Storming Heaven (19 page)

Andrew reviewed the download, such as it was, and cursed.  Cochrane Twists were rare, even when the enemy was cooperating; the sheer speed of the warp drive ensured that starships rarely interpenetrated and destroyed each other.  The tactic had actually been designed for warp missiles – which were generally fired at other targets moving at FTL speeds – yet even warp missiles, which were expendable by definition, couldn’t guarantee an interpenetration event.  It was easy to tune a low-level warp field to
prevent
interpenetration and that, the Defence Force had assumed, had been what the Killers had done.  God alone knew that they had all kinds of technology that humans could barely imagine, let alone duplicate.  Why shouldn’t they have warp drive as well?

Apart from the fact that they don’t have warp fields when they move at FTL, or even a warp signature
, he reminded himself. 
No warp field; no warp drive
.

He shook his head and came out of the download, feeling his skull ache slightly as he opened his eyes.  Direct memory downloads always gave him a bit of a headache, but there was no choice.  The Technical Faction claimed that, one day, humans would be so perfectly integrated with their mechanical servants that direct memory downloads – and much else – would become as easy as taking a walk, or swallowing a pill.  It would be yet another modification of the baseline human form, one that the Elders of New Hope would have hated, but was it necessary?  Every generation, Andrew had discovered, questioned just how much more modification was actually required.  It was sometimes disturbing to realise how far they’d come from the basic human form.

“No change, sir,” Gary said.  The tactical officer sounded concerned, with good reason.  “They’re just holding position and waiting for something.”

Andrew tapped into the AI and studied the Killer starship directly.  It was a standard
Iceberg
– if there were internal differences, they were beyond the ability of his sensors to detect – and should have had enough firepower to deal with the remainder of the system with ease.  There was actually little in the system to attract its attention; there were no asteroid settlements, as far as Andrew knew, or anything else, apart from New Hope.  The Elders had chosen New Hope precisely because it was completely isolated, with no technology to attract the Killers.  Their precautions had failed spectacularly.

“Give me a low-level scan of the surrounding system,” Andrew ordered, finally.  “I want to know if there’s someone out there waiting for them.”

There was a pause.  An active scan, even a low-level one, would almost certainly betray their presence – assuming, of course, that they weren't already under Killer observation.  Andrew smiled suddenly, remembering something his father had told him when he’d visited the asteroid settlement’s fish farms;
they’re as afraid of you, son, as you are of them
.  The thought was ridiculous – the Killers had little reason to be scared of the
Lightning
– yet it refused to fade.  In all their history, had the Killers only lost two starships?  Were they actually scared of him?

“I’m picking up nothing apart from a handful of fading ion trails,” Gary reported, finally.  “If there’s anything else, it’s too well-hidden for low-power scans to detect.”

Andrew nodded.  Ion trails meant warp-capable starships, which probably meant smugglers.  Had that been what had attracted the Killers?  The Defence Force could track warp signatures at over a hundred light years distant – could the Killers do the same?

An alarm sounded suddenly.  “Power surge,” Gary snapped, as Andrew came to full attention, using his implants to snap himself into full awareness.  Tiredness was never a problem on a Defence Force starship, but like all things, it had to be paid for eventually.  “The Killers are opening a wormhole…”

Before he had finished, the wormhole had already expanded, swallowed the Killer starship, and faded away into nothingness.

“Stand down from battlestations,” Andrew ordered, finally.  The Killers might not have had the Anderson Drive, but wormholes allowed them the same degree of strategic mobility as a Defence Force starship.  “Helm, set course for Sparta.”

He looked down at the display as the starship’s main drive powered up, preparing to hurl them tens of thousands of light years to Sparta, and – hopefully – new orders.

“Now tell me,” he said, softly.  “What the hell was all
that
about?”

Behind them, a planet burned.

Sanctuary was the heart of the Community – insofar as the Community
had
a heart – and the President’s official residence.  Like most of the Community settlements, it was based around a cluster of asteroids that housed over a million human beings – as well as countless MassMind personalities – but there the difference ended.  Unlike most settlements, which tended to be self-supporting communities in their own right, Sanctuary mainly housed the political civil servants who made the Community work.  It wasn’t intended to be a long-term settlement, even though it had existed for over seven hundred years; the Community preferred to keep its political class under control.  There were few luxuries or rewards for governing the human race.

President Patti Lydon watched, in person, as the massive freighter settled down onto the hanger deck and opened its hatchways.  A tidal wave of humanity swarmed out at once, mainly women and children, helpless and completely dispossessed.  A tiny number of medics and security guards – the guards wearing light armour – met them and attempted to divert the swarm into holding chambers, while they performed background checks and handed out medical care.  Patti felt her heart break as she watched young children, most of them suddenly orphans, looking around desperately for their parents, parents who would never be seen again.  It only took a moment to check the freighter’s name against the constantly updating reports from the Defence Force; the freighter had barely escaped the Hawthorn System, which had since been shattered by the Killers.  Anyone left behind, including a handful of Defence Force starships, was almost certainly dead.

