The Commonwealth Saga 2-Book Bundle (255 page)

“That’s rubbish.”

“It’s true.” She put her hand out and stroked his shoulder. “It’s no different than collecting his autograph. And you startled us, that’s all, that’s why we looked surprised.”

“I meant, everybody knows you exist. You’re just … phenomenal.”

She put her knees on the mattress and leaned over him. He gave her a sullen look, but didn’t flinch away. “You’re crying,” she exclaimed. It shocked her.

“I wanted to marry you,” he moaned. “I love you, Jasmine.”

“Whaa … You? No. Orion, you don’t love someone after a morning.”

“But I do. Even when you were arguing with the security staff I knew I never wanted anyone else.”

He sounded so piteous and terrifyingly sincere her skin turned cold. She took his hand in hers, and told her e-butler to initiate a secure interface. It told her it couldn’t. A quick passive scan from her inserts was unable to detect any OCtattoos in the boy’s body. “Orion?” she asked curiously. “Do you have any inserts?”

“No.” His hand tightened hopefully around hers. “Do you mean it, that you and Ozzie weren’t starting something?”

“We weren’t.” It was ridiculous, having to comfort this naïve boy when the real issues of the war were still unresolved; yet her conscience was stopping her from just walking out.
God, he’s worse than Dudley. Actually, no, that’s not fair; Dudley was never this vulnerable. Or sweet.

“Oh.” He didn’t sound convinced.

“Believe me,” she said softly. “If it was anything else, if I liked him, would I do this?”

“What?”

She kissed him.

It was dark outside; Cressat’s sun had set nearly an hour earlier. Mellanie lay on the bed, listening to Orion’s regular breathing for several minutes before she knew for certain he was asleep. She got off the gelmattress as carefully as she could so she didn’t wake him. He was sprawled on his side, one hand hanging over the edge. She smiled as she pulled the thin duvet up around him. He sighed in his sleep, and settled contentedly under the fabric. Even when she gave him the lightest of kisses on his shoulder he never stirred.

I should hope not. He should be exhausted after everything I made him do.
She felt a wicked sense of pride at how successfully he’d been corrupted during that long afternoon.
I’m a bad
bad
girl. And loving every minute of it.

Mellanie didn’t bother trying to find her swimsuit and toweling robe; the kafuffle might wake him. She just walked naked down the mansion’s long corridors back to the Bermuda room. Her smile kept shining the whole time. She couldn’t get his face out of her mind, the expressions of surprise and fearful delight. His body had been nicely responsive. Some of his reactions made her laugh, then gasp.
Bad!

In the Bermuda room she placed her hand on the desktop array, her i-spot interfacing securely with the mansion’s network. The SIsubroutine was established in the arrays, waiting for her.

“We have infiltrated the network,” it told her. “Ozzie will be able to leave the building undetected. He will wait for you by the first cattle grid on the drive.”

“Right then, I’ll call a cab from Illanum. Give me fifteen minutes.”

The maidbots packed her bags while she took a quick shower. Before she left, she wrote a short note and sealed it in an envelope.

One of the security staff was standing in the hall as she came downstairs, a woman she remembered from the morning. Jansis? The cab from the Dynasty office had just pulled up outside.

“Would you give this to Orion in the morning, please?” Mellanie asked, and held out the envelope.

“You’re leaving now?” The woman seemed faintly surprised.

“I’ve done what I was paid to.” Mellanie couldn’t detect any suspicion. She proffered the envelope again.

“Okay.” The woman took the envelope.

Mellanie went down the broad steps, hoping she wasn’t showing too much haste. The cab was the same kind of maroon-colored Mercedes limousine that had brought her to the mansion. Her luggage rolled up into the open boot as she claimed one of the front seats. She didn’t like driving manually, so she told her e-butler to designate a route to Illanum station. “And slow down to a crawl when we reach the first cattle grid,” she instructed it.

The car followed the winding drive for a kilometer through the parklands surrounding the mansion before it slowed. Mellanie opened the door, and Ozzie bounded in.

“Cool,” he said admiringly as he settled next to her. “We did it.”

