Nights Dawn (№3) - Neutronium Alchemist - Consolidation

It took several minutes for his anger to sink back into more rational, passive thought currents. By the time he was thinking logically again, Valisk’s SD sensor network alerted him to five voidhawks emerging from their wormhole termini to take up station half a million kilometres away. Spies! They didn’t trust him.

He had to find the three people from the Yaku , and those members of his family whose monitor routines had been tampered with.

While the rest of the Srinagar system went to an agitated stage one military alert status, he tried again and again to scan his own interior for the renegades. Standard visual pattern recognition routines were useless. He upgraded and changed the perception interpretation routines several times. To no avail. He tried loading similar search orders into the servitors, hoping that they might succeed where the sensitive cells woven into every polyp surface had failed. He swept through entire starscrapers with his principal consciousness, certain that they still hadn’t managed to infiltrate and corrupt his identity core. He found nothing.

After ten hours, the watching voidhawks were joined by three Srinagar navy frigates.

Inside the habitat, Time Universe played Graeme Nicholson’s recording continuously, agitating the population badly. Opinions were divided. Some said Laton and Rubra were obviously colleagues, comrades in antagonism. Laton wouldn’t hurt Valisk. Others pointed out that the two had never met, and had chosen very different paths through life.

There was unease, but no actual problems. Not for the first few hours. Then some idiot from the spaceport’s civil traffic control centre leaked the news (actually he was paid two hundred thousand fuseodollars by Collins for the data) that the Yaku had docked at Valisk. Twenty starships immediately filed for departure flights, which Rubra refused.

Unease began to slip into resentment, anger, and alarm. Given the nature of the residents, they had no trouble asserting their feelings in a manner which the rentcops employed by Magellanic Itg had a hard time damping down. Riots broke out in several starscrapers. Localized ‘councils’ were formed, demanding the right to petition Rubra—who simply ignored them (after memorizing the ringleaders). More thoughtful and prudent members of the population started to hike out into the remoter sections of parkland, taking camping gear with them.

Such strife was almost designed to make Rubra’s frantic search for the three Yaku crew members difficult verging on impossible.

Thirty-eight hours after Graeme Nicholson’s flek arrived in the Srinagar system, a voidhawk came from Avon, exposing the true nature of the threat the Confederation was facing. Such was the priority, it even beat the First Admiral’s earlier communiqu

In its wake all incoming starships were isolated and told to prepare for boarding and inspection by fully armed military teams. Civil starflight effectively shut down overnight. Proclamations were issued, requiring all newly arrived travellers to report to the police. Failure to comply was roughly equivalent to thumbprinting your own death warrant. Navy reserves were called in. Industrial astroengineering stations began producing combat wasps at full capacity.

In one respect, news of the possessed assisted Rubra. It seemed to shock Valisk’s population out of their confrontational attitude. Rubra judged it an appropriate time to appeal to them for help. Every communications net processor, holoscreen, and AV pillar in the habitat relayed the same image of him: a man in his prime, handsome and capable, speaking calmly and authoritatively. Given that he’d had nothing to do with the general population for a century, it was an event unusual enough to draw everyone’s attention.

“There are only three possessed at large in the habitat at this moment,” he told his audience. “While they are certainly a cause for concern, they do not as yet present a threat to us. I have issued the police with the kind of heavy-calibre weapons necessary to surmount their energistic ability. And if circumstances warrant, several citizens have the kind of experience which might prove useful in a confrontation.” An ironic, knowing curl of his lip brought an appreciative smile from many watchers. “However, their ability to alter their appearance means they are proving hard for me to track down. I’m therefore asking all of you to look out for them and inform me immediately. Don’t trust people just because they look the same as they’ve always been; these bastards are probably masquerading as friends of yours. Another effect to watch for is the way they interfere with electronic equipment; if any of your processors start glitching, inform me immediately. There’s a half-million-fuseodollar reward for the information which results in their elimination. Good hunting.”

