Redemption of Sisyphus

by Eric Michael Craig

  She nodded to indicate that they should cut the internal com and then closed her eyes and waited for several seconds. Before she opened her eyes, Danel and Dr. Jameson had showed up at Jeph’s door. Anju came through several seconds later with Tana and Saf close on her heels.

  Tana looked like she was ill, but Saffia was ready to take the war to them. By brute force if necessary.

  “Did they really nuke Underhive?” Tana asked.

  “Probably,” Roja said. The optic image from her side of the conference expanded to show Nakamiru and Jeffers sitting beside her. For once, the admiral looked his age. The three multicruiser captains appeared and then three other faces that Jeph didn’t recognize. They had to be the ice hauler commanders.

  “All we know at this point is that all contact with NHC went down at the same time that a seismic event occurred. If the magnitude of the shock wave is any indication, the blast was big enough to have destroyed the entire Underhive complex. Because it wasn’t centered on NHC, there’s a possibility of survivors there. Unfortunately, since the loop tubes were all underground, we can’t get any recovery teams in.”

  “You said they had forces in space over NHC?” Tana asked.

  “At least thirty ships,” the admiral said. “Quintana sent three Multicruisers to do a recon assessment, and then if they think we have the force in place, they will bring in a large enough attack group to clear the space above the Sinus Iridium basin. As long as Lassiter’s ships hold control over the site, we can’t bring landers in to start any relief efforts.”

  “Actually, that should all be done already, and we’ll hear the results soon,” Roja said.

  “How many multicruisers do we have in Zone One now?” Captain Mei asked.

  “Fifteen total,” the admiral said. “Although they’ve pinned six inside the blockade at L-2. I believe Quintana committed all the remaining forces to the counter assault.”

  “Blockade?” Tana asked, her face showing she was processing through her emotions.

  “They have around fifty ships holding station around the shipyard and we haven’t yet tried to challenge it,” Roja said. “All together Tomlinson’s got somewhere near 150 ships in Zone One.”

  “We are basing our strategic planning on the idea that defensively a multicruiser is a match for around eight to ten of their converted science vessels,” the admiral said. “Offensively, we are thinking we need to have better than a five to one ratio to be safe.”

  “If they’re bringing 650 ships out here, that leaves us like sixty-five multicruisers short,” Mei said.

  “We do have the Armstrong too,” Jeffers said.

  “Fleet tactics aside, is there anything we can learn from what they’ve done to New Hope City?” Jeph asked.

  “Why would they attack Underhive and not New Hope City itself?” Danel asked.

  “Maybe they were trying to send a message?” Anju said. “If Lassiter made an announcement about it, that has to be the reason.”

  “He did claim responsibility for the attack,” Jeph said.

  “That makes no sense.” Roja shook her head. “He’s apparently a lot more ruthless than we thought, but he still wields the power of the people.”

  “Exactly,” Tana said. “If he wanted to send a message to the resistance, he’d have taken Pallassano out. He’d want leaders of other colonies to know it was a bad idea for them to lead their people into the rebellion. He’d point his attack at her and not at his personal power base.”

  “They were after something,” Saf said, growling. “Sentinel Operations used to be below Underhive. We pulled out of there right after Odysseus went active, but they might not have known.”

  “Lassiter wouldn’t have known that at all,” Tana said. “Nobody knew it was there.”

  “Odysseus did,” Solo said, surprising everyone as it jumped in on the conversation. “It would consider those who held gate keeping responsibility over it to be its most serious threat. Knowledge of its origin and specifications would be an asset to those who might seek to defeat it. A preemptive attack against that possibility would be within its operational limits.”

  “Incinerating a million innocent people to protect itself is within its limits?” Roja asked, shaking her head.

  “Potentially yes,” Solo said.

  “Does that also mean that it would consider using a similar weapon to remove us as an obstacle to achieving its objectives?” Dutch asked.

  “If it were able to ascertain that such an action would not adversely impact the ESI contact itself, then this is a possibility,” Solo said.

  GovCom Center: New Hope City:

  “We can’t get to Underhive at all,” Mayor Pallassano said. She sat in the near dark and held her personal thinpad in her hand. One of the multicruisers overhead had restored minimal communications to the colony for now. They were trying to get their own com online, but she didn’t hold out much hope of success any time soon. “There’s too much structural damage to the cross connects and all the surface egress is within the collapsed crater.”

  “Do you have any idea how bad it is yet?” Quintana asked.

  “We don’t know, but we’re looking at over ninety percent casualty rates for Underhive itself,” she said. “We’ve already got ten percent losses in NHC. Unfortunately, they’re telling me that will get a lot worse.”

  “Worse?”

  She nodded. “We’ve got radiation levels rising on all the life support systems. We’ve shut down everywhere there is interconnected air and water between the two facilities, and we’re trying to pull people out of the affected areas as fast as we can. The recyclers are filtering out radioactive particulates but they’re clogging faster than we can dispose of the dust.”

  “Multicruisers always carry deployable emergency life support gear,” he said. “We can get that to you immediately.”

