It was in range of the Rift Guns.
He activated the signal, and began the message, the speech he’d had ready, short and to the point.
Then he walked through the rift portal they’d finally installed at GDC headquarters, and across the plaza at Neem-Jat labs to the orbital command facility. He had a few items of last-minute preparation to discuss with Neem. Inside, he found Neem at, or rather in, very unique gun control station. It was a suit of power armor, even larger than the standard Elder design, wielding a huge targeting gun, and standing in front of a giant wall-sized monitor.
“Really?” he said, flatly.
Neem looked at him in surprise, “Jat finally figured out how to replicate one of the Elder’s starbase energy cannons, and so I had a Rift Gun rigged up with one, and I thought a gun like that should have a really cool firing station, and so, of course…”
“Logically!” said Karden, “My apologies for not seeing that. Does it, in fact, work?”
Neem walked over in the armor, grinned, walked back, activated his screen, and pulled up a target in space. He aimed and fired. Only a tracking signal came out of the targeting gun, but on the screen, or rather, a light year away, a searing beam of white energy disintegrated the target without a trace.
“I can’t wait to try it on the Elders!” said Neem.
“Neem, didn’t you get the transmitter message, or mine?”
“No, I was busy, why? Oh…”
“That’s right. The time is now,” said Karden.
Across the now sixty worlds of the League, the call went out to the now three million strong corps of volunteer gunners.
Across sixty worlds, a million people of many ages and occupations, united only by their skill and enthusiasm, sat down at their control consoles and readied their Rift Guns.
Across sixty worlds, billions more watched.
Across sixty worlds, a million orbital guns activated rifts.
///
As Katiyar’s fleet assumed its defensive globes once more, a substantial fraction of the hundred million crew and soldiers aboard were engaged in a search for more transmitters. Others were equally busy resupplying as fast as even Elder efficiency would allow. He strode his bridge, gloomy thoughts on his mind. His Flag Captain, Sikrai, arrived.
“Flag Captain, any luck?”
“Nothing, Admiral Sir. Not from interrogations or searches. The crew has opened every ration packet on the ship.”
“I think the most unfortunate part, Flag Captain, is that even if we find another one, we can’t be sure it is the last. We’re going to have to leave sooner than we’d like for the last jump, and hope that the enemy doesn’t show up with any greater force than they brought last time.”
“May I speak, Admiral Sir?” asked Sikrai.
Katiyar studied him. From Sikrai, it was an unusual request.
“Yes, Flag Captain.”
“This new use of the rift drive by the Grounders and the rebels, hiding and shooting us through their rifts from safety, seems somehow desperate and cowardly. Yet, it is very dangerous. I think if they have much more time to spread their revolution and that technology, we could face some real trouble.”
“We could, Flag Captain, but they are trying to win a war against a greatly superior foe. They are using the weapons available to them, as we will be, with the free hand of Level Three Retrogression. Our job for the moment is to weather whatever sniping attacks they raise against us, then eliminate them permanently from the war.”
He continued, “With luck, Flag Captain, our scientists will soon sort out how to duplicate their rift technology, and then we can be sure no one like them will ever rise again.”
///
At that moment, a million rifts opened in space around the fleet, and a million guns opened fire. The outer globe of the Grand Fleet came under a withering barrage as millions of railgun shots, lasers and particle beams ripped into the Warden Ships.
From somewhere on the other side of those rifts came an attack that startled even impassive Elders. A brilliant white ray of energy, like one of their own starbase heavy beams, cut into a Warden Ship, knocking out its shield on that side with a single shot. With a second shot it vaporized the bridge.
Light years away, a young man in power armor, standing in front of a giant video of the ship he’d just disabled, cheered, and moved to the next target.
The shields of hundreds of ships began to ripple and flicker out. Ships began shattering, exploding, or floating in space, bereft of engines or bridges. Katiyar swiftly realized what it meant, and how little time they had. He’d prepared a short-term contingency for a surprise attack. He activated an all-fleet communication signal.
“All ships, all crews, open wormholes to the secondary destination, and jump… NOW!”
Roughly three thousand Warden Ships and five thousand transports had fuel left for the short jump he’d set as an emergency escape if they were still being tracked. The rest either didn’t, or had already been destroyed or disabled. Those left behind were soon cut to pieces by the volume of fire.
In astronomical terms, it wasn’t far at all, only sixty billion kilometers, but enough to escape any direct attack… unless they were still being tracked. As they came out of their wormholes, Katiyar signaled his fleet.
“All ships, all crews. You are to focus on refueling, and only refueling.”
“Admirals and ship captains, power down and get fuel to your stardrives as fast as possible, using any means necessary.”
And a bitter race against time, and the unknown, began.
///
“Slag!” yelled Neem through a communication line to Karden’s desk at the GDC war room.
Karden paused at that. It might have been the first time he’d heard Neem curse. He wasn’t feeling much better. The Grand Fleet had jumped away, again. His mind raced. How far could they have gotten? How long would they be in wormholes? Did he dare use the transmitter again and possibly lose it uselessly by breaking up a single wormhole, or did he fail to use it, end up with it found, and lose track of the fleet forever?
