Countdown Amageddon (The Spiral Slayers Book 2)

by Rusty Williamson

  Lithe was looking at him, “It will take you at least an hour to read through that. Want to just kick back and get started?”

  Whitehall nodded.

  “More coffee?”

  “Yes, please,” then he settled back and dug in.

  A little over an hour later, Whitehall sat staring off into the distance. His eyes burned with an inner fire and his mind raced for…the world had just changed.

  Everything! This was everything! He could tear the government down with this. Wicker might even have to resign…maybe. If done right.

  He immediately realized that he himself would need to seem completely unconnected to this. Someone else…he’d need someone else to do this. Someone special…they would have to think it was their idea.

  However, there was a big problem. Neither the good Dr. Lithe nor Alex the AI had Red Raven Security clearance. This report was based on incomplete and, in some cases, false information. If these corrections were made, would the program reach the same conclusions? Right now, what it said was absolutely shocking—the human race was being had. The human race was being screwed. He returned to the first page…it said that its conclusions were 68 percent certain.

  Whitehall was pulled back to the present by the sound of a door opening. “General Whitehall,” Lithe said, “what do you think?”

  Whitehall put on a poker face and said, “Interesting, but you have a lot of missing and, in some cases, incorrect information. Can we make some changes and run the program again?”

  At first Lithe didn’t get it. “I assure you all the input data has been verified…what do you mean by missing…incorrect…”

  Whitehall held up a hand, “Dr., you do not have the security clearance I have…”

  Lithe’s eyes widened as understanding came.

  Whitehall outlined the needed changes.

  “The fucking ship is on its way here!” Lithe hollered.

  “No…or rather, we don’t know that, but it needs to be one of the assumptions.”

  “Oh.”

  “How long will it take to redo?”

  “It’ll take just minutes to make the changes, but about two hours to run.”

  “Two hours?”

  “It takes everything into consideration to see what is related.”

  “All right, can we do this now?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Two hours later, Happenings came to the same conclusions, only this time instead of 68 percent likelihood, it came back with a 92 percent likelihood.

  Whitehall knew the basics of what he needed now. He needed someone with money, someone with credibility, someone with a fire in his or her belly and someone who loved causes, and finally, someone who had a mistrust of the government and/or the Loud.

  Well, he thought, there was really only one person and he fit the bill perfectly. De Bella had known and hated him but now, as General Whitehall, so many things had changed including his hatred for one of his most feared enemies, Dr. Alex Radford.

  Now he needed to befriend Radford. He needed to subtlety plant some ideas, allow those ideas to germinate and then, he sees some of the Happenings program’s report. It would all fall together perfectly.

  ---

  Near the gas giant Aster…

  Admiral Adamarus looked out over the large bridge of the Menace and then through the front viewport. She was a Leviathan Two Class Battleship and in the final phases of testing the low and mid-yield grav-bombs.

  Off the port beam forty-seven miles away was the Loud Umbrella ship that had been working with the Menace. Two hundred miles astern was the carrier class ship Axel. The three ships had been together in orbit around the gas giant Aster for ten months now.

  This had been a working vacation for Adamarus and it had been kind of fun. He and Grace had occupied the ship’s Ambassador’s Suite which sported a fireplace, entertainment center, gym, pool and a hot tub. It was incredible. And, of course, Nero was there as well.

  Adamarus smiled—just two more months and both he and Grace would depart for a real vacation. While they did nothing but enjoy themselves for two years—first, at the famous resort on Serena-7 (before the moon was vaporized) and then touring the star system—the R&D department, working with the Loud, would develop the next generation of weapons. After the two-year vacation, once again, he and Nero would be working together to test this next generation. Adamarus was looking forward to all of it.

  Sixty-four thousand miles dead ahead of the Menace was Aster’s second largest moon, Loran, which measured 2,732 miles in diameter. Loran was today’s target and the largest moon targeted to date. It was a dirty white snowball. They could only target the ice moons for now as the rock moons were still being mined.

  The night/day terminus cut the moon in half. Beyond Loran, Aster’s cloud-banded sphere took up 70% of the viewport. Like Loran, the gas giant was half sun lit and half dark. The dark side of the gas giant was much more interesting as the dark cloud formations were regularly lit by flashes from lightning bolts whose width sometimes equaled that of Amular.

  Although Adamarus was the ranking officer, he worked through the ship’s real master, her captain. Adamarus sat in the ‘Admiral’s Chair’ which was to the right of the captain’s seat and he smiled over at the Menace’s captain, “Want to do the honors?”

  Captain Nero Maximus smiled back at his father. “In case something goes wrong, you can blame it on me?” Nero was 32 years old now and his father’s pride and joy. Like most of the humans, he had seemed to stopped aging around 30.

  Nero had graduated from the Navy’s Officer Candidate School, then Flight School, both at the top of his class and made Captain at the young age of 24, making him the youngest Captain in the fleet. At 27, he had gotten the Menace and last year had become a squad leader commanding six Leviathan Two Class Battleships. Nero’s squadron was scattered around Aster, as well as Serena, testing the current generation of weapons.

