A Night Without Stars (62 page)

Once the external duplication was complete, the filaments set about erasing those same memories and thought routines from his brain. Also a well-understood procedure—though usually there was a lot more time available. The medical module's smartnet told Joey this rushed procedure was likely to leave a considerable amount of Adolphus's subconscious remaining.

The final stage was inserting Joey's memories and personality into the waiting brain. This process was a modified version of psychoneural profiling—which had long been illegal in the Commonwealth. But Joey wasn't entirely surprised to find Nigel had loaded the ability into the medical module's smartnet.

With the download under way, the medical module made its final alterations. A genome reading showed Adolphus had Advancers somewhere in his heritage, but the sequences passed down through the generations had weakened and corrupted, leaving only a few specialist cellular clusters with about as much functionality as an appendix.

Time was now becoming critical, so Joey settled for several old-style OCtattoos for communication and sensory augmentation—they were quick and simple to add to the prime minister's body. While they were being written onto his new/old skin, the life support pod's synthesizers extruded some small weapons modules—slim cylinders that were neatly inserted into the fleshy hands and forearms.

Then the filaments withdrew, knitting together the minute holes they had created as they snaked out, and Joey began to regain consciousness in Adolphus's body.

It was wrong on so many levels. There was a headache for a start. His thoughts were slow, memory triggers sluggish. Without macrocellular clusters running secondary routines, he lacked so much mental agility; even simple math was almost impossible. Coordination was a bitch, too.

Then there was his body. It was old—the first shock. Overweight; he actually grimaced as he felt folds of fat sagging against his skeleton. Joints ached without even moving. Every time he breathed he wheezed, as if he never got enough oxygen into his lungs. And his heart…The way it was hammering away in his chest made him worry he was about to have a major coronary event. Hopefully that was just an adrenaline panic-reaction to his own semi-dazed awareness of his new identity/location.

Exovision icons burned across his vision, slowly stabilizing. He opened a link.

“You all right?” Joey-in-the-pod-smartnet asked.

“I will be,” Joey-in-Adolphus's-brain replied.

“Weird, huh?”

“You have no idea.”

“Can you move?”

“Let's find out. Open the pod doors, pal.”

“Ha, well, at least plenty of our memory transferred okay.”

Joey-in-Adolphus's-brain opened his eyes to see a soothing pale-blue light. Then the plyplastic door dilated and the altogether sharper light from the crypt's overhead bulbs assaulted him. He slowly climbed out, knees creaking as he stood up. Goosebumps rising everywhere. Blinking the world into focus.

Stonal was standing there beside Laura's ancient exopod, watching him suspiciously. Adolphus had been inside the medical capsule for five hours, and Stonal had walked out of the crypt as soon as the prime minister had climbed in, only returning after ninety minutes—but Adolphus wouldn't have known that.

“Where do you think he went?” he asked Joey-in-the-pod-smartnet through their link.

“I don't know. Faustina said he was badly agitated when he quizzed her; he doesn't trust her anymore. Just be careful. There's nothing more dangerous than a paranoid spook.”

“He can't touch me; I'm the prime minister.”

“And let's not add that to history's list of famous last words, shall we?”

“Sir?” Stonal inquired. “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” Joey croaked. Cleared his throat. “Ask it if I'm cured.”

Stonal raised the microphone. “Was it a success?”

“One hundred percent. The tumors were excised. He's clear.”

“Oh, thank crudding Giu,” Joey exclaimed with appropriate gratitude and relief. Being trapped in a timeloop was weird, but listening to his own voice coming from a duplicate personality while in a stolen body possibly qualified as weirder.
It might even impress Ozzie.

He picked up his shirt. His new fingers were chubby and not very flexible. It took time to do the buttons.
How did people ever live growing old?

“What now?” Stonal asked.

That's got to be a test—the first of many no doubt.
“Make contact with the Warrior Angel. You were right; change is inevitable now. But we must be careful how it is introduced. We have to retain control over the process.”

“Of course.”

