Do as you would be done by, and do it first. Well, well, you’ve finally started thinking like me. There’s hope for all of you yet. Okay, go ahead.
Thank you, Rubra. We know this must be difficult for you.
Just make damn sure you don’t miss. Some of my industrial stations are very close to my shell.
Rubra had always maintained an above-average number of Strategic Defence platforms around Valisk. Given his semi-paranoid nature it was inevitable he should want to make local space as secure as possible. Forty- five weapons platforms covered a bubble of space fifty thousand kilometres in diameter with the habitat and its comprehensive parade of industrial stations at the centre. They were complemented by two hundred sensor satellites, sweeping both inwards and outwards. No one had ever attempted an act of aggression within Valisk’s sphere of interest—a remarkable achievement considering the kind of ships which frequented the spaceport.
Magellanic Itg had manufactured the network, developing indigenous designs and fabricating all the components itself. A policy which had earned the company a healthy quantity of export orders. It also enabled Rubra to install his personality as the network’s executive. He certainly wasn’t about to trust any of his woefully ineffectual descendants with his own defence.
That arrangement had come to an abrupt end with the emergence of the possessed. His control over the network was via affinity with bitek management processors that were integrated into every platform’s command circuitry. He hadn’t even realized he’d lost control of the platforms until he’d attempted to interdict the hellhawks when they first revealed themselves. Afterwards, he’d worked out that somebody—that little shit Dariat, no doubt—had subverted his SD governor thought routines long enough to load powerdown orders into every platform.
With the power off, there was no way of regaining control through the bitek processors. Every platform would have to be reactivated manually. Which was exactly what Kiera had done. Spacecraft had rendezvoused with the platforms and taken out Rubra’s bitek management processors, replacing them with electronic processors and new fire authority codes.
A new SD Command centre was established in the counter-rotating spaceport, outside Rubra’s influence. He couldn’t strike at that like he could the starscrapers. The possessed technicians who reactivated the network were convinced they had made it independent, a system which only Kiera and her newly installed codes could control.
What neither they nor Dariat quite appreciated were the myriad number of physical interfaces between the neural strata and Valisk’s communications net. The tube trains and the starscraper lifts were the most obvious examples, but every mechanical and electronic utility system had a similar junction, a small processor nodule which converted fibre optic pulses to nerve impulses and vice versa. And Magellanic Itg not only built Valisk’s communications net, it also supplied ninety per cent of the counter-rotating spaceport’s electronics. A fact which even fewer people were aware of was that every company processor had a back-door access function hardwired in, to which Rubra alone had the key.
Within seconds of the possessed establishing their new SD command channels he was in the system. A delicious irony, he felt, a ghost in the ghosts’ machinery. The devious interface circuits he’d established to gain entry couldn’t support anything like the data traffic necessary to give him full control of the platforms once more, but he could certainly do unto others what they’d done to him.
On the ready signal from the Kohistan Consensus, Rubra immediately sent a squall of orders out to the SD platforms. Command codes were wiped and replaced, safety limiters were taken off line, fusion generator management programs were reformatted.
In the commandeered spaceport management office used to run the habitat’s SD network, every single alarm tripped at once. The whole room was flooded with red light from AV projectors and holoscreens. Then the power went off, plunging the crew into darkness.
“What the holy fuck is happening?” the recently appointed network captain shouted. A bright candle flame ignited at the tip of his index finger, revealing equally confounded faces all around him. He reached for his communications block to call Kiera Salter, dreading what she would say. But his hand never made it.
“Oh, shit,
Severe white light began to flood in through the office’s single port.
In forty-five fusion generators the plasma jet had become unstable, perturbed by rogue manipulations in the magnetic confinement field. Burnthrough occurred, plasma striking the confinement chamber walls, vaporizing the material, which increased the pressure a thousandfold. Forty-five fusion generators ruptured almost simultaneously, tearing apart the SD platforms in a burst of five million degree shrapnel and irradiated gas.
You’re clear,rubra told the waiting fleet.
Three hundred wormhole termini opened, englobing the habitat. Voidhawks shot out. Two hundred were designated to eradicate the industrial stations, depriving Kiera of their enormous armament manufacturing base. The bitek starships immediately swooped around onto their assault vectors. Kinetic missiles flashed out of their launch cradles, closing on the stations at sixteen gees. Each salvo was aimed so that the impact blast would kick the debris shower away from the habitat, minimizing the possibility of collision damage to the polyp shell.
The remaining hundred voidhawks were given suppression duties. Flying in ten-strong formations they broadcast affinity warnings to the thoroughly disconcerted hellhawks sitting on the docking ledges, ordering them to remain where they were. Sharp ribbons of ruby-red light from targeting lasers made the ledge polyp shimmer like black ice speared by an early morning sun. Refracted beams twisted around the alien shapes perched on the pedestals as the voidhawks strove to match their discordant vectors with the habitat’s rotation.
Closer to the habitat, cyclones of shiny debris were churning out from the ruined industrial stations. Victorious voidhawks dived and spun above the metallic constellations, racing away ahead of the perilous wavefront of sharp high-velocity slivers. The hellhawks sat on their pedestals, observing the carnage with mute impotence.
Exemplary shooting,rubra told the kohistan consensus. Just remember when this is all over, you’re paying Magellanic Itg’s compensation claim.
Three hundred wormhole interstices opened. The voidhawks vanished in an extraordinary display of synchronization. Elapsed time of the attack was ninety-three seconds.
Even in the heat of passion Kiera Salter could sense nearby minds starting to flare in alarm. She tried to dislodge Stanyon from her back and rise to her feet. When he resisted, tightening his grip, she simply smacked an energistic bolt into his chest. He grunted, the impact shoving him backwards.
“What the fuck are you playing at, bitch?” he growled.
“Be silent.” She stood up, her wishes banishing the soreness and rising bruises. Sweat vanished, her hair returned to a neatly brushed mane. A simple, scarlet summer dress materialized over her skin.
On the other side of the endcap, the hellhawks were seething with resentment and anger. Beyond them was a haze of life which gave off a scent of icy determination. And Rubra, the ever-present mental background whisper, was radiating satisfaction. “Damn it!”
Her desktop processor block started shrilling. Data scrawled over its screen. A Strategic Defence alert, and red systems failure symbols were flashing all over the network schematic.
The high-pitched sound started to cut off intermittently, and the screen blanked out. The more she glared at the block, the worse the glitches became.
“What’s happening?” Erdal Kilcady asked. Her other bedroom fancy—a gormless twenty-year-old who as far as she could determine had only one use.
“We’re being attacked, you fool,” she snapped. “It’s those fucking Edenists.” Shit, and her schemes had been progressing beautifully up until now. The idiot kids believed her recording; they were starting to arrive. Another couple of months would have seen the habitat population rise to a decent level.
Now this. The constant hellhawk flights must have frightened the Edenists into taking action.
The burn mark on Stanyon’s chest healed over. Clothes sprang up to conceal his body. “We’d better get along to the SD control centre and kick some butt,” he said.
Kiera hesitated. The SD centre was in the counter-rotating spaceport. She was certain the habitat itself would be safe from attack. Rubra would never allow that, but the spaceport might be a legitimate target.
Just as she took a reluctant first step towards the door the black bakelite telephone on her bedside table started to ring. The primitive communications instrument was one which worked almost infallibly in the energistic