The Mercedes began to pick up speed. Ozzie ordered it to switch to manual control, and a steering wheel slid out in front of him. He gripped it with both hands. An enhanced light image appeared on the windshield, showing the trees of the parkland as silver-white ghosts.

“How’s Orion?” Ozzie asked.

Mellanie smiled broadly. It was an automatic response, she couldn’t help it. Didn’t particularly want to. “He’s just fine.”

Something in her tone made Ozzie shoot a quizzical look her way. “What does he think about me?”

“That you’re the antichrist.”

“Thanks.”

She watched the monochrome landscape sliding by. “I hope you know where the Sheldon Dynasty has its starship base, because I certainly don’t.”

“I’ve been thinking about that. The gateway to Cressat was expanded, and there was a lot of traffic going through. So at least part of the operation will be here.”

“Where? It’s a whole planet, and this is the only transport we’ve got.”

“Relax. One of the reasons Nigel was so keen to keep me penned up is because I’m so deeply embedded in CST. I told you, it’s half mine.”

“You also said he handles the day-to-day running.”

“True. I can ghost through most Dynasty security barriers, but I’m guessing this one will give me a problem. I know Nigel. A project on this scale, and designed to save his own ass, is going to kick his corporate paranoia into over-drive. Every security protocol surrounding it is going to be shiny new, and completely lacking my authorization privileges. There’s only one place he’ll build anything this secret. I just hope he hasn’t gone and switched the original personnel around too much.”

For once there was no crowd waiting to greet Elaine Doi as the presidential limousine pulled up smoothly. The bodyguards riding with her still went through the disembarkation procedure, scanning the area, running identity requests on the few people who were standing outside the gateway control center. It was a nondescript building made from a high-density metal stone amalgamation with slim recessed vertical windows, the kind of office block that would be rented by a small company going nowhere. In this case it was very literally in the shade of the Hanko wormhole generator building, whose composite panel sides rose up behind the gateway control like a vertical mountain.

Presidential security gave the okay, and the limousine’s thick armored doors unlocked. The pressure seal that protected her from chemical and biological attack disengaged, and the force field switched off.

“I see Nigel hasn’t bothered to come and welcome me,” the President complained. How the unisphere shows would love that slight. He’d sent some station management types to wait on the steps for her instead.

“Remember the Michelangelo feed is live,” Patricia warned as the door irised apart.

As she stepped out of the limousine Doi’s smile had the appropriate gravitas for the occasion. She thanked the two CSI managers for sparing the time to greet her at what must be a frantically busy time for them on this historic day. Nodded courteously at the reporter from the Michelangelo show standing to one side, and let herself be ushered inside.

The control center itself had undergone a hurried modification over the last few days, with over a dozen new consoles crammed into the narrow aisles between the existing two rows. Whereas before, under normal operating conditions, there would be no more than three or four people in the center at any one time, each position now had a technician sitting at it, while more specialists and engineers stood behind them monitoring the new procedures. In addition, the back wall was lined with dignitaries, including Michelangelo himself, who’d arm-twisted an invitation out of CST. With only half an hour to go before the wormhole was switched to its new advanced temporal flow mode, the atmosphere was strained and excited. None of the technical staff were bothering to use the communications links; they shouted questions and comments around the center at high volume.

“It’s worse than a Senate debate,” Doi said from the corner of her mouth as they entered the control center.

Patricia’s neutral expression never flickered.

Nigel Sheldon came over to greet her, apologetic that he hadn’t been at the front entrance earlier. “Things are getting a little tense around here,” he explained. “They even asked my advice on exotic matter stress. I was quite flattered.”

“I’m sure you gave them every help,” Doi said tightly; she was very aware of the Michelangelo reporter standing a few paces away, capturing everything for the unisphere audience. In her virtual vision grid the total access number was creeping up to the kind of level that the last Prime invasion had generated.

“We all contribute what we can,” Nigel said in a very condescending tone.

Rafael Columbia came over to welcome Doi.

“Admiral,” she said in relief; at least he would be more formal. The occasion deserved it, she felt. “How is the navy coping with the remaining Prime ships?” she said, as if the Prime armadas were some minor problem left over, a few spaceships already on the run from superior Commonwealth forces.

