Endymion

11

Precisely two hours before the child is scheduled to emerge from the Sphinx, an alarm sounds in Father Captain de Soya’s command skimmer.

“Airborne contact, bearing one-seven-two, northbound, speed two-seven-four klicks, altitude four meters,” comes the voice of the COP defense-perimeter controller from the C3-ship six hundred kilometers above. “Distance to intruder, five hundred seventy klicks.”

“Four meters?” says de Soya, looking at Commander Barnes-Avne where she sits across from him at the CIC console amidships in the skimmer.

“Trying to come in low and slow under detection,” says the Commander. She is a small woman with pale skin and red hair, but very little of either skin or hair is visible under the combat headgear she wears. In the three weeks de Soya has known the Commander, he has not seen her smile. “Tactical visor,” she says. Her own visor is in place. De Soya lowers his.

The blip is near the southern tip of Equus, moving north from the coast. “Why didn’t we see it before?” he asks.

“Could have just launched,” says Barnes-Avne. She is checking combat assets within her tactical display. After the first difficult hour in which de Soya had to present the papal diskey to convince her that command of the Pax’s most elite brigades was to be handed over to a mere ship’s captain, Barnes-Avne has shown total cooperation. Of course, de Soya has left the minute-to-minute operation to her. Many of the Swiss Guard Brigade leaders believe de Soya to be a mere papal liaison. De Soya does not care. The child is his concern, the girl, and as long as the groundforce is being well commanded, the details are of little concern.

“No visual,” says the Commander. “Dust storm down there. It’ll be here before S-hour.”

“S-hour” is what the troops have been calling the opening of the Sphinx for months now. Only a few officers among them know that a child has been the focus of all this firepower. Swiss Guards do not grumble, but few could appreciate such a provincial posting, so far from the action, in such sandy and uncomfortable surroundings.

“Contact remains northbound, one-seven-two, velocity now two-five-nine klicks, altitude three meters,” says the C3 controller. “Distance five hundred seventy kilometers.”

“Time to bring it down,” says Commander Barnes-Avne on the command channel limited to her and de Soya. “Recommendations?”

De Soya glances up. The skimmer is banking to the south. Outside the mantis-eye blisters, the horizon tilts and the bizarre Time Tombs of Hyperion pass a thousand meters beneath them. The sky to the south is a dull brown-and-yellow band. “Lance it from orbit?” he says.

Barnes-Avne nods but says, “You’re familiar with the torchships’ work. Let’s put a squad on it.” With her god-glove she touches red pips at the southern tip of the defensive perimeter. “Sergeant Gregorius?” She has switched to the tactical-channel tightbeam.

“Commander?” The sergeant’s voice is deep and graveled.

“You’re monitoring the bogey?”

“Affirmative, Commander.”

“Intercept it, identify it, and destroy it, Sergeant.”

“Affirmative, Commander.”

De Soya watches as the C3 cameras zoom toward the southern desert. Five human forms suddenly appear rising from the dunes, their chameleon polymer fading as they rise above dust cloud. On a normal world they would be flying by EM repulsors; on Hyperion they wear the bulkier reaction paks. The five fan out so that several hundred meters separate them and hurtle southward into the dust cloud.

“IR,” says Barnes-Avne, and the visual shifts to the infrared to follow them through the thickening cloud. “Illuminate target,” she says. The image shifts south, but the target is only a heat blur.

“Small,” says the Commander.

“Plane?” Father Captain de Soya is used to spaceborne tactical displays.

“Too small, unless it’s some sort of motorized paraglider,” says Barnes-Avne. There is absolutely no stress in her voice.

De Soya looks down as the skimmer passes over the south end of the Valley of the Time Tombs and accelerates. The dust storm is a gold-brown band along the horizon ahead of them.

“Distance to intercept one hundred eighty klicks,” comes Sergeant Gregorius’s laconic voice. De Soya’s visor is slaved to the Commander’s, and they are seeing what the Swiss Guard sergeant sees—nothing. The squad of troops is flying on instruments through blowing sand so thick that the air is as dark as night around them.

“Reaction paks are heating up,” comes another calm voice. De Soya checks the readout. It is Corporal Kee. “Sand’s foulin’ up the intakes,” continues the corporal.

De Soya looks through his visor at Commander Barnes-Avne. He knows she has a tough choice to make—another minute in that dust cloud could send one or more of her troops falling to their deaths; failure to identify the bogey could lead to trouble later.

“Sergeant Gregorius,” she says, her voice still rock calm, “take out the intruder now.”

There is the briefest of pauses on the comline. “Commander, we can hang in here a few more…” begins the sergeant. De Soya can hear the howl of the dust storm over the man’s voice.

“Take it out now, Sergeant,” says Barnes-Avne.

“Affirmative.”

De Soya switches to the wide-range tactical and looks up to see the Commander watching him. “You think this might be a feint?” she says. “A distraction to pull us away so that the real intruder can infiltrate elsewhere?”

