Звезда Пандоры

Mellanie was in some kind of open-air bus station, a big square expanse of tarmac with a passenger waiting lounge along one side. Every window had been blown out along the front of the building, with the support pillars bent and half of the solar collector roof missing. Despite how bright it was outside, a heavy rain was falling from a cloud-veiled sky. The relentless deluge was making life even more miserable for the hundreds of people swarming through the station. A full-scale exodus was in progress. Queues were trailing back from a logjam of stationary buses, the able-bodied paired with the moderately injured, helping them along. Four buses had been converted into makeshift ambulances, their seats removed and slung out to pile up beside the wrecked waiting lounge. The badly injured were being carried on board on crude stretchers; a lot of them were in a bad way, with their wounds being treated in the most primitive fashion, wrapped in cloth bandages rather than healskin.

Engineers were clustered around open hatches on the sides of the buses, rewiring the superconductor batteries. Alessandra glimpsed Mark Vernon in one repair group, working away furiously. But Mellanie didn’t pause in her establishing scan. The roads around the station were packed with four-by-fours and pickup trucks that were stuffed full of kids and uninjured adults.

“Mellanie,” Alessandra said. “Glad to see you’re still with us. What’s the situation there in Randtown?”

“Take a look at this,” Mellanie said in a flat voice.

Her visual sweep continued until she was looking down across the broken town. The bus station was obviously at the back of Randtown, where the ground started rising into foothills. It was a position that gave her a view out over the shattered roofs to the Trine’ba beyond. She raised her head to the mass of thick black clouds roofing the giant lake. Finally, Alessandra understood why it was so bright.

Fifty kilometers away, the rucked thunderclouds were sprouting a pair of radiant tumors, huge writhing bulges that were billowing downward. She watched the base of the largest burst apart as eight slender lines of solid sunlight sliced down through it to strike the surface of the lake. Steam detonated out from the impact, sending a circular cascade of blazing mist soaring across the heaving water. The light was so intense it threw the town and countryside into stark monochrome. Mellanie’s retinal inserts brought up their strongest filters, though they could barely cope. Most of the townspeople in the bus station were cowering away from it, bringing their forearms up to cover their eyes. Screams and shouts of panic were coming from all around. They were quickly smothered as a strident roaring sound reached the town, rattling the remaining buildings. It grew steadily louder until Mellanie’s whole skeleton was thrumming painfully. The image that her retinal inserts fed back to Alessandra’s studio was reduced to a blurred black and white profile. Directly over Randtown the clouds were in torment, savaged by conflicting high-velocity pressure fronts. The chittering rain changed in seconds, curving with the wind to streak along almost horizontally, each drop stinging sharply as it hit unprotected skin.

“Plasma drives,” Mellanie screamed above the never-ending thunderclap. “Those are ships coming down.”

The second tumor of cloud ripped open as it was lanced by eight more incandescent spears. Mellanie finally had to cover her eyes, turning the image to a single bloodred haze as her hand came close to translucent. Even through the lashing rain, the heat pouring out of the plasma was greater than any noonday desert sun. The raindrops were steaming as they bulleted through the air.

There was a slight decrease in the light level. Mellanie brought her hand down. A ship had descended out of the clouds, a dark cone shape riding the vivid glare of its rigid plasma exhausts. Then it vanished behind the massive wall of radiant steam gushing up from the lake.

“Did you see that?” Mellanie screamed raw-throated. “They’re coming.”

“Get out of there.” Eighty billion accessors saw Alessandra’s poise crack. “Don’t compromise your safety: run.”

“We can’t…” The image vanished in a scattering of purple static.

Alessandra froze behind the desk. She cleared her throat. “That report from Mellanie Rescorai, one of the most promising and talented newcomers to join our team for several years. The prayers from all of us here in the studio are with her. And now, over to Garth West, who was covering the flower festival on Sligo. What’s it like there, Garth, any sign of Prime landing ships, yet?”

“Ships now approaching upper atmosphere on Anshun, Elan, Whalton, Pomona, and Nattavaara,” Anna reported in a calm voice.