Karden knew once they got away, they’d have as much time as needed to refit and refuel from the vast stores on those transports, and they were still strong enough to accomplish their goal – the annihilation of his world.
He called Jat, who was busy working on ideas to for the defense of the Ground system, should they come.
“Jat, how far do you think they could have gone, with the fuel they probably had left?”
There was a long pause. Karden imagined Jat at work on his computer.
“Not far, or they would have left a lot more ships behind. Maybe sixty to eighty billion kilometers. That is a rough estimate at best, Karden.”
Sixty to eighty billion kilometers!
Karden considered. Did he dare make another use of the precious transmitter? Did he even have time to wait to decide? Given the number of ships that had been abandoned, catching them off guard at their first deep space staging ground must have caught them in uneven stages of refueling. He, Katiyar would want to keep as many of his ships as he could intact for eventual attack.
He guessed Katiyar would be at the nearer end of that range, and towards Ground rather than away from it. That might narrow things down a bit. There would also be the flashes from the wormholes to look for, expanding outward at the speed of light. He had a million pairs of eyes, with rift viewers at their disposal, to try to find him. He made up his mind, and a call.
“Abida, I don’t think the Grand Fleet went far. Call out your troops to go searching between the coordinates I’m about to send you.”
“Search? Karden, isn’t it many millions of kilometers?”
“And how many people do we have who can search?”
Abida laughed.
“I’ll let you know if we find them!”
///
Even Karden was shocked at how fast they found them. It had been not much more than two hours. Some amateur astronomer had noti
ced the slightest twinkle of light, out in the void of space, where without atmosphere, stars didn’t twinkle. He’d zoomed in to investigate, and found them.
The rest of the million followed, and unleashed misery on the Grand Fleet.
Karden watched through a patch-in from Neem’s giant-sized monitors. Ships were shattering everywhere under the almost unimaginable volume of fire. Shuttles attempting to fly out, perhaps to deliver fuel, were picked off in seconds.
Katiyar must have decided to make a hard choice, because after half an hour of destruction, the fleet jumped again. Or rather, part of it. This time they left a thousand or more Warden Ships behind, and two thousand transports. Against a million guns, and with no way to fight back, those left behind didn’t last long.
This time, Karden was sure Katiyar must have taken a longer jump, with only the ships that could make it. There was no other explanation for the awful choice of leaving so much of his fleet behind. There would be no finding them by lucky guesses and mass searching this time. The odds might be improving, but Katiyar would be getting more desperate, and even after his horrific losses, he had two thousand Warden Ships, and if he could get them enough fuel, he could afford to take desperate risks.
Now once again Karden faced his grim choice. Skrai’kiik’s last transmitter might reveal the location of the fleet. If he didn’t wait long enough to activate it, it would be lost forever. If he waited too long, Katiyar might, with frenzied effort, have time to concentrate his fuel in enough ships to make a final jump to Ground. That is, if the transmitter still worked.
Finally, he resolved to try it. He waited the agonizing hours he hoped, with a little advice from Jat, would be long enough.
He unlocked the transmitter. He pressed the button.
It pinged.
His heart racing, he forwarded the coordinates to Abida and his millions.
///
In the time since they’d arrived at their latest, hastily chosen, waypoint, the Grand Fleet had put every moment into the effort to get the vast amounts of fuel they needed loaded into their stardrives. Warden Ships drained their internal extra reserves, transports were emptied of fuel to fill the rest. Katiyar silently cursed his people’s centuries old ideas of starship design, that had assumed control of space and the ability to refuel at will.
He had Sikrai at his side, and his admirals on a communication channel.
“We will have to leave most of the transports, but the extra fuel brings us into jump range of the Ground system. Officers, we must be willing to jump close in to Ground itself, at ranges that may cost us five to ten percent of the fleet lost in unstable wormholes. Are you prepared to do you duty?”
“Yes, Admiral Sir,” Sikrai and the admirals answered as one.
“We will be close enough to launch nuclear and antimatter missiles, and everything on that world will die. From there, we will divide and proceed simultaneously to Solidarity 17 and the ten other league worlds I’ve given you as targets. We may hope the destruction of Ground will convince them to cease fighting. If it doesn’t, we are not authorized to enact Retrogression, but we will come as close as allowed. This revolution must be ended permanently, and a lesson taught to all who might consider it in the future.”
His officers set to their work. Then it started again. Ships exploded around him in all directions. Heavy fire was striking the reinforced shields around the bridge of the Reeducator.
Sikrai looked at his admiral, resignation in his eyes. “Admiral Sir, shall I give the order to jump?”
“Wait for all designated ships to finish fueling, Flag Captain.”
“Yes, Admiral Sir.”
A few moments passed, the bridge shields were beginning to flicker. Reports came back from across the fleet. They were ready.
“Now, Flag Captain.”
Sikrai gave the order to jump, as nearly two thousand captains across the fleet did the same. But this time, the enemy did something different.
The fire stopped. At the same moment, all around them and amidst them, thousands of Liberty class ships appeared, fired nuclear missiles, and disappeared. Even as wormholes were opening, the missiles, thousands of them, detonated.