“Could be,” says de Soya. He sees from the display that the Commander has raised the alert all along the perimeter to Level Five. A Level Six alert is combat.

“Let’s see,” she says, just as Gregorius’s troops fire.

The dust storm is a rolling cauldron of sand and electricity. At 175 kilometers, their energy weapons are unreliable. Gregorius chooses a steel rain dart and launches it himself. The dart accelerates to Mach 6. The bogey does not divert from its path.

“No sensors, I think,” says Barnes-Avne. “It’s flying blind. Programmed.”

The dart passes over the heat target and detonates at a distance of thirty meters, the shaped charge propelling the twenty thousand flechettes directly downward into the intruder’s path.

“Contact down,” says the C3 controller at the same second that Sergeant Gregorius reports, “Got him.”

“Find and identify,” says the Commander. Their skimmer has banked back toward the Valley.

De Soya glances through the visor display. She has taken the kill at a distance but is not removing the troops from the storm.

“Affirmative,” says the sergeant, and the storm is wild enough to add static to a tightbeam.

The skimmer flies low over the valley, and de Soya identifies the tombs for the thousandth time: here, in reverse order from the usual pilgrims’ approach—although there have been no pilgrims for more than three centuries—comes first the Shrike Palace, farther south than the others, its barbed and serrated buttresses reminiscent of the creature that has not been seen here since the days of the pilgrims; then the more subtle Cave Tombs—three in all—their entrances carved out of the pink stone of the canyon wall; then the huge centrally placed Crystal Monolith; then the Obelisk; then the Jade Tomb; and finally the intricately carved Sphinx with sealed door and outflung wings.

De Soya glances at his chronometer.

“One hour and fifty-six minutes,” says Commander Barnes-Avne.

Father Captain de Soya chews his lip. The cordon of Swiss Guard troops is in place around the Sphinx—has been in place for months. Farther out, more troops are placed in a broader perimeter. Each tomb has its detail of waiting soldiers, just in case the prophecy might have been mistaken. Beyond the Valley, more troops. Above them, the torchships and command ship keep watch. At the entrance to the Valley, de Soya’s private dropship awaits, its engines already powered up, ready for immediate liftoff as soon as the sedated child is aboard. Two thousand klicks above, the archangel-class courier ship Raphael waits with its child-sized acceleration couch.

First, though, de Soya knows, the girl whose name might be Aenea must receive the sacrament of the cruciform. This will happen at the chapel in the torchship St. Bonaventure in orbit, moments before the sleeping child is transferred to the courier ship. Three days after that, she will be resurrected on Pacem and delivered to the Pax authorities.

Father Captain de Soya licks his dry lips. He is as worried that an innocent child will be hurt as he is that something will go wrong in the detention. He cannot imagine how a child—even a child from the past, one who has communicated with the TechnoCore—can be a threat to the far-flung Pax or the Holy Church.

Father Captain de Soya throttles back his thoughts; it is not his place to imagine. It is his place to carry out orders and serve his superiors, and through them, to serve the Church and Jesus Christ.

“Here’s your bogey,” comes Sergeant Gregorius’s rasp. The visual is hazy, the dust storm is still very wild, but all five troops have made it to the crash site.

De Soya raises the resolution on his visor display and sees the shattered wood and paper, the riddled, twisted metal that might have been a simple solar battery-pulse reaction outboard.

“Drone,” says Corporal Kee.

De Soya flips up his visor and smiles at Commander Barnes-Avne. “Another drill from you,” he says. “That’s five today.”

The Commander does not return the smile. “Next time it may be the real thing,” she says. To her tactical mike she says, “Level Five continues. At S-minus sixty, we go to Level Six.”

Confirmations ring on all bands.

“I still don’t understand who might want to interfere,” says Father Captain de Soya. “Or how they could do it.”

Commander Barnes-Avne shrugs. “The Ousters could be spinning down from C-plus even as we speak.”

“Then they’d better bring a full Swarm,” says the father-captain. “Anything less and we’ll handle them easily.”

“Nothing in life is easy,” says Commander Barnes-Avne.

The skimmer touches down. The lock cycles and the ramp lowers. The pilot turns in his seat, slides his visor up, and says, “Commander, Captain, you wanted to land at the Sphinx at S-minus one hour and fifty minutes. We’re a minute early.”

De Soya disconnects himself from the skimmer console. “I’m going to stretch my legs before the storm arrives,” he says to the Commander. “Care to join me?”

“No.” Barnes-Avne lowers her visor and begins whispering commands.

Outside the skimmer, the air is thin and charged with electricity. Overhead, the sky is still the peculiar deep lapis of Hyperion, but already the southern rim of the canyon has a haze hanging over it as the storm approaches.

De Soya glances at his chronometer. One hour and fifty minutes. He takes a deep breath, vows not to look again at the timepiece for at least ten minutes, and walks into the looming shadow of the Sphinx.