Nguyen had hopes that the alien biotech would hold the key to blending nanotech with a modified Eden Plague, resulting in even more powerful supersoldiers. Ekara’s people wanted to find more macroscopic applications: materials technology was the most obvious area, and also its tiny but powerful fusion drive.
Apparently the Meme aliens had no concept of operational security. Had humans designed the probe to inflict its plagues on an alien race – at least, had Nguyen – it certainly would have self-destructed after its mission, rather than soft-landing for easy recovery. Perhaps that was their usual modus operandi, to reuse their biomachines. Probably their mindset simply was not flexible enough to easily grasp the concept that they now fought a technological enemy that was determined to defend itself by any means necessary – including using the enemy’s tools against it.
“How is the probe exploitation coming?” Ekara asked Nguyen, though he certainly had read the daily reports his own technicians filed from the Direct Action labs.
He simply wants to hear it in my own words, Nguyen thought, to be reassured of our relationship. As if he could detect if anything was amiss, were I to wish to hide a betrayal. No, James, you are as good an ally among our Outlier subspecies as I could expect to have.
“Slow, but promising,” Nguyen replied. “The materials studies have yielded several very useful approaches in development of new structural and armor alloys. Unfortunately, deciphering their fusion technology is a greater challenge and is unlikely to yield results in time for Orion’s launch. Their biotech is another order of magnitude beyond even that; my people say it will take years before they are able to duplicate it even at the most rudimentary level.”
Ekara nodded, phlegmatic. “Yet we possess it, and if we assume their biotech is, let us say, hundreds of years advanced over ours, we shall have it in mere tens.”
“I suspect if it were hundreds of years ahead of us, we would all be dead,” joked Nguyen gently.
“Perhaps their strategies are not as advanced as their weapons.”
“I choose to hope that they are – how would the Americans say it – one-trick ponies.”
“Meaning?” Ekara’s expression was more than politely interested; he seemed to hang on every word.
Nguyen tapped his nose to indicate a secret. “Perhaps these fearsome aliens are so used to wiping out races with their biotechnology that they lack other weapons. Or at least, their other weapons are not so fearsome.”
“Then why this ship?” Ekara waved vaguely toward the Orion site.
Nguyen smiled. “Shall we wager the human race on my opinion, no matter how erudite? I think not.”
“You are wise, Brigadier Nguyen.”
The Vietnamese looked carefully at the slim Australian half-Aborigine, wondering whether this flattery was sincerely motivated. After a moment he relaxed, trusting his own judgment, ignoring his professionally suspicious nature. “We are both wise, Minister Ekara, to work so closely together, unlike some of the others.” Nguyen bowed, careful to keep any trace of irony from his voice or manner.
Ekara returned the bow with his head and heels, almost Germanic in its motion.
On such courtesies are empires built, thought Nguyen.
After discussion of the Marine facilities, personal weaponry, and boarding and counter-boarding equipment, he went over the ship’s heavy mounted weapons plan. While not strictly his purview, he felt competent enough to at least observe and ask pertinent questions, several of which had already prompted improvements. And since he had taken a personal hand in securing the promise of their delivery from the South-African directed-energy weapons program, he had a moral right to at least observe. The Free Communities were well ahead of the rest of the world in this area.
The South African state, heavily influenced by Chairman Markis and his wife Elise, had originally hoped to make the experimental lasers, grasers, masers and particle beams into nonlethal weapons for terrestrial use. Instead, now they would build a dozen or fourteen enormously upscaled versions for mounting on the Orion, dwarfing the fabled turrets of oceangoing battleships.
Fortunately it did not appear that Eden conscience against killing extended to the aliens. There was simply no biological basis for humans to detest killing non-human enemies, so Nguyen was confident that the crew of the Orion would use these terrible weapons without moral impediment.
When he finished his visit he praised Ekara, his facilities and his teams in a short recorded message for distribution during their next scheduled break. After that he left with Major Alkina, thoroughly satisfied.
-20-
The wedding was a formal one. The bride was resplendent in modern Marine mess dress, with a blinding white long skirt and high-collared jacket, and rows of medals topped by the Navy Cross, the highest possible US military award save only the Medal of Honor. Jill could hardly complain; three quarters of MoH recipients were awarded it posthumously. The veil wasn’t exactly standard issue but she figured the Corps could forgive her that aberration in her uniform, just this once.
The groom, not being military, was attired in the finest tuxedo Johannesburg’s tailors could produce. That’s okay, Rick said to himself. A wedding is the bride’s day, but it’s the marriage that matters. And as a soon-to-be married man, he had to think about married things, like a house, and furniture, and bank accounts and things like that, he figured. No more all-night online gaming sessions – well, not many – and then there was sleeping together. Not sex, just…sleeping in the same bed with someone. It sounded great, until he remembered how light a sleeper he was. Any little thing tended to wake him up. Ah well, climb that tree when I come to it.
His three mothers, as he called them – Cassandra, Elise Markis and Shawna Nightingale – had organized everything, along with his sister Millie. Daniel Markis himself would be his best man, and Roger Muzik was flying out from the US to give Jill away in the absence of any other father figure, which was apt. The painfully handsome military officer still engendered something uncomfortably close to jealousy for Rick, as his bride-to-be had spent a lot of time with him. On the other hand, had there been anything romantic between them, it would have taken hold long ago and Rick would have been left in the dust. He still had no idea why she had fallen for him instead of one of the heroes she worked with, so he just chalked it up to good fortune and thanked God.
He fiddled with his lapel flower and then, as Daniel gestured to him to take his place, he wiped his sweaty palms on his trousers. After all you’ve been through, he told himself, this is nothing. Just a walk in the park.
Except a walk in the park still gave him sweaty palms. The shrinks weren’t quite sure why intermittent agoraphobia seemed to be a lingering side-effect of his captivity, but then, they could never admit psychology was still more art than science.
As with most men at their own weddings, the ceremony itself was a blur, a sensory overload. Snippets stood out in his mind: putting on the rings; Jill’s face as he lifted her veil; the kiss; the honor guard raising swords high and Rosco barking as Randy Butler and Denise Lockerbie, its co-chiefs, swung the flats of their blades in perfect synchrony to slap the bride and groom on their hindquarters. He was glad everything was on video, so he could fill in his stunned memories.
He relaxed a lot more at the reception, as the wine began to flow and he accepted the congratulations and well-wishes of all of their friends. He was surprised at how many they had, and how many had made it there considering the frenetic pace at which the world was working under the looming alien threat.
Perhaps they all knew that a day or two off made for redoubled efforts later. Perhaps they couldn’t stand to miss a good party. Perhaps they thought it would be one of the last good ones before hell rained down from above.
Rick did remember his wedding night with crystal clarity, with no need for an extra video camera.
He rubbed his right eye and smiled.
-21-
Chief Energy Weapons Engineer Lawrence Nightingale ran h
is hands over the carbon fiber barrel of the enormous laser that squatted with its fellows in the barnlike Orion assembly building, a mere two miles from the ship itself. It was the first of its kind, a weapon fit for the Earth’s inaugural spacegoing battleship.
In basic form the tube resembled a naval gun of ninety centimeters diameter and more than twenty feet long. The strong outer sheath merely supported the crystal waveguide within, and what came out of the business end was coherent light. In fact, the back part of the gun itself looked similar to the squat camera-like devices in dentists’ offices or hospital radiology departments. But this version would transfer gigawatts of energy to its target. Each pulse delivered the force of a 500-pound bomb.
Theoretically we need to get within a thousand klicks to have a chance to be effective. Of course, we don’t know what kind of armor, shielding or countermeasures they have. All I know for sure is that these babies pack a punch, and the closer, the better.
