by Stephen Moss
He ordered his Ubitsyas to withdraw and they banked hard as one, falling in behind his own ship as a shield as he accelerated away.
Then he saw it. Coming from the south.
Big enough to be …
Fast enough …
No, he thought. No! It could not be. They could not have built a resonance dome big enough. No. Could he have been so foolish? Had he been so focused on the SpacePort that he had missed the greater threat?
He veered with all his vehicle’s power, ignoring the Ubitsyas, who flew on, confused, toward the coming star-cross.
They saw it as but a blur on their scanners.
And Banu saw them all. She saw them and she heard the voice of Minnie in her mind.
Minnie:
She watched the first one, a smaller, almost cute attempt at her own form’s might. She saw it veer away and begin to flee and she chuckled at the futility of its flight. She could see it was going as fast as it little furry legs would carry it. It was quaint, really.
But she would deal with these others first. Her talons were a series of particle beams lensing out from the spiny front of her body and her four wings. They found the Ubitsyas and dug into them. The first fell after a few moments, its armor providing some respite before the beams ate through it, folding the plane in on itself like a sock being pulled inside out. In about five seconds the wings came together and the whole plane was sucked into the hot core of her fire and then it was gone, a vapor, but a ghost on the wind.
The rest opened fire as they came into range and she reacted, rolling and spinning with wild abandon as she came at them, making the vast cross a whirlwind rather than a target, like firing into an approaching tornado. But her attack never relented even as she span. Firing in impossibly small windows as they closed on each other, she clawed at their little bodies, the killing real for her now, the struggle and gore of the fight vivid and true.
The Ubitsya pilots continued to die in the seconds before they were on her and she was glancing between them, her massive size preposterously agile. Mikhail, still fleeing to the northwest, watched the dog fight with barely restrained anguish. In a desperate move, he slaved two of the Ubitsyas and tried to collide them directly with her core as they passed by each other.
She giggled at it, at the impertinence of it, as she whipped between them, their attacks molasses slow to her as she spun her entire self and during the milliseconds of their passing, rotated the whole of the Skalm, whipping her guns around.
In that critical micro-event of the passing, she even used her engine as a weapon and as she glinted between two of the Ubitsyas trying to collide their very selves with her, she sliced at one with her forward particle beams and brought her roaring engine across the face of the other.
At such range, with her power untethered by fear or mercy, they sublimed in the stellar fire of the Skalm’s core, turning to vapor in an instant. And then she was turned, rotated, her carbon nanotube beams screeching with the strain as she began to decelerate, and even as the final Ubitsyas tried to turn to face her once more, she was already lensing them with her beam once more, chasing down and extinguishing the last of them.
Two minutes. Twenty-five enemies dead.
Mikhail did not mourn their passing. Whether it was callousness or mere terror, he did not even look back as the last of them died. He must hide. If he could reach land, then decelerate enough, he might be able to eject his Agent body and escape.
With zeal, Banu turned her focus on the last of her prey.
Banu: ‘¿where are you, little rabbit?’
He was a hundred miles away already. Minnie was still watching him, her desire to ‘resolve the imbalance’ matched only by Banu’s appetite for the hunt.
Minnie:
His location appeared as a beacon in Banu’s mind and she was accelerating again in the same instant. All of her five engines giving their all, nothing spared even for weapons in this moment of hot pursuit.
He ran. He hoped to reach land before she caught him, but her acceleration was stupendous. This was real. This was a Skalm. And like any Mobiliei, Mikhail knew what that meant. It was the limit of material engineering. The point where the peaks of energy, strength, and mental capacity were strained to the very brink. Until they learned how to break one of those seeming absolutes, there was nothing more fearsome than one of these beasts on either Mobiliei or Earth.
It could be killed, of course it could. And it could be tracked, indeed its need to constantly expend the ridiculous power generated by its five cores made it about as subtle and easy to hide as an erupting volcano.
If he had a nuclear weapon at his disposal and the will to use it, even against every iota of his mission’s parameters, then he might have been able to kill it.
But he did not.
So he fled, even as his tactical options dwindled to zero.
He fled across the treetops of the Amazon. He fled all the way to the Northern Andes. And here, among the fallen cities of the Incas, he dodged and ducked and dived in a last hopeless attempt to escape.
Like so many of Banu’s virtual prey had before, Mikhail sought refuge behind any obstacle that might hide him from her fury. Mikhail darted behind mountains, banked into valleys, tightly hugged cliffs and streaked past ice-faced peaks.
The ground and air shook with the chase and Banu giggled with glee at the speed of it.
But she was merely toying with him.
Minnie:
She was disappointed but she understood. For a moment, Mikhail thought, she faltered, but then she came on at an even greater pace. He had hoped she might fail. That she might miss.
She did not. She dug into his ship’s flesh with her particle beam talons and ripped at it. She knew this was real. She knew this was killing. And she did it with a relish bordering on ecstasy.