“Thank you, Big Brother.” Ross Nash tipped his beer glass at the holoscreen over the Tacoul Tavern’s bar. He looked away from the drastically wobbly picture of Rubra, and grinned at Kiera. She was sitting in one of the wall booths, talking in low intense tones with the small cadre she’d been building up; her staff officers, people joked. Ross was mildly bugged that she hadn’t been including him in the consultation process recently. Okay, so he didn’t have much in the way of technical knowledge, and this habitat was a far gone trip into future-world for a guy who was born in 1940 (and died in ’89—bowel cancer); he kept expecting Yul Brynner to turn up in his black gunslinger outfit. But damn it, his opinion counted for something. She hadn’t screwed with him for days either.

He glanced around the black and silver tavern, resisting the impulse to laugh. It was busier than it had been for years. Unfortunately for the owner, nobody was paying for their drinks and meals anymore. Not this particular clientele. Tatars and cyberpunks mixed happily with Roman legionaries and heavy-leather bikers, along with several rejects from the good Dr Frankenstein’s assembly lab. Music was blasting out of a magnificent 1950s Wurlitzer, allowing a flock of seraphim to strut their stuff across the neon underlit floor. It was pure sensory overload after the deprivation of the beyond, nourishment for the mind. Ross grinned engagingly at his new buddies propping up the bar. There was poor old Dariat, also cut out of Kiera’s elite command group and really pissed by that. Abraham Canaan, too, in full preacher’s ensemble, scowling at the debauchery being practised all around. One thing about the possessed, Ross thought cheerfully, they knew how to party. And they could do it in perfect safety in the Tacoul Tavern; those who were affinity-capable had turned the joint into a safe enclave, completely reformatting the subroutines which operated in the neural strata behind the walls.

He gulped down the rest of his glass, then held it up in front of his nose and wished it full once again. The liquid which appeared in it really did look like gnat’s piss. He frowned at it; a complicated process, coordinating that many facial muscles. For the last five hours he’d been delighted that possessing a body didn’t prevent you from getting utterly smashed, now it seemed there were disadvantages. He chucked the glass over his shoulder. He was sure he’d seen shops out in the vestibule, some of them would stock a bottle or two of decent booze.

Rubra knew his thought processing efficiency was lower than optimum. The malaise was his own fault. He should be reviewing the search, reformatting sub-routines yet again. Now more than ever the effort should be made, now the true nature of his predicament was known. And it was a predicament. The possessed had conquered Pernik. Bitek was not invincible. He ought to divert every mental resource towards breaking the problem; after all, the possessed were physically present, there had to be some way of detecting them. Instead he brooded—something an Edenist habitat personality couldn’t, or wouldn’t, do.

Dariat. Rubra simply couldn’t forget the insignificant little shit. Dariat was dead. But now death wasn’t the end. And he died happy. That passive half smile seemed to flitter through the cells of the neural strata like a menacing ghost. Not such a stretched metaphor, now.

But to kill yourself just to return . . . No. He wouldn’t.

But someone had taught the possessed how to glitch his thought routines. Someone very competent indeed.

That smile, though. Suppose, just suppose, he was so desperate for vengeance . . .

Rubra became aware of a disturbance in the Diocca starscraper, the seventeenth floor, a delicatessen. Some kind of attempted holdup. A sub-routine was attempting to call for the rentcops, but it kept misdirecting the information. The new safeguard protocols he’d installed were trying to compensate, and failing. They fell back on their third-level instructions, and alerted the principal personality pattern. And barely succeeded in that. Dozens of extremely potent subversive orders were operating within the Diocca starscraper’s neural strata, virtually isolating it from Rubra’s consciousness.

Elated and perturbed, he focused his full attention on it . . .

Ross Nash was leaning on the delicatessen’s counter, pressing a very large pump-action shotgun into the face of the petrified manager. He clicked the fingers of his free hand, and a thousand-dollar bill flipped out of his cuff, just like the way he’d seen a magician do it in Vegas one time. The crisp note floated down to join the small pile on the counter.

“We got enough here yet, buddy?” Ross asked.

“Sure,” the manager whispered. “That’s fine.”

“Goddamn bet your ass it is. Yankee dollar, best goddamn currency in the whole fucking world. Everybody knows that.” He snatched up a bottle of Norfolk Tears from beside the bills.

Rubra focused on the shotgun, not entirely sure the seventeenth floor’s perception interpretation routine was fully functional after all. The weapon seemed to be made of wood.