“Secure in this system, Madam President,” Rafael said. “We now have eight frigates assigned to elimination duty. Over half of the Prime ships have been successfully eliminated, the rest are in flight. Protecting Wessex with its wormhole generators is imperative. We will guarantee it at all costs.”

“I’m sure you will, Admiral.” Which didn’t quite equate the briefing he’d given her ten hours ago. The Prime ships in many of the Second47 systems were trying to congregate into swarms, merging their defense capabilities while they attempted to find a suitable asteroid or moon to claim as a new home. But in seven systems, the gathering swarms were heading into the Commonwealth worlds. The navy had diverted frigates to try to deflect the inward migration, but the numbers were against them. Those seven planets were going to have a tough time of it during the next week while the evacuation progressed.

“We’re almost ready,” Nigel said. He and Doi walked down to the front of the control center while the noise died down. The five big holographic portals on the wall were projecting data schematics for the wormhole. The central one switched to a picture of Hanko’s Premier Speaker, Hasimer Owram.

“Mr. Sheldon, Madam President,” he said.

Doi was very aware of the hostile undercurrent in his voice, and hoped no one else would pick up on it. The last talk she’d had with him, five hours ago, had been short and antagonistic. Starting with his dismay that Hanko was going to be the first to begin evacuating into the future or, as he put it, the experiment to test if the whole lunatic time travel idea worked; right up to the fact that Nigel wasn’t kidding about not letting anyone opt out of the operation. Owram had wanted to be allowed back into the Commonwealth so he could “monitor” the preparations being made for his people on their new planet.

“Hello, Hasimer,” Doi said. “We’re about to open the wormhole for you.”

“Everyone here is ready. We’re leaving with great sadness, but also a sense of hope and pride. Hanko’s society will flourish again.”

“I have no doubt of that. I look forward to visiting and experiencing your triumph in the flesh.”

“Hasimer,” Nigel said. “The wormhole is ready. We’ve got a direct lock on the gateway at Anagaska. It’s opening now.”

“Anagaska it is then,” Hasimer Owram said. “Make sure we’ve got some decent weather when we arrive.”

“Consider it done,” Nigel said. Anagaska was a phase three world, eight light-years from Balkash, which CST had already advanced to predevelopment state. Its position close to the Lost23 was another source of Hasimer’s anger, but as Nigel had told him and all the other Second47 planetary leaders, the Wessex-based wormholes couldn’t reach the other side of the Commonwealth.

Doi watched the image pull back from Hasimer. The Premier Speaker had been standing beside a dark green six-seat Audi Tarol that was parked directly in front of the Hanko gateway. The train tracks had been ripped up and replaced by a vast apron of enzyme-bonded concrete that had been poured without any finesse over the ground all the way back to the main highway leading to the planetary station. It was starting to look like that wasn’t going to be nearly enough.

The silence in the control center was broken with a buzz of incredulity as the Hanko station yard expanded across the portal. It was covered with vehicles of every description, from open trikes to twenty-wheel trucks. The police had done their best to line them up in columns, but the patrol cars had soon become surrounded and blocked by the sheer volume of the evacuation vehicles. Their strobes were all that gave away their position, points of bright light flashing amid the vast multicolored carpet that covered the entire station. At some point perspective failed, and the vehicles looked like blocks in a city grid, a city that had a vast black river winding through the center. That was the people who didn’t have a car or truck or bike, who’d arrived at the planetary station on one of the thousands of trains collecting them from across the planet. Local news media had estimated there were already over seven million people on foot waiting to walk through the gateway.

A frosty mauve light shone out of the opened gateway. For once not the light of a distant sun, but radiated by the exotic matter itself. Normally the wormhole’s internal length was so close to zero it was for all intents and purposes immeasurable; this one was a glowing tunnel that extended a good way to infinity, and was still lengthening. Air roared into it as the pressure curtain was shut down. Cheers and applause began in the control center, building in volume. Doi joined in, clapping warmly, smiling congratulations at Nigel.

Hasimer Owram drove himself and his family into the wormhole. There had also been a lot of debate about whether he should be first or last. Hasimer had wanted to be last. “It is the decent thing,” he claimed. “I won’t have anyone’s respect if I slink away first and leave everybody else to wait for the atmosphere to collapse and the Prime ships to start their bombardment.”