After a moment of his armor resisting the hot beams, there was a flash. As the shell of his ship eventually cracked Mikhail’s cores fluttered for an instant, then, as his own engines’ might was rent asunder and exposed, his ship detonated and was gone.
Chapter 47: Ebb
The calls came in fairly quick succession after the attack was over. The leaders of the world’s great powers were demanding an accounting. At first belligerent at the destruction of their massive investment on Rolas, then quieted somewhat by the soft, calm cadence of Neal’s rebuttals, and then stunned, quite literally into silence by the change in his stance toward them.
Neal was on the fourth of those calls right now. A call with the French president. He had spoken with the German, British, and Brazilian leaders already. Jim Hacker and the US president were, apparently, waiting for him to return their requests for conference. Well, they could wait until he was ready.
“Monsieur President, I thank you again for your candor, but ask once more that you listen to my reply more closely.”
“I am listening, Dr. Danielson, and I appreciate your calm attitude here, but I might actually appreciate it more if you would show a little more emotion. Two French Corsair-Class destroyers were sunk today, lost with all hands. Sixteen Rafale fighter jets shot down. Hundreds of French lives lost, and for what, Doctor? The SpacePort fell. We gave you those units, we trusted command of them to your taskforce,” the word was said with venom, “because you said you needed them to protect our investment. But yet you have failed to protect it, Neal. I am sorry to say it but you have failed.”
Neal let the man finish his rant, then waited a moment for him to catch his breath, before saying, “Mr. President, it saddens me that you mistake my calm tone for a lack of emotion. But I will move past the inherent insult you proffer by implying that I do not care for what has happened here.” He heard the French leader go to speak, but did not give him the chance, “I have felt the loss just as much as you today, and so much more, Mr. President, so very much more. I will not trouble you
with details, but suffice to say that everyone here has lost friends today, friends that will be missed more than you can know.”
He spoke of the hundreds of his colleagues, both military and scientific, who had died in the attack. He spoke of Admirals Cochrane and Takano, of Captain Bhade, and of all their brave sailors and pilots who had fought till the end. He spoke of Dr. Hauptman and the inconceivably brave Captain Cashman who had chosen to stay with her as he jettisoned them both off into space.
And he spoke of his friend, one the first of his allies in this long, bloody war. A man they still had not been able to find. A man that his people on site at Rolas searched for even now in the rubble that had been man’s first SpacePort. A man whose loss Neal was going to have to come to terms with over the next days and weeks as they lost hope of ever finding his remains in the bloody stump that was the once mighty SpacePort.
A man whose wife even now was exacting cold revenge on the Russian forces still left alive in Western Ukraine, neutering the once mighty Russian Army one battalion at a time with her scalpel-like Spezialist forces.
“Monsieur President, I think it is important to stress that I speak to you now not to offer apologies or explanations, that time has passed. I speak to you now from the base formerly known as Rolas Base, from now on to be referred to as TASC District One. I speak to you now from the base I fully intend to rebuild. In fact, I have already initiated plans for that work, including the production of the machines I will need, to be built at TASC District Two.”
“District Two?” the Frenchman asked, still trying to process what Neal was saying.
“Yes, Mr. President, TASC District Two, formerly Deception Island, a small, desolate place in the South Seas, but the site of the until-now secret development of my first full-sized Resonance Dome, the source of the craft you have no doubt been hearing about from your intelligence services. The craft that finally dispatched the Russian and Chinese air force that attacked SpacePort One.”
“Dr. Danielson, I hate to correct you once more,” said the French leader, as his counterparts had earlier, “but you speak of your Resonance Dome, and your forces. Now more than ever, I must insist that you recognize that these are forces that are on loan to you, and given the events of the last few days, that trust in you is going to need to be rebuilt if you hope to continue to enjoy the support of France and her allies.”
“Your point is well taken, Mr. President, but once again, I am afraid you are not listening to me. I speak to you now not from a position of leadership over a taskforce, but as the leader of an independent military body. As of this moment, I am declaring the Terrestrial Allied Space Command as a state unto itself. A nationalized state, with, for now, only ninety citizens, though more are swearing allegiance as we speak. At its head: myself, Ayala Zubaideh, and Madeline Cavanagh. Among our generals are Jack Toranssen, Quavoce Mantil, and John Hunt. Among our citizens, well, you need only concern yourself with one: Banu Mantil.”
The Frenchman was silent, profoundly silent, and with no small amount of relish Neal went on, “I speak to you now as the appointed representative of that state, and inform you that your support, while not required, will be asked for. But your interference in any matter that we deem of importance to our mission will not be tolerated.
“Mr. President, as of today I represent a small but incredibly powerful military body. A military that can reach anyone, anywhere. A military that recently summarily executed the illegitimate leader of Russia for crimes against humanity.”
