The Evolutionary Void (12 page)

Lizzie teleported into the school. Rosa whooped with delight at the
abrupt jump. “Good, good,” she enthused.

The classroom she’d emerged into was a broad circle with a shallow dome
roof and long overhang windows looking across the green playing fields of
Dulwich Park. It was raining outside. Twenty children were inside, split into
three groups. Their teachers were already looking startled. Lizzie looked
around as a timer started to count away her minute. Elsie was part of a reading
group. She glanced up and smiled at her mother.

Two more parents jumped into the classroom, both looking as perturbed as
Lizzie imagined she was. She beckoned frantically to Elsie, who started over.
By now another five parents had arrived. The large classroom was starting to
feel crowded.

Tilly was in the music group, her violin resting comfortably under her
chin as the children practiced a cheerful-sounding song for the school’s
Christmas Nativity play. “Come here,” Lizzie called as Elsie reached her side.
There were twenty seconds left. Out of the corner of her eye, Lizzie saw a
mother jump away as she clutched her son.

“What’s happening?” Tilly asked.

“Here!” Lizzie implored. Another two adults materialized in front of her
and started to hunt desperately for their children. The youngsters were
starting to get upset as more and more parents with worried faces appeared.

Tilly scampered over, still hanging on to her violin. Lizzie’s u-shadow
registered a call from her husband. “Not now,” she grunted, and designated the
house as their teleport coordinate. Tilly ran into her, and there were nine
seconds left. Just for an instant, the emptiness of the translation continuum
flashed around them as Lizzie and the kids jumped out.

She let out a little shocked sob as they all materialized in the familiar
hallway.

“What is it?” a subdued Elsie demanded. “What’s happening?”

“Mummy?” Tilly appealed, tugging at Lizzie’s skirt.

“I’m not sure,” Lizzie said even as she was trying to make sense of the
defense agency displays. The defense agency didn’t have any details on the
devices that had surrounded the solar system. Then the T-sphere was diverted
from standard use, stranding everyone on the planet in his or her immediate
location. She told her u-shadow to accept her husband’s call.

“Thank Ozzie,” he exclaimed. “Where are the girls?”

“Got them,” she promised, feeling slightly superior because she’d reacted
so swiftly and correctly. “Where are you?”

“On a starship. Eight minutes out from Gralmond spaceport.”

“Do you understand what’s happening?”

“Not really. It’s the ANA factions; their fights have turned physical.”

“They can’t hurt Earth? Can they?” She didn’t want to let go of the
children. Outside, the rain had drained out of the gray London sky as the force
field dome covered the city.

“That’s not what it’s about. Look I’ll be with you as soon—”

The connection ended. Strange symbols flipped up into her exovision,
showing routing problems with his link.

In the unisphere? That’s not possible!

“—after I’ve landed. Then I’ll—”

“Something’s wrong,” she gasped.

“—hang on! I will be there, I prom—”

“The link has failed,” her u-shadow reported.

“How can it fail?” she cried.

“The wormhole connections with the Commonwealth worlds are collapsing,”
her u-shadow said.

“Oh, great Ozzie!” Lizzie hurried into the conservatory, pulling the
girls with her. She tried to make sense of the emergency icons invading her
exovision as she looked up into the dour sky, hunting for signs of the world
coming to an end.

———

Kazimir’s energy signature halted ten kilometers from one of the Swarm
components. He manifested a vast array of sensor functions, yet not one of them
was able to penetrate the five-hundred-meter-diameter force field floating
serenely in space. “Damnit, they’ve acquired Dark Fortress technology,” he told
ANA. Far behind him, the Accelerator ship dropped out of hyperdrive next to the
inversion core. It was large for an ultradrive; long-range scans revealed a
multitude of weapons on board. A hold door opened in the rear section, and the
inversion core slipped gracefully inside. Then a force field came on around it,
every bit as impervious as the one he was confronting.

Kazimir was desperate to intercept the Accelerator Faction starship, but
with Earth and ANA facing an unknown threat, his duty was clear. He manifested
several high-level weapon functions and fired at the force field directly ahead
of him. Everything he used was simply deflected away. The force field was
completely impermeable to any assault he could bring in spacetime and
hyperspace.

“The wormholes to the Big15 worlds are collapsing,” ANA reported.
“Something is cutting them off.”

Kazimir examined the exotic matter intrusions stretching out from Earth
away to the stars, seeing them subjected to enormous interference that was
causing them to constrict. Even though he knew the incursion must originate
within the Swarm, his manifested sensor functions couldn’t track down its
nature.

