At first the Chinese thought there was a malfunction and did a thorough check of all their computers and Gate equipment. When it all checked out, they sent a dummy probe outbound with a command to report at each station. At Twenty it reported no problems. At Twenty-one Nueva Hispaniola, it reported all Gates currently occupied. Undaunted, the Chinese had ordered it to try to get through, although if all three were occupied, as reported, the probe would be hung up in the Flux universe in digitized form and could not back up or return until at least one of the Gates ahead was clear. It left—and there was no further report.
They sent a second probe to Twenty, basically an orbiting Gate network that was totally automated, brought it into space, and placed it in orbit near the station as a monitor. When, after several weeks, sensors indicated a freed-up Gate, everyone gave a sigh of relief that the Hispanic Union had fixed whatever was wrong. The relief did not last long. A single message probe came back from the first probe sent.
“Am under attack by powerful forces, origin unknown, nature unknown, in full control of Gate computers. No human life forms sensed. Control allows this one outgoing probe, but power is insufficient to digitize whole unit. Believe emergency situation exists here with high potential threat to inbound colonies. Am sending this now to make certain it gets out. Will send updates as warranted or possible.”
That was the one and only message ever received.
The Chinese relayed this down the line to the Soviets and to their own authorities back on Earth, but did not notify every colony. They requested sufficient armament be sent up to reach the Twenty position and not only close the Gates but blow them up. For several reasons, this was denied. The Chinese and Hispanics were in a delicate stage of negotiations on a variety of things and the Hispanics insisted that their people not be abandoned. Later, computer simulations told them that the action would be futile. In the scenario postulating an attack on Nueva Hispaniola by a hostile alien life form that was obviously not native to the well-surveyed Hispanic system, the only way theoretically known that such a thing could happen would be if the astronomical odds had been breached and another Flux universe traveling species, using essentially the same physics and means, accidentally intersected one of our permanent strings and followed it to Neuva Hispaniola. Either that, or the Hispanic colony was the point of intersection. It was still not understood why the gravity attraction was stronger at these points.
In this case, blowing the Gates at Twenty would simply delay matters a bit until this alien force, following the still existing string, reached the same gravity point where the Gates had been and punched through themselves. Humans had emergency equipment capable of doing so in both directions in a matter of weeks. It had to be assumed that this alien force was at least as capable, and there was little that could be sent in so short a time to make a difference.
The Chinese elected to make a fight of it, fearing that if they sealed their world, isolating themselves indefinitely, they would risk a punch straight through their system, perhaps destroying their world. Because they didn’t have enough ships to block most of the Gates and didn’t know how much time they might have to get them, they swallowed their pride and their national enmity and requested the Soviets send two of theirs. The Soviets, like New Eden, had seven Gates, but unlike New Eden, they had three ships always in. They sent two, brimming with armaments, battle computers, and exobiologists. With the two Chinese ships they then effectively blocked all but a single Gate of the Chinese’s own choosing and waited.
The enemy had learned from Nueva Hispaniola. It came through, sat there for a couple of hours ignoring everything and everyone. The Chinese got impatient, started unloading all their best armaments on the thing, which was not the same size or shape as our ships but which could use our Gate. Pictures sent down showed a smaller ship than any of ours, a bit cockeyed in the dish-shaped Gate, looking like an old-fashioned flying saucer with a minaretlike tower.
The thing clearly seized control of the Gate somehow right away. They had wasted no time in learning the standardized Gate mechanism and controls from Nueva Hispaniola’s. The force field was transparent but impenetrable by anything thrown at it. It traveled not only outward, seemingly building and expanding every minute, but also down the download tunnel, through the linkage transmission lines to the Anchors, and seized and cut the master computers. From there they tapped the network, seized the grid, and all contact ceased.
The Soviets wasted little time. They were even now using their lone remaining ship to evacuate who they could while stopping at each point and requesting any available ships be sent forward. Learning what they could from the Chinese, they directed a vacuum purge of the tunnel be maintained at all times from the dish itself. This would turn to Flux anything that tried making its way down the tube—even energy itself. This would deny the invaders easy access to the Anchors and their master computers and force them to come out overland. The computers indicated that the invader’s ships contained only sufficient Flux transformers to build, maintain, and expand the force field from the Gate. The Chinese Anchors had been taken from within because there was no way to direct sufficient power along the transmission lines. Their power would be limited to what they could siphon off as surplus from the single Gate. It should not be sufficient to expand through all four quadrants, and in no case could it influence Anchors.
The bastards would have to come out and fight.
The Soviet computers indicated that the only way to seal off their seven Gates, all exposed, was complex. It would involve manually setting all seven to outgoing and then send-ing tapeworms—memory-specific erasure programs—into the master, Gate computers to erase their automatic switching functions. To be sure, they had to erase all knowledge of how to open or close those Gates and any curiosity about doing so.
The Soviets were now as set as they could be for a fight and yet hoping for allies and for as much evacuation as possible. They had no idea how long they would have, but these bastards moved fast.
This had already been sent to Earth and to all inbound destinations in digested form. The Soviets made it a personal point to stop at New Eden because, after them, the Westrex moon was the next habitable colony.
