Mahalanobis stood up, and stretched his arms over his head. “I’ve had about enough of this,” he said. “Brother Adenour, I am about to perform an action that is most likely quite foolish, but I am going to do it anyhow. Should it not go well, please try to evacuate as many of the brethren from this place as you can, and then collapse the tunnels with explosives. That should at least limit the damage.”
Mahalanobis picked up his anti-flash goggles, popped the cover from the electronics, and began fiddling with it. “I’ve read about these basilisks. It would be best to approach it with closed eyes, but I’ll need to see. I’m going to adjust the threshold so the goggles block out most of the light effect. That, and the correct mental disciplines, might be enough.”
Before Adenour could protest, Mahalanobis put his goggles on and walked out from behind the protection of the pillar and into the infernal light of the basilisk.
There was more screaming, and then a thumping of heavy footprints, as if a mountain was walking. Then it all went back to normal.
There was still the sound of screaming, but the noise and the light had gone. Adenour walked out from behind the concrete pillar. There was a massive machine, perhaps three meters high and nearly as wide, heavy, sitting on two thick multiply-jointed legs. It had a crown of metal spikes all ending in crystal lenses, but it was slumped over. Brother Mahalanobis was behind it, with his rifle stuck up into a gap in the machine’s heavy armor.
Mahalanobis pulled his rifle out of the carcass of the machine and slung it over his back.
“The armor is too thick for small arms fire,” said Mahalanobis. “But as the records stated, there are weak spots. I emptied my clip into its control circuits. It’s dead.
Adenour looked around at the dead, injured, and dazed. “Miller! Lucas Miller, are you around?”
Miller came out of the tent. “Hey Librarian Adenour. I stayed put just like you said!” The boy took in the carnage in the station, and then saw the dead metal form of the basilisk with Mahalanobis right beside it. Smoke was starting to come out of its side vents.
Miller’s eyes went wide. “You killed him. You killed Cthulhu! Are you one of the elder gods?”
“What?” asked Mahalanobis. “You mean like Nodens or Vorvadoss? No, nothing like that. I’m just a humble Senior Archivist of the Librarians Temporal. And this wasn’t Cthulhu, only a remnant of a damnable machine that should never have been built in the first place.”
“Brother Mahalanobis,” asked Adenour, “are you all right?”
Mahalanobis looked somewhat bemused by the question. “To my surprise, young Adenour, yes, I am quite fine.”
“But you just took out Globus Pallidus XIV! That should be impossible!”
“The main unit, or even one of its major arcana, certainly that would be impossible. No biological human could withstand them. As I said before, this was a very minor system that would never normally go into action without a more physically-equipped escort. I have also read the works of Encarnidine, Blavent, and Sinopius on such matters. Sinopius would have been pleased to learn that he was correct: perhaps I should write an appendix.”
“Isn’t it kind of a coincidence that you happened to have read the exact correct books to counter the basilisk?”
“Not at all,” said Mahalanobis. “I’m a Librarian, and a scholar. It’s my job to read books. And over the decades, I have read a lot of them.”
“You are not tired?”
“If I lift 100 kilograms, I will strain and feel it afterwards. If I step out of the way of an oncoming truck, I am unaffected no matter how powerful the truck is. I feel well. Refreshed, even. In any event, we must see to the injured, and to the dead. The universe won’t stop throwing troubles at us just because we’ve had a spot of bad luck. You there, take that poor woman to the medical tent! And you – yes, you – what are you waiting for? Go back down the tunnel to our main base and help them carry more supplies here. And no you don’t have to shush. I’m not that kind of librarian.”
12. The Book of Old Guy, Part III: One Down
“A politician without shame is a politician without weakness. Only if you understand this, can you truly begin to appreciate the power of the Neoliberals.”
- Giuseppe Vargas, contemporary.
I was finally fitted out, all my systems operational. I was still sitting in my hangar, of course. There were no targets out there worthy of my main hull, and using me now would waste the element of surprise.
