The Night's Dawn Trilogy
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are
used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 1996, 1997, 2000 by Peter F. Hamilton.All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including
information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may
quote brief passages in a review.
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ISBN: 978-0-7595-2122-3
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Contents
THE REALITY DYSFUNCTION
. Copyright © 1996 by Peter F. Hamilton. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic
or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except
by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
Warner Books,
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10017
Aspect is a registered trademark of Warner Books, Inc.
This edition is published by arrangement with Macmillan U.K.
ISBN: 978-0-7595-2122-3
A mass market edition of this book was published in two parts in 1997 by Warner Books.
First eBook Edition: November 2000
Visit our website at
www.HachetteBookGroup.com
.
Emergence
Space outside the attack cruiser
Beezling
tore open in five places. For a moment anyone looking into the expanding rents would have received a true glimpse into empty
infinity. The pseudofabric structure of the wormholes was a photonic dead zone, a darkness so profound it seemed to be spilling
out to contaminate the real universe. Then ships were suddenly streaking up out of the gaping termini, accelerating away at
six gees, twisting round on interception trajectories. They were different from the spherical Garis-san naval craft which
they had tracked between the stars, graceful, streamlined teardrop shapes. Larger and dangerously powerful. Alive.
Nestled snugly in the armoured and sealed command capsule at the heart of the
Beezling
, Captain Kyle Prager was shocked out of a simple astrogration review by a datavised proximity alert from the flight computer.
His neural nanonics relayed information from the ship’s external sensor clusters directly into his brain. Out here in the
great emptiness of interstellar space starlight wasn’t powerful enough to provide an optical-band return. He was relying on
the infrared signature alone, arching smears of pinkness which the discrimination programs struggled to resolve. Radar pulses
were fuzzed and hashed by the ships’ electronic-warfare pods.
The combat programs stored in the memory clusters of his neural nanonics went into primary mode. He datavised a quick sequence
of instructions into the flight computer, desperate for more information. Trajectories from the five newcomers were computed,
appearing as scarlet vector lines curving through space to line up ominously on the
Beezling
and her two escort frigates. They were still accelerating, yet there was no reaction-drive exhaust plume. Kyle Prager’s heart
sank. “Voidhawks,” he said. On the couch next to him, Tane Ogilie, the
Beezling
’s patterning-node officer, groaned in dismay. “How did they know?”
“Confederation Navy Intelligence is good,” Kyle Prager retorted. “They knew we’d try a direct retaliation. They must have
monitored our naval traffic and followed us.” In his mind a black pressure was building. He could almost sense the antimatter-confinement
chambers inside the
Bee-zling
, twinkling like devilish red stars all around him.
Antimatter was the one anathema which was universal throughout the Confederation. No matter what planet or asteroid settlement
you were brought up on, they all condemned it.
The penalty if a Confederation Navy ship caught them was an immediate death sentence for the captain, and a one-way ticket
on a drop capsule to a penal planet for everyone else on board.
There was no choice, of course, the
Beezling
needed the fantastic delta-V reserve which only antimatter provided, far superior to the usual fusion drives of Adamist starships.
The Omutan Defence Force ships would be equipped with antimatter drives. They have it because we have it; we have it because
they have it. One of the oldest, and feeblest, arguments history had produced.
Kyle Prager’s shoulder muscles relaxed, an involuntary submission. He’d known and accepted the risk, or at least told himself
and the admirals he did.
It would be quick and painless, and under ordinary circumstances the crew would survive. But he had orders from the Garissan
Admiralty. Nobody was to be allowed access to the Alchemist which the
Beezling
was carrying; and certainly not the Edenists crewing the voidhawks: their bitek science was powerful enough already.
“A distortion field has locked onto us,” Tane Ogilie reported. His voice was strained, high. “We can’t jump clear.”
For a brief moment Kyle Prager wondered what it would be like to command a voidhawk, the effortless power and total superiority.
It was almost a feeling of envy.
Three of the intercepting ships were curving round to chase the
Beezling
, while the frigates,
Chengho
and
Gom-bari
, only rated one pursuer each.
Mother Mary, with that formation they must know what we’re carrying.
He formed the scuttle code in his mind, reviewing the procedure before datavising it into the flight computer. It was simple
enough, shutting down the safeguards in the main drive’s antimatter-confinement chambers, engulfing nearby space with a nova-blast
of light and hard radiation.
I could wait until the voidhawks rendezvoused, take them with us. But the crews are only doing their job.
