Forge and Steel

by David VanDyke

When the last of twelve detonations dissipated, Vango found himself and his remaining four-ship in superb position, spread fifteen klicks apart, each pointed at a Destroyer that was frantically accelerating sideways, hoping to dodge. The big ships weren’t nearly fast enough, though, even spreading out in all directions.

  Fusors vomited into space, reaching for him, but with his accelerated time senses they seemed to move in slow motion, and he easily anticipated their paths. Maneuvering to avoid the white-hot zones, he closed toward his target like a gazelle in a dispersed herd of buffalo.

  Stevie blasted at maximum and was the first to cross the five-thousand-meter line. Vango expected the usual notation to appear in the mission tracking module, but it didn’t, this time. Closer and closer she flew, until a fusor blast seemed to reach for her. Vango wondered why the sim was waiting to record her score.

  Then his sensors fuzzed and he lost all HUD cohesion for a long moment. When his viewing capability returned, he saw an expanding zone of annihilation ten kilometers wide. Stevie and the Destroyer were simply...gone. Another Destroyer on the edge of the sphere of death spun slowly, severely injured.

  “Mother of God,” he breathed. “What in hell was that?”

  “Mother for sure,” Lock replied. “The mother of all suicide bombs, a thousand times as big as anything I’ve ever seen.”

  “More like ten thousand times as large,” Token said, ever the human calculator. “Remember the square-cube law. Double the blast radius needs eight-ish times the power. What the hell makes a bang that big?”

  “Antimatter,” Lock said. “Has to be. Total ee-equals-em-cee-squared, one hundred percent mass to energy conversion. I heard a rumor they were experimenting with it.”

  Vango laughed, but grim. “So they did give us weapons after all. Let’s go out in a blaze of glory. See you all on the dance floor.”

  Token crossed his line, and then Lock. Each disappeared in another blinding flash, vaporizing at least one of the Destroyers and damaging others nearby.

  Vango felt no trepidation, only satisfaction at completing the mission combined with anticipation of another night with Stevie, as he approached five thousand meters and awaited detonation.

  Thus, it came as a shock when, just seconds in realtime, minutes in slow time before he broke the imaginary sphere, the face of Daniel Markis, his father and Chairman of the council of Earth, appeared in his HUD.

  “Hello, Vincent. The fact that you’re seeing this means the end is near. The headshrinkers didn’t want me to record a message for you, or for any one of your fellow heroes, but I insisted.” Daniel Markis grimaced. “And when I insist, I damn well get my way.

  “But I wanted you to know that I love you, and my pride at what you’re doing for humanity is boundless. I have no idea what you’ve figured out from within the virtuality you inhabit, but you deserve to know the truth before you go.

  “We used you, Vincent, over and over. There are many of you: minds copied from the real Vincent Markis and from the others you know. Stevie, whom you loved, and who now lives on only in this form. Lockerbie, who chauffeured me around the fleet when I came out for inspections. Token, who flew with you against the first Destroyer.

  “It may help you to know that the original, corporeal Vincent Markis is right now on his way to EarthFleet’s first conquest of another star system, and I hope he’ll live a long, happy life.

  “But I’m sure you’re wondering now about yourself and your comrades. We call them – you – engrams.

  “It was probably the hardest decision I’ve ever made to authorize copying your mind and loading it into semi-organic brains controlling the new XM-58 capital missiles, some with antimatter warheads that cost as much to build as a cruiser. But if I ordered it done to others, I had to order it done to you. Anything else would be cowardice on my part. To command is to order the death of what you love.

  “And I apologize for not telling you the truth until it was too late to change your fate. Early experiments showed that if we explained everything up front, in a small number of cases engrams would rebel, refuse, or even go mad. We couldn’t afford that. So, the experts designed the program you experienced. We’ve had one hundred percent success with it. You and your squadron have died many times, but you’ve killed a hell of a lot of Meme ships. In fact, you’ve changed the course of the war.

