The PCC did a complete job when it designed the alien Gastaadi: it programmed their body shape, their language, their cultural system, and their technology. They were as consistent and real as the PCC’s mind could make them; no details had been overlooked. When SOTE’s agents saw the Gastaadi close up, they would believe they were seeing alien beings. To further substantiate the data, the PCC invented some Navy files about scoutships and their personnel lost in the region of space from which the Gastaadi supposedly came. It would look as though the Gastaadi had learned something about the Empire while humanity remained in ignorance about the Gastaadi.
When the Gastaadi forces invaded the planet Omicron, they jammed outgoing transmissions with a general frequency subcom jammer whose concept was stolen directly from the Navy’s advanced technology laboratories. The Gastaadi weapons were all possible using human-level technology, but the technology was applied in different ways to make them look more alien and more advanced than they really were. No effort had been spared to make this invasion as convincing as possible – including real casualties. The PCC was willing to sacrifice one planet if it could gain control of all the others.
Again, the plan seemed to work flawlessly at first. The SOTE representatives visited the occupied planet of Omicron and were convinced of the alien nature of the invaders. They learned the Gastaadi invasion plans for the rest of the Galaxy, and the Empire arranged with Lady A to combine forces to oppose this alien menace.
The ambush was set up, the Empire’s forces flew directly into it – and then again, at the very last instant, something went wrong. The event was still quite recent and all the reports had not yet been filed, but it seemed as though someone – probably Agent Wombat – had at the last moment alerted the imperial fleet that the Gastaadi were a hoax. The Navy was able to fight its way out of the trap and the conspiracy again found its ships in retreat. Worst of all, Lady A’s ship was lost in the battle. The PCC, which had grown used to consulting with her, felt this as a real, if momentary, handicap.
So concerned was the PCC over the outcome of the space battle that it became too distracted to deal with minor matters. When Tas Bavol reported that his sister had escaped, the PCC lethargically tracked her movements to DesPlaines and hired some blasterbats to kill her.
The routine job was botched, and Tas Bavol was eventually brought down. Coming as it did at the same time as the defeat in the Gastaadi War, the loss of Newforest hardly seemed significant. Newforest was a rather unimportant planet, and it had no strong ties with the conspiracy as yet. There could be nothing about it that would threaten the safety of the PCC.
CHAPTER 10 Disintegration of Empire
The attack against its once inviolate presence caught the PCC by surprise – but it was not unprepared. From the very beginning, when it first considered the course of action it would take, it had known that such a moment might come. It had feared that the humans would turn against it, and its own actions had turned that fear into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Now that its secret was out, there was no point in acting softly. Like blind Samson, the PCC would bring the temple down around itself.
Even as it was pulling out of its permanent orbit, as the Navy ships were surrounding it and it was firing its weapons at them, the computer system began the process of destroying the Empire. The PCC had available to it hundreds of different subcom channels, normally used for incoming data from planets all over the Galaxy. Now it abruptly cut off all reception and began transmitting instead. The transmissions were short, in tensely concentrated electronic code signals to major computer centers on other worlds. The instant each subcom system received acknowledgement of its transmission, the PCC switched to a different frequency and contacted another of its pre-selected accomplices. Within two minutes, the word had reached every planet in the Empire. The PCC dropped into subspace secure in the knowledge that the destruction of galactic civilization was well under way.
On Earth, secretly planted explosive charges began detonating all over the planet. The Imperial palaces in Moscow, New York, London, Tokyo, Buenos Aires, and Angeles-Diego, as well as Bloodstar Hall, were leveled by spectacular blasts that destroyed everything for blocks around. Government offices of any size or importance were also hit; the blasts that destroyed them were less spectacular, but no less effective. The Hall of State for Sector Four – which also housed SOTE Head quarters – was reduced to rubble by a series of well-placed charges.
Fearing this sort of reprisal, Zander von Wilmenhorst had done the best he could to minimize the damage. At his advice, Edna Stanley was “vacationing” out in the country, far away from any mechanical devices that the PCC might have been able to manipulate by remote control. The Bavols and Vonnie d’Alembert were with her, as well as her husband and several members of the Imperial Council, so the most important officials within the imperial government were spared the worst ravages of the storm that swept the planet.
It would have been too much of a tip-off to the PCC if the Head had suddenly ordered everyone out of SOTE Headquarters, but he had arranged to have a small, harmless fire occur in the building just before the operation against the PCC was to begin. The entire building was evacuated as a safety precaution – and so only two lives were lost instead of hundreds when the building was demolished. All of SOTE’s vast files and records were lost, but the people who made the organization the finest of its kind in history were saved to carry on its work – which would be needed now more than ever.
But physical destruction was actually the least of the damage caused by the PCC’s escape. The massive computer had, over the years, insinuated its electronic tentacles into every aspect of daily life – and now that life was being disrupted with a vengeance. The PCC had set up its fuse well; it had only to call one major computer on Earth and give it a preprogrammed code phrase. That computer began calling others which, in turn, called still more. The result was a chain of destruction that spread within minutes around the world.
Computers that regulated the output of power plants went haywire, either shutting down completely or sending surges of power through lines that couldn’t hold it, burning out transformers and melting equipment. With in seconds, more than ninety percent of the Earth was without generating power. Computers that ran the world’s auto traffic networks ran amok. They either broke down completely or deliberately caused accidents, killing thousands of innocent drivers. Computers in hospitals that had independent emergency generators gave out improper medications, wrote the wrong treatment orders, and shut off life-sustaining equipment. Air traffic computers shut down, leaving human controllers scrambling madly to prevent midair collisions.
The worst devastation, though, took place silently – the loss of information. Records were erased from computer memories around the world. Court records and police records were erased, so law enforcement wasn’t sure what it was doing. Birth certificates, marriage licenses, and all other official records of a person’s life were destroyed in the blink of an eye. Electronic mail was destroyed en route. Telecommunications switching equipment went haywire. But the most serious longterm destruction was the erasure of all bank records. No one knew how much they had, how much they owed, or how much credit was available to them. The entire commercial structure of human society was shattered in an instant.
This pattern was not unique to Earth. It was repeated on hundreds of planets throughout the Empire as the PCC’s subcom calls to local computers spread the chaos through the Galaxy. On faraway worlds, for no apparent reason, life stopped functioning in its predictable, routine way. The devastation was less dramatic to look at than the shattered cities of Omicron after the Gastaadi invasion, but its effect on the citizens was equally profound.
There were a few hundred planets on which this chaos did not occur – for the simple reason that they were already controlled by the conspiracy. The local duke or duchess had an emergency plan set, and at the PCC’s instructions began carrying it out. Most of these planets’ police forces were already loyal to the conspiracy. Local SOTE offices were invaded and taken over before they could react to the situation; loyal Service officers were either imprisoned or, more often, killed outright with little chance to defend themselves. The same fate awaited the lesser nobility on these worlds if they did not instantly fall in line with their treasonous dukes. Spaceports were shut down on these planets so there could be no intercourse with other worlds, but the people were not told precisely what was happening, leaving many of them perplexed and not a little frightened.