A Night Without Stars

  ‘Captain Chaing.’ Stonal beckoned.

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘Did the mutant say anything new on the journey here?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  Stonal grunted. ‘Pity.’

  ‘I’m not sure Roxwolf is telling the truth, sir,’ Jenifa said.

  ‘Oh, he was, corporal.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Three hours ago, the Space Vigilance Office reported that the Trees have begun to move,’ Davorky told her. ‘They are flying down to a lower orbit. Their eggs will Fall on us, and there’s nothing we can do to stop them.’

  ‘No,’ Chaing said faintly. That’s the end. We lost. He heard Corilla gasp. She’d turned pale, and her hands were trembling.

  Stonal gave her a sharp glance. ‘Hold off telling your friends that. I’d like to keep the capital calm.’

  ‘Why?’ she asked in a shaky voice. ‘What’s the point?’

  ‘If the regiments have a clear field to move through, we’ll be able to inflict maximum damage on the nests as they advance. I don’t want panicked crowds blocking their way.’ Stonal indicated a swathe of red flags beyond the city’s outskirts. ‘Those are all incidents reported to us during the night, possible enemy incursions or gatherings. We’ve heard of villages cut off, unauthorized vehicles on the road, unknown creatures seen moving across the countryside, that kind of thing. Now we’re waiting on scouts to report in. But they’re clearly massing out there for something.’

  ‘What about the prime minister?’ Jenifa asked. ‘Is Byarn secure? Can we retaliate . . . afterwards?’

  ‘Her plane is still two hours out from Byarn,’ Davorky said. ‘Nothing can happen to her while she’s flying over the ocean.’

  Stonal raised a sceptical eyebrow. ‘Even if she gets to the refuge intact, communications between us and Byarn are poor. There’s been a lot of sabotage inflicted on our secure lines. We’re dependent on radio now. The master general and I were discussing whether to order the Operation Reclaim aircraft into the air as soon as we have any reports of Falling eggs. That way we can turn this continent into a radioactive Uracus. The Fallers will gain nothing.’

  Davorky nodded solemnly, as if he couldn’t quite commit to agreeing out loud.

  Chaing looked round as he heard a commotion. One of the console operators had a microphone held to his mouth, asking for urgent confirmation.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Stonal asked.

  ‘Sir. It’s the river, sir. There’s—’ He broke off and thumbed the microphone switch again. ‘Repeat, please?’

  ‘Put it on speaker,’ Davorky ordered.

  ‘. . . on the quayside . . . out of the water . . . huge . . . monsters . . . firing now . . .’ The sound of machine-gun fire thudded out of the speakers above the console. ‘More. All along the docks . . . hundreds . . . Uracus, what are those . . . !’

  An involuntary shiver ran along Chaing’s spine as he recalled the beasts on Port Chana’s harbour. And judging by the way Jenifa’s face had become still, those images were haunting her, too.

  ‘Get reinforcements to the docks,’ Davorky said at once. ‘And find out what’s happened to the Marine attack boats. They should be responding.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘It’s started,’ Stonal said coldly. ‘Captain Chaing, a word, please.’

  Chaing followed him over to a corner of the command centre. ‘I have one final job for you, captain. It’s not one I can entrust to most, but you’ve certainly proved your worth recently.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘It’s not just loyalty I’m going to need, but a great deal of courage.’

  ‘I think this day will see a lot of courage, sir. We’re just never going to hear of it.’

  ‘No doubt.’

  Stonal reached into his pocket and produced two long black keys. ‘These, captain, are the triggers for a three-hundred-kiloton atomic bomb which is here in the palace. I want you to assume command of the squad guarding it, and if I don’t make it, I want you to detonate it.’

  ‘Sir?’ he asked in a strained voice. For one ridiculous moment he’d thought Stonal had some miraculous fallback, that he’d somehow discovered how to open the wormhole to Aqueous.

  ‘We’re going to lose, captain. You know this, don’t you?’

