Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Charles Sheffield

Author:Charles Sheffield
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science Fiction, General, Fiction
ISBN: 9780575085695
Publisher: Hachette UK
Published: 2013-04-28T12:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

"Lord of our far-flung battle line"

Waiting.

Drake considered himself an expert on waiting. What else had he been doing for the past six billion years but waiting and hoping?

This time, though, it was different. This time he could not drift dormant through the ages; this time he must remain conscious, day after day, waiting and watching and wondering.

Cass Leemu and Mel Bradley, with Drake's guidance and close direction, had taken existing technology and adapted it to provide planetary defenses. Superluminal signals had been sent out to the colonies; not only to the ones that according to Par Leon were in the most immediate danger, but to the next line back.

The main focus was going to be on that second line. Drake had made the decision and kept it to himself, knowing that he dare not discuss it with the others. His action was going to doom billions of thinking beings to extinction. The composites would not be able to handle such an idea. Drake, however, had no choice. If he were right, this was going to be a war of long duration. Before he could produce a long-term strategy, he needed to see exactly what happened when the Shiva became active in a region; then he needed time to build a wall of defense, observation posts, and lines of communication. Except as information sources, he had to write off planets that would probably fall in the next year or two.

The outgoing messages to the colonies gave precise instructions on fabricating and installing the defense systems. Within a few months, the superluminal S-wave messages came flowing back. Defenses had been built and tested on thousands of worlds. Shields were in place. Fusion, fission, cavitation, and particle beams sat prepared for instant use. The colonies were nervous, but they claimed to be ready for anything.

That worried Drake more than it heartened him. In every resurrection he had believed himself ready for anything; each time, he had been astonished by events.

What else could he do while he was waiting? The little villa had become a headquarters for galactic action. He prowled it, night and day. The living room was now a War Room for the whole Galaxy, where reports from a billion suns were sifted, analyzed, and summarized by the multiple working layers of composites. The placid view of the Bay of Naples had long since gone. In its place was an ever-changing display of the "battle front." Drake thought of it that way, although there was still no sign of conflict; only reports from the colonies and regular messages from the probes that were observing them from a safe distance. A copy of Par Leon was on each of those probes, transmitted as S-wave signals and downloaded to permanent storage as part of the resident composite.

Everything was ready. Ready for anything? Drake watched and wondered.

And then the silence began. One of the front line planets stopped transmitting.

It was almost too much for that copy of Par Leon. The returning messages from the probe took on a hysterical overtone.

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