The Accelerator Faction ship carrying the inversion core went FTL,
streaking across the solar system directly away from Kazimir at seventy-eight
light-years an hour. His energy signature flashed after it. Enormously powerful
exotic energy manipulation functions manifested, but he still couldn’t reach
through its force field to disable the drive. He began to manifest some
functions that would disrupt the quantum fields around the ship, which would
force it out of hyperspace. The ship passed through the Swarm’s orbit. Kazimir
was less than two seconds behind. It was too late. The force fields surrounding
the Swarm components expanded at hyperluminal speed.

Kazimir’s energy signature struck an impermeable barrier that cut clean
across spacetime and hyperspace. He couldn’t get through.

———

The ship
dropped out of hyperspace a
light-minute beyond the force field. To the hyperspace sensors, a vast blank
shield had sprung up behind them. Its curvature revealed a radius of forty AUs.
There was no hint of stress or distortion anywhere on its surface. Whatever
Kazimir was armed with was unable to cut through. Neskia brought
the ship
’s visual sensor data into her exovision, watching
the image keenly as a timer counted down. After one minute, the high-magnitude
star that was the Sun vanished, along with the stars across that half of space.

“No sign of it breaking through,” Neskia said. “I think we’re safe.”

“Very clever, that deterrence fleet,” Ilanthe said. “An interstitial
energy signature that can extrude into spacetime.
The ship
wouldn’t have stood a chance in a straight firefight. ANA was more advanced
than we’d realized.”

“Even more reason for us to leave it behind,” Neskia said dismissively.
“It had so much potential and wasted it.”

“Quite.”

“Where are we going?”

“Ellezelin. I trust our agents are close to recovering Araminta.”

“They are.”

The ship
slipped back into hyperspace, heading
away at a modest fifty-five light-years an hour. Behind it, the somber sphere
imprisoning the Sol system refracted the gentle starlight impinging on its
boundary with a cold shimmer reminiscent of a deep forest lake, guarding its
contents in perfect isolated darkness.

I
T WAS THE FIFTH TIME
Edeard had watched the
militia forces close in on the hidden valley. There had been a lot of mistakes
previously; ge-eagles had been spotted, fastfoxes mauled the first militiamen
over the lip, the bandit forces had fought back with a secret cache of weapons,
hothead officers didn’t quite follow orders, allowing the Gilmorn to rally his
people. Each time there had been too many deaths. Each time Edeard reset the
universe to the night before and attempted to mitigate the problem.

Last time he was sure he’d gotten it right, and then the bandit gang had
produced rapid-fire guns from a cache that he hadn’t found the first three
times. Even with third hands joined together to add extra strength to their
shielding, the troopers had been cut to shreds before Edeard himself could
reach them. So …

This time he had slipped unseen and unsensed through the valley for two
hours just after midnight. He’d destroyed the second lot of rapid-fire guns the
bandits had hidden and snatched away the ones belonging to guards after
rendering them unconscious. It was politically important that the militias
thought they alone had overcome the bandits; Edeard and Finitan wanted the
rapid-fire guns to vanish into legend. Now he stood on a small rise half a mile
from the valley as the predawn light slowly overwhelmed the nebulae. Buluku was
the first to vanish, its undulating stream of pale indigo fading away just
above the eastern horizon, as if the land had somehow opened to swallow it. Edeard
could well believe that. The valley that the bandits had chosen as their last
redoubt was a narrow crack in the undulating grasslands that made up the
southernmost part of Rulan province, lapping against the low mountains of
Gratham province, which rose in the distance. Not hard to imagine it as a
fissure slicing through the whole world.

As the scarlet-spiked glory of Odin’s Sea began to diminish far above, he
farsighted the troopers of the Pholas and Zelda regiment breaking cover from
the spinneys beyond the valley where they’d gathered during the night. They
were supported by provincial militiamen from Plax and Tives. The men moved
silently, like a black stream winding around the soft knolls and hummocks of
the grasslands, out of farsight from the sentries within the valley. Edeard
concentrated on subverting the ge-eagles gliding high above, insinuating his
own orders into their sharp, suspicious little minds. That left just the
fastfoxes. He was too far away to help with them. Brawny ge-wolves and fast
ge-hounds slunk forward, accompanying the marauder groups of sheriffs and
Wellsop rangers whose control over their genistars was second to none.

“Go,” Edeard’s directed longtalk urged Dinlay.

The Lillylight and Cobara regiment, along with militias from Fandine,
Nargol, and Obershire, emerged from their forward positions to the west of the
valley. It was the Nargol troopers and their unfettered eagerness who had been
the problem the second time around; since then Edeard had emphasized how
important it was to keep them moving along the planned route. Colonel Larose
had done a good job keeping the provincials in line ever since; ignoring their
muttered resentment about city folk lording it over the countryside.

