“Who’s going to rebuild it? Where’s the equipment, and the resources, going to come from?” said John MacEwart, in exasperation.
The engineering head was beside himself, looking out of the freighter at the devastation that had once been the Prometheus project.
“Easy, John,” said Finch, placing a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “We’ve still got all the Prometheus knowledge, we’ve got most of the production templates, and we rescued nearly all of our people. That last one’s the important thing.”
Saint George looked at the remains of his beloved comms center. The fireball that had leveled the comms tower and cut off all communication with Prometheus had also seared away the equipment housing at the back of the center. Miraculously, though, it had left the main control room – and all his staff – intact.
“Cordez has his hands full with Earth,” said Finch, “but he hasn’t forgotten about us. First thing he wants us to do is shift everyone to the Aster site in the Asteroid Belt. The accommodation facilities there didn’t suffer too much damage. You two added some of the building blocks to the complex as I recall.”
George nodded.
“You did a good job. It withstood the worst the Reaper ships could throw at it,” said Finch. George shrugged. There was no point in doing shoddy work.
“We’ll still have to expand Aster to take the extra population,” said MacEwart plaintively.
There was an uncomfortable pause. The big zero gee production yards above the Aster center had taken a beating from the Reaper ships, and half the population of Aster had died in the yards that day. There was a empty space in the accommodation complex now, but the much larger population of Prometheus was still going to need a lot of extra room.
It’s going to be hard moving into the living quarters of dead men and women, thought George sadly. I wonder what the Mersa will make of it all.
The people of Alamos had said little, but it was clear the struggle for freedom had been brought home to them by the deaths. There had been a lot of sub-space communication lately with their home planet, and Alamos had been the first to offer its support in the reconstruction of Earth.
“It’s not all bad,” said Finch. “The Javelin production center on Mars hasn’t been touched, and the Mars miners will be able to help us build up production in the Asteroid Belt again.”
They all knew the value of having a zero gee production site, and it helped that the greatest remaining concentration of super-heavy metals in the Solar System was in the Asteroid belt. The micromining technology among the asteroids was tedious, though it was automated.
“The Sumerians have already turned over the entire output of K'Sarth to Earth’s reconstruction,” continued Finch. “We only have to say what we want. We’ll have to send detailed plans if it’s anything complicated, and the results will be a bit primitive – metals instead of composites, liquid hydrogen engines instead of nuclear power packs, but it’ll do the job while we’re getting started again.
“It’s a pity K’Sarth doesn’t have much in the way of resources spare to help us. The Sumerians have found one Stygian hells of a mother lode on the sea floors of Neerok, but most of that so far has gone into making more Sumerian motherships.”
“And we owe them one for that!” said MacEwart warmly.
Finch decided it was time to take a closer look at the damage on the giant base, and the heads of departments left the freighter to make their way around the Prometheus site in EVA suits. They were soon bouncing along in the super-light gravity.
“It’s a bit different without gravitysum,” said Ursul Vangretti gloomily. They all missed the adjustable artificial gravity, but it was the utter devastation about them that put the bitterness in her voice.
Cantoselli, head of Ursul’s Mersa team, had elected to stay inside the escape ships, in orbit about Neptune, as had all the diminutive Mersa. It was a Human thing to want to see the devastation, and touch it, and remember it. Matsu and some of the other Human team members had felt the same way as the Mersa. They were inclined perhaps to look forward to a new beginning, and not want to dwell on what had happened to Prometheus.
“We’ll be back, people,” said Finch. “It’s in Cordez’ plans. There’s still a fair bit of ore to be mined here, and the old place is kinda central – close enough to Earth, Mars, and the mining sites, but already on the way out of the Solar System, don’t you think?”
“You mean it’s got that real estate ‘location’?” said George with a smile.
“I want to show the Invardii they can’t just push us out of the way when it suits them!” said Ursul vehemently. “The sooner we rebuild, the better.”
“Then we’re agreed,” said Finch softly. “Whatever the reasons, we’re going to be back.”
They started the almost weightless walk back to the freighter.
Cordez had foreseen the time when Earth would need to replace all that had been lost in an invasion, but he was now trying to juggle so many balls he had long ago lost count. Two months had passed since the armada had been beaten back, and there was rebuilding going on in so many places he had to give anything not part of the war effort over to the trading blocks and local government. Which was as it should be, he reminded himself.
He was in his command bunker deep in the Andes, and he was watching a fleet of K'Sarth freighters land in the middle of what had once been the city where he lived and worked. It was a white and gray plain of complete devastation now, his little two-story South Am headquarters completely gone.
The Board of Regents already had new satellites up, so Cordez had visuals everywhere across Earth. What little remained of EarthGov had been suspended, and the planet was now on a survival footing. Simply feeding the population would be touch and go for the first year.
The Invardii had gone to great lengths to destroy Earth. On the Sumerian planets they had taken out the industrial and administrative areas, but left everything else. Here on Earth they had completely leveled the cities, leaving nothing but powdered rubble. It was a grim and satisfying realization at the same time. Earth was considered much more of a threat.
