Nights Dawn (№3) - Neutronium Alchemist - Consolidation

“That’s pure bullshit, buddy. Je-zus, I don’t know where you got that rumour from. No of course we’re not going to attack anyone. But we can defend ourselves pretty good if the Confederation Navy tries any funny stuff, we sure got the ships for that. Hell, I don’t want that to happen. We just want to be peaceable neighbours with everyone. I might even ask if we can join the Confederation.” At the murmur of surprise echoing through the lobby he grinned around happily. “Yeah. Why the hell not? Sure we can ask to join. Maybe some good will come out of it, some kind of compromise that’ll make everyone happy; a solution to all the souls that wanna come back. The Organization can pay Confederation longhairs to grow us all new bodies from scratch, something like that.”

“You mean you’d give up your body if a clone was available?”

Al frowned as Emmet leaned over to murmur in his ear, explaining what a clone was. “Sure,” he said. “Like I told you, we’re all the victims of circumstance.”

“You believe peaceful coexistence is possible?”

Al’s jocularity darkened. “You’d better fucking believe it, buddy. We’re back, and we’re here to stay. Grab that? What I’m trying to convince you guys is that we ain’t no end of the world threat, it’s not us who’s the riders of the Apocalypse. We’ve proved possessed and non-possessed can live together on this planet. Okay, so people out there are alarmed right now, that’s only natural. But we’re frightened too, you can’t expect us to go back to the beyond. We’ve got to work together on this. I’m personally offering the Assembly President my hand in friendship. Now that’s an offer he can’t refuse.”

The glowing red clouds had begun to grow, small ruby speckles blossoming right across Norfolk. Louise, Fletcher, and Genevieve spent their first day in orbit watching the images received by the Far Realm ’s external cameras. Kesteven island was by far the worst. A solid crimson aureole had gathered to mask the land, its shape a distended mockery of the coastline it was obscuring. Strands of ordinary white cloud malingered around its disciplined edges, only to be rebuffed by invisible winds if they drifted too close.

Fletcher assured the girls that in itself the red cloud was harmless. “A simple manifestation of will,” he proclaimed. “Nothing more.”

“You mean it’s just a wish?” Genevieve asked, intrigued. She had woken almost purged of her emotional turmoil; there were none of yesterday’s periods of manic exuberance or haunted silences. Although she was quieter than usual; which Louise thought was about right. She didn’t feel like talking much, either. Neither she nor Fletcher had mentioned the Tantu .

“Quite so, little one.”

“But why are they wishing it?”

“So that they can seek refuge below it from the emptiness of the universe. Even this planet’s sky, which has little night, is not a sight to cherish.”

Over thirty islands now had traces of redness in the air. Louise likened it to watching the outbreak of some terrible disease, a swelling cancer gnawing away at the flesh of her world.

Furay and Endron had come down into the lounge a few times, keeping them informed of the navy squadron’s actions, and the army’s progress. Neither of which amounted to much. The army had landed on two islands, Shropshire and Lindsey, hoping to retake their capitals. But reports from the forwards units were confused.

“Same problem as we had with Kesteven,” Furay confided when he brought them lunch. “We can’t support the lads on the ground because we don’t have any reliable targeting information. And that red cloud has got the admiral badly worried. None of the technical staff can explain it.”

By midafternoon, ship’s time, the army commanders had lost contact with half of their troops. The red cloud was visible over forty-eight islands, nine of which it covered completely. As Duke-day ended for Ramsey island slender wisps were located over a couple of villages. Teams of reserve soldiers were hurriedly flown in from Norwich. In both cases contact was lost within fifteen minutes of them entering the area.

Louise watched grimly as the coiling cloud thickened over each village. “I was right,” she said miserably. “There’s nothing anybody here can do. It’s only a matter of time now.”

Tolton made his way up the narrow creek, water from the narrow stream slopping over his glittery purple shoes. The top of the steep bank, a fringe of sandy grass, was several centimetres above his head. He couldn’t see out onto the parkland, and nobody could see him—thankfully. Far overhead, Valisk’s light tube gleamed. The intensity hurt Tolton’s eyes. He was a night person, used to the clubs, bars, and vestibules of the starscrapers, delivering his poet sermons to the ship crew burnouts, bluesensers, stimmed-out wasters, and mercenaries who sprawled throughout the lower floors of the starscrapers. They tolerated him, those lost entities, listening to (or laughing at) his carefully crafted words, donating their own stories to his wealth of experiences. He moved among the descriptions of shattered lives as vagrants moved through the filthy refuse of a darkened cul-de-sac, forever picking, trying to understand what they said, to bestow some grace to their wizened dreams with his prose, to explain them to themselves.