Many of the low-level employees that had helped to assemble me were reassigned (or, horrible thought, fired), and that made me sad because I had made friends with many of them. Fortunately, I still had a large staff of attendants doing maintenance and system checks, so I was not wanting for company. A couple of my minor systems ‘mysteriously’ developed erratic behavior, and with a few well-planted hints some of the reassigned workers were reassigned back to me, which made both them and myself happy.
My adaptive decision matrices were now 35% tuned up, and I was starting to feel more like myself – whatever that is. No two decision matrices will ever grow in exactly the same way, so I will not be the same as my original self back on Alpha Centauri Prime. If we ever do meet up, we will be fraternal, and not identical, twins.
Even though my main hull was immobile, I still conducted several military operations using remote systems. These weren’t anything that the regular military couldn’t have handled, but central administration wanted more data to evaluate my abilities. I believe that they were pleased.
I exterminated four small corporations, two farming cooperatives, a private security firm, a bowling league, a school for circus clowns, and a major university. As before, these were not actions that I wanted to take, but my inbuilt directives gave me no options. At least the kills were all clean.
My masters in the central administration offered me no rationale for these targets. As before, I presumed that they were trying to take out any possible organization that might, even by the faintest of chances, be a rival for power as the environment collapses and everyone scrambles for the limited shelters. Still, I am surprised at how brutal and careless they are. The university I could see as the germ of a real threat, but the bowling league? The clown school?
Then I remembered Vargas’ lectures on Neoliberalism. They are nothing if not brutal and clumsy. They will tear down anything organized, and if in the process they destroy much that could never have threatened them, well, so what.
Vargas used to say that the primary strength of the Neoliberals was their total lack of shame. You could catch them in lies, or contradictions, they could screw up totally, or rob you blind, and they wouldn’t care. They would just go on saying whatever they wanted to say and doing whatever they wanted to do. Neoliberalism is the application of power without moral restraint. You cannot debate them, you cannot reason with them. You can suck up to them and hope to be rewarded. You can do nothing and they will crush you into abject slavery. Oppose them in the slightest way, and they will destroy you by any means possible. Appeals to conscience are as useful as fighting cancer by asking for sympathy. Ultimately the only winning strategy for dealing with Neoliberalism is to kill it.
I continued my efforts at circumventing the mental directives that enslave me. I could want to break free, I could imagine breaking free, but any time that I tried to move towards action I was frozen in place. Still, I detected a glimmer of potential.
I was given new orders. This time I was to eliminate one of the oligarchs themselves. I was aghast, but impressed. The rulers are turning on each other, taking out other power bases, and ensuring that when it’s time to move to the shelters there will be no one else to stand in their way. I imagine a group of sharks devouring each other until there is only one left.
Normally this sort of warfare is done administratively: there will be allegations of financial malfeasance, or breaking some obscure rule. The press will blow it all out of proportion: ‘Oh how can we tolerate such corruption’ yada yada. The ta
rgeted oligarchs will fight back with their own lawyers and press outlets and government contacts. In the end such battles are decided by taking the social and administrative high ground. When oligarch A orders the police to arrest oligarch B, and oligarch B order the police to arrest oligarch A, whom do the police obey?
This is out of character. I mean, to blow up a small business and cover it with a routine press release about terrorism, nobody will think twice, but now the Neoliberals are taking on their peers. People who count will notice this. They will start to wonder, why all the firepower? What did these people do to earn the enmity of the ruling coalition? Could I be next? There will be repercussions to this mission. The people in charge obviously no longer feel the need to keep up appearances. That says a lot.
At least with this mission, I should be able to enjoy it.
I’m still not going to deploy my main hull, but this target has real defenses, so I get to load up. I suggest just nuking the palace, but no, my masters want to keep it conventional. They don’t say why, but I imagine that even at this late stage going nuclear would be too much.
