by Stephen Moss
“Good.”
“Goodbye, Neal. And good luck.”
Neal closed the connection, a long, deep breath spreading through his deflated form like a death rattle. But only a moment was allowed to pass before Minnie’s voice entered his mind like a subconscious twitch, pulling him back to the task at hand.
Minnie:
Neal: ‘thank you, minnie.’
It was as much as they could do, Neal knew that, but thanking Minnie for it felt like thanking the executioner for saying they would make it quick. Barrett interjected.
Barrett: ‘¿minnie, what is your comfort level with our force estimates on the incoming force?’
Neal closed his eyes and saw what Barrett was looking at from his command center elsewhere in the concrete mountain that was Rolas. He looked at the forces now converging on Rolas. His: a tiny force of four StratoJets coming from Hungary, moving fast, but hopelessly distant. The enemies’: a cloud of threat coming at them from the east.
How had they managed to build so many of the hypersonic fighters?
Neal set aside the question with physical effort. It was, after all, irrelevant. Instead, he studied the Russian jets, for he did not know that nearly half of them were actually Chinese, and such considerations were, in the end, irrelevant anyway. He looked at them from one of his many satellite Pods now tracking the fleet.
They had heard news of the fleet as a series of complaints echoing throughout the world’s capitals. The flotilla had announced itself to the world by thundering into Somalian airspace, then across south Sudan toward Cameroon. The banana republics had fired in anger at this violation of their airspace and sent indignant calls defending their sovereignty to anyone they thought might be responsible for the huge fleet. They had fired anything and everything they had at the jets, impotently screaming as their primitive arsenal had been rebuffed like so many arrows against the broad flanks of a dreadnaught.
As news had reached Neal and his commanders it had not taken them long to guess who the force really belonged to. They had pondered the lack of tech-ten air units as they engaged the Russians in Hungary. Now they pondered no more.
Minnie:
Neal shook his head. Things had become strange indeed when Madeline had to ask permission to speak to him. But his mind was protected behind the bank of icewalls, filters and AIs that now managed his day. He opened the virtual doors to his sanctum and spoke with his first companion on the long road he found himself on.
Neal: ‘madeline, things are getting interesting here. ¿have you been updated by minnie?’
Madeline: ‘of course, neal.’
A hint of emotion bled through their link to his right brain, anger and indignation at the implication that she should need informing of such monumental events as the impending attack on Rolas.
Neal: ‘sorry, madeline, i forget myself, sometimes. ¿what is it you need?’
Madeline: ‘it’s not what i need, but what you need, neal. when you made the decision to send the fleet out yesterday, i retasked the resonance chambers here. i thought i would be replenishing the fleet based on potential losses from the engagement in hungary. anyway, i have three stratojets inbound on your position now, eta sixty minutes, and three more leaving japan as we speak, though i imagine those will be too late to make too much difference.’
Three StratoJets. It wasn’t much, but it was three more than he had. Three against two hundred.
Neal: ‘thank you, madeline, that is some very welcome good news. and sorry for the delay you had getting to me. i am updating my executive ai’s to give you command override, just like ayala, barrett, and the others. you should have had it from the start.’
Far away, Madeline, banished any remaining indignation she might have felt from her mind and focused on what Neal and the rest of her friends at Rolas must be feeling.
Madeline: ‘forget about that, neal. that is less than nothing. neal, my friend, it’s been so long since we brought down the satellites that i had almost forgotten what it feels like to be so vulnerable. you will be ok. we survived the satellites and you will survive this. we are all with you.’
Neal: ‘thank you, madeline. but unfortunately i need to do more than just survive it this time. the spaceport. the elevator. if i could stand in front of it and die to save them i would. my survival means nothing compared to the time and resources we have sunk into this damn island.’
Madeline did not doubt his words. His dedication to the task ahead was without question. To the point of fanaticism even, but what more deserving cause for zealousness was there?
Madeline: ‘i know you would, neal, we all do. but you don’t have to, and you won’t, neal. you have to focus, my friend. i have been looking at these numbers. they aren’t good, but they aren’t without hope either. leave hungary to jack and ayala and get minnie, quavoce, and john’s minds back to rolas. banu’s too, if only so she can defend herself. you have three stratojets coming, give them one each and see if they can’t even the odds a bit.’
Neal nodded, sending his approval back to her as an emotive thank you, while he felt her confidence and support as a warmth in his mind.
Neal: ‘thanks, madeline. good advice. all right, i must go. thank you again.’
Madeline: ‘of course. we are all with you, neal. you are going to be ok.’
He agreed and thanked her again.
Once the connection was broken he sat back.
ok.
He did not want to be ok. He was tired of striving for ok. He wanted to be in control. He wanted to be done with this fucking infighting so he could get on with the real work. He was trying to drag humanity up a technological mountain and all it could do was scream and bicker and kick at his heals all the way like a gaggle of spoiled children.
And now two economic and military giants among those children had, in their ignorance and stupidity, unwittingly conspired with the enemy, and may have doomed them all.
