Cold Fusion - Lance Parkin [110]
‘You threaten us, we who are the lords of time?’
Medford turned to face the apparition. ‘You’ve psionic control over time? You can manipulate the Time Vortex with your mind?’
‘It is magic.’ Its finger scratched a rune in the air, and Medford was on his knees, gasping for breath. He could almost feel his heart missing beats and his lungs misfiring.
‘Advanced technology,’ he managed to gasp, nothing more.’
‘Magic,’ the ghost repeated. ‘You speak of nothing. You are nothing: a creature of shit and blood and dreaming.
You cannot comprehend what we are, you cannot stop what we are.’ It seemed oblivious to his distress, even though it was responsible.
‘This is your last chance to withdraw,’ the Provost-General coughed. ‘Leave now or be destroyed.’
‘Chimpanzee arrogance!’ the ghost said. ‘You cannot threaten me, Provost-General, you can hold no secrets from me.’
The ghost leant forward. Medford suddenly felt his mind open out and his memories unfurl. He could see the ghost study his thoughts, discarding those that did not interest it: his Asteroid Express PIN number: 8414; his childhood on the family farm on the slopes of Mount Bedford; the sickly-spice taste of Danbweldian wormcake; Jaltarra’s winning goal for Earth in the ’84 Worlds Cup from twenty-five metres; the reason his mother had chosen his forename; lying alongside Juno for the first time, her body as cool as a spring breeze. She was nineteen, five years his senior.
That was ignored, in favour of the military codes, the tactical information, the scientific and intelligence data.
Everything he knew of history, art and literature. Earth’s defences and those of Ponten and Oberon. The secrets of the Unitatus Guild, the meanings of the Bureau’s innermost ritual. The locations of every secret weapons research project in human space. The ghost took it all, yet hardly seemed interested in what it found.
Medford’s wrist computer bleeped once. The display was flashing 00:00:00. The Provost-General smiled, remembering.
‘No...’ the ghost said.
Twenty thousand kilometres out from the Icarus Skybase space was twisting. The darkness folded in on itself and began to pulse and seethe. Chinks of light appeared, great four-dimensional cracks in reality.
The Ark Royal was the first out of hyperspace. There had been a warship of that name for a millennium and a quarter, but the latest was by far the largest. A cylinder over three kilometres long from bow to stem, it bore few external features. The retro rockets began firing, the ion drives began to engage, allowing it to move in normal space. All along the flank of the Ark Royal hangar bays clanked open and missile batteries deployed. The first fighter squadrons were already spaceborne by the time the next few ships arrived.
These were perimeter defence craft, their hulls dull green barrels bristling with weapons. They came out of warp at the edge of the system, sketching in the boundary of the battlefield with trails of photon mines laid in five dimensions.
A dozen carriers came next. These were ugly ships, little more than slabs of grey metal. Even before they had fully slowed down, the ancillary vessels had begun to pour from the hangar bays: shuttle craft, tugs, workpods, tankers, messenger buoys and their fighter escorts.
Wave after wave of flat-sided cruisers and wide-bodied frigates were arriving, taking up carefully pre-planned positions. Medical and salvage ships brought up the rear.
The ether buzzed with comm signals as the battlecomputers talked to each other, agreeing on the topology of the warzone, relaying maps and stats to each