Burning Eagle

by Navin Weeraratne

  Sun Tzu faced the command deck in flesh and blood. A thousand green wireframes surrounded him in dataspace. Lexington, Queen Victoria, Zhang He: the list went on. The rank bars beneath them rose from Lieutenant through to Admiral.

  White jumpsuits sat up at neuro-optical workstations. Lasers streamed directly into their eyes, the scatter lighting up their transhuman faces. Battle computers, thrumming stacks of black cylinders, were studded about the deck like monoliths. White frost formed on their coolant veins and sublimed into the air.

  Sun Tzu was pale as a deep spacer, his movements restrained for low-gravity.

  “The Hedron network is extensive, some scientists believe they must exist throughout the entire galaxy. We must assume the Invaders have access to them, and if so, can access our own. I can’t tell you why they haven’t used them yet. However, they will simply not allow us to capture a Transcendent. A hedron-assault to distract us is a very real possibility.

  “You’ve trained for this. You’ve downloaded Tennyson combat experience, or you served there yourself. You are the best commanders, pilots, and deck crews in the Union. No society in our history has had such fearsome defenders. We will meet them in battle. And on your efforts and sacrifice, our way of life will be victorious.”

  A white mug tipped over, its black gold spilled and dripping over the table edge. Cues were strewn on the pool table, the winning shot of a hard-fought game, ignored. The news played on a flat screen, but no one was there to hear the pundit tell them why they were losing the war.

  Through the window, the rest of the station stretched. It was a herd of silver zeppelins, solar powered and semi-living. They floated over the desert planet, lashed together with diamond-silk cables. Modules, girders, and bays hung underneath them: a headquarters-worth of ballast.

  The giant bays opened liked the bellies of early, TNT-dropping bombers. Armored khaki pressure suits stood packed in rows on the edges. Suddenly, officer-suits upped their thumbs and grunt-suits upped back – and jumped. One after the other, they plummeted down to the planet.

  Thirty second later, the first of the Quick Reaction Force broke the sound barrier.

  Union Secretariat, Washington DC, USA

  “Your security forces have all been briefed about this. And I’m going to be here with you, every step of the way.”

  Sun Tzu faced the Security Council in flesh and blood. The well-lit hall was paneled in real, priceless, wood. The observer galleries were empty – secret servicemen in dark suits stood statue-still by the entrances. A quiet, Chinese delegate nodded but looked behind him: focused on a virtual overlay of casualty projections. A Merchanter in pirate-lace and jewels argued with a red dwarf, albino prince. Digerati republics queued millions of requests a second, gobbling all available bandwidth.

  Sun Tzu’s face was wrinkled, his temples salted and peppered.

  “Union dataspace will be safeguarded. At the first sign of infiltration, the entanglement relays will go offline. Paradiso will be cut off from the rest of the Union. We will deal with the problem on site, and neutralize it at all costs. With your support and leadership, we will be victorious.”

  “I’m being set up.”

  “Eh?”

  “It knows we’re coming, Jack. It can’t not know. Droptroops from space. Fleet movements. Changes in satellite activity. Sun Tzu is forcing me to act immediately, or risk losing the target.”

  “Well he’s certainly being a bit overenthusiastic – “

  ‘Overenthusiastic? Jack, Yellow Labradors are overenthusiastic. Strategic planners are not. He is a Transcendent mind, everything he does, he does for a reason. The hunter is making a lot of noise, now that he’s found the quarry. Ask yourself why.”

  “Do you think he’s trying to – threaten it?”

  “You mean ‘warn’. No, I don’t think he’s trying to warn it. I think he’s trying to kill it.”

  “Then why does he want you to capture it?”

  “This is about fear.”

  “Have you any idea how crazy you sound right now?”

  “Sun Tzu should be putting recon and intelligence assets down, not troops. We know nothing about the target. This is how you make a mess of things, and any infantryman will tell you this.”

  “How does that make this about fear?”