Perhaps it was in part the fact that the Human civilization was so much an unknown to the Invardii. the Sumerians had been servants of the Rothii, and the Rothii were descended from the Caerbrindii as the Invardii were. Humans were something else again, something alien to the aliens.
Cordez almost laughed at his own play on words, and then he realized he was getting tired. He brought his mind forcibly back to the complex and demanding rebuilding programs he had on his hands.
The Javelin production center on Mars was now running on Sumerian resources from Neerok, and they were fitting Javelins with scrubbers to clear the fine particles and smoke out of Earth’s upper atmosphere.
Rebuilding the Aster production center in the Asteroid belt was almost finished, and then micromining could restart there. Mining on the outermost planets of the Mersa system would meet most of Earth’s resource needs eventually, but production from the new mines was still some way off.
On Earth itself, one half of humanity had returned to their country homes without power or communications, and taken in the other half of humanity that used to live in the cities. That had been an extraordinary exercise in trust, and belief in the future. It still warmed Cordez’ heart.
He looked back at the K'Sarth freighters, sitting in the middle of an ashy, gray plain. It made sense to rebuild the South Am capital city in the same place, he thought. The blasted wasteland would be of little use for anything else, and every arable field had to produce food for the population, and, wherever possible, biofuels.
New fusion reactors would be built as quickly as possible, but in the beginning their output would be needed for the war effort. Power stations that ran on simple biofuels were cheap and easy to build, and would be all that was available for the civilian population for the next two or three years.
The K'Sarth freighters started unloading a special type of heavy machine
ry that would compact the rubble around them, and treat it to make a base for the new city. The freighter’s stardrive engines would have disrupted the electronics of the whole city when it still existed, but now it was possible to set the freighters down in the middle of the devastation.
Once the base had been laid down by the machines, the construction teams would be able to get on with the job. The fusion reactor needed to supply them with power had been set up after the last freighter run. There were four fleets of freighters now, and they were visiting each trading block at least weekly, reducing turnaround times with each run as they helped to rebuild Earth’s cities.
Cordez turned to his comms link and added his image to the holographic network. The Regents were meeting over a holographic connection, each too busy these days to leave his or her bunker. All the sophisticated electronics outside of the trading block headquarters had been destroyed, and the Regents were talking over the one remaining holographic network left in the world.
“I want more survey ships in the Alamos system now,” Cordez was saying soon after the meeting started. “Mines are being excavated on the first of the outer planets as we speak, but I want to know exactly what’s on the other two when the time comes to mine them.”
The others nodded.
“One thing we’re not short of is stardrive-capable ships,” he continued. “The Mars miners delivered another full squadron of Javelins a week ago, but that’ll be the last squadron for a while.
“Once the Mars production center has converted enough Javelins to a ramjet configuration to scrub the smoke and particles out of Earth’s upper atmosphere, I want the Mars miners helping at Aster. It’s vital we get the micromining systems up and running there as soon as possible.
“It’s been a Godsend that we lost less than twelve percent of the Javelins in the Mars action, and less than fifteen percent of them overall,” he said. Then he considered his remarks for a moment.
“Except of course for the three Earth squadrons that destroyed the last of the Invardii flagships. They were mostly your boys, weren’t they, Victor?”
No one spoke for a moment. It was a painful memory for all of them. Then the EuroRussian Regent inclined his head slightly.
“I will never forget their sacrifice,” said Cordez softly.
Dante McGorant offered the help of the small North Am mining colony on Mars to help rebuild the Aster center, and Cordez gratefully accepted it. It was a rare moment these days when the other Regents had anything to offer.
Cordez didn’t want the rebuilding of Earth, and the Solar System, turning into a South Am and Asian show run by himself and Asura.
Their two trading blocks had been the most prepared for the invasion, and come through it with the most in the way of remaining assets, but Cordez believed in a democratic approach to things that affected Earth as a whole. And it didn’t hurt to show your allies you valued them as much when they were down and out, as when they had something to contribute!
“The first of the food ship convoys left Madras yesterday,” said Asura.
The northern hemisphere farms were at peak production in late summer, and the excess food was being shipped to meet shortages in the southern hemisphere. Once India had managed to reduce its population, some three centuries before, its tropical southern plains had become the market garden for much of the world.
Now that the factories which would normally preserve the seasonal abundances had been destroyed, it was much harder to keep Earth’s millions fed. Production needed to be much more closely aligned with need.
Stocks of long-life foods had been significantly reduced while the population had been in the shelters during the bombing, and the re-settlement, and the rest was being carefully apportioned by need and the nutritional profiles of local diets.
“How are we going to convert excesses into bio-fuel?” said Padoulus, the Pacific Regent.
“If we can get it to the coast, we can ship it to the refineries,” said Asura. “When we’ve built the refineries, that is. As far as the inland areas go, I’m sorry to say it will be some time before we have adequate air transport to cover them.”
