The Night's Dawn Trilogy (298 page)

Twelve gees rammed him down into the acceleration couch. His vision disappeared into a purple sparkle. And after thirty years
the neural strata no longer resisted him.

Two entities—two egos—collided. Memories and personality patterns merged at a fundamental level. Hostility, antipathy, anger,
regret, shame, an abundance of it all pouring out from both sides, and there could be no hiding from it anymore. The neural
strata thrummed from collective moments of outraged pique as secrets long hidden were exposed to searing scrutiny. But the
indignation cooled as the two differing strands of thought began the process of twining and integrating into a functional
whole.

One half brought size to the mating, the huge neural strata, alive yet quiescent under the spell of the reality dysfunction;
from the other half came the energistic effect, small in a single human, but with unlimited potential. For the first five
seconds of the transfer, Dariat’s essence was operating within a section of the neural strata only a few cubic metres in volume.
At that level it was sufficient to halt the reality dysfunction of the possessed from paralysing any more of the neural strata.
As the integration progressed and the thought routines amalgamated and multiplied it began to expand. More and more of the
neural strata awoke to accommodate it.

The horrified possessed, quite literally, watched their dreams shatter around them.

Okay, you fuckers,
bespoke Valisk’s new personality.
PARTY’S OVER.

As soon as the escape pods launched, a hundred voidhawks from the Kohistan Consensus swallowed in. Their appearance ten kilometres
from Valisk’s counter-rotating spaceport startled the already frantic hellhawks. The gulf between the two antagonistic swarms
of bitek starships was slashed by targeting lasers and radar pulses.

Do not engage any targets,
the voidhawks ordered.
The habitat is to be left intact, the escape pods must not be harmed.

Two hellhawks immediately launched a salvo of combat wasps. Solid rockets had barely propelled them clear of their launch
cradles before they were struck by X-ray lasers from the voidhawks. It was a perfect demonstration of the disadvantage the
hellhawks suffered in any short-range combat situation. The energistic effect downgraded their electronic systems to a woefully
inferior state.Wormhole interstices sprang open, and the hellhawks dived down them, eluding any further conflict, abandoning
their erstwhile abode with nothing more dangerous than a backwash of obscenities and threats.

Over two hundred escape pods were plunging away from Valisk’s spaceport. Solid fuel rockets burned a glaring topaz, gifting
the drab grey gridiron of the spaceport with an unrivalled dawn. As the distended skirts of flame and smoke died away, a cluster
of five voidhawks surged forwards to intercept a single pod.

Tatiana knew Dariat had gone; his body had shrunk somehow, not in size, but certainly in presence. It was as if the terrible
crush of acceleration had left him behind, diminishing the teenage boy lying on the couch. Horgan began to wail. She released
her webbing and floated over to him. Her own free-fall nausea forgotten in the face of someone whose suffering was far worse.

“It’s all right,” Tatiana whispered as she hugged him. “It’s all over now. He’s left you for good.” She even managed to surprise
herself at the note of regret which had crept into her voice.

The voidhawks rendezvoused with Tatiana’s pod, claimed its occupants, then swooped away from the habitat at seven gees. Valisk
was now host to a war of light. The original red fluorescence was besieged by a vigorous purple shimmer sweeping down the
shell from the northern endcap. As the purple area grew in size, so it grew in intensity.

Ten minutes after the escape pods were launched, the last glimmer of red was extinguished. The voidhawks were seven hundred
kilometres away when it happened, and still retreating at two gees. Nobody quite knew what constituted a safe separation distance.
Then their distortion fields detected Valisk’s mass starting to reduce. The last image of the habitat which their sensor blisters
received was of a purple-white micro-star blazing coldly. At the core of the photonic rupture, space itself broke down as
bizarre energy patterns exerted a catastrophic stress.When the glare faded and space regained its equipoise there was no evidence
of the habitat’s existence. However hard the voidhawks probed, they could find no residue of energy, no particles larger than
a mote of dust. Valisk had neither vaporized nor shattered, it had simply and cleanly departed the universe.

