So many police had left that Boongate’s First Minister was forced to ask CST for additional security staff to help with crowd control around the planetary station. Sure enough, Nigel sent them in from Wessex, though it was in their contract that they returned to that base between shifts. Without that concession they wouldn’t have taken the duty.
As more and more people drifted away from the countryside and villages, leaving for the far side of the Commonwealth, so the rural police were withdrawn to the towns. Eventually, they were brought back to the cities, and just patrolled the towns. Intermittently.
Best estimates were that thirty-seven million people had so far abandoned their world. That still left over ninety million living there in various levels of trepidation. When the flare bombs and quantumbusters detonated in the star there was no real mechanism left for counting how many people made it to safety under the force fields. The frenzied particle storms that swept around the planet disrupted power supplies and communications. Everyone who heard the warning did their best to make it to safety, cowering in cellars or behind thick walls, heading underground, driving into tunnels; a lucky few had caves nearby. Once the borealis blizzards had diminished, the agitated atmosphere hit the survivors with gales and hurricanes. People struggled on to the nearest population center with a force field.
The War Cabinet had given planetary governments of the Second47 half an hour’s advance warning before they made their public announcement. Boongate’s First Minister and the remaining members of the cabinet were left with the near impossible task of getting the survivors to the capital inside the one-week deadline for evacuation. Anyone with a car started to drive. Buses were commandeered. Train schedules were drawn up, utilizing both passenger carriages and cargo wagons.
The CST planetary station force field, which had powered up when the invasion began, remained on. With everyone left on the planet slowly congregating underneath the capital’s force field the government needed to keep the station clear to prevent a stampede. Within hours, the new deluge of refugees had ringed the entire station. Their numbers expanded constantly, without order. It was soon impossible for food, or police, or medical personnel to reach the innermost migrants pressed up against the force field. All anyone could do was wait for Nigel Sheldon to make good on his promise. The cabinet knew that as soon as the gateway was opened to the future, and the station force field turned off, there would be a panicked race for the gateway, with injuries reaching horrific numbers. Medical contingency plans were drawn up with little prospect of ever being implemented.
In the meantime, those who were inside the station boundary when the force field came on rejoiced in their amazing good fortune, and settled down for the kind of relaxed wait impossible outside. It lasted right up to the moment when the gateway to Wessex opened without any warning.
The battered old track maintenance division carriage burst through the opening. Its frame was shaking violently as its motors strained away at torque levels they were never designed for.
A host of vehicles was waiting on either side of the track. Big four-by-fours and covered vans, all of them equipped with bulky mounted weapons now openly deployed. There was a long moment broken only by the metallic screeching of steel wheels and bearings that were being pushed far beyond their safety margins. Armor-suited figures leaped through the carriage’s shattered windows as the vehicles fired lasers, kinetics, and ion bolts into the bodywork. The flimsy metal panels crumpled and vaporized, yet still the tormented chassis held together. It was nothing more than a fireball on wheels now, plummeting forward.
The giant GH7 engine raced through the gateway, its five big cargo wagons intact. All the vehicles stopped firing. Two seconds later, the GH7 slammed into the burning wreckage. What was left of the carriage simply disintegrated, its remnants forming a short-lived halo of flame around the front of the GH7.
Scraps of scorched twisted metal pattered down around Alic. His passive sensors showed him their blackened shapes bouncing across the stony ground. When he shifted the focus, he saw the GH7 slowing to a more reasonable speed now its mad dash for the gateway was successfully concluded. It was already half a kilometer away. The parked vehicles started up, and drove off after it, providing a tight escort on either side. They rocked violently as they cut across tracks and drainage ditches, always maintaining their position in the line.
The two vehicles bringing up the rear of the little convoy opened fire with magnetic Gatling cannons, strafing the area where the armor suits had landed. Instinct made Alic clasp his arms over his head as the ground erupted into clouds of stone chips around him. A couple of the projectiles struck his armor, punching him sideways, but the force field held. Their impact was like taking a kick in the ribs.
