Super World Two

by Lawrence Ambrose

  "It doesn't seem to be working out all that great for us, either," said First Navigator Andrea Wilkins.

  "What's happening on Earth, Pat?" Mallory asked.

  "20 ICBMs have just been launched from China, 115 from Russia. Russian submarines have surfaced on East and West coast and are launching multiple nuclear missiles. Russian bombers and conventional fighter jets are flying toward the United States. U.S. nuclear submarines are now launching counterstrikes against Russia and China, and U.S. stealth and conventional bombers are en route to those countries."

  The blinking purple light signaled an emergency message from Space Command.

  "Image on." Cameron spoke in a ragged half-whisper.

  President Tomlinson, flanked by the Secretary of Defense and General Akron and other presidential advisors loomed before them.

  "Commanders Cameron, Lindley, and Armstrong," said the President. "I'll get to the point since we can't be sure when or if this communication may be disrupted. As you may have noticed, we are now at war with China, Russia, and India, and are caught up in a full-scale nuclear exchange. Apparently, their intelligence discovered the true nature of our dispute with the Luminate, and they decided to ally themselves with the aliens. Unfortunately, our response to their missile and bombers have been strongly limited by the disabling or destruction of our surface power grid from the Luminate strike. We're still not sure what the nature the strike was, but it incapacitated us almost completely."

  "Our AI believes it involved some form of energy dampening field," said Cameron.

  "That would explain the thoroughness and depth of the effect, Madame President," said Jacob Kushner's voice off-camera.

  "Conditions in the National Underground Complex are dicey, as Dr. Kushner implied," said President Tomlinson. "Our own energy sources have been compromised, and this connection was established only through extraordinary measures." She set her jaw. "You haven't had contact with Jamie Shepherd and her people, Captain Cameron?"

  "No, Ma'am. But we've been kind of hard to pin down. We're in normal space and on full display now."

  "We aren't showing any link to the Ardent," said General Akron.

  "The Luminate got her." Horace Lindley was speaking.

  "They drop in and out of detection before we can target them," said Captain Armstrong."

  "Cowardly bastards," Lieutenant Mallory added.

  "Hopefully, Ms. Shepherd and her motley crew will make an appearance before it's too late," said President Tomlinson. "In the meantime, I am ordering Proteus launches against Moscow, Beijing, and New Delhi. Penetrating ground strikes, I am told, will destroy or monumentally compromise their capitals' underground bunkers. Let our antimatter weapons give their leaders a taste of their perfidy."

  "But their citizens committed no perfidy," said Keira. "Yet countless millions of them will die."

  "Along with the countless millions of our own citizens who are dying at this very moment." President Tomlinson's face gathered shadows in the suddenly flickering light. "My orders stand. I trust there won't be a rebellion this time."

  "No, Ma'am," said Commander Armstrong.

  A number of moments passed.

  "Captain Lindley?"

  Horace Lindley's heavy sigh reverberated through the Cheyenne's speakers. "I will follow your order, Madame President, may God or some more merciful deity forgive me."

  "May She forgive us all, Captain Lindley."

  The image dissolved, replaced by the former field of battle five hundred miles above the Earth where the USSC main star fleet still clustered above the skies, interspersed with shuttles filled with repair and medical crews.

  "Proteus missiles launched," Horace Lindley announced in a dead-sounding voice. "Zane, we can see your flashing lights, and we're nearly half a million miles from your position. Offering yourselves up as the goat to the Luminate tiger?"

  "We're giving Jamie Shepherd and her people a chance to find us," said Cameron. "You and Martin should make yourselves scarce until we do."

  "We'll be popping in and out of subliminal space for the next hour or two hoping that makes us a harder target. We'll catch up in the spaces between. Good luck, Zane."

  "You, too, Horse."