The Kulu embassy was situated just outside Harrisburg’s central governmental district; a five-storey building in the civic
tradition, granite block walls and elaborately carved windows. Slender turrets and retro-modernist sculptures lined the roof
in an attempt to grant the stark facade some degree of interest. To no avail; Harrisburg’s ubiquitous granite reduced the
most ornate architecture to the level of a neo-Gothic fortress. Even the setting, in one of the wealthier districts laid out
with parks, wide streets, and century-old trees, didn’t help. An office cube was an office cube, no matter what cosmetics
it dabbed on.

Its neighbours comprised rich legal practices, capital-city headquarters of large companies, and expensive apartment blocks.
Directly opposite, in an office which claimed to be an aircraft charter broker, Tonala’s security police kept a twenty-four
hour watch on everyone who went in or out. Forty minutes ago they had gone up to alert condition amber three (foreign covert
action imminent) when five large, screened cars from the diplomatic fleet slid down into the embassy’s underground car park.
None of the officers on duty were sure if that particular alert status applied in this case; according to their colleagues
at the city spaceport, the cars were full of Edenists.

The arrival of Samuel and his team had drawn considerable interest from staff inside the embassy, too. Curious, slightly apprehensive
faces peered out of almost every doorway as Adrian Redway led Monica Foulkes and her new allies through the building. They
took a lift eight stories below ground, to a floor which didn’t exist on any blueprints logged on the city council’s civil
engineering computer.

Adrian Redway stopped at the door to the ESA station’s operational centre and gave Samuel an awkward look. His eyes slid over
the tall Edenist’s shoulders to the other six Edenists waiting patiently in the corridor.

“Listen,” he said heavily. “I don’t mean to be an oaf about this. But we do run and correlate our entire Tonala asset network
from here. Surely, you don’t all need to come in?” His eyebrows quivered hopefully.

“Of course not,” Samuel said graciously.

Monica gave a disgruntled sigh. She knew Samuel well enough now not to need affinity to hear the thought in his head: strange
concept. If one Edenist went inside, then technically all of them did. Her hand fluttered towards him in a modestly embarrassed
gesture. He winked back.

The operations centre could have been the office of any medium-sized commercial enterprise. Air-conditioned yet strangely
airless, it had the standard desks with (more sophisticated than usual) processor blocks, big wall screens, ceiling-mounted
AV pillars, and side offices with heavily tinted glass walls. Eleven ESA staffers were sitting in big leather chairs, monitoring
what they could of the planet’s current military and politico-strategic situation. Information was becoming a precious resource
as Tonala’s communications net started to suffer glitches; the only certainty gained from the overall picture was how close
the orbital situation was getting to all-out confrontation.

Tonala’s state of emergency had been matched by that of the other nations. Then in the last twenty minutes Tonala’s high command
had confirmed it had lost the
Spirit of Freedom
station to unknown foreign elements. In response, five warships had been dispatched to intercept the
Urschel, Raimo
, and the
Pinzola
to try to find out what had happened. Every other government was complaining that their deployment at this time constituted
a deliberately provocative act.

Adrian led Monica and Samuel through into a conference room on the far side of the operations centre. “My chief analyst gives
us two hours tops before the shooting starts for real,” he said glumly as he sat at the head of the table.

“I hate to say this, but that really is secondary to our mission,” Monica said. “We must secure Mzu. She cannot be killed
or captured. It would be a disaster for the Confederation.”

“Yeah, I accessed the report,” Adrian said glumly. “The Alchemist by itself is bad enough, but in the hands of the possessed.…”

“A fact you may not have yet,” Samuel said. “The frigates
Urschel, Raimo
, and
Pinzola
are all Organization starships. Capone must know Dr Mzu is here; his representatives will not demonstrate any restraint or
subtlety at all. Their actions could well trigger the war.”

“Jeeze, they sent some spaceplanes down after they arrived. Nobody knows where the hell to, the planetary sensor coverage
is wiped.”

“What about local air defence coverage for the city?” Monica asked.

“Reasonably intact. Kulu supplied the hardware about eleven years ago; hardly top grade but it’s still functioning. The embassy
has an over-the-shoulder feed from the Tonala defence force headquarters.”

