The Dreaming Void (81 page)

Beside it, the
Artful Dodger
rose into the maelstrom of radioactive destruction that cascaded across the base the instant the main force field vanished. Sensors showed it a pinprick of dazzling white light searing its way downward, accelerating at fifty gees. The ship's smartcore blasted away at the weapon with neutron lasers and quantum distortion pulses. Nothing happened. The smartcore started to change course, but it wasn't fast enough. The lightpoint struck the
Artful Dodger
amidships, unaffected by the force field. Enormous tidal forces tore at the ship's structure, destroying its integrity. Even spars reinforced by bonding fields were ripped out of alignment. Ordinary components were mangled beyond recognition. The entire hull buckled and imploded to a third of its original size. Then the Hawking m-sink punched through the other side of the ship and streaked onward into the ground. Its intense spark of light vanished. The surrounding ground heaved as if Kajaani had been hit by a massive earthquake, annihilating the remaining buildings and structures. All the secondary force fields died, leaving the collapsing cottages and science blocks exposed to the planet's malignant atmosphere.

The wreckage of the
Artful Dodger
tumbled out of the hurricane to smash into the ruins of the base.

Aaron's contact with the starship was lost as soon as the Hawking m-sink had penetrated the hull, when every microcircuit and kube was physically distorted and ruptured.

A couple of Kajaani's sensors had caught the last moments of the star that had bolted out of the churning naked sky. Its speed was such that human eyes registered it as a single line of light, like a perfectly straight lightning bolt. Radiation monitor records showed a swift peak that went off the scale.

“What the hell just happened?” Corrie-Lyn demanded.

Aaron was too stunned to reply immediately. His u-shadow confirmed that the beacon relay now ended two kilometers short of the base's perimeter.

“They fired on the base,” Inigo said quietly. “Lady, they were completely unarmed.” He glared at Aaron. “Was that one of the factions?”

“Could be. It might even have been the Cleric Conservator making sure of his tenure.”

“There's a place in the depths of Honious reserved for your kind. I hope you reach it quickly.”

“Where?” Aaron asked.

Inigo and Corrie-Lyn gave him an identical snort of disgust.

“We'd better get back up to the shelter,” Inigo said. “I expect they'll want to get to Kajaani right away. We are one of the closest camps.”

As soon as they came through the cramped suit room, Ericilla pointed an accusing finger at Aaron. “That was you,” she yelled in fury. “You're responsible. You told them to get clear. You knew who that was. You brought them here.”

“I didn't bring them
here.
Those people were going to catch up with us eventually. The location was … unfortunate.”

“Un-fucking-fortunate?” Vilitar spit. “There were nearly two hundred people there. We don't know how many of them are still alive, but even if some of them survived the attack, they'll be dying from the radiation. My friends. Slaughtered.”

“They'll be re-lifed,” Aaron said impassively.

“You bastard,” Cytus stepped forward, his fist raised.

“Enough,” Inigo said. “This won't help.”

Cytus paused for a moment, then turned away, his face contorted with disgust and anger.

“You knew, Earl,” Nerina said. “You warned Ansan as well. What the hell is going on? Do you know these people?”

“I'm the one they're looking for. I didn't know about the attack.”

The rest of the team started at one another in mute bewilderment.

“We're going to Kajaani,” Ericilla said. “We can help recover the bodies before the winds blow them too far.”

“How long before your organization sends another ship?” Aaron asked.

“Like you care!”

“How long? Please.”

“Too long,” Nerina said. “Hanko isn't part of the unisphere. We can't just yell for help. Our only link to the Commonwealth was the hyperspace link in the starship, which was connected to our headquarters back on Anagaska. Without that we're completely cut off. Anagaska will assume there was some kind of equipment failure; then, after we haven't repaired it in a week, they'll probably investigate. If I remember right, we're due a scheduled flight in two weeks, anyway. They'll probably wait until then. Budget considerations.” She snapped it out with contempt.

“By which time radiation poisoning will have killed everyone exposed to the atmosphere,” Vilitar said. “We don't have enough medical facilities to help them all. Congratulations.” He stared challengingly at Aaron.

“We need to get moving,” Ericilla said. “The medical systems on our ground crawlers can help a couple of them, maybe more.” She pushed her way past Aaron, not looking at him. Cytus managed to knock Aaron's elbow as he went into the suit room.

“You coming, Earl?” Nerina asked.

“Yeah.”

“You've done enough already,” Vilitar said. “Whoever the fuck you really are. I thought—” He snarled incoherently and hurried into the suit room.

“We'll come with you,” Corrie-Lyn said. “We can help.”

“The Asiatic glacier is half a day from here,” Nerina said. “The far end has mile-high cliffs. Why don't you help us by driving off them.” She went into the suit room and closed the door.

“Then there were three,” Aaron said.

“We'd better get going,” Inigo said. He faced Aaron. “You know they'll probably close the Restoration project down because of this.”

“Do you think the next galaxy along will mount a Restoration project for all the species which the Void devourment phase exterminates?”

For a moment Aaron thought Inigo might activate his biononics in an aggressor mode. “You know nothing,” the lost messiah whispered.

“I hope something, though.”

“What?”

“That you have a starship stashed away. Preferably close by.”

“I don't.”

“Really? I find that mighty curious. You took all this trouble to stay lost, yet you have no escape route if someone came along to expose you.”

“Obviously not. Otherwise I wouldn't have been here waiting for you.”

“You wouldn't have been waiting around here if it had just been me,” Aaron said. He gestured at Corrie-Lyn. “But her? That's different. Seventy years is a long time to be alone. She stayed in love for that long. Did you?”