With the assault under way, Edeard mounted a ge-horse that the Eggshaper
Guild had sculpted purely for speed. His ebony cloak swirled around him,
flowing across the saddle before rippling above the beast’s hide. Felax and
Marcol scrambled onto similar mounts on either side of him. He didn’t have to say
anything to them; his mind urged the ge-horse forward at a gallop, and the
young constables followed.

The three beasts thundering over the grassland in the cold silence of the
ebbing night sounded incredibly loud to Edeard, yet he knew they were too far from
the valley to be heard. Up in front of him the troopers were an unstoppable
Swarm as they converged on the valley.

Finally, the alarm was raised by the bandits. Those sentries still awake
shouted to their armed comrades for help, only to find them lying in a deep
unnatural slumber, their weapons gone. More shouts and frantic longtalk roused
the rest of the sleeping group.

So far, so exactly as before, and this time going according to plan.

Fastfoxes flittered silently along the valley with the speed of hurricane
clouds. The invading militias urged their ge-wolves on ahead. Along the top of
the valley, troopers fell to the ground, their pistols held over the edge.
Shots were fired. Ge-wolves and fastfoxes clashed head on, powerful animal
screams reverberating across the grasslands as gray light crept over the
dew-soaked ground.

The Pholas and Zelda regiment reached the far end of the valley and began
to follow their ge-wolves down into the deep narrow cleft. Dinlay and Argian
were close to the front, using their farsight to expose anyone with the
concealment ability. Most of the bandits could perform the trick. Edeard held
his breath, the memory of another deep gully on another night stirring in his
mind. This time would be different, he promised himself; this time he could
guarantee there would be no surprises.

Troopers along the top of the valley provided a thick covering fire for
their comrades sweeping forward below. As always, the Gilmorn gathered his
stalwarts together in a tall fortresslike outcrop of rock. They still had their
ordinary pistols and fired ruthlessly at the advancing troopers. Concealment
made it hard for anyone to return fire with any accuracy. Argian hurried
forward to assist the troopers closing in on the outcrop.

Edeard arrived at the head of the valley and dismounted. He refused to
rush forward even though it was what everyone was expecting. His farsight
observed troopers rounding up the bandits who had surrendered and isolating the
few who still resisted. Then it was just the Gilmorn and his cadre left
offering resistance. Dinlay and Larose moved the militiamen forward cautiously;
men wriggled on their bellies along small clefts in the land and dashed between
convenient boulders. Within ten minutes, the Gilmorn was completely surrounded.

As Edeard made his way along the stony floor of the valley, he passed
groups of smiling troopers hauling their captives along. Several were men from
the tribes that lived in the wildlands: beyond Rulan’s boundaries. They were
just as he’d encountered them all those years ago on the caravan back from
Witham: ringlet hair and bare chests caked in dark mud that was flaking off.
They glanced at the Waterwalker with sullen expressions, their minds tightly
shielded. In all the clashes over the last few years, Edeard had never seen one
of them wielding a rapid-fire gun; those weapons were possessed by the
Gilmorn’s people alone. He halted one of the tribesmen escorted by five wary
troopers, a man he guessed to be in his late fifties though with none of a city
dweller’s laxness about him; he had pale gray eyes that glared out of a face
that displayed all the anger and defiance his mind refused to show.

“Why?” Edeard asked simply. “Why did you join them?”

“They are strong. We benefit.”

“How? How do you benefit?”

The older tribesman gave Edeard a superior snort. He gestured around the
grasslands. “You are gone. Even now you will never return. This land will be
ours.”

“All right, I can see that. I can even understand how the killing and
destruction becomes a perverted addiction for some of you. But why these lands?
There are lands unclaimed to the west. Land with forests and herds to hunt. No
one even knows how much land. Why ours? You don’t farm. You don’t live in stone
houses.”

“Because you have it,” the tribesman said simply.

Edeard stared at him, knowing he’d never get a better answer.
Nor a more honest one
, he thought. He was looking for
complexity and purpose where there was none. It was the Gilmorn and his kind,
the remnants of Owain’s ruthless One Nation followers, who had intent. The
tribesmen were simply useful innocents who’d been duped into an allegiance they
had never fully comprehended.

He dismissed the escort with a curt wave of his hand, and the tribesman
was dragged off to the jail pens that were being established up on the
grasslands.

“We should get down there,” Marcol said eagerly. The young man’s farsight
was sweeping over the fortress outcrop, exposing the concealed bandits with
ease.

Edeard did his best not to grin. Marcol’s psychic abilities had developed
considerably since the day of banishment, almost as much as his sense of duty.
He was a devoted constable and utterly loyal to the Grand Council, yet there
was still some of the old Sampalok street boy in there. He was spoiling to join
the fight.

