Trail of Evil

by Travis S. Taylor

  Madam President, Scotty interrupted her.

  Yes, Scotty?

  Ma’am, the chief of staff says she needs to speak with you immediately, and the Secret Service is with her.

  Okay, send them in.

  A woman and three men entered her Oval Office. The men were wearing standard body armor suits and carrying firearms. The woman was dressed in business attire.

  “What can I do for you, Maria?” Sienna asked her Chief of Staff. The damned clones were all so emotionless and robotic. Sometimes, Sienna had wished she had just built mechanical hosts for the AICs, but Copernicus had insisted they be humanoid due to the more susceptible and compatible quantum “wet” brain characteristics.

  “Madam President, good day. We are receiving an unencrypted signal from approximately six hundred thousand kilometers in space radially outward from the sun. The beam is so tightly controlled that it is only incident on the White House. It is addressed to you.” The chief of staff spoke completely devoid of any emotion whatsoever.

  “Is that right?” Madira asked. “Then let us hear it.”

  “As you wish, ma’am.” Maria nodded her head slightly to the guards and looked back to Madira. “Do you wish to hear it in private?”

  “No need, dear. I’ve got nothing to hide from you.”

  Hell, I can control their thoughts if I need to. I certainly don’t have to hide from them.

  Yes, ma’am, her AIC agreed.

  “Let’s hear it now.”

  “Very well, Madam President,” Maria said. Then an audio message started playing over the room’s sound system.

  “Hello, mother,” the voice started. “It is me, Sehera. I have been searching the stars with my husband, General Alexander Moore, and my daughter, Major Deanna Moore, and many of our friends for remains of the Separatist movement. Along the way we have found clues that have led us here and to you. While I have no way of knowing if you are the Sienna Madira of Earth, and my mother, the evidence does point in the direction that you are at least somehow connected to my mother, even if you are not her.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned. Moore found me,” Madira said out loud.

  “Ma’am?” Maria asked.

  “Oh, hush, dear, and let me listen.” Madira waved her hand at the clone and continued to listen to the message.

  “We are here with a fairly substantial force, but we wish to talk, not to fight. We have also been watching you for some time now. We know about the alien Copernicus and the impending invasion from the Chiata Expanse. Mother, please come to us at the coordinates imbedded in this signal and discuss in detail what our next steps either together or apart will be. We would very much like to speak with you in private.”

  The message paused briefly and then started to repeat.

  “Okay, turn it off.” Sienna stood and looked around the room. “Maria, get me the SecDef in here now.”

  “Yes, ma’am. He is waiting outside presently.”

  “Well, don’t just sit there, girl. Send him in.” Madira felt antsy. What should she do? She could always just teleport out to them, but she would be unprotected. Of course, she could always snap back too. That is, unless Moore used a dampening field to keep her there.

  “Madam President?” her secretary of defense entered the office. They all spoke so damned emotionlessly. It had taken her years to get used to that. “I gather you have heard the signal and are contemplating your next move?”

  “Your thoughts, Sam?” she asked the clone.

  “Well, ma’am, my biggest concern is that they claim to have been watching us for some time now and we have had no knowledge of this. Also, our sensors are not picking up any ships in the system that are unaccounted for. That said, this signal is coming from exactly where they say it is.”

  “Alright, then, it is settled. Prepare my shuttle. I want to be wheels up in less than ten minutes.” Sienna thought for a moment. “Wait, make that twenty. I want to change my attire.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the clones said in unison as they flurried out the door.

  The Archangels sat in their mecha in the hangar bay. Each mecha was neatly stored in its own maintenance alcove. The invention of the mecha QMT system had forever changed the combat deployment procedures for pilots. DeathRay used to love the way the fighters would systematically hover out to the catapult and be thrown like mad projectiles out the back of the carrier into the shit. DeathRay had long developed his own ritual with mission deployment. But those days were no more. Nowadays, mecha jocks sat in their planes ready to go, and when the mission time was right for them to be deployed, they would be QMTed directly from the ship into the shit or some tactically and strategically advantageous position near the shit.