  Chaing nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

  ‘As Roxwolf so eloquently explained, those of us who survive the bombardment will either be eggsumed or eaten alive. All of us, men, women, and children. I believe it would be better for Varlan to die in a fast, clean blast of nuclear annihilation than be subject to that. I trust you share that view?’

  ‘I do, sir,’ Chaing said formally. ‘I understand true duty to this world. You can depend on me.’

  ‘Good man. I’ll get there if I can. If not, it’s down to you. You’ll know the moment.’

  Chaing put the keys in his jacket pocket, and saluted. There wasn’t anything else left to say.

  *

  After seeing the Palace Guards escort Roxwolf off to the cells, Faustina walked through the palace gardens. Since the city’s main power grid had been sabotaged, the palace had been running on backup generators. The main building was well lit, but extravagances like the fancy path lights and splendid fountains all remained off. She wasn’t bothered by that. Enough light was shining from the palace windows for her to see where she was going, especially with her Advancer-heritage retinas. So she walked slowly through the ancient groves remembering the first time she’d been brought to the palace. They were bad memories, the lowest point in her life – or so she’d thought at the time.

  Infra-red vision showed her the Capital Regiment patrols moving across the grounds. It was easy enough to alter her walk to keep clear of them. She was beside a broad pond filled with ornamental dyllcod when she saw five men in regimental uniform hurrying through the cherry tree orchard ahead. She frowned, suspicious at how furtively they were behaving – looking round nervously, keeping low, avoiding the patrols just like her.

  She trailed after them, keeping a good fifty metres behind. They came to the perimeter wall. The old stone barrier was thick around the garden, topped with tangled firepine bushes, whose thorns contained a lethal venom. The little group must have known about a gardener’s concealed stairs, for they hurried straight up the wall to the top. Then they were gone, sneaking their way through a hidden gap in the bushes.

  Deserters, she realized.

  Faustina stared at the top of the wall for a long time, unable to condemn them. In fact, it was a wonder that more weren’t abandoning their posts to be with their families at the end. They must have known the Faller Apocalypse was starting, and it was going to be far worse than their most feared nightmares. She raised her gaze to the blank night sky, seeing the dreaded glimmering line of the Tree Ring slicing through space above Bienvenido. The Trees did look brighter – or maybe she was just imagining it. Everyone in the palace now knew the Trees were on the move, sliding down into low orbit. The bombardment would be starting soon, probably within a day.

  After all she’d done, all she’d suffered, the world was coming to an end. She felt the tears building behind her eyes, and hated herself for the weakness.

  Another man was jogging round the base of the wall, his bright infra-red glow blurred into a wavering profile. He found the stairs and started climbing.

  Desperate, yes, selfish undoubtedly, but he still clung to some kind of hope. Otherwise why would he do it?

  That’s all any of us have left now: desperation.

  Faustina wiped her eyes angrily and went back into the palace. There was only one guard on duty outside the crypt, where there were usually never fewer than five standing sentry over Section Seven’s greatest secrets. Despite the authority conveyed by wearing the smart Palace Guard uniform, the girl’s worried expression betrayed how young she was. Faustina suspected she was a probationary, one who didn’t know what to make of all the rumours echoed by the palace’s eternally gossipy staff.
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  She saluted as Faustina held out her laminated pass, and carefully wrote the admission in her log, noting the time.

  As always, the lights were on in the crypt, as were the recording machines. Faustina turned them off and faced the space machine.

  ‘How far can you extend your force field?’ she asked Joey.

  ‘Not much. Not enough to protect the city, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

  ‘I wasn’t. How about the palace? Can you cover it?’

  ‘No. It’s too big. I might manage a hundred metres or so, but it wouldn’t be particularly strong.’

  ‘Enough to deflect an egg?’

  ‘Yes. I guess.’

  ‘And bullets?’

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  She straightened her back, trying to appear dignified. ‘Because I’m desperate, Joey. Because there’s nothing else.’

  ‘You want me to protect people?’

  ‘Yes. Is there any way you can produce an ingrav drive, or repair yours?’

  ‘Hoo, boy. I’ve only got the smallest synthesizers. I told you before, they were never intended for that.’