“Let the militias have their moment of glory,” Edeard said quietly. “This
has been a hard campaign. They deserve to be the ones ending it all.” That was
true enough. For eight months the forces of city and countryside had been
allied, chasing the Gilmorn and his remaining supporters across the provinces
farther and farther to the west until finally there was nowhere left to run.

“Politics,” Felax said with a disgusted grunt.

“You’re learning,” Edeard said. “Besides, you two have nothing to prove,
not after Overton Falls. I heard the daughters of those caravan families made
their appreciation clear enough.”

The two young constables looked at each other and shared a knowing smirk.

Down by the outcrop, Larose’s longtalk was delivering a sharp ultimatum
to the Gilmorn. They were outnumbered fifty to one and completely surrounded.
They had no food. Their ammunition was almost gone. There was no help coming.

Edeard wasn’t convinced that was quite the right thing to point out to a
merciless fanatic like the Gilmorn, though in truth, they’d never reached this
point of the assault before, so he didn’t know what would work.

They carried on down the valley, passing several dead fastfoxes and ge-wolves.
Edeard tried not to grimace at the brutally torn flesh of the animals. Argian
was sitting on a moss-covered boulder where the valley opened out, quietly
munching on a red apple. Several squads of militia were milling around, also
wanting in on the finale. Their corporals and sergeants were having a hard time
keeping them in line. Everyone quieted down as Edeard appeared.

“Will he surrender?” Edeard asked.

Argian shrugged and bit down hard. “He has nothing to lose. Who knows
what he’s thinking?”

“I see. Well, fortunately, we can wait. For as long as it takes.”

“Ah,” Marcol exclaimed. “They’re arguing.”

Argian gave the young constable a searching stare, then turned his
attention to the outcrop. There was indeed an argument spilling out from the
jagged rocks, a loud one, full of anger. Two men were confronting the Gilmorn,
telling him they were walking out to surrender to the militia. Edeard’s
farsight showed him the men turning away. The Gilmorn lifted his pistol and
brought it up to point at the back of one man’s head. Edeard’s third hand
slipped out and twisted the firing pin, bending it slightly out of alignment.
The Gilmorn pulled the trigger. There was a metallic click. The bullet didn’t
fire.

Marcol cleared his throat in a very pointed fashion.

Another argument broke out, even more heated than the first. Fists were
swung. Third hands attempted to heartsqueeze. Men started wrestling.

Larose gave the order to combine shields and move in.

Two minutes later it was all over.

There were militiamen perched on top of the rocky pinnacles, cheering
wildly and waving beer bottles above their heads. Whole regiments were spilling
over the site of the last fight, singing and embracing their comrades. Edeard
couldn’t help but smile as he walked among them, taking the occasional swig
from a proffered bottle, shaking hands, hugging older friends exuberantly. They
were glad to see the Waterwalker, who had led the campaign, but they were
prouder that they’d won the final battle themselves.

Colonel Larose had established his camp on the far side of the fortress
outcrop. Carts were drawn up in a large circle; long rows of tents were laid
out, ready to be put up. A big open-sided canvas marquee had already been
raised, with the cooks preparing a meal inside. Smoke from the cooking fires
was starting to saturate the still air. At the center of the camp, the field
headquarters tent was a drab khaki, guarded by alert senior troopers and a pack
of ge-hounds. Orderlies and runners were skipping in and out. Eleven regimental
flags fluttered weakly on top of their poles outside, representing the finest
of city and country.

The guards saluted Edeard as he went inside. Larose was sitting behind
the wooden trestle table that served as his desk while a flock of adjutants
hovered around with requests and queries. His drab green field uniform jacket
was open to the waist, revealing a stained gray shirt. Senior officers were
clustered at a long bench with all the administrative paraphernalia necessary
to move and orchestrate such a large body of men. Even though it had been only
a couple of hours since victory, orders and reports had begun to pile up.
Larose stood and embraced Edeard warmly.

“We did it,” Larose exclaimed. “By the Lady, we did it.”

The officers started to applaud. Edeard gave them a grateful nod.

“You should be very satisfied with your men,” Edeard told him, loud
enough for the other commanders to hear, especially those of the country
regiments. “They behaved impeccably.”

“That they did.” Larose grinned around generously. “All of them.”

“And you,” Edeard told the Colonel. “You should stand for election when
we return. The residents of Lillylight would appreciate a man representing them
who’s actually accomplished something outside the city.”

Larose gave a shrug that was close to bashful. “That would cause my
family’s senior members some surprise and satisfaction, I imagine.”