‘Admiral Kime has ordered the warships to rendezvous,’ the SI said.
‘I bet those alien bastards are quaking in their fucking boots. Whoa, three ships are heading their way.’
Wessex aerobots destroyed another salvo of projectiles. The Primes seemed to have stopped targeting the small towns dotted over the rest of the planet. Narrabri and its external districts were on the receiving end of just about every deluge now.
‘You are not getting my station,’ Nigel told them uncompromisingly. He opened a multitude of command links directly into the wormhole generator machinery of three gateways in Narrabri’s station. His secure memory store was accessed, the old memories rising out to occupy an artificial neural network, giving him all the knowledge he ever had of exotic matter, energy inverters, supergeometry, quantum math. He drew on it all, loading new directives into the machinery which generated wormholes leading to Louisiade, Malaita, and Tubuai.
Limiters and feedback dampers flashed alerts at him. Not even his control system could handle three wormholes simultaneously.
‘Could use a little help here,’ he told the SI.
‘Very well.’
Nigel let out a small breath of relief. You never could tell when the SI was going to pitch in, or just watch aloofly. He guessed this invasion might actually have flustered even the great artificial intelligence, after all Vinmar was physically inside Commonwealth space.
With the SI acting as interpreter and actuator, Nigel’s role was elevated to executive only. Under his direction the SI reformatted the internal quantum structure of the three worm-holes he’d designated. He retracted the exits from their distant gateways, turning them into open-ended fissures twisting through spacetime.
One of the Prime wormholes re-emerged above Wessex, and Nigel struck, his pseudo-telekinetic control moving icons at supersonic speed. The three CST wormhole exits materialized inside the interloper in a transdimensional intersection, creating a massive distortion that instigated huge oscillations along the alien wormhole’s energistic fabric. Power from eight of Narrabri’s nuclear power stations was pumped through the gateway machinery to amplify the instability, forcing it back toward the Prime end.
The intrusive wormhole vanished in a severe gravitational implosion, releasing a burst of ultra-hard radiation. Nigel waited, hysradar scanning space above Wessex. The Primes were down to forty-seven wormholes jumping in and out of existence. Cautions from the Malaita gateway sounded loudly, warning him that the whole machine was powering down to prevent any further damage; the excessive power loadings he’d forced through had burned out a lot of components.
‘It worked,’ he proclaimed.
‘Of course,’ the SI replied equitably.
‘Can you take out the rest?’ Alan asked.
‘Let’s find out.’
*
As far as such a thing were possible, MorningLightMountain experienced a brief feeling of trepidation as it arranged its thoughts prior to launching the expansion. The alien Commonwealth was a considerable unknown, despite the Bose memories. It remembered living there, remembered what the society was like, but had only vague notions of what its true industrial and military capabilities were. That gave cause for concern.
There were several other stars close to its home system that had planets capable of supporting Prime life. It had already opened wormholes to eight of them, sending hundreds of millions of motiles through to begin settlements. Life-sustaining planets were much simpler to spread across than the cold, airless moons, and dead asteroids of its home system. They didn’t require machines to cocoon the new settlements in a protective friendly environment. They were cheaper to establish. Already immotile groupings were amalgamating on the new planets, integrating with Morning-LightMountain’s main thought routines. In a heady taste of the future, it had now spread out to exist across hundreds of light-years.
At one time that might have been sufficient. Even the first great enemy, the unknown, would have trouble constructing barriers around so many stars. But there was more than one enemy in the galaxy. It could see what would happen when its expansion ran into the obstacle of the humans and their territory. Two incompatible lifeforms competing for the same planets and stars. MorningLightMountain knew they could not co-exist in a peaceful fashion. In fact it didn’t see how ultimately it could allow any other alien to share this galaxy, there were after all only a finite number of stars. Now it knew how, it could join every one via wormholes, it could become omnipresent. That way it could guarantee its immortality. No matter how many stars died or turned nova, it would still be alive. And the first obstacle to that was the Commonwealth; full of dangerous independent humans and their superb advanced machinery.
