by Dan Simmons
“And Patroclus out there alive somewhere over the sea,” parodied Penthesilea. “Just how in Hades’ name are we supposed to get over the sea, son of Peleus? And which sea, anyway?”
“We’ll find a ship,” said Achilles without turning to look back at her. “Or build one.”
Someone snorted, either the Amazon or her mare. She’d obviously stopped following him—Achilles heard only his own horse’s shoes on stone—and she raised her voice so that he could hear her. “What are we now, bleeding shipbuilders? Do you know how to build a ship, O fleet-footed mankiller? I doubt it. You’re good at being fleet-footed and at killing men—and Amazons who are twice your better—not at building anything. I bet you’ve never built anything in your useless life…have you? Have you? Those calluses I see are from holding spears and wine goblets, not from…son of Peleus! Are you listening to me?”
Achilles had ridden fifty feet on. He did not look back. Penthesilea’s huge white mare stood where she had reined her in, but it now pawed the ground in confusion, wanting to join the stallion ahead.
“Achilles, damn you! Don’t just assume that I’m going to follow you! You don’t even know where you’re going, do you? Admit it!”
Achilles rode on, his eyes fixed on the hazy line of hills on the horizon line near the sea far, far, far to the south. He was getting a terrible headache.
“Don’t just take it for granted that…gods damn you!” shouted Penthesilea as Achilles and his stallion kept moving slowly away, a hundred yards now. The bastard son of Zeus did not look back.
One of the vultures on the shrub-tree by the holy Xanthes flapped its way into the sky, circling the now-empty battlefield once, its kin-of-the-eagle eye noting that not even the ashes of the corpse fires—usually a place to find a midday morsel—remained.
The vulture flapped south. It circled three thousand feet over the two living horses and human beings—the only ground-living things visible as far as the far-seeing carrion bird could see—and, ever hopeful, it decided to follow them.
Far below, the white horse and its human burden remained unmoving while the black horse and its man clopped south. The vulture watched, hearing but ignoring the unpleasant noises the rearward human was making as the white horse was suddenly spurred into motion and galloped to catch up.
Together, the white horse trailing only slightly, the two horses and two humans headed south along the curve of the Aegean and—lazing easily on the strong thermals of the warming afternoon—the vulture followed hopefully.
89
Nine days after the Fall of Ilium:
General Beh bin Adee personally led the attack on Paris Crater, using the dropship as his command center while more than three hundred of his best Beltvec troopers roped and repellored down into the blue-ice-hive city from six hornet fighters.
General bin Adee had not been in favor of joining this fight on Earth—his advice had been to choose no one’s side—but the Prime Integrators had decided and their decision was final. His job was to find and destroy the creature named Setebos. General bin Adee’s advice then had been to nuke the blue-ice cathedral above Paris Crater from orbit—it was the only way to be sure to get the Setebos thing, he’d explained—but the Prime Integrators had rejected his advice.
Millennion Leader Mep Ahoo led the primary assault team. After the other ten teams had roped down and blasted through the outer surface of the blue-iced city, establishing a perimeter and confirming it over tactical comm—the thing could not escape now—Mep Ahoo and his twenty-five picked rockvec troopers jumped from the primary hornet hovering at three thousand meters, activated their repellors at just the last second, used shaped charges to blow a hole in the roof of the blue-ice cathedral dome, and roped in—their fastlines anchored from pitons driven into the blue ice itself.
“It’s empty,” radioed Millennion Leader Mep Ahoo. “No Setebos.”
General bin Adee could see that himself on the images sent back from the twenty-six troopers’ nanotransmitters and suitcams. “Grid and search,” he commanded on the prime tactical band.
Reports were coming in now from all perimeter teams. The blue-ice itself was rotten—a fist could collapse an entire tunnel wall. The tunnels and corridors had already begun to collapse.
Mep Ahoo’s team returned to repellor flight and flew their grid search in the cavernous central place over the ancient black hole crater itself. They started high—making sure that nothing was hiding in one of the blue-ice balconies or high crevices—but soon were swooping low over the fumaroles and abandoned secondary nests.
