the zenith, and down again to antispin. Massed, black sheets of smoke drifted slowly to antispin, above the steady turning of the Wheel, sullenly red-lit from beneath. That he could see the flames against the darkness was itself alarming. What had happened to the usual comfortable glare of the cities’ lights, to their power?
“Show me the Hub,” he ordered the room.
Cameras directed at Kaleed’s hub fifteen hundred kilometers overhead showed the wheelworld’s central illuminator was dead. The quantum taps within providing heat and warmth had failed, and the three extruded Pylons holding the Hub in place were dark. There appeared to be a battle being fought at the base of Number Two Pylon, two clouds of anonymous fliers, their hulls difficult to see as their nanoflage surfaces shifted and blended to match their surroundings, were swarming about the base and the column, laser and plasma fire flashing and strobing with each hit.
Damn it … who was fighting who out there?
“Administrator Corcoram wishes to see you, Lord,” his assistant told him as he stared at the world’s ruin. “Actually, several hundred people and aigencies have requested direct links. Administrator Corcoram is the most senior.”
“Put him through.”
The System Administrator appeared in Goradon’s sleep chamber, looking as though he, too, had just been roused from sleep. His personal aigent had dressed his image in formal presentation robes, but not edited the terror from the man’s face. “Star Lord!”
“What the hell is going on, Mish? There was nothing in the last admin reports I saw. …”
“It just came out of nowhere, sir,” Mishel Corcoram replied. “Nowhere!”
“There had to be something.”
The lifelike image of Kaleed’s senior administrator shrugged. “There was a … a minor protest scheduled for nineteen at the public center in Lavina.” That was Kaleed’s local admin complex.
Eight standard hours ago. “Go on.”
“Our factors were there, of course, monitoring the situation. But the next thing socon knew, people were screaming ‘natural liberty,’ and then the Administrative Center was under attack by mobs wielding torches, battering rams, and weaponry seized from Administratia guards dispatched to quiet things down.” The image looked away, as though studying the scenes of fire and night flickering in the nano e-paint coating Goradon’s wall. “Star Lord … it’s the end of Civilization!”
“Get a hold of yourself, Mish. Who are the combatants? What are they fighting about?”
“The stargods only know,” Corcoram replied. He sounded bitter. “Reports have been coming in for a couple of hours, now, but they’re … not making much sense. It sounds like r-Humans are fighting s-Humans … and both of them are fighting both Dalateavs and Gromanaedierc. And everyone is attacking socon personnel and machines on sight.”
“A free-for-all, it sounds like.”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
Goradon shook his head. “But why?”
“Like I said, Lord. It’s the collapse of Civilization!”
Which Goradon didn’t believe for a moment. Mish Corcoram could be hyper-dramatic when the mood took him, and could pack volumes of emotion into the utterly commonplace. He was a good hab administrator—the effective ruler of the wheelworld known as Kaleed—but Ared Goradon was the administrator for the entire Rosvenier system … not just Kaleed, but some two thousand other wheelworlds, cylworlds, rings, troider habs, toroids, and orbital cols, plus three rocky planets, two gas giants, and the outposts and colonies on perhaps three hundred moons, planetoids, cometary bodies, and Kuiper ice dwarfs. His jurisdiction extended over a total population of perhaps three billion humans of several subspecies, and perhaps one billion Dalateavs, Gromanaedierc, Eulers, N’mah, Veldiks, and other nonhuman sapients or parasapients.
He could not afford to become flustered at the apparent social collapse of a single orbital habitat.
“Star Lord,” his AI assistant whispered in his ear. “Other reports are beginning to come through. There was some transmission delay caused by the damage to the Hub. It appears that similar scenes are playing out on a number of other system habs.”
“How many?”
“Four hundred seventeen colonies and major bases so far. But that number is expected to rise. This … event appears to be systemwide in scope.”
On the wall, a remote camera drone captured a single, intensly brilliant pinpoint of light against the far side of the Wheel, nearly three thousand kilometers distant … perhaps in Usila, or one of the other antipodal cities. Gods of Chaos … he could see the shockwave expanding as the pinpoint swelled, growing brighter. Had some idiot just touched off a nuke? …
“Star Lord,” his assistant continued. “I strongly recommend evacuation. You can continue your duties from the control center of an Associative capital ship.”
“What’s close by?”
“The fleet carrier Drommond, sir. And the heavy pulse cruiser Enthereal.”
Seconds ago, the very idea of abandoning Kaleed, of abandoning his home, had been unthinkable. But a second nuclear detonation was burning a hole through the wheeldeck foundation as he watched.
The fools, the bloody damned fools were intent on pulling down their house upon their own heads.
“Mish, on the advice of my AI, I’m transferring command to a warship. I recommend that you do the same.”
“I … but … do you think that’s wise?”
“I don’t know about wise. But the situation here is clearly out of control, yours and mine.”
“But what are we going to—”
The electronic image of the Kaleed senior administrator flicked out. On the wall, a third city had just been annihilated in a burst of atomic fury—Bethelen, which was, Goradon knew, where Mish lived.
Where he had lived, past tense.
Goradon was already jogging for the personal travel pod behind a nearby wall that would take him spinward to the nearest port. He might make it.
“What I’m going to do,” he called to the empty air, as if Mish could still hear him, “is call for help.”
“What help?” his AI asked as he palmed open the hatch and squeezed into the pod.
“I’m going to have them send in the Marines,” he said.
It was something Goradon had never expected to say.
1
2101.2229
Associative Marine Holding Facility 4
Eris Orbital, Outer Sol System
1542 hours, GMT
Marine General Trevor Garroway felt the familiar jolt and retch as he came out of cybe-hibe sleep, the vivid pain, the burning, the hot strangling sensation in throat and lungs as the hypox-perfluorate nanogel blasted from his lungs.
The dreams of what was supposed to be a dreamless artificial coma shredded as he focused on his first coherent thought. Whoever is bringing me out had better have a damned good reason. …
Blind, coughing raggedly, he tried to sit up. He felt as though he were drowning, and kept trying to cough up the liquid filling his lungs. “Gently, sir,” a female voice said. “Don’t try to do it all at once. Let the nano clear itself.”
Blinking through the sticky mess covering his eyes, Garroway tried to see