The Temporal Void (75 page)

‘
Wish it well, wish it gone
,’ Aaron sang in a low whisper.

Below the shredded atmosphere, the mantle detonated. Continent-sized rock segments punched outwards amid tattered oceans of superheated lava.

‘
The splendour of death, once known, loved beyond reason. Evolution’s eternal shore, free at last to wash up what you will.
’

Untied from the constraints of the semi-solid shell, the true light of the runaway m-sink implosion shone out far brighter than the nearby star. Its spectrum chased through a delicate pink to pure white, then accelerated into blue-white as its radiation efflux poured out vast quantities of gamma waves. The event horizon consumed the last of the planet’s core. Only the light remained, growing ever brighter as its heart shrank faster and faster.

‘
Out of twinkling stardust all came, into dark matter all will fall. Death mocks us as we laugh defiance at entropy, yet ignorance birthed mortals sail forth upon time’s cruel sea
.’

The
Lindau
began to accelerate at an easy two gees, keeping far ahead of the rock fragments and darkening seas of magma that spewed out from the dazzling implosion nucleus.

‘I don’t recognize the verse,’ Inigo said.

Aaron shook himself out of a mild daze to frown at him. ‘What verse?’

Corrie-Lyn rolled her eyes, and poured a shot of hundred-year-old rum into the remains of her hot chocolate. She’d found the bottle of St Lisamne’s finest in one of the crew cabins, and immediately appropriated it. ‘Never mind. Has your crappy brain come up with anything yet?’

‘I’m considering options. I’m most worried that the Navy knew we were here.’

‘How do you know that?’ Inigo asked.

‘The information was in the captain’s brain. Admiral Kazimir himself told him about you and me.’

Corrie-Lyn shuddered and poured some more rum. The chocolate was all gone now. ‘In his brain! So they’ll come looking when this ship doesn’t report in.’

‘I suspect they’re already on their way and, given the captain reported the use of an m-sink, it will be considerably more than a simple scout ship that pops out of hyperspace.’

‘So will you suicide or surrender?’

‘Neither. We have about three more hours until primary systems repairs reach an adequate level. The rest can be performed while we’re underway, but the drive and power systems must be made reliable first.’

‘That sounds like you know where we’re going.’

‘I’m considering options that are opening up.’

‘Opening up,’ an intrigued Inigo said. ‘Do you mean logically, or are these possibilities inside your own head that are being revealed by your employer?’

Aaron scratched behind his ear, clearly made uncomfortable by the whole process. ‘The options, I guess, are implanted information. Which one I choose is down to me based on the situation on the ground. After all, it’s that kind of expertise which bought me the job.’

‘Do any of these options tell you what is to become of me?’

‘It’s not like that. You’re not relevant to me personally; you’re just the package I’m assigned to deliver.’

‘You know, as well as my day job as the Dreamer, I am an accomplished analyst. If you were to open yourself fully to the gaiafield I might be able to uncover the pathways of these foreign memories.’

‘Why would I want you to do that?’

‘So that you know who you are. Where the real you begins and the artificial motivations end.’

‘Suppose they’re not artificial motivations? Suppose this is what I am, what I’ve always been?’

‘You suffer too much for that to be true. Your dreams trouble you. I knew that even before Corrie-Lyn told me.’

‘And yet I’m alive, and you’re in my custody. I think we’ll settle for that level of functionality for now.’

‘As you wish. Can you at least tell us of the options that have been revealed?’

‘I don’t know much in advance. That way, if I’m captured I can’t reveal anything to my opponents.’

‘You just said we were in your custody.’

‘I have to consider the infinitely small probability you might escape. I can’t have you knowing what I know, that would give you a mighty large tactical advantage, my friend.’

‘Oh, dear Lady,’ Corrie-Lyn groaned, and took a swig straight from the bottle. She ordered her u-shadow to resume the feed from the external sensors.

The new intense star that had been Hanko began to diminish within an hour of its inception. It was an insatiable consumer of mass, quick to devour the remnants of the planet that hadn’t reached escape velocity during the implosion rupture. Solid splinters were quick to fall prey to its incredible gravity, flashing to ruin as they passed through the event horizon. Then its gravity reached out further, to the solidifying torrents of magma, pulling them back. After that there were only the thick streamers of gas and dust that were splayed out. Their tides began to turn, grasping at the loose irradiated particles and hauling them down the steepening gravity gradient to extinction.

