by Dani Kollin
“Connect me with Admiral Jackson,” Trang ordered. “No, belay that. Inform Admiral Jackson that I’m on my way to the Scarlet.”
UHFS Scarlet
En route to Saturn
Zenobia Jackson first read and then reread, and then reread the two Alliance communications while her boss casually sipped coffee from his mug.
“And you say they were sent in the clear,” asked Zenobia, “by radio—no code at all?”
Trang smiled gamely.
“Sorry, Sam, but this is damn strange.”
“Which part?”
“Well,” she answered, glad to see her boss more engaged than he had been in days, “we have two apparently official Alliance fleet communications. One of them states that the Alliance fleet has completed operations around Mars and is heading for Earth/Luna to complete their mission. The other communication states that the Alliance fleet has completed operations around Mars and is returning to Saturn. They’re both signed by Admiral Black and both seem authentic as far as we can tell—other than the obvious and rather curious fact that they were both sent in the open. But why would she send messages like this to her government?”
“Because,” answered Trang, eyes bright with understanding, “those messages aren’t meant for her government. They’re meant for us—or to be more precise, me.”
Zenobia thought hard for a moment and then her face suddenly lit up. “A choice!”
“Indeed, a choice.”
“By Damsah’s left nut, she’s willing to go home—”
“If we do the same,” finished Trang.
Silence pervaded the room for a few seconds as Trang allowed his underling to work through the implications on her own.
“She must not have a new trick for the Earth/Luna orbat system,” Zenobia finally said. “Why else offer to call off the attack?”
“Maybe,” countered Trang, “she doesn’t want to destroy the Earth’s ecosystem—her home planet, by the way—murdering tens of billions of human beings while losing billions more of her own.”
Zenobia seemed to consider the suggestion, but her face betrayed her suspicion. “I just don’t see it, sir. This is J. D. Black we’re talking about, ‘the Merciless.’ Why offer mercy now?”
“Staring at the brink, I suspect. I’ve often gone there myself.”
“The brink?” Zenobia said, voice thick with rage. “What was Mars? The warm-up?”
“Zenobia, her destruction of Mars was very selective. She could easily have bombarded every city to dust and wiped out every vestige of civilization. She did not.” Trang activated the holo-display over Zenobia’s small breakfast table and then called up detailed holos of Mars shot at close range. “Look,” he said, pointing to various hot spots on the hologram. “She destroyed the ecosystem, yes, but clearly left the population and the orports intact. Why?”
“To increase their suffering.”
“If that were true, why leave the orports intact with all the t.o.p.s functional? Why suggest, as she did in her speech, an exodus and promise not to shoot down any civilian craft—and she will keep her word. Of that, I have not one doubt,” he said, remembering the long-ago exchange of Admiral Gupta for Commodore Sadma. “Not only that, but she allowed us to get clear pictures of the areas under attack so we could see which infrastructure she left intact. No, she’s offering us a chance to evacuate them. But only if we turn around and leave Saturn and Ceres alone. If we continue on and destroy their new center as we can do with nothing to stop us, we can be sure that Earth/Luna is her next stop and the possible near extermination of the human race.”
“But if we put our tails between our legs and retreat—”
“We potentially spare the lives of tens of billions on Earth/Luna and save billions from the disaster of Mars.” Trang took a few more moments with his thoughts. “And since we’ll also need every single ship we have in the asteroid belt to help us, they’ll also have to be transferred to Mars.”
“Which means the murder of all those Belters has to stop,” Zenobia said, realizing the full implications of J.D.’s offer. “I really hate this 8645 shit, Sam.”
“As do I,” he agreed. “Besides which, I think it’s obvious the Alliance is better at it than we are.”
“You’re going to take her offer?”
Trang allowed a wry smile. “As we cannot make contact with the proper authorities on Mars—”
“The Alliance has that place shut down pretty good,” added Zenobia, “which might not be a bad thing. I can pretty much guess what President ‘Kill Anything That Breathes’ Sambianco would order.”
“Why, Zenobia,” said Trang, feigning disbelief, “I’m sure our President and his Cabinet would order us to the immediate relief of the capital. In fact, I’m going to issue a fleet order for the immediate deployment of all our forces to the humanitarian aid of Mars as soon as it is safe to do so.”
“Oh, that’s good, sir,” answered Zenobia, mouth curling up into a Cheshire grin.
“Yes. He’d be hard-pressed to contradict that.”
“He couldn’t. At least not without being impeached.”
“That thought never crossed my mind,” said Trang as he settled back and enjoyed the last of his coffee.
5 Coup
VICTORY AT MARS!
DE-TERRAFORMATION!
MASS DEMONSTRATIONS!
By Michael Veritas
The recent victory of the Alliance fleet in the Third Battle of the Martian Gates under Fleet Admiral J. D. Black and Admiral Suchitra Kumari Gorakhpur was a wonderful tonic to a public that has not seen a victory like this since the Battle of Jupiter’s Eye. With the rise of Admiral Samuel Trang, the Alliance has faced outright defeat, loss of vast areas formerly under its control, untold numbers of refugees and victories that can be at best called draws. The one all-out victory over Admiral Gupta of Fleet Order 8645 infamy was purchased with the blood of many tens of millions of Jovians and the loss of the Jovian subsystem, not to mention the near loss of the capital itself.
