A packet boat had come through during the previous watch, and among the things it carried were sealed and encoded courier pouches for the Odysseus. It was known that the old captain of the ship, along with the Orthodox priest and the old diva, had been huddled for a couple of hours looking over whatever had come in, and that the robotic systems were testing and preparing visuals.
The group was pretty well divided over the length of the wait. A number, led by the scientists Takamura and van der Voort, thought that this was as far as they were going to get, and that it was something of a wild goose chase. The mercenaries were content either to go or to continue to train both themselves and the civilians in what was to come. It was pretty well known that Colonel N’Gana believed that it would be far better for most of the others if this did turn out to be a wild goose chase, since he didn’t give them much hope of surviving any conditions that they would probably face were they to get a “go!”
And then there were Krill and Socolov, both of whom were bored to tears and just wanted something to happen before they died of old age. Krill felt certain that she’d swept the ship as thoroughly as technology made possible, and that nothing important was getting back to Commander Park. She was well aware of the tiny robotic bugs that kept crawling all over, but there were ways to limit them, or jam them completely if need be. Others had not been so kind about their discovery, but amateurs always believed that if you paid enough money and demanded that you juggle three planets and breathe pure carbon monoxide, then you should be able to do it all while singing your old college fight song.
One of the first things they taught would-be officers in OCS, though, was the ancient story of King Canute, who believed that he was king by God’s grace and will and thus had God’s powers. Irritated by the crashing of the surf on the incoming tide that disturbed his sleep, he marched out into the sea and commanded it to stand still and be quiet. The sea, of course, ignored him and he drowned.
The ones giving the orders and paying the bills were always the descendants of King Canute, whether private or government. That was why Krill, at least, had gone private. If you were going to have to work for idiots, then you might as well work for the ones that paid the best.
Madame Sotoropolis ambled in in her inimitable fashion and took a supporting seat in her usual spot. Krill and a few others knew what she looked like under there—although not how much was still human and how much was replacement—but most were more or less content not to know.
Father Chicanis emerged from behind the stage and stood at the podium.
“I have good news and distressing news both this morning,” he told them without preamble. “The distressing news is that a new wave of Titan ships has deployed and is beginning to take over the Sigma Neighborhood. That’s eight systems, eight planets. The Confederacy knew they were coming and got off what it could, but the wholesale evacuation of eight worlds is simply impossible, as you know. Unlike the first wave, when we challenged them and were destroyed, or the second, in which we were far too cautious and didn’t yet know what sort of things they did, this time, at least, we managed to be set up to get detailed analytical measurements, including pictures. Their method of operation has not varied, but there do seem to be more of them this time.” He looked to the back of the room. “Run sequence number one, please.”
The screen suddenly leaped to life, showing a remarkably lifelike three-dimensional solar system against a star-field, a kind of shadowbox view of the inner planets with the sun blocked from direct view to keep the scene visible.
The military people had seen such footage before, but it was relatively new to the rest. It was public knowledge what the Titans did, but The Confederacy had thought it prudent not to allow the kind of graphic pictures that were possible. The resulting panic from what they now knew was bad enough; this sort of thing would simply serve no purpose.
There was a slight pan, and then, in the upper left, the formation of Titan ships appeared. They were, as always, apparently out of focus: flattened eggs with a horizontal demarcation line, but fuzzy and muted. No details were visible and even the yellowish color was a pastel.
They were large ships, but not that large, even by Confederacy standards. Although unitary rather than modular, like the Odysseus, the Titan craft looked to be a bit over a kilometer long and perhaps slightly narrower across, the orientation mostly taken from the direction of flight rather than from any feature that would indicate a pilot area, or, indeed, an engine module.
There were seven of them flying in a close-quarter V formation, and they moved as one and banked and headed for the second planet from the sun, the one that was blue and white and was clearly the sort of place to support a large human population.
Suddenly there was an enormous flare-up in space as they passed a point between planets two and three.
“That’s the primary genhole blowing,” the priest told them. “Essentially the power required to sustain it is simply bled out as they pass—note that there were no signs of anything shooting from the ships, nor coming to them. When they are near and there is power, they simply absorb it. The gate loses its stability and essentially vanishes within itself, the hole that swallows a hole and becomes nothing. Anything in there at the time also is destroyed, or, more accurately, ceases to exist, but I’m informed that they cleared everything that they could and that no ships got caught, unlike the last encounters.”
“Thank God for that,” Madame Sotoropolis muttered.
“As they close in on the second planet, which is called Naughton, you see that there comes a fair amount of exchange. Magnify, please!”
The view suddenly filled partway with a no less diffuse and unfocused Titan ship and also showed some rather substantial warships bearing in and firing full. The energy pulses, torpedoes, and fusion warheads all were permitted to come in and apparently hit the Titan ship, but when they did, nothing happened. Nothing. No explosions, no nothing. It was as if they were all snowballs and had simply hit a mass of molten rock.
