Exultant (57 page)

After that, things went much better.

Chapter
49

The trouble started in the most innocuous, most mundane of ways: problems with waste.

For many quagmite kinds, eliminated waste was in the form of compressed matter, quarks and gluons wadded together into baryons—protons and neutrons. You could even find a few simple nuclei, if you dug around in there. But the universe was still too hot for such structures to be stable long, and the waste decayed quickly, returning its substance to the wider quagma bath.

Now, as the universe cooled, things changed. The mess of sticky proton-neutron cack simply wouldn’t dissolve as readily as it once had. Great clumps of it clung together, stubbornly resistant, and had to be broken up to release their constituent quarks. But the energy expenditure was huge.

Soon this grew to be an overwhelming burden, the primary task of civilizations. Citizens voiced concerns; autocrats issued commands; angry votes were taken on councils. There were even wars over waste dumping. But the problem only got worse.

And, gradually, the dread truth was revealed.

The cooling universe was approaching another transition point, another phase change. The ambient temperature, steadily falling, would soon be too low to force the baryons to break up—and the process of combination would be one way. Soon all the quarks and gluons, the fundamental building blocks of life, would be locked up inside baryons.

The trend was inescapable, its conclusion staggering: this extraordinary implosion would wither the most bright, the most beautiful of the quagmite ecologies, and nobody would be left even to mourn.

As the news spread across the inhabited worlds, a cosmic unity developed. Love and hate, war and peace were put aside in favor of an immense research effort to find ways of surviving the impending baryogenetic catastrophe.

A solution was found. Arks were devised: immense artificial worlds, some as much as a meter across, their structures robust enough to withstand the collapse. It was unsatisfactory; the baryogenesis could not be prevented, and almost everything would be lost in the process. But these ships of quagma would sail beyond the end of time, as the quagmites saw it, and in their artificial minds they would store the poetry of a million worlds. It was better than nothing.

As time ran out, as dead baryons filled up the universe and civilizations crumbled, the quagma arks sailed away. But mere survival wasn’t enough for the last quagmites. They wanted to be remembered.

Chapter
50

On Orion Rock, time flowed strangely for Pirius Red.

The days seemed to last forever, but his nights seemed very short. And the sum of those long days, as they accumulated into weeks, amounted to no time at all.

Pirius hammered home the ten-week target every time he spoke to his crews, and as the training schedule was compressed and the technical development work accelerated, the effort everybody put in was more and more frantic. But the calendars wore down, regardless.

Suddenly deadline day was here.

And it went, with no word from the Grand Conclave. One day passed, two.

Pirius figured they may as well use the time productively. The flight crews and ground staff continued their training. By now, as well as flying the modified ships on endless low-level loops past hapless target Rocks, they were running full-scale simulations with flight crews and a fully staffed operations room, everybody working together to iron out procedures. Commander Darc’s experience was vital in this—and to Pirius’s surprise, Pila proved observant and helpful, pointing out ways to improve the information flow between ships and the base. Even she seemed finally to be committing herself to the great effort.

All this was useful, as far as it went. Behind the scenes, though, those in the know became increasingly anxious. Even now it was possible that the Grand Conclave would, for its own inscrutable reasons, withhold final permission to fly the mission.

Up to now Nilis had remained remarkably calm. His design of the mission had been largely conceptual—“a mere data-desk sketch,” he said—and now that they were down to operational details there was generally little he could add. He kept himself busy with his continuing analysis of the true nature of Chandra. He said he wanted to make sure they understood what it was they were attacking before they “blew it to smithereens”—although he continued to complain about obstruction and a baffling lack of cooperation from the military authorities who were his hosts. “It’s almost as if they don’t
want
me to learn about Chandra!” he told a distracted Pirius.

But after the deadline expired, Nilis became increasingly agitated. He started to make lurid threats about how he would return to Earth and storm his way into the sessions of the Grand Conclave itself.

