The terminus above the corona began to move down into the seething ionic storms thrown off by the prominences. Long powerful streamers curved round to streak into the dark throat.
Paula steeled herself, supremely conscious of how close she was standing to the wormhole generator – not that she’d ever know if there was a confinement breach. It would all be over too fast for human nerves to react, even nerves as enriched as hers.
Superhot plasma from the corona began to roar down the wormhole before venting into space like God’s own firework rocket. Density, heat, and velocity increased as the terminus penetrated the chromosphere. The power level generated by the induction effect along the wormhole was phenomenal.
Fergus used the floater’s wormhole to form a channel between the energy generated by the BC5800d2’s wormhole and the connection between Trüb and the barrier generator.
‘Is it enough?’ Paula asked the Planter.
‘Not yet.’
‘Down we go, then,’ Demitri said evenly.
The BC5800d2’s terminus sank deeper into the star’s interior; plasma at incredible temperature poured out through the wormhole, its velocity approaching half-lightspeed.
‘We are patterning the energy to override the generator’s warp effect,’ the Planter said.
Paula was sure she somehow picked up a resonance of excitement from the enigmatic alien. She walked over to the arch of outlandish Planter substance that was protruding through the gateway and onto the barrier surface. There was a small gap between it and the edge of the wormhole, revealing the midnight-black crescent of the generator. Close enough to touch, had it not been shielded by the gateway’s force field.
‘You’re going to have to be quick,’ Demitri said. ‘There are instabilities building in the exotic matter. The wormhole won’t hold for long.’
‘Applying now,’ the Planter said.
Paula held her breath.
Abruptly, the blackness was gone. Paula could see a tangled knot of translucent energy bands, loops kilometres across, gyrating round and through each other as they glowed with the telltale violet of Cherenkov radiation. As she watched, stains of darkness sluiced through them, contaminating the intricate formation deeper and deeper until every band was shading down to obscurity. The negative energy they were composed from dissipated in a last burst of gamma radiation and exotic neutrinos.
The barrier collapsed.
Freed from the harsh pull of its artificial gravity, Valatare’s colossal gas envelope exploded both outwards and inwards. Vast surges of cooling hydrocarbon vapour slashed past the floater, which held steady amid the moon-sized hurricanes.
The fake gas giant was now the centre of an expanding cloudstorm that would continue to grow over the weeks until it was thin enough for the solar wind to blow it out across the intergalactic night. Paula watched the start of the process, as the hot lower layers surged into the gulf exposed by the barrier disappearing. Nothing was visible through the ever-shifting ochre haze. Titanic energy swirls tried to equalize, flinging off oceanic-sized lightning discharges.
The Planter withdrew from the wormhole, allowing Paula to stand directly in the centre of the gateway. Her u-shadow transmitted the message she’d composed what seemed an age ago now, sitting in Kysandra’s dining room the night she realized what Valatare was.
She waited with growing desperation, seeing only vast swirls of the drab gases rushing past her tiny window. I am not wrong. It has to be them. It has to be. Her hands clenched into fists so tight her nails were digging into her palms.
An answering signal came out of the billowing ionized mist. Then shapes began to emerge, serene and massive. Thousands of them.
Paula smiled beatifically at the glorious Raiel warships as they headed towards her.
*
Kysandra watched the Fallers abandon their troop carriers, finally realizing they were easy targets. Several of them were sneaking forwards through the smoke, dodging between trees and statues in the neat gardens that moated the government offices. She used disrupter pulses to take out the corners and core of the People’s Transport Ministry. The entire nine-storey building tumbled down in a slow-motion cascade of stone and concrete and tortured girders. The Fallers creeping furtively along its sides ran frantically into the open road. Kysandra tugged her maser rifle off her shoulder as targeting graphics locked on, her secondary routines designating them for the rifle. It saved power; her biononics didn’t have unlimited reserves, and there were still over two thousand Fallers closing on the palace.
She started jogging towards the Ministry of Agriculture. Sure enough, Fallers began to follow, which made her grin savagely; it was like a magnet drawing iron filings along. Huge swells of black smoke churned along the length of Bryan-Anthony Boulevard, forming a roiling ceiling above her. A sleet of incendiary bullets slammed into the Ministry of Agriculture. Fires bloomed behind shattered windows.
