Stephen Baxter - Starfall

Stillich looked at the Admiral's grim face.

"Decision time," said Kale.

"Yes, sir. My view? It's not worth risking Earth to save this project of the Empress's—"

"The Project is worth any price," Shira murmured. "Even that."

Kale turned to her. "Ma'am—we have no time. We must accept his terms. We can discuss the details of your abdication later—the legitimisation of an interim government ... " He turned to Flood. "You have won, star-farmer."

Flood picked up the nanotechnological box, and dropped it in the logic pool. It sank with barely a ripple, and then seemed to dissolve. Flood watched the pool, as the writhing metamathematical bifurcations withered, and the pale light began to die. "It is done."

Stillich said urgently, "And call off your relativistic attack dog."

Flood smiled. "Done."

"None of this is real," Shira murmured. She rolled back into the shadows.

Kale faced Flood. "You will pay for all you have done."

Flood gazed at him, his eyes full of regret. "Oh, I have paid, soldier. Believe me, I have paid."

And then the bunker shuddered, and a wave like a tide pulsed through Stillich's gut.

Kale staggered. "What was that?"

When Stillich had recovered, Shira was gone.

Asteroid Belt

Earth was so close now that Densel Bel could see it, an image magnified and heavily corrected for relativistic distortions, suspended over his head—he could see it in real time, a blue marble, achingly beautiful, and yet scarred by war. But he could never touch it. The vast pulse of kinetic energy that had been injected into this ship by years of GUTdrive acceleration separated him from his home world just as much as if he had been stranded in another universe.

Only subjective minutes remained before his life ended, and Earth died with him.

Once more Flood appeared before him. "It's over," he said, smiling.

"What is?"

"The war. Shira is abdicating—we are free. Now you must destroy the Fist Two."

"Me? Why me?"

"This was your purpose, Densel Bel. You are my failsafe. I needed somebody on board who I knew would terminate the mission, even at the cost of his own life. And that's you, a man loyal both to Earth, where you were born, and Footprint, where you have your family. You have the authority. Just say aloud, 'let it end'. The AI will do the rest. Goodbye, Densel Bel. I hope you feel the sacrifice you are making is worth it."

"Flood. Wait—"

"Yes?"

"Would you have done it? Would you have let the Fist strike the Earth?"

"Oh, yes. To stop what Shira was doing—believe me, there was no choice. Good luck, Densel Be!." He broke up into a cloud of pixels and disappeared.

Densel Bel looked up at the blue Earth, and thought of Su-su and Fay. "let it end."

Light flared, an instant of intense white pain—

Earthport

The flitter rose from Earth like a stone thrown from a blue bowl. The little cylindrical craft tumbled slowly as it climbed, sparkling.

Peering out from the rising flitter, Stillich had to admit that the Freestar, which he had come to inspect on behalf of the Navy, looked spectacular, with the newly constructed wormhole Interface, a bright blue tetrahedron with milky-gold faces, slung beneath its angular spine. When Flood and his crew returned to Alpha system in a couple of months, they would take the grudging good wishes of Earth's interim government with them, and the business end of a new wormhole, which would link the worlds of Alpha and Sol forever.

"Or until the next political crisis," Flood said dryly.

"There is that."

"Look—here comes another shipment of green muck from Titan."

It was a cargo pellet slung from Titan that had crossed the system unpowered, and now made an entry into Earth's atmosphere, cutting a bright contrail across the blue sky. This crude shipment method was an interim emergency measure, until the great space elevators were hung in the sky once more.

"Not 'green muck'," Stillich said. "Algal concentrate."

Flood pulled a face. "Next time you visit Footprint, be my guest at dinner."

"That might be some time away," Stillich said gently.

They both knew that was likely to be true. Too many had died, on Earth and elsewhere, for the populations of Sol system to forgive their colonial cousins for the war, whatever the retrospective justification in terms of Shira's murky crimes.

But it would come in time, Stillich knew. Already Earth was recovering, as people and machines laboured to repair the damage done, and the vast resources of space were reattached to the damaged planet. And likewise Sol system was making conciliatory gestures to the starborn. The Facula was en route back to Tau Ceti, taking the abducted colonists home. Stillich had made sure Pella was on that mission. She was a bright officer, but she needed to acquire the humanity that informed good judgement

"I saw your report on Shira's escape," Flood said now. "You were serious in your conclusions?"

"There's no real doubt about it." Shira had stashed many treasures from her lost future down in that bunker, and among them was what appeared to be a transdimensional transport system: Shira had disappeared from the bunker by stepping sideways into one of the universe's many extra compactified dimensions. "If that doesn't qualify as a 'hyperdrive' I don't know what does."

Flood shook his head. "She had a hyperdrive. And she kept it to herself all these centuries, while the rest of us limped across the Galaxy in sublight GUTships. Just so she had a last-resort escape hatch. How selfish."

"Maybe it's just as well. Anyhow I guess we are due to acquire the technology in a few centuries. Certainly it will transform the face of war." Stillich and Flood were both key witnesses at an inter-governmental inquiry into the course and conduct of the war, an experience Stillich suspected had increased both their understandings. "When you think about it, an interstellar war fought out with sublight drives is right at the limit of the possible. For a start you need a strong reason to do it; almost nothing is worth fighting such a campaign for."

Flood grunted. "You should read more history. Our fear of what Shira was up to was comparatively rational as a casus belli. Another global threat, experiments with vacuum energy, which could destabilise the entire universe, say, might be another. But horrific wars have been fought over splinter-fine differences in ideologies. look up the crusades some time."

"But when we get hyperdrive," Stillich said, "and as a consequence—perhaps—we get an authentic first alien contact, rather than these dark hints and glimpses from the future, we might soon see a transformation both of our means of fighting war, and of our choice of opponents. This might be remembered as mankind's last great conflict."

"The end of human war?" Flood laughed. "I knew you were imaginative, Stillich. I didn't have you down as a dreamer ... "

An alarm chimed, as the flitter prepared to dock with the Freestar. Stillich straightened his uniform, preparing for duty.

As it turned out, Flood was wrong.

It was only a few years later that Pella, en route to Tau Ceti, sent Stillich a packet message to announce contact with an alien species. He took the call in his apartment in the clouds over London.

"As far as we can tell they are aquatic group-mind multiple creatures. Fish-like. They have an interstellar network of trading colonies. Their name for themselves"—a thin squeal, heavily processed from the creatures' own sounds, 'Ss-chh-eemnh'—means something like the Wise Folk. Rather like Homo sapiens. Captain, here's the thing. They were heading for Sol system! They picked up some kind of signal from Shira's escape. The hyperdrive she used must have been one of their drives, or a human derivative. The question is, sir, how our descendants managed to take such a prize away from the Ss-chh-eemnh ... "