New Eden was thrown into an instant panic, all else forgotten. While the news was kept for a time from the public, it began to leak out all over the place and get magnified so badly that they finally issued clear statements outlining the true situation.
As the most budget-conscious and poorest of the projects.
New Eden had mothballed its fleet for the most part and made do with just two ships on regular runs. One was currently inbound, the other was still in port back in the home solar system. It was started forward immediately, and the other was turned around almost instantly. It would take months to get the others in decent shape, but work was started on them. Many had been cannibalized for spare parts, and none had an operational master computer system.
The Soviets repeatedly attempted contact up the line while continuing a serious debate among themselves over what to do. Considering the swift, brutal takeovers of the Hispanic and Chinese colonies, they felt they had to fight even to the last human being, but they also knew that they were too far up the line with too few ships and too little defense and knowledge of the attackers to hope to succeed. It was now revealed for the first time that they had been having major technical problems in their colony, that they had attempted too much terraforming too quickly, that that sealing themselves in was not considered a viable long-term alternative. They could only wait, and prepare as best they could, and evacuate as many people as practical with the few ships that could make it up the line.
The first New Eden ship to arrive contained technical experts and also a great many orders. The colony itself had ceased everything but worrying and preparing for their defenses, and all the master computers were thrown directly into solving the problem, if it could be solved. The major problem was simple: clearly the enemy now knew them, if it hadn’t known them before, and it was clearly technologically superior. We, on the other hand, knew next to nothing about them.
Admiral Cockburn studied his own communiques and then called the board and the military commanders, not waiting to get them together.
“I have received a number of directives,” he told them. “First and foremost, I am a flag officer in the Royal New Zealand Navy, which has primary jurisdiction here because the corporate headquarters are in Auckland. Upon emergency act of Parliament, I have been given broad discretionary powers. My charter is virtually unlimited, and the Ministry of Defense, under this act and various cooperative agreements with Westrex, has assumed direct control and responsibility.
“Pursuant to these orders, company authority on New Eden is herein suspended. Civil authority as well as military authority is now assumed by the military command, and the entire colony is placed under the laws and constitution of New Zealand. All officers and enlisted personnel, no matter what their country of origin, will accept this authority and receive new commissions or ratings in the armed forces of the Commonwealth of New Zealand or they will resign. I am happy to report that no one has chosen the latter path.
“A state of military emergency exists from this date. Under a joint declaration of the League of Nation States, this colony is now designated Earth Forward Fire Base Fourteen. All projects not related to the military mission are herein suspended. A state of martial law is declared for this entire colony, and all persons, civilian and military, will be subject to conscription of goods or labor as required. My own objectives are quite simple. To prepare the best defense of which we are capable. To supply and support that defense. On a space-available basis, ships proceeding through going inbound are authorized to evacuate those who wish to go. You may take nothing with you, and we can guarantee transit only down to the Franco-Brazilian colony at Eleven. Your district military commanders alone will decide who will go, and the proper request must be made in writing. No essential personnel and no military or technical computer personnel will be allowed out, although nonessential spouses and dependents will have equal access. Any rioting or other breach of civil order will be dealt with summarily and harshly.
“With the ships available from our own people and from allies down the line, we believe we have sufficient time to evacuate most civilian personnel. I must tell you frankly that the League has decided that Earth must be protected at all costs, a not surprising position. Should the Soviets fail to hold, I am directed to evacuate all possible personnel not involved in defense and then seal the Gates absolutely. As the last ships pass through, the automated stations at positions Twelve and Thirteen will be destroyed. Eleven will then evacuate and seal and the same procedures will be followed.
“We have determined that conditions here are sufficient to support a permanent and independent existence cut off from all other human contact. Unlike our brethren, we imported craftspeople, basic farmers, and others, which made us self-sufficient in production and which depend on the computers only for environmental maintenance. Any who wish to remain may do so, but with the understanding that it may be the next generation before any contact with Earth is reestablished.
“I wish even then I could give you guarantees, but I cannot. With an enemy of unknown strength and power, we have no idea even with all that that we can keep them out. We believe we can, but we must prepare as if we cannot. I can only ask your prayers and complete cooperation. God save the King!”
After the broadcast, things began to happen so quickly around the planet that it almost seemed as if Cockburn had been prepared for even such an emergency as this right from the start. In fact, he had not, but he did have major contingency plans and trained personnel and computer programs in place to deal with attacks by potential human enemies, such as the Soviets, and for major physical and equipment disasters. What he really didn’t have was enough to make the term “fire base” more than an impressive term.
Throughout the twenty-eight Anchors, farming, industrial, and town councils met and debated. The colony now contained almost four million people, and it was clear that there was no way that more than a fraction of that could be evacuated, even when excepting the almost quarter of a million people deemed “essential.” Some did go, abandoning their dream in fear; in the end, almost twenty-eight thousand people were pulled out by the nineteen ships that managed to get in, load, and get out on their way back from what had been waggishly dubbed “The Russian Front.” The vast majority, however, wanted to remain of their own free will.