Resolution (81 page)

Ro concentrated, joining her ship’s energies to those of her son, as they screamed through extreme trajectories neither vessel had been designed for. Then they struck the pattern. Their ships twisted and turned, were hurled aside by unseen vortices within a maze of turbulence, and fell endlessly through a trajectory no sane being could hope to follow.

Hang on.

Automated systems screamed warnings neither Ro nor Dirk paid attention to.

Hang on ...

They burst into a region of open space.

‘All right

Began the insertion sequence.

‘At last.’

Slid into black realspace, and floated among the stars.

No-one, no Zajinet, followed from mu-space.

They waited some hours just in case, but not even a suicidal Zajinet could have followed every twist and turn of the madcap geodesic they had followed.

There was no sound inside Ro’s vessel.

She welcomed the delay, giving her time to process her vessel’s flight log, to assess and calculate and see just where and when they were. Finally, she sent a question to Dirk:

++Have you worked out the date?++

##Sorry, Mom, but no. I’ve been plotting geodesies to a certain mu-space locus.##

++You mean Labyrinth.++

##Right. You thought I wouldn’t find out about it?
##

Ro let the question ride. Floating here in darkness, there seemed little point in arguing.

++Try plotting a least-action geodesic, Dirk. Back to Terra. And check the arrival date.++

##All right, I can ... Oh, shit.
##

++Oh yes. ++

Everything in realspace as well as mu-space is relative. But, by the most sensible method of performing the calculation, their ships’ processors could nail the date back on Terra precisely, the earliest date they could possibly arrive there: July 11, 2301.

Their hell-flight had lasted one hundred and thirty-five years.

When the two vessels approached Labyrinth, the place was far greater than before: an immense spreading construct whose infinite architecture was spellbinding. Two Pilots - physically older than Ro, yet with eyes as obsidian as hers - entered her ship’s cabin and bowed, and greeted her in Anglic that sounded well-rehearsed more than fluent.

‘Welcome, Admiral. This is a signal day for us all.’

In a daze, Ro followed them to an antechamber where perspectives slid and curved, and where Dirk was already waiting. He gave her an uncertain smile.

‘Hey, Mom. Looks like you created an entire world.’

Maybe even more than that.

‘Could be.’

One of Ro’s escorts gestured in the direction of wide doors that revolved out of existence, revealing Hilbert Hall ... but not as she had left it a few subjective hours before. Then, it had been infinitely complex. Now, it seemed also to stretch for ever in all directions, even - as Ro and Dirk stepped from the antechamber - back the way they had come.

Before them stood a massed gathering - parade was too small a word - a huge ordered crowd of ten thousand people or more standing in straight ranks. Every man and woman wore a black jumpsuit and black cape trimmed with gold. Each one watched with glittering black eyes.

My God.

While behind Ro, as she had promised, Claude Chalou returned to the magnificence that was Labyrinth, his coffin borne by six solemn Pilots.

<>

~ * ~

49

NULAPEIRON AD 3426

Under the chameleoflage sheet, Tom came out of sleep slit-eyed, and realized first that he was hot. Sweat layered his face, and he was breathing open-mouthed, taking shallow breaths.

Everything reduces to basics.

Perhaps it was some kind of paradox, that to fight for humanity meant relinquishing the civilized mind which made the battle worthwhile.

It was the second day ‘in-country’, as the clone-warriors termed it, and the ground was hard beneath a baking mid-morning sun. But Tom told himself to remain still, ignoring discomfort until he knew why he was awake. Was it natural, or had a rasp of sound dragged him from his fading dream?

Swirl of dark-blue cloaks and shining copper helms. The screams of dying men ...

In his fist Tom held the story crystal. Yet it was not the old tale, but something else, that he had dreamed of.

He moved minutely, took a peek with one eye from beneath his draped chameleoflage. Some fifty metres away on the ground, a membranous circle, ten metres in diameter, looked pale and sticky. All around, the surface was broken, with uneven bumps and depressions in the hard clay. Some of those bumps concealed clone-warriors, as unmoving as statues or preying reptiles.

Morphblade singing through the air ...

In that moment Tom remembered the contents of his dream, and knew that it was more than random electrical waves sweeping through his brain. He had Seen while he was dreaming; and every man who screamed inside his mind had perished in reality.

‘Yours is a deep penetration mission, Warlord.’
That was what Ygran had said during final briefing.
‘The territory is occupied but not Absorbed, not a pure hive mind. Ideally, you‘ll be in and out with no enemy contact, no-one even realizing you were there.’

Then Ygran had pointed to a different location in the holomap.

‘Volksurd’s carls, however, will be conducting an all-out commando assault, with overt advance-to-contact in the final phase, and holy bloody Chaos once the thing kicks off.’

Now Ygran’s words returned like a fulfilled prophecy.

Nestled amid a bowl of purple grassland (Tom remembered from his dream) something like a wide lake shone - but the sunlight glistened on glossy membrane, not water. What lay hidden underneath was not a placid marine ecosystem but a single vast cavernous space remade centuries ago by human-directed drones.

In his dream, Tom had Seen five suborbital flyers hurtling through the yellow sky. They screamed to a halt above the wide membrane, turned and hung in formation, then their grasers stabbed downwards.

Shining membrane bubbled and blackened. Great rents appeared. Within a minute, only burned tatters remained. Then the grasers fired onto selected targets as the lateral hatches opened and twenty smartropes snaked down from each hovering flyer. One hundred carls, bronze shields and jade morphospears slung across their backs, launched themselves downwards.