“Son of a bitch,” Jim groaned. “I got hit on the helmet.”
“You okay?” Matthew asked.
“Hangover like an eight-day stag weekend.”
“Boss, you want us to hit the vehicles?” Vic asked. “I can target at least eight with missiles.”
“No. They’re not important. The Starflyer’s all that matters now.” He saw a red square flashing in his communications grid. “Damnit. We’ve lost the unisphere, all I can hook into is the planetary cybersphere. I can’t tell Oscar what’s happened.”
“They’ll be here soon enough,” Jim said.
Alic climbed to his feet. That was when he noticed that John King’s telemetry grid was black. “Oh, shit. Anyone see John? Did he make it out?”
“I got him,” Vic said. “Some of him. The kinetics got through; he must have taken a real pounding. Damn, they made a mess. Chewed him up bad.”
“Crap.” Alic wanted to hit something. Hard. “Can you see his helmet? Did his skull get damaged?”
“No, I think that’s okay; he’s in one piece from the shoulders up. More or less.”
“Okay, his memorycell’s intact. He can be re-lifed.”
“By who?” Jim cried. “This planet isn’t even going to be here by the end of the week.”
“Before we leave, we come back and recover the memorycell,” Alic said. “That goes for all of us. Last man standing has that duty. Agreed?”
“Yes, Boss.”
The other two grunted acknowledgment.
“All right.” Alic stared along the track where the GH7 had gone. The Far Away section force field was a gray-shaded bubble squatting over a cluster of diminutive buildings and warehouses six kilometers away. “We know where it’s going. Let’s get after it. Matthew, get Edmund on-line. It’s about time he earned his money and switched off that force field.”
“Just us four?” Jim asked.
Alic looked around at the gateway. It was still open. I could run through. We all could. It would be so easy. Technically the mission’s over. We’ve proved the Starflyer exists. “I don’t think we’ll be alone for long.”
His visual sensors picked up something moving a kilometer away across the station yard, heading toward them. A laser radar sweep showed him a bike, moving fast as it jumped rail tracks, heading for the wormhole. It picked up a couple of other moving objects behind the bike, possibly small cars. “Let’s move,” he said. “We’ll get run over if we stay here much longer.”
***
Adam eased the Ables ND47 out of the shed and applied the brakes. Narrabri traffic control logged them onto the system, and assigned them a transit code. He had to smile at the file name: Guardian 0001A.
Now we’re The Man.
“Here they come,” Bradley said.
Adam opened the cab door, looked out. A medium-sized truck and a fifteen-seater bus were racing along the service road to the shed.
“Everyone okay down there?” he asked the team crammed into the armored vehicles. The three squad leaders, Kieran, Rosamund, and Jamas, all replied yes. He thought they were all wound too tight. Even for a Guardian, committed since birth, it was quite something to finally know the Starflyer had passed just a few kilometers away. As for him…
&nbs
p; I don’t have to take it on faith anymore. It was an astonishing release, almost spiritual. The Starflyer was real, the Guardians were mainstream, and there was a noble cause to be fought. In the middle of a war for species survival with millions already dead he actually felt good.
The bus and truck pulled up beside the two closed wagons behind the Ables ND47. Bradley had already opened the broad side doors, and was extending the ramps. He’d said Sheldon was sending something large. Adam assumed that would be some kind of combat aerobots.
Armor-suited figures were hurrying out of the bus. The back of the truck rolled up, and a thick ramp slid out.
“Fuck me,” Adam muttered.
A Raiel lumbered down out of the truck, its bulky body undulating in long wave motions. It was followed by a woman with wild red hair, who was dressed in a black blouse and short skirt colored almost the same shade as her hair. She’d squeezed a force field skeleton suit on top of her clothes. Even that couldn’t quite account for her inelegant movements. Then Adam realized she was in heels.
Five Guardians spilled out of the armored vehicles to greet the newcomers. Mostly they clustered around the Raiel.
