Invardii Box Set 2

by Warwick Gibson

  As the Alliance numerical superiority increased, groups of Javelins attacked individual Reaper ships, weakening them enough to get some shots through into the internal hubs and spars. When the shield-busting missiles ran out, the Sumerian energy weapons were able to take over and bite through shields weakened by a flurry of super-dense slugs.

  The Reaper ships fought to a bitter and predictable end. Cordez wasn’t sure if they simply never grasped the fact they were beaten – as if such a thing was not possible – or whether they chose some sort of ‘death before dishonor’ code, but it was the end he needed to see.

  The loss of so many placed the Invardii armada in an unwinnable position. Their groundships would continue to be picked off by the pulse weapons, and Cordez was sure the dwindling numbers must be a problem for them by now.

  On top of that, attempts to drive a moon or asteroid into Earth would now be met with a greater force than the enemy could muster. Surely the Invardii could see this now. To make sure he drove this point home, Cordez asked ParapSanni to bring the remaining five Sumerian motherships back into the Solar System.

  He hoped the Invardii would understand that the situation had changed. They were up against superior forces now, and the only reasonable course of action for them was to leave the Solar System.

  Once they did, they would never come back – he promised himself that. The Alliance would take the fight to them from now on. They would never, ever, get the chance to return to Earth!

  As if in answer to Cordez’ hope that they would understand their situation, the remainder of the armada turned away from its position above Earth. One by one they winked out as they engaged stardrive systems. Then the effect accelerated, and row upon row of the orange ships disappeared in long ripples of multi-colored light. The last of them vanished, and Cordez put his head in his hands, and relief flooded through him.

  Then a sub-space connection lit up in front of him. It was Prometheus.

  “The gutless slag-spawn jumped right on top of us,” yelled John MacEwart into the link. Cordez could see pandemonium in the comms center behind him. Most of the comms officers were running for the emergency ships, and a production center on a screen behind him disintegrated as an orange fireball hit it.

  “There was no stardrive signature when they arrived!” continued MacEwert. “Normally we get a few minutes warning as this end of the jump forms, but there was nothing.

  “I bet they’ve hit every mining center across the Solar System at the same time, except the Mars miners where the Javelins are. God knows how much of this mess we can salvage.”

  He was about to say something else when the screen went blank. Cordez hastily moved to back-up channels, but there was nothing coming out of Prometheus now, not on any channel.

  So, the Invardii had left a poisoned sting in their departure. Would he have expected anything else? Cordez put away his feelings for the people on Prometheus, people he knew so well. He hoped they were all on their way to somewhere safe.

  He changed the data feeds in front of him, and looked at the main screen as an image of Earth appeared on it.

  It was an Earth still burning in a dozen places. An Earth bleeding hundreds of smokey smudges. The atmosphere of the blue and white planet was pocked with them. But it was an Earth, nonetheless, that was free of the hated alien presence.

  Cordez could hear the cheers from his staff in the rest of the South Am military headquarters. They were celebrating many things – still being alive for one, and the miraculous achievements of the defense forces. The Alliance had fought the Invardii to a standstill.

  Cordez could feel the importance of the moment. This was the turning point in the war. He remembered the words of another politician, pushed back to an island home and standing against another kind of madness, five centuries earlier.

  “This is not yet the beginning of the end; but it is the end, of the beginning.”

  PART THREE: REBUILDING A PLANET

  CHAPTER 7

  ________________

  “Who’s going to rebuild it? Where’s the equipment, and the resources, going to come from?” said John MacEwart, in exasperation.

  The engineering head was beside himself, looking out of the freighter at the devastation that had once been the Prometheus project.

  “Easy, John,” said Finch, placing a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “We’ve still got all the Prometheus knowledge, we’ve got most of the production templates, and we rescued nearly all of our people. That last one’s the important thing.”

  Saint George looked at the remains of his beloved comms center. The fireball that had leveled the comms tower and cut off all communication with Prometheus had also seared away the equipment housing at the back of the center. Miraculously, though, it had left the main control room – and all his staff – intact.

  “Cordez has his hands full with Earth,” said Finch, “but he hasn’t forgotten about us. First thing he wants us to do is shift everyone to the Aster site in the Asteroid Belt. The accommodation facilities there didn’t suffer too much damage. You two added some of the building blocks to the complex as I recall.”

  George nodded.

  “You did a good job. It withstood the worst the Reaper ships could throw at it,” said Finch. George shrugged. There was no point in doing shoddy work.

  “We’ll still have to expand Aster to take the extra population,” said MacEwart plaintively.

  There was an uncomfortable pause. The big zero gee production yards above the Aster center had taken a beating from the Reaper ships, and half the population of Aster had died in the yards that day. There was a empty space in the accommodation complex now, but the much larger population of Prometheus was still going to need a lot of extra room.

  It’s going to be hard moving into the living quarters of dead men and women, thought George sadly. I wonder what the Mersa will make of it all.

