The Naked God — Faith

mechanisms forming a slowly expanding clump.

Three high-thrust solid rocket motors were clustered around the base of the life support capsule which contained the bridge; they ignited with only the briefest warning, thrusting the sphere clear of the cloud of technological detritus. Duchamp and the others were flung back into their acceleration couches, bodies straining against the fifteen-gee acceleration.

“My ship!” Andre screamed against the punishing force. The Villeneuve’s Revenge , the one last minuscule glint of hope for a post-crisis existence he had left, was unravelling around him, its million-fuseodollar components spinning off into the depths of the galaxy, transforming themselves into unsalvageable junk. Loving the ship more deeply than he did any woman, Duchamp forgave the eternal demands which it made for his money, its temperamental functions, its thirst for fuel and consumables; for in return it gave him a life above the ordinary. But it wasn’t quite fully paid for, and years ago he’d forsaken a comprehensive insurance policy with those legalized thieving anglo insurance companies in favour of trusting his own skill and financial acumen. His scream ended in a wretched juddering sob. This universe had just become worse than anything which the beyond promised.

Kingsley Pryor didn’t ignite the rockets on his own life support capsule. There was nowhere for him to escape to. The debris of the Villeneuve’s Revenge was churning heatedly now, agitated by the bridge’s life support capsule erupting from its centre. But it was still all sweeping towards Trafalgar, and carrying Kingsley along with it. He didn’t know exactly where he was; he couldn’t be bothered to access the rudimentary sensors surmounting the capsule. All he knew was that he’d done his best by the crew, and he wasn’t in Trafalgar where Capone wanted him to be. Nothing else mattered any more. The decision had been taken.

Floating alone in a cabin illuminated only by tiny yellow emergency lights, Kingsley datavised the off code to an implant in his abdomen. The little containment field generator represented the peak of Confederation technology; even so it pushed way beyond the kind of safety specifications normally used for handling antimatter. The ultra-specialist military lab in New California which manufactured it had neglected to include the standard failsafe capacity which even the most cheapskate black syndicates employed. Capone had simply decreed that he wanted a container defined by size alone. That’s what he got.

When the confinement field shut down, the globe of frozen anti-hydrogen touched the side of the container. Protons, electrons, anti-protons, and anti-electrons annihilated each other in a reaction that very, very briefly recreated the energy density conditions which used to exist inside the Big Bang. This time, it didn’t result in creation.

SD platform lasers were already picking off the gyrating chunks of equipment around the fringe of the debris cloud that had once been the Villeneuve’s Revenge . The bulk of the swarm was less than twenty-five kilometres from Trafalgar, on a course that would collide with one of the spherical counter- rotating spaceports. Ionized vapour from the disintegrating components fluoresced a pale blue from the energy beams stabbing through them, forming a seething bow-wave around the remaining pieces. It was as if a particularly insubstantial comet was shooting across space.

Kingsley Pryor’s life support capsule was twenty-three kilometres and eight seconds away from the spaceport when it happened. Another three seconds and the SD lasers would have targeted it, not that it would have made much difference. Capone had intended to do to Trafalgar what Quinn Dexter had done to Jesup; with the antimatter detonating in one of the biosphere caverns the asteroid would have been blown apart. Even if Kingsley didn’t cheat his way past the inevitable security checks and had to kamikaze in the spaceport, the damage would have been considerable, destroying the counter-rotating sphere, any ships docked, and possibly dislodging the asteroid from its orbit.

By switching off the confinement chamber outside Trafalgar, Kingsley would be reducing the damage considerably. Enough to salvage his conscience and allow him to return to New California claiming a successful mission. However, in physical terms, he wasn’t doing the Confederation Navy much of a favour. Unlike a fusion bomb, the antimatter explosion produced no relativistic plasma sphere, no particle blast wave; but the energy point which sprang into life had the strength to illuminate the planet’s nightside a hundred thousand kilometres below. The visible and infrared spectrum it emitted contained only a small percentage of the overall energy output. Its real power was concentrated in the gamma and X-ray spectrums.