Kysandra’s secondary neural routines brought up light-amplification imagery to compensate for the growing darkness. She ducked round the side of the building, where the smoke wasn’t so dense. The light kept dimming.
‘Uh, Kysandra, what is that?’ Florian asked.
An icy phantom ran slowly along Kysandra’s spine. She stopped jogging and looked up.
‘Skylords,’ Ry said. ‘The Skylords have returned.’
‘That’s not a Skylord,’ Kysandra said solemnly.
She remembered the Skylords from her childhood. Exquisitely alien crystalline mountains, shimmering in refracted sunlight, which floated nimbly through the sky as they collected the souls of humans beginning their journey to the welcoming heart of the Void. This dark thing descending on Varlan was so much larger – orders of magnitude greater than the city itself. Its umbra had already engulfed the surrounding countryside, pushing the sunlight away to a slender fringe clinging to the horizon. Clouds broke apart on its base, and a fierce wind began to blow across the rooftops as it displaced a monstrous amount of air.
It was all Kysandra could do to stay standing. The most primitive animal instinct she possessed was shouting at her to bow down, to run, to scream hysterically—
The only thing she could hear now was the crackling of the flames. Even the Fallers had stopped shooting. Like her they were silent and still, staring up blankly at their fate.
*
Paula stood beside Yathal in his command chamber as the Golakkoth lowered itself into Bienvenido’s atmosphere. The titanic warship moved with a sedate grace, ensuring the air it deposed didn’t howl away in wayward hurricanes as it slid down towards Varlan.
‘There are many conflicts underway in the city,’ the Raiel captain said. ‘Which one involves your friends?’
Paula was using the warship’s phenomenal sensor suite to observe the city. She had to block most of it; the sheer quantity of information contained within a complete sweep could probably fry a human brain. The warrior Raiel, however, seemed quite capable of total engagement.
She moved her perception focus directly underneath the warship; there was a confrontation on a long road stretching out from the palace. Pinprick graphics bloomed emerald, revealing energy weapon discharges. The answering deluge of more primitive chemical weapons were designated a dull yellow. Her perception spiralled in on Kysandra and Florian and Ry. They’d stopped shooting to gape up in awe. ‘That’s them,’ she said. ‘You’ve shocked everyone into stopping, but we need to end this, now.’
‘Of course,’ Yathal said. ‘The other ships are almost in position.’
Outside of Golakkoth’s sensor image, Paula was aware of four other Raiel warships lowering themselves out of the sky above Lamaran. Their T-fields were already reaching out.
She shifted her focus again, zooming into the palace, identifying the overstretched force field covering a courtyard, then diving deeper, her augmented sight flowing through walls, seeing the crypt where the wormhole had spent so many centuries waiting – now home to bodies and the badly wounded. A deep bunker filled w
ith frightened defiant regiment officers organizing Varlan’s last stand. Cellars where the big building’s ordinary staff cowered, awaiting the apocalypse.
‘It’s over,’ she whispered, surprised how the omnipotent view-point made her feel so benign. ‘We’ve got you. You’re safe.’
The Golakkoth’s sensors classified humans and Fallers, tagging them. Within seconds, she was looking at every sentient entity in Varlan no matter where they were.
‘Lift the humans out,’ she said.
‘The Faller species is undesirable,’ Yathal said. ‘We removed them from our galaxy. We can do the same here for you.’
Paula cancelled the warship’s perception and turned to face the warrior Raiel. It was different again to any she’d encountered in the Commonwealth galaxy, larger and with wings that evolution had long discarded in the Raiel of her time. For a moment that worried her, but Raiel nature was an absolute, of that she was sure. ‘I ask you not to. They will be perfectly harmless if we simply leave them behind. This world . . . it is as much a prison for humans as Valatare was for you. There is nothing here for us. We have to leave, now.’
A soft sigh escaped from the Raiel’s thick lips. ‘Very well, Paula Myo. We acknowledge our debt to you.’