  “Well, Captain Maximus, in all truth, I’m not sure you can hit it,” Adamarus joked.

  “That so, Admiral?” Nero asked with a grin. He turned to the weapon’s control section. “Weapons, kindly lock grav-bomb missile seventeen on the Loran moon.”

  “Locked and ready to fire, Captain,” the Weapon’s Section Chief said.

  Nero got up and walked forward. Adamarus joined him and they both paused in front of the viewport. “Check that safety filters are on for all bridge viewports,” Nero ordered.

  Adamarus looked over at him. “Wimp,” he whispered.

  Nero just shook his head, smiling, “Fire.”

  The missile shot out from the right-hand side of the view screen and quickly vanished. It would take about a minute to reach the moon and would be the highest yield grav-bomb tested in-system to date.

  It was the First Officer’s job to ‘count it out’ and so he did. “Impact in 30 seconds.” The bridge crew waited, relaxed, used to the routine...“Impact in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1…”

  All three viewports went white. And they stayed that way. Adamarus frowned. This was not right.

  Nero turned to look at Adamarus, also realizing that the explosion was too large. “Uh oh,” he said. “Maximum shielding and integrity fields,” he yelled.

  “Full reverse,” Adamarus hollered at the same time as his son.

  The windows had cleared and now they could see a white fireball where the moon had been. The fireball was at least ten times the size of the moon and expanding quickly.

  “Brace for impact,” Nero called out as both he and his father ran back and took their seats, which immediately folded around them. The ship was shaking now as the engines strained to back her away from the expanding fireball. It was no good, the white ball would overtake them in seconds.

  Adamarus gave Nero a look.

  His son nodded. “Armor up,” he yelled.

  Immediately the entire bridge began shooting downward into the mammoth armored keel below. The bridge viewports switched seamlessly from direct view to camera view.


  The white fireball was beginning to fade and become transparent. It was filled with debris from the moon. Some of the ice chunks were the size of mountains.

  The blast wave hit the ship with an immense force, causing the ship to nose upward and to the left. The energy wave broke through the magnetic shielding, causing power spikes that overloaded half a dozen consoles. One of the environmental stations erupted in sparks and caught fire, causing minor burns to two of the crew.

  Then the energy wave passed.

  “Damage control,” Nero called out, “Report.”

  As it turned out, damage to the Menace was minor. The Loud ship had jumped away and was undamaged…as was the Axel which was far enough away. Bugs came on the ship-to-ship viewer. “Are you okay?” it asked.

  “We’re okay, Bugs,” Adamarus replied. “What happened?”

  Bugs didn’t answer for a second then said, “A bug,” and did a fair imitation of a shrug. “We’re looking into it.”

  Nero looked over at his father. “Did it just say it screwed up?”

  “I guess no one’s perfect,” Adamarus replied.

  ---

  Amular, City of Snow Summit…

  Dr. Alex Clinton Radford started working on what would come to be called the Radford Revolution three months after Whitehall indirectly got bits and pieces of the analysis from the Happenings program to him. Radford was quick to put two and two together and, as Whitehall had hoped, believed it was all his idea.

  Radford quietly started talking to people he could trust to keep the world shattering news secret.

  His views were powerful, and making them even more dangerous was the fact that Radford was completely sincere in his beliefs. Indeed, his point of view was incredibly sensible given all the facts—all the pieces fell into place. What’s more, his presentation was brilliant and very persuasive. It simply all made perfect sense.

  Amular was being had. Amular was being conned by the Loud.

  Truly outraged with the scam he believed the Loud were pulling on Amular and, with either the gullibility of the government or its corruption and cover up, he made foiling the Loud’s con game his personal crusade and he had the money and determination to carry it out.

  With the help of the billions of credits he had inherited from his manufacturing tycoon father, he organized and began training a group made up of college professors, scientists—some quite prestigious—and literally hundreds of college students.

  He perfected his message and the delivery systems to get it out.

  Afraid the Loud and very possibly the government would do anything to stop the truth from coming out, he did two things. First, he went to extremes to do everything in complete secrecy, and he succeeded—no one had a clue his efforts were underway.

  Second, he enlisted Dan Webber, an old friend and ex-marine officer, who feverishly believed in Radford’s views and objectives. Webber was a remarkable person; he was an extraordinary leader who knew how to train men and carry out covert operations.

  Radford gave Webber fifty million credits and asked him to assemble, outfit and train a small elite army that Radford could hold in reserve and, if needed, use at a moment’s notice. They called it Striker One.

  Webber converted the ice caves below Dark Mountain as their home base. An additional billion credits would be placed in various accounts to cover ongoing operational costs as well as any additional gear Webber thought was needed.

  This force would provide protection for Radford and the movement’s top people. Webber would be secretly reporting directly to a friend of Radford’s who was high up in the military…a General Whitehall.

  Finally, after more months of hectic round-the-clock work, Dr. Alex Radford was ready to go. He scheduled the launch date and his teams began moving out to all the major cities with everything they would need.

  Then, at last, the day was upon them…tomorrow it would start.

