“What do you mean: supplant?”
“It’s like this: Human portals are all dependent on power from Earth’s power grid, right? Which gives you the final authority over every portal. All Connexion has to do is switch off the electricity, like you did at Kings Cross, and there is no more interstellar entanglement. Game over.”
“So the machine was an Olyix portal?”
“It appears to be. But it’s different from Connexion doors. You use fixed slabs of twinned active-molecule systems to create spatial entanglement. The Kings Cross machine was a ring capable of physical expansion.”
“They’re better than our portals?” Alik shot a startled look at Ainsley.
“An expanding rim would save you having to thread up each time you need a bigger doorway,” Soćko said.
“Very diplomatic,” Alik told him.
“We need to be extremely vigilant at the interstellar hubs,” Ainsley III said. “The Olyix cannot be allowed to establish their own portal to any terraformed planet. Christ, can you imagine a variable size portal opening up? They could send their Deliverance ships straight through; no need to wait for the Resolution ships to arrive.”
“It won’t happen,” Yuri said. “Anne Groell has implemented a constant review protocol on the interstellar hubs. And now I know what they’re trying to do, I’ll cut the power if there’s even a hint that something is wrong.”
“All right,” Emilja said. “But we will have to watch the habitats that fall to the Deliverance ships, too. Their interstellar portals must be deactivated as soon as the shields fall, if not before.”
“Agreed,” Ainsley said. “We won’t let them through.”
“Thank you.” Emilja nodded in satisfaction. “Now, Alik, you asked for this meeting?”
“Actually, no,” Alik said. “The president of the United States asked that you convene at this point. I am here in the official capacity as her representative.”
“Very well,” Ainsley III said. “What’s the view from the White House?”
Alik cleared his throat as the official script splashed down his tarsus lenses. “POTUS has been speaking to the general secretary of the Communist Party of China, they are fully agreed that firstly: This committee with its resources and contacts is uniquely placed to coordinate Sol-wide strategies to achieve goals that would be difficult for a national government or the Sol Senate to implement. It is jointly decided that surrendering the citizens of our respective countries, and the Sol system in general, to the alien elevation is not an option. Therefore”—he looked directly at Jessika then Soćko—“they task this committee to use all its exceptional assets toward finding a solution—”
“Fuck’s sake,” Yuri grunted.
“—that will enable governments to evacuate the majority of their citizens and culture from Earth, to a safe future including but not limited to exodus habitats. It is understood that this will require considerable time, and that time can be bought by whatever method or means this committee sees fit—including short-term detriment on whatever scale the committee judges appropriate.”
“Mother Mary,” Kandara muttered. “Is this for real?”
“Furthermore,” Alik continued in a strained voice, “upon completion of an exodus habitat program or equivalent, it is unacceptable for humans to then become hunted among the stars. We need you to put in place a coherent and viable long-term strategy to successfully assault the Olyix enclave with such force as to guarantee its eradication, allowing us to return to our homeworld in peace.” He looked up, staring around at the faces, seeing who was startled and who was phlegmatic. He was pleased that he’d pretty much called it. “They jointly declare that all resources and personnel you need will be made available to accomplish this task. That’s it.”
“I’m pleased that POTUS and the chairman recognize what needs to be done,” Jessika said. “And I speak for myself and my Neána colleagues when I say that we will do our utmost to ensure as many humans are saved as can be. However, you need to make it clear to your leadership that eradicating the Olyix is practically impossible.”
“Why?” Alex snapped back, angry at her constant dumb defeatism. Maybe Kandara’s right, they are just androids spouting their bullshit party line script. “There has to be a way. Maybe you just don’t understand humans well enough to know there will be no limit to what we are prepared to do in order to achieve our survival.”
“Exodus habitats will enable—”
“No,” Kandara said. “I’m with Alik on this. You might well consider it impossible, you with your hiding in the dark. But we need to find a way.”