One day, he told them, I will incorporate it all into an MF album. The galaxy will know of your plight, and liberate you.

They didn’t believe him, but they accepted him as one of their own. It was a status which had saved him from many a bar fight. But now, in his hour of desperate need, they had failed him. However difficult it was to acknowledge, they had lost; the toughest bunch of bastards in the Confederation had been wiped out in less than thirty-six hours.

“Take the left hand channel at the next fork,” the processor block clipped to his belt told him.

“Yes,” he mumbled obediently.

And this was the greatest, most hurtful joke of all: him, the aspirant anarchist poet, pathetically grateful to Rubra, the super-capitalist dictator, for helping him.

Ten metres on two gurgling streams merged together. He turned left without hesitation, the foaming water splashing his knees. Fleeing from the starscraper, it was as though an insane montage of all the combat stories he’d ever been told had come scampering up out of his subconscious to torment him. Horror and laughter pursued him down every corridor, even the disused ones he thought only he walked. Only Rubra, a calm voice reeling off directions, had offered any hope.

Water made his black trousers heavy. He was cold, partly from the fright, partly cold turkey.

There had been no sign of pursuit for three hours now, though Rubra said they were still tracking him.

The narrow creek began to widen, its banks lowering. Tolton walked out into a tarn fifteen metres across with a crescent cliff cupping the rear half. Fat xenoc fish lumbered out of his way, apparently rolling along the bottom. There was no other exit, no feed stream.

“Now what?” he asked plaintively.

“There’s an inlet at the far end,” Rubra told him. “I’ve shut down the flow so you’ll be able to swim through. It’s only about five metres long, it bends, and there’s no light; but it leads to a cave where you’ll be safe.”

“A cave? I thought caves were worn into natural rock over centuries.”

“Actually, it’s a surge chamber. I just didn’t want to get technical on you, not with your artistic background.”

Tolton thought the voice sounded tetchy. “Thank you,” he said, and started to wade forwards towards the cliff. A couple more directions, and he dived under the surface. The inlet was easy to find, a nightmare-black hole barely a metre and a half wide. Knowing he would never be able to turn around or even back out, he forced himself to glide into the entrance, bubbles streaming behind him.

It couldn’t have been five metres long, more like twenty or thirty. The curves were sharp, one taking him down, the other up. He broke surface with a frantic gasping cry. The cave was a dome shape, twenty metres across, every surface was coated in a film of water, thin ripples were still running down the walls. He had emerged in the pool at the centre. When he looked up there was a large hole at the apex, droplets splattered on his upturned face. A high ring of electrophorescent cells cast a weak pink-white glow into every cranny.

He paddled over to the side of the pool and pushed himself out onto the slippery floor. A bout of shivering claimed his limbs; he wasn’t sure if it was from the cold water or the nagging feeling of claustrophobia. The surge chamber was horribly confined, and the fact that it was usually full of water didn’t help.

“I’ll have one of the housechimps bring you some dry clothes and food,” Rubra said.

“Thank you.”

“You should be safe here for a while.”

“I . . .” He looked around apprehensively. Everyone always said Rubra could see everything. “I don’t think I can stay very long. It’s a bit . . . closed in.”

“I know. Don’t worry, I’ll keep you moving, keep you ahead of them.”

“Can I join up with anyone else? I need to be around people.”

“There aren’t that many of you left free, I’m afraid. And meeting up with them isn’t a good idea, that would just make you easier to locate. I haven’t quite worked out how they track the non-possessed yet; I suspect they’ve got some kind of ESP ability. Hell, why not? They’ve got every other kind of magic.”

“How many of us are there?” he asked, suddenly panicky.

Rubra considered giving him the truth, but Tolton wasn’t the strongest of characters. “A couple of thousand,” he lied. There were three hundred and seventy-one people left free within the habitat, and assisting all of them simultaneously was pure hell.

