“Cleansing?”
“Yes. They will create an energy firestorm that will sweep the area in between their bases and meet in the center. This will eliminate all standing vegetation and probably whatever humanity is trying to survive above-ground. That’s what we believe. A great deal of effort went into putting up shelters in underground units, even in old transport tubes and the like. It won’t be very pleasant there, and there will be no fresh air flow, no lights, no nothing, but some people will survive and live off preserved foods and such for years. By the time the very few survivors emerge, they will probably be nocturnal, and very primitive, but they will emerge into a world which is hot, wet, and has a reestablished ecosystem. The Titans tend to foster fruit and vegetable growth, including both imported and native species, if they’re in balance. A very small human population can probably survive on them. Our energy scans indicate that they range in tribal groups. But there will not be many, and they will be essentially ignored.”
“Just what sort of population were we looking at there, Father?” van der Voort asked him, fearing the answer from the knowledge of past conquests but wanting to know anyway.
“Last census was a bit over a billion people,” Chicanis responded gravely. “They managed to evacuate, oh, perhaps a hundred and thirty thousand.”
That cast a sudden chill and noticeable pall across the whole gathering. Still, N’Gana shifted a bit impatiently. “This is old stuff, Father. Why do we need the gory details again?”
“Sorry, Colonel, but it’s not completely old stuff to some, and it was necessary that everyone, I think, not only know the facts but see them in graphic detail. The reason why Naughton is a particularly important object lesson is that it is, in many ways, quite similar to Helena.”
That caused a major stir.
“Helena has two continental land masses,” Madame Sotoropolis put in from her perch in the center. “However, they are not all that far apart and, even with a gulf of perhaps five hundred kilometers between them, they are in many ways similar to what you have seen. The rest is sea.
There are active volcanic islands in the ocean which the Titans have so far not seen fit to shut down or alter. There is also volcanism scattered in among the high mountains that ring the two continents. Helena was designed to our specifications, although, of course, over a far longer period and using our more primitive tools, so there is a certain regularity. Two island continents, rather playfully called Eden and Atlantis. The Titan bases are set up much the same as you saw them there, only there are fewer of them. Eden, the more tropical of the two throughout and the planet’s breadbasket, has only one primary base and then uses a half dozen small bases using the spinoff ships. Atlantis, which was where the major population centers were, has three large ships doing a kind of triangle system the way those seven did there with the larger single continent on Naughton.”
Katarina Socolov took several deep breaths. Chicanis noticed and asked, “Are you all right, my dear?”
She nodded. “I—I think so. How old were those pictures, Father?”
He looked at a small screen in the podium. “Even allowing for temporal distortion, we are talking no more than two years here. Yesterday by the packet boat’s clock.”
“Two years… So, right now, that continent is a blasted plain with nothing growing, and out of a billion people a few—what? hundred? thousand?—survivors are huddled like animals in caves in near darkness eating jars of food and—it’s horrible!”
“Tell me how to stop it and I’ll blow those things to hell without a second thought,” Colonal N’Gana put in, showing some uncharacteristic compassion.
“What’s the real time clock on Helena now?” Doctor Takamura asked.
“If we left tomorrow and managed somehow to establish a genhole terminus in system without attracting the bad guys, it would be seventy-eight years standard,” Chicanis told them.
“We left them and marched to the rescue a mere six years ago,” the old diva sighed. “But in that time we have lived, they have been remade. That is the worst of all tragedies. Not just that we cannot help, but that no matter when one rides to help, it’s always too late. Much, much too late.”
There was silence for a minute or so there, then the priest continued.
“Because of the likelihood of this conference being monitored, we can’t go into much more detail right now,” he told them. “I think they are going crazy trying to figure out what this is all about, and, frankly, I was beginning to have my doubts as well. However, now we can both bid farewell to the prying little crawling monitors of Commander Park and this rather depressing little place and head off. The packet also brought the codes we have been waiting for. It appears that the Titan movement caused the delay in ways I suppose we will need to have explained. At any rate, from this moment on, all shore leave is canceled for any and all personnel, as little as we’ve done to begin with, and the captain, even now, is putting in his charts and requests to break port and head out. It will doubtless take a few hours for traffic control to clear us, and, of course, as much added time as Commander Park and his people want to delay us, but it is a good bet that we will be under way by twenty hundred ship’s time this day.”
“At last,” several breathed, although there was also among the small group a sudden rise in tension as well. It was finally on!
“Once we are through the genhole, we will meet again here and in security discuss for the first time some of the more specific parts of what we aim to do. All of this, of course, still depends on a third party who might or might not come through, but we will see.”
“In the meantime, parties should continue with their simulation exercises,” N’Gana said firmly. “It looks like you may well need them after all.”
Below, in the Officer’s Quarters on the Naval base, a communicator went off like a fire siren.
Commander Park and Admiral Storer were aboard the tender Margaite now with Gene Harker and the chief. Harker’s combat e-suit stood like a streamlined robot just behind them.
“This is still volunteer, Harker,” Storer reminded him. “You don’t have to do this.”
The warrant officer swallowed hard. “Yes, sir, I think I do. Something tells me that if we’re not, somehow, along on this then there is no hope. I would rather take risks and maybe go down than sit and wait for the damned Titans to come knocking. I just hope all the theory people back in the labs are right that this is possible for a human being to do.”
“Oh, it’s possible. We’ve had people do it, at least for one jump, in testing this sort of thing,” Park assured him. “Of course, that was under controlled conditions with us knowing somebody was there, but it should work.”
“Thanks a lot for the qualifiers, sir,” Harker responded glumly.
The admiral looked at him. “Scared, son?”
“Yes, sir. Scared shitless, beg the admiral’s pardon. This may be the stupidest thing I’ve ever thought up, but I’m not going to back out.”
“Well, you’re as checked out as we can make you,” Commander Park said. “The suit’s the top of the line, even has some protection features and capabilities that are still not available in contract models. We’ve done this drill many times in this old heap.”