James Hogan - Giant's Star

"At once, General," JEVEX acknowledged.

In the communications room in Connecticut, Hunt turned his head toward Verikoff, who was watching from the doorway. "You’d better come on in. It looks as if you’ll be on again in a few seconds to accept the surrender. It’s just about all over." Verikoff moved to the center of the room while the others fell back to clear a small circle around him. On the screen showing the Jevlenese War Room, Wylott and Broghuilio had turned to look directly out at the room and were waiting expectantly for JEVEX to make the connection. Verikoff folded his arms and assumed a domineering posture in readiness.

And suddenly the screen went blank.

Puzzled looks appeared all around the room. "VISAR?" Hunt said after a few seconds. "VISAR, what’s happened?" There was no reply. The screens that had been connecting them to Thurien and the Shapieron had gone blank as well.

Verikoff moved quickly over to a bank of equipment on one side of the room and ran rapidly through a sequence of tests. "It’s dead," he announced, looking up at the others. "The whole system is dead. We don’t have any channels to anywhere, and I can’t open any. Something has cut us off from JEVEX completely."

In the Government Center at Thurios, Caldwell was equally bewildered. "VISAR, what’s happened?" he demanded. "Where did the views from Earth and Jevlen go? Have you lost them or something?"

A few seconds went by, then VISAR answered. "It’s worse than that. I haven’t only lost Connecticut and the War Room, I’ve lost everything from JEVEX. I don’t have anything into it at all. The whole system has switched off."

"Don’t you know anything that’s happening at Jevlen at all?" Morizal asked, aghast.

"Nothing," VISAR said. "The only channel I’ve got to anywhere in the whole of the JEVEX-controlled world-system is the one through to the Shapieron . JEVEX seems to be dead. The whole system has just gone down."

Broghuilio found himself reclining in his private quarters deep underground in the complex that housed the Directorate of Strategic Planning. He sat up sharply, unsure of what had happened. A moment before he had been in the War Room with Wylott, waiting for a connection to Verikoff. Even as he remembered, he saw again in his mind’s eye the armada from Earth, at that moment sweeping inward toward Jevlen. He looked around wildly.

"JEVEX?"

No response.

"JEVEX, answer me."

Nothing.

Something cold and heavy turned over deep in his stomach. He leaped to his feet, fumbled his way into a robe to cover his shorts and undershirt, and hurried into the next room to check the status indicators of the suite’s monitor panel. Lighting, air conditioning, communications, services . . . everything had reverted to emergency backup mode. JEVEX was not operating. He tried activating the communications console, but the only thing he could raise on the screen was a message stating that all channels were saturated. It meant that the condition was general and not due simply to some local failure; the complex was in panic. He rushed through into his bedroom and began frantically tearing clothes out of a closet.

He was still buttoning his tunic when a tone sounded from the outside door in the hallway. Broghuilio hastened out and pressed his thumb against a printlock plate to dematerialize the door. Estordu was there with two other aides. The sounds of shouting and commotion came in from behind them.

"What’s happened?" Broghuilio demanded. "The whole system is dead."

"I deactivated it," Estordu told him. "I threw the manual override breakers in the master nucleus control room. I’ve shut JEVEX down totally."

Broghuilio’s beard quivered, and his eyes widened. "You what-" he began, but Estordu waved a hand impatiently to silence him. The gesture was so out of character that Broghuilio just stared.

"Can’t you see what’s happened?" Estordu said, speaking rapidly and urgently. "JEVEX was not functioning coherently. Something was affecting it from the inside. It could only have been VISAR. Somehow VISAR gained access to it. That meant that the Thuriens could have been watching every move we made. We still have twelve hours, and if we move quickly we can still get away. We still have emergency communications channels to Uttan, and the standby transfer system can project an entry port to Jevlen. With JEVEX inoperative and VISAR therefore blind, we can make our arrangements without risking interference from the Thuriens or the Terrans. The nearest Terran ships are still twelve hours away. By the time they get here we can be gone, and they’ll have no way of knowing where to. By the time they think of looking for us at Uttan, we will be well prepared. Don’t you see? It was the only way. With JEVEX running we couldn’t have planned a move without them knowing."

Broghuilio thought rapidly as he listened. There was no time for arguing, and anyway, Estordu was right. He nodded. "Everyone with their wits about them will go physically to the War Room," he said. He looked at Estordu. "Find Lantyar and tell him I want five reliable crews mustered and brought to Geerbaine by eighteen hundred hours today. You. . ." He directed his gaze at one of the two aides standing behind Estordu. "Contact the operations commander at Geerbaine and tell him I want five E-class transports ready for launch not one minute later than then, and power standing by on-line at Uttan to project ports as soon as the transports clear Jevlen." He gestured to the other aide. "And you, find General Wylott and tell him to mobilize four companies of guards and organize air transportation from here to Geerbaine, ready to leave by seventeen thirty hours. I’ll need capacity for two thousand persons. Commandeer it from wherever you need to, and don’t hesitate to use force. Do you understand?" Broghuilio straightened his collar and went back through to the bedroom to buckle on his belt and sidearm. "I am going to the War Room now," he called out to them. "The three of you will report to me there not later than one hour from now. Do as I say, and this time tomorrow we will all be on Uttan."

The Shapieron had moved closer to Jevlen to await the arrival of the Ganymean ships from Thurien, which had begun moving inward from the edge of the planetary system but were still many hours away. The main screen on the Command Deck was showing views of Jevlen’s surface being sent back from probes at lower altitudes. The planet seemed to be in chaos. Nothing was flying anywhere, but in many places people had begun leaving the cities on foot and in disorderly streams of ground vehicles that had soon jammed solid on highway systems never intended for more than minor local or recreational traffic. Disturbances and rioting had broken out in a few places, but in most the populations were merely assembling in the open spaces, leaderless and bewildered. Communications traffic from the surface was garbled and revealed no organization for maintaining order or vital services. In short, the Ganymeans were going to have a big job on their hands putting the pieces of the mess together again.

Garuth was tense and apprehensive as he stood in the center of the Command Deck taking in the reports. VISAR had not crashed JEVEX, so the culprit had to have been the Jevlenese themselves. Somehow they had discovered they were the unwitting objects of surveillance through JEVEX, and had shut down the system to blind VISAR to what they were doing. In other words they were up to something, and there was no way of knowing what. Garuth didn’t like it.

The other thing that was bothering him at a deeper level was the feeling that he had failed. Despite the reassurances of Eesyan, Shilohin, Monchar, and the others that his bringing the Shapieron to Jevlen had saved Thurien, Garuth was acutely conscious of how near to disaster he had brought them, and that only the fast action of Hunt and the others on Earth had saved things. He had risked his crew and Eesyan’s scientists irresponsibly, and others had bailed him out. Yes, the threat to Thurien had been removed; but Garuth didn’t feel he deserved very much credit for that. He would have liked to have contributed more and the congratulations that had poured through from Thurien had only added to his discomfort.