  “The one difference for you – the copy of you that’s seeing this, that is – is that this time the Destroyers you face are making their biggest push for Earth ever. Whereas before the engrams increased effectiveness and reduced corporeal casualties – I apologize for having no better term – this time, your sacrifice protects the planet itself. I can’t tell you whether we’ll stop this latest assault. I can only tell you that you’ll have done your part, above and beyond.”

  Daniel Markis raised a hand, as if in blessing. “I hope you can forgive me for what I’ve done to you. Your sacrifice may save us all. Farewell, Vincent, my firstborn son. I couldn’t be more proud of you.”

  Epilogue

  “These new semi-organic control modules are a pain in the ass,” said Missile Tech First Class Pedro Weinauer as he fitted the half-meter black box into the last of the flight of twenty-four XM-58 capital missiles.

  The cylindrical bodies, huge for weapons but small compared to even a one-man fighter, sat lined up on the flight deck of the assault carrier Peterborough. A line of cones kept the hustle and bustle of operations away from the delicate devices.

  Warrant Officer Hudson stared flatly at Weinauer. “Shut up and finish. I’m initiating the integration program.” She input a code into the Vango module – the master – and closed the access panel. “Network looks good. Everyone take an hour. Get some chow or some rack time. We start on the next set as soon as these are movable.”

  Weinauer nodded. “Thanks, boss,” he said, leading the half-dozen missile techs waiting nearby toward the enlisted mess.

  Hudson checked her secure control pad and stared at the hard cables snaking across the deck, connecting the brains into a network. After launch, they would go wireless, using microwave and laser comms.

  But until then, they would take that hour until the modules achieved full integration, more or less. Something about the variability in the Meme-derived bioprocessors made the exact time uncertain. Then, the grabships would load the weapons onto the interceptors and they’d be sent into battle.

  Hudson shrugged. Finicky or not, these things were taking down Meme warships. It didn’t matter much what weird shit they put inside to make them work. In fact, she didn’t really want to know.

  She shivered. Sometimes she felt like the boxes were alive and looking at her.

  ***

  Excerpt from A Personal Memoir: Survival Against the Meme, by Xiaobo HUEN, Admiral, EarthFleet, Commanding; 2110 A.D.

  Use of human engrams to guide missiles must be viewed as a mixed success. Their performance exceeded that of our best digital control systems, but the expense in time, resources, and particularly the moral cost to those who knew, the knowledge that our finest minds were being replicated, trained and deliberately sent to inevitable death, caused me to wonder whether it was worth it.

  I must reluctantly conclude it was. During the Meme’s latest brutal assault, use of our most skilled and dedicated officers’ engrams brought us within a hair’s breadth of victory. To quote Wellington, it was a damn near-run thing, which in no way detracts from the efforts and heroic sacrifices of the virtual replicants. Without them, we would have lost the entire Solar System. At least now we have a chance to rebuild. Though Earth herself lies mortally wounded, the Mars colony is robust, and Jupiter’s moons contain the bulk of our spaceborne industry and military might. While we hold those, hope remains.

  We have not heard from Admiral Absen, of course. Five years remain until Task Force Conquest arrives at the Meme system of Gliese 370, thirty-six light-years from us. Even if he wins in that place and immediately returns with help – an unlikely scenario, giv
en the difficulty of bringing any conquered territory under new sway – at least forty-five years must pass.

  Until then, we are on our own.

  The End of What Price Humanity?

  Read on for an excerpt from Starship Conquest (First Conquest), which continues the story of Reaper and Bull as they assault another star system, and more!

  Starship Conquest (First Conquest) Excerpt

  Plague Wars: Stellar Conquest, Book 1

  Sergeant Major Jill Repeth, EarthFleet Marine Corps, gasped as the slimy tracheal tube withdrew and she began to breathe on her own again. Lifting her hands to rub her face, she carefully opened her eyes for the first time in what must be nearly forty years. Lighting glowed dim and no klaxons wailed, no strobes flashed, so she figured Conquest to be on schedule, nearing her destination.

  Repeth felt the living coffin, another product of adapted enemy biotech, loosen on her lower body, and she winced when the catheter probes withdrew. Naked, she was birthed anew. She welcomed the sound and fury to come; after nearly sixty years of Marine service – plus the forty in stasis – she still looked forward eagerly to righteous battle. Neither guilt nor moral ambiguity troubled her thoughts of killing aliens hell-bent on genocide.