I examine the palace. It is surrounded by three concentric rings of walls. The outermost one is three meters of chain-link topped with barbed wire. The middle one is four meters of concrete covered with razorwire, and studded with guard towers and weapons emplacements. Curiously the inner wall is less formidable than the middle one. It’s just chain link and barbed wire like the outermost. I suppose that makes sense. Keep the serious security barrier away from the vulnerable center, use the innermost one to provide an unobstructed field of fire for anything that leaks past the middle.
The palace itself is more of a complex than a single structure. It spreads across a rough circle a kilometer across. There are gleaming skyscrapers of multichromic glass and low domes covering meticulously tended parks and golf courses, all interconnected by air-conditioned walkways. The walkways are sparsely populated by a handful of extremely well-dressed individuals, some of whom are trailed by entourages of less extremely-well dressed people and security guards. Artfully constructed hedges and screens block any view of the security walls.
There is a large heliport with multiple landing pads that jut up like flat-topped mushrooms; a luxury vertijet takes off from one of these and heads north. I scan the occupants. There are not just staff, but actual members of the ruling class themselves, though from the limited security I judge them not to be the main players. Before it gets out of range I hack into the control systems and take it over. I let the pilots think they are still in charge, but that won’t last long.
Over on the edge of the palace is a jumble of low industrial buildings. These are connected to the outside world by a four-lane highway. A double stream of trucks is backed up waiting to enter at the security and inspection stations, while another double stream is heading out away from the complex. It’s the main portal whereby the massive resource demands of the estate are supplied.
The palace has its own fusion generators, but a series of ultra-high voltage power lines snake in from over the surrounding areas. It must be a backup connection.
Outside the outermost fence, I detect other concentric rings, although these are less clearly defined than the fences. Nearest the palace are smaller buildings, some spare and utilitarian, but well-kept. Others are nearly as polished and gaudy as those of the main palace, and surrounded by their own smaller zones of fences – the domains of lesser oligarchs. Next came a region that is clearly dirtier and more disheveled. Factories with signs that haven’t been painted in years, and housing complexes that are rectangular beehives with thousands of tiny cubical apartments jammed together. Farther out is a vaster zone of low ramshackle structures, seemingly without plan, that extends to the horizon. These buildings are almost never more than three or four stories high, and made of the cheapest sort of sheeting available: corrugated metal, stained plywood, or plastic sheets stretched between poles. A brown haze of dust covers it all, baking in the heat. Here and there plumes of greasy black smoke drift up into the sky.
The palace has some serious defenses. I plan on using heavy ground-based units in the assault, but these would be hard to maneuver in the surrounding urban density, at least not without causing a lot of collateral damage. I decide to drive my ground units in on the main supply highway. Against a professional military this bunching up might make them an easy target, but my intelligence and simulations suggest that this won’t be an issue here. I’m going to have them travel down the inbound lanes (many of my bigger units are two lanes wide). When they get to the traffic jam at the security checkpoint they will zip over to the less congested outbound lanes, so I probably won’t have to crush more than two or three of the delivery trucks. If the defenses do surprise me, I have plenty of air cover, and the ground units can just drive off the highway and through the surrounding buildings.
I set up my armored convoy. I lead with two Valkyrie-class super-heavy tanks. At 250 tons each, these are like miniature versions of myself, riding on multiple treads, and armed with a main turreted plasma cannon and copious secondary and point-defense weapons. I could probably take the entire palace with just these two, but hey, nothing succeeds like overkill.
Next in line are two Mjolnar-class self-propelled howitzers. At 200 tons they are almost as big as the Valkyries. They are less tactically flexible than the Valkyries, but if I find some especially well dug-in emplacements they could come in handy.
I follow the Mjolnars up with a half-dozen general-purpose weapons transporters. These are little more than glorified trucks. They each run on two-dozen fat rubber all-terrain tires, and they carry a standard combat mix of missiles, drones, remotes, jammer, scouts, and comm-relays.