  At the moment, every pilot in the Madira II’s flight wing was sitting tight and ready to fight.

  “Alright, Archangels, all is quiet right now, but we’ve got no idea when that might change. Keep your standard attack playbooks loaded and listen for my audibles if we need to change them.” DeathRay obsessively checked that his universal data port cable between his suit and the Gnat-T’s computer console were locked in. Then he checked it again. He ran through the wireless connectivity and then he double-checked his weapons list. Then he brought up the playbook in his DTM battlescape view. All the Archangels showed up as stationary blue dots. Jack was beginning to wonder if they were ever going to get the show on the road and then the call came.

  “Archangels, this is QMT tower,” came the operator AIC over the tac-net.

  “Archangel One, go, tower,” DeathRay responded. He adjusted his weight in the flight couch and gripped the HOTAS stick with his right hand and gently placed his fingers on the throttle on the left.

  “DeathRay, the Archangels are go for rapid calm, repeat, rapid calm, deployment in five, four, three, two, one,” the tower AIC announced. And then the world flashed and buzzed and sizzled and DeathRay and the rest of his squadron were deployed, the squadron in a tight V formation about him. “Rapid calm” meant there were no immediate hostiles in the area and his DTM mindview backed that up.

  “Moore to DeathRay.”

  “DeathRay here. Go, General.” DeathRay checked his right three-nine line to make certain Apple One was right where she was supposed to be. Of course she was.

  “DeathRay, we have a dignitary guest approaching our current vector,” Moore’s voice said. “You and your wingman are to escort the shuttle to the aft hangar bay and then accompany the dignitary to the captain’s lounge. Copy?”

  “Roger that, General Moore. I’ve got the shuttle on the tracker now.” DeathRay could see the red dot approaching their location in his mindview. He looked out in the general direction for a glint, but with the star at the shuttle’s back, he couldn’t make it out yet.

  “Moore out.”

  “Alright, Archangels, we are on escort duty. Lock on to the red dot and let’s follow the bouncing ball,” he told his squad. “Apple One, stay on me and we’ll take the lead.”

  “Roger that, DeathRay,” Apple One replied.

  “DeathRay to Fish.”

  “Fish. Go, DeathRay!”

  “Fish, Apple One and I are going to take this bird on into the hangar bay. We’ll be there for a while. You’ll have the angels at that point. Copy?”

  “Copy that, DeathRay.”

  “Alright, Archangels, I don’t see any signs of trouble, but that don’t mean there ain’t any coming. Stay frosty and keep your eyeballs open.” Jack laid out an intercept track to the incoming shuttle. The QMs and radar picked up the shuttle just fine. He pitched his snub-nosed fighter over about fifteen degrees and banked left and made a beeline for their target. “Apple One, stay loose on me just in case there is a shakeup. I don’t want us bumping into one another.”

  “Roger that, DeathRay.” DeathRay could see her blue dot giving him a little space.

  Candis, you got anything out of the ordinary? Jack thought to his AIC.

  Negative, Captain, the AIC replied.

 
Private channel to Nancy. DeathRay thought he’d check in with her and see if her super AIC had come up with anything to worry about. It was nice to have such contacts to fall back on.

  Channel is open.

  “Nancy, you getting any weirdness out there?”

  “Well, nothing other than a system full of deadpan faces and rampant activity. No. The entire system reminds me of an ant colony,” Nancy replied.

  “Let me know if you get anything.”

  “Will do. Jack. Be careful,” his wife told him.

  “DeathRay, you seeing the shuttle yet?” Apple One said on the pilot tac-net. “I’ve got multiple glints surrounding the location of the red dot, but only one dot. We’re being jammed.”

  “Roger that, Apple One. I say right back at ’em.” DeathRay had suspected that, even though they had the Buckley-Freeman Switch, they would still be jammed by the bots and the equipment in this system. They had been jammed for years by the random quantum field generators Elle Ahmi had been implementing. Why would he expect anything different now? At least now, they could jam the enemy right back.

  “Tit for tat is what I always say,” Dee replied.

