The Reality Dysfunction

  Near the centre of the formation a zone of space the size of a quark warped to an alarming degree as its mass leapt towards infinity, and the first frigate emerged. The remaining twenty warships jumped insystem over the next six minutes. It was a textbook-sharp manoeuvre, giving Admiral Meredith Saldana the widest possible number of tactical options. All he needed was the relevant data to evaluate.

  The normal background murmur of voices on Arikara’s bridge died away into a shocked hush as the first sensor scans came in. Amarisk occupied the centre of the planet’s daylight hemisphere, the red cloud bands above the Juliffe resembling a jagged thunderbolt captured in mid-discharge.

  “Was there ever anything like that on this God-blighted planet before?” Meredith Saldana asked in a voice that strained for reasonableness.

  “No, sir,” Kelven replied.

  “Then it is part of the invasion, a new phase?”

  “Yes, sir. It looks that way.”

  “Captain Hinnels, do we know what it is?” the Admiral asked.

  The staff science officer looked round from a discussion with two of the sensor evaluation team. “Haven’t got a clue, Admiral. It’s definitely optically radiant, but we’re not picking up any energy emission. Of course, we’re still a long way off. It’s rearranging the local weather patterns, too.”

  Meredith datavised for the sensor image again, and grunted when he saw the clouds being parted like candyfloss curtains. “How much power would that take?”

  “It would depend on the focal accuracy—” Hinnels broke off at the Admiral’s gaze. “Controlling the weather over a quarter of a continent? A hundred, two hundred gigawatts at least, sir; I can’t be more specific, not until I understand how they apply it.”

  “And they have that much power to spare,” Meredith mused out loud.

  “More importantly, where’s it coming from?” Kelven said. “Durringham had thirty-five fusion generators in the dumpers, and three smaller units in the navy office. Their entire power output didn’t add up to more than twenty megawatts.”

  “Interesting point, Commander. You think there has been a massive landing operation since you left?”

  “Shipping generators in would be the logical answer.”

  “But?”

  “I don’t believe it. The amount of organization necessary to set it up would be incredible, not to mention the number of starships involved. And you saw the flek of Jacqueline Couteur, she can summon up energy from nowhere.”

  The admiral gave him a dubious stare. “There is a difference between flinging fireballs and this.” His hand waved expansively at one of the big bridge holoscreens showing the planet.

  “A difference of scale, sir. There are twenty million people on Lalonde.”

  Meredith didn’t like either alternative. Both implied forces immeasurably superior to that available to his squadron. Probably superior to the whole damn navy, he thought in apprehension. “Hinnels? Give me an evaluation. Is it safe to move the squadron closer?”

  “Given the capability the invaders are demonstrating, I’d say it’s not safe even being here, Admiral. Moving into low orbit will obviously increase the risk, but by how much I wouldn’t like to say.”

  “Thank you,” Meredith said acidly. He knew he shouldn’t take out his anxiety on the crew. But damn, that red cloud was unnerving. The size of it.

  “Very well, we shall attempt to accomplish the First Admiral’s orders and halt any use of force by Smith’s starships, with the proviso that at the first sign of aggression from the invaders we withdraw at once. I’m not committing the squadron to fight that ... whatever it is.” He was aware of the relieved looks flashing round the bridge, and diplomatically ignored them. “Lieutenant Kanuik, have you completed a status review of the mercenary ships?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Meredith datavised the computer for a tactical situation display. The mercenary starships seemed to be in considerable disarray, with three under power, heading out of orbit. Probably running for a jump coordinate. Small VTOL spaceplanes were docked to five of the blackhawks.

  The Adamist craft left in orbit all had their hangar doors open. Another two spaceplanes were rising up from the planet. He cursed silently. They must have landed their scout teams already.

  One of the Adamist starships was venting heavily, a grey jet of atmospheric gas shooting out of the hull. Its ion thrusters glowed bright blue to compensate the wayward thrust.

  He saw a blackhawk’s purple vector line begin to curl up like a corkscrew. Long-range optical sensors showed him the bitek starship tumbling and twisting hectically.

