Tales from the Triverse

Bombings: part 3

London.
1973. November.

The portal station was always busy, from the passenger concourse above ground to the shipping lanes below. People and cargo were travelling through the portals at all times, albeit only the rich or connected people and the those goods manufactured and shipped by the most influential companies. Day or night it was in motion, an example of perfect efficiency and a blend of Mid-Earth and Max-Earth technology, ingenuity and architecture.

It was near-silent.

The concourse was emptied, the building shut down. The portals remained, of course, black and huge, but with nothing coming or going. The doors were shut, the station evacuated. Above, through the glass ceiling, could be seen smoke billowing from the Joint Council tower. In the cargo dock the conveyor belts had halted, the cranes were still and the dockworkers were gone, evacuated to the mile-perimeter set up by the police. It was highly unlikely that the tower would come down, but there was no sense in waiting underneath to find out.

As the floor manager confirmed that all his staff were out, he hit the final shutdown button and ducked beneath the security shutter as it clattered down. Only a couple of minutes later there was a rumble and clattering as a cargo train drew into the hall, entering through the underground tunnel that connected to the river docks.

Doors were slid open and a new crew jumped out: a small number for operating the entire portal station, but just right for processing a single, very particular shipping container.

Geosynchronous Earth orbit.
2543. November.

The debris glittered in space like a cloud of new stars: a plume expanding steadily from the station at the tip of the elevator, ships scrambling in various directions: cargo shuttles disengaging and aiming to get as far from the dock as possible, passenger vessels evacuating staff and travellers, rescue ships en route and moving against the tide.

Earth displayed its expanse, the enormous cable of the space elevator disappearing to nothing as it dropped into atmosphere. Far below the triple anchor would be straining against its supports as the cable flexed and re-strengthened itself following the bombing. The station had been hit strategically, knocking it a fraction of a percentage off its normal axis, which was enough to risk catastrophe. The challenge was not the force exerted by the explosion, or any individual damage, but the cumulative risk of cascade failure.

Just Enough moved in a tight arc around the station, which was in fact a sizeable asteroid pulled from the belt centuries prior. It served as the counter weight, positioned precisely to keep the elevator cable stable and taut. Simulations had been run at the time of the elevator's construction and many times since: what would happen if the counter weight was damaged, or destroyed? What would happen if one of the tripod anchors was damaged? What if one of the elevators was destroyed halfway up the cable? There were contingencies in place for all of these, in the first instance to prevent them happening at all. That had clearly failed. Which was surprising in itself, given the elevator security.

Having an AI nearby was one of those contingencies. Phenomenal power, both physical and mental, and fast enough to compute for an unfolding calamity. As Just Enough flew around the stricken station, they scanned and analysed from multiple angles, building up a hyper-accurate model of what was happening. Additional data was pulled in from all the other ships in the area and from sensors on the station itself. Observatories on the surface and deeper into space transmitted data about the cable's trajectory and torque.

It was rare for a megaship to need to be physically in a particular location, especially one such as Just Enough which had no direct intervention motivation. Could Kill was a more explicitly assistive to the outer planets. Just Enough preferred more independence, operating multiple host bodies across different settlements, always keeping an eye on the system and Mid-Earth on the other side of the portal. Gathering information.