‘Thank you.’
*
Kysandra’s u-shadow reported a link opening. ‘Paula?’ she asked in amazement.
‘Yes.’
‘You did it?’ There had been so many years spent holding things together, fighting this wretched eternal rearguard battle, that somewhere along the line she’d stopped thinking it could ever end, that they might actually win. True belief had been extinguished that day Nigel had left her.
Inside she felt a hysterical laugh gestating – nothing could be more real than a multi-billion-tonne alien spacecraft hovering over your head.
‘Yes, this is the Golakkoth, a Raiel warship.’
‘So you were right, then?’
‘Yes, I was right.’
‘Thank you.’
‘It’s what I do. It’s what I am.’
‘Are the Raiel going to destroy the Fallers?’
‘No. There’s no need. And I did promise the Planters.’
‘But . . .’
‘Stand by. We’re going to teleport you on board. We’re going to teleport everyone on board.’
Kysandra’s field function scan reported a weird quantum effect establishing itself around her. Then the flaming wreckage of Bryan-Anthony Boulevard vanished.
*
The habitation dome they’d been assigned on the Golakkoth was apparently small by Raiel standards – barely eight kilometres across. Its buildings were cubes and cylinders and hemispheres with narrow paths between, illuminated by coloured strips set into the translucent surface. Walking along the gloomy alley, Florian could have sworn part of the darkness around him came from fog that lingered between the high blank walls, except when he waved his hand at the grey wisps they were never there.
His u-shadow guided him round a few more turns and a doorway opened at the base of a cylinder. Bright white light shone out. The doorway put him in mind of a bussalore hole gnawed into a skirting board.
Three days ago, the inside of the cylinder had been a gloomy grotto with walls that seemed to flow as if they had a sheet of water constantly running down them. A typical Raiel dwelling, Paula told him. Now it was very different. Walls and floors had rearranged themselves – not just their layout, but texture, too. The cylinder’s interior had grown itself into something that resembled a plush human hotel, except it had no windows. Which was why Florian spent as much time as possible standing beside the bottom of the crystal dome, staring at the wonders unfolding outside. The entire Raiel armada was orbiting Ursell, unleashing energies he didn’t understand to dismantle the benighted planet and use the debris to build five awesome new structures. DF spheres, Paula called them.
He went up the curving marble stairs to the first floor, where the big lounge had been established. Paula was already sitting at the head of the table, with Yathal standing beside her. Florian had been on board the Golakkoth for three days now, and he still felt intimidated by the Raiel. Yathal was as big as a seibear, but that was the only valid comparison to any creature Florian knew. All the crew were warrior Raiel, Paula explained. Presumably that was why Yathal appeared to have a hide made of obsidian armour with inbuilt twinkling jewels. The Raiel’s various tentacles were woven with black threads, and the folds of loose flesh around the back of his head had been groomed out to form a mane of white fans. Oddest of all were the leathery wings folded along his flanks that seemed far too small to allow him to actually fly.
The one time Florian gathered up enough courage to ask the Golakkoth’s captain about them, Yathal told him they were vestigial, and the Raiel only kept them for tradition and decoration.
Kysandra was sitting beside Paula. She acknowledged Florian with a sly smile and a wink. When he sat beside her, he felt her hand close on his thigh, squeezing playfully. He blushed – as he supposed he always would when she was with him. Since they’d been teleported on board the Golakkoth, they’d spent half their time in bed together, both of them devoted to recreating the happy few days they’d enjoyed after she’d rescued him from Opole. He knew it wouldn’t last, that the voyage home was just another interlude before his life truly began, but that didn’t bother him any more. The Commonwealth was in his future now. A dream made real.
There weren’t many others at the table: Ry, of course, and Demitri and Corilla. He’d been somewhat disconcerted by Paula’s insistence that Stonal and Captain Chaing be included in their small council, but she wanted alternative viewpoints. ‘For a fair representation,’ she claimed. Prime Minister Terese was also given a chair, though she’d said very little in their meetings. Florian thought she was still in a state of shock. He could relate to that; the decisions this small council had been making were momentous. That didn’t seem to perturb Paula. He was finally starting to realize why Nigel had chosen her to carry his plan forward if he failed.
