"What's an Alcubierre wave?"
"Something exploded inside the Interface. And the Interface's negative energy region expanded from the tetrahedron, just for a moment. The negative energy distorted a chunk of spacetime. The chunk containing us."
On one side of the wave, spacetime had contracted like a black hole. On the other side, it expanded—like a re-run of the Big Bang, the expansion at the beginning of the universe.
Pella scanned her data desk. "We lost contact altogether with five of our ships. None of the ships is operational. The Facula—"
"What about the surviving rebels?"
"Two disabled." She looked up. "One got away. It's heading for Earth."
"Can we give chase?"
"No, sir, we—"
"Get me a line to Admiral Kale. Patch it through to the Palace if you can—"
She looked up again, shocked. "Sir. I've a standing order, to become operative in case of failure."
"Get on with it."
"You're relieved of command. In fact, you're under arrest."
Stillich laughed. "Fine. I'm in your custody, Number One. Now get hold of a working flitter and get me back to Earth."
S-Day plus 11
Orbit of Neptune
The final attempt to stop the Fist ships was the most dramatic.
After ice-moon debris had put an end to One and then Four, it was a GUTship that tried to halt the last two survivors, Three and Two. Not far within the orbit of Pluto, on the rim of Sol system proper, moving at a fraction of the attackers' near-lightspeed, it tried to ram them. It was an extraordinary bit of relativistic navigation. Fist Three, taking the lead, destroyed it with an equally remarkable bit of sharp-shooting. But the detonation hurled debris into the path of Three, and that was that.
When it was done, here was Fist Two alone, sailing on through the orbit of Neptune at over ninety-eight per cent of lightspeed—the fastest velocity ever attained within the system, it was believed, save for cosmic rays, atomic nuclei ejected from supernovas.
Fist was a warship, a relativistic weapon, manned, sailing among the fragile worlds of the mother system. It was wrong, Densel Bel thought. It was monstrous. And yet here he was. Densel Bel was glad the remaining time was so brief.
S-Day plus 11
Imperial bunker, New York City
Stillich was brought to the Empress's bunker in shackles.
Admiral Kale was here. With an impatient command he ordered the shackles removed, and dismissed the guard.
Beside the logic pool, in its eerie, shifting light, the Empress brooded. Some Virtual display was playing itself out before her: a globe, a point of light, a glowing splinter—over and over.
Stillich approached his superior, rubbing his ankles. "Sir. How long?"
Kale snapped his fingers; a small Virtual data display appeared in the air. "That fucking relativistic ship is crossing Saturn's orbit."
Stillich thought. "Seventy-eight minutes from Earth."
"About that. And we're still waiting on this bastard Flood."
After the Navy's scattering at Jupiter, there had been nothing left to stand in the way of the Freestar's advance on Earth. At last the rebel ship had entered orbit around Earth itself, and Flood was descending to discuss surrender terms.
"Do you think we've a choice but to do what he says?"
Kale grimaced. "The choice is playing itself out on the Empress's lap."
The consequence of the Fist striking the Earth had been modelled for the Empress. The physics was simple, a function of the fist's immense kinetic energy. The impact, marked by a tunnel of air shocked to superheated plasma, would be the source of a pulse of electromagnetic energy itself strong enough to sear anything alive across half a hemisphere—bright enough to pierce walls. The shock waves of air and water that would follow, and a hard rain of melted bedrock falling from the sky, would do the rest. Shira watched this over and over, obsessive.
At the seventy-minute mark, the chamber door opened. Flood walked in. He was a bulky, strong-looking man, wearing a simple tunic and leggings. He carried a package, a sleek black box. Two others accompanied him, a man and a woman similarly dressed. These companions looked nervous, even over-awed, to be in this bunker under New York City itself, to be in the presence of an Empress. Flood, however, showed no fear.
Flood glanced at the Empress. She showed no reaction, watching her model go through its sequence, over and over.
Kale sneered. "So you are Flood, the great rebel leader. And you dress like a farmer. How ostentatious. How predictable."
Flood smiled at him, and looked him up and down. "Nice jacket. Here. Hold this." He handed him the box he was carrying.
Kale took it reflexively. Then, irritated, he passed it to Stillich. "What is it?"
"Our final weapon. A nanotech modification of the smart plague—hardware, not software. Released, it would chew up the robust networks you were prudent enough to install—your optical-fibre links and all the rest. Necessarily delivered after landfall."
Stillich put this on the floor, gingerly. "Your final weapon save for the fist."
"Save for that, yes."
"Why have you brought it here?" the Admiral asked. "You have won. You have no need to do more damage."
Flood walked to the rim of the logic pool. "To put an end to that."
Now the Empress spoke. "You are Flood."
He bowed. "Empress—"
"Shira will do."
"Yes. Shira is your name. It always was, wasn't it? I am here to discuss terms."
Stillich said tensely, "Keep it brief, farmer. We don't have much time."
"Brief I can manage. Your Empress must stand down. This logic pool must be shut down—here, now, immediately, before my eyes. And we begin the establishment of a constitutional convention. A new relationship between the free worlds of all mankind."
"How civilised," Kale said. "A constitutional convention, or global obliteration."
"Admiral," Stillich snapped. "We don't have the time. Flood—why the logic pool? This is at the centre of everything, isn't it?"
Flood faced Shira. "The centre of all she is doing. Isn't that true, ma'am?"
"How little you understand," Shira said.
"Oh, I think I understand well enough." Flood faced the Navy men. "You know her story by now. She is a refugee from the future—from a time that, even nine hundred years later, is so far remote it remains the future. And she is going home the long way, year by year, heartbeat by heartbeat. But it isn't the future she longs for - is it, Shira? You don't want to be in this universe at all ... "
Kale had tried to explain Shira's extraordinary ideas to Stillich, and Stillich thought he understood. "Ma'am? Is he right?"
"None of this is real," Shira said, her voice a husk. "It is all transitory. We are simply forced to endure the motion of our consciousness along one of the chains of quantum functions, a sequence of potentiality to be collapsed, discarded, by the Ultimate Observer at timelike infinity ... "
Stillich tried to control his impatience. "This is just anachronistic philosophy. I don't see what it is that she's doing here that disturbs you, Flood."
"She longs for her Ultimate Observer. And she thought she could find her quantum messiah in mathematics ... "
The logic pool, he said, was a meta mathematical universe. While not infinite it comprised more mathematical understanding, far more, than had yet been explored by mankind—and in principle, somewhere within the meta mathematical branching of the pool, any algorithm possible might exist.