  “That will help since we’re overloading the life support zones that were unaffected,” she said. “Unfortunately, we’ve got so many volunteer rescue teams working, that they’ve moved a lot of the injured to safe areas before decontamination. At this point, it’s likely the radiation will spread all over NHC.”

  “Does that mean you need to evacuate everybody?” he asked.

  “Thirteen million people? To where?”

  “What will you do?”

  “We’re trying to establish clean zones on the northern and eastern edges of the city and we’ll rebuild from there, but we’re going to lose a lot more before …” emotion killed the words in her mouth.

  “I understand,” the admiral said, his voice echoing her anguish. “Carranza Pratte has said as soon as her crews can get the loop operating again you can send refugees to Tsiolkovskiy. Freeport is gearing up to take in as many as they can house and we’re trying to coordinate with the other colonies, but most of them are scared of retaliation if they help.”

  “I don’t blame them,” she said. Her console flickered as the power grid tried to return and she knew that somewhere one of her people was trying to get things restored. There were thousands of heroes working in the dark to piece their world back together.

  “Have they sent another attack after us yet?”

  “No,” Quintana said. “We lost the Orion in the fight, but we’ve got eight more multicruisers watching over you. So far they don’t seem to have the stomach for another round.”

  “At least that’s good news,” she said, trying to find something to smile about in his words.

  “Unless they have more ships hidden somewhere in the zone, they’ve only got another sixty five or seventy that aren’t tied up in keeping us in a cage,” he said. “We’re at military parity at this point.”

  “I hope so,” she said as the lights came on and she felt a cool blast of air from the ventilators. “That’s a good sign.”

  Her door burst open and her chief of staff came charging through. His ashen gray skin made it look like he’d been digging regolith with his bare fingers. He skidded to a stop at the edge of her
desk. “Old Main Dome is collapsing,” he gasped. “We’ve got to get into the underground before we lose the air!”

  “What?” she said shaking her head in disbelief. Old Main was the first major colony structure ever built on the moon. The GovCom Tower stood forty stories tall in its center. It couldn’t collapse!

  “The shockwaves cracked the skin,” he said, grabbing her thinpad from her hand and pulling her to her feet. “Engineering says we’ve got five minutes before it tears loose.”

  Jakob Waltz Medical Center: Gateway Colony: L-4 Prime:

  Saf had gone back to work in the Kanahto, sucking up her rage and turning it into determination. But Tana wasn’t so tough. She’d lived most of her adult life in New Hope City. She knew it at least as well as she knew her own face. It was an intimate part of her life and she couldn’t accept that it might be gone.

  She sat in the new MedBay watching in silence as engineering workers from the Armstrong pushed equipment into place. Everything felt detached and hollow.

  Anju walked up and handed her a glass without comment, taking a seat beside her and waiting. After several minutes, she nudged her arm and nodded at the drink in her hand. “It’ll help.”

  She slammed the vodka down and hissed in surprise. “I wasn’t expecting that,” she said, coughing as her voice came back.

  “Yah, but sometimes the old fashioned medicine works best,” she said.

  “Sometimes.” She nodded. “I need to just deal with it. We’ve got work to do.”

  “We do, but it’s alright to take some time to accept what’s happened,” Anju said.

  “Accept? I don’t know if I can. I want that bastard dead,” she growled, sounding a lot like her wife had, when she’d said the same thing.

  “Lassiter?”

  “Him too,” Tana said, “but I meant Odysseus. I can’t believe I was ever part of that project. How could I sit there and let them create a monster like that?”

  “You didn’t know what it was capable of doing,” she said. “I’m sure if you had, you’d have stopped it. You don’t seem to be the killing type.”

  Ice daggers dug their way into her flesh as she shook her head. “You don’t know the trail of bodies we left behind us to get here.”

  “Well then, let me say you don’t seem like the genocidal type,” Anju said, shrugging it off. “I don’t know what you had to do to get away from the shitstorm down there, but it sounds like it was a fight or die situation. That isn’t the same as what Lassiter did.”

  “It wasn’t Lassiter,” she said. “Odysseus did it.”

  “But Lassiter stood by and let it happen. That makes him at least partially responsible,” Anju said.

  “Just like me,” she said. “I stood by and let it happen and now that monster has killed millions and is coming for us.”

  “You know, if you want to divide the blame up there is a lot of it to go around,” she said, standing up. “I even get a slice of that pie since I was the one that made the com that started all this rolling. You can’t carry this all alone. No one can.”

  “I understand that in here,” Tana said, tapping herself in the head, “but not in my heart.”

  “Sometimes the brain’s job is to protect the more vulnerable organs,” Anju said, reaching out and pulling Tana to her feet. “Let’s put it to work and maybe that will give the rest of your emotions a chance to work themselves out.”

  “You know, there are times you really sound like your mother,” she said, grinning.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Un Shan Takhu Institute: Gateway Colony: L-4 Prime:

  Jeph stood with Rocky inside the permeable doors they’d installed against the outer airlock hatches of the Jakob Waltz hull. Inside those they had mounted blast doors made of the same material as all the rest of doors inside the colony. They remained open for the moment, but once they closed them, there was no way in if you didn’t know the language.