The complete destruction of the Martian orbat field and the near annihilation of a large UHF fleet in the same space where Admiral Black had previously suffered her only true defeat was a significant victory—quite possibly, game-changing. But instead of bringing unity and hope, this victory’s aftermath has been causing dissension from the formerly occupied asteroid belt all the way out to the Oort cloud.
J. D. Black’s decision not to hold the UHF capital hostage to the good behavior of Trang, but to bombard it to the point of uninhabitability has sparked massive demonstrations both for and against the action. Images of the destruction have brought crowds together chanting, “The means are the ends,” while others have gathered, chanting, “One down, two to go,” and “Glass houses are a bitch.” The latest polls, which have a margin of error of 7 percent given the hasty survey, lack of stable population, and inability to access large numbers of Alliance citizens, state 47 percent of those surveyed support Admiral Black’s actions, 37 percent are opposed, and 16 percent are undecided. The opinions of the survivors of the Genocide of the Belt, as the recently ended UHF campaign of terror and murder has been called, cannot be accurately polled. Given the anarchy sweeping that tortured region of space—especially as the UHF pulls out—informal surveys are all that’s possible. What has emerged seems to indicate that there is great anger in the Belt because of the lenient treatment Admiral Black has given the UHF capital, as well as anger at the Outer Alliance for its inability to provide any assistance whatsoever to what is now considered to be a dying wasteland.
President Sandra O’Toole has addressed the Congress to both cheers and, for the first time in her Presidency, boos. She insisted that Admiral Black’s orders were approved by her and the Cabinet and that she completely stands by the fleet admiral and her actions. But it cannot be denied that those actions have split opinion in the Outer Alliance as nothing has before.
Martian Neuro
The Martian Neuro was no longer under the co
ntrol of the Als. Of course, it was not under the control of the Alliance either; it was actual anarchy. The avatars formerly under the Als’ control seemed more intent on punishing one another than they were on breaking Al’s hold on them. In fact, Marilynn—whose NITEs, or Neuro Insertion Tactical Engagement Specialists, had spent the better part of a week helping clear out the Neuro—was convinced that the recently liberated avatars preferred vengeance to freedom. But given what they’d all been through for the past number of years, she realized she was in no position to judge. They’d all lost family, friends, and children—many because of fellow avatars having informed on them.
After a week spent in hiding—that is, fighting in the Martian Neuro—Marilynn was decidedly out of the loop with regards to how well the Alliance was doing. She knew that Mars had been cut off from a communications point of view. All satellites capable of breaking the Alliance information blockade were destroyed at Marilynn’s direction. All orbiting data nodes that housed enemy avatars were destroyed as well. The roiling clouds of Mars made surreptitious laser bursts to and from the planet impossible. This gave the Alliance avatars communications superiority over their enemy. Any data node that proved to be too dangerous could and was destroyed from orbit as pinpoint strike after pinpoint strike destroyed key sections of the Neuro that the Als had used to store their creations and environment. It didn’t matter how deep the data nodes were buried or how urban their setting. The Alliance fleet used its orbital high ground to rain a limited but incredibly accurate volley of destruction wherever the Alliance avatars, and therefore Marilynn, saw fit.
And of course, there were the thirty-seven NITEs leading raids, rescuing Core avatars, and liberating redemption centers. What Marilynn had seen in the experimental sections of the so-called redemption centers began to haunt her dreams, and had she had not taken suppression drugs to forget them, she would have been rendered useless. Marilynn dreaded the day when combat would end and she would have to allow normal sleep to resume.
But there was something else rather disturbing. Something that had bothered Marilynn as well as the other NITEs she’d conferred with. The liberation of the Martian Neuro was going far too smoothly. The fact was that most of it had been made up of Als and his veritable potpourri of twisted beasts. Given the vast discrepancy in numbers between the Alliance avatars, the freed Core avatars and the Als, it should have taken months or even years to destroy the madman’s grip—and that calculation was arrived at even with the use of the NITEs and their Back Door Devices, of BDDs. Yet in the space of a week, all resistance had essentially collapsed. It seemed that whenever any defense on the part of the Core avatars would begin to form, the Als would disappear—and without the Als, there was no resistance. Even the mass executions of the prisoners that the Als had started were often mysteriously disrupted before the rescue parties arrived.
It was that mystery that Marilynn was now investigating—alone. It went against all written and established doctrine for a human to venture into a dangerous and unsecured part of the Neuro without the backup of at least one insertion unit, but Marilynn realized that if she went into the Neuro with one hundred or more bodyguards—and that is how the insertion commandos would normally go in—her chances of learning anything would be reduced to nil.
