His chair swivelled so he was facing Emilja and Ainsley. They were staring at the chamber’s central display, watching the patch of empty space where the massive arkship had been.
Ainsley raised a fist in victory. ‘That’s it, then. We dick-punched the bastards.’ He started laughing.
‘Heaven preserve us,’ Emilja said. ‘What have we done?’
‘The only thing we could,’ Johnston assured her.
‘They will be back.’
‘Oh, yes. And when they return, there is only one thing left for us to do: run. We need to be ready.’
‘Christ’s sake, you two,’ Ainsley said. ‘Lighten up. We won. In a couple of centuries, we can fight them on our own terms. You’ll see.’
Emilja gave him a pitying smile. ‘Thankfully, I won’t. That is our children’s fight. And they are not going to thank us for it.’
Nashua Habitat, Delta Pavonis
S-Day, 11th December 2206
Gwendoline Seymore-Qing-Zangari was in the department of exodus habitat construction’s main lounge – a huge communal area where the staff could go and chill. The design subroutine that had produced it had aimed for European stately home but had landed at corporate employee informal function zone. However, the sofas were deep and comfy, the holographic projector top quality, the software in the servez delivering drinks reasonably semi-sentient, and the printed snacks surprisingly good. She could have gone to her apartment with its spectacular view along Nashua’s cylindrical landscape, but being alone when such a decisive – thedecisive – battle for the future of the human race was being fought would have been too depressing. No way was she going to observe with her family. And since she’d arrived two years ago, there’d been precious little time to make any friends. So she’d chosen to settle down and watch Strikeback with her team; they’d all grown close enough over the last twenty months, even though they weren’t Zangaris. She’d brought in a few colleagues from her London office – ones she’d worked with in the past and knew were super-competent. Others had been assigned to her by Delta Pavonis: some from Alpha Defence – which in reality meant the Sol Senate, checking up that the Zangaris and Utopials were upholding their part of the arrangement to build the exodus fleet – and the rest from various astroengineering consortia, weighted in favour of the Eta Cassiopeiae Billionaire Belt.
The display hanging in the air was heavy on data tags, with plenty of long-distance sensor imagery of explosions above Earth, and more disturbingly in the atmosphere.
‘We really are never going back, are we?’ Matilde d’Gorro said bitterly. ‘Not with that radioactive shit piled on top of the Olyix toxicology.’ She’d been one of Gwendoline’s executive administrators back in London, partying as hard as she worked – which was with total dedication. Now she was a paid-up miserabilist, but still kept her impressive focus, which was why Gwendoline continued to use her.
‘They’re single-phase fusion bombs,’ Bettine Abbey, one of the Billionaire Belt science directors, responded. ‘Clean ignition, so they don’t pump out much contamination.’
‘Ten thousand of them?’ Josquain sneered. ‘Those gamma emissions will—’
‘We’ve terraformed worse. Look at Ulysses.’
‘Delta Eridani was different. It didn’t have the kind of particle decay Earth’s going to suffer. And anyway—’
‘Enough,’ Gwendoline said. ‘None of us will ever be returning to Earth.’
‘But it’s our homeworld,’ Matilde exclaimed, almost in tears. ‘There are still whole areas of the biosphere we know nothing about. How are we going to catalogue them now?’
‘Save it for the people who are never going to join the exodus,’ Bettine snapped.
‘Earth is more than just humans!’
‘Oh, fuck, you’re not seriously going speciesist on us? Today?’
‘Time out, both of you,’ Gwendoline ordered. She knew she should be kinder, more sympathetic, but everyone was exhausted, everyone was frightened, and everyone had family who were affected. The arguments about drawing up lists of those who’d get to embark on the exodus habitats were fractious at best. She’d heard there’d been physical fights break out over them.
We just don’t have the psychology to deal with Armageddon. Though judging by the confidential medical reports the Zangari council had allowed her to see, humans certainly had the mood drugs for it.
She watched the clusters of Olyix transport ships fleeing Earth. They were flocking together in huge squadrons and accelerating hard for the Salvation of Life up at Lagrange Three. That puzzled her. A surprise first strike against the alien arkship would have been better tactics, surely? They could have disabled the wormhole and gravitonic drive, leaving the arkship stranded. The cocoons could have been rescued. But now the Olyix onemind knew the Strikeback cruisers and missiles were approaching and was undoubtedly preparing to flee.
‘Call Loi,’ she told Theano, her altme.
‘Network unable to connect.’
‘What? Try again.’
‘Unable to connect. He is offline.’
She grimaced. He was heavily involved in Strikeback, possibly even in the command centre along with Yuri, so he’d be incredibly busy right now. And definitely wouldn’t appreciate a call from his mother. But . . . ‘What’s his location?’
‘Classified.’
‘Well, what was his last non-classified location?’
‘The Delta Pavonis star system.’
‘Okay. Well, leave a message for him. I want to—’ She stopped in surprise as Ainsley Zangari III’s icon splashed into her tarsus lens. ‘Yes?’ she asked.
‘Stop trying to call Loi,’ Ainsley III said.
‘I just wanted to—’
‘You’re tripping all sorts of security alerts. He’s involved in Strikeback; you know that. Which, if you hadn’t noticed, is rather critical to our survival right now. Stop being his mother, for fuck’s sake. He’s old enough to take care of himself and make his own decisions.’
‘But—’
Ainsley III’s icon vanished.
What the actual hell? She glanced surreptitiously around the lounge to see if anyone was looking at her. No. Now you’re getting paranoid. But the reaction from Ainsley III was disturbing. So Loi was in the command centre helping. That wasn’t a reason to snap at her. Unless he wasn’t in the . . . Oh, shit!
Horatio, at least, responded straight away to her call. ‘Hey, you. Did you know this was going to happen?’ he asked breezily.
‘What?’
‘The