  “Sir!”

  He cancelled the datavise. Lieutenant Rhoecus, his staff voidhawk coordination officer, was wincing. “One of the blackhawks, it’s ...” The Edenist puffed his cheeks out and jerked up from his acceleration couch as though someone had thumped him in the belly. “Its captain is being attacked ... tortured. There are voices. Singing. The blackhawk’s frightened.” He closed his eyes, teeth gritted. “They want the captain.”

  “Who does?”

  Rhoecus shook his head. “I don’t know. It’s fading. I had the impression of thousands speaking to the captain. It was almost like a habitat multiplicity.”

  “Signal from the Gemal, Admiral,” a communications rating said. “Terrance Smith wants to talk to you.”

  “Does he now? Put him on.”

  Meredith looked into his console’s AV projection pillar, seeing an exceptionally handsome man with perfectly arranged black hair. Corporate clone, the Admiral thought. Although the usual smooth flair of competence endemic to the type was in danger of crumbling. Terrance Smith looked like a man under a great deal of pressure.

  “Mr Smith, I am Admiral Saldana, commander of this squadron; and under the authority invested in me by the Confederation Assembly I am now ordering you to suspend your military operation against Lalonde. Recall all your personnel from the planetary surface and do not attempt to engage the invader’s forces. I also require you to hand over all combat wasps and nuclear devices to the navy. The starships currently under your command are free to leave this system once they have complied with my instructions, except for the Lady Macbeth, which is now under arrest. Do you understand?”

  “They’re up here.”

  “Pardon me?”

  Terrance Smith’s eyes flicked to one side, glancing at someone out of pick-up range. “Admiral, the invaders are up here. They came up in the spaceplanes that took my scout teams down. They’re sequestrating my crews.”

  Meredith took a second to compose himself. Four minutes into the mission, and already it was catastrophe. “Which crews? Which starships?” He suddenly looked across the bridge at Lieutenant Rhoecus. “Is that what was happening to the blackhawk captain? Sequestration?”

  “It could be, yes,” the startled Edenist replied.

  “I want two voidhawks on that blackhawk, now. Restrain it, I don’t want it to leave this system. They are authorized to engage it with combat wasps if it resists. Deploy the remaining voidhawks to prevent any of the Adamist starships from leaving. Commander Kroeber.”

  “Sir?”

  “Squadron to move in now. Full interception duties, I want those starships neutralized. Alert the marine squads, have them stand by for boarding and securement.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  He turned back to the AV pillar. “Mr Smith.”

  “Yes, Admiral?”

  “Which ships have been taken over?”

  “I don’t know for certain. The only ones which haven’t sent spaceplanes down to the surface are the Gemal, the Lythral, the Nicol, and the Inula. But the Cyanea’s spaceplane never made it back.”

  “Admiral,” Kelven interjected.

  “Yes, Commander?”

  “We don’t know the Gemal didn’t send a spaceplane down. There is no visible evidence of sequestration, certainly not over a communication channel.”

  Gravity returned to the Arikara’s bridge as the fusion
drive came on, building swiftly. The Admiral squirmed his shoulders, trying to get completely comfortable before the high gees squashed him. “Point taken, Commander Solanki, thank you. Commander Kroeber, all starships are to be intercepted, no exceptions.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  Meredith checked the tactical situation display again. There was only one spaceplane which hadn’t rendezvoused with its parent starship now. “And tell that spaceplane to remain where it is. It is not to dock. Solanki, start working out how we are going to restrain any starship crew-members that have been sequestrated.”

  “Sir, if this sequestration produces the same energy-control ability in the crews that it has in Jacqueline Couteur, I recommend the marines aren’t sent into the ships at all.”

  “I’ll bear that in mind. However, we will certainly have to make at least one attempt.”

  “Admiral,” Lieutenant Rhoecus called through gritted teeth. “Another blackhawk captain is being sequestrated.”

  “Acknowledged, Lieutenant.” Meredith reviewed the tactical display again, observing the blackhawk’s crazed course, a moth caught in a tornado.