It was too much. It was treason. It was treason of the highest order. Even as Neal checked in with Minnie once more on their preparations he saw that he could no longer sit by and wait for the rest of the world to get Russia and China in line. They had committed the foulest of crimes against humanity. They needed to be punished.
Neal: ‘minnie, patch me through to recon team two in russia. i have a new mission packet for them.’
- - -
Hektor and his team trundled along through the Russian countryside. Hundreds of miles away, the country’s military was being punished with deadly force for pushing the world too far. But here, deep in the heart of the mighty nation, all was quiet, and recon team two passed unnoticed through yet another town as they made their way toward the sprawling capital.
They had been using their now passive subspace tweeter to monitor subspace traffic, and had picked up signs of very real tech-ten capability along the route from the Ukrainian border to Moscow.
Cara drove, her incongruously angelic face combining with her better than average grasp of Russian to provide good cover for the team should they be stopped. They had switched the truck’s plates not far out from the lumber farm they had stolen it from, just in case the Russian police were unusually efficient. Now they moved into the city at a rumbling, agrarian speed that belied the power of their weaponry and training. They moved toward Red Square, monitoring and tracking subspace traffic as they went. They were stalking the subspace network, hunting its source. Identifying the location of the Russian Agent, maybe. They could not know.
But as they broached the suburbs, Bohdan was receiving new information, and new orders. They had none of the vagueness of their current standing orders. They were very precise.
“Sir,” Bohdan called to the team leader over the noise of the well-used diesel engine, “you ne
ed to review the subspace data packet that just came in, immediately.”
Hektor opened the packet with his mind, tensing as he read the simple order. He could not reply directly. He could not verify. He could not send anything through subspace for risk of alerting the Russians to their presence. But it didn’t really matter anyway. The order did not require any further clarification.
Dr. Neal Danielson, CO Terrestrial Allied Space Command: ‘recon team two. new primary mission parameter: locate russian premier yuri svidrigaïlov. confirm identity and terminate.’
Chapter 44: The Hot War
The time for subtlety was passed. They were coming in fast, and even the darkest of nights could not have hidden the shout of the sonic booms reverberating in their wake. They knew they would get to Rolas before it would have any of its StratoJets home to roost. Now there was just the small matter of the two thousand men and women of the allied naval fleet between them and their mark.
Far ahead of them, a band of destroyers, cruisers, submarines, and frigates were forming into a line, arraying their manifold ordnance at the eastern horizon and preparing for battle.
“Captain Bhade,” said Admiral Cochrane, from the fly bridge of the Dauntless, “please have your teams pick and assign. I want target batches dispatched to the fleet as soon as they are ready. Fire At Range.”
“Yes, sir,” replied the captain, “we are assigning now, Admiral. Fire control, you have clearance. Attach Fire At Range to all packets.” The order echoed throughout the bridge, and onward by radio to the fleet still taking their final positions in the firewall.
“Comms,” went on Admiral Cochrane, “orders for Admiral Takano: please tell the admiral his submarines are cleared to engage at outside range. I want them to deploy their entire surface-to-air salvos in the first wave and then dive. There is no need for them to be exposed to this.”
No one commented on what that meant for the surface fleet. In most modern conflicts the cruisers, frigates, and destroyers that made up Admiral Cochrane’s taskforce represented the safest possible place to be during an engagement. Usually they were far from the hot exchange of bullets, and any enemy craft foolish enough to approach them would be torn to shreds by the array of weaponry the big ships bristled with.
But this was no ordinary war, and no ordinary enemy, and though they had actively upgraded the systems aboard the fleet, they had never anticipated such a force as this.
The Japanese submarines did as they were ordered with neither complaint nor gratitude. As the fleet launched its first massive salvo of missiles at the coming Ubitsyas, the subs were more active than most, firing off every anti-air missile they had and then sealing and emergency-diving.
For his part, Admiral Takano looked on stoically from the bridge of the lone Japanese destroyer in the fleet, aware of his imminent fate. He did not flinch. He sufficed himself with mentally urging on the nearly thousand missiles the fleet had just launched at the coming flotilla and tried to maintain a sense of calm for the men and women sharing his bridge.
The first barrage was a throng of big, hulking rockets; their longest-range ordnance. The biggest was the Aegis, designed to leave the atmosphere if it had to, a variant of it among those that had killed one of the Mobiliei satellites months beforehand. But now they pursued smaller, faster, but less well-armed prey. Maybe some would find what they sought.
Now, with the tables turned from the night before, the allied navy mimicked the Russians tactics from the bloody fight in Hungary. As they closed with the coming enemy, the first wave of missiles performed the same random exercise in murder as the Russian wasps had, singling out unfortunates from among the Russian swarm and converging on them.
Above Cameroon, the skies became dark as the two great clouds came together, the bank of oncoming jets and the wave of missiles blocking the sun. They approached each other at stupendous speed, and the sparse population below watched in awe and horror as a hail of return fire came from the coming Ubitsyas like blurred lines of energy, warping the air between the two supernatural forces in the brief moments before collision.