A mere three hours after it shone brighter than its primary, Hanko was reduced to a tiny glowing ember surrounded by whirlpool veils of lavender fog that were slowly constricting.

‘It consumes everything around it in order to burn,’ Aaron said. ‘Yet, in the end, entropy will always emerge victorious, snuffing out the very last glimmer of heat and light. After that there is only darkness. When that state is reached even eternity will cease to exist, for one moment will be like every other and nothingness will claim the universe.’ He turned to Inigo. ‘Sound familiar?’

‘Nothingness is a long way off,’ Inigo said. ‘Not even the post-physicals will be around to witness that. It certainly doesn’t worry me.’

‘And yet it’s your Void which will accelerate the process. Without the mass of this galaxy, the universe moves noticeably closer to the end of time and space.’

‘Your employers want me to stop the Pilgrimage.’

Aaron gave a bemused shrug. ‘I have no idea what they want. I’m just observing the symbology here.’

Corrie-Lyn stirred herself. After the St Lisamne rum, she’d polished off a couple of bottles of wine hoarded by another crewman. Then there was the JK raspberry vodka. It annoyed her there wasn’t a working fridge, the JK should have been drunk chilled to arctic levels. ‘You care though,’ she slurred. ‘That’s a start. Your conditioning is beginning to unravel. Maybe we’ll get to meet the real Aaron sooner than your boss would like.’

‘You’re already looking at him. Sorry.’ Aaron sent an order to the smartcore, and the
Lindau
went ftl.

‘So what have you decided?’ Inigo asked.

‘The Navy knows that I was hunting you, and if they don’t know I survived Hanko they’ll find out soon enough. We’re both being hunted by whoever flew the ship that fired the Hawking m-sink. I was supposed to be in the
Artful Dodger
, which should have given me a big edge, but that’s gone. However, there’s an emergency replacement ship waiting for me on Pulap. The bad news is that if we turn up anywhere in the
Lindau
, everybody and their mother will know about it. I can’t risk that, I can’t expose you to the possibility of capture or termination.’

‘You’re stuffed then,’ Corrie-Lyn sniggered. ‘Shame about that.’

‘Not quite. There is something that took a long time to emerge, a real last resort.’

‘Which is?’ Inigo asked.

‘I’m taking you to the Spike.’

‘The alien macro-habitat? That’s seven thousand lightyears away. It’ll take weeks. What in Honious is there?’

Aaron wrinkled up his brow as if listening to some distant voice. Even he seemed surprised by what it was saying: ‘Ozzie. Ozzie lives in the Spike.’

*

Paula watched the padded plyplastic fold protectively around her piano with a mild sense of regret. There was no point in trying to play. Following the conference with Kazimir and ANA she just couldn’t lose herself in music like she normally did. Kazimir’s doubt about the Accelerator’s motivation was troubling her. Logically, the outline she’d proposed was flawless. The Accelerators needed the deterrent fleet weapons to blast the Raiel out of the way.

As she’d thought earlier: what else could the whole Prime scheme be? And that nasty little phrase had begun to haunt her.
What else?
For the Accelerators to risk internal ANA suspension by manipulating the Ocisens and Primes was a phenomenal gamble. One that always had a good chance of exposure. To her mind it was too much of a gamble for anything astute as an ANA Faction. For all she rejected half of their ideologies, they weren’t stupid. Which left her with the uncomfortable question of what else they could hope to gain by forcing deployment of the deterrent fleet.

In a classic diversion tactic, the fleet would rush off to intercept the Ocisens, leaving the rest of the Commonwealth exposed. She couldn’t think what the nature of that exposure could be.

It can’t be a physical attack. They need the Pilgrimage ships to be complete and launch, they also need ANA to carry on, after all they’re part of it.

So, what, then?

If it was nothing other than a crude attempt to analyse the deterrence fleet weapons they were going to fail. And failure now would mean the end of them and their goals. ANA:Governance had only ever used the suspension sanction once before, during the Evolutionary Secessionist rebellion five hundred years ago, which had seen the Secessionists trying to literally split ANA so they might assume control of a section and go post-physical.