The flimsy infrared image of the three pursuit craft suddenly increased dramatically, brightening, expanding. Eight wavering
petals of energy opened outwards from each of them, the sharp, glaring tips moving swiftly away from the centre. Analysis
programs cut in; flight vector projections materialized, linking all twenty-four projectiles to the
Beezling
with looped laserlike threads of light. The exhaust plumes were hugely radioactive. Acceleration was hitting forty gees.
Antimatter propulsion.
“Combat wasp launch,” Tane Ogilie shouted hoarsely.
“They’re not voidhawks,” Kyle Prager said with grim fury. “They’re fucking blackhawks. Omuta’s hired black-hawks!” He datavised
an evasion manoeuvre order into the flight computer, frantically activating the
Beezling
’s defence procedures. He’d been almost criminally negligent in not identifying the hostiles as soon as they emerged. He checked
his neural nanonics; elapsed time since their emergence was seven seconds. Was that really all? Even so, his response had
been woefully sloppy in an arena where milliseconds was the most precious currency. They would pay for that, maybe with their
lives.
An acceleration warning blared through the
Beezling
—audio, optical, and datavise. His crew would be strapped in, but Mother Mary alone knew what the civilians they carried were
doing.
The ship’s acceleration built smoothly, and he felt the nanonic membrane supplements in his body hardening, supporting his
internal organs against the gee force, preventing them from being pushed through his spine, ensuring an undiminished blood
supply to his brain, forestalling blackout.
Beezling
shuddered violently as its own volley of combat wasps launched. Acceleration reached eight gees, and carried on building.
In the
Beezling
’s forward crew module, Dr Alkad Mzu had been reviewing the ship’s status as it flew towards their next jump coordinate at
one and a half gees. Neural nanonics processed the raw data to provide a composite of the starship’s external sensor images,
along with flight vector projections. The picture unfurled behind her retinas, scintillating ghost shadows until she closed
her eyelids.
Chengho
and
Gombari
showed as intense streaks of blue-white light, the glare from their drive exhausts overwhelming the background starfield.
It was a tight formation.
Chengho
was two thousand kilometres away, Gombari just over three thousand. Alkad knew it took superb astrogation for ships to emerge
within five thousand kilometres of each other after a jump of ten light-years. Garissa had spent a lot of money on equipping
its navy with the best hardware available.
Money which could have been better spent at the university, or on supporting the national medical service. Garissa wasn’t
a particularly rich world. And as to where the Department of Defence had acquired such large amounts of antimatter, Alkad
had studiously avoided asking.
“It will be about thirty minutes before the next jump,” Peter Adul said.
Alkad cancelled the datavise. The sensor visualization of the ships faded from her perception, replaced by the spartan grey-green
composite of the cabin walls. Peter was standing in the open oval hatch, wearing a dark turquoise ship-suit, padded on all
the joints to protect him from bruising knocks in free fall. He smiled invitingly at her. She could see the worry behind the
bright, lively eyes.
Peter was thirty-five, a metre eighty tall, with skin actually darker than her own deep ebony. He worked in the university
mathematics department, and they had been engaged for eighteen months. Never the outgoing boisterous type, but quietly supportive.
One person who genuinely didn’t seem to mind the fact that she was brighter than him—and they were rare enough. Even the prospect
of her being for ever damned as the Alchemist’s creator left him unperturbed. He had actually accompanied her to the ultra-secure
navy asteroid base to help with the device’s mathematics.
“I thought we could spend them together,” he said.
She grinned back up at him and slipped out of the restraint net as he sat on the edge of her acceleration cushioning beside
her. “Thanks. Navy types don’t mind being cooped up by themselves during realignment. But it certainly gets to me.” Various
hums and buzzes from the ship’s environmental systems invaded the cabin, crew-members talking softly at their stations, vague
words echoing along the cramped companionways.
Beezling
had been assembled specifically to deploy the Alchemist device, its design concentrating on durability and performance; crew
comforts had come a long way down the navy’s priority list.
Alkad swung her legs over the side of the cushioning ledge, feet
pulled
down to the decking by the strong gravity, and leaned against him, thankful for the warmth of the contact, his just being
there.
His arm went round her shoulders. “What is it about the prospect of incipient mortality which gets the hormones flowing?”
She smiled and pressed harder into his side. “What is it in the male make-up that simply being awake gets your hormones going?”
“That’s a no?”
“That’s a no,” she said firmly. “There’s no door, and we’d do ourselves an injury in this gravity. Besides, there will be
plenty of time once we get back.”
“Yes.” If we do. But he didn’t say that out loud.
That was when the acceleration warning sounded. Even then it took them a second to react, breaking through the initial moment
of shock.