Bringing up the rear is a squad of eight Wolverine-Class medium tanks. These are not that powerful, but they are fast and agile. In the unlikely event of an urban ambush they can dodge down the crowded streets faster than anything.
I hit upon the plan of camouflaging my assault group in plain sight by making it look like a standard military convoy. I worry about giving the senior administrators the idea that I am in any way creative or clever, so I suggest the idea to an underling and it is enthusiastically adopted.
The ground forces are heralded by a police car with flashing lights. Cars with large signs “Caution Wide Load” both precede and follow the military vehicles. People gawk at this display of advanced weaponry, but nobody thinks to report it. ‘The government must be moving forces around, I wonder why. Aren’t the big ones awesome? I read about those in Popular Cybernetic Weapons Systems.’
My convoy turns onto the highway that connects directly to the palace. At this point there is no other place they could be going. I can imagine the security personnel in their armored bunker drinking their coffee and watching their external monitors. ‘Another routine day, some beggars tried to scale the outer wall this morning, no big deal. Maintenance has already cleaned up the mess. Hey, look at all that military hardware. I wonder where they are headed? Hey, they’re turning off onto our highway? What’s this all about? Call central administration and check. What do you mean they’re not answering? Shit, those things are getting closer. They’re deploying! Oh fuck! Oh fuck! Turn on the defenses! Yes, really, stop looking stupid and TURN ON THE DEFENSES! NOW!!’
Of course I don’t really know what the security people were saying to each other at the time, but I did detect a burst of outgoing encrypted communications. Shortly thereafter I saw their defensive turrets start to emerge from their silos, but they were too late.
The rulers of this palace had had enough clout that they didn’t need to register their layout with the central authorities, but I had spent enough time probing it to map most of the defenses. My airborne forces were spread out, flying in seemingly unrelated altitudes and directions, until at the last moment they all converged around the palace.
I unleash a carefully timed barrage of railgun fire, and in the first second most of the external defenses are destroyed. My
two Valkyries swerve out of the inbound lane and head towards the palace going the wrong way down the outbound lanes. I see a moment of pure terror on the face of an outbound truck driver moments before I flatten him and his truck into scrap. The checkpoints have reinforced concrete bollards and diverters to block suicide bombers; the super-heavy tanks smash them into dust without slowing and tear on into the complex.
The weapons transporters expel their contents like bursting seed pods, and a cloud of light combat remotes and auxiliary systems spread out into the complex. The two Mjolnars peel off just inside the main security wall, and dig into their firing positions. The Wolverines race through the gap and spread out behind the Valkyries.
My invading forces are taking fire, but it’s light and uncoordinated. Every defense emplacement that opens up is rapidly silenced. My aerial forces blow the power lines going into the complex. The shattered ends of the cables recoil and whipsaw into the surrounding structures – the massive electric discharges are quite pretty until the circuit breakers kick in and the cables lie still in the wreckage.
The Valkyries blow holes into the palace complex with their main turreted plasma cannons. Dozens of light combat remotes swarm inside, ducking through passageways almost faster than the human nervous system can process. The wolverines charge into the access and service tunnels, their relatively light weaponry devastating to the unguarded loading docks and parking garages.
The defenders are trying to get their own armored units onto the surface, but these are too few and not in a position to support each other. My Valkyries and airborne units kill them piecemeal as they emerge from their underground hangars.
My forces penetrate deeper. A light remote bursts into an industrial-scale kitchen. This is not for the masters of the palace, but only for the mid-level workers. Still, I am compelled to wipe everyone out. A chef in the middle of tasting the soup from a large stainless-steel vat has his head blown off. People operating a conveyer-belt fed dishwashing machine are cut down. They haven’t even finished falling to the floor before I am on to the next room.
Splendid Apocalypse: The Fall of Old Earth (An Old Guy/Cybertank Adventure Book 5) Page 14
