The Evolutionary Void

The Evolutionary Void

Book 3 of the Void Trilogy

By Peter F. Hamilton

For Felix F. Hamilton,

who arrived at the start of the Void.

Don’t worry, Daddy’s world isn’t really like this.

T
HE STARSHIP HAD NO NAME
; it didn’t have a serial number
or even a marque. Only one of its kind had ever been built. As no more would
ever be required, no designation was needed; it was simply
the
ship
.

It streaked through the substructure of spacetime at fifty-nine
light-years an hour, the fastest anything built by humans had ever traveled.
Navigation at that awesome velocity was by quantum interstice similarity
interpretation, which determined the relative location of mass in the real
universe beyond. This alleviated the use of crude hysradar or any other sensor
that might possibly be detected. The extremely sophisticated ultradrive that
powered it might have reached even greater speeds if a considerable fraction of
its phenomenal energy hadn’t been used for fluctuation suppression. That meant
there was no telltale distortion amid the quantum fields to betray its position
to other starships that might wish to hunt it.

As well as its formidable stealth ability,
the ship
was big, a fat ovoid over six hundred meters long and two hundred meters across
at the center. But its real advantage came from its armaments; there were
weapons on board that could knock out a half a dozen Commonwealth Navy
Capital-class ships while barely stirring out of standby mode. The weapons had
been verified only once:
the ship
had flown over ten
thousand light-years from the Greater Commonwealth to test them so as to avoid
detection. For millennia to come, primitive alien civilizations in that section
of the galaxy would worship as gods the colorful nebulae expanding across the
interstellar wastes.

Even now, sitting in
the ship
’s clean
hemispherical cabin with the flight path imagery playing quietly in her
exovision, Neskia remembered with a little shiver of excitement and
apprehension the stars splitting asunder. It had been one thing to run the
clandestine fabrication station for the Accelerator Faction, dispatching ships
and equipment to various agents and representatives. That was easy, cold
machinery functioning with a precision she could take pride in. But seeing the
weapons active was slightly different. She’d felt a level of perturbation she
hadn’t known in over two centuries, ever since she became Higher and began her
inward migration. Not that she questioned her belief in the Accelerators; it
was just the sheer potency of the weapons that struck her at some primitive
level that could never be fully exorcised from the human psyche. She was awed
by the power of what she alone commanded.

Other elements of her animal past had been erased quietly and effectively:
first with biononics and acceptance of Higher cultural philosophy, culminating
in her embrace of Accelerator Faction tenets, then by committing to a subtle
rejection of her existing body form, as if to emphasize her new beliefs. Her
skin now was a shimmering metallic gray, the epidermal cells imbued with a
contemporary semiorganic fiber that established itself in perfect symbiosis.
The face that had caused many a man to turn in admiration when she was younger
now wore a more efficient, flatter profile, with big saucer eyes biononically
modified to look across a multitude of spectra. Her neck also had been
stretched, its increased flexibility allowing her head much greater
maneuverability. Underneath the gently shimmering skin her muscles had been strengthened
to a level that would allow her to keep up with a terrestrial panther on its
kill run, and that was before biononic augmentation kicked in.

However, it was her mind that had undergone the greatest evolution. She’d
stopped short of bioneural profiling simply because she didn’t need any genetic
reinforcement to her beliefs. “Worship” was a crude term for thought processes,
but she was certainly devoted to her cause. She had dedicated herself
completely to the Accelerators at a fully emotional level. The old human
concerns and biological imperatives simply didn’t affect her anymore; her
intellect was involved solely with the faction and its goal. For the past fifty
years their projects and plans had been all that triggered her satisfaction and
suffering. Her integration was total; she was the epitome of Accelerator
values. That was why she’d been chosen to fly
the ship
by the faction leader, Ilanthe, on this mission. That, and that alone, made her
content.

The ship
began to slow as it approached the
coordinate Neskia had supplied to the smartcore. Speed ebbed away until it hung
inertly in transdimensional suspension while her navigation display showed the
Sol system twenty-three light-years away. The distance was comfortable. They
were outside the comprehensive sensor mesh surrounding humanity’s birthworld,
yet she could be there in less than thirty minutes.

Neskia ordered the smartcore to run a passive scan. Other than
interstellar dust and the odd frozen comet, there was no detectable mass within
three light-years. Certainly there were no ships. However, the scan picked up a
tiny specific anomaly, which caused her to smile in tight satisfaction. All
around
the ship
ultradrives were holding themselves
in transdimensional suspension, undetectable except for that one deliberate
signal. You had to know what to search for to find it, and nobody would be
looking for anything out here, let alone ultradrives.
The
ship
confirmed there were eight thousand of the machines holding
position as they awaited instructions. Neskia established a communication link
to them and ran a swift function check. The Swarm was ready.

She settled down to wait for Ilanthe’s next call.

The ExoProtectorate Council meeting ended, and Kazimir canceled the link
to the perceptual conference room. He was alone in his office atop Pentagon II,
with nowhere to go. The deterrence fleet had to be launched; there was no
question of that now. Nothing else could deal with the approaching Ocisen
Empire armada without an unacceptable loss of life on both sides. And if news
that the Ocisens were backed up by Prime warships leaked out … Which it would.
Ilanthe would see to that.