MorningLightMountain opened one thousand one hundred and four wormholes, aiming at the stellar coordinates which had come from the Bose memories. Some emerged very close to their targets, others were nearby, several were half a light-year or more distant. Sensors were pushed through, collecting positional data; the information was used to refine its star chart, locking the Commonwealth stars to precise locations. The wormhole exits were realigned around its initial target planets. MorningLightMountain was interested that the Bose memories were right about the human colonization patterns; the species grossly underused the worlds they settled. Their total numbers would barely be sufficient to fill one world, let alone hundreds. Individuality was a terrible weakness, multi-plying their collective greed.
Bombardment projectiles were sent through, aimed at the smaller habitation zones and the perimeter of larger ones. It found other targets, the human quantum sensors, communication webs, satellites, power grids, and guided its projectiles at them. MorningLightMountain was intending to eliminate the humans themselves whilst keeping their industrial centres relatively intact. Those that survived, it wanted to drive out of their buildings and disperse ineffectually across the unused land.
Force fields came on over the cities. MorningLightMountain hadn’t expected that, the Bose memories had no knowledge of such things. It couldn’t open its wormholes inside them. Over the immense distance it was operating, positioning them within two thousand kilometres of a planet was as precise as it could get. For precise exits, it needed gateways to anchor the wormholes.
Small flying machines, aerobots, rose up around the cities, shooting its projectiles. MorningLightMountain had no choice, it increased the number of projectiles it was sending through, guiding them to create the maximum damage.
When it opened the wormholes above the major world, Wessex, it encountered even stronger resistance. It could see down onto the megacity which was two-thirds industrial facilities. The scale surpassed most of its own planet-based settlements, while the efficiency of the human systems with their electronic controllers went beyond anything it had achieved.
A human starship flew above Anshun, knocking out dozens of bombardment projectiles. MorningLightMountain’s response was standard, it sent through more projectiles. When the human starship began to fall in and out of its own wormhole, MorningLightMountain diverted more immotile groupings to concentrate on its own wormhole generator mechanisms, shifting the energy composition to act as an inhibitor. Tens of thousands of additional immotiles focused on the problem, taking its control ability to the absolute limit. With the starship restricted to real space, it fired an overwhelming salvo of projectiles.
Something happened to one of its wormholes above Wessex. Energy surged along the disintegrating fabric of the distortion, overloading the generator mechanism that was built on one of the four giant asteroids which orbited the interstellar wormhole at the staging post. The resulting explosion knocked out the tower storing the bombardment projectiles, and even reached out to the squadron of ships waiting above it.
MorningLightMountain urgently searched through its memory of the event. As it did, another two wormholes collapsed, their energy flashbacks wrecking the generators. MorningLightMountain realized they were actually being over-loaded by an external force.
It switched more immotile group clusters to the problem, increasing the power to the remaining generators to counter a further five attempts at destabilization.
The struggle evolved into a contest of power capacity. MorningLightMountain was powering its wormholes from magflux extractor disks dropped into the staging post star’s corona, transferring the induced power to the asteroids via a small wormhole. Even with those providing maximum output, there was a limit to how much the wormhole genera-tors themselves could handle. And the humans were changing their methods of attack with a speed it could not match, modifying interference patterns and resonance amplification in nanoseconds. They, too, seemed to have unlimited power to draw on.
A further twenty-seven wormhole generators either exploded or twisted into molten ruin. MorningLightMountain ended its attempted capture of Wessex, diverting the remaining wormholes to the other planets where there was no interference. The results of the bombardment projectiles were disappointing on most of them. But the human defences were slowly being beaten back by the sheer quantity of projectiles it was firing through. It halted the projectiles, and flew the first ships through into the Commonwealth.