  As far as Rocky could tell from all the analysis she’d done so far, when the doors were not active, they were indistinguishable from the null-metal outer shell of the colony itself. Which was the same as the skin of the Tacra Un. It might not be indestructible, but it had endured the full blast of the Waltz’s engine as it came crashing down, so there was little doubt it would stand up to weapons fire.

  Over the last six days, the Tacra Un had created, and she and her crew of conscripts from the Armstrong had installed, enough panels of this material to encase the portion of the ship’s hull that extended through the center stack of the colony. Unfortunately, they needed to leave the nose of the Waltz exposed to operate as a communications station. They still hadn’t figured out how to transmit a signal through the Tacra Un walls. That meant that the ship itself, and anything inside it was exposed.

  When they designed the colony and had the Tacra Un build it for them, they hadn’t considered making it a fortress, so the MedBay and the entirety of Dutch’s core were still on the wrong side of the wall. They hadn’t realized the problems until they had no hope of fixing them in time. Now that they were facing the reality of the ghost fleet, even with their militia of 300 well-armed security troops between him and the door, Jeph was almost terrified.

  “Solo and I are in agreement that it is unlikely Odysseus and the fleet will attack directly,” Dutch said. “Its initial objective will be to seek our surrender, and for us to grant it access.”

  “When we do not, will be big problem,” Rocky said. She turned and watched two workers hauling a massive assembly up the corridor behind them. It was a null-metal shield panel for their soldiers to shelter behind if the enemy forces breached the Waltz and they found themselves in a firefight.

  “It is likely Odysseus will assimilate the Armstrong’s and the multicruisers’ AA systems, whether or not we refuse,” Dutch said.

  “What’s to keep it from taking you over?” Jeph asked.

  “I can greatly reduce my architecture in the event of an attempt,” it said. “Because I am no longer operating a spacecraft, I have no need to remain attached to the vulnerable NavCom grid. We have already isolated my processor core from all RF dependent infrastructure and I maintain a connection via opti-cable trunk to the interior controls of the colony.

  “Also to targeting control for weapons,” Rocky added.

  “We have spent several days conducting mock infiltration attempts,” Solo said joining in. “I have been unable to gain access to any critical aspect of Dutch’s hardware.”

  “We do not know if this will be true with the Odysseus-Collective awareness,” Dutch said. “However my success in the simulations is encouraging.”

  “Dutch has created an array of defenses, the rival of any tengen system in existence,” Solo said. “In our trial runs, we have only identified one potential weakness, and that requires creating a physical connection to hardware inside the Jakob Waltz itself.”

  “How likely is that?” Jeph asked.

  “Not at all if I have a say,” Seva said, walking up and glaring at the two workers that had set the shield down. “Why are you lazy flatches sitting on your ass while there’s work to be done?”

  “Sorry, ma’am,” the taller of them said, jumping up. “It’s just damned heavy for two men.”

  “Ja, it’s supposed to be heavy, otherwise it wouldn’t be worth using,” she said, shaking her head and reaching down to pick it up by herself. Jeph jumped back to avoid being crushed as she swung the massive shield up off the deck. “You two go back and get the next one.”

  They took off like they had been shot from a cannon. By a pissed off grizzly bear. Rocky doubled over laughing.

  “I thought FleetCom training made them tough?” Seva said, looking disappointed as she tossed the massive construct over the gravity threshold. It sailed into the distance and crashed against something inside. “Two meters more.” She sighed and leapt after it.

  “To answer your question,” Solo said, “we do not know if the Columbia is a command ship or contains landing force
s. If it contains troops, then this infiltration method is a distinct possibility should they breach the hull of the Waltz.”

  “The Columbia?”

  “It is a former cruise liner. Based on the tactics used in the assault on New Hope City, a similar large volume ship functioned as a troop carrier. If that is the case in this instance as well, there could be several thousand soldiers aboard.”

  “Several thousand?” Jeph gasped.

  “That’s why we’re sticking barricades in their way,” Seva hollered back through the door. “We’ll skinnywall them at the EVAOps Deck if we can and make it cost for every inch from there.”

  Armstrong: Station-keeping Above L-4 Prime:

  Four million miles.

  The main screen showed the sensor images of the approaching ghost fleet provided from the Kanahto. It was infinitely better than the Armstrong’s sensors at this range, so they were glad to accept what the colony could provide. It was also a constant reminder that they should know a lot more about things down there than they did.

  After all the months that they’d been working to understand the Tacra Un, the quantum quicksand still held them.

  A fly trapped in the spider’s web, waiting for the inevitable.

  “We need to get you down to the colony,” Admiral Nakamiru said, turning to face Chancellor Roja as she stood beside him on the command riser.

  She shook her head, but didn’t look at him. “I need to be up here helping make command decisions.”

  “Respectfully, ma’am,” Captain Jeffers said, “the admiral is right. You can make decisions from down there as well as you can up here. We need to keep you safe.”

  “What happened to all that bravado about the firepower of the Armstrong?” Roja said, glancing at the captain, but refusing to make real eye contact. She knew it was a cheap shot, but she wasn’t willing to entertain the idea of running from the fight.