Admiral Katiyar and Captain Sikrai stood on their bridge as the Reeducator raced toward its wormhole. Then the blasts hit them. The Grand Fleet, thousands of ships and millions of lives, ceased to be. In its place were heat, waves of force, and deadly radiation spreading outward across the void of interstellar space.
56
As the Grand Fleet was destroyed, Karden, in the war room back at GDC headquarters, watched it all through monitors. Everyone around him erupted in cheers. There were yells, hugs, cheers, and calls to spread the news. He slumped back in his chair in exhaustion. Tomorrow, there would be work to do. He would have to get a new propaganda video made, announcing the victory and issuing a fresh call for revolution. There would be calls to Viris and Marit and Giuseppe McCoy.
But for now he needed sleep, and he missed Tayyis.
///
Word of the destruction of the Grand Fleet spread rapidly. Within days, thousands of Production worlds were engulfed in violence as rebels fought against the authorities. The League of Free Worlds added more and more supply bases in the interstellar voids, more spy satellites behind enemy lines, and more communication satellites behind their own.
Within weeks, the League had grown to more than two thousand worlds. As they connected those worlds to the rift networks, as the growing fleets of private cargo vessels reached them, as they stripped away the layers of control and fear, vast productive forces were being unleashed.
As worlds joined the league, they were set to work building gun platforms like those of the original members. The pace of expansion was such that they had trouble producing infrastructure, including maintenance supplies and ammunition, fast enough to support them. The tremendous pace of recruitment was also affecting the supply of gunners. They couldn’t simply operate the new guns through chains of rift communicators because of the very small, but tactically fatal delays that crept into transmissions as rifts were opened and closed.
Meanwhile, in the heart of the League, they had a brilliantly skilled pool of volunteers with nothing more to shoot at.
///
As the dreadful news of the surrender of the Grand Fleet reached Earth, there was tumult in the Galactic Central Presidium. Raised voices, almost shouted, crossed the room, and whispered opinions swept like winds back and forth. Speaker Quinn stood unhappily on his podium.
A voice raised, it was Ozerov’s, “Honored members, the crisis before us is unprecedented in the history of the Galactic Protectorate. It requires swift action, now, if there is to be any hope of survival for the precious heritage of enlightenment that was placed in our charge.
“There are still sector detachments in service. We have our new Enlightener class warships under construction, ready to face the enemy with their own technology. There are still possibilities. To use them requires fresh thinking, requires willingness to look at our past blindness and to learn the lessons, yes the lessons, being taught us by our enemies.”
“Not least of those lessons is our error in authorizing Level Three Retrogression.”
There was a murmur of voices around the chamber.
“Bear with me, honored members. We could not have foreseen the full consequences, and it is not my intent to revive earlier debates. However, results have shown that the declaration of Retrogression unified the enemy and played a key part in fomenting the unrest now spreading among the Guided Populations. That unrest in turn contributed to the disruption of logistical support for the Grand Fleet, and in turn again, to its weakening and destruction.”
“We may all take our share of blame, but ultimately this defeat derives from a failure of leadership. Responsibility rests with the one who proposed Level Three Retrogression, with the one who currently holds supreme authority, Presidium Speaker Quinn.”
“There are possibilities, but there i
s not much time. Making use of that time requires new leadership. I move for a vote of recall, and election of a new Speaker, immediately.”
Quinn surveyed the chamber, his face a mask. He spoke.
“Presidium Member Ozerov has called for a vote of recall, does anyone second?”
The vote that followed was overwhelming. Quinn was recalled to his seat as a regular member, and after a few short rounds of discussion, Ozerov was elected the new Speaker. The debates however, went on.
///
Viris Nane was busy expanding a network of her own. The Elder’s communication network, narrowband, slow, and government run, was in ruins. The network the league had been building thus far was also government run, and geared mostly toward spying and military communication.
She had better ideas. She saw it as her chance to try to build a data network from the ground up, according to her ideas. Flexibility, openness, speed, mobility, cheapness, reliability through capacity and redundancy rather than centralized perfection. The nets on Ground were her model, but they’d grown as a hodgepodge under different national standards. This time, it could be done right.
With input from Marit, Ilyar, Neem, Sader, Harker and others, she thought about how it could be spread cheaply, almost virally.
She swallowed her old rebellious pride, and went out to the business world to raise capital. Based on their experience, Neem and Jat recommended she consult, and license prototypes, rather than try to build a physical network herself, and that was more than fine with her. Her ideas took hold, the advantages of her architecture clear. Hundreds of small companies started on dozens of world using her ideas. She consulted and advised without controlling, and nonetheless soon found herself surprisingly wealthy.
The first big test of her model came with a call from Karden.
“Viris, you know we’re having problems building our network of Rift Guns fast enough, and more with the command and control of the guns themselves.”
“You know delays creep in through multiple transmitters because of the time, however small, it takes to open a rift. We need a way to keep up with the advancing front, and we’ve got skilled gunners here going to waste. Would you be willing to get with Neem and Jat and come up with ideas on how to get around the problem?”
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