  “Because it’s what you would do if you panicked. Think about it: the Xeno-T has been studying us for months. It recently started probing our defenses, testing weapons against us. The pressure on Sun Tzu is to act, not to take time and carefully gather intel. To give into that pressure, is to panic.”

  “You think a military god brain as big as Cheyenne Mountain, is panicking?”

  “Yes. Can you imagine how terrified it must be? Jack, whatever is here killed a bunch of Sun Tzu’s buddies. We’ve been here six months and we’ve only just managed to find it. He must think it was by accident. Accident. You can’t tell a strategic planner that after six months, he’ll eventually score some luck. Don’t you see? He feels completely outclassed.”

  “Well is he?”

  “That doesn’t help to think about.”

  “Well if he’s so scared, why is he wasting time? Why not just bomb it from space? That’s what I’d do if I was panicking.”

  “The worshippers, Jack. There’s thousands of them in the holy city. He can’t kill them– not unless he’s forced to. This is the bit where I get set up.”

  “You’re not being set up. This was always your job. He gave you a taskforce to hunt this thing down. How does it look when he takes command away from you, right when you’ve succeeded where he’s failed? This is politics, and he’s making the right call. He’s giving you back up. You’re in command of the raid. He’s just making sure he can act in case you fail.”

  “If we’re going to go in and capture this thing, we need weeks. Weeks to infiltrate and study the target. The defenses. The entrances. To learn the layout. How many people are in there? Which are legitimate targets? What weaknesses can we use? We know nothing Jack. Look, just take my word for it as a military man – Sun Tzu is not helping me. He is deliberately forcing me to go in without proper prep and planning. An op is doomed from the start. Just take my word for this, and accept it.”

  “Okay, fine, if that’s the only way this conversation can move forward. All I’m asking is why would he want you to fail at all?”

  “Because he needs failure. Once the situation is out of control, he can step in and use more extreme measures.”

  “You mean blow it up from space.”

  “I mean blow it up from space. He can’t get away with that. But if he has no other choice, then he can.”

  “Gerard, he’s accountable.”

  “Yes. There will be inquiries. Hearings. Heads are going to roll. He will not do well of out a massacre. However, he can plead he was forced to pull the trigger. That’s something he can get away with. It doesn’t paint him as a cold and passionless computer.”

  “Gerard? Are you being racist?”

  “Like you said, this is politics. He’s making the right call.”

  “Look, his personal ego and standing cannot be a stake in this.”

  “Who said those were the stakes? This is a Transcendent AI, about to kill thousands of people in collateral damage. How is that going to go down back home? See? You got nothing to say. Can you see it now? Can you see the set up?”

  “No, it’s not that I see.”

  “What then? You see a crazy man here? Am I a crazy man, Jack?”

  “You’re crazy angry, yes. But that’s not what I was seeing.”

  “Then what are you seeing?”

  “I’m seeing that this isn’t the first time he’s set you up. If you’re right about this, is it a coincidence he also fired you a century ago? You told them they were coming – perhaps that was inconvenient.”

  “Now you’re the one who sounds crazy.”

  “Yeah. Yeah you’re right. That would just be crazy.”

  “Admiral,” Cul
lins stood in the doorway and saluted.

  “At ease, Commodore. The room is secure?” under his arm was a manila folder. Sun Tzu held it with both hands.

  “As you requested. It’s just you; me; and the soundproofing.”

  “I’m sorry this is last minute. Please don’t be insulted, I did not expect your taskforce to succeed where the rest of us had failed.”

  “None taken. The Rangers have landed and are prepared to move in. The Indomitable is in position and launching combat air patrols. The Washington will be reaching its final way point in T minus eight minutes.”

  “Outstanding. I have every confidence in you, Commodore.”

  “Thank you Sir. What was it that I needed to be briefed on?”

  “Two things,” he tapped the folder. “But firstly, I believe there is just a piece of the Xeno Transcendant at Kashi. It must be a data center or a processing core.”

  “Just a piece? There’s a nuclear reactor buried down there.”