The Frenchman blurted, “You did what! That was you? We had assumed, no, we had hoped, that the death of Svidrigaïlov had been the work of internal forces, retribution for his defeat in Hungary. But it was you! This will not stand, Dr. Danielson, we will be speaking with our representatives at the Hague, we will …”
“No, Mr. President, you will not!” Neal shouted, raising his voice for the first and last time in the meeting. “Whether you appreciate it or not, I am engaged in the most important project in human history. A project so vital that any act against it is an act of the vilest treason and as of this very moment I am here to tell you that such acts will not be tolerated. Not anymore, not from anyone, not even you, am I making myself clear? I am here to tell you that TASC will defend itself and its mission, with lethal force if necessary, against any and all threats. Do you understand me, Mr. President?”
The Frenchman was silent, no doubt quite stunned. Good, thought Neal.
So Neal went on, reinstating his sheen of calm like a shield over his barely contained wrath, “And let me also take this opportunity to tell you that TASC is officially declaring independent oversight over not only District One here on Rolas, and District Two on the island of Deception. We are also declaring TASC District Three in the mountains of Japan. My representative there, Ms. Cavanagh, and her liaison Mr. Matsuoka, have already begun negotiations for the annexation of that land with the Japanese government, in return for concessions in the Fourth TASC District.”
Neal took a breath. This was the fourth time he had said these words, or ones to their effect, and it was equal parts terrifying and liberating to do so. “TASC District Four, over which we are also claiming unlimited and exclusive sovereignty as of this moment, represents the only one of our four districts that is not currently claimed by anyone else, and yet I am sure it will also be the most hotly contested. TASC District Four represents that place we must, by rite of our mission, have unquestioned access and domain over.
“As of today, Mr. President, we claim sovereignty over space. With a unique ability to defend it, and, once the Space Elevator is rebuilt, unparalleled access to it, I am here to tell you now that any country wishing to maintain a presence of any kind outside of Earth’s atmosphere is going to have to actively participate in and contribute to our work. I come to you today not to ask for your permission to move forward, the days of me having to negotiate for the right to save humanity are through. I come here today to offer permission, Mr. President. Permission to continue to use your communications satellites. Permission to continue to have access to GPS and other data sources, and permission to use the new SpacePort we will build here and the others we have planned around the equator to maintain those systems.”
Neal went silent to allow the Frenchman to respond, and to object, as Neal knew he must.
After a moment the president did not disappoint, “Neal … Doctor … it is clear to me that you have lost your grip on reality. I will not negotiate with you over such things. You have gone too far. This is madness. We all appreciate the importance of what you are doing but you have crossed the line. Your team, if it wishes to continue to exist, will have to work within the agreed upon terms and conditions, and operate with international law! And whatever happens, your days of running, or even participating in, this effort are through, Dr. Danielson. France will not negotiate with terrorists! Hear me now when I say you will be held accountable for this.”
Neal smiled coldly, then spoke with the clear French perfection his link with Minnie allowed him to, “Mr. President, I will ignore your posturing and threats, mostly out of respect for our past work together, but also because I no longer care whether you agree with me or not. You have been informed of our terms. Your state department, along with all other members of the UN, will be receiving the details of our new Independent Charter shortly. You can cooperate, or you can not. You can participate, or you can not. You can keep your nation’s technological place in the twenty-first century, or you can watch your economy fail as you compete with nations that still have access to satellite communications, and to the advanced technologies we will continue to provide to our allies.
“The choice is yours, Mr. President. I hope you will take the time to consider it very carefully. But whatever you decide, be under no illusions. Any incursion into any of the districts detailed in our charter, any attack on our citizens, their families, or our ships, both naval or in space, will be met with the deadliest of force. As will any actions, either milita
ry or economic, that are taken against nations that choose to ally with us.
“We will build Earth’s defenses, Mr. President. We will drag humanity into a new era of technological capability whether you want us to or not. I hope you will join us, but that, my friend, is up to you. Ask yourself this, though: if you refuse us, we will be forced to approach your opponents in the French leadership. And what, do you think, will the French people do when your rivals come bearing all the gifts we can offer?”
And with that he closed the line, the time for diplomacy was done. His next call would be to the US president, a man who had tempered his initial pride somewhat since their first meeting, but who, unfortunately, had ever less to offer Neal’s cause. So Neal would offer him something he could not refuse: protection. A chance to stop spending on his nation’s military, a force that was soon to be obsolete anyway. A chance to bring his troops home and repurpose them to the job of rebuilding their nation.
Neal would ask for two things in return. Firstly, the gifting, not loaning, of two of the US’s once mighty aircraft carriers to form the hub of his rebuilding at District One and his growing operations at District Two. And the second thing: the willing release of Jack Toranssen, Jennifer Falster, and the host of other American pilots, commandoes, seals, and scientists that were even now being invited to join his growing city-state.
The call would, surprisingly, be the easiest he would have that morning, and Neal would be even more surprised, and happy even, when Jim Hacker asked to be among those new citizens. Though he spoke of his new state as foregone conclusion, he would need the help of experienced administrators and governors in order to make it viable.
- - -
Once the most important calls were finished, Neal changed his focus once more, tired, beaten, but newly invigorated by his mission. They had one more piece of housecleaning to do.
Neal: ‘¿minnie, have we received news from quavoce and jennifer?’
Minnie:
