The Night's Dawn Trilogy (456 page)

Eight hundred Adamist warships formed the nucleus of the new attack formation, while five hundred voidhawks flocked around
their periphery. Once their relative positions were locked, the main drives burst into life, accelerating the ships in towards
the planet at eight gees. Voidhawks expanded their distortion fields and matched the acceleration of their technological comrades.

The gigantic neuroiconic display wheeled slowly inside Motela Kolhammer’s mind, each ship a pinprick of golden light trailing
a purple vector tag in a headlong rush to the solid bulk of the planet ahead, represented by a blank, ebony sphere. The strength
of the planetary defence layers were illustrated by translucent coloured shells wrapped around the blackness. The ships still
had some way to go before the outermost, yellow shell. And still neither side had fired a shot.

The simulation put him in mind of a hammer descending on an egg, rendered with impossibly delicate artistry for what it actually
portrayed. Even he was dismayed at the level of violence to be unleashed when those two forces collided in the physical world.
Something he never expected. But the tradition of the Confederation Navy was to prevent exactly this kind of monstrosity from
happening, not to instigate it. He couldn’t help the guilt which came from knowing this was happening because politicians
considered the Navy had failed in their principal duty.

Stranger than that, the knowledge and its burden was bearable because of those politicians. The very people who had declared
the attack had made it possible to do so with minimal casualties—on the Navy’s side. By insisting on total success, the Polity
Council had given Kolhammer the one thing all military commanders crave before battle is joined: overwhelming firepower.

Kolhammer’s task force accelerated towards Arnstat at a constant eight gees for thirty minutes. When he gave the order for
the starships to switch off their drives, they were still 110,000 kilometres out, just on the fringes of the outer SD network,
and travelling at over 150 kilometres per second. Frigates, battleships, and voidhawks fired a salvo of 25 combat wasps each.
Every drone was pre-programmed to operate in an autonomous seek-and-destroy mode. A perfect engagement scenario: any chunk
of matter above Arnstat, from pebble-sized interplanetary meteorites to kilometre-long industrial stations, MSVs to asteroids,
was classified as hostile. The Confederation Navy ships didn’t have to stay to supervise the attack over encrypted communications
links, there would be no salvos of Organization antimatter combat wasps fired at their ships to counter, no 12-gee evasive
manoeuvres. No risk.

Adamist warships began to jump away. Wormhole interstices were prised open, carrying some of the voidhawks to their rendezvous
coordinates. Only the
Illustrious
, 10 escort frigates, and 300 accompanying voidhawks remained to observe the outcome. All of them now decelerating at 10 gees
as the armada of 32,000 combat wasps swept on ahead, accelerating at a full 25 gees.

It was a clash which had one outcome from the moment it was instigated. Even with over 500 antimatter combat wasps available,
the Organization could do nothing to stop the incoming weapons. Not only did the Confederation have an incredible weight of
numbers on their side; the ever-increasing velocity at which they were approaching gave them an overwhelming kinetic advantage.
Kills could only be achieved by a first-time direct hit; no defending submunition would have a second chance.

The hellhawks swallowed out en masse without even bothering to consult Arnstat’s SD command. Organization frigates began to
retract their sensor booms and communication dishes down into their hull recesses prior to jumping clear. Those assigned to
low-orbit enforcement duty began to accelerate at high gees, striving for an altitude where they could use their patterning
nodes successfully.

Voidhawk distortion fields examined the pressure which the Organization frigates applied against space-time in order to escape.
Each combination of energy compression and trajectory was unique, allowing for only one possible emergence coordinate. Three
voidhawks swallowed away in pursuit of each Organization ship, with orders to interdict and destroy. With the Adamist warships
needing several seconds after emergence to extend their sensors, the voidhawks would have a small window when their target
was utterly defenceless. Kolhammer was determined none of them should return to New California to bolster Capone’s strength
and add their antimatter to his stockpile.