  “Send a voidhawk to intercept, full interdiction authority.” That was a third of his voidhawk force committed already. He needed the rest to contain the Adamist starships. If any more blackhawks were taken over he would have to order a combat wasp launch. They would probably fight back.

  With his options diminishing before his eyes, Meredith let out a pained hiss of breath as the Arikara accelerated past six gees. Sensors reported another mercenary starship’s fusion drive igniting.

  Ashly Hanson came through the airlock tube from the spaceplane and drifted straight into the barrel of a laser rifle. Warlow was holding it, aiming it directly at his forehead.

  “Sorry,” the hulking cosmonik boomed. “But we have to be sure.”

  Ashly realized there was a fission saw plugged into his spare left elbow socket, a glowing saffron blade nearly a metre long.

  “Sure of what?”

  Warlow rotated his principal left arm around the blade. He held a processor block in his hand. “Datavise something into this.”

  “Like what?”

  “Anything, doesn’t matter.”

  Ashly datavised a copy of the spaceplane’s maintenance record.

  “Thanks. It was Joshua’s idea. From the reports we’ve had it looks like they can’t use their neural nanonics.”

  “Who can’t?”

  “Spaceplane pilots who have been sequestrated.”

  “Oh, God. I knew it, they can intercept our communications.”

  “Yes.” Warlow executed a perfect mid-air roll, and headed for the airlock tube. “I’m going to check the spaceplane’s cabin, make sure you didn’t bring any up. Nothing personal.”

  Ashly eyed the deck’s ceiling hatch. It was locked, red LEDs blinking to show the manual bolts were engaged on the other side. “The invaders are up in orbit?”

  “Yes. Busy hijacking starships.”

  “What’s Smith doing about it?”

  “Nothing. A naval squadron has arrived, it is in their hands now. They have aborted our mission. Oh, and we’re under arrest, too.” His diaphragm rattled a metallic approximation of a chuckle.

  “The whole fleet? They can’t do that. We’re operating under bona fide contract to the Lalonde government.”

  “No, just the Lady Mac.”

  “Why us?” But he was talking to a pair of disappearing horned feet.

  “Erick? Erick, are you receiving this?”

  “His organs are critical, heading for all-out cellular collapse. For God’s sake cancel that suspension program.”

  “Got it. Physiological data coming through.”

  “Program the nanonic packages for total cranial function support. We have to sustain the brain. André, where the hell’s that plasma? He’s lost litres of blood.”

  “Here, Madeleine. Erick, you wonderful crazy Anglo. You got them, do you hear me? You got them!”

  “Mesh the infuser with his carotid.”

  “It was magnificent. Pull one little lever and all of them, baboom, dead.”

  “Shit. Desmond, slap a nanonic package on that stump, the epithelium membrane isn’t strong enough, he’s leaking plasma everywhere.”

  “His lungs are filling up too, they must be ruptured. Up the oxidization factor. His brain is still showing electrical activity.”

  “It is? Oh, thank God.”

  “Erick, don’t try and datavise. We’ve got you. We won’t let you go.”

  “Do you want to put him in zero-tau?”

  “Hell, yes. We’re days from a decent hospital. Just let me try and get him stabilized first.”

  “Erick, my dear one, don’t you worry about a thing. For this I will buy you the best, the greatest, clone body in Tranquillity. I swear. Whatever the cost.”

  “Shut up, Captain. He’s in enough shock as it is. Erick, I’m going to put you back under. But don’t worry, everything is going to be just fine.”

  The last of the six aerovettes stopped transmitting. Reza Malin upped his cranial audio receptors to full sensitivity, trying to hear the noise of the little vehicle’s impact. The sounds of the jungle invaded his brain—insect chirps, animal warbles, leaves crackling—filtered and reduced by discrimination programs. He counted to ten, but there was no crash.

  “We’re on our own now,” he said. The aerovettes had been sent off to the west at a fast walking pace as a decoy, giving the scout team time to melt away into the jungle. He had guessed the invaders could track anything electronic; as Ashly said, if they could create the cloudbands, they could do almost anything. They weren’t invincible though, the fact that the team had landed was proof of that. But they were definitely going to provide a formidable challenge. Possibly the greatest Reza would ever face. He liked that idea.