A man in a sharp expensive business suit stepped out of the bus. Adam recognized Nelson Sheldon immediately. His presence sent a little shiver along Adam’s spine as he watched Bradley take his suit helmet off and walk over to shake hands with the security chief. Historic moment. A figure in an armor suit standing beside Nelson handed Bradley a small plastic case, the type used to carry memory crystals.
Her! Adam shivered again inside his armor suit.
As if she could sense his thoughts, Paula Myo turned and tipped her blank helmet up so that she was staring right at him. Even with all his suit’s passive and active layers of protection, Adam felt terribly vulnerable.
“All right,” Bradley announced, “let’s get this show on the road.”
The Raiel started up a ramp into the rear cargo wagon. Bradley had obviously decided it could ride in one of their armored Volvo trucks.
Paula Myo stayed outside, looking up at the cab on top of the Ables ND47. Adam’s e-butler told him she was calling him on a secure local channel. He opened the communications link.
“Mr. Elvin,” Paula Myo said.
“Investigator. Thank you for agreeing to help us.” Total bullshit, of course; he wasn’t pleased. He didn’t want her within a hundred light-years of this train, nor him.
“Just so we understand each other,” Paula said. “When the Starflyer threat is over, I will be arresting you for the Abadan atrocity. Johansson has committed many criminal acts, but they were politically motivated, for which I expect he will be given a pardon. High-level discussions are under way on that subject. You, on the other hand, will not receive a pardon. That has already been decided. Your continued assistance in exterminating the Starflyer might help mitigate your sentencing with the judge, nothing more.”
Adam canceled the link, and gave her the finger. It wasn’t a gesture that came over well in an armor suit.
Paula walked up the ramp into the first covered wagon.
Adam slammed the cabin door shut. He was shaking inside the suit. Even his virtual hands seemed to be trembling when he began manipulating the engine’s systems, preparing the defense hardware for whatever was waiting on the other side of the wormhole.
Pre-combat nerves, that’s all. Not her. She doesn’t scare me. Not anymore. No way.
“Well, they didn’t start shooting at each other,” Nelson said. “That’s something.”
“Not yet,” Nigel told him. He was relaxing in a seat at the back of the converted lecture theater, as good a place as anywhere to see the remainder of this mission through. His expanded mentality now had complete control over the Boongate gateway. CST communications technicians were looking into reestablishing Boongate’s connection to the unisphere. Someone had bombed the primary connection node, and the backup, and the fallback interlink. Emergency laser relays working through the main gateway were now in operation, allowing a remote survey of the damage. Permanent reconnection would mean keeping the main gateway open while technicians went through to do the work. With less than a week left before the evacuation was due to begin, Nigel didn’t favor that option. Besides, the main gateway would soon have to be reduced to zero width to permit final realignment on the generator itself so it could be formatted for temporal transit.
One piece of data that was coming through clear and strong was the images of the rush toward the gateway on the Boongate side. It had only been opened twenty minutes, and already over a hundred vehicles had powered through, from bikes, to cars, buses with tires that had burst on the rough journey over tracks, even a tow truck; so far five guys had cycled through. Sensors on the other side showed a lot of people jogging toward the open wormhole, making good time, too, considering the terminal was five kilometers distant.
A section of his grid expanded into his virtual vision, showing him the Guardians’ train starting its journey across Narrabri station.
“They’ll be through in two minutes,” he told Justine, who was sitting next to him, chewing on a peppermint settler tab.
“Will you shut the gateway after that?”
“Completely. I’m recoding the management routines so that I’m the only person who can activate it. When that’s done I’m going to start firing half of my security operation. This was a total fucking catastrophe.”
“No more than the rest of this war,” she said equitably. “Who knows when the subversion software was loaded in? It could have been sitting in the arrays for decades waiting for today. The Starflyer really thinks and plans ahead. I just hope Bradley Johansson’s counterstrike is up to the task.”