  Cameron slumped back in his chair, imagining the Proteus missiles streaming through space. Another care package – uncare package – in humanity's endless arsenal of self-destruction. He could have Pat light them up so they could track their approach, but why bother? The Russians or Chinese had a small chance of intercepting them. Very small, he thought. Proteus missiles, powered by the antimatter ion drive, traveled roughly four times the speed of a traditional ICBM – more than twice as fast as Russia's "lightning bolt nuke," the Topol-X2 – and would hit the atmosphere perpendicular to the target, effectively diving straight down on the targeted cities. Once the missiles hit the atmosphere, the enemy had only seconds to stop the descending 55,000 MPH fireball, protected by a carbyne shield. Time was running very short for the three enemy capitals.

  "Instead of fighting the Luminate together," Keira said in a soft groan, "we rip each other apart."

  "Such is the nature of the beast," Dan Mueller said with a sorrowful chuckle.

  The crew jerked in their seats when Jamie and her "Grand Forks Gang" materialized in the new DARPA teleport-carrier – but relief swiftly overpowered their surprise.

  "We had a little trouble finding you," said Jamie. She and the others rose from their seats. "We guessed you had to leave the area. We saw some ships shooting at each other and it looks like some big explosions are occurring on Earth, but were not sure what's happening."

  "The Russkies, Chinese, and Indians turned against us," said Mallory. "We're knee-deep in a nuclear exchange right now."

  "You're kidding." Jamie exchanged aghast looks with her people. "I thought they all agreed to fight the Luminate with us."

  "They apparently got wind of what we did to antagonize the Luminate," said Cameron. "We don't really know what they know, but it was enough to turn them against us in a big way."

  Jamie's mind was whirling. From her companions' expressions, their thoughts were spinning in her same orbit. She'd barely gotten accustomed to the idea of hostile aliens – or any kind of alien, really – and now she had to process a Dr. Strangelove end-of-the-world scenario.

  "I know it's a lot to take in, Jamie," said Cameron. "For all of us. But we need to put off the shock for now and take care of business. To put it simply, we need you and your crew outside this ship ready to teleport into the enemies' ships the instant they appear. Which could be any instant."

  "They've been playing cat and mouse with us," Mallory grunted. "Guess which one's the mouse."

  "Captain, a Luminate ship has just appeared. SC-1 initiated."

  Jamie wasted no time jumping into her husband's arms. "Go!"

  They reappeared outside the ship. Jamie pointed toward an unlit black object in the distance. Dennis nodded – and they were just outside the ship. A brief pause, and they plunged back inside a Luminate "water-world" – but a smaller version with fewer of the slug-like aliens. They materialized, and Jamie wasted no time in blasting a telekinetic shockwave out through the water with everything she had. She didn't want to see the destructive details but it was impossible not to glimpse the bodies shredding in mists of brown-red blood while wall control panels burst or imploded.

  They returned to N-Space and traveled the length of the ship, which was not much larger than the Cheyenne, soon arriving at what appeared to be the main control hub, which was badly shattered and oozing prongs of electricity or some other form of visible energy while Luminate bodies drifted through the water.

  "I think this ship is done," said Jamie. "Let's go back to the Cheyenne, but stay in N-Space." She hoped there was a ship to go back to.

  The Cheyenne wasn't anywhere nearby, which Jamie thought was probably a good thing. Now that Dennis had been in it, he was linked, so in the space of a breath they were materializing back inside the ship.


  "It's done," said Jamie to Captain Cameron's cocked brow.

  Kylee ran up and hugged her mom and dad. "You should've taken me!"

  "Didn't think we had time, honey." Jamie mussed her hair.

  "I appreciate your fast reaction," said Captain Cameron. "Even so, we thought you might be too late. They fired one of their 'star' weapons, but it flashed by instead of hitting us."

  "Possibly it required ship guidance, which Jamie disrupted," Dan Mueller said. "Or we just got damn lucky."

  "My people and I should get back into space," said Jamie. "I don't want to cut it that close next time."

  "All right. We're just going to circle the Earth, see what we've wrought and wait for the next order. We'll flash our lights if we spot a Luminate ship, twice if we need to talk."

  Jamie and the others returned to the "ski-lift" carrier at one end of the bridge.

  "I should probably tell you that we've launched antimatter missiles at the Russian, Indian, and Chinese capitals." Cameron's eyes shifted to one side of the appalled gazes of Jamie and her people. "They're set to hit in... Pat?"

