Peter Hamilton - The Evolutionary Void

“I’ll talk to the Skylords,” Araminta-two said earnestly. “I’ll fix this. The pilgrimage fleet will land on Querencia. They’ll be safe.”

He nodded, grimacing. “Thank you.”

Darraklan was giving Araminta a curious look as agitation built amid his thoughts. She realized that some suggestion of Aaron might have escaped from her shield.

“Dreamer?” It was almost a plea. Like all of them, he’d invested everything he had in her.

“It’s all right,” Araminta said, and held out her hand for him to touch. “I will talk to the Skylords. I will get us to Makkathran.” She faced the front of the observation deck again, focusing on the bereaved Skylords. “We seek fulfillment,” she told them calmly. “We seek guidance.”

Everything was calm. That wasn’t good.

The Delivery Man wanted some kind of evidence of the unimaginable nuclear hell that raged barely twenty meters from where he was sitting in the Last Throw ’s cabin.

“This is really disturbing you, isn’t it?” Gore said over the TD channel. “Your emotions are hyping up the gaiafield. Why don’t you play some soothing music.”

“FUCK OFF.”

And still the Last Throw remained perfectly still. The Delivery Man desperately needed proof that he was actually descending through the photosphere of a midrange star, not that size truly mattered given the circumstances. Some shaking would be nice. Maybe the odd creak of the stress structure. And heat. There really, really ought to be an unpleasant amount of heat in the cabin.

There wasn’t a chance of that. The super-reinforced force fields cocooning the starship would work or they wouldn’t. There was no little margin for error that he could get through by gritting his teeth and heroically enduring some hardship. For all the difference it would make, he could quite easily be taking a comforting spore shower or maybe a little snooze in his sleep compartment. Oh, yes, that’s really going to happen .

The Last Throw was navigating by hysradar alone. None of its other sensors would be of the slightest use. They couldn’t even protrude through the ultrasilver one-hundred-percent-reflective surface of the outermost force field. Nothing material could survive the photosphere plasma.

So … hysradar it was. The exovision display showed the macrohurricanes of the photosphere rampaging around him, particle gales so large and fearsome that their size actually made their surges and twists predictable. The smartcore could track and predict the impact vectors of the magnetosphere squalls and granulation eruptions braking around them, allowing the ingrav and regrav units to compensate, keeping them on course.

They were driving down vertically, forcing through the barrage of escaping plasma toward the siphon-now three thousand kilometers below Last Throw , submerged within the convection zone, where the temperature spiked up past two million degrees Celsius, with a density just over ten percent that of water. And life was going to get extremely dangerous, because as Gore had gleefully remarked, the photosphere was just the warm-up. The Delivery Man still didn’t know what to make of that sense of humor.

His one talisman was the Stardiver program, which had notched up some success over the centuries. Not that Stardiver probes were the most regular missions launched by the Greater Commonwealth Astronomical Agency. The hyperspace-spliced shielding perfected for them over eight hundred years hardly guaranteed success once the convection zone was entered.

The Delivery Man would have liked a few test flights first, each one dipping a little deeper, scientifically analyzing the results, seeing how the modified and expanded force field generators performed. Power consumption. Energy tolerance. Pressure resistance. Hyperspace shunts. But no …

“It either works or it doesn’t,” Gore had said. “There’s no halfway here.”

That didn’t mean one couldn’t be prudent. It wasn’t an argument the Delivery Man even bothered with. Besides, even he acknowledged that it wouldn’t do to pique the curiosity of the ship that had followed them. No Accelerator agent would ever permit any endeavor that might halt Ilanthe’s attempt to Fuse with the Void.

Two and a half thousand kilometers.

The Delivery Man had launched five hours after Justine’s last dream, and he hadn’t worked out what was so incredibly funny about the Lady’s statue. Gore-naturally!-had smirked and gone: “Well, who’d have guessed?” So they both knew who she was, some figure from ancient history, no doubt.

“How’s your infiltration going?” the Delivery Man asked.

“Everything’s in position,” Gore replied. “I won’t be starting the actual physical process until you’ve established command over the siphon.”

“What does Tyzak make of it all?”

“It’s just another sensor system to him.”

“We could maybe tell him the truth.”

“Sonny, we’re doing what we have to so we can protect our species-and his. He does what he has to do to guarantee his way of life. This is not a diplomatic negotiation so that we can find common ground. Both of us are genetically wired to be what we are. And right now there is no common purpose. That’s a fucking great shame, but it’s the way it is.”

“I know. I suppose I was hoping that meeting Justine might make him change his mind. If he could just understand what it is we’re all facing.”

“That’s the thing; he does understand. But that doesn’t mean he can change, not to the degree we need and certainly not in the time frame we have.”

“I know. Are you really not going to tell me who the Lady is?”

“It’s a complete irrelevance to this situation; besides, it keeps you distracted.”

“Yeah, right.” The Last Throw was now three hundred kilometers above the surface of the convection zone. Energy usage was growing as the drives fought to keep the ship stable against the monstrous tides of plasma streaking along the quivering flux lines. There was also the problem of the star’s own gravity. Five additional ingrav units had been included in the modification whose sole purpose was to negate that awesome crushing force. They were operating right at their maximum loading. If one of them glitched for even a second, he’d be squashed into a molecule-thick puddle of blood and flesh across the decking.

“Here it comes.” The Delivery Man braced himself as Last Throw approached the convection zone. There was no clean defining edge between the two. The photosphere simply grew hotter, with a corresponding shift in density.

The Last Throw ’s ultradrive came on as the temperature rose from the relative cool of the photosphere shunting excess energy from the force fields away into hyperspace, a flow rate that was increasing at a nearly exponential rate. The Stardiver project engineers had soon learned that combining the force field energy dissipation function with an exotic component was the only way to deal with such extraordinary temperature loading.

“It’s holding,” the Delivery Man said in surprise as the starship began to descend through the convection zone. Now the biggest danger lay with the bubblelike granulations that bloomed thousands of kilometers across almost without warning and raced for the photosphere. One of the primary mission objectives for Stardiver probes was to study the factors that contributed to their gestation. Even now, with centuries of research and observation, that prediction was a very inexact science.

“Good man,” Gore replied levelly. “Keep it coming.”

“Right.” The Delivery Man was shaking now. He wiped a hand across his forehead, dismayed to find out how much sweat was forming there, then ordered his biononics to initiate an adrenaline suppressor. He had to keep a clear head, and fear was degrading his ability to think straight. Yeah, as if staying sober and alert is going to help . One flaw in a system, one dodgy component, a single poorly written line of code, and it would be over in microseconds. At least I’ll never know. Until I get re-lifed. Except I won’t get re-lifed because according to Gore, this is the galaxy’s last chance. Oh, shit. I miss the kids .