Authors: S. Andrew Swann
Messiah (4 page)
Her sister, the de facto captain of the
Daedalus
, transmitted back, “Still no word from the
Khalid
.”
Daedalus
, transmitted back, “Still no word from the
Khalid
.”
For what seemed to both Tonis very questionable reasons, Mallory and his command staff had agreed to use the
Khalid
to attempt a blockade run. Her twin had only agreed because Mallory’s group had been able to trade seats on the trip groundside for additional ships for their fleet. “Captain” Tony Valentine had told her sister that she had thought no one would accept the offer.
Khalid
to attempt a blockade run. Her twin had only agreed because Mallory’s group had been able to trade seats on the trip groundside for additional ships for their fleet. “Captain” Tony Valentine had told her sister that she had thought no one would accept the offer.
Toni II, for the first time since diving into a wormhole and finding her ten-day-younger self on the other side, disagreed with her other self. She never would have agreed to such a fool plan, even if it doubled their fleet at the time. They had only been granted a trio of ships at the expense of the
Khalid,
which had been probably the most technically advanced ship in all of Bakunin space. An exchange that, after the pope’s broadcast, seemed hardly worth it.
Khalid,
which had been probably the most technically advanced ship in all of Bakunin space. An exchange that, after the pope’s broadcast, seemed hardly worth it.
Toni II could remember the whole thing, nearly word for word. The pope warning of Adam, showing first the tachcomm transmission Mallory had made from Salmagundi before that planet fell, then another showing Adam taking the capital of the Caliphate, Khamsin. And the pope’s closing statement had been chilling:
“For centuries, all human society has recognized three basic evils. Religious or secular, we have not tolerated any experiments in these Heretical Technologies: Self-replicating Nanotechnology, Artificial Intelligence, and the genetic engineering of sapient beings. Each brings its own unique dangers, and each has been responsible for the loss of countless lives over the past five hundred years. For five hundred years we have seen these things, in and of themselves, as anathema. But evil does not reside in matter, in knowledge, in science. Evil lives in the heart. It lives in the soul. It is our choice, to follow a moral framework we acknowledge as outside ourselves, or descend to one written to accommodate our own petty desires, our hubris, our narcissism, our solipsism, our nihilism.
“You have seen the works of the entity calling itself Adam. Adam represents the ultimate fear that drove us all to reject those Heretical Technologies. Adam is the temptation we tried to deny ourselves, power without any restraint or moral consideration. Adam represents the antithesis of humanity, the Adversary of every single faith, creed, or philosophy.
“We have seen Evil, and it is not in the tools Adam uses. It is not in the technology. The Evil is Adam itself. The Evil that places any inhabitant of this universe on the level of its creator. The Evil is rule based on the whim of a would-be god. The Evil is in the cancerous belief that would deny existence to any that do not adhere to it. Because of this, and with the authority God grants me and the Church, I herby grant absolution for all those who have used Heretical Technologies, and their progeny—specifically, the Proteans and their kin—who chose to follow the laws of God and man. Any who rise up now to resist this Evil, have my blessing and that of the Church.”
Since that broadcast spread across the system three days ago, Mallory had brought together an alliance of nearly fourteen hundred ships. Enough so that they could use nearly half in this unmanned attack against that Adversary.
Toni II glanced at display for the comm channel for the
Khalid
. It had been dead silent since the dropship tached into low orbit over Bakunin.
Should
have tached into low orbit. Even more than running the blockade, that maneuver with a tach-drive so close to a gravity well was insanely dangerous. Any craft less sophisticated than the
Khalid
would have found the task impossible; the advanced navigation systems on that ship made the attempt only
barely
possible.
Khalid
. It had been dead silent since the dropship tached into low orbit over Bakunin.
Should
have tached into low orbit. Even more than running the blockade, that maneuver with a tach-drive so close to a gravity well was insanely dangerous. Any craft less sophisticated than the
Khalid
would have found the task impossible; the advanced navigation systems on that ship made the attempt only
barely
possible.
They had probably lost the ship and everyone on it.
Over the common channel, across the whole fleet, Mallory spoke, “Ready the computers to synchronize on my signal.”
Toni II looked up at the main holo display. The display showed a large slice of a star field looking out along the path of Bakunin’s orbit. There was nothing inherently remarkable about the area of space, other than the fact that it once held the system’s single wormhole.