Then, two days after the formal deadline, an “Immediate Message” was handed to Pirius. It had come through the office of Marshal Kimmer, and was signed by the Plenipotentiary for Total War herself: “Operation PRIME RADIANT. Execute at first available opportunity.”

That was all. Pirius read the note again, hardly able to believe what he was looking at. He said, “Suddenly we are no longer a project but an operation.”

Pila was watching him, her beautiful, cold face intent. She seemed fascinated by his reaction. “How do you feel?”

“Relieved,” he said. Then, “Terrified.” He glanced at a chronometer. It was evening.
First available opportunity.
One more full day to prepare, then; after that, they would fly at reveille. “Thirty-six hours,” he breathed. “We go in thirty-six hours.” He stood up. “Come on, Pila. We’ve work to do.”

That night he called in Pirius Blue and This Burden Must Pass, his flight commanders, for a final operations meeting. With Pila at his side, he locked the door of his office, set up a security shield, and showed them the order. Red watched Burden carefully, still not quite trusting him. But neither he nor Blue showed shock, surprise, or fear. Maybe they didn’t quite believe it, Red thought.

At this point it was their job to go over every detail of the mission, and to talk through tactics regarding the resistance they might encounter, and how they would recover from any foul-ups at various points in the mission profile. After they were done, Pila would draft the final Operation Order that would be disseminated to the flight crews.

As they got to work, Red said, “Maybe this session will be quick. We’ve war-gamed this a dozen times.”

“You’d be surprised,” Burden said dryly. “The imminence of real action has a way of focusing the mind.”

Pirius Blue was watching his younger self curiously. “How are you feeling? You haven’t flown a combat mission before.”

Red said, irritated, “Yes, I’m the rookie; thanks for reminding me.”

“That may help,” Blue said awkwardly. “I mean it. There’s no substitute for going through it for real. When you lead crews into a situation where they’re likely to buy it, it frightens you—the responsibility—and that gets mixed up with your own personal fear. You can’t help it. It’s stomach-churning. But experience is one thing; the residual shock is another. You never quite recover. You have enough on your plate today. It may be better that you’re fresh.”

Red said, “I’m not frightened of dying. I’m not even frightened of the responsibility for other people’s lives.”

“But you’re frightened of screwing up,” said Burden.

“Yes,” Red admitted.

“Don’t worry,” Blue said. “We’re at your side.” He sat stiff in his chair, and he couldn’t meet Red’s eyes.

Red knew this was the closest Blue could bring himself to pledging loyalty to his own younger, less experienced, overpromoted self. It would have to do, he thought.

Red pulled a data desk toward him. “Let’s get on with it,” he said gruffly. “First, the launch sequence. We will go in two waves. . . .”

The next morning, as he began his day, Enduring Hope immediately knew something was up.

He made his usual inspection walk through the bomb dump, a hangar that had been modified as a store for the point black holes. And he walked into the big main hangar, where fifteen heavily engineered, thoroughly worn-out greenships were being treated with tender loving care by his technicians. Everywhere he went, he sensed a heightening of activity, and of tension. For one thing there were more flight crew around than usual, working with the ground crew on the ships they would fly. But there was more to this atmosphere than that. He’d been through this before, back on the other side of the magnetar incident that had cut his life in two, when he had flown his one and only combat mission.

Everybody understood the need for security. Generally you had no idea until a day or so before the launch of a mission exactly what your target was to be. This mission had been no different—save only for the novel bits of technology they all had to become used to. As always, there had been much speculation. The advantages of the new superfast processors and the formidable black-hole cannon were obvious. But nobody could figure out what the grav shield, difficult and temperamental, was actually
for
. Nor could anybody come up with a convincing target. It was sure to be something big, though—big and therefore exceptionally dangerous. But all this was scuttlebutt.

This morning, though, it was clear that things had changed: from somewhere in the higher echelons, it was being said, orders had arrived to proceed. Right now Pirius Red was probably briefing the senior staff, and everybody else was supposed to be in the dark. But it was astonishing how these things got out, how people picked up on almost imperceptible cues, if it really mattered to them—and this was an issue of life or death.