Now, though, the three large warships lost their own shields even as they banked to attempt to get away. They did not explode, they did not flare, they simply went cold and dark and continued aimlessly in the trajectory they’d been taking when it hit.
“All power goes instantly,” the priest told them. “It sucks it up so fast and so completely it barely registers on the instruments. Since there’s also no life support, no lifeboat support, no environmental suits and space suits that will work, not even oxygen-carbon dioxide exchangers, normal ventilation, you name it, everything is instantly gone. Some of the poor souls may have hung on for a while, but the lucky ones died instantly. One will head forever out into deepest space; a second will fall into Naughton’s gravity well and burn up; and the third will angle in and eventually fall right into the star. Other ships based on the planet and stuck there will try to rescue them somehow, but none will succeed. Now—see them begin to deploy. There is more ocean on Naughton than normal, and the continental land mass is huge but singular at the moment. They are deploying along the outer edges of the continent as you see now from this angle, and essentially encircling it. Once the Titans have established position, they will begin a broad coordinated sweep that will eventually take them over every single part of the land mass. As they pass, slowly and methodically as always, the power will simply go below. This takes some time, and is probably not completed now down there. However, take a look at the night shot here. Next sequence, please!”
The planet was now in night, and there were still signs of vast lighted areas. Cities were down there still, and a huge amount of humanity had not been able to get off. The Titan ships weren’t even visible in a long shot, but you could see their effect on the coastal areas. There, quite discernibly, whole sequences of lights representing major places where people lived were simply winking out.
Father Chicanis continued, “The next step after this will be to establish a base system. With only one Pangean land mass, they will probabl
y establish it equidistant from the edges of the continent. The seventh ship, probably the lead ship, will then detach a smaller vessel identical to the big ones and establish a center point in a flat area in the middle of the land mass. They will then set up an energy grid of a nature we have not ever been able to crack or understand, and, using that, they will begin the reshaping of the land.”
“What about the islands? There are lots of islands in that humongous ocean,” Katarina Socolov noted. “What about on the sea and underwater colonies?”
“They really don’t care,” Chicanis reminded her. “They simply ignore us. What will happen is that they will use the nexus they created to reshape the planet as they choose. Once they establish their ground stations, smaller ships, which kind of ooze out of the main ones like bubbles of oil out of a great slick, can extend the active force fields as desired. In Naughton’s case, it may be that some of the people on the smaller islands and perhaps even some underwater stations will continue to exist, as the Titans have shown little interest in the seas and there are no islands large enough for their plantings. What they might do is anything from tilt the axis of the planet to nudge it into a slightly different orbit that would produce their preferred temperature range. That usually destroys any settlements such as you describe, but in this case they probably will not do that. Naughton is already very close to their norms on its own. They need only adjust the rainfall patterns, accelerate drift to create or eliminate some needed landforms and river systems, and so on. They will almost certainly also do a cleansing, as we call it, once they have set up their various nexus.”
“Cleansing?”
“Yes. They will create an energy firestorm that will sweep the area in between their bases and meet in the center. This will eliminate all standing vegetation and probably whatever humanity is trying to survive aboveground. That’s what we believe. A great deal of effort went into putting up shelters in underground units, even in old transport tubes and the like. It won’t be very pleasant there, and there will be no fresh air flow, no lights, no nothing, but some people will survive and live off preserved foods and such for years. By the time the very few survivors emerge, they will probably be nocturnal, and very primitive, but they will emerge into a world which is hot, wet, and has a reestablished ecosystem. The Titans tend to foster fruit and vegetable growth, including both imported and native species, if they’re in balance. A very small human population can probably survive on them. Our energy scans indicate that they range in tribal groups. But there will not be many, and they will be essentially ignored.”
“Just what sort of population were we looking at there, Father?” van der Voort asked him, fearing the answer from the knowledge of past conquests but wanting to know anyway.
“Last census was a bit over a billion people,” Chicanis responded gravely. “They managed to evacuate, oh, perhaps a hundred and thirty thousand.”
That cast a sudden chill and noticeable pall across the whole gathering. Still, N’Gana shifted a bit impatiently. “This is old stuff, Father. Why do we need the gory details again?”
“Sorry, Colonel, but it’s not completely old stuff to some, and it was necessary that everyone, I think, not only know the facts but see them in graphic detail. The reason why Naughton is a particularly important object lesson is that it is, in many ways, quite similar to Helena.”
That caused a major stir.
“Helena has two continental land masses,” Madame Sotoropolis put in from her perch in the center. “However, they are not all that far apart and, even with a gulf of perhaps five hundred kilometers between them, they are in many ways similar to what you have seen. The rest is sea. There are active volcanic islands in the ocean which the Titans have so far not seen fit to shut down or alter. There is also volcanism scattered in among the high mountains that ring the two continents. Helena was designed to our specifications, although, of course, over a far longer period and using our more primitive tools, so there is a certain regularity. Two island continents, rather playfully called Eden and Atlantis. The Titan bases are set up much the same as you saw them there, only there are fewer of them. Eden, the more tropical of the two throughout and the planet’s breadbasket, has only one primary base and then uses a half dozen small bases using the spinoff ships. Atlantis, which was where the major population centers were, has three large ships doing a kind of triangle system the way those seven did there with the larger single continent on Naughton.”
