Bombardment projectiles were sent through, aimed at the smaller habitation zones and the perimeter of larger ones. It found other targets—the human quantum sensors, communications webs, satellites, power grids—and guided its projectiles at them. MorningLightMountain’s intention was to eliminate the humans themselves while keeping their industrial centers relatively intact. Those that survived, it wanted to drive out of their buildings and disperse ineffectually across the unused land.
Force fields came on over the cities. MorningLightMountain hadn’t expected that; the Bose memories had no knowledge of such things. It couldn’t open its wormholes inside them; over the immense distance it was operating positioning them within two thousand kilometers of a planet was as close as it could get. For precise exits, it needed gateways to anchor the wormholes.
Small flying machines,aerobots, rose up around the cities, shooting projectiles. MorningLightMountain had no choice, it increased the number of projectiles it was sending through, guiding them to create the maximum damage.
When it opened the wormholes above the major world Wessex, it encountered even stronger resistance. It could see down onto the megacity that was two-thirds industrial facilities. The scale surpassed most of its own planet-based settlements, while the efficiency of the human systems with their electronic controllers went beyond anything it had achieved.
A human starship flew above Anshun, knocking out dozens of bombardment projectiles. MorningLightMountain’s response was standard, it sent through more projectiles. When the human starship began to fall in and out of its own wormhole MorningLightMountain diverted more immotile groupings to concentrate on its own wormhole generator mechanisms, shifting the energy composition to act as an inhibitor. Tens of thousands of additional immotiles focused on the problem, taking its control ability to the absolute limit. With the starship restricted to real space, it fired an overwhelming salvo of projectiles.
Something happened to one of its wormholes above Wessex. Energy surged along the disintegrating fabric of the distortion, overloading the generator mechanism that was built on one of the four giant asteroids that orbited the interstellar wormhole at the staging post. The resulting explosion knocked out the tower storing the bombardment projectiles, and even reached out to the squadron of ships waiting above it.
MorningLightMountain urgently searched through its memory of the event. As it did, another two wormholes collapsed, their energy flashbacks wrecking the generators. MorningLightMountain realized they were actually being overloaded by an external force. It switched more immotile group clusters to the problem, increasing the power to the remaining generators to counter a further five attempts at destabilization.
The struggle evolved into a contest of power capacity. MorningLightMountain was powering its wormholes from magflux extractor disks dropped into the staging post star’s corona, transferring the induced power to the asteroids via a small wormhole. Even with those providing maximum output, there was a limit to how much the wormhole generators themselves could handle. And the humans were changing their methods of attack with a speed it could not match, modifying interference patterns and resonance amplification in nanoseconds. They, too, seemed to have unlimited power to draw on.
A further twenty-seven wormhole generators either exploded or twisted into molten ruin. MorningLightMountain ended its attempted capture of Wessex, diverting the remaining wormholes to planets where there was no interference. On most of them the results of the bombardment projectiles were disappointing. But the human defenses were slowly being beaten back by the sheer quantity of projectiles it was firing through. It halted the projectiles, and flew the first ships through into the Commonwealth.
Altogether, it had gathered a fleet of forty-eight thousand for its preliminary expansion stage.
It was getting crowded at the center of Wilson’s tactical display. The ghostly image of Elaine Doi herself had joined him, along with Nigel Sheldon, their spectral presence giving his orders supreme executive authority. To advise on tactics and technology he had the shades of Dimitri Leopoldovich and Tunde Sutton floating in attendance behind him.
Right now he would have welcomed a genuine spook, a psychic who could tell him what was coming next, or at least take a good guess. They were watching the last of the Prime projectiles rushing down over twenty-one besieged planets—he considered that ominous while everyone else was overjoyed. Wessex had successfully banished the alien wormholes, but Olivenza and Balya had dropped out of the unisphere when their station force fields were breached. The CST planetary station on Anshun had switched off their connecting gateways.
“Can’t you overload the remaining alien wormholes?” Doi asked Nigel. She was keen for further victories.
“I burned out eighteen of our wormhole generators taking out thirty of theirs,” Nigel said. “Do the math. That’s not a good ratio. Without wormholes we don’t have a Commonwealth. In any case, I doubt we have enough power reserves right now.”
Wilson said nothing. He’d watched helplessly as Sheldon sucked more and more power out of the Commonwealth power grid. All of the Big15 worlds had switched to niling d-sink reserves as their nuclear generators were called on. Earth had suffered an unprecedented complete civil power loss as Sheldon diverted the entire lunar output to support his space-warping battle above Wessex; while every other world in phase one and two space had experienced blackouts and brownouts as their domestic generators were put on front-line duty. For a while it had been touch and go: several city force fields had flickered alarmingly from the power loss. Right now everyone was busy recharging their storage facilities.
It had been a desperate exercise, although Wilson had to admit there had been no alternative. But if the Primes had chosen that moment to launch a further wave of attacks, the results would have been catastrophic. Wilson had been reduced to praying.
“You mean they’re here to stay?” Doi asked.
“For the moment, yes,” Wilson said.
“For the love of God, the money we gave you…”
“Enough to commission three warships,” Wilson snapped back. “I’m not even sure three hundred would have been enough today.”
“The aerobots and force fields have done a damn good job,” Rafael said. “Without them the damage would have been considerably greater.”
“But the casualties,” the President said. “Good God, man, we’ve lost two million people.”
“More than that,” Anna said soberly. “A lot more.”
“And it’s going to rise,” Wilson said, deliberately harsh. “Dimitri, can you give us some options on their next move?”
“They have softened us up,” the Russian academic said. “Occupation is the logical follow-up. You must be prepared for a full-scale invasion.”
“Tunde, what’s the ecological damage level on the assaulted worlds?”
“In a word, bad. Anshun took the worst pounding. The storms are just beginning there, at the very least they’ll spread the radioactive fallout right over the planet. The Primes don’t use particularly clean fusion bombs. Decontamination would cost a fortune, even if it was practical—which I doubt. Cheaper to evacuate and ship everyone to a new phase three planet. The other worlds are in varying stages of climate breakdown and nuclear pollution. Given our general population’s attitude to nuclear and environmental issues, I’d say nobody will want to stay on anyway.”