But the enhanced processing on the image drew highlights on what occupied that space now.
A near-invisible cloud of uniform density spread out in an arc. Though vast, the mass was so diffuse as to show no ripples in any mass sensors, and so dark as to reflect no radiation at all back into the system. It took a Centauri spy platform to find it, even when they knew where to look.
That cloud was, in effect, Adam. It was dormant, a body waiting for the arrival of its consciousness—a cloud of nanomachines vast enough to saturate the surface of Bakunin the way Adam had done with Khamsin.
They were going to destroy it.
Data scrolled by, showing Mallory’s ghost fleet of empty, near-derelict tach-ships signaling back their status. Their computers were all synced, their drives hot, the damping coils on their drives disabled. Toni II shuddered just thinking of so many ships taching simultaneously. She glanced at the status of the
Daedalus
’ drives. They were still cold, inert to the surge these ships would generate . . .
Daedalus
’ drives. They were still cold, inert to the surge these ships would generate . . .
The meters monitoring tachyon radiation spiked.
The ships were underway. She looked back up at the holo of the cloud. Right now, nearly seven hundred ships were taching into a dangerously small volume in the center of it. Unfortunately, the light from their arrival would take nearly an hour to reach them.
“Fourteen seconds,” her sister said from the captain’s chair. She leaned back and said, “It’s over now, one way or the other.”
“Do you think it worked?” Karl asked.
“It’s how Parvi said to fight this thing. Dump as much energy in as small a space as possible.” She rubbed her face, and Toni II saw the strain in her features. Taking over as the nominal captain meant that she had been getting a lot less sleep than her elder self.
Toni II saw the pain upon mentioning Parvi’s name and realized that her twin was thinking of the
Khalid
and held the same doubts about Parvi’s suicidal snipe hunt that she had. They had lost their one pilot who’d had direct experience in combat with this thing.
Khalid
and held the same doubts about Parvi’s suicidal snipe hunt that she had. They had lost their one pilot who’d had direct experience in combat with this thing.
“I don’t think—” Toni II had been about to console her twin, but she was interrupted by a sudden burst of radio chatter. The other Toni fell back to monitoring the command console.
“Well, we achieved something,” she muttered while checking the new incoming transmissions.
Toni II could see the comm channels all lit up by chatter, and she could see why. The tachyon radiation meters had slammed the upper limits of their resolution across the board. If the
Daedalus
hadn’t shut down their tach-drive completely, a good part of their engine would have burned out even with the damping coils.
Daedalus
hadn’t shut down their tach-drive completely, a good part of their engine would have burned out even with the damping coils.
Mallory’s voice came over the general comm channel, telling the fleet to render what aid was possible to the damaged ships in range.
Please, after all this, let us have destroyed it.
The
Daedalus
was a heavily modified craft. The interior had been retrofitted to hold much more cargo than a stock craft of its design, at the expense of no longer having any sort of artificial gravity or being able to reenter an atmosphere. The
Daedalus
would be unable to land even if the blockade was lifted.
Daedalus
was a heavily modified craft. The interior had been retrofitted to hold much more cargo than a stock craft of its design, at the expense of no longer having any sort of artificial gravity or being able to reenter an atmosphere. The
Daedalus
would be unable to land even if the blockade was lifted.
There were other advantages for a family business that had made at least half its income from contraband.
Former family business,
thought Stefan Stavros.
thought Stefan Stavros.
He had seen his birthright stolen out from under him, and he had seen his father capitulate again and again, until he thought he no longer knew the man. He had dutifully waited for his father, the man who had built their livelihood, built this ship, to come up with a strategy, some sort of plan to retrieve the
Daedalus
from these pirates. It didn’t matter what the priest, or the Valentine bitches, or any of them thought they were fighting. Stefan didn’t believe in the Antichrist or the end of the world, all he saw was him, his father, and their ship being hijacked into a war they shouldn’t have any part in.
Daedalus
from these pirates. It didn’t matter what the priest, or the Valentine bitches, or any of them thought they were fighting. Stefan didn’t believe in the Antichrist or the end of the world, all he saw was him, his father, and their ship being hijacked into a war they shouldn’t have any part in.
