Звезда Пандоры

“The Prime wormholes have stopped moving around,” Rafael said. “Oh, Christ on a crutch, here they come.”

Radar and visual sensors showed Prime ships flying out of the wormholes above each of the besieged worlds.

“If they start landing you can forget trying to evacuate anybody,” Dimitri said. “There’s no time. We have to knock out their center of operations, hit their wormholes on the other side, where they’re vulnerable.”

“How long until the starships reach Anshun?” Wilson asked.

“Two are already at the rendezvous point,” Anna said. “Another eight hours until the final one gets there.”

“Son of a bitch! Rafael, start the evacuation of everyone in the capitals right away. We’ll get them clear at least.”

“I’ll get wormholes opened to the other protected cities,” Nigel said.

“What about the people left outside?” Doi said. “In God’s name we have to do something for them.”

“We will see what we can do to assist,” the SI said.

It took Mark forty minutes, but he eventually got the Ables pickup working again. A whole load of circuitry had burned out, stuff he managed to jury-rig or bypass. Liz and Carys spent the time packing, bringing out a couple of cases of clothes and all of the family’s camping gear.

“I think the cybersphere is coming back,” Liz said as she dumped the last bag in the back of the pickup. “The house array is bringing up a basic communications menu.”

“The house array is working?” he asked in surprise. There had been a lot more than simple electronic damage. Most of the windows had blown in, even the triple-glazed ones, covering every room with shards of broken glass. Seeing what the blast had done to their home was almost as big a shock as witnessing the explosion, and infinitely more upsetting. It was as if each room had been deliberately, maliciously vandalized.

Even so, Mark reckoned they must have got off lighter than most. At least their drycoral house was all domes, allowing the worst of the blastwave pressure to slip smoothly over it; flat vertical walls would have taken a bad pounding. He couldn’t bear looking out over the vineyards; almost every row had been knocked flat. It was the same all the way down the Ulon Valley as far as he could see.

“I can’t interface with it,” Liz said. “But the backup monitor screen in the utility room survived, so I could type in a few commands. Ninety percent of the system has crashed, and I can’t get the reload and repair program to run. The network operation protocol is about the only thing that is there; it’s definitely hooked into the valley node. The cable is fiber-optic, it can survive a lot worse than this.”

“Did you try calling anyone?”

“Sure. I went for the Dunbavands and the Conants first. Nothing. Then I tried the Town Hall; I even tried the Black House. Nobody’s home.”

“Or they don’t realize the system’s rebuilding itself; it’ll take time even with genetic algorithms restructuring around the damage.”

“They probably never will find out if their inserts are screwed like ours. Who knows how to work a keyboard these days.”

“I do,” Barry said.

Mark put his arms around his son. The boy still had dirt and tears smeared over his face. He seemed to be recovering from the shock, though. “That’s because you’re brilliant,” Mark told him.

“Clouds coming,” Carys said. She was looking to the north, where long streamers of white vapor were sliding low and fast over the Dau’sings. They were like fluffy spears heading toward the smog-clotted remains of the Regents.

Liz eyed them wearily. “Going to rain before long. Heavy rain.” She turned to Mark. “So which way are we heading?”

“It’s a long way to the gateway,” he said.

“If it’s still there,” Carys said. “They used a nuke to take out a remote detector station, God knows what they hit the CST station with. And that highway is one very long, very exposed route. Then we have to cross an ocean.”

“There’s no other way out,” he said.

“You know we have to check on the others,” Liz said. “I want to get the children to safety, more than anything, but we have to know where safe is. And right now I’m not convinced it’s the other side of the Dau’sings.”

Mark glanced up at the sky, suddenly fearful of the sight. He’d never realized before how open it was. “Suppose… they come?”

“Here?” Carys was scathing. “Sorry, you guys, but come on. Randtown isn’t exactly the strategic center of the universe. Without the detector station this is nothing.”

“You’re probably right,” Mark said. “Okay, we’ll head for town, and check in with a few neighbors on the way.”

“Good enough plan,” Liz said. “We need to know what’s happening on the rest of Elan, and the Commonwealth. If the government makes any attempt to contact us, it’ll be at the town.”

“If there is a government,” Carys said.

Liz gave her a sharp glance. “There will be.”