“I'll call General Delores and order a Liberty flight launch into polar orbit.”

“That might take a while.”

“They always say that. This is an emergency, and the Astronaut Regiment must be made fully aware of that. I will fly out there myself to supervise; that should convince them.”

“You are going to Cape Ingmar?”

“It's one of the most secure places on the planet, so my personal security won't be an issue. And it's also where they communicate with the Liberty capsules, is it not?”

“Yes.”

“So that is how I can talk directly to the Warrior Angel. I wish to ensure this Paula woman has access to—” He waved his hand at the wormhole. “Once we have a deal for evacuating essential government personnel and a marine task force to Aqueous, we can proceed with combating the so-called Apocalypse. I don't like it, but I can see the time coming when we have to combine forces with the Warrior Angel. After all, your father did the same thing with her to destroy the Prime that landed on Fanrith, didn't he?”

Stonal nodded. Joey almost smiled at how the spy chief's jaw muscles were working hard to keep his expression neutral.

“That's settled then. I'm going back to the bunker now. I need to talk to the marine commander. I want an armed ship to sail for Lukarticar tonight. I'm going to authorize them to carry nuclear weapons. If that Liberty does its job properly, it can guide them to intercept the
Sziu.
That should convince the Warrior Angel we're serious about an alliance.”

“Yes, sir.”

Joey bent down to tie up his shoelaces, keeping a keen eye on Stonal. If the spy chief had any suspicions, he wouldn't waste time. He wasn't the type.

“Right, then.” He stood and took the microphone from a frowning Stonal. “Thank you, Joey.”

“You're welcome” came the reply.

“I'm going to have the science director bring in regular progress reports on the sensors you gave us; it's essential we have them as soon as possible. If you can offer any insights into speeding up the production process, I'd appreciate it.”

“Of course. And our arrangement?”

Joey gave Stonal a conspiratorial grin, praying his facial muscles were working correctly. “If you're helping us, we will all survive together, won't we?”

“I suppose so.”

“And if the worse comes to worst—Well, you're right next to the wormhole.”

Florian was woken by a hand gently shaking his shoulder. It was dark in the little cabin, and quiet. His u-shadow told him it was half past four in the morning. The
Gothora
's engines were off, but the cabin heater was thrumming like a trapped bussalore. He squinted up as visual enhancement routines showed him Kysandra standing over the cot. The smile on her freckled face made her look heart-achingly lovely.

“They found it,” she said.

“Huh?”

“The
Viscount.
Access the drone link.”

Florian sat up fast. His u-shadow established a link with the drones circling so far overhead. The ge-eagles were also circling, seven hundred kilometers away. It had been five days since they launched, and they'd covered nearly a third of Lukarticar in that time. Then around midnight, their fieldscan sensors had picked up a big density anomaly, and ten of them had closed in to confirm the find, spiraling down to a hundred meters altitude to produce a more detailed examination.

Their visualization was a three-dimensional image mainly of translucent emerald, which was the ice cap, showing a depth of just over three kilometers resting above the bedrock. A dark-purple shape over a kilometer long—nearly cylindrical—was buried under the surface at a forty-degree angle, with its highest point thirty meters beneath the fresh snow crust. Several other purple shapes were scattered around it, at varying depths.

His navigation routine pulled up a map of Lukarticar and overlaid the ge-eagles' location. It was nearly seven hundred kilometers west of the
Gothora
's current position entering the Straits of Tiree, and two hundred kilometers inland.

“Great Giu,” he breathed. “It's real. Paula was right!”

Kysandra's lips twitched. “Commonwealth people do make a habit of that.”

“And it's intact!”

“Well, almost. There was some breakup, but that happened to
Vermillion,
too. It certainly didn't smash apart when it came down, which is supremely good news. There should be a lot of equipment we can salvage.”