Ross grinned at the trembling manager. “I’ll be back,” he said, in a very heavy accent. He did an about-face and started to march away. The shotgun flickered erratically, competing with a broken chair leg to occupy the same space.

The manager snatched his shockrod from its clips under the counter and took a wild swing. It connected with the back of Ross’s head.

Along with the manager, Rubra was amazed at the result of the simple blow.

As soon as the shockrod sparked across Ross’s skin, his possessed body ignited with the pristine glory of a small solar flare. All colours in the shop vanished beneath the incandescent blaze, leaving only white and silver to designate rough shapes.

Nearby processors and sensors came back on-line. Thermal alerts flashed into Valisk’s net, along with a security call. Ceiling-mounted fire suppression nozzles swivelled around, and squirted retardant foam at the blaze.

The thick streams made little difference. Ross’s stolen body was dimming now, sinking to its charred knees, flakes of carbonated flesh crumbling away.

Rubra activated the audio circuit on in the shop’s net processor. “Out!” he commanded.

The manager cringed at the shout.

“Move,” Rubra said. “It’s the possessed. Get out.” He instructed all the net processors on the seventeenth floor to repeat the order. Analysis routines began correlating all the information from the starscraper’s sensitive cells. Even with his principal personality pattern directing the procedure, he couldn’t see what was happening inside the Tacoul Tavern. Then bizarre figures started to emerge from the tavern’s doorway into the vestibule.

He’d found them, the whole damnable nest.

White fireballs shot through the air, pursuing the terrorized delicatessen manager as he ran for the lifts. One of them caught him, clinging to his shoulder. He screamed as black, rancid smoke churned out of the wound.

Rubra immediately cancelled the floor’s autonomic routines and shunted himself into the operating hierarchy. The vestibule’s electrophorescent cells went dead, dropping the whole area into darkness, except for the confusing strobe of white fire. A muscle membrane door leading onto the stairwell snapped open, sending out a single fan of light. The manager altered course, put his head down, and charged straight at it.

Chips of polyp rained down on the vestibule floor. All across the ceiling the atmosphere duct tubules were splitting open as Rubra contracted and flexed the flow regulator muscles in directions they were never designed for. Thick white vapour poured out of the jagged holes. Warm, dank, and oily, it was the concentrated water vapour breathed out of a thousand lungs, which the tubules were supposed to extract from the air and pump into specialist refining organs.

The possessed wished it gone. And the muggy fog obeyed, rushing aside to let them pass. But not before it reduced their fireballs to impotent wispy swirls of fluorescing mist.

The manager reached the stairwell. Rubra closed the muscle-membrane door behind him, clenching it tight as several balls of white fire slammed into the surface, burrowing in like lava worms.

Kiera Salter ran out into the vestibule just as the last of the stinking mist vanished. Red emergency lights had come on, bringing an antagonistic moonlight glow to the broad chamber. She saw the stairwell’s muscle-membrane door slap shut ahead of the vengeful mob.

“Stop!” she yelled.

Some did. Several threw white fire at the muscle membrane.

“Stop this right now,” she said, this time there was an edge in her voice.

“Fuck you, Kiera.”

“He zapped Ross, goddamnit.”

“I’m gonna make him suffer.”

“Maybe.” Kiera strode into the centre of the vestibule and stood there, hands on her hips, staring around at her precariously allied colleagues. “But not like this.” She gestured at the smoking muscle membrane door, which was still shut. The grey surface was visibly quivering. “He knows now.” She tipped her head back, calling out at the ceiling. “Don’t you, Rubra?”

The ceiling’s electrophorescent cells slowly came back on, illuminating her upturned face. Lines of darkness flowed across them, taking shape. YES.

“Yes. See?” She dared any of the possessed to challenge her; a couple of her more powerful new lieutenants, Bonney Lewin and Stanyon, came forward to stand beside her for emphasis. “We’re playing a different game now, no more skulking about. Now we take over the entire habitat.”

NO, printed the ceiling.

“That wasn’t a deal, Rubra,” she shouted up at him. “I’m not offering to make you a partner. Got that? If you’re real, real lucky, then you get to live on. That’s all. If you don’t piss me off. If you don’t get in my way. Then maybe we’ll have a use for your precious Valisk afterwards. But only if you behave. Because once I’ve taken over your population it’s going to be easy to fly away. Only before we go, I’ll use the starships to cut you into little pieces; I’ll split your shell open, I’ll bleed your atmosphere out, I’ll freeze your rivers solid, I’ll blast your digestive organs out of the endcap. It’ll take a long time hurting for you to die completely. Decades, maybe. Who knows. You want to find out?”

