Звезда Пандоры

“Or they did, and the Primes caught them,” Rafael said. He shrugged into the silence. “Just being realistic.”

“The remaining six scoutships we’ve got out there should be returning over the following two months,” Oscar continued. “Between them, they’ll have covered over a hundred star systems. Admittedly, that’s not many considering the distances involved and the number of stars between us and Dyson Alpha. But if the Primes are coming this way, then one of those stars will be used as a staging post. We need to find it; at the very least that will enable us to start building realistic tactical scenarios.”

“Are these scouting patrols going to be constant?” Patricia asked.

“Yes,” Wilson confirmed. “We need to establish some early warning if the Primes are moving in our direction. It’s a three stage approach. Rafael is overseeing our short-range detector network which will find any wormhole opening inside the Commonwealth. The fleet will be running scoutship flights past the stars within one hundred light-years in the direction of Dyson Alpha on a continual basis; if the Primes appear at any of them we’ll know about it within three days maximum. Outside that, we’ll fly regular patrols to more distant stars, but the revisit times will be months apart rather than days.”

“When does this come into effect?”

“We’ve already begun siting the first elements for the border network detectors,” Rafael said. “If they come at us directly, we’ll know about it. Our estimates for completing the full Commonwealth-wide network are anything up to a further eighteen months.”

“I see. Admiral, what about the scout flights?”

“It depends on ship numbers, of course. Once this preliminary operation we’re running now is finished, I’m going to pull back those scoutships to begin patrols of the closer stars. We’ve got two more scoutships undergoing flight trials, and the remaining five of batch three will come off their assembly platforms over the next four months. That’ll give me fifteen, which is enough to provide the near-border patrols. The distant patrols will require another ten scoutships, though I’d prefer fifteen to twenty.”

“They cost three billion Earth dollars each,” Patricia said tersely.

“I’m aware of that; and their operating and maintenance costs as well. The executive knew the budget would have to increase almost exponentially for the first three to five years of the navy’s existence.”

“I’ll take those preliminary figures back with me. What about the warships?”

“The first batch of three is due to finish assembly in four months. After that, we’ll be building one every three weeks. How many we ultimately need depends on the nature of the Prime threat.”

Everybody turned to Dimitri Leopoldovich. Since the return of the Second Chance he’d been consulted by the Commonwealth executive and the Senate on an increasingly regular basis. The experience gave him a degree of confidence facing down high-powered questioners in a way that wasn’t evident in his appearance. “Just about the only thing we know for certain about the Primes is that they cannot be assigned human motivations,” he said in mildly accented English. “Even with such a huge civilization contained within a single solar system, a vast amount of their resources had to be diverted to construct the giant wormhole which my team has named Hell’s Gateway.” His lips twitched, as if expecting censure. “We do not fully understand why it was built on such a scale. One of the most obvious possibilities is that it was built without any reference to economics because it is a species survival route. The Primes fear the return of the surrounding barrier, and are trying to spread their seed across the galaxy. Arkships will travel through it, carrying breeding stock and enough machinery to support a colony. If they switch the other end of the wormhole to a new star system every week, or even every day, they will have dispersed themselves in such a fashion that will make it very difficult for the barrier builders to imprison them again. In effect, a fast-forward version of our own Commonwealth.”

“Wait,” Patricia said. “You’re claiming they’re not even a threat to us?”