The Hegemony Consul sat on the balcony of his ebony spaceship and played Rachmaninov’s Prelude in C-sharp Minor on an ancient but well-maintained Steinway while great, green, saurian things surged and bellowed in the swamps below. A thunderstorm was brewing to the north. Bruise-black clouds silhouetted a forest of giant gymnosperms while stratocumulus towered nine kilometers high in a violent sky. Lightning rippled along the horizon. Closer to the ship, occasional vague, reptilian shapes would blunder into the interdiction field, cry out, and then crash away through indigo mists. The Consul concentrated on a difficult section of the Prelude and ignored the approach of storm and nightfall.
The fatline receiver chimed.
The Consul stopped, fingers hovering above the keyboard, and listened. Thunder rumbled through the heavy air. From the direction of the gymnosperm forest there came the mournful ululation of a carrion-breed pack. Somewhere in the darkness below, a small-brained beast trumpeted its answering challenge and fell quiet. The interdiction field added its sonic undertones to the sudden silence. The fatline chimed again.
‘Damn,’ said the Consul and went in to answer it.
While the computer took a few seconds to convert and decode the burst of decaying tachyons, the Consul poured himself a glass of Scotch. He settled into the cushions of the projection pit just as the diskey blinked green. ‘Play,’ he said.
‘You have been chosen to return to Hyperion,’ came a woman’s husky voice. Full visuals had not yet formed; the air remained empty except for the pulse of transmission codes which told the Consul that this fatline squirt had originated on the Hegemony administrative world of Tau Ceti Center. The Consul did not need the transmission coordinates to know this. The aged but still beautiful voice of Meina Gladstone was unmistakable. ‘You have been chosen to return to Hyperion as a member of the Shrike Pilgrimage,’ continued the voice.
The hell you say, thought the Consul and rose to leave the pit.
‘You and six others have been selected by the Church of the Shrike and confirmed by the All Thing,’ said Meina Gladstone. ‘It is in the interest of the Hegemony that you accept.’
The Consul stood motionless in the pit, his back to the flickering transmission codes. Without turning, he raised his glass and drained the last of the Scotch.
‘The situation is very confused,’ said Meina Gladstone. Her voice was weary. ‘The consulate and Home Rule Council fatlined us three standard weeks ago with the news that the Time Tombs showed signs of opening. The anti-entropic fields around them were expanding rapidly and the Shrike has begun ranging as far south as the Bridle Range.’
The Consul turned and dropped into the cushions. A holo had formed of Meina Gladstone’s ancient face. Her eyes looked as tired as her voice sounded.
‘AFORCE:space task force was immediately dispatched from Parvati to evacuate the Hegemony citizens on Hyperion before the Time Tombs open. Their time-debt will be a little more than three Hyperion years.’ Meina Gladstone paused. The Consul thought he had never seen the Senate CEO look so grim. ‘We do not know if the evacuation fleet will arrive in time,’ she said, ‘but the situation is even more complicated. An Ouster migration cluster of at least four thousand . . . units . . . has been detected approaching the Hyperion system. Our evacuation task force should arrive only a short while before the Ousters.’
The Consul understood Gladstone’s hesitation. An Ouster migration cluster might consist of ships ranging in size from single-person ramscouts to can cities and comet forts holding tens of thousands of the interstellar barbarians.
‘The FORCE joint chiefs believe that this is the Ousters’ big push,’ said Meina Gladstone. The ship’s computer had positioned the holo so that the woman’s sad brown eyes seemed to be staring directly at the Consul. ‘Whether they seek to control just Hyperion for the Time Tombs or whether this is an all-out attack on the Worldweb remains to be seen. In the meantime, a full FORCE:space battle fleet complete with a farcaster construction battalion has spun up from the Camn System to join the evacuation task force, but this fleet may be recalled depending upon circumstances.’
The Consul nodded and absently raised the Scotch to his lips. He frowned at the empty glass and dropped it onto the thick carpeting of the holopit. Even with no military training he understood the difficult tactical decision Gladstone and the joint chiefs were faced with. Unless a military farcaster were hurriedly constructed in the Hyperion system – at staggering expense