“The main nest has collapsed,” reported Mep Ahoo on the common tactical channel. “Fallen into the old black hole crater. I’m sending images.”
“We see them,” replied General Beh bin Adee. “Is there any chance the Setebos creature could be in the black hole vent itself?”
“Negative, sir. We’re deep radaring the crater now and it goes all the way to magma. No side vents or caverns. I think it’s gone, sir.”
Cho Li’s voice came over the common band. “It confirms our theory that the quantum event of four days ago was an opening of a final Brane Hole in the blue-ice cathedral itself.”
“Let’s be sure,” said General Beh bin Adee. On the tactical command tightbeam, he sent to Mep Ahoo—Check all nests.
Affirmative.
Six rockvecs from Mep Ahoo’s primary assault force checked the collapsed ruins of Setebos’s central nest, then fanned out, repelloring above the collapsing cathedral floor to look at each decaying fumarole and sagging nest.
Suddenly there was a cry from one of the perimeter teams that had just penetrated to the central dome. “Something written here, sir.”
Half a dozen other troopers, including Millennion Leader Mep Ahoo, converged on the point high on the south wall of the dome. There was a terrace there where the largest corridor entered the dome, and in the wall of the dome where the corridor widened into the so-called cathedral, something or someone had written in the blue ice, using what appeared to be fingernails or claws—Thinketh, the Quiet comes. His dam holds that the Quiet made all things which Setebos vexes only, but He holds not so. Who made them weak, meant weakness He might vex. But thinketh, why then is Setebos here then vexed to flight? Thinketh, can Strength ever be vexed to Flight by Weakness? Thinketh, is He the only One after all? The Quiet comes.
“Caliban,” said Prime Integrator Asteague/Che from the Queen Mab in its new geosynchronous orbit.
“Sir, tunnels and caverns all checked and reported empty,” came a Centurion Leader’s report on the common tactical channel.
“Very good,” said General Beh bin Adee. “Prepare to use the thermite charges to melt the whole blue-ice complex down to the original Paris Crater ruins. Make sure none of the original structures will be damaged. We’ll search them next.”
Something here, said Mep Ahoo on the tactical tightbeam. The images flowing into the dropship monitors showed the troopers’ chest searchlights falling on a tumbled fumarole nest. All of the eggs in that nest had burst open or collapsed inward…all except one. The Millennion Leader repellored down, crouched next to the egg, set his black-gloved hands on the thing, then set his head against it, actually listening.
I think there’s something still alive in here, sir, reported Mep Ahoo. “Orders?”
Stand by, barked General Beh bin Adee. On his tightbeam to the Queen Mab, he said, Orders?
“Stand by,” said the bridge officer speaking for the Prime Integrators.
Finally Prime Integrator Asteageu/Che came on the line. “What is your advice, General?”
“Burn it. Burn everything there…twice.”
“Thank you, General. One second, please.”
There was a silence broken only by slight static. Bin Adee could hear the breathing of his three hundred and ten troopers over their suit microphones.
“We would like the egg to be collected,” Prime Integrator Asteague/Che said at last. “Use one of the stasis-cubes if feas
ible. Hornet Nine should shuttle it up. Have Millennion Leader Mep Ahoo stay with the egg on Hornet Nine. We shall use the Queen Mab itself as a quarantine laboratory. The Mab has divested itself of all weapons and fissionable material…the stealthed attack cruisers will monitor our study of the egg.”
General Beh bin Adee was silent a few seconds and then said, “Very well.” He opened the tightbeam to Millennion Leader Mep Ahoo and relayed the orders. The team in the blue-ice cathedral already had a stasis-cube ready.
Mep Ahoo sent, Are you sure about this, sir? We know from Ada and the Ardis survivors what their Setebos baby was capable of. Even the unhatched egg had some power. I doubt if Setebos left one viable egg behind by accident.
“Implement the orders,” said General Beh bin Adee on the common tactical band. Then he opened his private tightbeam to Mep Ahoo and sent—“And good luck, son.”