The surrounding shoal of metal trash which had been the Villeneuve’s Revenge twinkled for a picosecond before evaporating into its sub-atomic constituents. Trafalgar proved somewhat more resilient. Its mottled grey and black rock gleamed brighter than the sun as the energy tsunami hammered against it. As the white light faded, the surface facing the blast continued to glow a deep crimson. Centrifugal force stirred the sluggish molten rock, sending it flowing out along the humps and crater ridges where it swelled into bulbous fast- growing stalactites. Town-sized heat exchangers and their ancillary equipment anchored to the rock crumpled, their composite components shattering like antique glass while the metal structures turned to liquid and dribbled away, scattering scarlet droplets across the stars.

Hundreds of starships were caught by the micro-nova burst. Adamist vessels were luckier, in that their bulky structure shielded the crews from the worst of the radiation. Their mechanical systems underwent catastrophic failure as the X-rays penetrated them, instantly turning them into flying wrecks, coughing out vapour like the Villeneuve’s Revenge . Scores of life support capsules hurtled clear of the dangerously radioactive hulks.

Exposed voidhawks suffered badly. The ships themselves died wretchedly as their cells’ integrity was decimated. The further they were from the detonation, the longer their misery was dragged out. Their crews in the thin-walled, exposed toroids were killed almost instantly.

Trafalgar’s spherical counter-rotating spaceport buckled like a beachside shack in a hurricane. The nulltherm foam coating its girders and tanks crisped to black and moulted away. Air in the pressurized sections was superheated by the radiation, expanding with explosive force, ripping every habitable section to shreds. Tanks ruptured. Fusion generators destabilised and flash vaporised.

The concussion was totally outside the load capacity of the spindle. With fusion generator plasma roaring out of the collapsing sphere, the slender gridwork started to bend. It snapped off just above the bearing and took flight, deflating into a flaccid carcass beneath the short-lived fireballs puffing open across its superficies.

A dozen datavised emergency situation alerts vibrated urgently inside Samual Aleksandrovich’s skull. He looked up at the staff officers conducting the daily strategy review. More worrying than the initial crop of alerts was three of them immediately failing as their processors crashed. Then the lights flickered.

Samual stared at the ceiling. “Bloody hell.” Information pouring into his mind confirmed there’d been an explosion outside the asteroid. But big enough to affect internal systems? Outside his panoramic window, the central biosphere’s axial light gantry was darkening as the civil generators powered down in response to losing their cooling conduits. Whole sections of the asteroid’s ultra-hardened communications net had gone off-line. Not a single external sensor remained active.

The office lighting and environmental systems switched to their back-up power cells. High-pitched whines, the daily background sound pervading the entire asteroid, began to deepen as pumps and fans shut down.

Seven marines in full body armour rushed into the office, a detachment of the First Admiral’s bodyguard. The captain in charge didn’t even bother to salute. “Sir, we are now in a C10 situation, please egress your secure command facility.”

A circular section of floor beside the desk was sinking down to reveal a chute that curved away out of sight. Flashing lights and sirens had begun to echo the datavised alarms. Thick metal shields were closing across the window. More marines were running along the corridor just outside the office, shouting instructions. Samual almost laughed at how close such dramatics came to being counter-productive. People needed to remain calm in such events, not have their fears accentuated. He considered refusing the earnest young captain’s directive; gut instinct, acting out the role of gruff lead-from-the-front commander. Trouble was, that kind of gesture was so totally impractical at his level. Preserving the authority of the command structure was essential in a crisis of this magnitude. Threats had to be countered swiftly, which only an uninterrupted chain of command could achieve.

Even as he hesitated, the floor trembled. They really were under attack! The concept was incredible. He stared at the cups on the table in astonishment as they started to jitter about, spilling tea.

“Of course,” he told the equally apprehensive marine captain.

Two of the marines jumped down the chute first, their magpulse rifles drawn ready. Samual followed them. As he skidded his way down along the broad spiral an assessment and correlation program went primary in