  His two hounds, Fenton and Ryall, were slinking through the undergrowth two hundred metres ahead of the scout team, sniffing out people. So far the jungle had been deserted. Pat Halahan’s affinity-bonded harpy eagle, Octan, was skimming the treetops, retinal implants alert for the slightest motion below the fluttering leaves. The animals provided a coverage almost as good as the aerovettes.

  The team was following a danderil track, heading roughly north-east towards its operational target, the Quallheim Counties. Sal Yong was leading, brushing through the dense vines with barely a sound. With his chameleon circuit activated it looked as though a heavy miniature breeze was whirling along the track. The other six followed quickly (Theo was up overhead somewhere), all of them loaded down with packs, even Kelly. He was pleased to see she was keeping up. If she didn’t, it would be a maser pulse through her brain, which would upset some of the team. But he wasn’t having a liability of a reporter holding them back. He wondered if she realized that, if it lent a note of urgency to her steps. Probably.

  She was smart enough, and her bureau chief would certainly have known the deal. So would Joshua, for all his youth, wise beyond his years.

  Fenton arrived at a river, and peered out of the bushes lining the steep bank. Reza requested a chart from his inertial-guidance block, and confirmed their position.

  “Pat, there’s a river one eighty metres ahead, it leads into the Quallheim eventually. Send Octan along it to check for any boat traffic.”

  “Right.” The voice seemed to emerge from a small qualtook tree.

  “Are we going to use it?” Ariadne asked, a clump of knotted tinnus vines.

  “Yes, providing Octan says nobody else is. It’s narrow enough, good tree cover. We can cut a day off our time.” He called silently to his hounds, and ordered them to cut back behind the team, covering their rear.

  They reached the river three minutes later, and stood at the top of the four-metre bank.

  “What is that stuff?” Jalal asked.

  The water was clotted with free-floating fleshy leaves, pure white discs a couple of metres in diameter, a tiny purple star in their centre.
Each had an upturned rim of a few centimetres, natural coracles. They bobbed and spun and sailed calmly along with the current, undulating with the swell. Some overlapped, some collided and rebounded, but they all kept moving along. Upstream or downstream, whichever way the team looked, the river was smothered in them.

  Kelly smiled inside her shell-helmet as the daylight dream of her Lalonde didactic course came slithering into her conscious thoughts. “They’re snowlilies,” she said. “Quite something, aren’t they? Apparently they all bloom at the same time then drift downstream to drop their kernel. It really screws up the Juliffe basin for boat traffic while they’re in season.” She tracked her retinal implants along the river. It was all going into a neural nanonics memory cell, scenes of Lalonde. Capturing the substance of a place was always important, it gave the report that little edge, adding to reality.

  “They’re a bloody nuisance,” Reza said curtly. “Sewell, Jalal, activate the hovercraft; Pat, Ariadne, point guard.”

  The two combat-adepts unslung the big packs they were carrying, and took out the programmed silicon craft, cylinders sixty centimetres long, fifteen wide. They slithered down the bank to the water’s edge.

  Kelly focused on the sky downstream. At full magnification the northern horizon was stained a pale red. “It’s close,” she said.

  “An hour away,” Reza said. “Maybe two. This river winds a crooked course.”

  Sewell shoved a couple of snowlilies aside and dropped his cylinder into the clear patch of water. The hovercraft began to take shape, its gossamer-thin silicon membrane unfolding in a strict sequence, following the pattern built into its molecules. A flat boat-shaped hull was activated first, five metres long, fifteen centimetres thick. Water was pumped into its honeycomb structure, ballast to prevent it from blowing away. The gunwales started to rise up.

  Theo Connal dropped lightly to the ground beside Kelly. She gave a slight start as he turned off his chameleon circuit.

  “Anything interesting?” Reza asked.

  “The cloud is still shifting about. But it’s slower now.”

  “Figures, the spaceplanes have gone.”

  “All the birds are flying away from it.”