  The people of Alamos had said little, but it was clear the struggle for freedom had been brought home to them by the deaths. There had been a lot of sub-space communication lately with their home planet, and Alamos had been the first to offer its support in the reconstruction of Earth.

  “It’s not all bad,” said Finch. “The Javelin production center on Mars hasn’t been touched, and the Mars miners will be able to help us build up production in the Asteroid Belt again.”

  They all knew the value of having a zero gee production site, and it helped that the greatest remaining concentration of super-heavy metals in the Solar System was in the Asteroid belt. The micromining technology among the asteroids was tedious, though it was automated.

  “The Sumerians have already turned over the entire output of K'Sarth to Earth’s reconstruction,” continued Finch. “We only have to say what we want. We’ll have to send detailed plans if it’s anything complicated, and the results will be a bit primitive – metals instead of composites, liquid hydrogen engines instead of nuclear power packs, but it’ll do the job while we’re getting started again.

  “It’s a pity K’Sarth doesn’t have much in the way of resources spare to help us. The Sumerians have found one Stygian hells of a mother lode on the sea floors of Neerok, but most of that so far has gone into making more Sumerian motherships.”

  “And we owe them one for that!” said MacEwart warmly.

  Finch decided it was time to take a closer look at the damage on the giant base, and the heads of departments left the freighter to make their way around the Prometheus site in EVA suits. They were soon bouncing along in the super-light gravity.

  “It’s a bit different without gravitysum,” said Ursul Vangretti gloomily. They all missed the adjustable artificial gravity, but it was the utter devastation about them that put the bitterness in her voice.

  Cantoselli, head of Ursul’s Mersa team, had elected to stay inside the escape ships, in orbit about Neptune, as had all the diminutive Mersa. It was a Human thing to want to see the devastation, and touch it, and remember it. Matsu and some of the other Human
team members had felt the same way as the Mersa. They were inclined perhaps to look forward to a new beginning, and not want to dwell on what had happened to Prometheus.

  “We’ll be back, people,” said Finch. “It’s in Cordez’ plans. There’s still a fair bit of ore to be mined here, and the old place is kinda central – close enough to Earth, Mars, and the mining sites, but already on the way out of the Solar System, don’t you think?”

  “You mean it’s got that real estate ‘location’?” said George with a smile.

  “I want to show the Invardii they can’t just push us out of the way when it suits them!” said Ursul vehemently. “The sooner we rebuild, the better.”

  “Then we’re agreed,” said Finch softly. “Whatever the reasons, we’re going to be back.”

  They started the almost weightless walk back to the freighter.

  Cordez had foreseen the time when Earth would need to replace all that had been lost in an invasion, but he was now trying to juggle so many balls he had long ago lost count. Two months had passed since the armada had been beaten back, and there was rebuilding going on in so many places he had to give anything not part of the war effort over to the trading blocks and local government. Which was as it should be, he reminded himself.

  He was in his command bunker deep in the Andes, and he was watching a fleet of K'Sarth freighters land in the middle of what had once been the city where he lived and worked. It was a white and gray plain of complete devastation now, his little two-story South Am headquarters completely gone.

  The Board of Regents already had new satellites up, so Cordez had visuals everywhere across Earth. What little remained of EarthGov had been suspended, and the planet was now on a survival footing. Simply feeding the population would be touch and go for the first year.

  The Invardii had gone to great lengths to destroy Earth. On the Sumerian planets they had taken out the industrial and administrative areas, but left everything else. Here on Earth they had completely leveled the cities, leaving nothing but powdered rubble. It was a grim and satisfying realization at the same time. Earth was considered much more of a threat.

  Perhaps it was in part the fact that the Human civilization was so much an unknown to the Invardii. the Sumerians had been servants of the Rothii, and the Rothii were descended from the Caerbrindii as the Invardii were. Humans were something else again, something alien to the aliens.

  Cordez almost laughed at his own play on words, and then he realized he was getting tired. He brought his mind forcibly back to the complex and demanding rebuilding programs he had on his hands.

  The Javelin production center on Mars was now running on Sumerian resources from Neerok, and they were fitting Javelins with scrubbers to clear the fine particles and smoke out of Earth’s upper atmosphere.

  Rebuilding the Aster production center in the Asteroid belt was almost finished, and then micromining could restart there. Mining on the outermost planets of the Mersa system would meet most of Earth’s resource needs eventually, but production from the new mines was still some way off.

  On Earth itself, one half of humanity had returned to their country homes without power or communications, and taken in the other half of humanity that used to live in the cities. That had been an extraordinary exercise in trust, and belief in the future. It still warmed Cordez’ heart.

  He looked back at the K'Sarth freighters, sitting in the middle of an ashy, gray plain. It made sense to rebuild the South Am capital city in the same place, he thought. The blasted wasteland would be of little use for anything else, and every arable field had to produce food for the population, and, wherever possible, biofuels.

  New fusion reactors would be built as quickly as possible, but in the beginning their output would be needed for the war effort. Power stations that ran on simple biofuels were cheap and easy to build, and would be all that was available for the civilian population for the next two or three years.

