Peter F. Hamilton - Salvation Lost

Great North Road

Manhattan in Reverse and Other Stories

Fallen Dragon

Misspent Youth

Pandoras Star

Judas Unchained

The Dreaming Void

The Temporal Void

The Evolutionary Void

The Reality Dysfunction

The Neutronium Alchemist

The Naked God

The Confederation Handbook

A Second Chance at Eden

Mindstar Rising

A Quantum Murder

The Nano Flower

The Abyss Beyond Dreams

A Night Without Stars

The Secret Throne

The Hunting of the Princes

A Voyage Through Air

Salvation

Salvation Lost

Salvation Lost is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2019 by Peter F. Hamilton

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

D EL R EY and the H OUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Names: Hamilton, Peter F., author.

Title: Salvation lost / Peter F. Hamilton.

Description: New York: Del Rey, [2019]

Identifiers: LCCN 2019014523 | ISBN 9780399178856 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780399178863 (ebook)

Subjects: | GSAFD: Science fiction.

Classification: LCC PR6058.A5536 S2513 2019 | DDC 823/.914dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019014523

Ebook ISBN9780399178863

randomhousebooks.com

Book design by Jo Anne Metsch, adapted for ebook

Cover design and illustration: Anna Kochman, based on an image agsandrew/Shutterstock

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The dark, cold bulk of the Nena insertion ship had been traveling through interstellar space for twenty-two years before it flew across the faint twinkling specks of the stars cometary belt. Half a light-year ahead, their G9 target star shone with a strong silver-white glare, casting its intense rays over a family of twelve planets. The fourth planet, a small, solid world, was emitting a bright babble of radio signalsa source that a Nena abode cluster had picked up when the Vayans began their tentative first broadcasts fifty-three years earlier.

A trio of moons orbited the warm, life-rich fourth planet in eccentric million-kilometer loops above its white clouds, lush continents, and deep blue oceans. Two of them were now also emitting electromagnetic signals; the radio waves were coming from the pioneering research bases that the native Vayans had recently constructed. Forty-seven different Vayan clans were operating space programs, putting aside their conflict-heavy history to collaborate on the great adventure out across the gulf of space.

The insertion ship flew in north of the solar ecliptic, shedding cold mass in irregular bursts like a black cometa deceleration maneuver that took nineteen months. This was always the riskiest part of the voyage. The Vayans currently had thirty-two robot space probes traversing their solar system, sending back a great deal of crude science sensor data to their homeworld, as well as two high-powered observatories on the largest moon. The chance of one spotting the insertion ship was slim, but the controlling sentience took no chances. By the time it passed the innermost gas giant, it was down to twenty-five meters in diameter. It had no magnetic field, and the outer shell was fully radiation-absorbent in every spectrum, making it invisible to any telescopes.

As it closed on Vayan, it detected a spaceship departing one of the three stations in low orbit, a nuclear fission rocket sending it on a ten-month flight to the fifth planet. A crew of eleven Vayans was crammed into its small life-support cabinemissaries of their species exuberant spirit, boldly outbound on their first interplanetary flight. Given that the Vayans had only launched their first chemical propellant rocket into orbit seventeen years earlier, the insertion ships controlling sentience was impressed by the speed of their technological progress.

During its long, lonely voyage between the stars, it had monitored the plethora of signals broadcast from Vayan, building up an extensive knowledge base of the species history and culture. Socially, they were organized along clan lines: a protective imperative bestowed by their distinct reproductive biology. Each female had up to ten mates, who all fertilized her egg cluster over the course of her fifteen-year adult life stage. When she was ready to gestate, she became immobile, feeding on the predigested pulp provided by her mates as her wombs began to swell. Giving birth to up to fifty infant Vayans was her last living actthough the insertion ship had recently picked up broadcasts speculating that modern medical techniques might be able to prolong female life after birth. From what the controlling sentience could understand, the concept was regarded as far-fetched and almost heretical. Though, so far, the Vayans seemed to have avoided the whole concept of deities and religion.

Physically, the Vayans had four legs supporting a rounded double-section body with eight upper arm-limbs. There was a long prehensile neck on the top, lifting up an ovoid cranium containing eight eyes and a combination earecho sonar organ, providing all-around perception. Their particular sensorium neurology meant theyd evolved past the concept of front and back and now had the capacity for free-ranging motion. That specific analytic ability gave the controlling sentience some difficulty when it came to developing equivalent thought routines for the six Vayan body biologics that it was now growing in its onboard molecular initiators. Fortunately, Vayan biochemistry was relatively easy to replicate.

As it closed to within a million kilometers of Vayan, the insertion ship discarded the last of its reaction mass as it performed a final deceleration maneuver. Now it was basically just falling toward the southernmost tip of the Farava continent. The lights of nighttime urban citadels sparkled across the continent, linked by the slender blue-green threads of bioluminescent transport rails. Tiny course correction ejecta refined the ships descent vector, steering it toward the coast, which was still thirty minutes from greeting the dawn. Even if some Vayan telescope chanced to find the ship now, it would simply appear to be a small chunk of natural space debris.

It hit the upper atmosphere and began to peel apart into six pear-shaped segments. The remaining matter broke away in fizzing sparks that produced a short-lived but beautiful starburst display streaking through the mesosphere. Below it, sheltered under their blanket of thick winter cloud, the clan packs of Gomarbabthe southernmost urban citadel on Vayanremained oblivious to their interstellar visitor.