“Kandara is correct,” Emilja said. “We’ve seen the Olyix for the monsters they are, we know how powerful and advanced their technology is compared to ours, and I get that any plan will be extreme. But if that’s what it takes, then so be it. Tell us what has to be done. We will fill in the practicalities; after all, I suspect we will have centuries to perfect them. This is not going to be a war that will end in any of our lifetimes.”
“Fucking-A,” Ainsley cheered.
Alik watched Jessika and Soćko exchange a glance.
“You can touch if you want,” Kandara said with a humorless smile. “We’re all friends here.”
Soćko raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”
“You communicate brain to brain via touch. Your skin has some kind of tactile nerve conductivity, right?”
“Son of a bitch,” Alik said. “How did you know…?”
“Kandara is an excellent observer,” Jessika said. “My compliments.”
“That’s how you fired the neurovirus into the transport ship’s onemind, isn’t it?” Kandara said as her smile morphed into a smirk.
“Correct,” Soćko said. “Olyix biotechnology is pervasive and pliant to their internal commands. It’s how they regulate and change the function of cell clusters. To facilitate that, their entire organic structure is laced with nerve pathways. After I let them capture me, they implanted Kcells that started to tumor inside my body to prepare me for cocooning, and this gave me a direct route into the ship’s neural web.”
Alik felt his heart rate speed up at hearing the outrageous concept. “Your body is a weapon? Jeez.”
“A very specific weapon. Don’t worry, I can’t use it against humans.”
“Have you tried?” Kandara asked mildly.
“No. That’s like asking if I’ve tried using cheese to cut through a knife blade.”
“Fascinating but not relevant,” Emilja said. “We need a way to destroy the Olyix. Are you prepared to help us or not?”
“To do that you would have to get inside their enclave,” Jessika said.
“And nuke it?” Alik asked keenly.
“I doubt that would work.”
“Oh, really? So you do know what’s inside?”
“No. But we have conjecture of its size, its power. One ship, one bomb, would achieve nothing. All it would do is show them a gap in their defenses that we can get through. So the next attempt becomes even harder.”
“Okay, if not that, then what?”
“You have to find the enclave’s entrance, the gateway—which the Neána have no knowledge of, and I do know that my abode has been searching for it for thousands of years.”
“The abode cluster didn’t find it, or simply didn’t tell you?” Kandara challenged.
“Touché. But if they had found the location, I cannot envisage a scenario where they would not broadcast it, or give their envoys the coordinates. None of us sent to Earth know the location of the enclave gateway, therefore the Neána do not have it. So anyway—your descendants find it eventually.”
“How?” Alik asked. “You guys have had millennia by your own admission, and you haven’t managed to do that.”
Jessika gave him a cold smile. “You will have to ambush one of their ark
ships, and capture it intact. The wormhole terminus inside will contain the data you need.”
“Jesus, you don’t think small, do you?”
“No. And along with building a trap strong enough to hold an Olyix arkship, you’ve been increasing your technology base and using it to assemble the greatest war armada the universe has ever seen.”
“I like it,” Ainsley said.
“It is that simple,” Jessika continued, “and that impossible. So you see why Soćko and I want you to devote your principal effort to saving the Sol habitat industrial stations. You have to build those exodus habitats. Every solution to this requires them.”
“But not enough of them,” Emilja said. “The total human population now exceeds twelve billion—we think. It’s probably more. Even if you and Kandara take out the Salvation of Life and buy us a fifty year hiatus until the Olyix return, we still wouldn’t have time to build enough exodus habitats.”
Jessika bowed her head. “Yes.”
“If ten years is what we get, that’s what we’ll take,” Ainsley said. “Let’s do this.”
Tronde knew he was awake. Eyes closed, he was engulfed in darkness. Motionless, his flesh devoid of feeling. Thoughts, cold and bleak.
This must be what death was like. No sensation he could feel or respond to. Nothing to lift the despair that came from knowing what was happening on the other side of the sky.