He started to wiggle his way out of the thick sleeping bag, careful not to tip off the edge of the cot; he'd done that a couple of times the first night, it was so narrow. “Great Giu, will there be weapons drones? Maybe we won't even need Paula's plan to visit Valatare. And there will be full Neumann-level synthesizers; we can extrude a whole drone army. And fliers! They had atmospheric fliers, I know. I checked the general inventory; Nigel had copies. And—”

She stopped him with a kiss. Florian gave her a surprised look; she was smiling happily. “That's the Florian I remember,” she said huskily.

He knew his expression was twisting to guilt, and maybe some resentment, too. Laughing softly, she kissed him again.

“But—”

Her forefinger lifted his chin. “We need to celebrate,” she said solemnly. “And no matter which way this expedition plays out, it may be our last time.”

“Oh. Er, don't we need to get ready to go?”

“The blimp takes a while to inflate. We have time.”

The ANAdroids had brought the anchor mast up first—a fat plyplastic rod barely two meters long that they fastened to the deck just behind the superstructure using molecular epoxy. The envelope case was next—a big heavy trunk that took three of them to lift. It opened easily, and a mini-avalanche of tissue-thin fabric slithered out. Valeri connected the nosecone's tether cable to the top of the mast, and they were ready to begin.

Helium was stored in heavily compressed tanks designed to look like oil barrels. They started to inflate the fifteen separate gas cells inside the envelope. As the mass of superstrength polymer rose into the air, the plyplastic gondola unfolded underneath it. The ANAdroids attached ducted fans to both sides.

By the time Florian and Kysandra arrived on the deck, thin Ringlight showed them that the blimp was two-thirds inflated, suspended like a flaccid silver-gray moon above the
Gothora.
The anchor mast had telescoped upward to keep level with the blimp's nose as the envelope continued to expand. Most of the crew was gathered together around the mast, gazing upward in admiration.

“It's huge,” Florian declared. The blimp was already longer than the
Gothora,
its cruciform tail hanging a long way out beyond the stern.

“Needs to be,” Fergus said. “The temperature around here kills the lift, and it's got to carry eight of us along with our supplies.”

“I've never seen anything like it,” Ry said.

“Me, neither,” Paula said. “Not outside history files, anyway. But it was easy for the synthesizers to manufacture. And all it has to do is get us there.”

“No problem,” Fergus said. “
Viscount
is only seven hundred kilometers away, and the weather is reasonable. It shouldn't take more than twelve hours.”

Florian tried to see the coast, which his u-shadow navigation routine was telling him lay twelve kilometers to port, but it was too dark even for his enriched retinas to make out. He wasn't entirely sure he wanted to spend twelve hours flying over that hostile wasteland in what was essentially a balloon with engines, even if it had been manufactured by Commonwealth synthesizers. The envelope skin looked so thin, like a soap bubble, and just as delicate. He knew that the gas cells inside were even thinner. A single peck from a yigull would probably send them all plummeting to icy oblivion.

It took another twenty minutes to complete the inflation. When the gas cells were full, the blimp strained at the anchor post, its tail tilting up at fifteen degrees even with full ballast tanks. The ANAdroids passed up their equipment cases, stowing them in the gondola. Then it was time to embark.

Florian slipped his small rucksack straps over his shoulders and climbed up the short rope ladder. Two crew were holding it steady for him. With everyone watching, he couldn't show any weakness—though he'd spent the last week worrying if he'd actually have the courage to do this when the moment arrived. It was one thing to plan to hunt for the
Viscount
; actually finding it was making everything acutely real. The Faller Apocalypse was imminent; Paula was going to try to reach another planet, which was actually a prison, where there might be aliens who could save them; and he was at the heart of it all. So when it was his turn, he didn't hesitate.

The gondola was a narrow space—four very basic seats on either side with bulky equipment packs stowed underneath, and a tiny toilet bucket at the back, without even a curtain. Florian crammed his rucksack onto the overhead luggage rack; he'd been allocated the rear portside seat, which he squeezed into, grumpy to find how little legroom the design gave him. The fuselage walls had long rectangular windows, and the curving prow was completely transparent. There were no manual flight controls, of course. Demitri had nominal pilot duties, so he was linked to all the control surfaces and engines.