  “Redundancy is the issue, not energy usage,” he shook his head. “It would not put all its eggs in one physical basket – no Transcendent does. The risk of damage or destruction, especially in the middle of a war, is just too great. It must have other centers across the planet – also powered by buried reactors. This makes it exceedingly dangerous.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t understand. Isn’t it exceedingly dangerous to begin with?”

  “Yes, but this isn’t like cornering a baseline. Redundancy means we can’t kill it; it has no reason to fear losing a replaceable component. However, it won’t let us seize what’s down there. The intel we could learn, that could be a real danger to it.”

  “So you’re saying it has nothing to lose, but won’t let us win?”

  “And it’s hiding under the holiest place on the planet, shielded by tens of thousands of civilians. And it’s sitting on a plutonium-based, nuclear reactor.”

  “Understood. We’ve been considering how it might try to leverage the civilian presence. Frankly, I expect that of it.”

  Sun Tzu nodded. “Are you planning an evacuation?”

  “Absolutely not. An evacuation hands it victory on a plate.”

  An eyebrow rose. “How do you reckon?”

  “This is a major pilgrimage site. Evacuating it will be all but impossible. You mentioned tens o thousands of civilians – currently, there are hundreds of thousands. It’s Great Pilgrimage season, and there are tent towns and river camps all around the holy city. We can’t move that many quickly – which would buy time for the Xeno. Additionally, the pilgrims will resist. Remember, pilgrims are always the craziest of the crazy. I don’t want a bloodbath, and that’s exactly what will happen if we try to move them – or if we hesitate.”

  “Hesitate?”

  “I think you give the Xeno too much credit. The only reason Kashi isn’t a glowing crater is because the Xeno either doesn’t know what’s happening, or doesn’t realize how quickly we’re moving. We have the jump on it, that’s our only real advantage. We capture it by dawn – or you’ll have to bomb it from space.”

  The admiral stared at him for a few moments – then slowly nodded.

  “Alright, this is your operation. You call the play, and I’ll support you. Now, this is the reason I came over personally to see you,” he handed the Commodore the manila folder. “I need you to memorize it, and then destroy it.”

  Cullins pulled out the single piece of paper, his eyes scanning.

  Copy All.

  “What’s Burning Eagle?”

  “Burning Eagle is a contingency plan in case I am destroyed or incapacitated. This is your part in it.”

  “These are just coordinates.”

  “There’s a backup processor core there. Activate it. It will deploy an extreme sanction program that should – help.”

  “You sound like you really mean, ‘can’t make things any worse.’”

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to mislead. If Burning Eagle comes to pass, then any help of any kind, really can’t make things worse.”

  Encrypt.

  Save As [PLAN-B].

  Forward, Jack D.

  “An op like this needs a month to plan. All you’re getting is forty minutes.”

  Jahandar looked around the military green tent. More than fifty others were sitting on the ground with him - there hadn’t been time for chairs. Droptrooper snipers in khaki ponchos rubbed on camo paint and squinted down scopes. Maroon-bereted Spetsnaz emptied bags of clips and checked each one, unhurried. A pair of turbaned Sikhs nodded quietly, drinking steaming chai and taking notes on paper. Everyone had pens and paper; it had come in their briefing packets. Most seemed not to trust the stuff.

  Jahandar opened up his briefing packet – a picture of a grinning giant fell out. “BABYSIT THIS ASSHOLE” was scrawled across it.

  Koirala stood in front of the wall display and held up a pile of prints, “Take one of these and pass the rest. These are maps of the target area. Neutrino-backscatter imaging down to one hundred meters. Memorize it if you can. There’s a lot going on here, but just worry about these – “

  Behind her, the wall display changed to show the printed map. It looked like a wireframe of a colossal, Cthulhoid, root vegetable. About eighty meters deep, were four caverns colored red.

  “These red spots are our mission. Closer surveillance has uncovered not one, but four different waste reactors. We’re going in to shut them down. A Transcendent is just a big computer: not so tough once the power is off. Once the reactors have been disabled, the Rangers will move in and secure the site. Everyone, look outside to the left – “

  Heads turned. Between neat rows of green tents, a giant climbing frame was emerging. Welding torches sparked and wet-hot diamond gleamed.