But he had the memories from mere hours ago when everything brought pleasure and life had soared to a pinnacle. Memories he kept trying to grasp and relive. But instead all he got were glimpses of what had been that made him despise his existence even more.
Tears leaked out from his closed eyelids. He hated that. Claudette might see, might coo concern and ask how he was, what she could do to help. There was only one answer: more hifli.
They still had some, but it was running out. Like time itself. The Earth wasn’t going to survive for much longer. He’d watched some of the feeds Ollie and Adnan had dragged out of the lownet, and there were the quick, bright flares amid the MHD constellation where alien missiles were exploding, while closer to the sun, dark warships closed in to conquer asteroid habitats. The solar system was a battlefield that humans were being forced out of. And the only thing protecting London now was a shield of artificially strong air.
Tronde knew he was going to die when the avian-shaped ships appeared overhead, and there was only one way to face that. With hifli, making death utterly glorious. He couldn’t begin to imagine how magnificent that would be: every nerve he possessed tingling from the nark, converting the zenith of pain that would engulf him at the blast wave impact into pure pleasure. He would die from ecstasy.
For that last glorious moment of existence, his dry, dull logic knew, he had to have some hifli left to take when the ships blasted their weapons at the shield dome and killed it. So it had to be used sparingly now.
Grimacing at the motion, he slowly swung his legs off the bed and stood up. Claudette was sprawled on the mattress, not asleep but in an unresponsive zombie daze, limbs tangled in a sheet that should have been washed a long time ago. He didn’t care.
Nyin’s basic splash told him it was two in the morning as he made his way downstairs, legs stiff and muscles slow to respond. His groin was oddly numb, which he guessed was from excessive use of his dick’s Kcells. Except the lack of sensation had extended up to his navel and down his thighs. Couldn’t feel his arse, either—which was maybe a good thing. There was something wrong with the house’s air-con; desert air was gusting over his skin, producing a grubby sheen of sweat.
Ollie and Adnan were timelooped, still sitting on the settee in the same places, still grazing on fridge leftovers, still watching live lownet feeds. A reality horror drama: The End of Days. Coming to a shield near you, and far too soon. The only difference in the room was a higher pile of greasy crockery on the table between them and the stage, with ketchup splats hanging off the rims in sticky lava flows. Empty wine bottles cluttered like bulbous cobbles across the thick cream carpet.
Ollie saw him come in and blinked; then his neck craned forward. “Whoa, Tronde, fella; you ain’t got no clothes on!”
“So?” Tronde shrugged and dropped into a wide armchair. He slid about disgustingly on the black leather, as if he was slathered in oil.
Adnan started laughing. “Man, you have completely lost it.”
“Yeah,” Ollie said. “Get your shit together.” He and Adnan high-fived, almost missing. Both of them emitted a high-pitched giggle.
“What’s happening?” Tronde asked, ignoring how dumb they were being. “Has Jade got back to us yet?”
In the middle of the stage, a thick habitat toroid was surrounded by a vivid crimson haze. Three sinister Deliverance ships circled around it with lupine ferocity.
“Nah,” Ollie said, nibbling on a fried chicken leg. “I reckon she’s dumped us.”
“Shit, no way,” Adnan slurred. “She’ll come through. It’s all about the money with her. We can grab her some serious watts with the drug raid. She’s not going to let that go without a fight.”
“I guess.” Tronde stared at the doomed habitat for a while. “Which one is that?”
“Solidaridad. It’s out at Toutatis, built by the Venezuelan New Route movement.”
“No route left to them now,” Ollie said sagely. “Here it comes, look.” The shield haze expanded rapidly, then blew apart in an abysmal rout. Deliverance ships closed in. “Aww, bloody hell. Another one bites the dust.” He drummed his fists on the settee cushions, disturbing a couple of pizza crusts. “Thirty-two minutes. New record.”
“Five hundred wattdollars to me,” Adnan said happily. “What else is coming up?”