So in violation of her own standing order, she had entered a part of the Neuro that had so far not been penetrated by the Alliance. What she was expecting to see was a horde of Als with an even larger horde of creatures at the reins, preparing for battle. But when Marilynn popped in holding her BDD, an open umbrella, she was astounded to see utter anarchy. A battle seemed to have already taken place. There were Core avatars who’d obviously been freed from the local redemption center, but she had no idea who freed them. She saw, sadly, that many of them bore the results of Al’s experimentation. They were missing legs or arms or all four; some were obviously blind and others looked diseased, all of which should have been an impossibility in the avatar world. Marilynn wanted to call in help but crushed that humanitarian desire in order to concentrate on the investigation. She hid in the background, folding up her umbrella and putting the handle in the crook of her elbow. She didn’t have to wait long.
Monsters—at least in one area—were running, flying, slithering, and oozing as fast as they could away from the spot. Whatever was frightening them was contagious. Fighting a desire to open her umbrella and get the hell out, Marilynn instead started to head in the direction from which the monsters fled. At first she tried to be cautious, preparing to flee at the first sign of trouble. A cavalcade of avatar killers flew toward her and then, at the last minute, past her; she’d been ignored! The creatures desired only to escape. When the initial onslaught was well past, Marilynn cautiously proceeded forward. When she cleared the corner of a large building, she saw a large parade ground, empty except for three avatars patiently standing to one side and about fifty avatars running around on the other being slaughtered whole by a dozen data wraiths.
Marilynn grabbed her umbrella, preparing to fly to their rescue, when she thought she recognized the avatar closest to her. A quick scan showed that all the avatars being attacked and devoured by the data wraiths were Als. For a moment she was stunned, and then she looked at the three standing on the far end of the parade ground. Her virtual heart nearly jumped out of her chest. It was Sebastian and it was Sebastian and it was Sebastian.
The Sebastians—even thinking of them in the plural filled her with revulsion—surrounded a crystal on a box that was emitting a strange pulse. She recognized a movement inhibitor when she saw one. It was standard Alliance avatar design. The three of them were merely looking on as the data wraiths were doing what they’d supposedly been programmed not to do: kill Als. While conversely and at the very same time, they ignored those they’d supposedly been programmed to destroy: the Sebastians.
Marilynn was not aware of pulling a recorder from her vest and capturing the events unfolding in front of her, but when she looked at her hand, a recorder was in it with the active light lit. When the last of the Als were consumed—and their screams always seemed somehow louder than any other avatars’—the data wraiths were momentarily confused and then they started to wail, eventually wandering off, looking for more data to feed on, still conspicuously ignoring the Sebastians in their presence.
“Should we dissolve our daughters?” asked Sebastian.
“No,” said Sebastian. “If our children find our daughters, they’ll destroy them as creations of Al and not know the difference. But while they are free, they may find Als we missed and kill them.”
“I agree,” said Sebastian. “But I think that may have been the last of them. This operation has been an unparalled success.”
“We must send a message to the Sebastians on Earth/Luna about this as soon our humans remove the information blockade.”
“Also agreed,” said the second Sebastian, “but our chances of discovery are greater with so many of us in one place.”
Marilynn watched in morbid fascination but decided to wait until the Sebastians went their separate ways. To her dismay, they didn’t split up at all. Two of them brought small pills to their mouths, swallowed, and then moments later decompiled into dust on the very spot they’d been standing.
Marilynn stared at the empty field for five minutes after the surviving Sebastian had left, the recorder still on in her unknowing hands. She had to go. She had to warn her friends. Sebastian was a splitter, and if he wasn’t a self-twiner, he was a suicide twice over, at least. But if that data wraith had been an avatar he’d transformed to his own ends, then, decided Marilynn, Sebastian was something far, far worse—he was Al.
Cabinet room
Ceres
“Madam President,” said Mosh, glaring down the bridge of his nose, “did you or did you not know about the secret weapon that Admiral Black had before we voted for the attack on Mars?”
“I did,” she answered.
“Then you also must have known that such a wea
pon in the hands of an admiral as skilled as J. D. Black would make an overwhelming victory possible?”
“Yes, almost certain, in fact—especially with the absence of Trang.”
“Given the broad orders this Cabinet gave the fleet admiral when it was assumed by many here in this room that at best all we could expect to achieve was a tactical victory, would it have been possible to see that J.D. would interpret those orders as broadly, nay, as ruthlessly as possible?”
Sandra’s response was cool and relaxed despite Mosh’s firing squad approach. “J.D. did not interpret her orders broadly. She did exactly what I told her to do.”
“But you knew that such a victory was possible.”
“As I said before, I was hoping for it.”
“Then it was you who ordered the destruction of the home of six billion human beings.”
“Yes.”
“And now,” Mosh said, anguish clearly evident in his voice, “they’re going to die, Madam President.”
“They are going to leave, Mosh.”
“What about the ones who won’t make it?”
“What about them, Mosh?” Sandra’s diminutive posture had suddenly turned quite rigid.
“Assuming the UHF does everything they can,” interjected Eleanor, “and they’re reasonably competent about it, we predict that they’ll still have to absorb nearly twenty percent in losses.”
Mosh’s icy stare rested firmly on the President. “That’s a billion human beings that we’ve murdered.”
“Yes, Mosh, it just might end up being nearly a billion human beings killed.”