  Sixty years. She’d never expected to serve for that long, but the Eden Plague virus conferred immortality and rapid healing, so such spans were now commonplace. She could have easily been an officer by now, but she’d always hated the idea of separation from the rank and file. Offered her choice of warrant or commission many times, she had always refused, preferring to stay where she was most comfortable – top enlisted Marine in a front-line combat unit.

  Looking around, she marveled at the rows upon rows of the biotech cocoons that had kept everyone alive, healthy but in stasis for the last four decades. Lines of them extended in a vast adult nursery, incubators of military personnel. She could see at least a thousand of the things from where she stood, in various stages of processing, BioMed personnel bustling among them, and she knew there were many thousands more spread throughout Conquest and the ships attached to her.

  Stumbling for the female showers in the deliberately heavy gravity that matched the target planet the astronomers had named Afrana – she was grateful for the protocol that decanted key leaders in order of rank. Brigadier Stallers and the rest of the Marine brigade’s officers should have been awakened ahead of her.

  Under hot water she soaped and sluiced, scrubbing remnants of bio-gel out of her ears, and then gingerly tested her cybernetics. As far as she could tell, her laminated bones and polymer-enhanced musculature had come through without degrading.

  Holding up her hands, she extended her claws in sequence to their full two centimeters, starting with the thumbs. The pain of the ferrocrystal knives slicing through her skin from beneath was familiar, comforting.

  Like the anachronistic bayonet, she seldom used the cutting blades in combat, but they’d come in handy for covert missions, back before Earth had been unified.

  Thoughts of Earth threw her mind back to her last view of that fragile blue marble hanging in space, and all the hopes and dreams of its inhabitants. Leaving behind everyone there was hard, and once again she crammed down the gentler part of her humanity, coating her soul in armor not so different from what she wore in combat. Only one man was allowed past that façade: her husband, Commander Rick Johnstone.

  Having him along kept her human, but the time for softness was past. Conquest and the ships attached to her had one simple mission: kill any Meme craft in the Gliese 370 system, destroy all resistance from the aliens nicknamed “Hippos” on the planet Afrana, and then colonize.

  She thought then about the briefings on the Hippos, what little they knew. So called because they were huge and gray and thick, they were reported to have technology similar to Earth’s, or possibly better.

  It’s gonna be a hard fight.

  Repeth touched her palm to the locker she had closed forty years ago and it hissed open, revealing her carefully packed kit. Looking in the mirror set inside, she saw a severe, strong-jawed face, intense brown eyes, and skin tinged with the blood of at least one Hispanic ancestor.

  A warrior’s face.

  Once dressed in crisp utilities she felt like a Marine again. With her starched eight-point cap settled carefully on her head – an affectation from her wet-navy days – she went in search of coffee, information and her commander, in that order, probably all in the consolidated wardroom, where officers and senior NCOs ate.

  Drawing a steaming cup of “lifer-juice,” the muddy coffee dispensed by the industrial-sized brewer, she nodded at Brigadier Stallers sitting with his battalion commanders. One of those was her own, infantry Major Joseph “Bull” ben Tauros, originally of the Israeli Defense Forces before volunteering for EarthFleet Marines. A hulking brute of a man, he was the only one that seemed completely normal without hair; the cue ball was his usual look.

  Bull caught her eye and lifted his cup. She raised hers back in greeting, but doubted his held coffee. He stood up, nodding to the brigadier, then waved Repeth over to a table nearby, growling at a lone Navy ensign. The young man hastily grabbed his powdered eggs and found another place to be.

  “Good decade, Smaj,” Bull greeted her as they sat down.

  She accepted the familiar corruption of “Sergeant Major” with good graces, knowing such nicknames built trust and camaraderie. “Good freakin’ four decades, Bull,” she replied, “but it feels like I only slept for a week.” Repeth sat down across from him and reached over to tilt his cup toward her with one short-nailed finger. “Ugh. Can’t believe you’re still drinking that dreck. I should space it.”