Corrie-Lyn moved close to Inigo. “Did you?” she asked in a quiet voice.

A mournful smile flickered over his lips. “I'm glad it was you. Is that enough?”

“Yeah.” She rested her head on his shoulder.

“No ship,” Inigo told Aaron. “And the only way I go anywhere with you is in a bag as small lumps of charcoal.”

“That's a shame, because I know what weapon they used to take out my starship and the base.”

“Is that supposed to impress me? I expect you know a great deal about weapons and violence. Men like you always do.”

“It was a Hawking m-sink,” Aaron said. “Do you know what that is? No? They're new and highly dangerous. Even ANA gets nervous around them. Basically, it's a very small black hole, but cranked up with an outsize event horizon to help absorption. It starts off as a little core of neutronium about the size of an atomic nucleus.”

Corrie-Lyn caught the emphasis. “Starts off?”

“Yes. Its gravity field is strong enough to pull in any atoms it comes into contact with. They're then also compressed into neutronium and merge with its core. With each atom, it gets a little bit bigger. Not by much admittedly, not to begin with. But the larger the surface area, the more matter it can absorb. And after it tore through the
Artful Dodger,
it hit the planet. Right now it is sinking through the mantle, eating every atom it encounters. It'll stop at the center of the planet. Then it just sits there and grows.”

“How big will it get?” she asked anxiously.

Aaron shot Inigo a look. “Black holes have no theoretical size limit. We used to think that was what the Void was.”

“But … Hanko?”

“It'll take about two weeks to devour the entire mass of an H-congruous world. Except we'll be dead long before that. Hanko will start to disintegrate as it's consumed from within. The continents will collapse in three or four days. So, once more, with an awful lot of feeling, do you have a starship hidden nearby?”

Araminta kissed three of hims as they sat at a table under a gazebo of flowering yisanthal in his garden. “I missed that,” she told the rugged Oriental one.

Mr. Bovey smiled in unison. Hes raised his glasses. “Cheers.”

“Cheers.” She sipped her white wine.

“So?” asked the one she had had their first dinner with.

Araminta steeled herself. “If your offer is still open, I'd like to accept.”

She even heard cheering coming from the big house as well as the racket that the three under the gazebo made.

“You've made some old men very happy.”

“Us young ones, too.”

Araminta laughed. “And I have absolutely no idea how to go about this. The first three apartments will be ready in another week. I've accepted a deposit on the fourth.”

“Congratulations.”

“But until I've completed it and the tenants are in, I won't see a profit. I need money to buy bodies.”

“Not as expensive as you might think. A friend, one of us, runs a clinic expressly for that purpose. She always gives a discount to a first expander.”

“Okay.” She took another drink to calm her shudders. It was momentous, sort of like accepting two proposals at once.

The young Celtic one squeezed her arm. “You all right?” he asked, all full of sympathy.

“I guess so.” She knew she was smiling like an idiot.
But this does feel right.

Two of hims came hurrying out of the house. One of them who seemed about seventeen went down on his knee beside her. A slim athletic build, she saw, with a wild shock of blond hair. He proffered a small box, which opened to show her an antique diamond engagement ring.

“I bought it just in case,” he told her.

Araminta slipped it onto her finger, then dashed away the tears.

“Oh, come here,” the youngster exclaimed.

His arms went around her, hugging her tight, and she was laughing through the tears. “I haven't seen you before.”

“I'm a slavedriver to me.”

She put her palms on his cheeks and kissed him thoroughly. “I would like you to be one of tonight's.”

“My considerable pleasure.”

“I believe you said I still have several of yous to get to know.”

“Oh, trust me, you'll know all of mes before our wedding day.”

“And I don't mind and won't complain about other women until I have enough bodies to cope. Just … I don't want to meet them.”

“I'll try to keep it to a minimum, I promise.”

“Thanks,” she whispered gratefully.

“Now, what sort of bodies are you going to go for?”

“Gosh, I hadn't thought about that,” she admitted. “What do you like?”

“Got to be a tall blond Amazon type. Always popular.”

“Oh, and very black as well. Let's cover all the old ethnicities, I have—almost.”

“And one of you has to have huge breasts.”

“More than one!”

She slapped at him, feigning shocked dismay. “You're appalling. I'm not doing anything like that.”

“That's not what you usually say in bed.”

Araminta laughed. She really had missed this.
I made the right decision.

Araminta lay on the big bed, listening to three of hims sleeping. Two on the bed with her and one on the couch, curled up in a quilt, all breathing softly, not quite in sync. This time she had refused any aerosols, wanting to try out Likan's program to make sure it worked with other people, that he hadn't loaded in a hidden expiry key.

It worked.

And how.

Mr. Bovey had been surprised and then very appreciative at how much more responsive her body had become. As she had suspected, a night in bed with hims had been a lot better than it had been with Likan and the harem.
Always nice to have confirmation.

Now she could not sleep. Not that she wasn't tired, she grinned to herself, but she couldn't stop thinking about the engagement and embracing a multiple lifestyle. It was such an upheaval. Everything was going to change for her, so much so that she was more than a little apprehensive. Her mind was churning over the same questions again and again, unable to find answers because she didn't actually know about being multiple. The only way to find out was to become one.

She turned her head to look at the young red-haired him who was nestled cozily beside her. He'd help her through the transition, she knew. Mr. Bovey loved her. That was enough to take her through the next few months. They hadn't set a date. He had said he would like at least two hers to register the marriage with him, which was fair enough. She really needed to finish the apartments. This day's events had made that even more urgent.