“McDivitt, which is going to be bad. McDivitt have fucked up their evacuation; their portal to the billionaire belt crashed. And a nethead hacked the governor demanding Alpha Defense rescue him and his family before the Deliverance ships arrive—it’s all over the allcomments.”
“Oh, man, that’s a skidmark. Anything else?”
“Kuta. The Deliverance ships will be there in seventeen minutes.”
“Go, Kuta! Shoot something back at the bastards. Just once!”
The stage switched to the feed from Kuta. The habitat was one of the larger ones in the Sol system, at fifty kilometers long.
“That’s big, it’ll have a good strong shield,” Ollie said, with only mild guilt. He didn’t want to think about McDivitt at all.
“Forty-seven minutes,” Adnan said. “In my professional opinion.”
“Nah, they got maybe thirty-eight, max forty.”
“Give me forty-seven to fifty; and I’ll see you that last five hundred, and raise you another two hundred.”
“I’ll take it.”
“Wait,” Tronde said, as disturbed as he was appalled. “Are you two betting on how long it takes for the Olyix to blow the habitat shields?”
“Yep,” Ollie told him with a gormless grin. “Why? You got something else to do?”
“Or spend your wattdollars on?” Adnan asked.
“Fuck’s sake, guys! There are people in those habitats.”
“Nope. Least…not apart from McDivitt. The Sol Senate ordered all habitats to evacuate before the bad guys arrive. Big rush away to the settled stars going on right now. Too bad we can’t grab a piece of that action, but it’s only the habitat residents get that ticket. Down here, we have to sit it out.”
“I’m giving the London shield an hour, maybe an hour and fifteen minutes,” Ollie said sagely.
“He’s good at calling it, too,” Adnan said.
“Oh, Jesus wept.” Tronde could feel his skin cooling, sliding from Sahara to Iceland in seconds. He started shaking. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
“I know,” Ollie said. “But it’s all down to Jade now. She’s our route out.”
<
br /> “Fuck.” He clenched his fists, trying to stop the Richter level tremors.
“Listen,” Adnan said. “We’re still a team, us. Still the Legion, right?”
“Yeah. ’Course.”
“So me and Ollie were talking, thinking like. About the money?”
“Yeah?”
“Well, it looks like your gig with Claudette is working brilliant. Man, she’s on her knees for you. So, like, if we can get the payoff now?” He gestured like a piteous kid asking for more ice cream.
“That’d do it, Tronde,” Ollie said. “That’d get us out of here. She’s got millions in her trust fund, more than Jade’s raid will ever pay us. We wouldn’t have to bother with all that new identity crap; Lars couldn’t handle that anyway. We could just bribe our way out, maybe all the way to Eta Cassiopeiae’s billionaire belt. If you’ve got money there, nobody asks questions.”
Tronde let the notion swirl around him, because he could only concentrate on the other thing Claudette was giving him. And the Olyix were coming, relentless as a tsunami. Running wasn’t going to be any use. He already knew how he was going to end, the magnificent blaze of euphoria that awaited when the London shield broke. “I don’t know. I don’t know if she’s ready for that yet.”
“You could try. Face it, right now we’ve got fuck all to lose.”
“Sure.” Tronde nodded like he was really thinking about it. “How’s Lars?”
Adnan flinched. “Not so good. He’s got a lot of swelling—shoulders, belly. It’s weird. Like his muscles have inflated.”
“More like they’ve got rigor mortis,” Ollie suggested. “His body’s turning rock hard.”
“Joining his head, then.” Adnan giggled gleefully. His humor drained away. “Tronde, you okay, man? You look like shit.”
“I’m good.”
“You need to get something to eat and drink. Take care of yourself more. Claudette, too.”
“Hey! I know what I’m doing.” He got up and stood over Ollie, staring down. The part of him that was so skillful at controlling Claudette gained a bitter satisfaction at the way his friend couldn’t quite bring himself to glance up. Surprised, too; Ollie never usually had trouble looking at naked flesh—anyone’s. He held a hand out, clicking his fingers impatiently. “Gimme some.”
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