Pandora's Star

Alarms were shrieking from every bridge console. Screens threw up systems schematics as the crew and the RI tried to reestablish functions.

“Jump us out,” Tu Lee ordered.

At the hyperdrive console, Lindsay Sanson activated the wormhole generator. Second Chance vanished from space above the planet.

“How bad is that software?” Tu Lee demanded.

“Strange,” Laroch said. “It’s very inflexible, nothing like as advanced as ours. It’s almost as if they don’t have smart programs.”

“We can use that,” Tu Lee said. She glanced at the main status display. The starship’s systems had suffered nothing too critical. Outside of some hull ablation and tank breaches, most of the damage had been absorbed by peripherals in the life-support wheel. Without the exploration and science teams they had only forty crew on board; no one was in any immediate danger. “Get everyone into suits,” she said as she called up a display of their missile reserves. “Then take us back.”

A lambent patch of turquoise light twisted out of nowhere eight hundred kilometers above Anshun’s capital Treloar. Second Chance leaped out of its center as the nimbus shrank away. The starship fired fifteen missiles, then her wormhole generator distorted space again and she vanished back into hyperspace. She reappeared almost instantaneously five thousand kilometers away, this time above Bromrine, a coastal city whose population of two hundred thousand was cowering under their protective force field dome. Another fifteen missiles were fired before she dived back into hyperspace.

She made another nine jumps around the planet, launching all one hundred seventy-three remaining missiles.

As soon as they were released, the missiles in each salvo fired their rockets briefly, spreading out from their launch point, then shut down. Their sensors sca

Second Chance popped out of hyperspace again and began a quick data transmission to the beleaguered world below, telling the navy how they had mined near-orbit space. Eight wormholes emerged, encircling the starship at five hundred kilometers. Lindsay Sanson activated their hyperdrive. “Shit!”

“What?” Tu Lee asked. The bridge portals were still showing Anshun below them, its once-passive cloud formations swirling in agitation in the aftermath of the explosions.

“Interference. Space is so distorted from their wormholes we can’t open ours. It’s deliberate, they modified the quantum fluctuations to block us.”

“Move us,” Tu Lee yelled at the pilot.

Second Chance’s plasma drive came on. She began to accelerate at over three gees.

Another eight Prime wormholes emerged around the starship.

“Fuck you,” Tu Lee told the Primes.

Ninety-six missiles flew out of each wormhole.

Nigel Sheldon had been taking breakfast in his New Costa mansion when the alert from the navy detector network came through. He hadn’t been back to Cressat, his family’s private world, for the last five months; he’d spent his time between Augusta and Earth. It was prudent, he felt, not to be too remote should anything happen, even with the blessing of modern communications. And now he was being proved terribly right.

Shielding sprang up around the mansion; communications shifted to secure links. He closed his eyes and relaxed back into the chair as the mansion’s internal shields came on, isolating the rooms. The full range of his interface inserts went on-line, allowing his sensorium to absorb digital data at an accelerated rate. Combat aerobots launched from bases dotted around the outskirts of New Costa. Startled residents gaped up into the bright morning sky to see the dark shapes roaring upward to their high-altitude patrol stations. Force fields closed off the sky behind them.

With Augusta’s defenses activated, Nigel switched his attention back to the attack. His enhanced display showed the twenty-three Commonwealth planets where the alien wormholes intruded; the wormholes themselves manifested as tactile sensations, like pinpricks across his skin. The SI responded to his request and joined him inside the tactical simulacrum, a small ball of knotted tangerine and turquoise lines fluctuating rhythmically as they floated in the nothingness beside him.

“That’s a lot of wormholes,” he said.

“Dimitri Leopoldovich always said the assault would be conducted on a large scale. This probably does not represent their full capability.”

There was a background whisper in Nigel’s greatly expanded perception as he registered the flurry of orders slipping out from the navy’s headquarters on the High Angel, coordinating sensor data and marshaling what resources they had. “Poor old Wilson,” he murmured. He concentrated on several icons in a small galaxy of symbols that were hovering in the background. They moved obediently. Using the deep co

Force fields came on around every CST planetary station in the Commonwealth. On the twenty-three worlds under attack, there was almost no warning. Local trains coming into the stations braked sharply, their engines skidding along the tracks, as they approached the implacable translucent barriers that had risen in front of them. Not all of them managed to halt in time. Several engines hit the force fields and jumped the tracks, slewing around; carriages and wagons jackknifed, crunching into each other, smashing apart, crumpling up, flinging passengers and goods across embankments and cuttings. Cars and trucks arriving along the highways were ordered to brake by traffic route management software. Lead vehicles rammed the force fields; pileups dominoed back down the roads.

Information on damage and casualties slipped into Nigel’s mind. Nothing compared to the destruction pouring down out of the sky all around them. He ignored the figures. There had been no choice; without the stations and their precious gateways there would be no Commonwealth.

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.