Anyone who arrived and dumped their car then had a wait of nearly two days as the massive throng of people slowly shuffled their way forward toward the haven of the terminal’s main entrance. Niall didn’t know how many people there were between the highway and the entrance; it looked like the entire population to him. They wore expensive semiorganic coats, or draped plastic sheets around their shoulders to protect themselves from the miserable rain of Boongate’s early winter months. There had been plenty of days when Niall turned up and it had been sleeting. Once it snowed for thirty-six hours. It subdued the crowd, made them miserable, made them bad tempered, but nothing had ever made them fall silent before.
Niall was only three hundred meters away from the employees’ gate when he realized the sound was missing; most days you could hear it over a kilometer away. He steered around a big Toyota ten-seater Lison that was parked across a warehouse delivery bay, and braked to a halt. When he pushed his goggles up, he found it had stopped raining. Good news, yes, but not enough to stop that constant growl of barely restrained anger. He looked up. The force field had come on over the city; dark clouds slithered around its shimmering surface. A second force field was covering the station, deflecting the mists that were trapped under the city’s dome. “Oh, hell,” he whispered in fright. He’d never allowed himself to believe that the aliens would return.
His e-butler’s news filter let through an alert telling him that wormholes were being detected in a lot of star systems across the Commonwealth. His instant response was to glance over at the giant terminal building with its long, curved glass roofs. Instinctive self-preservation kicked in, and he started to work out routes in his mind. As an employee, he had access to several restricted zones inside the station complex; there were a number of ways he could reach the platforms without ever having to join that horde outside.
He let go of the brakes, and began pedaling again. Today, there were eight guards outside the employee gate, all dressed in flexarmor and carrying weapons. Normally, there were just two security staff inside their cabin, who always waved him on when he showed his company pass. This time they made Niall put his palm on a sensor pad one of them was carrying to check his biometric pattern.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” the guard snarled from inside his helmet. “A tour company rep?”
“We’re still active,” Niall protested. “It’s genuine. Check my record; I’ve been in every day for weeks. I’ve got groups left on Far Away that are coming back. Somebody’s got to be here for them.”
“I’ve got news for you, sonny, they ain’t going to make it. Look around you.”
“And if they do?”
There was a long pause while the guard referred back to his superior. “Okay,” he said eventually. “You can go through.”
“Thanks.”
The reinforced barrier across the pavement swiveled up. Niall pushed his bicycle through, feeling his skin tingle as he went through the force field. Just as he was mounting up on the other side, the guard said, “Son, if you’ve got any sense at all, you’ll go straight to the platforms and catch a train to Gralmond or one of its neighbors.”
“If my group comes back, I’ll do it.”
Not even the thick armor could mask the man shaking his head.
Niall pedaled as fast as he could to the office. His e-butler was supplying situation updates the whole way. Alien ships were pouring into the Boongate system, out around the third gas-giant orbit. Thousands more were emerging in other systems. Local news told him that the wormhole to Wessex had been temporarily closed by CST. “Hellfire.” There’d be a riot. He knew there would be.
When he got to the office he wheeled his bike in through the reception area and parked it against the counter. There was a bag he kept in the back with some spare clothes. He fetched it out, and looked around the small room. Grand Triad Adventures had a floor safe to keep the petty cash and various travel vouchers. Mr. Spanton, the manager, had granted Niall’s biometric print a temporary access authority when he went “on holiday” right after the first Prime attack. Niall put his hand on the lock pad, and internal malmetal bands pushed the door up. The cash was all piled in different currencies. He didn’t bother with anything from Boongate or the neighboring stars, figuring those Treasuries wouldn’t be able to back the national currency for much longer. Out of the money that came from planets farther from this new attack, he had roughly fifteen thousand Earth dollars’ worth. He stuffed it into his jacket pockets and turned to the office array that had a direct link to the CST ticket and travel information system. Surprisingly, his access authority still got him in; not that there was much information available. Wessex seemed to have closed half of its wormholes to traffic, and there were heavy restrictions on the remainder. There was no indication when they would open again.
Only if the navy fights off this invasion, Niall thought. But if by some miracle it did, he was going to be ready. He used the Grand Triad Adventures account to buy a first-class ticket to Gralmond, just like the guard suggested. It was four hundred fifty light-years away, right across the other side of the Commonwealth, about as far away from Boongate as it was physically possible to go. He held his breath as the CST system processed the application, but after a few seconds it assigned his identity tattoo with the first-class ticket.
Someone knocked on the office door. Niall jumped, mostly from guilt. There was a man standing outside. Tall and quite handsome, with floppy blond hair. The type of guy who played a lot of sports; certainly his square-shouldered build put Niall’s rather more flabby frame to shame. He was talking, jabbing a finger at something in the office.
“Sorry.” Niall tapped his ear, and put his hand on the door’s lock pad. “Couldn’t hear you,” he said as the door opened.
“Thanks for letting me in,” the man said. His voice had a distinctive Earth-American twang.
“We’re not busy.” That was a dumb thing to say. Niall wanted to look at the door leading to the back room; he was pretty sure the man wouldn’t be able to see the open floor safe.
“I need some help. Ah…I don’t know your name.” His grin was the kind that took you straight into his confidence.
“Niall. What kind of help?”
“It’s like this, Niall. Some friends of mine have been stuck on Far Away for a while, but they’ve just sent me a message saying that they’ve managed to get off. They’re on their way back. How’s that for god-awful fucking luck. Coming back into the middle of an alien invasion. Anyway, I need to get out to the platform and meet them. Once we’re all together again then we’ll try to get off Boongate.”
“There aren’t any trains off Boongate right now. I was just checking that.”
“I know, but they’ll start up again as soon as the invasion is over. I’m not worried about that. My problem is my friends; I can’t let them down. Can you take me over to the Half Way wormhole gateway? I’d go by myself, but there are a lot of security systems around it; I’m worried I’ll never be allowed through to meet them what with everyone being so jumpy right now. They’ll get back and be stuck here. That would be serious bad news for all of us. If it helps, I can make it worth your while. Seriously worth your while.”
Niall liked the guy even more; he was obviously a regular dude, and rich, too. Everyone who went to Far Away was rich. And he was right about security: look at what happened at the employee gate this morning. Niall could come out of this very well if he played his cards right, maybe add a couple of grand to his newfound wealth. “Well, yeah, the company Mercedes is authorized to go right out to the Far Away transit area. I can take you through, no sweat.”