Nigel had overruled that. “Hanko is going to be the first planet to leave for the future, for better or worse. People are going to be frightened of what’s ahead. You need to lead by example, to show them there is nothing to fear. You must take that first step yourself.”

A seething Hasimer agreed to go first, leaving the Deputy Premier Speaker to bring up the rear.

Doi watched for several minutes as the traffic began to flow into the wormhole. Those on foot rushed forward, shepherded between two lines of police. She saw two or three fall. Didn’t see anyone stop and help them.

With a quick glance to make sure the Michelangelo reporter wasn’t focusing on her, she asked Nigel: “What happens if the generator fails?”

“They die,” he said. “Simple as that. But don’t worry, our generators are designed for long-term continuous usage; and we can sustain the wormhole with a different generator whenever the primary needs maintenance and refurbishment. It can be done. I would not have suggested this if there was too great a risk.”

She didn’t think she’d ever seen him so intent and sincere. It bestowed a curious feeling of confidence. “How are the other generator modifications progressing?”

“We should be able to start the evacuations on Vyborg, Omoloy, and Ilichio within a few hours. The rest will be completed within three days. How long individual worlds take to shove their populations through is up to their governments. Some are coping better than others.”

“And our other problem?”

“We’ll discuss that in a secure facility.”

“Yes. Of course.” She looked over at Michelangelo, who cocked an eyebrow expectantly. “I’d better go and do my PR.”

Michelangelo’s welcoming smile was broad and horribly earnest. Doi got a sinking feeling as she approached the media giant. There was just so much war-related news she couldn’t even keep up with that, let alone ordinary current events. Patricia had given her a reasonable briefing on the trip to Wessex, and the presidential office had a full rebuttal service on-line ready for her, although any pause to consult would be jumped on by a true pro like Michelangelo.

“Madam President,” he said formally, bowing slightly.

“Michelangelo, pleased to see you.”

“We’re running ground reviews for another minute, then we’ll switch straight to interview.”

“Fine.” Doi positioned the rebuttal team icon to the middle of her virtual vision, and pulled the show feed from her grid. Hanko-based reporters were moving through the awesome crowd outside the gateway, snatching comments at random. Mostly they were good-natured, everyone was pulling together: a man who was giving an elderly neighbor a lift with his family; bus company employees who’d volunteered to drive the buses loaded with patients from the hospitals; young kids who’d grabbed pets. People helping out other people. The refugees were a community pulling together in the worst crisis they’d ever known. They gave the ruined sky above the force field resentful looks, but spoke about the trip through the wormhole with cautious optimism. Some snide remarks about Hasimer saving his ass first, which made Doi tighten her lips in disapproval. There was anger that nothing more had been done to save their world, and a lot of heartache about everything they were being forced to leave behind. The feed switched to Michelangelo.

“So, Madam President, now we’ve seen the temporal displacement start, do you think anything more could have been done to save Hanko and the remaining Second47 planets?”

“Not a thing,” Doi said. “The navy did a magnificent job—”

“Sorry to interrupt, but you’ve just fired Admiral Kime. That doesn’t sound to me that you were satisfied with the navy’s performance.”

“The ships and their crews performed superbly. It was the way they were prioritized that gave the War Cabinet grave concern. Consequently, we had no alternative but to accept Admiral Kime’s resignation. I cannot hide from the fact that we didn’t have enough starships, and that is a major funding issue which Senator Goldreich is examining; but the sheer scale of the alien invasion is still something we are all coming to terms with.”

“Are you worried that more attacks will be forthcoming?”

“No. We have taken steps to insure this atrocity will not be repeated.”

“I understand you can’t give any details, but how confident can you be of that?”

“Completely. We have all seen how powerful our weapons have become. I accept responsibility for the ultimate outcome from the deployment of such power against living creatures, but I will not hold back from defending the Commonwealth. I believe in us, I believe we have a right to exist.”

“Something I’m sure my rival, or I should say ex-rival, Alessandra Baron believed in, too. Can you tell us why Senate Security forces thought it necessary to kill her during an attempt at arrest? Did she ask one awkward question too many in the Senate dining hall?”