YOU ARE COMPLETELY ALONE. POLICE AND COMBAT-BOOSTED MERCENARIES ON THEIR WAY. SURRENDER NOW.

Kiera laughed brutally. “No, we’re not alone, Rubra. There are billions of us.” She looked around at the possessed in the vestibule, not seeing any dissenters (except ones like Dariat and Canaan, who really didn’t count). “Okay, people, as from now we’re going overt. I want procedure five enacted this minute.” A casual click of her fingers, designating tasks. “You three, override the lift supervisor processors, have them ready to take us up into the parkland. Bonney, track down that little shit who wiped Ross, I want him creatively hurt. We’ll set up our command centre in Magellanic Itg’s boardroom.”

The first lift arrived at the seventeenth floor. Five of the possessed hurried in, anxious to show Kiera their eagerness to obey, anxious to reap the rewards. The doors slid shut. Rubra overrode the starscraper’s power circuit safeguards, and routed eighty thousand volts through the metal tracks which lined the lift shaft.

Kiera could hear the screams from inside the lift, feel the agony of forced banishment. The silicon rubber seal between the doors melted and burned, allowing the fearsome light of the bodies’ internecine flame to spew out of the crack.

NOT SO EASY, IS IT?

For about twenty seconds she stood absolutely still, face a perfect cage around any emotion. Then her finger lined up on a spindly youth in a baggy white suit. “You, open the muscle membrane; we’ll use the stairs.”

“Told you so,” the youth said. “We should have gone for him first.”

“Do it,” Kiera snapped. “And the rest of you, Rubra’s demonstrated what he can do. It’s not much compared to our ability, but it’s an irritant. We’ll cut through the neural strata’s connections with the starscrapers eventually, but until then, proceed with caution.”

The muscle-membrane door parted smoothly, allowing the now slightly subdued possessed to troop up the seventeen flights of stairs to the parkland above.

It wasn’t a pure affinity command,rubra told the Kohistan Consensus. I felt what was almost like a power surge through the neural cells around the muscle membrane. It came in with the affinity command, just wiped all my routines completely. But it’s localized, an area roughly five metres in diameter; it can’t reach into the main neural strata.

Laton claimed that Lewis Sinclair had that same kind of supercharged affinity when he took over Pernik island,the consensus replied.It works through brute strength, and as such can be subverted. But should one of them succeed in transferring his personality into you, the energistic ability increases in proportion to the number of cells subsumed. You must not allow that to happen.

Fat chance. You know Valisk’s neural cells were sequenced from my DNA, they will only process my thought routines. I guess that’s similar to what Laton did to Pernik when he altered the island’s neural strata with his proteanic virus. The affinity-capable possessed might be able to knock out some functions like the muscle membranes, but their personalities wouldn’t function as independent entities in the neural strata, not unless they operate as a subsection of my pattern. I’d have to let them in.

Excellent news. But can you protect your general population from possession?

It’s going to be tricky,rubra admitted reluctantly. And I’ll never save all of them, not even a majority. I’m going to have to take a whole load of internal damage, too.

We sympathise. We will help you rebuild afterwards.

If there is an afterwards.

Chapter 08

Culey asteroid was an almost instinctive choice for Andr

This time, though, when the Villeneuve’s Revenge performed its ZTT jump into the designated emergence zone, Culey spaceport was unusually reticent in granting docking permission. During the last three days the system had received first the reports of Laton’s re-emergence, and secondly the warning from Trafalgar about possible energy virus contamination. Both designated Lalonde as the focus of the trouble.

“But I have a severely injured man on board,” Andr

“Sorry, Duchamp,” the port control officer replied. “We have no bays available.”

“There’s very little traffic movement around the port,” Madeleine Collum observed; she’d accessed the starship’s sensor suite, and was viewing the asteroid. “And most of that is personnel commuters and MSVs, no starships.”

