"No, dear, they can't. Not by themselves. There are stories that some kingdoms in the Ring Empire tinkered with the interior of stars when the Empire was at the height of its powers, but they're only stories. And for all their knowledge and technology, the Mordiff were never as strong and wise as the Ring Empire. So the overlord had no choice, he had to order his people out of the wormhole as soon as the effect of the doomsday weapons had faded away, and while the sun still had some warmth. In that respect, he was a good leader, doing the best he could. He ordered that the new cities were to be built under protective domes. Their technology, he said, was enough to turn back the tide of night. Which, in truth, it was. They could still live on their planet, protected from the cold under skies of crystal. Fusion power would provide them with all the light and heat they could ever want. But these enclaves were harder to build, and took even more resources to maintain. It was a difficult life, and by now, the Mordiff had evolved for war and conquest. They knew nothing else. After so many generations devoted to endless conflict the outcome was inevitable. Once their population began to expand again, the ordeals and depravation hit them harder than ever before. The domed cities fought each other. It was insane, because they were so much more fragile than the open cities of old. And this time there was nowhere to flee if anyone let off the doomsday weapons. The only thing in their future now was cold and darkness.
"According to the Ring Empire archaeologists, the last of the Mordiff died out less than fifteen hundred years after they emerged from the terminus for the final time. The Ring Empire explored the Ulodan Nebula twenty-five million years later and found a few fractured remains amid the ice that shrouded the whole world, all that was left of a species that had covered their planet with cities and marvels."
The children sighed and shivered. Many of them glanced out at the sky for reassurance that their own sun was still there, as bright and warm as ever. The clouds were clearing above Memu Bay now, shredded by the offshore wind into gravid streamers. Broad white-gold sunbeams prized then-way through the ragged gaps to chase over the land. Denise smiled with them in reassurance at the water that glistened so refreshingly on the plants in the garden and the trees outside.
"That was scary," Jedzella announced. "Why did they all have to die?"
"Because of their circumstances. The nebula meant they could only ever look inward. We're luckier than that. We know the stars exist. It should help us develop a more enlightened attitude toward the way we live and behave." Denise tried hard to keep the sarcasm out of her voice.
One of the girls waved urgently. "What's enlightened?"
"It means being nice and sensible, instead of being stupid and violent." She paused and smiled round. "Now, who wants to go out on the swings?" It was still too wet, and she'd get a telling off from Mrs. Potchansky for letting them get their clothes damp. But they were at their happiest when they were gallivanting around outside: she couldn't bear to take a moment of that away from them.
They pelted out from under the roof, cheering and racing each other to the swings. Denise followed at a slower pace. Running the Mordiff tale through her mind always conjured up a melancholic mood. The story of their tragedy had too many resonances with humanity. There but for the grace of God... Not that she believed in gods, human or alien.
Her Prime alerted her to a priority spacecom alert diving through the datapool. Two fusion plasma plumes had been detected eight million kilometers out from Thallspring. Spacecom was scanning for more. Data traffic rates between then-offices and tracking satellites doubled inside fifteen seconds, then doubled again, increasing almost exponentially.
Denise's hand flew to her mouth as she looked round at the children. Their carefree shrieks, giggles and smiles pounded into her consciousness, and she was suddenly fearful for them. She tilted her head back, searching the section of sky that spacecom's coordinates indicated. In relation to herself, it was a nine-degree window just above the western horizon. There were too many clouds in the way to permit any sighting of the tiny blue-white sparks she knew were there. But their presence acted like an eclipse on her heart, making her world colder and darker. It had begun.
* * *
Captain Marquis Krojen sat back in what he liked to think of as the command chair on the Koribu's bridge. In practice, it was just another black office chair equipped with freefall restraint straps and bolted to the decking behind a computer station. There were eleven other identical stations in the square compartment, arranged in two rows of six, facing each other. Nine of them were currently occupied in readiness for exodus.
