Ken MacLeod - Newton's Wake

About ten minutes after take-off, with the city already dropping away behind them, Armand’s voice came over the phones.

‘Shit,’ he said. ‘One of these big fuck-off ships has just landed beside the relic. Some of the occupants have emerged and politely announced themselves as the Knights of Enlightenment. The troops on site have been told to stand down by the Joint Chiefs, of course.’

‘Wise move,’ said Carlyle. ‘What are the Knights doing?’

Armand listened for a few more minutes.

‘Deploying around the relic,’ he said. ‘Being very polite and firm.’

‘That’s their style,’ Carlyle said.

‘Do you want to turn back?’

‘Not as long as there’s a chance I can make the gate.’

‘Still no word of its being open,’ Armand said.

‘Maybe I could sort of hang around with your folks, assuming they’re not being pushed right off the job, and take my chance if it comes.’

‘OK,’ said Armand. He laughed. ‘I want to meet these Knights of Enlightenment myself.’

The northward journey took a lot less time than its southern counterpart had done a couple of weeks earlier. Within an hour they had crossed the ocean and passed high above the ragged shore of North Continent.

This time Carlyle had a chance to observe the view, and to notice the bright domes of settlements or science stations in the drab, tundra-like landscape.

These became fewer as the hills got higher. Then in the far distance she saw the diamond spike of the relic and the black fleck on or just above the ground beside it. Air screamed as the jet flues swung forward and the craft decelerated, with a shudder on the way back down through the sound barrier.She felt herself pressing forward against the restraints. Evidently blowing off the shell would be a complete waste, given that there was no need to deploy the aircar units separately. Armand was talking to his people on the ground, evidently got clearance for landing, and banked the shell into a wide swing around the far side of the relic and the KE ship. As they lost altitude the bright specks of the company’s other aerial vehicles and the armour on the ground came into view; the aircraft a variety of bright colours, the tanks and artillery a dark mottled green, more she supposed from tradition than any effectiveness as camouflage.

The brown and green moorland was now just a couple of hundred metres below. The direction of the jet flues shifted, from forward to down, and the craft began to sink. At that point a blast of air came from above and threw the shell sideways like a leaf. Sky and ground changed places, over and over. Armand’s hands left the controls and grabbed the ejector handles above his shoulders. Whirled and buffetted, Carlyle tried to do the same, but there was simply no chance to eject. The craft’s automation regained control far faster than any human pilot could have done, and brought it into the last seconds of a level flight at zero feet. With a rending screech, the craft hit the ground and chewed a path across the hillside, bumping and lurching, and finally came to a halt that threw both occupants forward then back.

The suits took most of the impact. Armand blew off the canopies. Carlyle hauled herself out after him and slid to the ground. They were on a hillside about a kilometre from the relic. Armand lifted his visor. ‘If you can walk away,’ he said, ‘it’s a landing.’

They were both looking up. Glowing bolides streaked across the sky in all directions, their paths radiating from the zenith. A bang followed in seconds and went on and on.

‘Fuck,’ Carlyle said.

‘At a wild guess, I’d say that was a spaceship exploding.’

‘Yeah. What got us was the downblast of a space-to-space missile.

Doesn’t usually destroy the ship directly, but a near enough nuke makes the main drive blow within about a minute.’ She frowned. ‘It’s a known bug.’

‘Poor bastards.’ Armand shook his head. ‘But they’ll all have had backups, no?’

They had started walking down the hill.

‘If they’re fae our firm,’ said Carlyle. ‘No if they’re Knights.’

‘Don’t they have the tech?’

‘Oh, sure. They just don’t use it.’

‘Good heavens,’ said Armand. ‘Why not?’

Carlyle shrugged, picking her way over tussocks. ‘It’s a physics thing.

They believe we’re all coming back.’

‘Reincarnation?’ Armand sounded scornful.

‘Hell, no,’ Carlyle said. ‘Cyclic cosmos.’

Armand guffawed. ‘Cold comfort.’

She paused to let him catch up, and gave him an offended frown. ‘It’s true,’ she said. ‘It’s no a religion or anything. They proved it. We’re living forever the now. This is it. Eternity.’ She remembered an ancient recording of a woman singing: It all comes back, in time. I certainly intend to .

‘So why do you take backups,’ Armand asked, ‘if you believe that?’

She thought about it. ‘It saves time.’

T

he Knight who walked up the hill to meet them was the most aged-looking person Carlyle had ever seen. The skin of his face was like old leather. Life-extension was another thing the Knights didn’t do. Or rather, they kept it natural. With herbal teas and Tantric sex and such like they had pushed their average lifespan to about a century and a half. This guy was at least two-thirds of the way there. Spry as a sparrow with it, though.

He wore black cotton trousers and T-shirt. The temperature was just above freezing and the wind chill was hellish. He wasn’t shivering, and his bare arms weren’t even goose-pimpled. Biofeedback yoga and general machismo—the Knights were heavily into both.

‘Hello,’ he said. ‘The situation is under control.’

It always was, with the Knights.

‘I’m glad to hear it,’ said Armand. ‘What just happened above us?’

‘A most regrettable loss of an enemy ship,’ the old man said. His gaze took in the company logo on their suits; flicked to Carlyle’s still-closed visor. For a moment, he seemed to stare right through its reflective surface to scan her non-optimal bone structure, then he turned away and pointed.

‘Your company is regrouping over there.’

‘Thank you,’ said Armand. The old man walked on up the hill.

As they made their way over to the growing assembly of people and matériel, Carlyle felt her knees wobble and her cheeks burn. To be associated with the loss of the search engine and probably of her original team was bad enough. To have the loss of a crew and—especially—of a ship linked to her name was appalling. Not that any of it was her fault, exactly, but in her family responsibility tended to be seen as causal, not moral.

The loss would undermine confidence in her. People would be that much more reluctant to join her teams, and the family that much less likely to underwrite her schemes. Backups were a boon to the survivors, not to the dead, and starships were expensive. Horrendously expensive. The firm had about twenty of them. She had just witnessed five percent of the family fleet and maybe one tenth of one percent of its net assets fall out of the sky like fireworks.

From the fringe of the clamourous huddle into which Armand had plunged, Carlyle looked up the hill to the henge and saw that the company troops there too were clearing off, making way for the tiny black-clad figures of the Knights. She scanned the nearby vehicles and troops, figured on her chances of somehow using these assets to break through. They weren’t good. Perhaps if Armand’s forces were allowed to remain on site, she could inveigle herself into the confidence of the Knights… .

Armand pushed back through the crowd, waving and directing as he went.

‘We’re pulling out,’ he told her. He grimaced. ‘The Knights insist on it, and the Joint Chiefs recommend it.’