90
Six months after the Fall of Ilium, on the Ninth of Av:
Daeman was in charge of the raid on Jerusalem. It had been carefully planned.
One hundred fully functioned old-style humans freefaxed in at the same second, arriving three minutes before four moravec hornets carrying a hundred more volunteers from Ardis and other survivor-communities. The moravec soldiers had offered their services for this raid months earlier, but Daeman had vowed a year ago that he would free the old-style humans locked in Jerusalem’s blue beam—all of Savi’s ancient friends and Jewish relatives—and he still felt it was a human responsibility to do so. They had, however, accepted the long-term loan of combat suits, repellor backpacks, impact armor, and energy weapons. The hundred men and women in the hornets—piloted by moravecs who would not otherwise join the fight—were bringing in the weapons too heavy to carry in during freefax.
It had taken Daeman and his team—humans and moravecs alike—more than three weeks to check and double-check the specific GPS coordinates of the old city streets, avenues, plazas, and junctions down to the inch in order to plot the hundred freefax arrival areas and designated landing sites for the hornets.
They waited until August, until the Jewish holiday of the Ninth of Av. Daeman and his volunteers freefaxed in ten minutes after sunset, when the blue beam was at its brightest.
As far as the Queen Mab’s surveillance and aerial reconnaissance could tell them, Jerusalem was unique of all places on Earth in that it was inhabited by both voynix and calibani. In the Old City, which was their target tonight, the voynix occupied the streets north and northwest of the Temple Mount, in areas roughly equivalent to the ancient Muslim and Christian Quarters, and the calibani filled the tight streets and buildings to the southwest of the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aksa Mosque in areas once called the Jewish Quarter and the Armenian Quarter.
From the spy images—including deep radar—they estimated there were about twenty thousand combined voynix and calibani in Jerusalem.
“Hundred to one odds,” Greogi had said with a shrug. “We’ve had worse.”
They faxed in almost silently, a mere disturbance in the air. Daeman and his team appeared in the narrow plaza in front of the Kotel…the Western Wall. It was still light enough to see, but Daeman used his thermal imaging and deep radar in addition to his eyes to find targets. He estimated that there were around five hundred calibani lounging, sleeping, standing, and milling just in the space and on the walls and rooftops immediately west of the plaza. Within seconds, all of his ten squad commanders had checked in over the combat suit intercoms.
“Fire at will,” he said.
The energy weapons had been programmed to disrupt only living tissue—calibani or voynix—but not to destroy real estate. As Daeman targeted and fired, watching the running, leaping long-clawed calibani go down or erupt into thousands of fleshy pieces, he was glad for that. They didn’t want to destroy this particular village in order to save it.
The Old City of Jerusalem became a maelstrom of blue energy flashes, calibani screams, shouted radio calls, and exploding flesh.
Daeman and his squad had killed every target they could see when he saw by his visor chronometer that it was time for the hornets to arrive. He triggered his repellor pack and rose to the level of the Temple Mount—Daeman was alone, this was no time to have the air full of people—and watched as the first two hornets swept in, landed, disgorged their people and cargoes, and then swooped out. Thirty seconds later, the last two hornets had arrived and the combat-suited men and women were spilling across the stones of the Mount, carrying their heavy weapons on tripods and repellor blocks. The two hornets swooped away.
“Temple Mount secured,” Daeman radioed to all his squad leaders. “You may fly when ready. Stay out of the set lines of fire from the Mount.”
“Daeman?” sent Elian from his position above Bab al-Nazir in the old Muslim Quarter. “I can see masses of voynix coming up the Via Dolorosa and bunches of calibani coming your way east on King David Street.”
“Thanks, Elian. Deal with them as they arrive. The larger guns may engage as…”
Daeman was deafened by heavy weapons’ fire from the Mount just beneath his feet. The humans all along the walls and rooftops there were firing in all directions toward the advancing gray and green figures. Between the vertical blue beam and the thousands of blue-flashes of energy weapon fire, all of Old Jerusalem was bathed in an arc-welding blue glow. The filters on Daeman’s combat suit goggles actually dimmed a bit.