“I am declaring a first-degree emergency,” Andr

“Emergency declaration acknowledged, Villeneuve’s Revenge ,” the port control officer datavised back. “We would advise you set a vector for the Yaxi asteroid. Their facilities are more appropriate to your status.”

Andr

Ri Drak was Andr

“Hello, Captain,” Ri Drak datavised. “We would seem to have a problem evolving here.”

“Not for me,” Andr

The two of them switched to a high-order encryption program. Much to Madeleine’s annoyance, she couldn’t access the rest of the conversation. Whatever was said took nearly fifteen minutes to discuss. The only giveaway was Andr

“Very well, Captain,” Ri Drak said at last. “The Villeneuve’s Revenge is cleared to dock, but at your own risk should you prove to be contaminated. I will alert the security forces to your arrival.”

“Monsieur,” Andr

Madeleine didn’t press. Instead she began datavising the flight computer for systems schematics, assisting the captain with the fusion drive’s ignition sequence.

Culey’s counter-rotating spaceport was a seven-pointed star, its unfortunate condition mirroring the asteroid’s general attitude to spaceworthiness statutes. Several areas were in darkness: silver-white insulation blankets were missing from the surface, creating strange mosaic patterns, and at least three pipes were leaking, throwing up weak grey gas jets.

The Villeneuve’s Revenge was assigned an isolated bay near one of the tips. That at least was fully illuminated, internal spotlights turning the steep-walled metal crater into a shadowless receptacle. Red strobes around the rim flashed in unison as the starship descended onto the extended cradle.

An armed port police squad were first through the airlock tube when it sealed. They rounded up Andr

“You put up a hell of a fight in here,” the port police captain said as he slid through the open ceiling hatch into the lower deck lounge where the possessed had stormed aboard. The compartment was a shambles, fittings broken and twisted, blackened sections of composite melted into queer shapes, dark bloodstains on various surfaces starting to flake. Despite the best efforts of the straining environmental circuit there was a nasty smell of burnt meat in the air which refused to go away. Nine black body bags were secured to the hatch ladder by short lengths of silicon fibre. Stirred by the weak columns of air which was all the broken, vibrating conditioning duct could muster, they drifted a few centimetres above the scorched decking, bumping into each other and recoiling in slow motion.

“Erick and I saw them off,” Andr

“You did pretty well, then,” the captain said. “Lalonde sounds as if Hell has materialized inside the Confederation.”

“It has,” Andr

The police captain nodded thoughtfully.

“Captain?” Madeleine datavised. “We’re ready to take Erick’s zero-tau pod down to the hospital now.”

“Of course, proceed.”

“We’ll need you there to clear the treatment payment orders, Captain.”

Andr

“You know, I have several friends in the media who would be interested in recordings of your mission,” the police captain said. “Perhaps you would care for me to put you in touch with them? There may even be circumstances where you wouldn’t have to pay import duty; these matters are within my discretion.”

Andr

Madeleine and Desmond accompanied Erick’s zero-tau pod to the asteroid’s hospital in the main habitation cavern. Before the field was switched off, the doctors went through the flek Madeleine had recorded as she stabilized Erick.

“Your friend is a lucky man,” the principal surgeon told them after the initial review.

“We know,” Madeleine said. “We were there.”

“Fortunately his Kulu Corporation neural nanonics are top of the range, very high capacity. The emergency suspension program he ran during the decompression event was correspondingly comprehensive; it has prevented major internal organ tissue death, and there’s very little neural damage, the blood supply to his cranium was sustained almost satisfactorily. We can certainly clone and replace the cells he has lost. Lungs will have to be completely replaced, of course, they always suffer the most from such decompression. And quite a few blood vessels will need extensive repair. The forearm and hand are naturally the simplest operation, a straightforward graft replacement.”

Madeleine grinned over at Desmond. The flight had been a terrific strain on everyone, not knowing if they’d used the correct procedures, or whether the blank pod simply contained a vegetable.

Andr

“Erick’s going to be all right,” she told him.

“Tr He is a beautiful enfant. I always said so.”

“He can certainly be restored,” the surgeon said. “There is the question of what kind of procedure you would like me to perform. We can use artificial tissue implants to return him to full viability within a few days, these we have in store. Following that we can begin the cloning operation and start to replace the AT units as his organs mature. Or alternatively we can simply take the appropriate genetic samples, and keep him in zero-tau until the new organs are ready to be implanted.”

