“It’s empty,” radioed Millennion Leader Mep Ahoo. “No Setebos.”
General bin Adee could see that himself on the images sent back from the twenty-six troopers’ nanotransmitters and suitcams. “Grid and search,” he commanded on the prime tactical band.
Reports were coming in now from all perimeter teams. The blue-ice itself was rotten—a fist could collapse an entire tunnel wall. The tunnels and corridors had already begun to collapse.
Mep Ahoo’s team returned to repellor flight and flew their grid search in the cavernous central place over the ancient black hole crater itself. They started high—making sure that nothing was hiding in one of the blue-ice balconies or high crevices—but soon were swooping low over the fumaroles and abandoned secondary nests.
“The main nest has collapsed,” reported Mep Ahoo on the common tactical channel. “Fallen into the old black hole crater. I’m sending images.”
“We see them,” replied General Beh bin Adee. “Is there any chance the Setebos creature could be in the black hole vent itself?”
“Negative, sir. We’re deep radaring the crater now and it goes all the way to magma. No side vents or caverns. I think it’s gone, sir.”
Cho Li’s voice came over the common band. “It confirms our theory that the quantum event of four days ago was an opening of a final Brane Hole in the blue-ice cathedral itself.”
“Let’s be sure,” said General Beh bin Adee. On the tactical command tightbeam, he sent to Mep Ahoo—Check all nests.
Affirmative.
Six rockvecs from Mep Ahoo’s primary assault force checked the collapsed ruins of Setebos’s central nest, then fanned out, repelloring above the collapsing cathedral floor to look at each decaying fumarole and sagging nest.
Suddenly there was a cry from one of the perimeter teams that had just penetrated to the central dome. “Something written here, sir.”
Half a dozen other troopers, including Millennion Leader Mep Ahoo, converged on the point high on the south wall of the dome. There was a terrace there where the largest corridor entered the dome, and in the wall of the dome where the corridor widened into the so-called cathedral, something or someone had written in the blue ice, using what appeared to be fingernails or claws—Thinketh, the Quiet comes. His dam holds that the Quiet made all things which Setebos vexes only, but He holds not so. Who made them weak, meant weakness He might vex. But thinketh, why then is Setebos here then vexed to flight? Thinketh, can Strength ever be vexed to Flight by Weakness? Thinketh, is He the only One after all? The Quiet comes.
“Caliban,” said Prime Integrator Asteague/Che from the Queen Mab in its new geosynchronous orbit.
“Sir, tunnels and caverns all checked and reported empty,” came a Centurion Leader’s report on the common tactical channel.
“Very good,” said General Beh bin Adee. “Prepare to use the thermite charges to melt the whole blue-ice complex down to the original Paris Crater ruins. Make sure none of the original structures will be damaged. We’ll search them next.”
Something here, said Mep Ahoo on the tactical tightbeam. The images flowing into the dropship monitors showed the troopers’ chest searchlights falling on a tumbled fumarole nest. All of the eggs in that nest had burst open or collapsed inward… all except one. The Millennion Leader repellored down, crouched next to the egg, set his black-gloved hands on the thing, then set his head against it, actually listening.
I think there’s something still alive in here, sir, reported Mep Ahoo. “Orders?”
Stand by, barked General Beh bin Adee. On his tightbeam to the Queen Mab, he said, Orders?
“Stand by,” said the bridge officer speaking for the Prime Integrators.
Finally Prime Integrator Asteageu/Che came on the line. “What is your advice, General?”
“Burn it. Burn everything there… twice.”
“Thank you, General. One second, please.”
There was a silence broken only by slight static. Bin Adee could hear the breathing of his three hundred and ten troopers over their suit microphones.
“We would like the egg to be collected,” Prime Integrator Asteague/Che said at last. “Use one of the stasis-cubes if feasible. Hornet Nine should shuttle it up. Have Millennion Leader Mep Ahoo stay with the egg on Hornet Nine. We shall use the Queen Mab itself as a quarantine laboratory. The Mab has divested itself of all weapons and fissionable material… the stealthed attack cruisers will monitor our study of the egg.”
General Beh bin Adee was silent a few seconds and then said, “Very well.” He opened the tightbeam to Millennion Leader Mep Ahoo and relayed the orders. The team in the blue-ice cathedral already had a stasis-cube ready.
Mep Ahoo sent, Are you sure about this, sir? We know from Ada and the Ardis survivors what their Setebos baby was capable of. Even the unhatched egg had some power. I doubt if Setebos left one viable egg behind by accident.
“Implement the orders,” said General Beh bin Adee on the common tactical band. Then he opened his private tightbeam to Mep Ahoo and sent—“And good luck, son.”
90
Six months after the Fall of Ilium, on the Ninth of Av:
Daeman was in charge of the raid on Jerusalem. It had been carefully planned.
One hundred fully functioned old-style humans freefaxed in at the same second, arriving three minutes before four moravec hornets carrying a hundred more volunteers from Ardis and other survivor-communities. The moravec soldiers had offered their services for this raid months earlier, but Daeman had vowed a year ago that he would free the old-style humans locked in Jerusalem’s blue beam—all of Savi’s ancient friends and Jewish relatives—and he still felt it was a human responsibility to do so. They had, however, accepted the long-term loan of combat suits, repellor backpacks, impact armor, and energy weapons. The hundred men and women in the hornets—piloted by moravecs who would not otherwise join the fight—were bringing in the weapons too heavy to carry in during freefax.
It had taken Daeman and his team—humans and moravecs alike—more than three weeks to check and double-check the specific GPS coordinates of the old city streets, avenues, plazas, and junctions down to the inch in order to plot the hundred freefax arrival areas and designated landing sites for the hornets.
They waited until August, until the Jewish holiday of the Ninth of Av. Daeman and his volunteers freefaxed in ten minutes after sunset, when the blue beam was at its brightest.
As far as the Queen Mab’s surveillance and aerial reconnaissance could tell them, Jerusalem was unique of all places on Earth in that it was inhabited by both voynix and calibani. In the Old City, which was their target tonight, the voynix occupied the streets north and northwest of the Temple Mount, in areas roughly equivalent to the ancient Muslim and Christian Quarters, and the calibani filled the tight streets and buildings to the southwest of the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aksa Mosque in areas once called the Jewish Quarter and the Armenian Quarter.
From the spy images—including deep radar—they estimated there were about twenty thousand combined voynix and calibani in Jerusalem.
“Hundred to one odds,” Greogi had said with a shrug. “We’ve had worse.”