"Is there anything you can do from Earth?" she asked. "Even just a few more hours could make a difference."
"I will try," he said.
"Can you put Harry Cohen on again?"
"Here he is." Eldrinson moved aside and Cohen reappeared.
"Mr. President," Soz said. "I need to invoke the full protection clauses in the Iceland Treaty. I"m asking for Allied forces to defend Lyshriol. Most of my family live in the Dalvador region of the North continent, except for my brother Denric, who is on the planet Sandstorm. You"ll need to pull out Denric and get him to Lyshriol. My father can give you details."
Cohen nodded. "We"ll protect your family, Imperator Skolia."
"Can you put my father back on?"
"Here he is."
When Eldrinson reappeared, Soz said, "I have a question for you. It may seem odd, but the answer is important."
"Go ahead," he said.
She spoke carefully. "When Eldrin was sixteen years old, he rode into battle with you for the first time. The army was gone for two months. Do you remember?"
"Yes. Your brother showed great courage."
"When he left, all he took was a sword."
"That"s right."
"We had laser carbines and EM pulse rifles. He didn"t even consider them."
"It was a matter of honor for him. He felt that to use such weapons against men armed with swords was wrong."
"He killed three men," Soz said. "In two months."
In a quiet voice her father said, "He had to fight one with his bare hands. I also saw him refuse to kill when he didn"t have to." He paused. "Your brother may have had trouble in his youth, adjusting to life on the Orbiter. But he has always been a man of honor."
Soz nodded. It was true of all her brothers. "Two years later, when Althor was sixteen, he rode into battle with you."
This time the pause was far longer than three seconds. Then he said, "Yes."
"With a laser carbine."
"Yes."
Softly Sauscony said, "He stood on a hill above the Plains of Tyroll and slaughtered 316 men in five minutes."
His voice came from light-years away. "And ended a war that might otherwise have dragged on for decades, killing many more."
"Which way do you think was right?"
He had a look she recognized, one she had seen before, the day they held the funeral services for her brother Kelric. The look of a father who knew the anguish of outliving his children.
"I can"t answer that," he said. "All I know is this: Eldrin and Althor each made the best decision they could."
"What would you have done?"
"I don"t know." Pain touched his voice. "I can"t begin to know what you are facing right now, Soshoni. All I can say is that I have always, no matter what our differences, had confidence in your judgment and sense of honor."
She swallowed. "And if there is no way of honor?"
"You make the best decision you know how."
Softly she said, "G.o.ds" blessing to you, Hoshpa."
His voice caught. "And to you."
"Good-bye."
"Good-bye, Daughter."
Then they broke the link.
She had run out of time. Whatever she decided, they had to move now, before the web failed.
"Charon, attend," she said. "Set up a dedicated link to Admiral Tahota at Onyx Platform. Security codes in 3-11-S."
"Codes verified," the computer said. "Link established."
The screen on the table in front of her rippled, and then Soz was facing Tahota. The admiral was seated at a console, the blur of holos visible behind her. With her six-foot-six frame and strong features, she looked like the reincarnation of a Ruby warrior queen from five thousand years in Raylicon"s past.
"Imperator Skolia," she said.
Soz felt as if she were in a suddenly m.u.f.fled room. Her words came out in quiet, still tones. "I"m sorry, Starjack."
It was a moment before the admiral answered. Then she said, "I understand." She took a breath. "I will keep you posted as the situation evolves."
"That may not be possible," Soz said. "We"re losing the web. It shouldn"t affect you within the Onyx complex, given the proximity of your habitats, but we won"t be able to communicate across interstellar distance."
Tahota stared at her. "G.o.ds, what"s going on?"
"I"m not sure." Soz spoke quietly. "Whatever happens, I"ve faith in your abilities and your decisions."
Tahota nodded, acknowledging her words. "My thanks."
Soz paused. "Kurj told me something once."
"Yes?"
"That you were his closest friend."
The admiral exhaled. "I am honored."
"G.o.ds" blessings, Starjack."
"And to you."
Then they closed the link.
Soz pushed a hand through her hair. "Charon, get me Admiral Barzun."
"On channel three." The screen rippled again, clearing to reveal a man with iron gray hair, a beak of a nose, and a square jaw.
"Imperator Skolia," Barzun said.
"We have to a.s.semble the Radiance Fleet now," Soz said. "The psiberweb is collapsing. We have a day, perhaps less."
Barzun swore. "Why is it collapsing?"
