The Hyperion Cantos 4-Book Bundle (192 page)

Aenea tapped the table. “It doesn’t really matter
how
they get there first,” she said. “I’ve
dreamed
that they will. I’ve been considering plans, but …”

“What about the Shrike?” I said.

Aenea glanced sideways at me. “What about it?”

“Well,” I said, “it provided a pretty convenient
deus ex machina
for us on Hyperion, so I just thought that if it could …”

“Damn it, Raul!” cried the girl. “I didn’t
ask
that creature to kill those people on Hyperion. I wish to God it hadn’t.”

“I know, I know,” I said, touching her sleeve to calm her. A. Bettik had cut down several of the Consul’s old shirts for her, but her wardrobe was still meager.

I knew that she had been upset about the carnage during our escape. She later admitted that it had been part of the reason for her sobbing that second night out.

“I’m sorry,” I said sincerely. “I didn’t mean to be flippant about the … thing. I just thought that if someone tried to stop us again, maybe …”

“No,” said Aenea. “I’ve dreamed that someone tries to stop us from getting to Renaissance Vector. But I haven’t dreamed that the Shrike helps us. We have to come up with our own plan.”

“What about the Core?” I said tentatively. It was the first time I’d mentioned the TechnoCore since she had brought it up that first day.

Aenea seemed lost in thought; or at least she ignored my question. “If we’re going to get ourselves out of whatever trouble might be waiting for us, it will have to be our doing. Or maybe …” She turned her head. “Ship?”

“Yes, M. Aenea.”

“Have you been listening to this conversation?”

“Of course, M. Aenea.”

“Do you have any ideas that could help us?”

“Help you to avoid capture if Pax ships are waiting for you?”

“Yeah,” said Aenea, her voice irritable. She frequently lost patience with the ship.

“Not any original ideas,” said the ship. “I have been trying
to remember how the Consul avoided the local authorities when we were just passing through a system.…”

“And?” said Aenea.

“Well, as I have mentioned, my memory is not as complete as it should be.…”

“Yes, yes,” said Aenea, “but do you remember any clever ways you avoided local authorities?”

“Well, primarily by outrunning them,” said the ship. “As we have discussed previously, the Ouster modifications were to the containment field and the fusion drive. The latter changes allow me to reach C-plus translation velocities much more quickly than standard spinships … or so it was when I last traveled between the stars.”

A. Bettik folded his hands and spoke to the same bulkhead area that Aenea had been watching. “You are saying that if the authorities … in this case the Pax ships … left from the planet Parvati, or near it, you would be able to make the translation to Renaissance Vector before they could intercept us.”

“Most assuredly,” said the ship.

“How long will the turnaround take?” I asked.

“Turnaround?”

“The time in-system before we can spin up to the quantum jump to Renaissance Vector’s system,” I said.

“Thirty-seven minutes,” said the ship. “Which includes reorientation, navigation checks, and system checks.”

“What if a Pax ship is waiting right there when we spin down?” asked Aenea. “Do you have any Ouster modifications that could help us?”

“Not that I can think of,” said the ship. “You know of the enhanced containment fields, but they are still no match for a warship’s weapons.”

The girl sighed and leaned on the table. “I’ve been over this and over this, but I don’t see how it can help.”

A. Bettik looked thoughtful, but then again, he always looked thoughtful. “During the time we were concealing and caring for the ship,” he said, “one other Ouster modification became apparent.”

“What’s that?” I said.

A. Bettik gestured downward, toward the holopit level below us. “They enhanced the ship’s morphing ability. The way it can extrude the balcony is one example. Its ability to extend wings during atmospheric flight. It is able to open each separate living
level to atmosphere, thus bypassing the old air-lock entrance if necessary.”

“Neat,” said Aenea, “but I don’t see how that would help, unless the ship can morph to the point of passing itself off as a Pax torchship or something. Can you do that, Ship?”

“No, M. Aenea,” said the soft male voice. “The Ousters carried out some fascinating piezodynamic engineering on me, but there is still the conservation of mass to reckon with.” After a second of silence, “I am sorry, M. Aenea.”

“Just a silly idea,” said Aenea, then she sat straight up. It was so obvious that something had occurred to her that neither A. Bettik nor I interrupted her train of thought for two minutes. Finally she said, “Ship?”

“Yes, M. Aenea?”

