Neutronium Alchemist - Consolidation

He gave an account of what had happened on Atlantis, followed by the prйcis which was Laton’s legacy. When he finished, the affinity band was silent for several moments.

I will call for a general Consensus,eden said. the habitat’s mental voice was uncharacteristically studious.

Relief mingled with a curious frisson of worry among Ruben’s thoughts. At least the burden which Oenone ’s crew had carried by themselves during the flight was to be shared and mitigated—the fundamental psychology of Edenism. But what amounted to the habitat’s shock at the revelation of souls returning to possess the living was deeply unsettling. Eden had been germinated in 2075, making it the oldest living entity in the Confederation. If anything had the requisite endowment of wisdom to withstand such news then surely it must be the ancient habitat.

Disquieted by the habitat’s response, and chiding himself for expecting miracles, Ruben settled back in the acceleration couch and used the voidhawk’s sensor blisters to observe their approach flight. They were already twenty-five thousand kilometres from Europa, curving gently around its northern hemisphere. The moon’s ice mantle glinted a grizzled oyster as distant sunlight skittered over its smooth surface, throwing off the occasional dazzling mirror-flash from an impact crater.

Behind the moon, Jupiter occluded half of the universe. They were close enough that the polar regions were invisible, distilling the planet to a simple flat barrier of enraged orange and white clouds. The gas giant was in one of its more active phases. Vast hurricane storm-spots geysered through the upper cloud bands, swirling mushroom formations bringing with them a multitude of darker contaminates from the lower levels. Colours fought like armies along frenzied boundaries of intricate curlicues, never winning, never losing. There was too much chaos for any one pattern or shade to gain the ultimate triumph of stability. Even the great spots, of which there were now three, had lifetimes measurable in mere millennia. But for raw spectacle they were unmatched. After five centuries of interstellar exploration, Jupiter remained one of the largest gas giants ever catalogued, honouring its archaic title as the father of gods.

A hundred thousand kilometres in from Europa, the habitats formed their own unique constellation around their lord, drinking down its magnetosphere energy, bathing in the tempestuous particle winds, listening to the wild chants of its radio voice, and watching the ever-changing panorama of the clouds. They could never live anywhere else but above such worlds; only the magnetic flux spun out by gas giants could generate the power levels necessary to sustain life within their dusky-crimson polyp shells. There were four thousand two hundred and fifty mature habitats in Jupiter orbit, nurturing a total Edenist population of over nine billion individuals. The second largest civilization in the Confederation—in numerical terms. Only Earth with its guesstimated population of thirty- five billion was bigger. But the standard of civilization, in both economic and cultural terms, was peerless. Jupiter’s citizens had no underclass, no ignorance, no poverty, and no misfits, barring the one-in-a-million Serpent who rejected Edenism in its entirety.

The reason for such enviable social fortune was Jupiter itself. To build such a society, even with affinity- enhancing psychological stability, and bitek alleviating a great many mundane physical problems, required vast wealth. It came from helium3 , the principal fusion fuel used throughout the Confederation.

In comparison with other fuels, a mix of He3 and deuterium produced one of the cleanest fusion reactions possible, resulting mainly in charged helium with an almost zero neutron emission. Such an end product meant that the generator systems needed little shielding, making them cheaper to build. Superenergized helium was also an ideal space drive.

The Confederation societies were heavily dependent on this form of cheap, low-pollution fusion to maintain their socioeconomic index. Fortunately deuterium existed in massive quantities; a common isotope of hydrogen, it could be extracted from any sea or glacial asteroid. He3 , however, was extremely rare in nature. The operation to mine it from Jupiter began in 2062 when the then Jovian Sky Power Corporation dropped its first aerostat into the atmosphere to extract the elusive isotope in commercial quantities. There were only minute amounts present, but minute is a relative term in the context of a gas giant.