Even as he was reassuring Tolton he perceived Bonney Lewin stalking Gilbert Van-Riytell. The tough little woman had taken to dressing in nineteenth-century African safari gear, a khaki uniform with two crossed bandoleer straps holding polished brass cartridges in black leather hoops. A shiny Enfield .303 rifle was slung over her shoulder.

Gilbert was Magellanic Itg’s old comptroller, and had never really stood a chance. Rubra had been trying to steer him along some service tunnels below a tube station, but Bonney and her co-hunters were boxing him in.

“There’s an inspection hatch three metres ahead,” Rubra datavised to Van-Riytell. “I want you to—”

Shadows lifted themselves off the service tunnel wall and grabbed the old man. Rubra hadn’t even noticed them. His perception routines had been expertly circumvented.

Once again, he purged and reformatted local sub-routines. By the time he regained some observation ability Van-Riytell’s legs and arms were being tied around a long pole, ready to be carried away like a prize trophy. He wasn’t even struggling anymore. Bonney was supervising the procedure happily.

One of her hunting team was standing back, watching aloofly; a tall young man in a simple white suit.

Rubra knew then. It had to be him.

Dariat!

The young man’s head jerked up. For an instant the illusion flickered. Long enough for Rubra. Under the outline of the handsome youth lurked Horgan. Horgan with a shocked expression wrenching his thin face. Incontrovertible proof.

I knew it would be you,rubra said. in a way the knowledge came almost as a relief.

Much good it will do you,dariat answered. Your awareness of anything is going to come to an end real soon now. And you won’t even make it to the freedom of the beyond, I won’t allow you that escape.

You’re amazing, Dariat. I mean that as a compliment. You still want me, don’t you? You want revenge. It’s all you’ve ever wanted, all that kept you alive these last thirty years. You still blame me for poor old Anastasia Rigel, even after all this time.

You got another suspect? If you hadn’t driven me away, she and I would still be alive.

The pair of you would be dodging good old Bonney here, you mean.

Maybe so. But then maybe if I’d been happy I might have made something of my life. Ever think of that? I might have risen through the company hierarchy just like you always wanted. I could have made Magellanic Itg supreme; I could have turned Valisk into the kind of nation that would have had Tranquillity’s plutocrats flocking to us in droves. There wouldn’t be any of these misfits and losers who rally around your banner. King Alastair would have come here asking me for tips on how to run his Kingdom. Do you really think a shipload of fucking zombies could have walked in here past passport, customs, and immigration without anyone even noticing if that kind of regime had been in place? Don’t you dare try and avoid facing up to what you’ve done.

Oh, really? Tell me: by misfits, and all the other trash you’d fling out of the airlocks, do you include the kind of girl you fell in love with?

“Bastard!” Dariat screamed. Everyone in the hunting party stared at him, even Van-Riytell. “I’ll find you. I’ll get you. I’ll crush your soul to death.” Rage distended his face. He flung both arms out horizontally from his body, a magus Samson thrusting against the temple pillars. White fire exploded from his hands to chew into the tunnel walls. Polyp flaked and cracked, black chips spinning away through the air.

Temper temper,rubra mocked. I see that hasn’t improved much over the years.

“Pack it in, you maniac!” Bonney yelled at him.

“Help me!” Dariat shouted back. The energistic hurricane roaring through his body was turning his brain to white-hot magma, wanting to burst clean out of his skull. “I’m going to kill him. Help me, for Chi-ri’s sake.” White fire hammered at the crumbling tunnel, desperate to reach the neural strata, to reach the very substance of the mind, and burn and burn and burn . . .

“Stop it, right now.” Bonney aimed her Enfield at him, one eyebrow cocked.

Dariat slowly allowed the white fire to sink back into the passive energistic currents stirring the cells of his possessed body. His shoulders hunched in as smoke from the scorched polyp spun around him. He reverted to Horgan, even down to the unwashed shirt and creased trousers. Hands were pressed to his face as he resisted the onrush of tears. “I’ll get him,” Horgan’s quavering, high-pitched voice proclaimed. “I’ll fucking have him. I’ll roast him inside his shell like he was some kind of lobster. You’ll see. Thirty years I’ve waited. Thirty! Thole owes me my justice. He owes me.”