Hope knew his duty, anyhow. He was going to make sure each of these dinged-up greenships was ready to do whatever its crew demanded of it, if he had to crawl into the guts of every one of them himself. He went to work with a will.

In the middle of the morning, Virtual images of Pirius Red appeared around the hangar, summoning the flight crews to a general briefing in one of the big conference rooms. The crews gathered in little knots, talking quietly, and began to drift out of the hangar.

It’s real, Hope thought; it really is happening. He felt an odd pull. It wasn’t so long since he had been flight crew himself.

He walked quickly around the hangar. Work was going well. In fact, he told himself, if he hung around watching over his technicians’ shoulders, he would get in the way. He could be spared for a couple of hours.

So, as the last crews walked down the short corridor to Officer Country, Hope followed them.

Torec was on security duty at the door of the conference room. Hope found his way blocked by her arm. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“The briefing.” Through the open door Hope glimpsed the thirty-odd flight crew milling, finding seats. They all seemed to be here, both primary crews and reserves. On a dais at the front sat the two editions of Pirius, Burden, Commissary Nilis, and others. As the officers prepared their briefing material, Virtual images flickered tantalizingly over their heads.

“Flight crew only,” Torec said. “I can’t let you in.”

“Come on, Torec,” he whispered. “I used to fly, remember?”

“I don’t know why you want to be here.”

Neither did Hope, quite. He looked into the room. “Because it’s history.”

“Yes,” she said. “There is that. Okay.” She lifted her arm. “But if anybody spots you I’ll say you slugged me.”

He grinned his thanks and hurried into the room.

The atmosphere in there was even stranger than out in the hangars. The tension in the air was like ozone. All the flight crew seemed to be talking at once, and the air was full of noise. But the talk was meaningless, just banter, ways to drain off stress. Hope spotted pilot Jees, who sat a little apart, as always, like a half-silvered statue; with no apparent nerves, she watched the platform and waited for the show to start.

Hope found space at the back, between two burly navigators. Of course everybody in this audience knew who he was, but they had all worked with him on their ships and seemed to accept him.

Pirius Red stood up on the platform. He raised his arms for silence, but he needn’t have; the hubbub died away instantly. Pirius looked out over the crews, a complex expression on his face. “You know why we’re here.” He spoke without amplification, and his voice, gruff with tension, was precise, determined. “Operation Prime Radiant is
on
.” There was a rumble of appreciation at that; one or two stamped their feet. “I know it’s still not much more than a name for most of you, but that’s about to change.

“I’ve already had briefings with the flight commanders, and representative specialists—pilots, navigators, engineers—and we’ve put it all together, as best we can. Commissary Nilis here will give you an overview of the objectives and strategy, and then Blue, Burden, and I will go through the operation in more detail. At the end of this briefing you’ll be given copies of the draft Operation Order by the adjutant. After that we’ll split for briefings in your specialist groups. We have more detailed Virtuals of the mission profile, including sims if you’ve the time to sit through them.

“At every stage I want you to answer back. What we’re going to attempt is something nobody’s done before. So if you spot a screwup waiting to happen, or can see a better way to do things, say so. At the end of the day the adjutant and I will pull all that feedback into a fresh draft of the Op Order, and we’ll hold another update session in here. Is that clear?”

There was no reply. He paced, as if suddenly uncertain, and gazed out at them; the crews watched him silently.

Pirius said, “I’ll tell you what we’re going to do tomorrow, in a sentence. We’re going to strike a blow at the Xeelee from which they cannot recover. And I’ll tell you something else. Tomorrow is our best chance, but it’s not the only chance. If you screw up tomorrow, you’ll go back out there as soon as we can patch up the ships, and patch
you
up, and do it again. And you’ll keep on going out until the job is done. So if you don’t want to go back, do it right first time.” He glared at them, as if daring them to defy him. Then, to silence, he sat down.