When he was a junior officer on his first couple of starflights, he'd managed to get a place in one of the observation blisters in the forward drive section for exodus, his captain of the time agreeing he wasn't essential for the operation. He'd waited spellbound with his fellow young officers as the moment approached, putting up with cramped limbs and stuffy air just for the chance to witness the transition. In the end it was as uneventful as most events aboard a starship. The wormhole wall, a blankness that wasn't quite black, slowly faded away, allowing the stars to shine through, almost like a lusterless twilight creeping up on a misty evening.
That had been thirty years ago. He hadn't bothered with visual acquisition since, preferring the more precise story of the display screen graphics and his DNI grid. Five of his own junior officers were currently crammed into the observation blister, a reward for reasonable performance of duties during the flight. They'd learn.
"Stand by for exodus," Colin Jeffries, his executive officer, announced. "Ten seconds."
There were so many displays counting down that the verbal warning was completely unnecessary. Tradition, though, like so many things on board, orchestrated the crew's behavior, helping to define the chain of command.
His DNI showed him the ship's AS powering down the energy inverter. The plasma temperature in the tokamaks began to cool as the magnetic pinch was reduced. Power levels fell toward break-even, producing just enough electricity to keep the ancillary support systems up and running.
All around the Koribu, the drab monotony of the worm-hole faded away to be replaced by normal space. Holographic panes on top of the bridge computer stations turned black, showing the steady gleam of stars relayed from external cameras. The AS activated various sensors, aligning them on Thallspring. Several of the bridge officers cheered as the bright blue-and-white orb materialized on their panes.
Let's face it, Marquis thought, we have little else to do. Bridge officers were simply a last fail-safe mechanism, nothing more. The AS ran the ship, while humans made small decisions based on the minute fraction of tabulated information it provided them through holographic panes and DNIs. Summaries of summaries: there was so much data generated by the millions of onboard systems that it would take a human lifetime just to review a single frozen moment.
"Eight million kilometers, as near as you can squint," Marquis said, after analyzing his DNI information. "Radar active. We're searching for the rest of the ships."
Simon Roderick leaned on the back of the captain's chair, inspecting his displays. "Very good. I expect that as we tracked their compression distortion while we were in the wormhole, they won't be far behind."
Marquis didn't reply. Everything Roderick said, the way he said it, was an assertion of his assumed superiority. A captain should be master of his own ship; as indeed the other captains of the Third Fleet were. But with Koribu acting as the flagship on this campaign, Marquis had endured Roderick's presence for the whole flight. He'd been subject to a stream of advice and requests the entire time. Every night, Roderick had dined with the senior officers, making it a miserable meal. The man's conversation was rarefied, discussing culture and economics and history and company policy. Never a joke or a lighthearted comment, which put everyone on edge. And he'd occupied five cabins. Five! Although Marquis no longer begrudged him that. The Board member spent most of the ship's day cosseted away there in meetings with his ground force commanders and the creepy intelligence operatives Quan and Raines.
"What's the reaction drive status, Captain?" Roderick asked.
"Engineering crew are priming us for ignition." Marquis kept his voice level and polite. Roderick could access as much data as he could, probably even more, given the access codes he had. The question was just a reminder of the strategy he'd insisted on.
Normally, a fleet would hold its drift positions at exodus, waiting for every starship to arrive before maneuvering into formation and heading in to the target planet. This time, Mr. Roderick had decided that there would be no formation; each starship would start its Thallspring approach flight at once. With the starships strung out, the planet's hypothetical exo-orbit defenses would be more exposed when they deployed. The lead starship would take the brunt of the attack but provide the remainder with first-class targeting information.
Marquis had pointed out during this discussion at their nightly meal that a formation of starships multiplied the available firepower to generate an excellent shield, and provided a much greater all-round coverage than a singleton.
"Remember Santa Chico, Captain," Roderick had replied. "We should examine history and move on from our failings in an appropriate fashion. Tempora muntantur. Tactics evolve in association with technology."
Marquis hadn't been on the Santa Chico campaign, thank God, but that planet was always a one-shot. Thallspring wouldn't have anything like their level of technology. If by some miracle they had built exo-orbital systems, they'd be the old-fashioned kind.