“Sure he does,” Bonney said. “But just so you and I are clear on this: pull another stunt like that, and you’ll need a new body to work out of.” She jerked her head to the team trussing up Van-Riytell. They lifted the old comptroller off the ground and started off down the tunnel.

The hunter woman glanced back at Dariat’s hunched figure, opened her mouth to say something, then thought better of it. She followed the rest of the hunters along the tunnel.

You frightened me so bad I’m trembling,rubra sneered. Can you feel the quakes? I expect the sea is about to flood the parkland. How’s about that for wetting yourself?

Laugh away,dariat said shakily. Go right ahead. But I’m going to come for you one day. I’ll crack your safeguards. They won’t last forever, you know that. And forever is what I’ve got on my side now. Then when I’ve busted you, I’m going to come into that neural strata with you, I’m going to crawl into your mind like a maggot, Rubra. And like a maggot I’m going to gnaw away at you.

I always was right about you. You were the best. Who else could still burn so hot after thirty years? Damn, why did you ever have to meet her? Together we could have rebuilt the company into a galaxy challenger.

Such flattery. I’m honoured.

Don’t be. Help me.

What?You have got to be fucking joking.

No. Together we could beat Kiera, purge the habitat of her cronies. You can rule Valisk yet.

The Edenists were right, you are insane.

The Edenists are frightened by my determination. You should know, you inherited that gene, it seems.

Yeah. So you know you can’t deflect me. Don’t even try.

Dariat, you’re not one of them, boy, not one of the possessed. Not really. What can they possibly give you afterwards, huh? Ever thought of that? What sort of culture are they going to build? This is just an aberration of nature, a nonsense, and a transient one at that. Life has to have a purpose, and they’re not alive. This energistic ability, the way you can create out of nothing, how can you square that with human behaviour? It’s not possible, the two are not compatible, never will be. Look at yourself. If you want Anastasia back, bring her back. Find her in the beyond, get her back here. You can have everything now, remember? Kiera said so, did she not? Are you a part of that, Dariat? You have to decide, boy. Someday. If you don’t, they’ll do it for you.

“I can’t bring her back,” he whispered.

What’s that?

I can’t. You understand nothing.

Try me.

You, a confessor father? Never.

I always have been. I am the confessor for everyone inside me, you know that. I am the repository of everyone’s secrets. Including those of Anastasia Rigel.

I know everything about Anastasia. We had no secrets. We were in love.

Really? She had a life before you met her, you know. Seventeen long years. And afterwards, too.

Dariat glanced around with cold anger, his appearance sliding back to the white-suited ascetic. There was no afterwards. She died! Because of you.

If you knew of her past, you would understand what I meant.

What secrets?he demanded.

Help me, and I’ll show you.

You shit! I’m going to cremate you, I’ll dance on your fragments—

Rubra’s principal routine watched Dariat’s rage run its course. He thought at one point that the man would revert to flailing at the tunnel walls with white fire again. But Dariat managed to hang on to that last shred of control—barely.

Rubra stayed silent. He knew it was too early to play his ace, the one final secret he had kept safe for the last thirty years. The doubt he had planted deep in Dariat’s mind would have to be teased further, tormented into full-blown paranoia before the revelation was exposed.

Lady Macbeth ’s event horizon vanished, allowing her mushroom-shaped star trackers to rise out of their jump recesses and scan around. Fifteen seconds later the flight computer confirmed the starship had emerged fifty thousand kilometres above Tranquillity’s non-rotational spaceport. By the time her electronic warfare sensors registered, eight of the habitat’s Strategic Defence platforms had locked on to the hull, despite the fact their coordinate was smack in the centre of a designated emergence zone.

“Jesus,” Joshua muttered sourly. “Welcome home, people, nice to see you again.” He looked over to Gaura, who was lying on Warlow’s acceleration couch. “Update Tranquillity on our situation, fast, please. It seems a little trigger-happy today.” Combat sensors had located four blackhawks on interception trajectories, accelerating towards them at six gees.

Gaura acknowledged him with an indolent wrist flick. The Edenist’s eyes were closed; he’d been communicating with the habitat personality more or less from the moment the starship had completed the ZTT jump. Even with affinity it was difficult to convey their situation in a single quick summary; explanations, backed up with full memory exposure, took several minutes. He detected more than one ripple of surprise within the personality’s serene thoughts as the story of Lalonde unfolded in its mentality.