‘If we’re all ready,’ Paula said.
Roxwolf materialized at the opposite end of the table. The mutant-Faller glanced round, keeping his face expressionless. Florian noticed a lot of his fur was rising, so maybe he wasn’t quite so unnerved as his posture was trying to promote. ‘Is this my trial?’ he asked.
‘Not at all,’ Paula said. ‘We acknowledge you were genuine in your attempts to side with humans, despite your earlier activities. We will honour that arrangement. However, there is a slight problem.’
‘Of course there is,’ Roxwolf grunted.
‘We exterminated your kind,’ Yathal said.
‘You did what?’
‘Long ago, before this fleet was ever built, the Raiel determined your species was too aggressive. You conquered all the worlds you encountered whose civilizations were not technologically advanced enough to stop you, destroying all the biological life you found without mercy. So we stopped you the only possible way.’
Roxwolf nodded slowly. ‘But those of us captured by the Void survived your massacre.’
‘Yes.’
‘And now we’re all that’s left?’
‘Yes.’
‘So you’re going to finish the job?’
‘No,’ Paula told him. ‘I gave my word to the Planters that this situation would be resolved with minimal violence.’
‘And in turn we acknowledge our debt to Paula,’ Yathal said.
‘The Vatni are coming with us,’ Paula said, ‘as are the Macule Units with their precious gene banks. They are already in stasis along with Bienvenido’s population. The Raiel are using Ursell’s mass to construct colossal wormhole generators. Even so, the voyage home will take several years.’
‘We will not permit your species to accompany us,’ Yathal said. ‘We will not turn you loose on our galaxy again.’
‘So Bienvenido is yours,’ Paula said. ‘It’s far enough away to prevent you from ever posing a thr
eat to us again.’
Roxwolf peeled his lips back. ‘I can’t live on Bienvenido.’
‘I know,’ Paula said. ‘So you have a decision to make.’
‘What decision?’
‘We can repair the distortion that afflicts you,’ Yathal said. ‘We can make you whole again, and return you to Bienvenido. Your kind will never know who you were.’
‘Or,’ Paula said, ‘we can download your memories into secure storage. Then when we’re back in the Commonwealth, you will be given a human body, or you may transfer directly into ANA. The choice is yours.’
Roxwolf held up his arms, looking from one to the other, from fur to skin. ‘I am both and yet neither. I know too much, and I am curious; that alone condemns me to my kind, no matter how pure my physical body. Above all, I want to live without fear and without limits. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. So . . . I choose human.’ He grinned his fearsome grin. ‘Until something better comes along.’
BOOK EIGHT
Commonwealth
This was the bit Joey Stein welcomed, yet dreaded. The fact he could think at all was welcome. It meant he was alive – which in itself was rather surprising, given his last memories of the crypt under the palace: way too much pain and blood and that psycho PSR officer. Although now he considered his last moments, they were mixed in with another set of memories, of operating within the lifeboat package smartnet and throwing a force field over the rose courtyard so that children and parents alike could cower together. Then the sky had darkened as the gargantuan Raiel warship had arrived above Varlan.
His eyes snapped open and he sat up. That was what he was dreading – the abysmally thin force-grown clone body provided by the re-life clinic. Pain and depression for months, attended by well-meaning self-righteous therapists. Too weak to resist their patronizing ministrations.
Except there was no pain, nor even stiffness. He didn’t feel hungry or weary. When he brought his hand up in front of his face it seemed perfectly normal, the hand his twenty-year-old self had possessed oh-so long ago. Before the colony starship flight to another galaxy, when he was so tired of the jaded lives lived by Commonwealth citizens. Before Shuttle Fourteen’s science mission into the Forest, when his body was suffering from a glitched tank-yank procedure. Before being caught by Faller-Rojas and forced into contact with the egg, the terror of slowly being eggsumed. Before his uncharacteristically noble suicide to save Laura. Before Nigel’s intervention. Before being downloaded into the lifeboat package’s smartnet. Before two hundred and fifty years stuck to a sodding Tree . . .