No choice
.

He straightened the recalcitrant silver braid collar on his dress uniform
one last time as he walked over to the sweeping window and looked down on the
lush parkland of Babuyan Atoll. A gentle radiance was shining down on it,
emitted from the crystal dome curving overhead. Even so, he could still see
Icalanise’s misty crescent through the ersatz dawn. The sight was one he’d seen
countless times during his tenure. He’d always taken it for granted; now he
wondered if he’d ever see it again. For a true military man the thought wasn’t
unusual; in fact, it was quite a proud pedigree.

His u-shadow opened a link to Paula. “We’re deploying the deterrence
fleet against the Ocisens,” he told her.

“Oh, dear. I take it the last capture mission didn’t work, then.”

“No. The Prime ship exploded when we took it out of hyperspace.”

“Damn. Suicide isn’t part of the Prime’s psychological makeup.”

“You know that and I know that. ANA:Governance knows that, too, of
course, but as always it needs proof, not circumstantial evidence.”

“Are you going with the fleet?”

Kazimir couldn’t help but smile at the question.
If only
you knew
. “Yes. I’m going with the fleet.”

“Good luck. I want you to try and turn this against her. They’ll be out
there watching. Any chance you can detect them first?”

“We’ll certainly try.” He squinted at the industrial stations circling
around
High Angel
, a slim sparkling silver bracelet
against the starfield. “I heard about Ellezelin.”

“Yeah. Digby didn’t have any options. ANA is sending a forensic team. If
they can work out what Chatfield was carrying, we might be able to haul the
Accelerators into court before you reach the Ocisens.”

“I don’t think so. But I have some news for you.”

“Yes?”

“The
Lindau
has left the Hanko system.”

“Where is it heading?”

“That’s the interesting thing. As far as I can make out, they’re flying
to the Spike.”

“The Spike? Are you sure?”

“That’s a projection of their current course. It’s held steady for seven
hours now.”

“But that … No.”

“Why not?” Kazimir asked, obscurely amused by the investigator’s
reaction.

“I simply don’t believe that Ozzie would intervene in the Commonwealth
again, not like this. And he’d certainly never employ someone like Aaron.”

“Okay, I’ll grant you that one. But there are other humans in the Spike.”

“Yes, there are. Care to name one?”

Kazimir gave up. “So what’s Ozzie’s connection?”

“I can’t think.”

“The
Lindau
isn’t flying as fast as it’s
capable of. It probably got damaged on Hanko. You could easily get to the Spike
ahead of them or even intercept.”

“Tempting, but I’m not going to risk it. I’ve wasted far too much time on
my personal obsession already. I can’t risk another wild-goose chase at this
point.”

“All right. Well, I’m going to be occupied for the next few days. If it’s
a real emergency, you can contact me.”

“Thank you. My priority now has got to be securing the Second Dreamer.”

“Good luck with that.”

“And you, Kazimir. Godspeed.”

“Thank you.” He remained by the window for several seconds after he’d
closed the link to Paula, then activated his biononic field interface function,
which meshed with the navy’s T-sphere. He teleported to the wormhole terminus
orbiting outside the gigantic alien arkship and through that emerged into the
Kerensk terminus. One more teleport jump, and he was inside Hevelius Island,
one of Earth’s T-sphere stations, floating seventy kilometers above the South Pacific.

“Ready,” he told ANA:Governance.

ANA opened the restricted wormhole to Proxima Centauri, four point three
light-years away, and Kazimir stepped through. The Alpha Centauri system had
been a big disappointment when Ozzie and Nigel opened their very first
long-range wormhole there in 2053. Given that the binary, composed of G- and
K-class stars and planets, had already been detected by standard astronomical
procedures, everyone had fervently hoped to find a human-congruent world. There
weren’t any. But given that they had successfully proved wormholes could be
established across interstellar distances, Ozzie and Nigel went on to secure
additional funding for the company that would rapidly evolve into Compression
Space Transport and establish the Commonwealth. Nobody ever went back to Alpha
Centauri, and nobody had ever even been to Proxima Centauri; with its small
M-class star, it was never going to have an H-congruent planet. That made it
the perfect location for ANA to construct and base the “deterrence fleet.”

Kazimir materialized at the center of a simple transparent dome measuring
two kilometers across at the base. It was a tiny blister on the surface of a
barren, airless planet, orbiting fifty million kilometers out from the
diminutive red dwarf. Gravity was about two-thirds standard. Low hills all
around created a rumpled horizon, the gray-brown regolith splashed a dreary
maroon by Proxima’s ineffectual radiance.

His feet were standing on what appeared to be dull gray metal. When he
tried to focus on the featureless surface, it twisted away, as if there were
something separating his boot soles from the physical structure. His biononic
field scan function revealed massive forces starting to stir around him, rising
up out of the strange floor.

“Are you ready?” ANA:Governance asked.

Kazimir gritted his teeth. “Do it.”

As Kazimir had assured both Gore and Paula, the deterrence fleet was no
bluff. It represented the peak of ANA’s technological ability and was at least
a match for the ships of the warrior Raiel. However, he did concede that
calling it a fleet was a slight exaggeration.