Altogether, it had gathered a fleet of forty-eight thousand ready for its preliminary expansion stage.
*
It was getting crowded at the centre of Wilson’s tactical display. The ghostly image of Elaine Doi herself had joined him, along with Nigel Sheldon, their spectral presence giving his orders supreme executive authority – providing they didn’t interfere. To advise on tactics and technology he had the shades of Dimitri Leopoldovich and Tunde Sutton floating in attendance behind him.
Right now he would have welcomed a genuine spook, a psychic who could tell him what was coming next, or at least take a good guess. They were watching the last of the Prime projectiles rushing down over twenty-one besieged planets – he considered that ominous while everyone else was overjoyed. Wessex had successfully banished the alien wormholes; while Olivenza and Balya had dropped out of the unisphere when their station force fields were breached. The CST planetary station on Anshun had switched off their connecting gateways.
‘Can’t you overload the remaining alien wormholes?’ Doi asked Nigel. She was keen for further victories.
‘I burned out eighteen of our wormhole generators taking out thirty of theirs,’ Nigel said. ‘Do the math. That’s not a good ratio. Without wormholes we don’t have a Commonwealth. In any case, I doubt we have enough power reserves right now.’
Wilson said nothing. He’d watched helplessly as Sheldon sucked more and more power out of the Commonwealth power grid. All of the Big15 worlds had switched to niling d-sink reserves as their nuclear generators were called on. Earth had suffered an unprecedented complete civil power loss as Sheldon diverted the entire lunar output to support his space-warping battle above Wessex. Every other world in phase one and two space had experienced blackouts and brownouts as their domestic generators were put on front-line duty. For a while it had been touch and go and several city force fields had flickered alarmingly from the power loss. Right now everyone was busy recharging their storage facilities.
It had been a desperate exercise, although, Wilson had to admit, there had been no alternative. But if the Primes had chosen that moment to launch a further wave of attacks, the results would have been catastrophic. Wilson had been reduced to praying.
‘You mean they’re here to stay?’ Doi asked.
‘For the moment, yes,’ Wilson said.
‘For the love of God, the money we gave you . . .’
‘Enough to commission three warships,’ Wilson snapped back. ‘I’m not even sure three hundred would have been enough today.’
‘The aerobots and force fields have done a damn good job,’ Rafael said. ‘Without them the damage would have been considerably greater.’
‘But the casualties,’ the President said. ‘Good God, man, we’ve lost two million people.’
‘More than that,’ Anna said soberly. ‘A lot more.’
‘And it’s going to rise,’ Wilson said, deliberately harsh. ‘Dimitri, can you give us some options on their next move?’
‘They have softened us up,’ the Russian academic said. ‘Occupation is the logical follow-on. You must be prepared for a full-scale invasion.’
‘Tunde, what’s the ecological damage level on the assaulted worlds?’
‘In a word, bad. Anshun took the worst pounding. The storms are just beginning there. At the very least they’ll spread the radioactive fall-out right over the planet. The Primes don’t use particularly clean fusion bombs. Decontamination would cost a fortune, even if it was practical – which I doubt. Cheaper to evacuate and ship everyone to a new phase three planet. The other worlds are in varying stages of climate breakdown and nuclear pollution. Given our general population’s attitude to nuclear and environmental issues, I’d say nobody will want to stay on anyway.’
‘I agree,’ Wilson said. ‘I want to begin evacuation today.’
‘On all of them?’ Doi asked. ‘I can’t consent to that. Where the hell would they all go?’
‘Friends, relatives, hotels, government camps. Who cares? That’s not my problem. We need to get everyone left alive on those planets under the force fields, then get them out. I want our military reserve shipped out there to help; every paramilitary officer, every police tactical assault squad; all the aerobots we can spare. Between them, the planetary governments have enough combat personnel to put together a reasonable-sized army. Madam President, I’ll need you to sign an Executive order putting them under Admiral Columbia’s command.’
