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 that 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 overloaded 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 generators 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 planets where there was no interference. On most of them the results of the bombardment projectiles were disappointing. But the human defenses 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 for its preliminary expansion stage.
It was getting crowded at the center 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. 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, but 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; while 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: 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-up. 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 fallout 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 reestablish 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 center 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 pickup working again. A whole load of circuitry 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 pickup. “The house array is bringing up a basic communications 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 all the way down the Ulon Valley as far as he could see.
“I can’t interface with it,” Liz said. “But the backup monitor screen in the utility room survived, so I could type in a few commands. Ninety percent 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 fiber-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 around 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 toward the smog-clotted remains of the Regents.
Liz eyed them wearily. “Going to rain before long. Heavy rain.” She turned to Mark. “So which way are we heading?”
“It’s a long way to the gateway,” he said.
“If it’s still there,” Carys said. “They used a nuke to take out a remote detector station, God knows what they hit the CST station with. And that highway is one very long, very exposed route. Then we have to cross an ocean.”
“There’s no other way out,” he said.
“You know we have to check on the others,” Liz said. “I want to get the children to safety, more than anything, but we have to know where safe is. And right now I’m not convinced it’s the other side of the Dau’sings.”
Mark glanced up at the sky, suddenly fearful of the sight. He’d never realized before how open it was. “Suppose… they come?”
