Salvation Lost [British Ed.] by Peter F. Hamilton

Author:Peter F. Hamilton [Hamilton, Peter F.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan UK
Published: 2019-10-28T11:00:00+00:00

London

29th June 2204

There was another disagreement with Crina, this time about going outside onto the penthouse’s balcony, but eventually the bodyguard agreed, on condition of the carbon sheet being raised. By then Gwendoline had given up arguing – through sheer exhaustion, she told herself. Or maybe the way Horatio’s irritatingly superior smile just kept growing the whole time had something to do with it.

So the anti-sniper sheet slid up just outside the balcony rail, and they stepped out into the cool morning air as a shield-diffused dawn rose somewhere out beyond the miscreation that was the Connexion tower in Greenwich. And after all that fuss she couldn’t even tell the sheet was there, the carbon was so thin. But tough. Enough to stop any kinetic attack short of a kilogram railgun harpoon, along with a mid-power maser carbine. If someone was that determined to kill her, they’d likely succeed anyway.

She and Horatio had spent the night together, though it hadn’t all been the happy passion she’d wanted to banish her fear. First she’d accessed the feed from Kayli; the level of violence delivered by the warheads was shocking. They’d clung to each other under the duvet, watching the multiple explosions bloom in ultrafast sequence, eradicating every gram of human presence on the asteroid, then fracturing the rock itself. It was so overwhelming, so swift, it had shaken her confidence badly. That cool inner core which reassured her that, no matter how bad the invasion was, people would overcome – the ancient Blitz spirit in every Londoner’s DNA – all dissolved in that primeval burn of intense radiation.

‘We’re going to lose,’ she professed bleakly to Horatio.

Even his cheerful optimism had gone, flash-evaporated in nuclear hellfire. ‘What do they want?’ he asked in bewilderment. ‘Those nukes are strong enough to take out half a continent.’

‘Us. They want us to join them on their pilgrimage to their God at the End of Time. We either go with them or we die.’

‘That is one extreme religion.’

‘I suppose the longer it’s been around, the stronger its hold on the culture which spawned it.’

‘I thought education was the solution to religion. There’s no way you can have a society as advanced as the Olyix without universal education.’

‘Face it,’ she said, ‘we still have enough flat earthers and other nutters. Besides, I don’t think you can equate Olyix culture to ours. They don’t even have their original bodies any more.’ She paused, considering what she’d just said, and the source of the information. ‘Actually, that’s what they told us, so it’s probably bollocks as well. We clearly don’t know anything about their true nature.’

They waited, nestled together sweetly while the minutes counted down to a missile’s arrival at Yanat.

‘What exactly is he hoping to do?’ Horatio asked.

‘Callum? I’m not sure.’ Gwendoline used her family executive clearance to stream the images from Alpha Defence on the bedroom’s big screen. Privately, she also splashed the technical schematics across her tarsus lens.

The asteroid’s little maintenance and control station had been abandoned, Callum and Fang Yun evacuated, and its portal door back to Quoek shut down.

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