  The K'Sarth freighters started unloading a special type of heavy machinery that would compact the rubble around them, and treat it to make a base for the new city. The freighter’s stardrive engines would have disrupted the electronics of the whole city when it still existed, but now it was possible to set the freighters down in the middle of the devastation.

  Once the base had been laid down by the machines, the construction teams would be able to get on with the job. The fusion reactor needed to supply them with power had been set up after the last freighter run. There were four fleets of freighters now, and they were visiting each trading block at least weekly, reducing turnaround times with each run as they helped to rebuild Earth’s cities.

  Cordez turned to his comms link and added his image to the holographic network. The Regents were meeting over a holographic connection, each too busy these days to leave his or her bunker. All the sophisticated electronics outside of the trading block headquarters had been destroyed, and the Regents were talking over the one remaining holographic network left in the world.

  “I want more survey ships in the Alamos system now,” Cordez was saying soon after the meeting started. “Mines are being excavated on the first of the outer planets as we speak, but I want to know exactly what’s on the other two when the time comes to mine them.”

  The others nodded.

  “One thing we’re not short of is stardrive-capable ships,” he continued. “The Mars miners delivered another full squadron of Javelins a week ago, but that’ll be the last squadron for a while.

  “Once the Mars production center has converted enough Javelins to a ramjet configuration to scrub the smoke and particles out of Earth’s upper atmosphere, I want the Mars miners helping at Aster. It’s vital we get the micromining systems up and running there as soon as possible.

  “It’s been a Godsend that we lost less than twelve percent of the Javelins in the Mars action, and less than fifteen percent of them overall,” he said. Then he considered his remarks for a moment.

  “Except of course for the three Earth squadrons that destroyed the last of the Invardii flagships. They were mostly your boys, weren’t they, Victor?”

  No one spoke for a moment. It was a painful memory for all of them. Then the EuroRussian Regent inclined his head slightly.

  “I will never forget their sacrifice,” said Cordez softly.

  Dante McGorant offered the help of the small North Am mining colony on Mars to help rebuild the Aster center, and Cordez gratefully accepted it. It was a rare moment these days when the other Regents had anything to offer.

  Cordez didn’t want the rebuilding of Earth, and the Solar System, turning into a South Am and Asian show run by himself and Asura.

  Their two trading blocks had been the most prepared for the invasion, and come through it with the most in the way of remaining assets, but Cordez believed in a democratic approach to things that affected Earth as a whole. And it didn’t hurt to show your allies you valued them as much when they were down and out, as when they had something to contribute!

  “The first of the food ship convoys left Madras yesterday,” said Asura.

  The northern hemisphere farms were at peak production in late summer, and the excess food was being shipped to meet shortages in the southern hemisphere. Once India had managed to reduce its population, some three centuries before, its tropical southern plains had become the market garden for much of the world.

  Now that the factories which would normally preserve the seasonal abundances had been destroyed, it was much harder to keep Earth’s millions fed. Production needed to be much more closely aligned with need.

  Stocks of long-life foods had been significantly reduced while the population had been in the shelters during the bombing, and the re-settlement, and the rest was being carefully apportioned by need and the nutritional profiles of local diets.

  “How are we going to convert excesses into bio-fuel?” said Padoulus, the Pacific Regent.

  “If we can get it to the coast, we can ship it to the refineries,” said Asura. “Wh
en we’ve built the refineries, that is. As far as the inland areas go, I’m sorry to say it will be some time before we have adequate air transport to cover them.”

  “I think we’re going to have to start conversion of foodstuffs to bio-fuels as a cottage industry,” said Emens.

  “A what?” said George Padoulus, who was unaware of the term.

  “Something simple enough to be run by one family, or maybe a small group of people,” said the EuroRussian Regent. “We go for economies of scale. If there are a million mini-refineries, each one only needs to produce a small amount each day. Most of the bio-fuels are very simple to make.”

  George looked doubtful, but the others seemed convinced of the merits of the idea, and the conversation moved on.

  CHAPTER 8

  ________________

  Cordez recalled some of the extraordinary sights he’d seen as Earth tried to feed itself, and get some sort of infrastructure up and running again. It had been hard starting from a position where there was almost nothing to work with.

  This morning he had watched a floating holiday palace being gutted for use as a grain transport. The pictures had come in on the only news channel allowed to use the new satellites so far. The holiday palace had been refitting at an isolated shipyard when the armada bombed Earth, and somehow escaped damage.

  The big fusion reactors that had powered the ungainly structure were being adapted to drive massive water jet engines. The reactors wouldn’t need refueling for several years, and the repurposed palace would carry a lot of grain in that time. But even when you had a way of carrying produce around the world, how did you load and unload the stuff when there weren’t any ports?

  Cordez had seen a host of small craft load an aircraft carrier – taken out of mothballs as a floating museum – from a mountain of goods stacked behind a beach. Each item had been manhandled along a hastily constructed jetty and into the small craft. Somehow, the job of feeding Earth’s millions was getting done.