  “When have you ever said that in your life, Apple One?” USN Lieutenant Commander Song “TigerLady” Davis laughed.

  “DeathRay, Madira!”

  “DeathRay here. Go, Madira.”

  “Be advised of multiple bogies verified eyeball, not on sensors. Copy?” the Air Boss’ voice warned him.

  “Roger that, Madira.” DeathRay could barely make out some definition on the glints now. But they clearly had wings and tails. The shuttle had a mecha escort.

  Jack, by the inertial movements of the six glints I calculate a very high probability that they are Seppy Stingers, Candis informed him.

  I was guessing that, Jack replied.

  “Be alert but stay frosty, Archangels. Those are likely Stingers out there. We’re not here to engage. We are here to escort them to the Madira.”

  Deanna stayed loose on DeathRay’s wing as they led the shuttle and the six Stingers to the aft hangar bay of the Madira. She scanned the fighters with every sensor she could think of, but could not detect them other than with her eyeballs. Jack had warned her that the same thing had happened on several different engagements. It usually took a few minutes for the AICs to link to the visual information coming into the pilots’ brains to create a DTM Red force detection and tracking algorithm. Fortunately for them, the Seppies, and later the bots, had never learned how to jam the human eyeball and brain combination.

  Dee ventured as close to the enemy Stingers as she could and noticed that they had human pilots. Well, at least they looked human. The enemy mecha looked just like the mecha they had found aboard the fleet. The Stingers out here looked just like the Stingers on deck on the fleet ships. Dee guessed that there were Gnats with similar paint jobs as well. The only difference in paint jobs were the pilot designations painted near the cockpits, which the enemy didn’t have. And the fleet’s Flight Wing squadrons each had their own symbols painted on the tailfins.

  “Tower Madira, Apple One on final approach,” Dee called over the landing net.

  “Roger that, Apple One. Clear for final. Call the ball.”

  “Apple One. Affirmative. The ball is green.” The tracking and alignment target in her DTM turned from a red to a yellow, then a green ball in her directional gyroscope. She brought the mecha in softly alongside the shuttle. DeathRay and the other six mecha were scattered about in a loose formation. They all touched down and were taken over by the taxi hoverfield.

  “Apple One is in taxi.”

  Dee toggled the canopy and it started to rise slowly as she taxied into the aft hangar parking zone alongside the other vehicles. She disconnected the UDP cable and the other harnesses. Before the vehicle came to a complete stop she stood and crawled out of the pilot’s couch and then leapt from the empennage to the deck with a thud.

  “What’s our play, DeathRay?” she asked Jack as he approached her from the other side of his mecha. The two of them popped their helmets and tethered them over their shoulders.

  “Simple. We keep our mouths shut until we get to the lounge. No small talk, Dee, no matter how much you want to. Your father’s orders.”

  The two of them stood flank on the either side of the shuttle’s ramp. The hatch cycled with a hiss and the ramp lowered to the ground. The pilots of the Stingers had stayed in their mecha. Dee wondered why. As the ramp lowered to the deck, a woman who looked just like Deanna and Sehera moore, except for a white stripe through her bangs, stood looking back at them.

  “My God, look at you. I was hoping to see you, my dear. But I had no idea you were a mecha jock!” Sienna Madira said. “My, you’ve grown since the last time I saw you.”

  She was talking to Dee. The fact that she claimed to be the woman who had met Dee before was intriguing. Dee thought that she looked like the woman who had held her captive on New Tharsis all those years ago.

  “Ma’am. Please follow us,” DeathRay told her.

  “Very well, Captain, uh, Boland, is it?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Please follow us. I hope you don’t mind, but we’ll have to place a security detail on your shuttle and your mecha until you return.”

  “It will be fine, Captain Boland. I have no intention of causing a ruckus, son.”

  Chapter 36

  December 6, 2406 AD

  61 Ursae Majoris

  31 Light-years from the Sol System

  Tuesday, 1:55 PM, Expeditionary Mission Standard Time

  “As it stands right now, I have no intention of causing a ruckus.” Alexander stood at the end of the table in the captain’s lounge. He was still wearing his AEM suit and had the helmet tethered over the shoulder. All of them were in armor except for Madira, who was dressed in designer-style business attire. Somehow, she made Alexander feel underdressed. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t if pushed.”