The combat wasps in the attacking swarm began to dispense their submunitions, stretching a dense filigree of white fire across
space for tens of thousands of kilometres. Brief, tiny pulses of glowing violet gas spewed out at random as the SD network’s
outer sensor satellites detonated. Then the explosions began to multiply as more and more of Arnstat’s hardware was obliterated.
The swarm swept across the first of the planet’s four asteroid settlements circling above geosynchronous orbit, overwhelming
its short-range defences. Kinetic spears and nuclear-tipped submunitions pummelled the rock, biting out hundreds of irradiated
craters. Vast cataracts of ions and magma flared away into space from each impact, the asteroid’s rotation curving them sharply
to wrap itself in a thick psychedelic chromosphere. Second-tier SD platforms and inter-orbit shuttles were caught next. They
were followed by another of the asteroids. For a moment it looked as though the pure savagery of the weapons had somehow ignited
a fission reaction within the rock’s atomic structure. The lush stipple of explosions melded into a single radiative discharge
of stellar intensity. Then the light’s uniformity cracked. At its core the asteroid had shattered, releasing a deluge of molten
debris, kicking off a wave of cascade explosions as each fresh target was intercepted by the submunitions.

Pressed deep into his acceleration couch by air molecules heavier than lead, Motela Kolhammer watched the results through
a combination of optical sensor datavises and tactical graphic overlays. The two were becoming indistinguishable as reality
began to imitate the electronic displays. Distinct shells of light were enveloping the planet as clouds of plasma cooled and
expanded. It was low orbit, inevitably, where the largest number of vehicles, stations, and SD hardware was emplaced. Consequently,
when the submunitions tore through them, the resultant blastwaves became a mantle of solid light that sealed the entire planet
away from outside observation.

Beneath it, wreckage fell to earth in bewitchingly attractive pyrotechnic storms. Streaks of ionic flame tore through the
upper atmosphere, a sleet of malignant shooting stars heating the stratosphere to furnace temperatures. A potent crimson glow
rose up from the clouds to greet them.

Illustrious
raced 80,000 kilometres over the south pole as the possessed on the ground chanted their spell. First warning came when the
planetary gravity field quaked, warping the battleship’s trajectory by several metres. The shroud of light around Arnstat
never faded; it merely changed colour, rippling through the spectrum towards resplendent violet as it contracted. Optical-spectrum
sensors had to bring several shield filters on line during the last few minutes as the source shrank towards its vanishing
point.

Motela Kolhammer kept one optical sensor aligned on the accusingly empty zone as the battleship’s radar and gravitonic sensors
scanned space for any sign of the planet’s mass. Every result came in negative. “Tell our escort to jump to the task force
rendezvous coordinate,” he told the tactical staff. “Then plot a course for New California.”

______

Sarha fell through the open hatchway into the captain’s cabin, ignoring the dark composite ladder and allowing the half-gee
acceleration to pull her down neatly onto the decking. She landed, flexing her knees gracefully.

“Ballet really missed out when you chose astroengineering at university,” Joshua said. He was standing in the middle of the
room, dressed in his shorts and towelling off a liberal smearing of lemon-scented gel.

She gave him a hoydenish grin. “I know how to exploit low-gee to my advantage.”

“I hope Ashly appreciates it.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Humm. So how are we doing?”

“Official end of duty watch report, sir. We’re doing the same as yesterday.” Her salute lacked efficiency.

“Which was the same as the day before.”

“Damn right. Oh, I tracked down the leak in that reaction mass feed pipe. Somebody slacked off when the tanks were installed
in the cargo holds, a junction was misaligned. Beaulieu says she’ll get on it later today. In the meantime I isolated the
pipe; we have enough redundancy to keep the flow at optimum.”

“Yeah, right, fascinating.” He balled the towel and chucked it in a low arc across the cabin. It landed dead centre on the
hopper’s open throat and slithered down.

She watched it vanish. “I want to keep the fluid volume up. We might wind up needing it.”

“Sure. How were Liol’s jumps?” He already knew, of course;
Lady Mac
’s log was the first thing he’d checked when he woke up. Liol had completed five jumps on the last watch, each essentially
flawless according to the flight computer. That wasn’t quite the point.

“Fine.”

“Humm.”

“All right, what’s the matter? I thought the two of you were getting on okay these days. You can hardly fault his performance.”

