Peter Hamilton - Neutronium Alchemist - Conflict

Lost somewhere among the rising glory of light were two tiny sparkles produced by antimatter detonating inside both Organization frigates.

Lady Mac swept triumphantly across the terminator and into daylight, surfing at a hundred and fifty kilometres per second over the hurricane rivers of phosphorescence which flowed through the troposphere. An arrogant saffron dawn waxed behind her, far outshining the natural one ahead.

“Time to leave,” Joshua datavised. “You ready?”

“All yours, Josh.”

Joshua datavised his order into the flight computer. Zero-tau claimed the last three acceleration couches on the bridge. Lady Mac ’s antimatter drive ignited.

The starship accelerated away from the gas giant at forty-two gees.

• • •

Finally, the Alchemist had come to rest at the centre of the gas giant. Here was a universe of pressure unglimpsed except through speculative mathematical models. The heart of the gas giant was only slightly less dense than the neutronium itself. Yet the difference was there, permitting the inflow of matter to continue. The conversion reaction burned unabated. Pure alchemy.

Energy blazed outwards from the Alchemist, unable to escape. The abscess was spherical now, nature’s preferred geometry. A sphere at the heart of a sphere; dangerously tormented matter confined by the perfectly symmetrical pressure exerted by the mass of seventy-five thousand kilometres of hydrogen piled on top of it. This time there was no escape valve up through the weak, nonsymmetrical, semisolid layers. This time, all it could do was grow.

For six hundred seconds Lady Macbeth accelerated away from the mortally wounded gas giant. Behind her, the Alchemist’s trail of fragmented energy abscesses pumped up out of the darkside clouds, transient volcanoes of feculent gas rising higher than worlds. The planet began to develop its own billowing photosphere; a dark burgundy orb enclosed by a glowing azure halo. Its ebony moons sailed on indomitably through their new sea of lightning.

The starship’s multiple drive tubes cut out. Joshua’s zero-tau switched off, depositing him abruptly into free fall. Sensor images and flight data flashed straight into his brain. The planet’s death convulsions were as fascinating as they were deadly. It didn’t matter, they were over a hundred and eighty thousand kilometres from the disintegrating storm bands. Far enough to jump.

Deep beneath the benighted clouds, the central energy abscess had swollen to an intolerable size. The pressure it was exerting against the confining mass of the planet had almost reached equilibrium. Titanic fissures began to tear open.

An event horizon engulfed Lady Macbeth ’s fuselage.

With a timing that was the ultimate tribute to the precision of Mzu’s decades-old equations, the gas giant went nova.

• • •

The singularity surged into existence five hundred and eighty thousand kilometres above Mirchusko’s pale jade blizzards of ammonia-sulphur cirrus. Its event horizon blinked off to reveal the Lady Macbeth ’s dull silicon fuselage. Omnidirectional antennae were already broadcasting her CAB identification code. Given the reception they got on returning from Lalonde, Joshua wasn’t going to take any chances this time.

Sensor clusters telescoped outwards, passive elements scanning around, radars pulsing. The flight computer datavised a class three proximity alert.

“Charge the nodes,” Joshua ordered automatically. His mistake, he never expected to jump into trouble here. Now that might cost them badly.

The bridge lights dimmed fractionally as Dahybi initiated an emergency power up sequence. “Eight seconds,” he said.

The external sensor image flashed up in Joshua’s mind. At first he thought they were being targeted by electronic warfare pods. Space was flecked with small white motes. But the electronic sensors were the only ones not being taxed, the whole electromagnetic environment was eerily silent. The flight computer reported its radar track-while-scan function was approaching capacity overload as it designated multiple targets. Each of the white motes was being tagged by purple icons to indicate position and trajectory. Three were flashing red, approaching fast.

It wasn’t interference. Lady Mac had emerged just outside a massive particle storm unlike anything Joshua had ever seen before. The motes weren’t ice, nor rock.

“Jesus, what is this stuff?” He datavised a set of instructions into the flight computer. The standard sensor booms began to retreat, replaced by the smaller, tougher combat sensors. Discrimination and analysis programs went primary.

The debris was mostly metallic, melted and fused scraps no bigger than snowflakes. They were all radioactive.

“There’s been one brute of a fight here,” Sarha said. “This is all combat wasp wreckage. And there’s a lot of it. I think the swarm is about forty thousand kilometres in diameter. It’s dissipating, clearing from the centre.”

“No response to our identification signal,” Beaulieu said. “Tranquillity’s beacons are off air, I cannot locate a single artificial electromagnetic transmission. There isn’t even a ship’s beacon active.”

The centre of the debris storm had a coordinate Joshua didn’t even have to run a memory check on. Tranquillity’s orbital vector. Lady Mac ’s sensor suite revealed it to be a large empty zone. “It’s gone,” he said numbly. “They blew it up. Oh, Jesus, no. Ione. My kid. My kid was in there!”

“No, Joshua,” Sarha said firmly. “It hasn’t been destroyed. There isn’t nearly enough mass in the swarm to account for that.”

“Then where is it? Where the hell did it go?”

“I don’t know. There’s no trace of it, none at all.”