  “Hah, you came here all armored up, not me,” Madira told him. “Certainly looks like you’re looking for a fight. You always were. That part I could count on every time, son.”

  “Is it really you, mother,” Sehera asked. She clanked closer to her and studied her like a specimen under a microscope. “The last time we saw you, you, uh . . .”

  “Oh, that,” Madira said with a frown. “I’m sorry I had to put you through that, dear. But the last time you really saw me was in the Oval Office. What you encountered at my hideout was a clone being controlled by Copernicus. It was all part of the plan to allow you to end the war and pull humanity back together. It had to be done.”

  “Mother, why?” Sehera gasped. “Why would you put us through that? Why would you cause so much death and destruction?”

  “Stop right there, girl.” Sienna Madira held up her hand as if to shush her daughter. She then pulled a lock of her white-streaked bangs and tucked it behind her ear. Alexander watched cautiously but held quiet. There was no telling where this was going and for now he wanted to let it play itself out.

  “It is very complicated,” Madira continued. “Sehera, my child, I was faced with a conundrum almost two centuries ago. A creature from somewhere across the galaxy spoke into my mind and warned me that humanity would soon be overrun and destroyed if we didn’t take steps to evacuate the entire population. I was told that humanity could not defend itself and that our only choice for survival was to give over the systems we were currently on and tuck tail and run away.”

  “We know all of this, Mother. Alexander found the files in your presidential archive. And Nancy recorded your recent conversation with Copernicus,” Sehera interrupted her. Alexander liked the startled look on Madira’s face when she realized they had been close enough to her to record her conversations with the alien. On the other hand, he wasn’t entirely sure if she was truly startled or just impressed.

  “We didn’t know what the entity had told you until a few days ago, but now we understand that part,” Alexander added. “We have a pretty
good idea of what you have been up to. Or at least why.”

  “Well, I figured you would figure it out. You always were the clever Marine,” Madira said to Alexander. “But imagine if this would have happened to you. There was no way I could tell this to anybody. I couldn’t prove it. They would think I was nuts! Then, the only hope humanity had would be locked away and medicated in some insane asylum somewhere. Or at the minimum they would have pulled Copernicus out of my head, which would have ended my communications with him. The end result would have been the total loss of humanity. I could only assume that the alien wasn’t bluffing. I had no choice but to do just what I did.”

  “But why the murders and wars and all of these robot death factories scattered about the galaxy and all of the clones in this system?” Deanna asked. “You were president. Couldn’t you just do what needed to be done the legal way, without killing so many people?”

  “Sweetheart, you are young and will someday realize that politics is a quagmire. I’m sure your father can tell you all about it.” Sienna Madira sat down and leaned back in one of the chairs at the table. “I had to make humanity tougher, grittier, and stronger if we were to survive what is coming. Can we get some coffee or something? What kind of diplomacy is this? Never mind, I didn’t expect any.”

  “I sent the chief of staff for some refreshments,” Moore said. “They’ll be here soon. Please continue. You were about to justify how you killed and destroyed hundreds of thousands of lives.”

  “Well, son, I can only justify it if it works. And even then I plan to spend a long time burning in hell for what I’ve done. But what I did do was spark a serious growth in military technology and might. In the civil war I created two very large armies and space navies that would eventually come back together. And don’t forget, the taxation and land grabs and unfair policies from one colony to another one were already going on before I meddled with the system. There is no doubt that a civil war was bound to happen. Had it been allowed to happen on its own, the might of humanity would have been splintered into pieces across our little tiny piece of the galaxy. But my war caused multiple outposts to be built. It enabled me to proliferate the QMT technology across the galaxy a little farther. It allowed me to build a line between us and the oncoming invasion. And, it also allowed me to emplace a backdoor if we had to have it. The most important result is a unified, tougher humanity.”