He was sitting in his hotel room watching a trivision broadcast when the calamity stuck. The screen suddenly went dark, but Jules thought little of that – it could be an ordinary power failure. A few moments later, though, he heard crashing noises out on the street. Peering from his window he could see half a dozen accidents from his narrow view alone. Only a massive failure of the city’s central traffic computer could have caused such a mess. Jules tried to call down to the main desk to find out what was wrong, but power was out in the phone lines, too. Those lines normally had their own in dependent power source. For everything to fail at once meant that something had gone drastically wrong.
Jules left his room. Guessing that power would also be out in the elevator tubes, he ran down the emergency stairway in the dark, game leg and all, for six flights until he reached the lobby level.
Everything here was pandemonium. Virtually every hotel function was breaking down, and the people in charge were scrambling frantically to deal with the problems. They had little time or energy to deal with the confusion of the hotel’s patrons at the same time – and passersby coming in from the street only added to the chaos.
Jules’s first thought was to check with the local SOTE office to see whether this was part of some planetwide emergency and whether he could help. The computerized city directory was down, too, but the hotel kept a written list of important addresses. By collaring a bellman and making strenuous demands of him, Jules got a set of directions so he wouldn’t have to rely on the city’s faulty traffic computer. From there he raced down to the hotel’s garage, where he got into his groundcar and drove up to street level.
Nothing was moving in the streets of Cochinburg, Nereid’s capital city. Though most cars had the option of disconnecting themselves from the traffic grid, there were so many accidents clogging the streets that the motorways were virtually impassable. The drivers trying to get around on their own only congested the avenues so much more. Many motorists, seeing the hopelessness of the situation, abandoned their cars and started walking to their destinations, which only confused things further.
Jules could never have driven to SOTE headquarters, but he had another alternative. As he reached the street and saw the jammed arteries, he touched a button on his dashboard and his own car took off straight into the air, soaring above the confusion. There were few aircars or copters flying, and Jules made his way to the SOTE office in only a few minutes.
Or at least, he made it to the place where the SOTE office had been. A bomb had been hidden within its structure years ago by agents of the conspiracy, and the computer had made all subsequent routine tests appear negative. Now, at a remote-controlled order, the bomb had detonated, leveling the building and killing the employees and officers working inside. So great was the blast that buildings for half a block around were also destroyed, and the number of dead and injured was beyond easy reckoning.
Jules’s aircar hovered over the bombed-out scene for several minutes as Jules stared down at the wreckage, becoming more and more incensed at what he saw. This was no innocent power failure, nor even casual sabotage. The bombing of a SOTE office could mean no less than total rebellion against the Empire. The conspiracy had obviously planned its actions well – at least here on Nereid – and there was little he could do as one person to bring the situation back under control. He would have to call for help – and he would have to notify Headquarters on Earth in case they were unaware of these developments.
With that thought, he turned his aircar around and flew off at top speed for the spaceport where the Copper Comet awaited him. He landed his car at the edge of the spacefield and drove up to his ship. At the touch of a button on his dashboard a special ramp descended from the side of the vessel and his car drove straight up and snugged into its special berth. Jules leaped out of the car and climbed quickly up to the ship’s control room, where a personal subcom set would quickly connect him with Headquarters on Earth.
But that plan, too, was frustrated. Jules could reach neither Headquarters itself nor the Head’s private emergency number – which, in theory, was always available. Jules knew from the experience on Omicron that the conspiracy had the ability to block out subcom transmissions from an entire planet, so it was possible that nothing from Nereid was escaping to the rest of the Empire. He tried reaching the d’Alembert manor on DesPlaines, and had a similar lack of success.
He hoped his hypothesis – that subcom transmissions and receptions in the Nereid region were being blocked – was the correct one. The alternative – that something might have happened on Earth and DesPlaines as well – was too horrible to contemplate.
But if he couldn’t communicate directly with Earth, the next best thing would be to go there and report in person. Everything had been peaceful when he had left a couple of weeks ago, and everyone’s spirits had been high at the triumph they’d scored over the conspiracy’s forces. He hated to break the balloon, but something was dreadfully wrong here, and the Head had to be informed.
The spaceport’s traffic control system was every bit as snarled as the street system. The controllers were trying to manage as best they could by halting all takeoffs and landings until they could sort out their situation – but Jules couldn’t wait. Ignoring the radioed warnings, he blasted off from Nereid into free space, with the intention of going straight to Earth.
His plans changed drastically as a pair of large and heavily armed cruisers dropped out of subspace near Nereid. These were remnants of the conspiracy’s once-mighty fleet, still under the command of Admiral Shen. After the debacle in which they’d been routed, the survivors had regrouped their forces around the manufacturing bases still hidden in interstellar space and prepared to rebuild once more. Suddenly they received emergency orders from C that the revolution had started in full force and they were to do what they could to aid in the battle. Since Nereid had no Navy base and there would be no organized opposition from SOTE, it was assumed that two cruisers would be sufficient to cow the native populace into submission.
As the ships appeared in the skies above Nereid, they radioed down a broadband proclamation that the leaders of the world were to surrender instantly to the forces of “the Second Empire.” Failure to submit would bring instant retaliation. The cruisers were prepared to drop cannisters of TCN-14 upon civilian cities if they did not instantly accept the conspiracy’s terms.
Trichloronoluene was a nerve gas, the stuff of nightmares. A single whiff was lethal, and its victims died in shrieking agony. TCN-14 had been used several times in pre-Empire days when one planet warred against an other – and when it dropped out of the skies there was little defense against it. It was sometimes said by historians that TCN-14, even more than nuclear weapons, had put so much fear into people that the Empire became necessary. There had to be some central authority preventing one world from destroying the people of another.
The planet Nereid had no organized forces to defend itself against the haughty rebels. Communications around the planet were spotty, but the duke hastily conferred with as many of his advisors and lesser nobles as he could reach. They had little alternative; they would have to surrender now and hope the Empire would manage to strike back against the rebels, establishing the old order once more.
Neither side, however, reckoned on the presence of Jules d’Alembert in La Comète Cuivré. Though the ship was a small, two-person vessel, it was more heavily armed than most ships many times its size. Jules heard the broadcast and set his jaw tightly. Nereid was not going to fall to this so-called Second Empire if he had anything to say about the matter.
The Comet was in an ideal position between the planet and the approaching warships, and it zoomed out to intercept them before they could come close enough to Nereid to carry out their threat. At first they scarcely noticed the little craft, and one of the cruisers fired a mild volley at it that the Comet’s shields easily deflected. By the time they realized they were in for a serious fight, the battle had already been joined.
Jules was operating under a handicap. Normally either Yvette or Yvonne would be in the seat beside him, serving as his gunner while he piloted the ship. Firing weapons in an open space battle was an art all its own, and required full concentration. Meanwhile, the pilot had to constantly dodge the opponent’s fire and keep the ship on some reasonable trajectory to aid his gunners. To attempt both jobs at once was either foolhardy or mad, probably both. Yet that was precisely what Jules did as the Comet closed in on its prey.