"The Triad link isn"t stable."
"G.o.ds almighty." The admiral stared at her for a full count of five before he asked, "Are we going to Eube or Onyx?"
Quietly Soz said, "To Eube."
27.
Admiral Starjack Tahota and Colonel Claymore Raines strode side by side along the gravel path in New Metropoli. The ground curved up ahead of them, barely discernible as deviation from the horizontal. Trampled gardens stretched on either side and starlight flooded through dichromesh windows overhead. All around them, personnel jogged by, duffels slung over their shoulders.
"I"m getting confirmation from the other habitants," Raines told her. He held his hand to his ear as data came over the comm on his headset. "They"ve almost finished loading evacuees."
"Good," Tahota said.
Ahead of them, people were converging on one of the great elevator columns that would ferry them out to the docking areas at the hub of the s.p.a.ce station. She and Raines made their way through the crowd to a lieutenant directing traffic.
"How many more loads do you have scheduled?" Tahota asked.
"This is the last group, ma"am," the lieutenant said.
Tahota nodded. "Well done."
As she and Raines took off again, Tahota pushed back the tendrils of hair that had escaped the braids on her head. Her people had implemented a contingency plan for evacuation, using computer databases to dictate what units took what personnel and equipment where, coordinating every last action, from the flow of people down to thousands of minute details that a less prepared force might have missed. But for all that, she still knew this was a desperation move.
Instead of gearing the 300 thousand s.h.i.+ps at Onyx for battle or suicide runs, she filled them with Onyx personnel. When ESComm moved in, the evac fleet would move out. The stations were almost empty now, a sparkling cl.u.s.ter of deserted islands in the sea of s.p.a.ce.
To "collapse" their sphere, the Trader s.h.i.+ps would have to invert into superluminal s.p.a.ce, converge on Onyx, drop back into normal s.p.a.ce, and re-form the sphere close enough in to attack. Any ISC s.h.i.+ps trying to flee would be extracted by ESComm telops. But Tahota suspected most of those telops were untrained providers struggling to monitor a huge volume of s.p.a.ce. Their job would be even trickier during the collapse, particularly with the Onyx periphery defenses hara.s.sing the ESComm fleet. Whether or not that would distract the telops enough to let any ISC s.h.i.+ps slip through undetected depended on how well prepared ESComm was to counter the Onyx periphery defenses.
Tahota had no idea what was happening out on the periphery. Onyx had lost psiberweb contact with its outlying bases. The fragile thread of hope for a successful evacuation depended on the answer to one question: how well had Althor Valdoria kept the secrets of Onyx?
Messages flooded Tahota"s mind, almost all from volunteers reporting for duty. Not everyone had boarded the evac s.h.i.+ps; a few hundred thousand were staying behind to help the last strike Onyx would ever make against ESComm. Even knowing the price they would pay, still they volunteered.
The observation bay where Tahota and Raines were headed was in the hull of this cylinder in the gigantic double-barreled habitat that made up New Metropoli. They entered the bay by a trapdoor in the "ground" under their feet and climbed down a ladder to a platform. With the apparent gravity directed out from the axis of the cylinder, the observation bay lay "below" them, a dome of dichromesh gla.s.s bubbled out from the hull. Platforms were scattered throughout it, linked by catwalks and ladders. Standing above the transparent bubble, looking out into s.p.a.ce, Tahota felt as if she were poised over a great abyss.
As New Metropoli rotated, other habitats came into view, including the Third Lock. The stations were dangerously close to one another, given their immense sizes. On Tahota"s order, her people were drawing them together into as small a volume as possible.
Reports poured into her nodes. In only two hours, almost two billion people had boarded the evac s.h.i.+ps, a tribute to the efficiency of a force linked by a web that permeated their lives, even their minds, though most weren"t psions. Tahota rated only two on the Kyle scale, having more empathic ability than 99 in every 100 humans, but not enough to qualify as psion. Even so, the extensive biomech in her body allowed her to develop a symbiosis with the electro-optic webs almost a.n.a.logous to telepathy. But she could never enter psibers.p.a.ce, a fact she had always regretted.
Hundreds of people already filled the bay, gathered on platforms and catwalks, and many more were streaming in from other trapdoors. Monitors around the bay showed similar scenes throughout Onyx.
"There"s so many," Tahota said to Raines as they climbed to the main platform, about halfway down the bubble, near its curving wall.