  However, that was when something completely unexpected happened.

  ---

  Amular, the Capital City of Axis…

  Half a century after President James Olson Wicker told the population of Amular and its space settlements about the destruction of the Loud’s world and sun by a hostile and unknown alien force, the other foot unexpectedly fell like a hammer. And, unknown to the president or his government, Dr. Alex Radford was in just the right place, at just the right time, to align the spike of revolution beneath that hammer.

  It started when a Mr. Taylor Teal—the CEO of the Amular Herald, the star system’s second largest newspaper, video news program and online news source—through trusted intermediates, made Lt. David W. Dunham, a former Tachyon scope operator, an offer he could not refuse. All the retired naval officer had to do to become a very rich man who would want for nothing the rest of his immortal life was to betray his oath to Amular’s Space Navy and government.

  Thus, Dunham leaked the biggest story since the arrival of the Loud: that the alien ship that had destroyed the Loud star system was and had been in route to Amular, coming at just below the speed of light and arriving in about 150 years.

  Of course, there were the scandalous as well as terrifying details. Like, the government knowing since the Loud’s early return and keeping the information secret, and that the alien ship was wrapped in a black hole the size of a small star system.

  Strangely enough, what saved Amular from complete chaos, panic and riots was the resistance movement that seemed to emerge overnight at the exact same moment—The Radford Revolution. Its slogan was, ‘It’s Not Our War!’ and it spread like a firestorm around the globe.

  ---

  Amular, Snow Summit…

  The next morning, Dr. Alex Radford woke up filled with excitement in anticipation of launching his crusade.

  He had turned his mountain lodge into a state-of-the-art command and communication center. In only a few hours, thousands of letters would go out, and a day later, the Loud’s con would be exposed.

  He threw on a robe and walked outside, his slippers crunching in the new fallen snow. Large flakes were pouring from the sky—visibility was down to 15 feet. He picked up the morning paper—a novelty he paid extra for—and began brushing off the snow and removing the plastic wrap while walking back. With a yawn, he opened the paper and the headline jumped out at him:

  ALIENS WHO DESTROYED

  LOUD ARE ON THEIR WAY HERE!

  He stopped dead in his tracks four feet from his front door, and with snow accumulating on his head and arms, he quickly read the article. Then he ran into the house, slamming the door behind him, and he started making calls.

  Radford had no idea what affect this earth-shattering news would have on his plans or his movement. Was this incredibly good timing or bad? He did not know. He had to have time to think. And he had to put everything on hold until he had that time to think.

  He knew the info-bomb that he planned was ready to launch. It wouldn’t explode until tomorrow morning, but once the info-bomb was released, once things were mailed or sent, there’d be no stopping it. Calling each major city, he said to every team leader, “Put everything on hold but keep everything ready. If I say ‘go’, be ready to start immediately. For now, sit tight and await further orders.”

  Next, he got on the network, reading everything he could find related to the Amular Herald’s bombshell story. Then he got on the com to every connection he had, getting any additional information he could.

  By noon, it was clear that the story was true and that, at the moment, the public was still in shock, as yet doing nothing. It was also clear that the public and media would soon explode with enormous force. His crusade would either be run over and crushed by that force or…his crusade could catch that force and channel all of its energy into forward momentum.

  It was then that he had the brilliant insight. With the alien ship on its way, the theory he was about to bombard everyone with…could be tested. And it was an easy test that the government could have no possible objections to.
No, this incredible news could do nothing but strengthen his revolution.

  He sent the following electronic message to all of his team leaders standing by in all of the major cities on Amular:

  “Go! Go! Go! Town meeting announcements, pamphlet distribution and media blitz to start immediately and, as planned, to continue through noon tomorrow. Town meetings to start at 1:00 p,m, tomorrow and to be held continuously as needed through the next day. Go! Go! Go!”

  He hit send, then fell back into the chair and closed his eyes. He took a slow deep breath. There was one thing he was sure of, that the news of the approaching alien ship should break on this day—of all days—was surely a sign and a very good sign. What else could it possibly be?

  The Radford Revolution would hit every major city the day after the Amular Herald ran the story of the approaching alien ship. The movement caught almost all of the energy that would have otherwise gone toward chaos, riots and looting.

  This turned out to be a fact that everyone was thankful for…ironically even the president.

  ---

  Amular, The Loud Compound at Hillcrest…

  That morning Jan laid a copy of the Amular Herald on Woodworth’s desk, the shocking headline jumping out at him. He and Jan, along with their aides, were at their headquarters for meetings with Leewood, Harrington and Bugs.

  At that time, the seemingly harmless stuff coming from Dr. Radford was just a small blip on the radar screen and only because of some minor spillover of Radford’s media blitz. The pamphlets that the movement distributed—by hand, by snail mail as well as electronic mail—the info-bomb—were carefully targeted at people who were not in government, the armed forces or law enforcement. Only some confusing hints had reached the government.

  The bombshell news leak that the alien was already on the way was the perfect distraction—the government was completely in the dark and had no idea of the scope of the revolution that was upon them.