"The Centre Cannot Hold"

[Col. C.E. Harper 0]

Saturn was slipping by the wide viewports, its dancing system of rings and moons arrayed in fine form with the warm light of Sol shimmering over the slowly revolving debris. But not a single eye was turned toward the scene. No one noticed that the fleet of small craft usually found darting through the mini-system was absent, or that even the Academy Flight Range, barely visible in the gas giant's immense shadow, lay near-abandoned. The cluster of humanoids gathered in the Agincourt's mess hall had their various visual organs fixed instead on the single large viewscreen that usually displayed some bit of entertainment chosen by Recreation.

 

Today the feed was linked into the ship's main sensor feed, as was nearly every screen not needed for critical systems monitoring. The view was split; half heavily magnified visual, half tactical map. Both showed the same thing: Earth, surrounded by a ring of red-marked hostiles. On the tactical map the familiar Starfleet parabolas closed steadily on that ring. Inside it were a few of the Earth-orbit vessels and whatever ships had been in Spacedock or McKinley when the Soltan fleet jumped in. Those, however, had been winking out at alarming speed.

 

The vessels of the Mars Defense Perimeter were just barely coming into range now, positions shifting as they grouped up into attack formations. A few more signals were crossing through the asteroid belt -- or more accurately, over it, unwilling to be slowed by dodging rocks. That would be the outer ships so conspicuously absent here by the Jovians. And then, lit in blue on the tactical map, Agincourt herself, heading in-system at the fastest crawl her cranky abused engines would permit after her subspace jaunt. Farther out still, so far away the tactical map only showed markers at the screen edge with a vector notation ticking down ETAs, were dozens of Starfleet ships from all over the sector, all of them responding to Agincourt's call, all of them rushing headlong toward the besieged Earth.

 

All of them far too late.

 

Standing at the threshold, unnoticed by the crowd, Harper knew what everyone in that room knew, however unwilling they were to admit it: Earth was taking the pounding of its life. The plain visual was too small to resolve the battle as more than flashes of light, even at maximum magnification, but the tactical readouts told the tale in vanishing transponders and red-lit energy wave readouts. And everyone there could do the simple math -- the Federation ships inside the Soltan perimeter were outnumbered ten to one, which left far too many ships free to turn their strange pulse-weapons on Earth itself, those weapons that Agincourt's shields had been helpless against. It was even-odds whether the local planetary shields might hold up better against the onslaught; certainly the ships' were not.

 

A ripple of movement stirred the gathering; the visual blinked off momentarily, then reappeared in a different form. One of the news stations was broadcasting, sketchily, video scattered with static that did nothing to obscure the horror of the images displayed in deathly silence.

 

It might have been anywhere. It might have been one of the old history vids, the ones from London after the Blitz, or the scraps of records made after the Third World War. Building materials have changed, but synthcrete and plasteel are almost indistinguishable from brick and steel when they've been reduced to tumbles of smoking, burning rubble. The image panned slowly, jerking and flickering now and again, to take in more of the street, the devastation wrought with no concern for niceties like civilian-military differentiation. A figure lay crumpled in the roadway among a welter of broken synthcrete blocks. The poor image quality mercifully obscured any details; it might have been man, woman, child; might have been alive; might have been a charred corpse; might have been nothing more sinister than a display mannequin.

 

The camera panned up, as though the operator could no more stand the sight of that still figure than the huddled crowd in the mess hall. At the end of the street, behind the smoke, hovered some tall structure, indistinct as a mirage. Then a gust of wind whipped the smoke, clearing the view for one breathless moment. "La Tour --!" someone breathed, somewhere between a moan and a prayer. Only a Parisian could have recognized that form so quickly: the graceful curves of the tower were twisted and warped, the top of the monument half-missing, and one side melted into a formless mass of iron rivulets. The watchers huddled a little closer, as if seeking a warmth that had nothing to do with body and all with soul.

 

The screen dissolved into static, then reformed. This was clearly a new feed; worse quality, barely functioning at all, flickering in and out of existence. But for all that, the images were clear enough. Clear enough, that is, to a room full of people who had lived and worked and played among the buildings that lay in ruins among obscenely untouched manicured grounds. It zoomed in jerkily on a blue flag still flying bravely in front of a building that was nothing but a smoking crater. A sob burst out from the tight little knot, loud as gunfire, as was quickly strangled.

 

"Screen off." Her voice sounded odd to her; surely she hadn't decided to give the command? But the viewscreen obediently blanked itself, and heads were turning her way; wounded, curious eyes begged the question.

 

Gently, very gently, Harper said, "Don't torture yourselves with it, people. We have work to do now." She waited a moment, until the hunched shoulders began to square against the bright uniforms, the backs to straighten infinitesimally, the eyes to look less watery, then commanded simply, "Stations."