"It"s the same on every station." He sent her a copy of a file she also had waiting in her queue. All together, 400 thousand people had stayed behind.
"G.o.ds," Tahota murmured. "ISC better have enough medals for them all."
A buzz came from the comm in her wrist gauntlet. Raising her arm, she said, "Tahota here."
"Admiral, this is Colonel Oppendayer, on the battle cruiser Pharaoh"s s.h.i.+eld. We"ve packed in the last stragglers. The evac s.h.i.+ps are ready to go."
"Good work," Tahota said. "Launch on my order."
She called up a continually updating file from one of her spinal nodes. Her biomech web accessed her optic nerve and a display appeared in front of her, a translucent image in the air. When she winked her right eye, the image moved to the right, toward the gla.s.s wall of the bubble, leaving her view of the bay un.o.bstructed. The image showed the ESComm sphere enclosing Onyx, two million s.h.i.+ps spread over a sh.e.l.l with an area almost eighty light-years square, roughly sixty billion kilometers on average separating vessels. Without a psiberweb, the sphere was far too big for real-time communication among its const.i.tuent s.h.i.+ps. It could take well over fifty hours for a light signal just to go from a craft to its nearest neighbor.
However, ESComm telops were monitoring the sphere and had so far caught every decoy s.h.i.+p Onyx sent out, extracting them from both real and superluminal s.p.a.ce. Soon ESComm would collapse the sphere, bringing it in to only a few million kilometers from Onyx, just far enough out for the s.h.i.+ps to dump their velocity on approach to the stations. Tahota already knew they could pull off the maneuver on a much smaller scale; they had used it with vicious success on ISC outposts. But seeing it from a force of two million daunted even her experienced eye.
Raines was listening to his ear comm. "Admiral, we have hookups now to every station and s.h.i.+p. You"re all set."
"Good work." Tahota drew in a breath, knowing this was the time she should produce a stirring oration that would inspire the billions waiting to hear her voice. Given her limited oratorical abilities, she would have to make do with a few simple words instead.
She spoke, and her voice carried throughout Onyx. "In a few moments, you will all make history." It wasn"t the most original opening line, but it would do. "We expect ESComm to collapse their sphere within five minutes. That"s when we"ll launch the evacs. G.o.ds know, I wish I could promise you will all make it. I can"t do that. But I know of no force better trained to make this work, no force with greater courage or skill."
A rumble of approval rippled through her listeners. When it quieted, she said, "We know ESComm has state-of-the-art quasis tech for dealing with large accelerations, so we expect it will only take them ten minutes to converge on Onyx, maybe even less." To collapse the sphere that fast meant the s.h.i.+ps had to travel at about a hundred thousand times light speed. The speed itself was easily attained, but the accelerations were daunting. "What that means," she said, "is that the evac s.h.i.+ps will have less than ten minutes to get out."
Tahota took a breath. "Those of you who volunteered to stay behind should have been a.s.signed fuel bottles by now. With 400 thousand of you, we"ve covered almost every bottle on every station. We all know ESComm can stop our self-destructs now, but try to engage them anyway. They will expect it."
She glanced at her display. The habitats had moved farther inward, leaving the Lock on the edge of the cl.u.s.ter. "ESComm wants these stations intact. As soon as they"re within range, they"ll go after our electro-optic webs, to control our systems so we can"t blow anything up. After you try to engage the self-destructs, simply surround each of your a.s.signed bottles with a second Klein field." Whether it would actually be "simple" remained to be seen. It wasn"t a procedure they had ever had reason to test on this scale, given that putting one fuel bottle inside another achieved nothing except making the fuel inaccessible. However, the apparent stupidity of such an action meant ESComm had no reason to have countermeasures for it either.
"You must wait until the last evac s.h.i.+p has inverted out of here before you make the new bottles," she continued. "Under no circ.u.mstances should you start before the evac s.h.i.+ps invert." Looking out at her people, she raised her voice until it resonated throughout the bay. "I am honored by the service of every last one of you. Your courage will be remembered throughout history, when parents tell their children how the heroes of Onyx broke the back of the Eubian Empire."
They gave a subdued cheer then, from all over Onyx. Tahota swallowed, moved by the bravery of all these men and women who volunteered to follow her despite the enormity of the threat they faced. She saw no sign of regret from anyone.
Colonel Oppendayer spoke over her ear comm. "Admiral, the Trader s.h.i.+ps are accelerating in preparation for inversion."