  "Between seven and seven minutes and twenty-three seconds, with Moscow first, followed by Beijing and New Dehli."

  "Those bombs are so powerful," said Tildie. "I'm not sure I even want to know how many people they'll kill?"

  "Approximately 53 million immediately," Pat replied. "I estimate two to three additional million over the next few months."

  "Thanks, Pat," Cameron growled.

  Dennis teleported them just outside the ship, where they had a bird's eye view – an exceptionally high-flying bird, Jamie thought – on their turbulent world. Jamie wasn't sure she wanted to see the MAME missiles hit their targets. Right now, the main sign of destruction was fires – impossibly large, bright, raging fires – scattered over the U.S. and Russia, but in China and India networks of flames appeared to have consumed the whole countries. It made Jamie think of the coals in their charbroiler a few minutes after Dennis had doused them with starter fluid and tossed in a match.

  Cloud cover blocked most of her beloved North Dakota.

  "Do you know if the Grand Forks Air Force Base Complex still has Minutemen missiles?" Jamie asked Dennis. "They were removed in my world over twenty years ago."

  "Same here," said her husband. "Minot would be the nearest military target, but that's over two hundred miles away. The closest after that might be around Minneapolis somewhere. I'm not really up on that."

  "No primary targets I'm aware of," said Cal. "God, I hope I'm right about that."

  They fell silent as a pair of ghostly blue and white domes rose along the curved horizon where China and India had nearly rotated out of view, and western Russia wasn't visible. Jamie sensed the bodies beside her tensing along with her own.

  "The antimatter missiles?" Kylee asked in a near-whisper.

  "Looks like the right locations," said Cal. "Such a waste. Such an insane waste. Maybe the Elementals were right about us."

  "Fuck that," snorted Thomas Mayes. "Ain't no one to blame but the Russians and Chinese. They brought this on their own dumb Commie asses."

  "You wonder what the hell they were thinking," said Dennis. "Did they really believe we wouldn't be able to retaliate?"

  "They must've thought the Luminate would completely neutralize the U.S." Cal was shaking his head. "I wonder if the Luminate promised them that? Otherwise, why would they have dared to do this?"

  "If the Luminate promised them that, it sure as hell didn't work out," Thomas grunted.

  Jamie was the first to notice the crystalline object glinting in moonlight to one side of them. It made her think of a cathedral...or maybe an ice sculpture of a cathedral, turned on its side. Zooming in revealed it was perhaps a half-mile away, and from that distance it appeared the size of a large skyscraper. It was transparent, or appeared to be: stars shone through its body.

  At their backs, the Cheyenne flashed twice.

  "They must see the ship," said Jamie. "They want to talk to us about it?"

  "I guess we'll find out," said Dennis.

  "They're not the Luminate," were Captain Cameron's first words when they materialized back inside the Cheyenne. "That's an Alpha ship. It hasn't responded to our attempts to communicate."

  "It must've shown up next to us for some reason," said Jamie.

  "The aliens' reasons aren't always easy for us to follow," said Dan Mueller, "even when they deign to share them with us."

  "I don't understand why they're allowing this," Tildie moaned. "Aren't they supposed to be our friends? Is it some kind of Star Trek non-interference imperative thing?"

  "That's it, basically," said Cameron. "Though I don't see the Luminate attacking us with the Alpha ship so close."

  Cal made a grumbling noise. "One thing that doesn't make sense to me. They're consulting with the U.S. and probably other governments, right? And haven't you been using some of their technology from captured space ships or wherever? So how does that jibe with non-interference?"

  Captain Cameron nodded and gave Cal a tired smile. "From what I know, which is second or third hand at best, the Zetas and Alphas were more or less forced into breaking their hands-off approach when we captured crashed alien ships and attempted to back-engineer them. They faced the choices of either forcefully intervening to stop us, letting us do our own thing, or establishing at least tenuous relations that permit them to monitor us. That's the leading theory – or rumor – about why the aliens maintain a presence at some of our top-secret bases."

  "But they're still damn stand-offish," grumbled Lieutenant Mallory.

  "Why don't I talk to them?"

