Peter Hamilton - The Evolutionary Void

“Shit!” Marius discarded the dream altogether and sent his starship hurtling toward the borderguard at thirty-seven gees. Weapons locked onto the garish nimbus. He opened fire.

No matter how hard he cursed, how fast his expanded mind activated infiltration packages, Gore knew it was coming. There was nothing he could do about it. His wild boast about Commonwealth webheads had proved vain and hollow, and everything in the galaxy was going to die because of it.

Unless-

“Shit. Go for it,” he ordered the Delivery Man. “Initialize the wormhole. Shove some fucking power my way. Do it. Do it now.”

He ordered the packages to activate, to grab control.

Too late. Out of the city’s subdued background murmurings Gore perceived that cool consciousness rising once again. It observed its environment with a host of strange senses.

“This is an act of hostility,” the elevation mechanism said. “You are trying to steal my fundamental nature. It is not for you and your kind, and with good reason.”

“Yeah. So you said. And as I told you, the Void is about to expand and wipe this star system from existence.” The dream showed him the big Firstlife in Sampalok, shaking its thick beefy body furiously as it tried to orient itself. Then Ilanthe appeared overhead. “Oh, God-fuck, no!” Gore entreated. “No, not her, not now.” The defeat was as strong as any physical blow, striking him to his knees in the middle of the plaza. All around him the glistening black strands of the infiltration web began to smolder, filling the air with thin acrid smoke. “You’re killing us,” he screamed into the night. “All I needed to do was show the Heart, that’s all, just show the fucker there’s an alternative, prove it can evolve.”

Tyzak was approaching him cautiously, stepping gingerly over the sputtering web.

“Got it,” the Delivery Man called. “Siphon’s activated. Wormhole established. We did it!”

“Leave,” Gore told him flatly. “Fly to a fresh galaxy, one that isn’t cursed like this one. Don’t let the universe forget us.”

The third borderguard imploded amid a searing flare of violet Cherenkov radiation. Broken strands from the concentric shells twirled away, venting thick sparkling gases at high velocity. Marius detected another five materializing out of their distinctive hyperspatial rents. He brought the ship about in a fast curve, chasing the debris that was expanding out of the last implosion. The trouble with combat this close to the star was the lack of mass for quantumbusters to work with.

Sensors tracked the three largest chunks of the shells, and he launched missiles at each of them. Diverted energy function quantumbusters activated, converting the tumbling mass to energy. Exotic distortions slammed into two of the borderguards as they were still exiting hyperspace, wrenching at the exotic pseudofabric. Unbearable contortions crushed the borderguards down to neutronium density. The wreckage immediately detonated out of its impossible compression state, saturating local spacetime with an inordinately hard neutron storm.

Seven energy beams burned across the force fields protecting Marius’s starship. His exovision brought up severe overload warnings. He fired another nine Hawking M-sinks, which the surviving bodyguards had no defense against. So far . He watched in fury as the attackers opened up small wormholes, which swallowed five of the M-sinks. Another barrage of energy beams found his starship. Missiles were heading in toward him at ninety gees, and he still hadn’t managed to knock out the Delivery Man’s ship.

Sensors reported a zero-width wormhole establishing itself between the star and the Anomine homeworld. The smartcore dismissed it as a weapon. Marius ordered an urgent review. The wormhole was originating from the mysterious object with which the Delivery Man’s ship had rendezvoused.

It had to be some kind of power system-whatever needed that level of power? The elevation mechanism! Marius knew it with absolute certainty. Gore had found some way to switch it on. He was going postphysical. It was the only thing left that could threaten Fusion.

Marius activated the ship’s ultradrive and flashed in toward the star. He emerged just above the swirling streamers of the photosphere, where energized atoms from a multitude of spots and flares simmered away into solar wind. Every force field warning turned critical as the starship received the full blast of the star’s radiation and heat. Marius fired two novabombs straight down, then jumped back into hyperspace.

Behind him the borderguards were massing above the photosphere. Eighteen of the giant machines had rushed out of hyperspace, firing enough weapons down after the novabombs to break open a moon. None of it was any use. The novabombs were designed to function amid the outer fringes of a star, whereas the borderguards’ weapons were just uselessly pumping more energy into the rampant solar furnace.

Thirty seconds before they detonated, Marius was already outside the Anomine system. The nova would eliminate the power station, then go on to wipe out the Anomine homeworld minutes later. Gore would never reach postphysical status now. The Accelerator objective was safe.

Edeard didn’t know who to give his attention to or even that it would do any good if he could decide. The astounding Firstlife was straightening itself, turning several small black membranes at the top of its trunk toward the humans as well as directing a formidable farsight at them.

Above the dome the Ilanthe thing was also observing them. It scared him how nonhuman it was. His farsight couldn’t begin to uncover its secrets, but the power it contained was evident. Whatever the Heart was, it seemed to be bending around Ilanthe’s glossy surface.

But it was Gore who now concerned him the most. The golden man was stumbling, dropping to his knees. The anguished keening his mind emitted was dreadful, as if his soul itself were being violated.

“Dad,” Justine was yelling frantically. “Dad, what is it? What’s happening?”

“It caught me,” Gore told her weakly. “The motherfucker found the infiltrator packages.”

“I could have told you the Anomine mechanism was obdurate,” Ilanthe said complacently.

The Firstlife took a step toward the humans, three of its feet slamming down on the surface of the square with a slap that Edeard could feel in his leg bones. “What is this place?” the Firstlife’s longtalk demanded. “What are you? You are not us.”

Inigo squared up to the imposing creature. “This is your future. You were re-created from the Void’s memory.”

The Firstlife’s farsight probed around again, its extraordinary reach allowing it to scan the city and delve down into a fair percentage of the warship’s main body. It also attempted to examine Ilanthe, who deflected it effortlessly.

“You are the omega?” it asked in surprise.

“No,” Inigo said. “We originated outside the Void.”

“How can that be? There is nothing outside, only dead matter.”

“Are you the creators? Did your species build this?”

“Yes.”

“We and many others have been pulled inside so you could exploit our rationality.”

“That is not so. You cannot exist unless the omega formed you.”

“We do exist, and the Void did not make us. The Void is killing us.”

“You do not understand your purpose. This is why I was brought back.” The Firstlife was uncertain.

“No. You can communicate with the Heart, the mind that envelops us. This is why-”