The words burned off into static, and then there came another voice, so faint and distant, it was like the wail of something drowning in the abyss.
“ Icarus. Icarus. Icarus. Icarus. ”
“What—” I cried; but as suddenly as it had begun, the voice grew silent. The luminous cone retracted into the ’file disk. Where he lay sprawled upon the floor, Aidan Harrow’s revenant stared up at me with sickly glowing eyes.
“You may be the only one with the strength and will to stop him, Margalis,” he whispered, and curled his hand in a final salute. “Farewell, old friend…Sky Pilot….”
I bent to touch him, drew back sharply. Flames leapt from the floor, flames and the smell of charred leather. There was a soft explosive sound, and a ball of smoke roiled toward me. I brought my hand protectively to my face. When I drew it away again, the flames were gone.
The viewing deck was empty. When I stopped to examine the floor, I found a small circle of ash where the ’file disk had been. As my finger stretched forth to touch it, it melted away like snow, and I stood back up in a daze.
“ There are records here in the ship’s library that will show you — look at them and learn. ”
“The library,” I whispered. I turned and fled the viewing deck, my heels clashing against the tiles, while behind me the blue-glazed eye of Earth gazed implacably upon the Izanagi.
The library was nearly as spacious as the viewing deck, with a great window running the length of one wall. Outside, stars burned and swirled in that dreamy waltz that accompanies the elÿon’s bursts of acceleration. I hardly gave them a look. I hurried to a carrel, throwing myself into the seat so quickly, I ripped its fabric with my metal hand.
“What would you like to research?” The pleasant voice of the ship’s librarian questioned me softly. In front of me appeared the generated image of a slight young man, clad in the simple black-and-gray suit of a Nipponian scholiast.
“All records of hostile maneuvers within the last six months.”
The figure rippled and faint dots of red and green imposed themselves upon his face. The library’s datafiles were deteriorating; the strain upon Lascar Franschii was starting to show. “Do you wish to review activity within the HORUS sectors or a particular region of Earth?”
I hesitated before deciding. I would look first upon the place where I had spent most of my career.
“The Archipelago.”
The scholiast nodded and the image blinked out—too quickly, another sign of the ship’s degrading systems. There was an instant when I might have imagined the soft click and buzz of the elÿon’s vast datafiles being accessed. Then the first icon appeared.
Before me an emerald plain wove into view, threads of turquoise and deep blue racing through it until the complete landscape shone in the library’s musty air. Beneath the ’filed image, glowing letters spelled out a name, latitude and longitude, and other coordinates. I gazed upon the Arafura Sea, its waters deceptively calm and utterly devoid of the landmarks that should have been there.
My voice was tight as I asked, “Where are the islands of the Archipelago? Where is Alor Setar? Where is Kalimantan?”
The scholiast’s reply hung calmly in the spaces above the wavering green ocean. “Alor Setar was destroyed by tsunami on the nineteenth of June, Old Solar Calendar.”
I counted back. It was the same day that the wave had swallowed Araboth. Not a week had passed since then. A terrible pressure began to build within my mind.
“Show me Sulawaya, then,” I ordered. “Sulawesi and Jawa.”
The ocean wrinkled, darkened to indigo as the image shifted. I saw a long line of blackened crags emerging from the water like knots of charred bone, some of them smoking as though racked by volcanic activity. Another string of letters and numerals appeared—
LRT 02° 10’ S—LONG 114° 44 E, CONFIG 9743 PRIOR STATUS: JAWA
“Where is this?” I asked with dread.
“Jawa,” the scholiast murmured.
I shook my head in disbelief. “But it’s gone. There’s nothing there.”
“The Ascendant Autocracy at Vancouver mistakenly believed the tsunami that destroyed their holdings at Araboth was the result of an Emirate attack. On twenty June o.s.c. they sent twenty thousand troops to attack the Emirate’s city of Tarabulus. Emirate troops retaliated with protonic weapons intervention directed at Jawa.”
The image flickered and changed to a close-up, empty turquoise waters flecked with gold and white beneath the remorseless sun. The glowing letters shifted until they spelled out another message.
LAT 04° 11’ S—LONG 107°30’ E CONFIG 9899 PRIOR STATUS: DJAKARTA, JAWA
It had been the Ascendant’s primary base in the Malayu Archipelago, one of the only remaining technopolies in the world.
“It’s gone,” I whispered. “How can it be gone?”
Once lush green mountains had risen from that sea, islands and glittering spans of bridges, the dark spires of refinery platforms and floating webs of agrivelts where the hydrapithecenes toiled. Now there was nothing; nothing but water, a single vast ocean encompassing the seas of Arafura and South China, Timor and Banda and Sulu.
They had all been destroyed. Sumatera, Jawa, Alor Setar, Kalimantan—all the thousand islands that had been spread across the ocean’s jeweled net like so many butterflies—all gone. Only a few score ragged promontories rose above the smooth blue surface. Black and molten orange beneath a faint haze of smoke and ash, they were all that remained of the system of hydrofarms and refineries that had been the Ascendants’ most valuable planetary holdings. The largest single population center in what remained of the civilized world had been reduced to steam and ash.
“ No! ”
My anguished shout rang through the chamber, setting off a small warning beacon by the door. I raged on heedlessly. How could they have done this? Who could have done this? Even the Habilis Emirate would not have deliberately destroyed such a rare hoard of resources; not even the Autocracy. But then I thought of Tarabulus, the beautiful and ancient heart of the Emirate. If it truly had been ravaged by Ascendant troops…
I knew how these lightning wars went. But the thought of that empty sea, of the horrible waste of lives and the precious hydrofarms, sickened me so that I sat in silence for a long time, staring blankly at the floor. Finally I raised my head and called out to the scholiast.
“More,” I whispered. “Let me see more.”
“Please be specific,” the scholiast’s voice rebuked me gently.
The clawed fingers of my left hand raked the top of the carrel. “The HORUS colonies,” I cried harshly. “Show me what became of the HORUS colonies.”
The ’filed image of the Archipelago radiated into random jots of emerald. An instant later a new ’file opened. It showed a whirlpool of black and ultramarine, with a date superimposed upon it.
JUNE 08, 2592, N.A.E. 73
At the whirlpool’s center a brilliantly shining torus tumbled in a languorous somersault. I could barely read the letters on its side—
HORUS/NASNA/CAMPBELL PRIME SERIES 0779988342
For a moment the torus hung there, no larger than my hand but seemingly as solid. Then, as silently as though it were some seed-heavy blossom scattered by the wind, the station burst. A speck of black at its center spread like spilled ink, as the shining outer rim of the structure stretched and bowed until finally it broke apart, flying soundlessly into the heavens. Campbell Prime had been destroyed. The holofile ended abruptly.
I clenched my fist and said, “NASNA Prime. Show me.” Flick. Another date; another silent maelstrom.
OCTOBER 31, 2591, N.A.E. 72
In the heart of this spiral the familiar struts and hourglass of the NASNA Prime Station slowly rotated. I could see the long silver tear that marked the main viewing deck, and imagined crimson-uniformed figures there, staring out into the void. I watched transfixed as one end of the hourglass distended. It bubbled outward, did not burst so much as disintegrate. Spars and beams of metal spilled out as the station cracked open like an egg, discharging its living humors. There was a blinding burst of light; then nothing.