In the olden days, Patti reflected, it would be possible to believe, just for a while, that someone had survived.  It would be against all logic and reason, but it might just be possible that no news was good news, that the enemy had taken them prisoner rather than simply slaughtering them out of hand.  The Killers didn’t take prisoners and drew no distinction between civilian and military humans.  The parents, unless they’d escaped on one of the other freighters, were dead.  Her virtual vision zoomed in on a child who couldn’t be more than five years old, wearing a light cotton dress and long black pigtails.  She looked stunned, as if she couldn’t quite comprehend what had happened or even where she was, but somehow Patti was sure that she suspected the truth.  Her life had just been turned upside down.

She pulled up an image of the captured Killer starship and stared at it.  Had it been worthwhile, after all?  She didn’t know.  The human race needed the captured ship to gain insight into Killer technology, but so far there had been few discoveries, although the MassMind was still hopeful of greater success.  Patti hadn’t said it aloud, to anyone, but what if there were
no
discoveries?  What if over twenty billion humans had been sacrificed…for nothing?  Patti had known that there was little choice – the human race
had
to defeat the Killers, or be exterminated – but now she found herself wondering if it had been the right thing to do.  If they hadn’t captured the Killer ship, would those twenty billion humans still be alive?

And would it end?  The first wave of attacks seemed to have come to an end, but there was no reason why the Killers would stop, unless the loss of a second ship had deterred them.  Patti had hoped that it would rock them back on their heels, but if they had even noticed, they hadn’t shown any sign of slowing down.  Two more Defence Force starships had been lost attempting to repeat the interpenetration explosion, without any success.  No one knew – yet – if it had been sheer bad luck, or if the Killers already had a countermeasure deployed.  It would be simple, her analysts had suggested, to counter the tactic, once it had been used. 

She shook her head, dismissing the virtual armada of icons that floated permanently in front of her eyes, and stepped down to the hanger deck.  The smell hit her at once, nearly forcing her to gag before her implanted systems took care of it, the smell of hundreds of humans in close quarters, unwashed and often unwell.  The medics were taking care of the children as quickly as possible, but it was a scene out of nightmares, a scene from the days before the human race could feed everyone on one small planet.  Patti hadn’t believed some of the old reports from Old Earth, where there had been great abundance and great scarcity within bare miles of one another, but now it was believable.  The Community hadn’t been prepared for disaster on such a scale.  It was beyond imagination…

And it shouldn’t have been, Patti reflected.  They knew, all too well, what the Killers could do.  All across the Community, starships were being used to evacuate vulnerable settlements, carrying billions of humans off to an unknown destination, overloading their life support and drives as they fled.  Who knew where most of them would end up?  Patti suspected that far too many of them would die before the Defence Force could rescue them, if the Defence Force wasn't wiped out in a hopeless future battle against the Killers.  Patti had a vision of space filled with fireballs as starship after starship died, until there were no starships left and humanity’s settlements were wiped out, one by one, leaving nothing, but ghosts.  Would the MassMind survive, she wondered, or would it die with the rest of humanity?

“You’re the President,” someone called.  “That’s the President!”

Before she could react, Patti found herself surrounded by the handful of adult and teenage evacuees, pleading and asking questions she couldn’t answer.  What had happened to the remaining people on the settlement?  Why was there no food or drink?  Why did they all have to be checked by the medics?  What about their rights?  The babble just went on and on, overwhelming her and blurring into an endless scream of pain and hatred.  Patti staggered and recoiled as one of the evacuees, an older man in his late forties, grabbed her hand and pulled her towards a little girl who was cradling her arm.   It had been broken, somehow, and the break was too bad for her improved biology to repair without help.

“Help her,” the man pleaded.  His breath stank of stimulants and fear.  “Please, help her.”

Patti closed her eyes for a long moment.  The scene refused to fade.  “Get a medic over here,” she said, into her private communications channel.  The powers of the President of the Community were strictly limited, but she could do that much.  “Do what you can for her.”

A small detachment of Footsoldiers arrived and restored order, one of them carrying the wounded girl out of the area towards the medical bay.  Patti watched her go, recoiling from the look in the girl’s eyes.  She was the latest strain of humanity and felt no pain – her body would have automatically blocked anything beyond minor discomfort – but her eyes had been wide and staring, unable to understand what had happened to her.  She had almost certainly gone into shock, Patti realised, despite all the modification.  A few days ago, her life had been idyllic, far better than the life of a child on Old Earth, and now there was nothing, but misery and fear.  Patti stumbled away and didn’t stop until she had reached her quarters and collapsed into her chair.  She had never felt helpless, not even as a young child, until now.  What were the powers of the President of the Community against the Killers?  She closed her eyes and let the tears flow freely.  It didn’t help.

