “Quinn Dexter. He was an Ivet shipped to Lalonde last year, sentenced for resisting arrest, the police thought he was running an illegal package into Edmonton. He was as it happens. Sequestration nanonics.”

  “Oh Christ,” Central America muttered.

  “The Kavanagh girl confirms he was on Norfolk, and both she and Fletcher Christian strongly suspect he was the one who took over the frigate Tantu. Following that, the Tantu made one unsuccessful attempt to penetrate Earth defences, and immediately withdrew, damaging itself in the process.”

  Western Europe datavised the sensenviron management processor, and the image above the table changed again. “Dexter got to Nyvan. One of the surviving asteroids confirmed that the Tantu docked at Jesup asteroid. That’s when their real troubles started. Ships from Jesup planted the nukes in the abandoned asteroids.” He pointed at the image of Nyvan which had replaced Dexter. It was a world like nothing previously seen in the galaxy, as if a ball of lava had congealed in space, a crinkled black surface crust riddled with contorted fissures of radiant red light. The two atmospheric aspects were in constant conflict, supernatural and supernature boiling against each other with harrowing aggression.

  “Dexter was there on Lalonde at incident one, according to Laton and our Edenist friends,” Western Europe said remorselessly. “He was on Norfolk, which we now recognize as the major distribution source of infection. He was at Nyvan which has elevated the crisis to a completely new stage; as far as we can tell one which has proved as hostile to the possessed as it is to the ordinary population. And now we are certain he arrived here at Supra-Brazil.” He looked directly at the South America supervisor.

  “There was an alert at the Brazil tower station fifteen hours after the Mount’s Delta arrived,” South America said tonelessly. “Just after its descent, one of the lift capsules suffered exactly the kind of electronic glitches known to be inflicted by the possessed. We had the entire arrivals complex sealed and surrounded within ninety seconds. Nothing. No sign of any possessed.”

  “But you think he’s here?” East Europe pressed.

  South America smiled without humour. “We know he is. After the alert, we hauled in everyone who came down on the lift capsule, passengers and crew. This is what we got from several neural nanonics memory cells.” Nyvan faded away to show a slightly fuzzy two-dimensional picture, indicating a low-grade recording. The figure in the Royale Class lounge wearing a blue-silk suit, and slumped comfortably in a deep chair was undoubtedly Dexter.

  “Merciful Allah,” North Pacific exclaimed. “We’ll have to shut down the vac-trains. It’s our one advantage. I don’t care how good he is at eluding our sensors, the little shit can’t walk a thousand kilometres along a vacuum tunnel. Isolate the bastard, and hit him with an SD platform strike.”

  “I believe even we would have trouble shutting down the vac-trains,” South Pacific said significantly. “Not without questions being asked.”

  “I don’t mean we should issue the order,” North Pacific snapped. “Feed the information up to B3, and make the President’s office authorize it.”

  “If the public find out there’s a possessed on Earth, there will be absolute pandemonium,” North Africa said. “Even we would have trouble retaining control over the arcologies.”

  “Better than being possessed,” North America said. “Because that’s what he’ll do to the arcology populations if we don’t stop him. Even we would be in danger.”

 
“I think his objective is more complex than that,” Western Europe said. “We know what he did to Nyvan, I think we can assume he wants to do the same thing here.”

  “Not a chance,” Military Intelligence said. “Even if he could sneak around up in the Halo, which I doubt, he’d never acquire enough nukes to split an asteroid open. You can’t remove one of those beauts from storage without anyone knowing.”

  “Maybe, but there’s something else. Kavanagh and Fletcher Christian both say that Dexter is here to hunt down Banneth and have his revenge on her. I checked Dexter’s file; he used to be a sect member in Edmonton. Banneth was his magus.”

  “So what?” asked North Pacific. “You know what those crazy brute sect members do to each other when the lights go off. I’m not surprised he wants to beat the crap out of Banneth.”

  “You’re missing the point,” Western Europe said patiently. “Why would the soul possessing Quinn Dexter’s body care about Dexter’s old magus?” He looked questioningly round the table. “We’re dealing with something new, here, something different. An ordinary person who has somehow gained the same powers of the possessed, if not superior ones. His goals are not going to be the same as theirs, this craving they have to flee the universe.”

  North America caught it first. “Shit. He used to be a sect member.”

  “And presumably remains so,” Western Europe agreed. “He was still performing their ceremony on Lalonde; that was incident one, after all. Dexter is a true believer in the Light Bringer teachings.”

  “You think he’s come back to find his God?”

  “It’s not a god he worships, it’s the devil. But no, he’s not here to find him. My people ran a psychological profile simulation; what they got indicates he’s come back to prepare the way for his Lord, the Light Bringer, who glories in war and chaos. He’ll try to unleash as much mayhem and destruction on both us and the possessed as it’s possible to do. Nyvan was just the warm up. The real game is going to be played out down here.”