Resolution (54 page)

‘Yeah. I have a ... friend with me. Her name is Jissie.’

Tom placed his hand over his eyes, and stayed very still for a moment.

Elva ... Oh, my love.

‘Thank Fate.’

Jissie stared into the view-images as sunlight brightened post-dawn skies to a creamy apricot-and-yellow mix. Tom tried to compose himself: dream-fragments briefly surfaced then spiralled back into the subconscious depths. A strange, reedy voice said:

‘The kaon persists.’

It was the old abbot who spoke to him.

‘The universe decays.’

Strange, curlicue particle tracks across the blankness of sapphire vacuum: a pattern flicked across Tom’s mind, was gone.

Then Axolon spoke once more:

The everyday world clicked back into place, though the term
kaon-koan, kaon-koan
continued to whisper in Tom’s mind. The great stone sphere grew larger in the forward display, as the shuttle decelerated on the final approach to Axolon Array.

To home.

~ * ~

35

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Tom and Jissie ate breakfast outside, at a small table on the ring-shaped balcony, while creamy gases spewed from the terraformer’s apex and the air blew cold and clear around them.

‘How have you been, Axolon?’ Tom sipped his daistral.

Jissie was tucking in to her third boljicream pancake.

Tom put his cup down, stood and crossed to the balustrade. He leaned over and stared down at the convex bulging stone surface which hid the equatorial rim where Axolon’s head was melded with the sphere, his nerves and sinews and cables splayed and rooted across the terraformer.

‘You’re looking pretty good,’ Tom called down, ‘for a burst of gamma rays.’

Tom walked back to the table. Jissie looked up briefly without a pause in her eating.

‘Ah,’ said Tom. ‘The other sphere. After Trevalkin swapped identities in the system.’

Picking up his daistral cup, Tom paused. ‘I don’t like feeling indebted to that man.’

‘Precisely.’ Tom replaced the cup without drinking. ‘And I wonder what he’ll want in return.’

But if the Anomaly fell across the world, there would be no human debts to repay. Before Tom could follow that thought further, Axolon caused a small holo image to appear above the breakfast table, low-resolution and blurred against the day’s brightness.

‘Are they—?’

Tom leaned closer to the holo, as though it brought them nearer in reality.

‘What?’

‘Is there any sign of pursuit?’

There were small fighter-darts aboard the terraformer, ready to launch; but if the Anomaly or its suborned forces knew where Axolon Array was—

Tom whirled away from the table, ignoring Jissie’s concerned expression, and strode inside to the hemispherical conference chamber where a lifetime ago he had slain an Oracle.

Even as Tom brought up his tactical displays, he had time to wonder why Elva had not tried to talk to him directly. He called his lieutenants, ordered autodocs to be made ready, and braced himself for bad news as the ragged formation drew near.

But Elva had been busy tending to the wounded. Charcoal-smeared and with blood across her swollen lip, escorting a lev-stretcher, she came out of the docked shuttle at a jog. She smiled at Tom before returning her attention to the moaning patient. This was the reality of war: whimpering and screaming, the stench of burned flesh, of blood and faeces, and the awful stares of those who saw death coming for them now.

‘Outlying parts of the realm, and the lowest strata, won’t hold for more than three days. The rest is already gone.’ Elva stepped back and wiped sweat and slick blood from her forehead, as medics took over the stretcher. ‘Realm Strelsthorm is lost.’

At that moment, one of the wounded soldiers shuddered, turned away from her and died.

‘Fate.’

‘How many people’ - Tom pulled her back from the incoming flow of injured - ‘did you bring?’

‘Two hundred and fifty. Maybe more. Maybe ...’

Maybe fewer, depending on how many survive.

‘Fate, Elva. I love you.’

‘I love you, Tom.’

Then Axolon announced:

Axolon meant that the Anomaly’s forces might not be aware of the vessels.

‘Are the vessels shielded?’

‘You’ll have to give me details.’

Tom stared at Elva.

‘Look,’ Elva said. ‘If comms or SatScan are breached, these are Anomaly fighters, and they’ve no need for subterfuge. I’d say they’re genuine free forces, come to join us.’

‘Ah, Destiny.’

In that moment, Tom knew who was aboard the new shuttles: the Action Leagues, the natural enemies of the LudusVitae movement to which Tom and Elva had once belonged. He did not know whether to cheer or sob.

‘It’s Trevalkin.’ It was the only explanation. ‘He’s spreading the word, through the Leagues that remain secure.’

And I wanted to be in charge. I’m a fool.

Elva looked around, at the medics and ordinary staff still carrying in the wounded. ‘How many people can we support?’

‘Not even this many.’

It was two hours amid the Chaos-laden process of getting refugees on board, and docking shuttles, and beginning repairs to the damaged craft, before Tom could stop to think. Two of the shuttles had torn or twisted flight surfaces, and would not have been able to make it this far without heroic feats of piloting which would never be told. Scarcely any craft was untouched by graser fire.

Shuttles continued to rise from the surface.

The motley armada of refugee vessels was growing larger. On every continent and from beneath the oceans, they rose into the air, broadcasting their encoded signals of despair and hope, as darkness consumed the realms they left behind.

So few among the population.

Axolon Array was already full.

Yet too many for us to cope with.

Suddenly, incredibly, Tom laughed - the act surprised even him - and people turned shocked stares in his direction.

‘Axolon! Are you there?’

It was comforting to Tom that his floating stone fortress was alive and powerful, a kilometre-wide sphere with a mind and armaments of its own.

‘Exactly
how many terraformers are there? I know it’s thousands…’

There was a pause.

‘Ha. You’re way ahead of me. What state will they be in? How many already have people living in them?’