  The startled looks mirrored Jamie's own surprise at her words.

  "Good idea!" Tildie said. "Maybe they know something?"

  Cameron opened his mouth to speak, but stopped himself. It was a novel idea – unprecedented, in his knowledge – that a human could gain an audience with an alien without its permission. But that was the possibility here.

  "The fact that they neither initiated communication nor responded to ours suggests a certain reluctance to speak with us, doesn't it, Captain?" asked Dan Mueller.

  "That would seem a reasonable inference."

  Cameron turned to Koharu Akiyama, their exobiologist. Dr. Akiyama was privy to secrets about the alien species that no one else on board, including PAT, knew anything about. Cameron, as a starship commander, needed to know some basics – particularly alien call-signs and ship-identification – which he and his fellows had failed at spectacularly with the Luminate vessel, he acknowledged with a scowl.

  "Koharu," Cameron said. "Your thoughts on initiating contact with the Alphas? Would they treat Jamie and her husband's sudden appearance as a hostile act, as the Luminate apparently did?"

  "The Alphas are far too considered and rational for that kind of intemperate response, in my opinion, Captain Cameron." Dr. Akiyama hesitated. "Though they would likely find it presumptuous."

  Cameron thought for a moment before nodding. He faced Jamie. "I don't see we have much to lose at this point. Feel free to be our ambassador." His half-smile held a hard edge. "But please, Jamie, try to avoid starting another interstellar war this time."

  "Yes, sir."

  Jamie tried not to let those words sting as they coasted across the short span of space toward the Alpha ship. What if the Alphas reacted hostilely, despite the exobiologist claiming they were so rational?

  "You're sure about this, babe?" Dennis broke the silence.

  "Not really. But the chance to meet with the Alphas..." She smiled at him. "I heard they look like Norwegians."

  "There goes your theory of reasonableness." Dennis was half-Norwegian.

  They both laughed quietly.

  "If there's trouble, we'll leave," she said. "No hesitation."

  "Yeah. I was thinking the same thing."

  They slipped through the alien ship's exterior – the sheets of glass hardly seemed to qualify as a "hull" – and found the
mselves in what appeared to be a gymnasium-recreation center filled with blond sports models in various colors of Spandex leaping over nets of glimmering light, sprinting across floors, dancing, and dangling from rings. It could've been a snapshot of some future Olympics featuring some evolved version of the Aryan ideal.

  When Dennis and Jamie materialized off to one side of what appeared to be a volleyball game involving basketball hoops, the people stopped what they were doing in waves spreading out from the two interlopers. No alarms sounded. No one reached for weapons. No security forces rushed them. They just stared with over-sized, unblinking blue eyes.

  Jamie and Dennis raised a hand in greeting.

  "Howdy," said Dennis. "We come in peace."

  The beautiful men and women circled in around them. Their faces were neither hostile nor friendly. Not a frown or smile among them. But their bodies seemed loose and relaxed. Their gazes struck Jamie as preternaturally steady, as if they suffered from the polar opposite of Attention Deficit Disorder. Hyper Attention Disorder?

  Jamie realized her thoughts were rambling under the unrelenting scrutiny and absolute lack of any traditional friendly greeting. Had the Alphas evolved beyond such emotional displays? She was sure some of them had been smiling and laughing moments ago while doing their sports.

  "You're from the Cheyenne," said a tall, broad-shouldered man in a green jumpsuit that detailed every muscle and tendon of his sculpted physique. "Two of the Elemental-crafted superhumans."

  "That's us," said Jamie.

  "Why are you here?"

  Jamie glanced at Dennis, who raised his eyebrows.

  "We were wondering," said Dennis, "if, uh, you can you tell us something about what's happening with the Luminates?"

  "The last Luminate ship has departed this solar system in the direction of its home worlds."

  "They're gone, then?" Jamie's voice cracked with hope.

  "Yes." The Alpha spokes-model didn't vary from neutrality even a fraction that Jamie could see. "They considered their losses, and the threat of their continuance, to be unacceptable."

  "We're safe, then?" Dennis asked.

  "From them." After a moment, he added: "Probably."