Another advantage to lasers was their rapidity of delivery – literally the speed of light. Delay at one thousand kilometers was only one three-hundredth of a second, which sounded fast enough. At the speeds possible in space, however, this might still be too far. A ship traveling at even one percent of lightspeed would move ten kilometers in the time it took for the beam to travel, making long-distance targeting rather like shooting a flying bee with a rifle bullet at a mile distance.
Rubbing his hand down the barrel, Larry thought, I’ve done my part. Fire control is someone else’s problem. My job is to design them, build them, power them and keep them running. In fact, my objective is simple – just fiendishly difficult in practice.
All weapons are just energy delivery systems, Larry mused. That’s the way my team and I have had to think. Deliver energy to a target in a destructive manner – faster than it can be absorbed, reflected, converted, deflected, or otherwise defeated. That energy can be in the form of chemical or nuclear explosives – not my department – or kinetic, like a mass driver or railgun – ditto, not my thing. Or it could be directly imparted by some form of directed electromagnetics – beam weapons, in common parlance. That’s my bailiwick.
His beam weapons research effort had been expanding exponentially, intending to counter the atomic and kinetic strikes of the Free Communities’ enemies. The nuclear weapons of the ballistic missile submarine Nebraska had stamped the Free Communities Council’s further emphasis on the project as the world witnessed the horrible destructive power of even one such salvo.
Larry looked down the line of hand-built energy projectors hulking in the warehouse. Teams of technicians and unlimited funding had yielded a plan for fourteen lasers. While there were other possibilities – grasers, masers, particle beams – with limited time it was a herculean effort to even provide these prototypes.
It’s my own Manhattan Project, he thought proudly. In fact, every part of this incredible ship – the nuclear propulsion that will lift it, the engineering and materials that ensured it would not crumple under the unimaginable stresses, the power generation and storage capacity – constituted a Manhattan Project by itself. For the first time in history, the world is cooperating for its own good. Even the Russians have gotten on board, if only so they won’t be left out. Their contributions to the molten-salt hybrid fusion power plants and their missiles have been tremendously helpful. Wonderful engineers, if you can separate them from their political masters.
Given that there was no agreement or certainty on weapons effectiveness, Orion was being loaded to the gunwales with as many different weapons as possible. It was highly inefficient, and on a normal warship design would be ridiculous. But the military strategists believed – hoped – that the ship would only have to fight and win one battle.
If they won, no amount of inefficiency would matter. All the eggs were in one basket, and as long as crew, power, lift capacity and room were available, the design philosophy was “more is better.”
If they lost, they still might be able to send back enough data to make a difference. Pieces of the Artemis, Orion’s sister ship, even now rested in a growing park of warehouses and manufactories, ready to be carried via truck, air and heavy rail to the nearby Assembly Area Two, but that ship would not be ready for at least two months afterward.
The best and brightest cadres of civilian and military experts from around the world would also crew Orion. Nothing was being held back, and so the complement of the Artemis could not possibly reach the pinnacle of expertise and experience aboard the first ship. The Earth would burn its best capital, leaving lesser men and women behind to try to carry the torch of war.
Larry’s musing mind startled at the sound of footsteps behind him. He had not expected anyone in the warehouse so early in the morning, other than the ubiquitous security forces. Turning his muscular frame on its heels, he was surprised but not shocked to see Major General Nguyen, decked out in his dun-colored Australian Army uniform.
“Spooky! I wondered when you’d turn up.” The big man swept the small up in a bear hug, then put him down.
For his part Nguyen looked pleased but humble, bowing to Larry and not at all discomfited by the indignity of the greeting. “Good to see you too, Doctor Lawrence. Or shall I say Commander? I hope you don’t mind if I still call you Larry?”
“Call me anything but late to dinner, Major General Nguyen. Congratulations on your second star.” Nightingale cocked his head. “I still can’t get over the way you talk.”