"Course to six-hundred-kilometer orbit plotted, sir," Colin Jeffries said.
Marquis reviewed the fusion drive schematics that his DNI was scrolling. Overall failsoft was 96 percent, which was good. They'd spent three months before the mission in dock at Centralis having a C-list refit. Only if failsoft dropped below 70 percent would he cancel ignition.
"Cleared for ignition, Mr. Jeffries. Alert the life support wheels to secure for gravity shift."
"Yes, sir."
"Anyone know what's happening on the planet?" Roderick inquired lightly.
Adul Quan looked up from the bridge station he'd appropriated. He'd routed a lot of sensor readings to his holographic panes, where analysis routines were reinterpreting the raw data. "Standard microwave and radio emissions. I'm also seeing hotspots corresponding to known settlement sites. They're still there, and effective."
"Ah, some good news. Very well, they'll attempt to contact us soon enough. There's to be no response. I'll talk to the president once we're in orbit."
"Understood."
Amber lights began to flash, warning them of the fusion drive ignition.
"Sir, the Norvelle has come out of exodus," Colin Jeffries reported.
"Excellent," Roderick said. "I'm going to my cabin. I doubt you need me breathing down your neck right at this moment, eh, Captain? You have my every confidence to deliver us into orbit unharmed."
Marquis didn't look round. "I'll inform you of any status change."
* * *
One thing Denise, Ray and Josep had never properly taken into account was how little lead time they'd have. Their Prime software might have trawled the spacecom alert from the datapool with a minimum delay, but that didn't mean there weren't others who were just as fast. Leaks were also a factor. The verified sighting was automatically distributed to over a hundred government personnel; most of them had family, all of them had friends and media contacts.
Fifteen minutes after spacecom's internal verification of starship exodus, the general media knew of the alert and started bombarding the president's office for official confirmation and a public statement. It was just after midnight in Durrell, the capital, but the president's praetorian aides responded swiftly. Their first cautious release that anomalous spacecom data was being reviewed hardly satisfied the howling mob, but it did give them enough justification to start breaking the story across the datapool and on the news shows. It was a story that fed on its own hysteria, expanding with each retelling. Recordings of the last invasion were snatched from their libraries and broadcast in extreme detail, reminding everyone of the oppression and brutality they'd suffered, as if they needed such cues. Thirty minutes later, just about all of Thallspring knew the starships had come again.
In their single act of public responsibility that day, the media announcers did keep repeating there was no need to panic—the starships were eight million kilometers away. Given how many people were desperate to hear the entire message, it amazed psychologists just how many managed to blank that part out.
Human nature being what it is, people's overriding instinct in times of danger is simply to head for home. It's a baseline refuge, seeking comfort and security from contact with your own family. In every city people walked out of work to hail the nearest taxi or jump on their tram; bikes and cars poured onto the roads. There hadn't been traffic snarl-ups and gridlock like it for over a decade; in fact, not since the last time the starships arrived.
Denise's usual twenty-minute trip back to the bungalow on the Nium River estuary took nearly an hour and a half. She hadn't realized so many people even lived in Memu Bay, let alone had cars or bicycles or scooters. So much time had been wasted just sitting in trams expecting them to move any minute. Nobody ever drove down the tram lines in the center of the road—until today, when they blocked it solid. Eventually, she hopped out of the stationary vehicle and started walking.
Fortunately the local datapool retained its integrity through the chaos, though even its connection time had slowed appreciably as half the town used it to contact the other half and ask them where they were. She sent a stack of Preformatted messages through her own ring pearl, using Prime to route the heavily encrypted packages to various resistance cell members so they would be untraceable. Acknowledgments returned sporadically, scrolling across her vision as she dodged traffic and slithered around lumbering pedestrians.
Outside the town's heart, the traffic wasn't so clogged, which allowed the vehicles to drive a hell of a lot faster.
They'd all had their AS programs taken offline, with the human driver ignoring the speed limits. Denise jogged along the suburb pavements, sprinting across intersections. Not even being young and female saved her from vigorous hand signals as cars swerved.