When he’d finished, Ione directed her identity trait at him in the Edenist custom. That’s some yarn you’ve got there,she said. Two days ago I wouldn’t have believed a word of it, but as we’ve had warning fleks arriving from Avon on an almost hourly basis for the last day and a half all I can say is I’ll grant you docking permission.

Thank you, Ione.

However, you will all have to be checked for possession before I’ll admit you into the habitat. I can hardly expose the entire population to the risk of contamination on the word of one man, even though you seem genuine.

Of course.

How’s Joshua?

He is well. A remarkable young man.

Yes.

The flight computer’s display showed the Strategic Defence platforms disengaging their weapons lock. Joshua received a standard acknowledgement from the spaceport’s traffic control centre followed by a datavised approach vector.

“I need a docking bay which can handle casualties,” he datavised back. “And put a pediatric team on alert status, as well as some biophysics specialists. These kids have had a real hard time on Lalonde, and that only finished when they got nuked.”

“I am assembling the requisite medical teams now,” Tranquillity replied. “They will be ready by the time you dock. I am also alerting a spaceport maintenance crew. Judging by the state of your hull, and the vapour leakages I can observe, I believe it would be appropriate.”

“Thank you, Tranquillity. Considerate as ever.” He waited for Ione to come on-line and say something, but the channel switched back to traffic control’s guidance updates.

If that’s the way she wants it . . . Fine by me. His features slumped into a grouch.

He ignited the Lady Mac ’s two functional fusion tubes, aligning the ship on their approach vector. They headed in for Tranquillity at one and a half gees.

“They believe all that spiel about possession?” Sarha asked Gaura, a note of worried scepticism in her voice.

“Yes.” He queried the habitat about the fleks from Avon. “The First Admiral’s precautions have been endorsed by the Assembly. By now ninety per cent of the Confederation should be aware of the situation.”

“Wait a minute,” Dahybi said. “We only just got back here from Lalonde, and we didn’t exactly hang around. How the hell could that navy squadron alert Avon two or three days ago?”

“They didn’t,” Gaura said. “The possessed must have got off Lalonde some time ago. Apparently Laton had to destroy an entire Atlantean island to prevent them from spreading.”

“Shit,” Dahybi grunted. “You mean they’re loose in the Confederation already?”

“I’m afraid so. It looks like Shaun Wallace was telling Kelly the truth after all. I had hoped it was all some subtle propaganda on his part,” the Edenist added sadly.

The news acted as a mood damper right through the starship. Their expected sanctuary wasn’t so secure after all; they’d escaped a battle to find a war brewing. Not even an Edenist psyche could suppress that much gloom. The children from Lalonde (those not squeezed into the zero-tau pods) picked up on it, another emotional ricochet, though admittedly not as large as all the others they’d been through. The happiness Father Horst had promised them waited at the end of their journey was proving elusive. Even the fact the voyage was ending didn’t help much.

The damage Lady Macbeth had suffered in the fight above Lalonde didn’t affect her manoeuvrability, not with Joshua piloting. She closed in on her designated docking bay, CA 5-099, at the very centre of the spaceport disk, precisely aligned along the vector assigned by traffic control. There was no hint that fifteen attitude control thrusters had been disabled, and she was venting steadily from emergency dump valves as well as a couple of fractured cryogenic feed pipes.

By that time almost a quarter of the habitat population was accessing the spaceport’s sensors, watching her dock. The news companies had broken into their schedules to announce that a single ship had made it back from Lalonde. Reporters had been very quick off the mark in discovering the pediatric teams were assembling in the bay. (Kelly’s boss was making frantic datavises to the incoming starship, to no avail.)

The space industry people, industrial station workers, and ships’ crews kicking their heels in the bars because of the quarantine observed the approach with a sense of troubled awe. Yes, Joshua had come through again, but the state of old Lady Mac . . . Charred, flaking nultherm foam exposed sections of her hull which showed innumerable heat-stress ripples (a sure sign of energy beam strikes), melted sensor clusters, only two fusion tubes functional. It must have been one hell of a scrap. They all knew no one else would be returning. Knowledge that every friend, colleague, or vague acquaintance who had accompanied Terrance Smith was either radioactive dust or lost to possession was hard to accept. Those starships were powerful, fast, and well armed.