  Bull pulled the protein shake back protectively. “Don’t you dare. I used all my personal allowance on this stuff. Can’t stay big on Navy food.”

  “Who cares if you stay big? Your cybernetics provide most of your actual strength. Besides, it gives you gas like a sick hound.”

  “I like to be big. You think this huge noggin would look good on a skinny body like yours?” He reached up to run a hand over his basketball-sized cranium.

  Repeth held up her hands in surrender. “All right. So what’s the word?”

  “Word is, All-Hands assembly at 1500 hours. Word is, Earth got hit five years ago by sixty-four Destroyers. We don’t even know if anyone’s left.” Bull slurped more of his shake, pensive.

  Repeth pursed her lips and put on a stoic front. “Can’t help that. We knew when we left it was long years of travelling at best, a one-way trip at worst.”

  “We might be all that’s left of the human race.” Bull hid a fleeting expression of deep concern.

  She leaned over to pound her index finger on the tabletop in front of the big young Marine officer. “Listen, sir, I’ve been in active combat longer than you’ve been alive. I’ve spoon-fed green lieutenants and I’ve made and I’ve broke battalion commanders like you. But I’ve seen you over the past few months – before the forty years – hell, you know what I mean – and I know you’ve got what it takes. So just do your job the best you know how and have faith in ol’ mother Repeth.” Unconsciously she patted her left breast pocket where her father’s ancient leather-bound small-print Bible rested.

  Bull’s mouth quirked up in a smile at her gesture. He reached up to his neckline to reveal a heavy ferrocrystal Star of David medallion on a chain. “I got faith, Smaj. But Moshe Dayan said faith and bullets’ll get you farther than faith alone.”

  Repeth laughed. “Amen to that, my bulky brother. No atheists in armor, eh? Pass the Lord and praise the ammunition.” She clapped him on the shoulder, a sensation like slapping wood. “I see the NCOs are up. Suggest you finish that glop and start doing some officer stuff. Find your drip-nose lieutenants, tell them mommy and daddy will make everything all right.”

  Bull rose with her, draining his plastic cup and folding it into a cargo pocket. “Yeah, lieutenants. Making simple shit hard since Christ was a corporal.”

  Repeth
tsk-stk’d good-naturedly at his irreverence.

  The Jewish major grinned. “You don’t like the way I talk, Smaj, that’s your cross to bear.”

  “Why do I feel like you set every Gentile you know up for that line?” With a rueful snort she took her leave and refilled the coffee mug, intending to see to her awakening troops. It was NCO business to get them ready so officers didn’t have to.

  Crossing the floor, Repeth spotted Tran Pham “Spooky” Nguyen sitting alone in a corner. Usually the slim Vietnamese highlander was easy to overlook, except that today she saw he wore the blinding white high-collared uniform of the Naval Stewards, EarthFleet’s specialized protective police service. She’d given up surprise at Spooky’s changes of uniform; he’d long since passed into legend within the clandestine services of Earth.

  He’d gotten the nickname long ago, before the aliens salted Earth with the Demon Plagues, with which the Meme had tried to reduce humanity to mindless animals. Later enhancements – combat nanites in the blood, cybernetic implants like Repeth’s, and his dedication to the martial arts – had only enhanced his legend.

  I’m one of the handful of people aboard that knows he’s a covert operative – spy, assassin, intimidator. Should have figured he’d show up; he’s always where the action is.

  “G’day, Spooky. Nice look.” She sat down, knocked her coffee cup against his tea mug. “You playing bodyguard this trip?”

  “Thank you, Jill. Of course, a Steward’s role extends beyond personal protection of the senior staff.” His accent was precise, perfect upper-class English, an affectation adopted so long ago that it was unshakeable. “Are you still playing at being Australian?”

  She noticed he didn’t exactly answer her question, a common occurrence with Spooky. Jill chuckled. “Lots of Aussies in the Marines, so I pick up the dialect, that’s all. But are you doing anything, uh, specific, or just keeping an eye on things?” And I refuse to ask why you even came on this mission, she thought. You’ve always done exactly as you pleased and somehow you get away with it.