Katarina Socolov took several deep breaths. Chicanis noticed and asked, “Are you all right, my dear?”
She nodded. “I—I think so. How old were those pictures, Father?”
He looked at a small screen in the podium. “Even allowing for temporal distortion, we are talking no more than two years here. Yesterday by the packet boat’s clock.”
“Two years... So, right now, that continent is a blasted plain with nothing growing, and out of a billion people a few—what? hundred? thousand?—survivors are huddled like animals in caves in near darkness eating jars of food and—it’s horrible!”
“Tell me how to stop it and I’ll blow those things to hell without a second thought,” Colonal N’Gana put in, showing some uncharacteristic compassion.
“What’s the real time clock on Helena now?” Doctor Takamura asked.
“If we left tomorrow and managed somehow to establish a genhole terminus in system without attracting the bad guys, it would be seventy-eight years standard,” Chicanis told them.
“We left them and marched to the rescue a mere six years ago,” the old diva sighed. “But in that time we have lived, they have been remade. That is the worst of all tragedies. Not just that we cannot help, but that no matter when one rides to help, it’s always too late. Much, much too late.”
There was silence for a minute or so there, then the priest continued.
“Because of the likelihood of this conference being monitored, we can’t go into much more detail right now,” he told them. “I think they are going crazy trying to figure out what this is all about, and, frankly, I was beginning to have my doubts as well. However, now we can both bid farewell to the prying little crawling monitors of Commander Park and this rather depressing little place and head off. The packet also brought the codes we have been waiting for. It appears that the Titan movement caused the delay in ways I suppose we will need to have explained. At any rate, from this moment on, all shore leave is canceled for any and all personnel, as little as we’ve done to begin with, and the captain, even now, is putting in his charts and requests to break port and head out. It will doubtless take a few hours for traffic control to clear us, and, of course, as much added time as Commander Park and his people want to delay us, but it is a good bet that we will be under way by twenty hundred ship’s time this day.”
“At last,” several breathed, although there was also among the small group a sudden rise in tension as well. It was finally on!
“Once we are through the genhole, we will meet again here and in security discuss for the first time some of the more specific parts of what we aim to do. All of this, of course, still depends on a third party who might or might not come through, but we will see.”
“In the meantime, parties should continue with their simulation exercises,” N’Gana said firmly. “It looks like you may well need them after all.”
Below, in the Officer’s Quarters on the Naval base, a communicator went off like a fire siren.
• • •
Commander Park and Admiral Storer were aboard the tender Margaite now with Gene Harker and the chief. Harker’s combat e-suit stood like a streamlined robot just behind them.
“This is still volunteer, Harker,” Storer reminded him. “You don’t have to do this.”
The warrant officer swallowed hard. “Yes, sir, I think I do. Something tells me that if we’re not, somehow, along on this then there is no hope. I would rather take risks and maybe go down than sit and wait for the damned Titans to come knocking. I just hope all the th
eory people back in the labs are right that this is possible for a human being to do.”
“Oh, it’s possible. We’ve had people do it, at least for one jump, in testing this sort of thing,” Park assured him. “Of course, that was under controlled conditions with us knowing somebody was there, but it should work.”
“Thanks a lot for the qualifiers, sir,” Harker responded glumly.
The admiral looked at him. “Scared, son?”
“Yes, sir. Scared shitless, beg the admiral’s pardon. This may be the stupidest thing I’ve ever thought up, but I’m not going to back out.”
“Well, you’re as checked out as we can make you,” Commander Park said. “The suit’s the top of the line, even has some protection features and capabilities that are still not available in contract models. We’ve done this drill many times in this old heap.”
“Beggin’ the commander’s pardon, the Margaite’s no heap,” the chief piloting it snapped.
“Fair enough. This is no time to argue aesthetics.”
“Comin’ up on the hull, sir,” the chief reported. “Hold on, we’re about to mate with the high energy power intake.” There was a shudder, and the old chief nodded. “Now comin’ up on the ship. You got ten minutes, sonny. Get in the damned suit now. Ten minutes from now I got to disengage or they’ll know we’re up to somethin’.”
“They already know we’re up to something,” Harker noted. “They’d have to be nuts not to. I just hope they don’t think about this.”
He shook hands with the two superior officers and even the chief, and went back and turned his back on his suit. The suit walked slightly forward and enveloped him, and he felt himself drifting into the center. All of the life support plug-ins, instrumentation, direct links to the cortex were established, and he began to see better than ever, hear better than ever, and feel a little like superman.
“God be with you, Mister Harker,” the chief said simply but seriously.
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