  “That’s a mock up of what we think the reactors look like. I want all the assault teams to do two walkthroughs, the second time with augment reality turned off. It’s based on ones we captured at Tennyson. Why do they still use Plutonium? Remember, the Calamari travel for thousands of years at a time between stars. Nuclear fuels with long half-lives are their preference. Now these are not fission plants, they’re thermoelectric generators. They’re just depots of encased waste, generating power directly from nuclear decay.”

  The wall display changed, showing a diagram of the power plant. It was a nesting of corridors grown around a glowing core.

  “They don’t need much maintenance; it’s still how a lot of probes and satellites are powered today. This is good for us because it means we won’t run into any tech crews. Also, you don’t need to get so close that you fry yourselves. Just plant charges here,” the display panned and zoomed, “and here, and blow up the power cables. Add in a rock-fall and a couple of booby traps and they’re not repairing these inside of a week. Any questions so far?”

  Heads stopped nodding and started shaking instead.

  “We all know what we’re doing, but let’s not kid ourselves people. We’re here because we’re the ones who could get here in time to take part. Many of you have had a chance to work together, you’ve performed admirably and I expect today will be no different. Now I think we can all agree it’s a bad idea to mix people who haven’t trained with each other, but we’re just too short-staffed on this one. Some of you have people to babysit. Check your briefing packets.”

  A giant sporting machine pistols waved at Jahandar, grinning. Jahandar smiled back. Say what you liked about the Commodore’s pet, the civilian contractor had come through.

  “Union Special Forces and GROM – we’re assaulting the reactors. The Crossbows will fly us in. The access points on the surface are sacred – how convenient – and so off limits to pilgrims. MARCOS, you’re job is support and reinforcement. You’ll stay on the Crossbows, and orbit the access points. Assist the assault teams if they run into trouble.”

  A hand went up, one of the Indian MARCOS. “What trouble are we expecting?”

  “Up top? Hopefully just pawns. Angry temple guards. Pilgrims who want to
be martyrs. Now remember, this is a covert op. We’re not only avoiding alerting the Transcendent, we’re avoiding alerting the worshippers. Brass doesn’t want them getting in the way. We’re going in with stealth cloaks – in and out – no one notices us. Use your knives if you have to, weapons hot as a last resort if your mission is in jeopardy, only. Get that clear.”

  “How are we communicating?” asked a blonde, Polish, angel. Her kill-count was tattooed on both arms, her shoulder patch read ‘GROM’. “How are we coordinating if we’re not allowed to use anything with a chip in it?”

  “Neutrino-relays. They’re not great, but they’ll work through solid rock. Any and all computers are not to be trusted, till this is over. It’s a risk we can’t take. Have you guys all turned off your optics? Turn off your optics. Get used to looking at the world without virtual overlays.”

  Questions and answers followed. There were a lot of questions, and hardly any answers. There were just too many unknowns. They would learn as they went, and deal as they could.

  “Hi,” it was the giant. Everyone had risen, clumps formed speaking in Polish, Hindi, and English. “I’m Jack.”

  “Jahandar,” they shook hands. “Nice work finding this thing.”

  “Meh, I got lucky.”

  “You ever done special ops before?”

  “Oh hell no, but I can tell we’re all expecting to get fucked.”

  Jahandar smiled.

  “Well, let’s see what we can manage. So you’re an observer?”

  “I’ll have a gun and I’ll shoot people, but yes, basically. I’ll hang back, don’t you worry about me.”

  “Come on. You’re going to meet the rest of the team. Right after we find you a stealth cloak that can fit you. Why are you so big, anyway?”

  Captain Jack Diamond grinned.

  “Size matters.”

  They came at night.

  Four, matte black, assault transports. Disc fans blurring, set into tilting wings. Side gunners leaned out, optics and cameras mounted on their helmets. They slapped their shredder cannons and checked their ammo feeds. Pilots sat side by side, their faces lit green by their screens. Gloved hands gripped flight sticks too tightly – Hands-On hadn’t been since Basic.