“I’m not.” He fished a clean sweatshirt out of a locker. “It’s just that I’m asking a lot of people for advice and opinions
these days. Not a good development for a captain. I’m supposed to make perfect snap judgements.”

“If you ask me a question about guiding
Lady Mac
I’ll be worried. Anything else…” Her hand waved limply, wafting air about. “You and I bounced around in that zero-gee cage
enough to start with. I know you don’t connect the same way most people do. So if you want help with that, I’m your girl.”

“What do you mean, don’t connect?”

“Joshua, you were scavenging the Ruin Ring when you were eighteen. That’s not natural. You should have been out partying.”

“I partied.”

“No, you screwed a lot of girls between flights.”

“That’s what eighteen-year-olds do.”

“That’s what eighteen-year-old boys dream of doing. Adamist ones, anyway. Everyone else is busy falling helter skelter into
the adult world and desperately trying to find out how the hell it works, and why it’s all so difficult and painful. How you
handle friendships, relationships, breakups; that kind of thing.”

“You make it sound like we have to pass some kind of exam.”

“We do, though sitting it lasts for most of your life. You haven’t even started revising yet.”

“Jesus. This is all very profound, especially at this time of the morning. What are you trying to tell me?”

“Nothing. You’re the one that’s troubled. I damn well know it’ll be nothing to do with our mission. So I guess I’m trying
to coax you into telling me what’s on your mind, and convince you it’s okay to talk about it. People do that when they’re
close. It’s normal.”

“Ballet and psychology, huh?”

“You signed me up for my multi-tasking.”

“All right,” Joshua said. She was right, it was hard for him to talk about this. “It’s Louise.”

“Ah! The Norfolk babe. The very young one.”

“She’s not…” he began automatically. Sarha’s lack of expression stopped him. “Well, she is a bit young. I think I sort of
took advantage.”

“Oh wow. I never thought the day would come when I heard you say that. Exactly why is it bothering you this time? You use
your status like a stun gun.”

“I do not!”

“Please. When was the last time you went planetside or even into port without your little captain’s star bright on your shoulder?”
She gave him a sympathetic smile. “You really fell for her, didn’t you?”

“No more than usual. It’s just that none of my other girlfriends wound up being possessed. Jesus, I had a hint of what that
was like. I can’t stop thinking what it must have been like for her, how fucking ugly. She was so sweet, she didn’t belong
in a world where those kind of things happen to people.”

“Do any of us?”

“You know what I mean. You’ve done stims you shouldn’t have, you’ve accessed real news sensevises. We know this is a badass
universe. It helps, a bit. As much as anything can. But Louise—damn, her brat sister, too. We flew off and left them, just
like we always do.”

“They spare children, you know. That Stephanie Ash woman on Ombey brought a whole bunch of kids out. I accessed the report.”

“Louise wasn’t a child. It happened to her.”

“You don’t know that for certain. If she was smart enough, she might have eluded them.”

“I doubt it. She doesn’t have that sort of ability.”

“She must have had some pretty amazing features to have this effect on you.”

He thought back to the carriage journey to Cricklade after they’d just met, her observations on Norfolk and its nature. He’d
agreed with just about everything she’d said. “She wasn’t street-smart. And that’s the kind of dirty selfishness you need
to elude the possessed.”

“You really don’t believe she made it, do you?”

“No.”

“Do you think you’re responsible for her?”

“Not responsible, exactly. But I think she was sort of looking at me as the person who was going to take her away from Cricklade
Manor.”

“Dear me, whatever could have given her that impression, I wonder?”

Joshua didn’t hear. “I let her down, just by being me. It’s not a nice feeling, Sarha. She really was a lovely girl, even
though she’d been brought up on Norfolk. If she’d been born anywhere else, I’d probably…” He fell silent, shifting his sweatshirt
round, not meeting Sarha’s astonished stare.

“Say it,” she said.

“Say what?”

“Probably marry her.”

“I would not marry her. All I’m saying is that if she’d been given a proper childhood instead of growing up in that ridiculous
medieval pageant there might’ve been a chance that we could have had something slightly longer-term than usual.”