“You’re able to morph an air lock … or a simple opening … anywhere on your hull?”

“Almost anywhere, M. Aenea. There are communications pods and certain drive-related areas in which I could not—”

“But on the living decks?” interrupted the girl. “You could just open them the way you let the upper hull go transparent?”

“Yes, M. Aenea.”

“Would the air rush out if you did that?”

The ship’s voice sounded mildly shocked as it answered. “I would not allow that to happen, M. Aenea. As with the piano balcony, I would preserve the integrity of all external fields so that—”

“But you
could
open each deck, not just the air lock, and depressurize it?” The girl’s persistence was new to me then. It is familiar now.

“Yes, M. Aenea.”

A. Bettik and I listened without comment. I could not speak for the android, but I had no idea where the kid was headed with all this. I leaned toward her. “Is this part of a plan?” I said.

Aenea smiled crookedly. It was what I would later think of as her mischievous smile. “It’s too primitive to be a plan,” she said, “and if my assumptions about why the Pax wants me are wrong … well, it won’t work.” The mischievous smile took on a wry twist. “It probably wouldn’t work anyway.”

I glanced at my wrist. “We have forty-five minutes until we spin down and find out if someone’s waiting,” I said. “Do you want to share your plan that wouldn’t work?”

The girl began speaking. She did not talk long. When she was finished, the android and I looked at each other. “You’re right,” I said to her, “it’s not much of a plan and it wouldn’t work.”

Aenea’s smile did not falter. She took my hand and turned my wrist so that my chronometer was face-up. “We have forty-one minutes,” she said. “Come up with a better one.”

The
Raphael
is on the final part of her return ellipsoid, rushing in-system toward Parvati’s sun at .03 of light-speed. The archangel-class courier/warship is ungainly—massive drive bays, cobbled-together com-pods, spin-arms, weapons’ platforms and antennae array protruding, its tiny environmental sphere and attached dropship shuttle tucked into the mess almost as an afterthought—but it becomes a serious warship now as it rotates 180 degrees so that it hurtles stern-first toward the projected translation point of the ship it pursues.

“One minute to spindown,” de Soya says over the tactical band. The three troopers in the open sally-port air lock do not need to acknowledge the transmission. They also know that even after the other ship appears in real space, it will not be visible to them—even with visor magnifiers—for another two minutes.

Strapped in his acceleration couch with the control panels arrayed around him, his gauntleted hand on the omnicontroller, his tactical shunt in place so that he and the ship are effectively one, Father Captain de Soya listens to the breathing of the three troopers over the com channel while he watches and senses the other ship’s approach. “Picking up Hawking-drive distortion reading down angle thirty-nine, coordinates zero-zero-zero, thirty nine, one-nine-niner,” he says into his mike. “Exit point
at zero-zero-zero, nine hundred klicks. Single vehicle probability, ninety-nine percent. Relative velocity nineteen kps.”

Suddenly the other ship becomes visible on radar, t-dirac, and all passive sensors. “Got it,” Father Captain de Soya says to the waiting troopers. “On time, on schedule … damn.”

“What?” says Sergeant Gregorius. He and his men have checked their weapons, charges, and boarding collars. They are ready to jump in less than three minutes.

“The ship’s begun accelerating, not decelerating as we’d guessed in most of the sims,” says de Soya. On the tactical channel he enables the ship to carry out preprogrammed alternatives. “Hang on!” he says to the troopers, but the thrusters have already fired,
Raphael
is already rotating. “No problem,” he says as the main drive kicks on, boosting them to 147 gravities. “Just stay within the field during the jump. It’ll take just an extra minute to match velocities.”

Gregorius, Kee, and Rettig do not respond. De Soya can hear their breathing.

Two minutes later de Soya says, “I have a visual.”

Sergeant Gregorius and his two troopers lean out of the open air lock. Gregorius can see the other ship as a ball of fusion flame. He keys the mag-lenses so he can see beyond that, raises the filters, and sees the ship itself. “Pretty much like the tacticals,” says Kee.

“Don’t think that way,” snaps the sergeant. “The real thing’s never like the tacticals.” He knows that both these men realize that; they have been in combat. But Sergeant Gregorius was an instructor at Pax Command on Armaghast for three years, and the instinct is hard to break.

“This thing’s
fast
,” says de Soya. “If we didn’t have the bounce on them, I don’t think we’d catch them. As it is, we’ll just be able to match velocities for five or six minutes.”