There has to be something I’m missing.

The one big hole in her information was the nature of the deterrence fleet. Which was the one thing ANA:Governance would never explain to her. For all she was a valued agent, even she acknowledged that information could never be allowed to leak out, which it might well do if she was ever captured. A small chance, but if it was the Cat after her, a realistic chance. And if not the Cat, there were others who would enjoy seeing her removed from physical existence. There probably always would be.
All part of the job
. After fourteen hundred years you just grew to live with the prospect no matter what your psychology was.

The smartcore told her the
Alexis Denken
was fifteen minutes out from Kerensk. And Gore was making a call.

‘Justine’s still all right then,’ Paula said. ‘That’s good news.’

‘Yes. But that little shit Ethan must be laughing his fucking head off that the Skylord wouldn’t help her.’

‘It won’t help her
now
. But let’s face it, if any of us are close to maturity it’s going to be Justine.’

‘Yeah, maybe.’

‘I didn’t realize time was that fast inside the Void.’

‘Nobody did. Although I suspect the flow rate might be localized. We don’t know enough about its fabric yet, but that would certainly explain the Skylord’s acceleration. It wasn’t physically fast, it operated a different timeflow.’

‘What do you think happened on Querencia since the Waterwalker’s death? The Skylord said there’s nobody left now.’

‘Who gives a shit? I have some information for you. Do you know who left Ganthia two hours after you did?’

‘Yes, an Accelerator agent we’re interested in. He’s got an ultradrive ship, but its stealth isn’t perfect, or at least ANA’s sensors are better. Don’t worry, Digby has him under surveillance.’

‘Keeping it in the family, huh? Good for you. But I wasn’t taking about Chatfield.’

Paula sighed. There were times when she was very annoyed with ANA for the leeway it granted Gore Burnelli. ‘Who then?’

‘Marius.’

After fourteen hundred years, an unexpected turn in a case no longer surprised her, but she was very interested. ‘And how do you know that?’

‘A friend of a friend saw him at the starport.’

She laughed. ‘You mean the Conservative Faction is still eager to screw the Accelerators.’

‘Screw them into the ground and dance on the pieces, actually. Does that information help?’

‘It’s not helpful for them, but it does confirm my assumption that Chatfield is an Accelerator representative.’ Her u-shadow reported that it couldn’t track the origin of Gore’s call. There were
very
few people who could manipulate the unisphere to that extent.
And why would he hide that anyway? Unless . . . No! Surely not.

‘I have something else which may be of use for you,’ Gore said.

‘What’s that?’

‘Troblum.’

‘You know where he is?’

‘No, sorry, not that, but I do know what he’s been up to.’

‘Oh really? Your Delivery Man shut down our one avenue of investigation. I’ll get round to arresting him one day, you know. Using an m-sink on a Central world is not amusing.’

‘Consider this my olive branch. We were scared by what Troblum was doing.’

‘Which was?’

‘Building an ftl drive big enough to move a planet.’

‘Jesus! You’re kidding.’

‘Wish I was. The good news is that he wasn’t doing it for the Accelerators – at least not as far as we can determine. This seems to be some mad personal obsession.’

‘That fits. He has a semi-plausible theory on how the Anomine acquired Dark Fortress technology. One way is that they simply stole or borrowed them from the warrior Raiel.’

‘Yeah? Anyway . . . he succeeded in building one.’

‘Now you are kidding me.’

‘No. That’s why the Delivery Man was authorized to cover it up. We were concerned when we thought it was part of the Accelerator plan, but now we don’t believe it is.’

‘So why tell me this now?’

‘Troblum is a very strange man. And now he’s loose in the universe with an ftl drive that might be able to move a planet. He’s also trying to make contact with you to tell you something about the Accelerators. They don’t like that.’

‘Ah, I get it: the wild card.’

‘Damn right.’

‘And that worries you?’

‘It should worry you, too. Events are becoming unstable enough as it is. We don’t need people like Troblum fucking things up even more.’

‘And yet he might have the evidence ANA:Governance needs to suspend the Accelerators.’