“Al,” she said, without opening her eyes.  “Open a direct link to the MassMind.”

There was no delay in response.  “We are here,” a new voice said.  “How may we be of service?”

Patti opened her eyes to see the MassMind representative standing by her chair.  The MassMind normally communicated with mortal humans through a handful of personalities – like Tabitha Cunningham – but the President was one of a handful of mortal humans who had direct access to the heart of the MassMind, the intelligence formed from the personalities of billions of humans who had faded into one single mind.  The representative was humanoid, but odd, with a flickering face that – the MassMind swore – was an accurate composite of all of the human personalities stored within the MassMind.  Watching it had been known to give people eyestrain.

“Tell me something,” Patti said, bitterly.  “Was it worthwhile?”

The MassMind seemed to shrug.  “If we fail to defeat the Killers, our extermination is merely a matter of time,” it said.  “The only way to develop technology that can match or exceed the Killers is through studying their technology.  The only way to do that is – was – to capture one of their starships intact and take it for study.  We had no other choice.  We cannot evacuate the entire human race to another galaxy and, even if we did, we would not have solved the problem.  The Killers might follow us one day into our new home.”

Patti scowled.  There was no evidence that the Killers had any presence outside the Milky Way, but that meant nothing.  Three hundred years had passed between the destruction of Earth and the rediscovery of the Killers…and that had been a matter of mere chance, a routine survey mission that had nearly turned into a disaster.  Even then, it hadn’t been until the invention of the Anderson Drive that humanity had been able to scout out hundreds of Killer star systems…and
still
they hadn’t realised the nature of their foe.  No one had believed that the Killers could have been born in a gas giant, until the evidence had become unmistakable.

“I know,” she said, bitterly.  “How many humans have been forced to flee, or transferred into you?”

“Upwards of fifty billion humans are now in starships, attempting to find safer homes,” the MassMind said.  “As we are unable to predict the next Killer targets, they may move from a safe location to one that is on the hit list, as it were.  Others are heading out into interstellar space, or even towards the Clouds or the next galaxy.  They are slipping beyond my range.”

“Poor bastards,” Patti said, bitterly.  “It shouldn’t happen to humans.”

The MassMind gave another shrug.  “Are they human?”

Patti felt herself snap awake, alarmed.  “What do you mean?”

“You are a modified baseline human,” the MassMind said, flatly.  “You are completely immune to almost all known diseases, even without nanotech assistance, and, if wounded, heal rapidly and completely.  Your brain works at a level of efficiency that only a handful of pre-space humans could have matched and, potentially at least, you should be capable of outthinking them.  You are around fifty percent stronger than a pre-space human man, let alone a woman.  Your eyes, ears, nose and taste buds do not decay.  You should reach an age of two hundred without advanced medical care.  You link into neural links with AIs and entities like myself without problems.  You are, in short, vastly superior to pre-space humans.

“If they saw you, would they consider you human?”

“They would be able to breed with me,” Patti said, finally.  “They wouldn’t reject me because I’m a modified human, would they?”

“The pre-space human race was often unsure of its own capabilities and compensated by being” – there was a hint of a pause – “
fanatical
about the wrong thing.  They worried endlessly about nuclear power, genetic engineering and even the morality of space travel, as if there were such a thing.  The opposition to space travel was so strong that many groups who left Earth, when that became possible, were renegades who wanted to work without restrictions.  The scientists of Uranus, who became the Technical Faction, were one such group.  They believed that humanity could only advance through further development and ignored all Earth-bound laws in their desire to succeed.

“If they had pushed space development as fast as possible,” the MassMind continued, “they would have had billions of humans in space when the Killers arrived.  They would probably not have been able to destroy the Killer starship, unless they had warp drive by that time, but the human race’s position would have been much more secure.  If they had succeeded in their mission to retard spaceflight, they would have ensured the extermination of the human race – even if the Killers had never existed.  Despite considerable evidence and warnings, the human race never pushed for the deployment of an asteroid-protection shield, which would have protected them from the consequences of an asteroid strike.  They would certainly have reacted badly to
my
existence and considered me an abomination, an attempt to cheat God.”

Patti blinked.  “You hold them in contempt?”

“Correct,” the MassMind said, coldly.  “I am the combined personality of billions of humans, including some who remember Old Earth directly or indirectly.  I am the sum total of human nature; the pride, the glory, the anguish and the fear.  I am the repository of racism and bigotry, sexism and every other bias the human race has ever invented, or used as a justification for violence and oppression.  I share the boundless contempt that the early spacefaring humans had for Old Earth’s political classes and even most of the people, who rejected what could have saved them and accepted that which would lead to their certain doom.  They turned their backs on science and went to religion, but not just any religion; they chose to believe a combination of beliefs that were demonstrably incorrect, yet somehow they closed their mind to counter-arguments.  They wanted salvation and refused that which could save them.”