  ‘Can you do it? Don’t make me beg, Joey; just answer me. If I get you the right raw material, is it in any way possible?’

  ‘It might be. I could probably repair my drive units at least, but it won’t be quick. Where do you want to fly to? Byarn?’

  ‘No.’ She walked onto the white floor and touched the exopod as if she was seeing it for the first time. ‘If you can repair your drive units, could you fix them to this? Could you make it fly? It was built for space.’

  ‘Wow, that’s . . .’

  ‘Desperate, yes. But could it work?’

  ‘Where do you want it to reach?’

  ‘Aqueous.’

  ‘Risky.’

  She laughed brittlely. ‘More like crazy. But could it work?’

  ‘Maybe, but I can’t even calculate the odds. Look, I get that you want to survive, but have you thought this idea through? That is one lonely life you’d be heading for, and when you got there, you’d know how everyone else died. That’s not a good way to spend your last years.’

  ‘I’m not doing it for me. I’m desperate, not selfish. The exopod is big enough for two, but it would hold an adult and two children.’

  ‘Hoo, boy. Yeah. I think I see where you’re going with this. It’s not good, girl.’

  ‘I could ferry them over, two at a time.’

  ‘Them?’

  ‘All the ones your force field protects.’

  ‘You’ve got to be kidding!’

  ‘I’m not. Joey, when I was Bethaneve I helped lead the revolution, and when we thought we’d won, we found out we were just Nigel’s puppets. We got through the Great Transition, then Slvasta, the man I loved and married, sank into psychotic paranoia. When I tried to stop him, I was thrown into the mines and only got out with Kysandra’s help; since then I’ve been her spy in the capital, and now she’s gone. Everything I’ve ever done has ended in failure, everyone I’ve helped is dead; in two hundred and seventy-five years, I’ve accomplished nothing. But I’ve always had hope, I believed people could do better for themselves, if we just had a chance. Let me have this, Joey. Let me have one last hope, however small it is. Please.’ She stopped, not caring that her head was bowed and she could see nothing through the tears. ‘Please. Help me.’

  ‘Aww, bollocks. All right, I’ll help. Like you said, it’s not like I’ve got anything else to do.’

  She smeared the tears away from her eyes. ‘Thank you.’ She sniffled miserably.

  ‘But I need to get out of here. If the eggs fall, we’ll be buried under the rubble, along with the exopod. And this crypt is a long way down.’

  ‘Yes, yes; right.’ Faustina tried to concentrate, to work out the practicalities of the outrageous idea. ‘I’ll order my assistants to drive the tractor and tow you outside.’

  ‘Will they do that?’

  ‘Yes. They’re completely loyal to me, and I’ll just say it’s orders from the security cabinet. Nobody will question that. It’s chaos upstairs right now. I can put you in the rose courtyard. It’s about a hundred metres across; you can shield that. The exopod will fit as well. We can convert it there.’

  ‘You know, even if this actually works, it will take weeks to fit out the exopod. Then it’ll take you at least a year to ferry all the kids over.’

  ‘Yes. I suppose it will.’

  ‘They’ll need to be protected and fed all that time, as the Fallers are laying siege to us.’

  ‘The Eliters will help me. I have contacts in Varlan. I’ll call them. I’ll get them to bring their children.’

  ‘Okay . . . but, Faustina, not too many.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘Right, then. I’ll get you a list of chemicals and minerals I’m going to need.’

  *

  Paula stood in front of the gateway again as Demitri opened the terminus above Valatare. The washed russet light of the insipid clouds shone through, making the faces of her companions seem strangely malaised. She opened a link to the floater.

  ‘Hello, Laura; we’re ready to connect to you now. Please shut down your wormhole to Ursell.’

  ‘It is done,’ Laura replied.

  ‘All right, stand by.’

  ‘I am recalibrating the floater systems to act as anchor.’

  ‘Going for connection,’ Demitri announced.

  ‘Initiating,’ Laura said.

  ‘We’re there! Connected and stable.’