“At least he has a plan,” Nigel said wearily. “I suppose I’d better send a starship to Far Away to provide backup. Oh, hell…”
“What now?” Justine asked.
“According to Johansson, the Starflyer’s going to take off and fly back to Dyson Beta, or somewhere it can link up with its own type.”
“Yes.”
“But it didn’t know we could build FTL starships when it started this conspiracy. We can catch the Marie Celeste at any time in the next six hundred years if it goes back to Dyson Beta at sublight speed.”
“Ah, you’re thinking it modified the Marie Celeste for FTL.”
“At least. I’m just hoping Alster didn’t give it the details of our new hyperdrive. We really would be up shit creek. No.” He shook his head. “We only just built the prototype drive ourselves two weeks ago, and there’s been no transport to Far Away for longer than that. If the Marie Celeste is FTL now, it’ll be using our original continuous wormhole generator.”
Mellanie and Hoshe entered the auditorium; they’d both been to see off Wilson’s team, staying with them while they suited up and caught their transport out to the Guardians’ train.
“Are you angry with me?” Mellanie asked Nigel.
“For what?”
“I was being a bit of a brat when I asked you to open the wormhole.”
“I just wish you’d asked earlier; we might have caught the Starflyer with its pants down.”
“Thanks.” She gave him a demure kiss. Both of them automatically looked over at where Dudley and the Bose motile were standing. Dudley was emphatically not looking in their direction. “Will you open it to get them back?” Mellanie asked.
“Not the main wormhole, no, it’s being converted to time travel, remember. If Wilson and Cat’s Claws do come back from Far Away, we can probably use the exploration division wormhole to retrieve them. I haven’t really thought any of this through. There’s also the question of the Commonwealth’s connection to Far Away as well. Which is going to be difficult and very expensive to renew, especially if the Commonwealth is paying for forty-seven new worlds at the same time. We might just reduce the connection to starship flights, or leave them as an Isolated world.”
“They wouldn’t care,” Mellanie said. “Morton could build
himself his empire there. It’s that kind of planet.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t go with them.”
“Really? It’s simple enough. I don’t have a death wish.”
Nigel grinned. “How’s Paula?” he asked Hoshe.
“Not happy. I really don’t think it was a good idea forcing her to go.”
“She’ll survive.” His virtual vision showed him the Guardians’ Ables ND47 turning onto the Boongate line. Cars and small vans were popping through the gateway, where CST security was busy rounding them up. Sensors showed him a force field strengthening around the train. He opened a link to Wilson. “Good luck. I’m going to send a starship to Far Away to support you. It should be there in a week or so.”
“Thanks,” Wilson said. “See you when we get back.”
“Boldly they rode and well,” Adam muttered as the engine lined up on the Boongate gateway. A four-by-four Toyota pickup sped out of the glowing haze that capped the entrance. A CST security division helicopter buzzed over it. “Into the jaws of death.” His virtual hand twisted the power feed, and they began to pick up speed. The force field extended, sweeping out across the rails ahead. “Into the mouth of hell.” Now they didn’t need to be stealthy, he deployed the weapons from their disguised casings. The gold glow from the gateway shone in through the cab windows. Adam smiled in welcome at the placid light; this far above the ground, isolated, running smooth, it was as though he were gliding into the sunset. “Rode the six hundred.”
The Ables ND47 went through the gateway at close to a hundred kilometers an hour. The gold haze tore away from the front of the engine revealing the twilit landscape of the station yard. A big Audi Luxnat ten-seater was trying to turn onto the track. The train smacked into it, shredding the bodywork to splinters of carbon. Adam winced in guilt. Hope the Investigator didn’t see that.
Dozens of other vehicles were jouncing their way across the multiple tracks, converging on the gateway. Cameras showed him exhausted runners flinging themselves down as the train hurtled past. He took in all the peripheral scenes with a swift sweep through his virtual vision display grid, concentrating on the tracks ahead. Radar showed them intact. The force field over the Far Away section was an impenetrable bubble.