But instead, his father, Karl Stavros, seemed to have joined in with the insanity around them. They had once prided themselves on being above dirtside politics; the
Daedalus
had always been a nation unto itself. But now that the priest was ready to wage war, Stefan had given up on waiting for his father to act.
Daedalus
had always been a nation unto itself. But now that the priest was ready to wage war, Stefan had given up on waiting for his father to act.
Stefan pulled himself through a gap between the nominal ceiling of the upper cargo deck and the skin of the ship. The space was designed to hold a manifold that would vent contramatter plasma from the ship’s contragrav generator in order to provide some measure of pseudo-gravity for the ship’s occupants. The manifold had been stripped, along with all the contragrav support systems, when the cargo capacity of the
Daedalus
had been upgraded. The space occupied by the manifold had been too small to be reclaimed.
Daedalus
had been upgraded. The space occupied by the manifold had been too small to be reclaimed.
Not in any obvious fashion.
The space was barely wide enough to accommodate him as he pulled himself along the long, flat conduit. The only light came from a small pinpoint lamp embedded in a sweatband on his brow, and that only showed him four or five meters before the curve of the ship’s skin blocked his view.
He had to crawl about twenty-five meters to reach his destination; an inaccessible junction nestled between the rearmost cargo bulkhead and the tach-drive. Not a place he’d want to be if the tach-drive was active, but fortunately the priest’s directives to power the plant down completely made Stefan’s destination as safe as anywhere else on the ship.
The junction itself was a cylinder about five meters across, half filled by pipes for the tach-drive’s power plant. The other half had been filled by similar pipes serving the contragrav’s power plant. Since the removal of the contragrav, the junction was half empty, leaving a space wide enough for Stefan to pull himself inside.
Flipping himself to face “down,” away from the skin of the ship, he could fit as long as he kept his legs bent in a crouch. He floated there, the hair on his arms standing up, the air still, cold, and smelling faintly of ozone.
Looking down the length of the junction, a large metal cylinder was nestled in the gap, over two meters in diameter, one flat end facing him, the brushed-metal surface broken only by a small metal door about thirty centimeters on a side.
He flipped open the door. Behind it was a recess that held a trio of anachronistic metal dials and a thick metal lever.
Stefan carefully dialed the combination on each dial. Even though the massive safe was purely mechanical—no electronics to tie into the ship’s systems or announce itself to any sort of passive scan—an incorrect combination would break the seals on several packets of inert chemicals housed in the walls of the device that would, when combined, ignite a powerful reaction that would render the contents so much undifferentiated ash.
When he spun the last dial to the correct number, he pulled the lever and the end of the cylindrical safe swung outward effortlessly on meticulously engineered hinges. The massive door was as tall as he was, but the walls of the safe were a half-meter thick, leaving a chamber a little better than a meter in diameter.
Stefan reached in and began pulling out long metal boxes.
He opened one that held currency reserves from a dozen different planets. The only thing in there of any particular use was the gold, which he removed.
The second drawer was the more important. He drew it out and opened it to reveal a half-dozen gamma lasers, a couple of caseless slugthrowers, a military-spec stun rod, and a set of heavy-duty Emerson field generators.
The next drawer held a plasma rifle, several stun and fragmentation grenades, and a couple of hyper-velocity needleguns.
He stared at the cache of weaponry and whispered, “Sorry, Dad, if you’re not going to fight back, I am.”
They had a timer warning them, but Toni II was unprepared when the display showing the space around Adam’s cloud went blank. Before she even had time to gasp, the computers monitoring the sensors started damping the output. Once the output had fallen down into levels the display could handle, it washed the bridge in eye-burning light.
Her sister, now just a black shadow eclipsing the sunlike brightness pouring from the display, damped the display further.
The Caliphate man said something in Arabic that sounded like a prayer. Karl simply said, “My God.”
Adam’s dark cloud had become a cloud of boiling plasma, as bright as a second sun, expanding outward in a rolling wave of light and energy that smeared a burning arc across the ecliptic.
Toni II stared at the display in awe.
From the captain’s chair, her sister whispered, “I didn’t think we could do something like that. It’s as big as the wormhole explosion.”
Toni II felt the same brief surge of optimism, until she thought of the fact that Adam had done this nearly a hundred times over across all of human space.
They had done it
once
, and it cost half their fleet.
once
, and it cost half their fleet.
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