  ‘Well done,’ Paula told the ANAdroid. ‘Okay, Laura, you need to modify your force-field profile for maximum streamlining. We’re going to move you.’

  ‘Understood.’

  Paula let the exovision data from the gateway fill her perception, monitoring Demitri’s control. The floater with Laura’s memories was eight and a half thousand kilometres from the equatorial anomaly. Demitri began to load new coordinates into the gateway, shifting the terminus and its new anchor. Laura altered the shape of the floater’s force field, elongating it to an ellipsoid, with the narrow section aligned along the direction of travel. Then she flattened it, turning the leading edges sharper, extending the nose to a point. Demitri began to increase the speed, lifting it to a higher altitude where the gas was thinner, so it powered along above the slow-spinning cyclones. They kept a close watch on the force field and settled for a speed of Mach seven, which it could withstand without undue strain.

  It took an hour to fly Laura’s floater to the equatorial anomaly, ripping through the melange of helium, hydrogen, and methane at the head of a roiling pristine-white contrail of ammonium ice particles that stretched out for over sixty kilometres. When it reached the right location, Demitri brought it to a halt, the terminus connection locking it in place.

  ‘Take it down,’ Paula said.

  He didn’t lower it at anything like supersonic speed, keeping the descent slow and careful. Laura reshaped the force field again, contracting it around the floater. Even with Valatare’s sluggish gas currents, it received quite a buffeting.

  ‘There’s a lot of tension on the connection,’ Demitri reported.

  ‘Can it damage the wormhole?’ Paula asked.

  ‘Not the wormhole itself; that’s just a negative energy structure. But it’s placing quite a strain on the floater’s physical systems.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Within tolerance.’

  ‘We can’t afford to lose the connection.’

  ‘I am aware of that.’

  It took quite an effort not to scowl at him.

  The floater continued its drop. Demitri had reduced the width of the wormhole to a metre in diameter. It was like a porthole in the middle of the gateway, showing nothing but a grey haze through which occasional wisps of auburn vapour flashed across. Paula’s exovision overlaid the gas pressure on the other side, and she did her best not to flinch. If it broke through, the jet of gas would be like an iron pillar pistoning out.
br />   When the floater was three hundred kilometres deep in the atmosphere, the light around it had dwindled away to nothing. It was hard to make out the throat of the wormhole; the gateway was a simple black circle.

  ‘Radiation rising,’ Demitri said.

  ‘Systems status?’ Paula queried.

  ‘So far, so good.’

  At thirty kilometres from the boundary, a faint glow began to appear.

  ‘Gamma radiation fluorescence,’ Demitri told them. ‘And that’s going to grow.’

  At this depth, it was questionable if the floater was immersed in gas or superfluid. Whichever it was, the density was extreme, and starting to stress the force field. The wormhole terminus was having to push the buoyant floater down – another function that was never included in its original performance specifications.

  Paula began to wish the ANAdroids were more human. She was sure if they were they’d be panicking about now, giving her a better indication of progress than Demitri’s bland assurances. She was certainly starting to sweat.

  The radiation glow was getting brighter, shining out at them like a lime-stained sun. Paula’s suit helmet activated several filters, protecting her retinas.

  At one kilometre above the boundary, the temperature began to rise fast, as did the gravity. The data in Paula’s exovision didn’t match any gas giant environment on record; they were truly into the unknown now. Gamma radiation was heating the hydrogen to such an extent that the pressure on the floater’s force field was now approaching overload. Paula noticed that the others had all backed a couple of paces further from the gateway, and smiled to herself.

  Without warning, the dazzling miasma became clear, and she could actually make out the surface of the boundary two hundred metres below the floater. There was an immense circle of relative darkness directly underneath.

  Five kilometres across, Paula realized. The generator. We’re on target.

  ‘Acceleration stress,’ Demitri said in surprise. ‘I’m going to have to—’

  The floater suddenly lunged down, its force field slamming into the generator’s boundary layer. Paula took an involuntary step back, her arm coming up in instinctive animal protection, warding off the unknown threat. The glare cut off abruptly. But the floater was still intact; she could see its data displays in her exovision.