“I think we’re going to have to start conversion of foodstuffs to bio-fuels as a cottage industry,” said Emens.
“A what?” said George Padoulus, who was unaware of the term.
“Something simple enough to be run by one family, or maybe a small group of people,” said the EuroRussian Regent. “We go for economies of scale. If there are a million mini-refineries, each one only needs to produce a small amount each day. Most of the bio-fuels are very simple to make.”
George looked doubtful, but the others seemed convinced of the merits of the idea, and the conversation moved on.
CHAPTER 8
________________
Cordez recalled some of the extraordinary sights he’d seen as Earth tried to feed itself, and get some sort of infrastructure up and running again. It had been hard starting from a position where there was almost nothing to work with.
This morning he had watched a floating holiday palace being gutted for use as a grain transport. The pictures had come in on the only news channel allowed to use the new satellites so far. The holiday palace had been refitting at an isolated shipyard when the armada bombed Earth, and somehow escaped damage.
The big fusion reactors that had powered the ungainly structure were being adapted to drive massive water jet engines. The reactors wouldn’t need refueling for several years, and the repurposed palace would carry a lot of grain in that time. But even when you had a way of carrying produce around the world, how did you load and unload the stuff when there weren’t any ports?
Cordez had seen a host of small craft load an aircraft carrier – taken out of mothballs as a floating museum – from a mountain of goods stacked behind a beach. Each item had been manhandled along a hastily constructed jetty and into the small craft. Somehow, the job of feeding Earth’s millions was getting done.
“One of my people has a population estimate for us,” said Dante McGorant, breaking into Cordez’ reverie. The Regent brought his attention back to the meeting with the Board of Regents.
“She used the new satellites to scan for population densities with some sort of high brow stats – at least we haven’t lost those sorts of skills.
“There’s a total of 417 million as best she can make out.”
Cordez’ eyebrows shot up. “417? That’s 63 million short!”
“Yes,” said McGorant. “We lost quite a few when the shelters were damaged by the groundships, and during the evacuation of the cities.
“On top of that, conditions were cramped inside the shelters, which led to deaths from existing medical conditions. It was just old age, and too much excitement, in many cases.”
“But so many!” exploded Cordez.
Asura Ming and Victor Emens looked at each other, then looked away.
“Out with it!” said Cordez. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“Not everybody went to the shelters,” said Asura. “We told the whole planet what was happening, and we broadcast the same messages for over twenty hours, but some people preferred to take their chances in their own homes.”
Cordez was silent. In a way he had to allow any human being that right. It was democracy at work. But part of him was wondering what else could have been done to make the situation clearer to the population.
“Why wasn’t I told?” he said at length.
Asura looked uncomfortable. “We tried everything to fix the problem, and we didn’t think there was much else we could do. We didn’t want to bother you when you already had so much on your plate.”
Then she lifted her chin defiantly. “Don’t you always say a leader should know how to delegate?”
Cordez had to smile. She was right, of course, and he was pleased she had made the decision for him. He would talk to her about it later.
A month after that a new sort of story started to come in over the news feed. They wer
e stories that showed the depth of Human problem-solving, and illustrated the way people everywhere could work together. Cordez found comfort in them. They kept him going when everything was in transition and there seemed to be nothing but set-backs.
He had asked for one of these stories to be researched more fully for him, and now it lay on his desk. He would read it when he needed his spirits lifted. It went like this.
On the plains at the foot of the Canadian Rockies stood a small town. It had come into being at the crossroads of the A19 where it snaked across the Canadian wheat fields, and the M5 where it headed for the United States border. On the outskirts of town, right next to the A19, stood a substantial engineering workshop with a large sign that read ‘Joe’s Garage’.
The name had been one of Joe’s retro ideas. A man with a love of history, he liked to think of his workshop as just him and some of his mates ‘tinkering with a few tools, out the back’. In fact, the workshop had once had the ability to maintain the massive machines that flew and crawled across the Canadian wheat fields.
But all that was gone now. The wheat fields hadn’t quite been thrown back to horse and cart days, but they weren’t far off.
Joe scratched at a three-day beard and surveyed his racks of sheet metal. The racks were full, but the smaller racks of high-tensile rods overhead were down a bit. He had restocked less than a month before the goddammit armada had laid waste to Earth.
That restocking had turned out to be a blessing, but the thought of the gray plains of ash where Earth’s proud cities once stood soured Joe’s mood. Out of the window behind him the flanks of the Rockies lay blackened and scared by erosion after recent rains.
It was a reminder that his walks in the wild with his Axos image recorder had been taken away from him. The sky was still a dirty gray from the fires, though the Javelins with the ramjet engines were scrubbing it a little cleaner each day.
Joe muttered under his breath, and turned his head to spit vehemently into a corner. His mutterings grew into a fully-fledged rambling – and then he realized what he was doing, and stopped himself. This was what the Invardii wanted him to do. They wanted to see his spirit taken up with lesser things, his thoughts filled with recrimination and empty plans for revenge.
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