Stephen Baxter - Starfall

"And then," said Kale, barely believing, "it was a simple matter of living through fifteen centuries—fifty generations—and waiting for your time to come again."

"You have it, Admiral."

He peered at her. "Were there others like you—others stranded in history?"

"None that remain in Sol system." Her face was blank. "None that survive."

"You monopolised knowledge of the future to cement your power base." He remembered himself. "Ma'am, forgive me for speaking this way—"

"It's all right, Admiral. Yes, you could put it like that. But it was necessary. After all there had been no unified government of mankind, none before me. Quite an achievement, don't you think? Why, I had to invent a religion to do it ... It was necessary, all of it. I need the shelter of power. There are many obstacles to be overcome in the decades ahead, if I am to survive to the year of my birth."

"Ma'am—I thought I knew you."

"None of you knows me, none of you drones." She withdrew. "I tire now. Progress your war, Admiral. But we will speak again. Even if I fall, the Project must not fail. And I will entrust in you that purpose."

He bowed to her. "Ma'am." And with huge relief he left the chamber, leaving the lonely woman and the light of the logic pool behind him.

Jupiter

The earthworm fleet was assembling here too, somewhere on the far side of the giant world. The showdown was still hours away, the Alphan planners believed.

Despite the urgency of the situation, despite all Flood's urging and imprecations, every chance they got the crew of the Freestar stared out of their lifedome at Jupiter. After all there were no Jovians in Alpha system.

It was a bloated monster of a world, streaked with autumn brown and salmon pink. And, still more extraordinary, it was visibly wounded, immense storms like funnels digging deep into its surface. The other ships of the rebel fleet, the other five of their minuscule armada, drifted across the face of the giant world, angular silhouettes.

One other structure was visible in its own orbit, deep within the circle of the innermost moon, Io. It was an electric-blue spark, revealed under magnification to be a tangle of struts and tetrahedral frames. This was the Poole hub, where Michael Poole had used the energies of a flux tube connecting Jupiter to Io to construct the heart of his intrasystem wormhole network. Even today one of those ancient Interfaces linked Jupiter itself to Earth—or it had until the earthworms had cut it.

It was an extraordinary sight, Flood conceded. "Spectacle and history, all mixed up."

"Yes, dad," said Beya. "You know I've been reading up on Sol system history ... "

He did and he didn't entirely approve; it struck him as a guilty reflex.

"You say this is all because of human action?"

"That's the story," he said. "Though my grasp of ancient earthworm history is shaky."

Nine hundred years before, Jupiter had been wrecked by the actions of the Friends of Wigner, rebels from a dismal, alien-occupied future. The Friends had had in mind some grand, impossible scheme to alter history. Their plan had involved firing asteroid-mass black holes into Jupiter.

"Whatever these 'Friends' intended, it didn't work," Flood said. "All they succeeded in doing was wrecking Jupiter." He shook his head. "The greatest mass in Sol system after the sun itself, a vast resource for the future—ruined in a single action. How typical of earthworm arrogance!—"

Light sparked in the complex sky. Flood saw it reflected in his daughter's face. He turned.

One of the rebel ships, the Destiny of Humankind, had exploded. The delicate spine was broken, the detached GUTdrive flaring pointlessly, and the fragile lifedome shattered, spilling particles of pink and green into space.

Alarms howled. Virtual control desks appeared before Beya and Flood, crammed with data. The crew, sleepy, shocked, scrambled to get to their positions.

And then another ship detonated. The Future Hope, a ship five hundred years old, gone in a second. This time Flood glimpsed the missile that took it out. But there was no time to reflect.

"Incoming," Beya called. "Incoming!"

Flood worked at his desk with brisk sweeps of his fingers. "All right. We're evading." The lifedome shuddered as the GUTdrive flared, shoving the Freestar sideways.

A missile streaked past the lifedome, close enough to see with the naked eye, glowing white-hot.

"Shit," Beya said. "How are they doing this? The scans showed a volume around us was clear."

"Jupiter," Flood said, reading his displays rapidly. "The missiles are coming out of Jupiter. But the velocities are so high—I don't understand."

"The black holes," Beya said. "Maybe that's it. They're slingshotting their missiles off the central black holes. You can pick up a hell of a lot of kinetic energy from an ergosphere."

"And they're punching out of the carcass of the planet, right at us. Incredible."

Another ship flared and died, a flower of light pointlessly beautiful.

"The Dream of Alpha," Flood read. "That's three of us gone in a few seconds. They're picking us off. Three of us left, against a dozen Navy cruisers. We'll have to withdraw. Regroup if we can—"

"No." Beya was working hard at her desk. "Dad, there's no time for that. Tell the survivors to make for the Poole hub."

"Why? The wormhole links are severed; we can't get away from there."

"It will give us a bit of cover. And I've an idea," she said, distant, working.

Flood frowned. He didn't enjoy it when this determined side of his daughter showed itself; it made her seem too strong, too independent—he couldn't protect her any more. But she had called the black-hole missile manoeuvre correctly. He saw no better option than to accept her recommendation. He snapped out the orders.

The Freestar's GUTdrive kicked in. The acceleration mounted quickly, two, three, four gravities. Flood felt it in his bones, but he stood his ground, determined. Above his head, Jupiter slid with ponderous slowness across his field of view. "Come on," he said. "Come on ... "

Elsewhere, aboard the bridge of the Navy ship Facula, there was much cheering at the downing of half the rebel fleet—premature cheering, as far as Stillich was concerned.

"Status," he yelled at Pella, above the noise.

"Three down, three to go."

"But the three survivors aren't running."

"Not from Jovian space, no sir. They seem to be making for the Poole hub."

"Why there?"

Pella tapped a desk. "The war-game AIs have no idea. If they need cover they could run to one of the moons ... " She grinned. "Sir, who cares? We have twelve ships against three. We can shoot them out of the sky."

Stillich felt deeply uneasy, but he couldn't argue with that analysis. "Well, that's the idea, Number One. All right. Call the fleet; set up an attacking perimeter."

"Sir."

The GUTdrive surged smoothly.

Twelve ships against three. The decision to withdraw the Sol fleet to Jupiter had been a good one, Stillich thought. The hinterland of the giant planet was a dangerous, complex place, laced with strong gravitational fields, intense radiation and hazards like the Io flux tube. It was a battleground much more familiar to the defending Navy than to the attackers—and he had been impressed by the innovative thinking at a Navy college on Earth that had come up with the notion of using the black hole slingshot to pick off the rebels even before the ships had engaged.

But once he had accepted the stratagem, Stillich had argued for withdrawing all of Earth's fleet to Jupiter or its environs, not to leave half of it mounting a futile picket fence at the incoming relativistic wave. Twelve against three. It was more reassuring than twelve against six had been, but Stillich was in no mood for anything less than a complete victory, an annihilation, the security of the system demanded it, and the more overwhelming the odds the better.