“Of course.” Andr

The surgeon gave a modest shrug. “The cheapest option would just be to give him the artificial tissue and not bother with cloned replacements. AT is the technology which people use in order to boost themselves; the individual units will live longer than him, and they are highly resistant to disease.”

“Magnifique.” Andr

“But we’re not going to use that option, are we, Captain?” Madeleine said forcibly. “Because, as you said when Erick saved both your ship and your arse, you would buy him an entire new clone body if that’s what it took. Didn’t you? So how fortunate that you don’t have to clone a new body, and all the expense that entails. Now all you are going to have to pay for is some artificial tissue and a few clones. Because you certainly don’t want Erick walking around in anything less than a perfectly restored and natural condition. Do you, Captain?”

Andr“Non,” he said. “How right you are, my dear Madeleine. As ever.” He gave the surgeon a nod. “Very well, a full clone repair, if you please.”

“Certainly, sir.” The surgeon produced a Jovian Bank credit disk. “I must ask for a deposit of two hundred thousand fuseodollars.”

“Two hundred thousand! I thought you were going to rebuild him, not rejuvenate him.”

“Sadly, there is a lot of work to be done. Surely your insurance premium will cover it?”

“I’ll have to check,” Andr

Madeleine laughed.

“Will Erick be able to fly after the artificial tissue has been implanted?” Andr

“Oh, yes,” the surgeon said. “I won’t need him back here for the clone implants for several months.”

“Good.”

“Why? Where are we going?” Madeleine asked suspiciously.

Andr

Idria asteroid was on full Strategic Defence alert, and had been for three days. For the first forty-eight hours all the asteroid council knew was that something had taken over the New California SD network, and coincidentally knocked out (or captured) half of the planetary navy at the same time. Details were hazy. It was almost too much to believe that some kind of coup could be successful on a modern planet, but the few garbled reports which did get beamed out before the transmitters fell ominously silent confirmed that the SD platforms were firing at groundside targets.

Then a day ago the voidhawk messenger from the Confederation Assembly arrived in the system, and people understood what had happened. With understanding came terror.

Every settled asteroid in the Lyll belt was on the same maximum alert status. The Edenist habitats orbiting Yosemite had announced a two-million-kilometre emergence exclusion zone around the gas giant, enforced by armed voidhawks. Such New California navy ships as had escaped the planetary catastrophe were dispersed across several settled asteroids, while the surviving admirals gathered at the Trojan asteroid cluster trailing Yosemite to debate what to do. So far all they’d done was fall back on the oldest military maxim and send out scouts to fill in the yawning information gap.

Commander Nicolai Penovich was duty officer in Idria’s SD command centre when the Adamist starships emerged three thousand kilometres away—five medium-sized craft, nowhere near the designated emergence zone. Sensors showed their infrared signature leap upwards within seconds of their appearance. Tactical programs confirmed a massive combat wasp launch. Targets verified as the asteroid’s SD platforms, and supplementary sensor satellites.

Nicolai datavised the fire command computer to retaliate. Electron and laser beams stabbed out. The hastily assembled home defence force fleet—basically every ship capable of launching a combat wasp—was vectored onto the intruders. By the time most of them had got under way the attackers had jumped away.

Another four starships jumped in, released their combat wasps, and jumped out.

The assault was right out of the tactics flek, and there was nothing Nicolai could do about it. His sensor coverage had already degraded by forty per cent, and still more was dropping out as combat wasp submunitions stormed local space with electronic warfare pulses. Nuclear explosions were surrounding the asteroid with a scintillating veil of irradiated particles, almost completely wiping out the satellites’ long-range scanner returns.

It was becoming increasingly difficult to direct the platforms’ fire on incoming drones. He didn’t even know how many surviving salvos there were anymore.

Two of the defending ships were struck by kinetic missiles, disintegrating into spectacular, short-lived streaks of stellar flame.

Nicolai and his small staff recalled the remainder of the fleet, trying to form them into an inner defensive globe. But his communications were as bad as the sensor coverage. At least three didn’t respond. Two SD platforms dropped out of his command network. Victims of combat wasps, or electronic warfare? He didn’t know, and the tactics program couldn’t offer a prediction.