It was that one tentative high-risk operation which had transformed itself, via political revolution, religious intolerance, and bitek revelation into Edenism. And Edenists continued to mine He3 in every colonized star system which had a gas giant (with the notable exception of Kulu and its Principalities), although cloudscoops had replaced aerostats long ago as the actual method of collection. It was the greatest industrial enterprise in existence, and also the largest monopoly. And with the format for developing stage one colony worlds now institutionalized, it looked set to remain so.

Yet as any student of ekistics could have predicted, it was Jupiter which remained the economic heart of Edenism. For it was Jupiter which supplied the single largest consumer of He3 : Earth and its O’Neill Halo. Such a market required a huge mining operation, as well as its associated support infrastructure; and on top of that came their own massive energy requirements.

Hundreds of industrial stations flocked around every habitat, varying in size from ten-kilometre-diameter asteroidal mineral refineries to tiny microgee research laboratories. Tens of thousands of spaceships congested local space, importing and exporting every commodity known to the human and xenoc races of the Confederation—their assigned flight vectors weaving a sluggish, ephemeral DNA coil around the five-hundred-and- fifty-thousand-kilometre orbital band.

By the time Oenone was two thousand kilometres away from Kristata, the habitat was becoming visible to its optical sensors. It shone weakly of its own accord, a miniature galaxy with long, thin spiral arms. The habitat itself formed the glowing core of the nebula, a cylinder forty-five kilometres long, rotating gently inside a corona of Saint Elmo’s fire sparked by the agitated particle winds splashing across its shell. Industrial stations glimmered around it, static flashing in crazed patterns over external girders and panels, their metallic structures more susceptible to the ionic squalls than bitek polyp. Fusion drives formed the spiral arms, Adamist starships and inter-orbit craft arriving and departing from the habitat’s globe-shaped counter-rotating spaceport.

A priority flight path had been cleared through the other ships, allowing Oenone to race past them towards the docking ledges ringing Kristata’s northern endcap, although the starship was actually decelerating now, pushing seven gees. Ruben observed the habitat expand rapidly, its central band of starscrapers coming into focus. It was virtually the only aspect of the external vista which had changed after travelling a hundred thousand kilometres from their swallow emergence point. Jupiter remained exactly the same. He couldn’t even tell if they were closer to the gas giant or not, there were no valid reference points. It seemed as though Oenone were flying between two flat plains, one comprised of ginger and white clouds, the other a midnight sky.

They swept around the counter-rotating spaceport and headed in for the northern endcap. The violet haze of glowing particles was murkier here, disrupted by slithering waves of darkness as the energized wind broke and churned against the four concentric docking ledge rings. Oenone experienced a prickle of static across its blue polyp hull as it slipped over the innermost ledge at a shallow tangent; for a moment the tattered discharge mimicked the purple web pattern veining its hull surface. Then the bulky voidhawk was hovering directly above a docking pedestal, slowly twisting around until the feed tubes were aligned correctly. It settled on the pedestal with all the fuss of a falling autumn leaf.

A convoy of service vehicles rolled towards it. The ambulance was the first to reach the rim of the saucer- shaped hull, its long airlock tube snaking out to mate with the crew toroid. Cacus was still discussing Syrinx’s status with the medical team as the zero-tau pod containing her body was rolled into the ambulance.

Ruben realized Oenone was hungrily ingesting nutrient fluid from the pedestal tubes. How are you?he asked the voidhawk belatedly.

I am glad the flight is over. Syrinx can begin to heal now. Kristata says all the damage can be repaired. Many doctors are part of its multiplicity. I believe what it says.

Yes, she’ll heal. And we can help. Knowing you are loved is a great part of any cure.

Thank you, Ruben. I am glad you are my friend, and hers.

Rising from his acceleration couch, Ruben felt a flush of sentiment and admiration at the voidhawk’s guileless faith. Sometimes its simple directness was like a child’s honesty.

Edwin and Serina were busying themselves powering down the crew toroid’s flight systems, and