The detonations began as notes in the stanza, missiles detonating as they were killed by the Ubitsyas’ guns, then it grew and grew as the Ubitsyas fought to thin out the massive destructive force coming at them.
Everyone watched as the two sides met, and the explosive noise rose to a crescendo of stellar proportions.
Neal, Barrett, Ayala, and Madeline watched with keen anticipation. The crews of the allied fleet watched with a hope bordering on delusion, almost against their will, not wanting to see how much of the coming death-dealers would make it through their first and largest salvo. And their captains and admirals watched with focused stoicism, their chests out, their eyes hard. Knowing the danger their crews faced but refusing to give in to despair.
And Mikhail watched, not from the front line, but from his own plane, if you could call it that. Well behind the main fleet, commanding it, close enough to maintain subspace communications, but far enough back that he could stay safely outside the maelstrom.
The noise was heard beyond horizons. A thunderous rumble that shook the earth, settling sand dunes, rustling trees, sending wildlife scattering, and raining down a molten hail of debris across a vast plain.
Two hundred Ubitsyas entered the fray, and out of the billowing vortex of flame and shrapnel a hundred sixty-two emerged.
Admiral Cochrane’s heart sank, as did every commander’s across the fleet, but still they tried not to let it show.
“Comms, to all units,” said Admiral Cochrane with stern command, “fire at will, engage and destroy.”
“Comms, to General Milton,” he went on a moment later, “General, you are cleared to bring up the air wing on Captain Bhade’s mark. We will continue to fire until you enter the kill zone.”
The orders were relayed and acknowledged.
Finally, Admiral Cochrane picked up a handset at his console and opened a channel to the strange artificial intelligence that he had been told responded to the name Minnie.
“Minnie, this is Admiral Cochrane,” he said, unaware that she knew with machine precision exactly where and who the call was coming from, “I have reviewed your request to take over fire control on our linked anti-air gun network. Given the statistics you provided, and the accompanying testimonies of General Milton and others, I have only one question for you before I agree: do you think it will make a difference?”
Minnie was quite capable of lying; that machines would for some reason lack the capacity for falsehood was a fallacy, a poorly conceived fiction. She was as capable of lying as she was of creating any text or speech, and she was capable of doing that in nine languages and counting. But she did not lie now. Out of her growing understanding of the concept of respect, she gave the man the most honest answer she could.
“Do I think I can manage the systems better than your human teams aboard the fleet? I am sure of it, Admiral. Do I think I can save all of the ships that now stand between Rolas and the coming armada? I am afraid I cannot promise that. Maybe I can save some, but even that I cannot guarantee.”
The admiral flinched as even his inclination toward brutal honesty was tested, but then she finished by saying, “But I can say with certainty that, based on the damage done by the first missile salvo, I will be able to make them pay very dearly for coming here. Very dearly indeed.”
He smiled, the adrenal rush of cold vengeance filling his veins.
“Comms to all units,” he said in a loud voice, “I want all fleet arms to give automated anti-air unit control to Rolas, per order set five-twenty-nine. They will coordinate autocannon protocols from there. Please acknowledge.”
Captain Bhade locked eyes with the admiral looking for some measure of solace, but found only fortitude. They nodded at each other. So be it.
- - -
The second missile salvo was sent and collided with the same brutal but inadequate lethality as the first. Then it all came to a head with shocki
ng speed. The storm would not be stopped. The cyclone was coming for them. They had loosed their arrows, and now the titans came in with savage haste.
The big ships launched a torrent of lead into the air in front of them along with every remaining missile they had. Minnie had forgone piloting one of the three inbound StratoJets for a chance to reap bloody murder with the combined might of the fleet’s autocannons. She used them to form an interlaced web of death for the Ubitsyas, trying to eliminate any avenue for them to pass through.
But the Ubitsyas were far from passive participants, and their commander far from simple, and as the true fighting began, Mikhail fanned them out, forcing Minnie and the fleet to dilute their fire while he could still focus his.
An American destroyer was the first to go, its entire forward superstructure folding in on itself as a thousand hypersonic copper bullets slagged a huge gash in its hull. Minnie felt the loss of fire as its systems went quiet, explosions ripping along its length as the once powerful ship tore itself apart. Another ship was not far behind, this one a missile frigate, Mikhail wisely focusing on the smallest ships first, quickly bringing down the volume of allied fire as they sank.
Mikhail’s forces were falling as well, though. Minnie especially was shredding them, weaving her web to entrap and destroy two or three at a time. She was actually frustrated by the rocketing arrival of General Milton’s bank of fighters on the scene, even though they forced the Ubitsyas to shift their fire from the ships as they came in hard. Mikhail’s Ubitsyas were close now and this would have been where she could have done the most damage, but she had to silence her guns as General Milton’s planes came in.
It was not a pretty sight, and all who witnessed it vowed a private curse upon the Russian and Chinese fighters as they butchered the slower, softer European and American jet fighters. They got some blows in, their once impressive AMRAAM missiles and forward guns ripping open fourteen more of the Ubitsyas. But fifty-five of them died in return, their bloodied carcasses falling, burning from the sky, some whole, some in pieces, all ablaze.