“So if the Organization spaceplanes approach Harrisburg you’ll be able to warn us.”

“No problem.”

“Good, that ought to give us a couple of minutes breathing space. Next question, did you find her?”

Adrian pretended offence. “Of course we found her,” he said, grinning. “We’re the ESA, remember?”

“Right; truth is always worse than rumour. Where is she?”

Adrian datavised the officer running the surveillance mission on Mzu. “She booked in at the Mercedes Hotel, or rather Voi
did, as soon as they arrived. They made very little effort to cover their tracks; Voi used a credit disk registered under
an alias, but it’s still got her biolectric pattern. I mean, how amateur can you get?”

“They’re not even amateurs, they’re just kids,” Samuel said. “They eluded us on their home ground because we were rushed.
Out here they’re completely defenceless against any professional agency.”

“Voi did approach a local security firm,” Adrian said. “But she hasn’t followed it up. Her request for bodyguards was cancelled.
They seem to have linked up with some locals instead. We’re not sure who they are. There certainly aren’t any Garissa partizan
cadres on Nyvan.”

“How many locals?” Monica asked.

“Three or four, we think. As we don’t know who they are, it’s hard to be sure.”

“Any interest from other agencies?”

“There have been three probes launched into the hotel’s computer system. We couldn’t get an origin on any of them. Whoever
it was, their blocker programs are first rate.”

“Is Mzu still at the Mercedes?” Monica asked.

“Not at this exact moment; but she is on her way back there from a meeting with the Opia company. Her group is passing themselves
off as representatives from the Dorados defence force, which gives them a valid reason to buy armaments. I should be receiving
a report on the meeting from our asset in the company any minute.”

“Fine,” Monica said. “We’ll intercept her at the hotel.”

“Very well.” Adrian gave her an edgy glance. “The local police won’t appreciate that.”

“Sad, but irrelevant. Can you load a priority flight clearance authorization into the city’s air defence network?”

“Sure, we supplied it, we have the ultimate authority codes.”

“Fine, stand by to do it for the Edenist flyers. We’ll use them to evac as soon as we’ve acquired her.”

“The Kingdom will probably get expelled from this entire system if you pull a stunt like that,” Adrian said. “If there’s one
thing Nyvan’s nations hate more than each other, it’s outsystem foreigners.”

“Mzu wanted somewhere that was dishonest and greedy enough to supply her with weapons on a no-questions-asked basis. If this
planet had built themselves a decent civilization in the first place, she wouldn’t even be here. They’ve only themselves to
blame. I mean, they’ve had five centuries for God’s sake.”

Samuel groaned chidingly.

Adrian paused, not meeting Monica’s stare. “Um, my second surveillance team leader is reporting in. I’ve had them following
that Calvert character, as you asked.”

“Yes?” There was a sense of grudging inevitability in this moment, Monica thought.

“The captain contacted a data security expert as soon as he landed, a Richard Keaton. It would seem Keaton has done a good
job for him. In fact, he probably origined one of the probes into the hotel computer. They’re currently in a car which is
heading in the general direction of the Mercedes Hotel. He’ll get there before you can.”

“Shit! That bloody Calvert.”

“Do you want him eliminated?”

“No,” Samuel said. He stopped Monica’s outburst with a firm stare. “Any action at the hotel now will draw the police to it
before we can get there. Our interception will be difficult enough as it is.”

“All right,” she grumbled.

“My team could intercept Mzu for you,” Adrian said.

Monica was tempted—anything to get this
resolved
. “How many have you got on her?”

“Three cars, seven personnel.”

“Mzu has at least four people with her,” Samuel said.

“Agreed,” Monica said regretfully. “That’s too many, and God knows what they’re carrying, especially these unknown locals.
We have to guarantee first attempt success. Tell your team to continue their observation, Adrian, we’ll join them as soon
as we can.”

“Do you think she’ll resist?” Adrian asked.

“I would hope not,” Samuel said. “After all, she is not stupid; she must know Nyvan’s situation is decaying by the minute.
That may well make this easier for us. We should start with an open approach to fly her outsystem. Once she realizes she has
to leave with us, either willingly or by force, it would be logical for her to capitulate.”