“All squads, fire at will, report any penetration in your sectors,” said Daemon. He tilted on the hovering backpack repellors and then slid through the air to the northeast to where the taller, more modern blue-beam building rose just behind the Dome of the Rock. He was interested to find that his heart was pounding so wildly that he had to concentrate on not hyperventilating. They’d practiced this five hundred times over the past two months, freefaxing into the mock-up of Jerusalem that the moravecs had helped them build not far from Ardis. But nothing could have prepared Daeman for a fight of this magnitude, with these weapons, in this city of all cities.
Hannah and her squad of ten were waiting for him when he arrived at the beam building’s sealed door. Daeman landed, nodded at Laman, Kaman, and Greogi, who were there in the soft twilight with Hannah, and said, “Let’s do it.”
Laman, working quickly with his undamaged left hand, set the plastic explosive charge. The twelve humans stepped around the side of the metal-alloy building while the explosion took the entire door off.
The inside was not much larger than Daeman’s tiny bedroom back at Ardis and the controls were—thank whatever God might be out there—almost as they’d surmised from reviewing all Shared data available from the Taj Moira’s crystal cabinet.
Hannah did the actual work, her deft fingers flying over the virtual keyboard, tapping in the seven-digit codes whenever queried by the blue-beam building’s primitive AI.
Suddenly a deep hum—mostly subsonic—rattled their teeth and bruised their bones. All of the displays on the AI wall flashed green and then died.
“Everyone out,” said Daeman. He was the last one to leave the beam-building’s anteroom, and not a second too soon—the anteroom, the metal wall, and that entire side of the building folded into itself twice and disappeared, becoming a black rectangle.
Daeman, Hannah, and the others had backed down onto the stones of the Temple Mount itself, and now they watched as the blue beam dropped from the sky, the hum growing deeper as it died—painfully so. Daeman found himself shutting his eyes and gripping his hands into fists, feeling the dying subsonics through his gut and testicles as well as his bones and teeth. Then the low noise stopped.
He pulled his combat suit cowl off, earphones and microphone still in place, and said to Hannah, “Defensive perimeter here. As soon as the first person is out, call in the hornets.”
She nodded and joined the others where they were facing and firing outward from the high Temple Mount.
At some time during the preparation for this night, someone—it might have been Ada—h
ad joked that it would only be polite that Daeman and the other raiders should memorize the faces and names of all of the 9,113 men and women captured in that blue beam fourteen hundred years ago. Everyone laughed, but Daeman knew it would have been technically possible; the crystal cabinet in the Taj Moira had given Harman much of that data.
So over the past five months since they’d decided how and when to do this, Daeman had referred to those stored images and names. He hadn’t memorized all 9,113 of them—he, like all the survivors, had been far too busy for that—but he was not surprised when he recognized the first man and woman to come stumbling out of that black-rectangle door from the neutrino-tachyon beam reassembler.
“Petra,” said Daeman. “Pinchas. Welcome back.” He grabbed the slim man and woman before they could fall. Everyone emerging from the black door, two by two like the animals from Noah’s ark Daeman had time to notice, looked more stunned than sensible.
The dark-haired woman named Petra—a friend of Savi’s, Daeman knew—looked around in a drugged way and said, “How long?”
“Too long,” said Daeman. “Right this way. Toward that ship, please.”
The first hornet had landed, carrying another thirty old-styles whose job was just to accompany and help load the long lines of returning human beings. Daeman watched as Stefe came up and led Petra and Pinchas across the ancient stones toward the hornet ramp.
Daeman greeted everyone coming down the ramp from the beam building, recognizing many on sight—third was the man named Graf, his partner who was also named Hannah, one of Savi’s friends named Stephen, Abe, Kile, Sarah, Caleb, William…Daeman greeted them all by name and helped them the few steps to those others waiting to help them to the hornets.
The voynix and calibani kept attacking. The humans kept killing them. In the rehearsals, it had taken them more than forty-five minutes—on a good evening—to load 9,113 people onto hornets, even given only seconds between one hornet being loaded and leaving and the next arriving—but this evening, while under attack, they did it in thirty-three minutes.