The remaining stations across the Commonwealth at least allowed arriving trains over the perimeter before their force fields went up. On the highways outside, huge queues formed along every carriageway, trailing back for kilometers. Those people trapped on the inside settled down for a long wait, quietly thankful about which side of the force field they were on.
Nigel saw city force fields power up as Rafael started to use the navy’s new planetary defense network, overriding local civil authorities. He sent combat aerobots rocketing skyward, firing as they went: big machines of unmistakable military ugliness. Prime projectiles were blown out of the stratosphere as they descended. But the sheer quantity of projectiles allowed several to slip through to pound at the force fields. Large areas of the surrounding countryside were flattened or reduced to lakes of glass, but the force fields held.
The CST station on Wessex actually beat the navy’s detector network in alerting Nigel to the wormholes opening above that planet. When he switched his attention there he was immediately aware of Alan Hutchinson’s command programs flooding through the Wessex cybersphere as the founder of that particular Big15 world took charge of its defenses. Multiple force fields came on around Narrabri, its megacity. The planet’s small tactical defense brigade was ordered to deploy around the perimeter, activating their ground-to-air interceptor batteries. Squadrons of combat aerobots launched from their silos to patrol the skies above the force fields.
Alan Hutchinson’s face flittered across Nigel’s consciousness, grinning savagely. Three of his aerobots fired their atom lasers, taking out incoming Prime projectiles as they hit the upper atmosphere.
“Good shooting,” Nigel said.
“Makes a decent change from finance reports,” was the gruff Aussie’s hearty comment.
Another salvo of projectiles shot out of four wormholes. They were answered by a battery of firepower from the planet below.
“Thank Christ for that,” Alan said as molten radioactive debris scudded down across the ocean. “We can hit back at the bastards.” Data coming back from the other afflicted Commonwealth worlds was depressing. Other than cities protected by force fields and aerobots, they were woefully unprepared.
“You can knock out a few missiles,” Nigel said. “But at this rate we’re going to lose. They have a thousand times our resources.”
“Well give me the good news, why don’t you.”
Both of them paused to observe the Second Chance fly into action above Anshun.
“Go, Tu Lee, go,” Nigel whispered out loud. He tried to suppress the anxiety he felt for his young descendant. Emotional distraction was the one thing he couldn’t afford right now.
Hundreds more projectiles were fired down at Wessex. Alan didn’t have enough aerobots to cover the more remote areas. Towns scattered across the continent-wide farmlands were wiped out as the Prime projectiles fell freely. “Motherfuckers,” Alan growled. “What threat did those people ever make?”
“Can you see an attack pattern in this?” Nigel asked the SI. “Is there a strategy? Or are they just trying to wipe us out?”
“The planets selected imply a double target approach,” the SI said. “The twenty-three outer worlds are a strong foothold into the Commonwealth. The acquisition of Wessex, with its gateways to phase two space planets, would allow them to occupy a huge proportion of territory, effectively eliminating the Commonwealth as a single entity, especially if they managed to occupy Earth as well.”
“They’ll never get the Narrabri station,” Nigel said harshly. “I’ll make quite sure of that.”
“They can’t know our exact response,” the SI said. “This is as exploratory for them as it is for us. The goal of securing Wessex is a logical one. They can afford to lose the venture, yet if they do obtain the gateways at Narrabri station they will have a back door into sixty developed worlds.”
“What the hell for? What do they want with us?”
“Judging by the projectile targets, we would infer they want to obtain as much human infrastructure as is practical. They are happy to eliminate the smaller civic areas to earn the larger ones. Even if they were to be repelled immediately, most of the surviving population from the twenty-three worlds under attack would have to be evacuated. The land around the cities is radioactive slag, crops are ruined, the climate has been disrupted. They are in danger of losing their H-congruous status without a huge amount of very expensive retro-forming.”
“Son of a bitch,” Nigel grunted. “You’re talking genocide.”
“Possibly.”
“Oh, Christ,” Alan exclaimed. “They’ve got her.”
Nigel watched with radar and optical sensors as the Second Chance valiantly accelerated out of orbit, struggling to shake off the surrounding Prime wormholes. Then the starship’s brilliant plasma rockets were extinguished behind a nuclear furnace of elementary particles that inflated out across five hundred kilometers.
“Son of a bitch,” Nigel barked.Tu Lee, you did a magnificent job. I’m so proud. And I will hear your laugh again.
“Goddamn,” Alan said. “I’m sorry, Nigel.”
“We can’t just sit here and take this kind of punishment,” Nigel said. “We have to show them we can fight back.”
“Admiral Kime has ordered the warships to rendezvous,” the SI said.
“I bet those alien bastards are quaking in their fucking boots. Whoa, three ships are heading their way.”
Wessex aerobots destroyed another salvo of projectiles. The Primes seemed to have stopped targeting the small towns dotted over the rest of the planet. Narrabri and its external districts were on the receiving end of just about every deluge now.
“You are not getting my station,” Nigel told them uncompromisingly. He opened a multitude of command links directly into the wormhole generator machinery of three gateways in Narrabri’s station. His secure memory store was accessed, the old memories rising out to occupy an artificial neural network, giving him all the knowledge he ever had of exotic matter, energy inverters, supergeometry, quantum math. He drew on it all, loading new directives into the machinery that generated wormholes leading to Louisiade, Malaita, and Tubuai.
Limiters and feedback dampers flashed alerts at him. Not even his control system could handle three wormholes simultaneously.
“Could use a little help here,” he told the SI.
“Very well.”
Nigel let out a small breath of relief. You never could tell when the SI was going to pitch in, or whether it would stand aloof. He guessed this invasion might actually have flustered even the great artificial intelligence. After all Vinmar was physically inside Commonwealth space.
With the SI acting as interpreter and actuator, Nigel’s role was elevated to executive only. Under his direction the SI reformatted the internal quantum structure of the three wormholes he’d designated. He retracted the exits from their distant gateways, turning them into open-ended fissures twisting through spacetime.
One of the Prime wormholes reemerged above Wessex, and Nigel struck, his pseudotelekinetic control moving icons at supersonic speed. The three CST wormhole exits materialized inside the interloper in a transdimensional intersection, creating a massive distortion that instigated huge oscillations along the alien wormhole’s energistic fabric. Power from eight of Narrabri’s nuclear power stations was pumped through the gateway machinery to amplify the instability, forcing it back toward the Prime end.
The intrusive wormhole vanished in a severe gravitational implosion, releasing a burst of ultra-hard radiation. Nigel waited, hysradar scanning space above Wessex. The Primes were down to forty-seven wormholes jumping in and out of existence. Cautions from the Malaita gateway sounded loudly, warning him that the whole machine was powering down to prevent any further damage; the excessive power loadings he’d forced through had burned out a lot of components.