“You want I talk like this again?” Nguyen said, reverting to a near-cartoonish Asian-American accent.
“Hell no, I like it! Make these Ozzies take you seriously, fo’ sho’. I’m proud of you, settlin’ down here with your girl and all. When do I get to meet her?”
Spooky reddened slightly and sighed. “Unfortunately, my friend, that will be difficult, since she has since found other company.” The convenient lie came easily to his lips. “But I have my fair share of lady friends, while it is you who have ‘settled down’ as they say. You used to be quite the bird-chaser.”
“Yeah well, they say you only need one if she’s the right one. Sorry about yours not workin’ out.”
“Perhaps then I shall find my ‘right one’ someday. Fortunately I now have time, with the wonderful Eden Plague in my favor.” Nguyen smiled again, a genuine-seeming grin that must have warmed Larry’s heart. It feels good to lie so well, to make my friend happy. And why should I not? What a flaw it must be to think that joy is finite and must be rationed, or that if another has more, I must somehow have less. Pleasure exists to be enjoyed, a tool to be dispensed to one’s allies and useful slaves and necessary supervisors.
Just like pain.
Too many Psychos fell into the trap of the short-term view, he thought, poisoning their surroundings with the detritus of destructive pleasure. Like seizing and tearing half-grown roses, they damaged the plant and missed out on the full ecstasy of the judicious application of power. Put another way, it was the ability to dispense horror and joy that gratified, not the emotions themselves.
Spooky went on, “And how is Shawna and the family? No permanent harm from the children’s little adventure, I trust?”
“Not at all. I don’t think they even knew they were in much danger. Daniella talks nonstop about how much fun it was to fly on the airplane. Now she says she wants to be a pilot. Even so,” he said, putting a huge hand on Spooky’s shoulder, “thanks for gettin’ ‘em back safe. I heard a few reports of how you handled those dirtbags, jerry-rigging that electromagnetic field to scramble their nanos. That was genius, maybe saved their lives.”
“I just tried to think of what my friend Larry Nightingale would do, and did that.” He patted Larry’s paw, then slid out from under it to walk slowly down the row of hulking lasers. “Of course, I did not do the actual technical work. I have people to do that. But I remembered one of your papers published on nonlethal electrical fields and took my inspiration from it.”
“You read my work?” Larry said wit
h surprise.
“Of course. It is important to the Free Communities, your engineering skill. Forgive me – I should say, it is vital to the entire Earth. Since I have some status within the special operations community here, I try to stay current on the latest developments in weaponry.” Spooky ran one hand over a laser housing and tapped it idly.
“Well until you Australians got this Orion thing going I thought nonlethals would be all I’d ever do. With aliens…it’s interesting, but I don’t have any problem burning them like snails. Less, really. I mean, I’d never burn a snail just for fun, but these Meme have murdered over a billion people.” His voice dropped harshly. “Sons of bitches.”
“Yes, we are in a life and death struggle. I have thrown my small influence behind the ship, and have done what I can to smooth the way for international cooperation.”
“The way I hear it, you were real important, talking with the Russians and Chinese. They respect someone with a reputation like yours.” Larry nodded unconsciously and joined Spooky in laying hands on the lasers. They were tangible proof of his own vital role, and they meant hope for the future, hope that his family would be safe.
As safe as anyone in this world of horrors and death.
“My reputation as a killer, you mean?” Spooky looked pained.
“For strength, that’s what. They know you’re a man who means what he says, who keeps his word and backs it up. A man of honor.”
Spooky clasped his hands behind his back and sniffed, turning around.
Larry thought he saw tears actually well up in his old friend’s eyes before Spooky faced away. He really has changed. God bless the Eden Plague. This triggered another thought, which he mulled for a moment to allow Spooky to regain his composure. When he thought the time was right he asked, “Any word on Skull or the alien?”
The Orion Plague Page 13
