Roger Allen - The Shattered Sphere

“Yes, sir,” Wally said. “Course, the infosets are pretty vague. I won’t be able to give you much detail, and some of it’s going to be speculative.”

“I am sure it will be up to your usual high standards,” the director said.

Sianna shut her eyes and cursed herself for an idiot. Of course. At this scale, with Earth the size of a basketball, what would there be to see? But of course the disaster would still come.

“So it’s finally going to happen,” Sakalov said. “I had been hoping I wouldn’t live to see it.”

“We’ll all live to see the start of it,” said Bernhardt. “You’ve seen the images from the Solar System, what just a handful of Charonians were able to do to Mars. These SCOREs are a different type of Charonian, of course, and they will probably behave quite differently.

“But I have no doubt they will do quite a bit of damage. The Charonians hunted our world down, and brought it back here, to the Multisphere, to their larder. Now they are ready to dine. They will land on Earth, and breed, and breed and breed and breed. They could wreck the planetary ecosphere completely. We can see other Captive Worlds where that has happened. Even if things don’t go that badly, they could still do some very serious damage.”

“So what do we do?” Sianna asked.

Wolf Bernhardt looked at her, then at Wally and at Dr. Sakalov. “First, we do all we can to resupply NaPurHab and the Terra Nova . We launch as many loads of spares and equipment at them as we can. If Earth is severely enough damaged, it is possible that they will be all there is left of us. We must do all we can to make sure they are in as good condition as possible. Then we use the interceptor missiles and the ground attack forces and all the other weapons we have built against this day,” he said. “We shoot down as many of them as we can, and kill as many of them as we can on the ground. Maybe we can drive back the first wave, and maybe the Charonians will conclude Earth is not a good place for a Breeding Binge. But I have no doubt that, if it chooses to do so, Charon Central can keep sending SCOREs—Breeders—long after our defenses are overwhelmed. And then the Breeders will land, and go about their business.

“And as to what we do then—I haven’t the faintest idea, except for one thing.” Wolf Bernhardt put his hands in his pockets, looked toward the simulation, and let out a deep sigh. “I expect,” he said, “that a lot of us will die.”

“There are times when I don’t much mind being called a Leftover—but other times when I find it bloody infuriating. Why mark me out because I was one of the ones left behind? Haven’t we all lost someone? Is there anyone in the Solar System who didn’t lose someone, or some part of their past, when Earth vanished? And is there a single one of you lot who wasn’t lost by someone back on Earth?

“And if you weren’t lost to someone, if there is no one on the other side who cares a sausage for you, then dearie, I feel sorry for you.”

Gerald MacDougal, second-in-command of the Terra Nova, lay awake in his bunk, staring at the overhead bulkhead. He knew he should be trying to sleep, but this was one night when sleep would not come.

Gerald missed his wife.

Marcia. He could turn over on his side and look at her picture, taped on the bulkhead next to his bed, but there was no need. He had spent endless hours in the last five years staring at that photo. It was the only one of her that he had, and it was his most prized possession.

It was a quite ordinary flat photo, no three-dee, no animation. She smiled out at the camera, her two elbows resting on the picnic table, with her chin balanced on the palms of her hands, her long fingers hidden under her frizzy black hair, though the tip of her left index finger peeked through, just by her ear.

Her dark brown eyes were half-hidden by her bangs, but they shone with love and happiness. She was grinning, ear to ear, gleaming white teeth showing, with one tooth just a little crooked, and a tiny little scar on one cheek where she had caught a chip of flying rock in some childhood accident, before she had escaped Tycho Purple Penal.

No, he didn’t have to look at the picture.

She had been off-planet when the Abduction struck, working at the VISOR station orbiting Venus, while he worked on his own projects back on Earth. Even then, they had been forced to settle for video messages sent from so far away the speed-of-light delay made conversation impossible. Back then, that distance seemed impossibly wide. Now, it seemed trivial. What were a few tens or hundreds of millions of kilometers, compared to the unknown number of light-years between them now?

At last he did turn his gaze toward the picture, but he was seeing through it, rather than looking at it. How had five-plus years changed her? Had her hair gone grey? Were there a few more laugh lines around her eyes?

He didn’t even want to contemplate the other disasters that might have befallen her. One of the last messages relayed by the Saint Anthony had confirmed that Marcia had survived at least that long, and to know that much was a great blessing. Gerald offered a silent prayer of thanks for that. Many aboard ship, and back on Earth, had no way of knowing if their loved ones in the Solar System had survived the disaster. All they knew was that the much smaller population of the Solar System had suffered more casualties than all of Earth.

But what of the five years since? He believed firmly, because he had to, that she still lived—but suppose she did not? Suppose she had died five minutes after sending that last message? Suppose she was dying now , this moment, while he lay here, safe and warm, and he did not know?

He calmed himself. No. She lived. He knew that. He had always felt that he would know if she died. He would be able to feel it, and never mind the distance and the logical impossibility of the idea. He could feel her being alive, the way he could feel his own heart beating. He would know if she died, the way he would know if his right arm were cut off.

But what of himself? Dear God, how had five years changed him ? How much had he aged? Five years cooped up in this oversized tin can—he had gained weight, lost muscle tone. That happened in space, no matter how much one exercised. And what about his soul, his spirit? Had five years of fruitless effort and failure soured him, embittered him? He did not believe so, but there was no way to tell.

He swung his feet around to the floor and sat up in bed. Enough. It was foolish to think that he was so changed that she would no longer love him, no longer be attracted to him. He had more faith in her—and confidence in himself—than that. But, still, he did not want to be a disappointment to her.

And she would be disappointed indeed to see him moping around in his quarters. There was work to be done. Even if the launch had been delayed for the time being, the second stealthship, the Highwayman, still needed to be prepared for its flight, prepared for the next attempt on a CORE. He got up, left his cabin, and made his way down toward the flight deck. There were stores to check, systems to test, hardware to inspect.

Gerald, of course, took a special interest in preparing the Highwayman .

He was going to command her. No matter how much Dianne Steiger protested, he was going to be aboard the little ship.

Gerald MacDougal had had his fill of sending others out to die. He would go himself, next time.