“We have a green board,” the bland, artificial voice announced over the comm speaker. “Launch in one minute.” It was just as well that the restraint system had activated, and that Sianna was completely immobilized, with the airbags inflated down from above to hold her body in place. Otherwise she would have been severely tempted to reach up and claw the damned speaker right out of the console. That damned robot voice was getting on her nerves. Repeating the same bloody message every half minute, nothing changing but the time. The display screen had switched to a countdown clock, the numbers flicking downward in over-big, over-bright letters. She wanted to turn her head away, but the restraint pads had inflated around her head as well, holding it quite gently but quite firmly in place. You could snap your neck by having your head turn when a high-gee boost kicked in, and the permod designers had taken no chances.
“We have a green board,” the voice said again. “Launch in thirty seconds.”
Sianna could feel the sweat on her body, the airbags pinning her in place. She was hot. She concentrated on that, trying not to worry about other things. After all, being in a box, and being restrained, utterly immobilized into the bargain, could be enough to drive a claustrophobic person completely around the bend, if that claustrophobic person thought about it.
At least it was almost over. In another thirty seconds, she would be on her way. Wait a second. Over? Nowhere near. She would have three days in this thing.
If she had three days. No one wanted to tell her what the loss rate really was, what her odds of survival really were. How many cargo vehicles were making it through? Ninety-nine out of a hundred? One out of a hundred? Half? None? And even if the odds were good now, the very reason for making the lift now was the knowledge that the odds were about to get much, much worse. Suppose they were too late, and the SCOREs and COREs had shifted from passive defense to aggressive attack right now?
Still, the sooner they lit the candle on this thing and got moving, the sooner she would get out of this machine. Out. Dear God, out. It wasn’t just a word, it was a prayer for deliverance. She had only been in here two hours, and she was already half out of her mind. How the hell was she going to say sane for three days?
“We have a green board. Launch in twenty seconds.” There was a pause, and then—“We have a green board. Launch in ten seconds. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Zero.”
With a shuddering, towering roar, the booster leaped into the sky. Sianna was shoved down into the padding beneath her, and a brutal fist slammed down into her gut. The crushing load shocked her, amazed her. How could anything be so heavy? How could she be so heavy? The air was squeezing its way out of her lungs, she could feel her heart straining to move her blood. And then—and then—
And then she could feel unconsciousness coming near, offering her a release from all the terrors and fears. She reached for it, and took it, and knew no more.
Joanne Beadle stared at the ops screen and tried to remember what sleep, real sleep, felt like. She had grabbed a catnap here and there over the last few days, but not real sleep, head on a pillow, body on a bed and no one to bother you for eight solid hours.
She blinked, rubbed her eyes, and yawned. Watch the screens. Watch the screens. Ignore Wolf Bernhardt hovering behind her. He had been there ever since that Colette person had boosted away, long hours ago. But pretend he’s not there. Watch the screens and pray, and wonder when to do the very little she could do. For the most part the COREs moved far too fast, maneuvered far too violently, for there to be any hope of a human-built spacecraft avoiding them. But for this all-out effort, at least some countermeasures were available. Ground-based radars were ready to throw powerful jamming signals into the sky, and cargo carriers full of decoy targets were ready to send the enemy chasing after dozens or hundreds of targets—but no one was ready to use those just yet. Not when that might give the enemy time to react.
Which left Joanne with just two questions. When would they use their countermeasures? And, would any of them work?
The Mind of the Sphere—or at least that fraction of itself not presently dedicated to other tasks—looked out over its domain, and knew that all was not well. True, its Captive Suns still plied their steady orbits, and the Captive Worlds remained green and fertile, ready to serve as fit nurseries for the Great Breeding that was soon to come.
But what good were healthy Captive Worlds to a Sphere robbed of all its energy sources and cut off from its communications? What breeding could happen on a cold, dead world, sundered from its sun when the stabilizing beams of gravitic potential could no longer hold the system together?
The Sphere had received warning enough to know how grave was the danger, not only to itself, but to all the systems of its clan, all those to whom it was root or branch. If the Adversary succeeded in conquering this system, it would regain entry into all the myriad ways of the Consortium of Spheres. It knew that it must be prepared to die—must be willing to accept death from others—rather than let that happen. Its own root system, its own parent, had died in just that way, and all had thought that was an end to it. But now—now the Adversary was reawakened, back on the trail, hunting again, and all the death and sacrifice and subterfuge that had gone before were useless.
The Sphere knew it must prepare—but even in the midst of those preparations, it knew that all might well be for nothing. Nor could it oversee all the preparations directly. There was too much to do, and the Sphere could not form itself into too many units. There were limits beyond which it was dangerous to subdivide. It was forced to leave its underlings to fend for themselves, under minimal supervision.
The Adversary could strike from any or all of a dozen or more directions, and might well slip past even the most relentless defenses. The Adversary had no qualms about sacrificing many, or even most, of its forces, for even if one of its number won through, then the battle would be over.
Therefore the Sphere had to prepare everywhere for every possible Adversary tactic—but knew, too, that such was an impossibility. It simply did not have the power, the resources, the forces, to make secure all the possible battlegrounds.
But it had to try. All other issues had to give way before the question of survival.
The Sphere refocused itself on the question of defensive strategy. It might have years until the onslaught. It might have milliseconds. Whenever it came, the Multisystem would be as ready as the Sphere could make it.
Out. Out. OUT! Sianna realized that she was pounding on the lid of the permod, shouting at the top of her lungs. Hold it. Stop. How long had she been doing that? She couldn’t remember waking up, couldn’t remember the restraint system releasing her. When had she started screaming? How long had she been at it? How long had she been out?