“We only need three,” says Gregorius. “Just get us alongside, Captain.”

“Coming alongside now,” says de Soya. “She’s painting us.” The
Raphael
was not designed with stealth capabilities, and now every instrument records the other ship’s sensors on her. “One klick,” he reports, “still no weapons activity. Fields on full. Delta-v dropping. Eight hundred meters.”

Gregorius, Kee, and Rettig unsling their plasma rifles and crouch.

“Three hundred meters … two hundred meters …,”
says de Soya. The other ship is passive, its acceleration high but constant. In most of the sims de Soya had factored in a wild chase before matching speeds and disrupting the other ship’s fields. This is too easy. The father-captain feels concern for the first time. “Inside minimum lance range,” he reports. “Go!”

The three Swiss Guard troopers explode out of the air lock, their reaction paks spurting blue flame.

“Disrupting … now!” cries de Soya. The other ship’s fields refuse to drop for an eternity—almost three seconds, a time never simulated in the tactical exercises—but eventually they drop. “Fields down!” calls de Soya, but the troopers already know that—they are tumbling, decelerating, and dropping onto the enemy hull at their prearranged entry points—Kee near the bow, Gregorius on what had been the navigation level on the old schematics, Rettig above the engine room.

“On,” comes Gregorius’s voice. The other two confirm landing a second later.

“Boarding collars set,” pants the sergeant.

“Set,” confirms Kee.

“Set,” says Rettig.

“Deploy from three,” snaps the sergeant. “Three, two, one … deploy.”

His polymer bag gossamers into sunlight.

On the command couch de Soya is watching the delta-v. The acceleration has risen to more than 230 gravities. If the fields fail now … He shoves the thought aside.
Raphael
is straining to her utmost to keep velocities matched. Another four or five minutes, and he will have to fall away or risk overtaxing all the ship’s fusion-drive systems.
Hurry
, he thinks toward the combat-armored shapes he sees in tactical space and video screens.

“Ready,” reports Kee.

“Ready,” comes Rettig’s voice from near the stern fins on the absurd ship.

“Set charges,” orders Gregorius, and slaps his onto the hull. “From five … five, four, three …”

“Father Captain de Soya,” says a girl’s voice.

“Wait!” orders de Soya. The girl’s image has appeared on all the com bands. She is sitting at a piano. It is the same child he saw at the Sphinx on Hyperion three months before.

“Stop!” echoes Gregorius, his finger above the detonate button on his wristplate. The other troopers obey. All are watching the vid broadcast on their visor inserts.

“How do you know my name?” asks Father Captain de Soya. Instantly he knows how stupid the question is: it does not matter, his men need to enter the ship within three minutes or the Raphael will fall behind, leaving them alone on the other ship. They had simulated that possibility—the troopers taking command of the ship after capturing the girl, slowing to wait for de Soya to catch up—but it is not a preferable scenario. He touches a presspoint that sends his vid image to the girl’s ship.

“Hello, Father Captain de Soya,” says the girl, her voice in no hurry, her appearance showing little or no stress, “if your men try to enter the ship, I will depressurize my own ship and die.”

De Soya blinks. “Suicide is a mortal sin,” he says.

On the screen the girl nods seriously. “Yes,” she says, “but I am not a Christian. Also, I’d rather go to hell than go with you.” De Soya looks intently at the image—her fingers are not near any controls.

“Captain,” comes Gregorius’s voice on the secure tightbeam channel, “if she opens the air lock, I can get to her and get a transfer bag around her before complete decompression.”

On the screen the girl is watching, de Soya’s lips are still as he subvocalizes on the tightbeam channel. “She is not of the cross,” he says. “If she dies, there’s no guarantee that we can revive her.”

“The odds are good the ship’s surgery can bring her back and repair her from simple decompression,” says Gregorius. “It’ll take thirty seconds or more for her level to lose all of its air. I can get to her. Give the word.”

“I mean it,” says the child on the screen. Instantly, a circular section of hull opens under and around Corporal Kee, and atmosphere blasts into vacuum, filling Kee’s boarding collar bag like a balloon and tumbling him into it as both crash into the external field and slide toward the stern of the ship. Kee’s reaction pak fires madly, and he stabilizes himself before being blown into the fusion tale of the ship.