‘I . . . I’m not sure.’
‘I’ll back you up,’ Nigel said. ‘And so will the Intersolar Dynasties. Wilson’s right, we need to get this moving.’
‘Can you get wormholes opened in the other cities on those planets?’ Wilson asked. ‘We’ll never be able to transport everyone to the capitals.’
‘Narrabri station’s gateways aren’t in great shape right now,’ Nigel said. ‘But we’ll cope. The whole goddamn train network is shut down anyway. We can divert the gateways we have left on Wessex, but it won’t be for trains. People will have to get through on foot, or buses.’
‘What about Olivenza and Balya?’
‘We can use the Anshun exploratory division’s wormhole to re-establish contact, see if there’s anyone left alive.’
‘The Prime wormholes have stopped moving around,’ Rafael said. ‘Oh, Christ on a crutch, here they come.’
Radar and visual sensors showed Prime ships flying out of the wormholes above each of the besieged worlds.
‘If they start landing, you can forget trying to evacuate anybody,’ Dimitri said. ‘There’s no time. We have to knock out their centre of operations, hit their wormholes on the other side, where they’re vulnerable.’
‘How long until the starships reach Anshun?’ Wilson asked.
‘Two are already at the rendezvous point,’ Anna said. ‘Another eight hours until the final one gets there.’
‘Son of a bitch! Rafael, start the evacuation of everyone in the capitals right away. We’ll get them clear at least.’
‘I’ll get wormholes opened to the other protected cities,’ Nigel said.
‘What about the people left outside?’ Doi said. ‘In God’s name we have to do something for them.’
‘We will see what we can do to assist,’ the SI said.
*
It took Mark forty minutes, but he eventually got the Ables pick-up working again. There was a whole load of circuitry that had burned out, stuff he managed to jury-rig or bypass. Liz and Carys spent the time packing, bringing out a couple of cases of clothes and all of the family’s camping gear.
‘I think the cybersphere is coming back,’ Liz said as she dumped the last bag in the back of the pick-up. ‘The house array is bringing up a basic communication menu.’
‘The house array is working?’ he asked in surprise. There had been a lot more than simple
electronic damage. Most of the windows had blown in, even the triple-glazed ones, covering every room with shards of broken glass. Seeing what the blast had done to their home was almost as big a shock as witnessing the explosion, and infinitely more upsetting. It was as if each room had been deliberately, maliciously vandalized.
Even so, Mark reckoned they must have got off lighter than most. At least their drycoral house was all domes, allowing the worst of the blastwave pressure to slip smoothly over it; flat vertical walls would have taken a bad pounding. He couldn’t bear looking out over the vineyards; almost every row had been knocked flat. It was the same right the way down the Ulon Valley as far as he could see.
‘I can’t interface with it,’ Liz said. ‘But the back-up monitor screen in the utility room survived, so I could type in a few commands. Ninety per cent of the system has crashed, and I can’t get the reload and repair program to run. The network operation protocol is about the only thing that is there, it’s definitely hooked into the valley node. The cable is fibre optic, it can survive a lot worse than this.’
‘Did you try calling anyone?’
‘Sure. I went for the Dunbavands and the Conants first. Nothing. Then I tried the Town Hall; I even tried the Black House. Nobody’s home.’
‘Or they don’t realize the system’s rebuilding itself. It’ll take time even with genetic algorithms restructuring round the damage.’
‘They probably never will find out if their inserts are screwed like ours. Who knows how to work a keyboard these days?’
‘I do,’ Barry said.
Mark put his arms around his son. The boy still had dirt and tears smeared over his face. He seemed to be recovering from the shock, though. ‘That’s because you’re brilliant,’ Mark told him.
‘Clouds coming,’ Carys said. She was looking to the north, where long streamers of white vapor were sliding low and fast over the Dau’sings. They were like fluffy spears heading towards the smog-clotted remains of the Regents.
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