“I am not proposing abandoning Wessex,” Rafael said. “However, there are now four and a half thousand fully armed Prime ships in the Wessex system. We don’t have four and a half thousand Douvoir missiles in our inventory, let alone the hundred seventy thousand we’ll need to eliminate Prime ships throughout the New48.”
“Did they really send that many through?” Toniea Gall asked.
“Yes,” Rafael said. “Which means we will have to evacuate the majority of these systems. The navy cannot deal with forty-eight armadas.”
“How many can you deal with?” Doi asked.
“Assuming the Moscow-class production continues unabated, we estimate we can clear five star systems before we face a loss of containment. We don’t yet know what kind of threat the ships pose. They have two options, both of which present unique difficulties for us. Firstly, they can head in to the H-congruous planets, and breach our defenses through sheer numbers, then land and establish an armed colony. It does of course mean that we can use quantumbusters against them when they are down and concentrated.”
“And the second option?” Crispin asked.
“They make a break for it. With an average of three and a half thousand ships in each system, they’ll possess enough equipment and manufacturing capability between them to put together an FTL drive eventually. Again, they will have to rendezvous to begin a manufacturing process, which will leave them vulnerable to a Douvoir missile.”
“How long will it take to manufacture a hundred and seventy thousand Douvoir missiles?” Toniea Gall asked.
“We could probably get them completed within nine months, providing we authorize a super crash-priority project. I’m not sure we have that kind of time available. If they are still planning on colonizing the New48, they could be in orbit around each of them within a week.”
“You’re talking about evacuation regardless of the Primes,” Justine said.
“Yes. That is our preferred option. Let them all land and take them out with a quantumbuster.”
“We’ve already got a monstrous refugee problem from the Lost23, and most of them were low-population worlds. How many people live on the New48?”
“Not including Wessex,” Nigel said, “about thirty-two billion people.” This time the silence was even more profound.
“It can’t be done,” Hans Brant said. “Can it?”
“Physically removing them through the wormholes is possible,” Nigel said. “However, accommodating a diaspora of such magnitude within the remaining Commonwealth is totally impractical. There is nowhere for that many people to live; feeding them on basic rations alone would virtually bankrupt the rest of us.”
“Then we have to face that prospect,” Justine said. “I for one will not even consider any proposal that includes abandoning these people. Wars inevitably instigate societal change; it looks like this is shaping up to be ours.”
“A noble sentiment, my dear,” Hans Brant said. “But even if the Senate were to assume draconian powers, and force the refugees on the rest of the Commonwealth, some planets would resist.”
“We cannot turn our backs on thirty-two billion lives!” Justine stormed.
“There is an alternative,” Nigel said quietly. “A risky one, of course.” This time he felt almost nothing but contempt at the way everyone turned to him with hope and desperation in their eyes. “We open up forty-seven fresh planets, and simply transfer the populations over directly so they can rebuild their societies.”
“For Christ’s sake, man,” Alan said. “You can’t dump billions of people on undeveloped worlds. They need cities, and infrastructure, government…food!”
“I know,” Nigel said. “That would all have to be prepared beforehand.”
“But…we’ve got less than a week,” Toniea Gall spluttered.
“As Einstein once said, time depends on the relative position of the observer.”
When President Doi officially closed the War Cabinet session, Justine waited in her chair while the other Dynasty leaders went over to Nigel to offer their thanks and congratulations. Even Heather was conciliatory enough to congratulate him. As for Doi, Justine had never seen the President so pathetically happy; she almost ran across the anteroom to tell Patricia Kantil the outcome. Patricia’s face was soon beaming a huge, incredulous smile.
How stupid, Justine thought. It was as if declaring something were possible had made it happen. And everything they’d agreed in cabinet was dependent on nothing else going wrong. How’s the Starflyer going to react?
“You wanted to see me, I believe?” Nigel said. He’d come over to stand beside her chair. Justine looked up at him. And exactly how do I tell if I’m looking at the Starflyer’s number one agent in the Commonwealth? Her hand went to the slight bump in her belly. I need to secure a place on one of the lifeboats, just in case.
“I do,” she said.
“Excellent. On one condition.”
“What’s that?” she asked in trepidation.
“You and Investigator Myo bring Mellanie with you.”
Justine’s jaw dropped. “Huh?”
“Mellanie Rescorai. I’ve been wanting to meet her for quite a while now. She’s with the Investigator, isn’t she? They traveled back to Earth together from Illuminatus.”
“Yes,” Justine said, struggling to regain her poise. How does he know that? More important, why does he know that?
“Excellent. We’ll do it after we’ve all made this stupid public announcement. The CST offices at Newark should give us some privacy.” He smiled. “I’m glad you’re okay after the assassin’s attempt on your life. Tell Gore I’m impressed, as always.”
“I’ll let him know,” Justine promised.
***
Edmund Li knew he was being stupid staying on. He should have left Boongate weeks ago, when the loose collection of relatives and friends that made up his family all departed on a train to Tanyata. They’d called him every time a connection to the unisphere was available, a schedule that was even worse than the link to Far Away, showing him images of the tent they were living in, scenes from everyday Tanyata life. So he got a good sketch of them and fifty thousand others spread out in a makeshift township not far from the ocean, one of eight such townships centered around the CST station. Everybody was helping to lay down the grid of their new city, building up the infrastructure, doing the work normally left to bots. They all helped out, they all knew their neighbors. There was a pioneer spirit there that human worlds hadn’t possessed since the very first planets were opened up three hundred years ago. Despite the hardship, it looked like a good place to live.
Still, Edmund hadn’t left. The really stupid thing was, technically, he didn’t even have a job anymore. The Far Away freight inspectorate division had nothing left to do. Nobody on Far Away was importing anything. There was nothing for his team to scan and analyze; besides, the others had all left a couple of days after the navy intelligence people had visited; it was just him now. He’d watched all the other offices in the small administration block thin out and dwindle to nothing, which made him the de facto Boongate government official in charge of all travel to Far Away.
At first he kept doing it because of the navy’s Paris office, which had asked him to keep monitoring traffic to and from Far Away. It was important, Renne and Tarlo had said. After a while, he became intrigued by Far Away and what was going on there—that wasn’t a good enough reason to stay, he knew, and yet…The people leaving Far Away were nearly all the same; every Carbon Goose flight was packed full with migrants who’d sold virtually everything they had to buy a ticket. They arrived bowed under the weight of a world with a standard gravity, and burdened further with pitiful expectations of the Commonwealth. Edmund was doing well if he managed to collect all their names before they disappeared into the station terminal where they believed they’d find sanctuary. By talking to them he did manage to gather a picture of the strange turmoil afflicting Far Away, the criminal sabotage, the rise of the Institute in enforcing law and order in Armstrong City.