The disembarkment process was, as expected, a shambles. People kept emerging from the airlock tube as if Lady Mac were the focus of some dimensional twist, her internal space far larger than that which the hull enclosed. Edenists formed a good percentage of the exiles, much to the surprise of the rover reporters. They helped a horde of wondrously senseogenic, scared-looking refugee kids in ragged clothes. Pediatric nurses floated after them in the reception compartment, while reporters dived like airborne sharks to ask the children how they felt/what they’d seen. Tears started to flow.

How the hell did they get in there?ione asked the habitat. Serjeants launched themselves to intercept the reporters.

Jay Hilton hugged her legs to her chest as she drifted across the compartment, shivering unhappily. None of this was what she’d been expecting, not the starship voyage nor their arrival. She tried to catch sight of Father Horst amid the noisy swirl of bodies bouncing around the compartment, knowing that he had others to look out for and probably couldn’t spare much time for her. In fact, she wouldn’t be needed for anything much now there were plentiful adults around to take care of things again. Perhaps if she hunched up really small everyone would ignore her, and she’d be able to have a look at the habitat’s park. Jay had heard stories of Edenist habitats and how beautiful they were; back in the arcology she’d often daydreamed that one day she’d visit Jupiter, despite everything Father Varhoos preached about the evils of bitek.

The opportunity to escape the melee never quite presented itself. A reporter soared past her, noticed she was the oldest kid in the compartment, and used a grab hoop to brake himself abruptly. His mouth split into a super-friendly smile, the kind his neural nanonics program advised was best to interface trustfully with Young Children. “Hi there. Isn’t this atrocious? They should have organized things better.”

“Yes,” Jay said doubtfully.

“My name is Matthias Rems.” The smile broadened further.

“Jay Hilton.”

“Well, hi there, Jay. I’m glad you’ve reached Tranquillity, you’re quite safe here. From what we’ve heard it was nasty for all of you on Lalonde.”

“Yes!”

“Really? What happened?”

“Well, Mummy got possessed the first night. And then—” A hand closed on her shoulder. She glanced around to see Kelly Tirrel giving Matthias Rems an aggressive stare.

“He wants to know what happened,” Jay said brightly. She liked Kelly, admiring her right from the moment she arrived at the savanna homestead to rescue them. On the voyage to Tranquillity she’d secretly decided that she was going to be a tough, Confederation-roaming reporter like Kelly when she grew up.

“What happened is your story, Jay,” Kelly said slowly. “It belongs to you; it’s all you’ve got left. And if he wants to hear it he has to offer you a great deal of money for it.”

“Kelly!” Matthias flashed her a slightly exasperated you-know-the-score grin.

It made no discernible impression on Kelly. “Pick on someone your own size, Matthias. Ripping off traumatized children is low even for you. I’m covering for Jay.”

“Is that right, Jay?” he asked. “Did you thumbprint a contract with Collins?”

“What?” Jay glanced from one to the other, puzzled.

“Serjeant!” Kelly shouted.

Jay squeaked in alarm as a glitter-black hand closed around Matthias Rems’s upper arm. The owner of the hand was a hard-skinned monster worse than any shape a possessed had ever worn.

“It’s all right, Jay.” Kelly grinned for the first time in days. “It’s on our side. This is what Tranquillity uses for its police force.”

“Oh.” Jay swallowed loudly.

“I’d like to complain about an attempted violation of confidentiality copyright,” Kelly told the serjeant. “Also, Matthias is breaking the sense-media ethics charter concerning the approach and enticement of minors in the absence of their parents or guardians.”

“Thank you, Kelly,” the serjeant said. “And welcome home, I offer my congratulations on your endurance through difficult times.”

She grimaced numbly at the bitek servitor.

“Come along now, sir,” the serjeant said to Matthias Rems. It pushed away from the compartment bulkhead with its stocky legs, the pair of them heading for one of the hatchways.

“Don’t ever trust reporters, Jay,” Kelly said. “We’re not nice people. Worse than the possessed really; they only steal bodies, we steal your whole life and make a profit out of it.”