Earth Star(86)

Fian might be the family failure, but he still knew an awful lot about science. If he couldn’t work out what was going on then I sure as chaos wouldn’t manage it. I patched in the command feed sound.

‘How much longer before we lose portals?’ asked the familiar voice of Colonel Torrek.

‘Fourteen minutes, sir,’ said a voice I didn’t recognize.

There was a short pause before the Colonel spoke again. ‘Analysis team, is your equipment still coping with the storm?’

‘No problems with the remotes, sir. We’re running multiple redundancy and merge on the data feed to eliminate interference.’

‘Then I want to evacuate the fighters now. Portalling out is the problem, not portalling back. We can watch the situation remotely and send in whatever forces are appropriate. Threat team, am I forgetting anything?’

‘No, sir,’ said the unmistakable lazy tones of Mason Leveque.

‘All fighters portal immediately to Echo base,’ said the Colonel.

‘We’re portalling out now, sir.’ There were faint crackling sounds as Nia Stone spoke, the interference confirming my guess she was out in space with shift 5.

Fian reached for my lookup. ‘Can I just …?’

I missed what he did, but the words ‘Cdr Stone, Attack leader’ suddenly appeared in the top left of the display. These rapidly changed to ‘Cl Torrek, C. O.’.

‘Threat team, what’s your current situation analysis?’

The display informed us Commander Leveque, Threat team leader, was replying. ‘We still believe the sphere has automatically put up shields to ride out the storm. We predicted a 72 per cent chance it would take defensive measures to protect itself from the increased radiation levels in a solar storm. We were concerned it would move into low Earth orbit to use Earth’s magnetic field for shelter, an action indistinguishable from moving into closer orbit in preparation for attack. The fact it is holding position is, in itself, reassuring.’

There was a pause before Colonel Torrek spoke again. ‘Physics team is telling me the sphere is absorbing power in preparation for an attack, and I should order a pre-emptive strike.’

Leveque sounded quite bored by this suggestion. ‘Generating shields uses power, sir. It’s logical to make the shield convert background radiation into energy to replace that power.’

‘They’re telling me the rate of power absorption is too high to just maintain shields.’

‘The sphere has definitely used power for other things, sir, including course changes and meteor defence. Physics team are still arguing it arrived by long distance drop portal shortly before it was detected. Threat team disagrees since Jorgen Eklund’s work states it would be impossible.’

Fian and I exchanged glances at the mention of his great-grandfather.

‘Threat team believes the sphere has spent hundreds or thousands of years reaching Sol system conventionally,’ continued Leveque, ‘and must have been designed to take every opportunity to recharge its equivalent of power cells.’

The Colonel spoke again. ‘Threat team does not advise an immediate attack?’

‘No, sir. We do not.’

‘We will remain at alert level 2,’ said the Colonel. ‘Attack team confirm status.’

‘All fighter teams are launch ready,’ said Nia Stone.

‘Earth Africa solar array status?’

Fian’s gasp of alarm was loud in my ear. ‘They’re keeping a solar array active in a solar storm!’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘They may need it to attack the sphere.’

‘But what if they lose control and the beam starts tearing Earth apart?’

‘They’re prepared to blow up the array if necessary,’ I said. ‘Earth has four more. Shhh.’

The Earth Africa solar array control supervisor was talking. ‘Remote controls are fully functional, sir. Off-line mode is holding stable with four wings of the array disconnected. My people are standing by ready to portal in if we need more wings disengaged as the storm builds.’

‘Warn me at the slightest sign that off-line mode is breaking down. I don’t want any risk of spontaneous beam coalescence,’ said the Colonel. ‘Missile status?’

‘Warheads are on final safety. Drop portals targeted and ready to fire,’ said the Missile team leader.

‘We have a Missile team?’ asked Fian. ‘Since when?’

‘Since right at the start,’ I said. ‘They’ve been stationed at Echo base, Adonis, all along.’

‘And now we wait,’ said the Colonel. ‘Physics team are sending me very creative comments about your sanity and ancestry, Mason.’