Tricia’s cute, delighted smile had a maniacal edge to it. “Just relax, Dmitri. It’ll be over in a couple of minutes.” She waved a hand, and a pair of bots carrying a footlocker as large as a coffin rolled in.
Dmitri was losing sensation in his legs. Tricia hopped over to him, holding him up until the bots could take his weight and hustle him into the open box that he could now see contained an oxygen mask and a couple of bottles of air.
“Tricia! What? Why?”
Tricia’s smile never wavered. “I’m sorry, Dmitri, but I need your assistance. We’re going to see the Premier. You’ll help me free Pascha from him.”
She patted his cheek, then slipped the mask over his nose and mouth as he lost the ability to struggle. “It should be an interesting reunion—the four of us together again. How long has it been?” She waved the bots to action.
Her lilting laughter, as beautiful as a tinkling bell, continued as the lid of the box slid closed and he fell unconscious.
The elder who nominally ran the council in charge of the village of Fashial in South Sudan might have trouble walking without the aid of his daughter, but his ears were still keen. He was the first to wake out of a deep sleep at the sound of the locusts approaching his village.
Not locusts! It had been years since the last swarm had swept through, ravaging the crops and leaving famine in its wake. The government had assured everyone it could never happen again, but here it was.
He stumbled through the village, hoarsely crying out for everyone to get up and do something—anything—to protect the fields.
Eventually people started to stumble out, grumbling, but as they heard the low hum, their eyes widened, and they ran to grab whatever implements they could find to slaughter as many of the oncoming murderers as they could. Everyone knew it was futile, but they had to try.
The swarm passed overhead, a patch of darkness blotting out the stars and the moon, on their way to the fields in the east. Screaming, the people ran after them.
But the locusts did not land in the fields. Indeed, as the swarm landed east of the carefully tended crops, the approaching people found that these were not locusts at all.
Beyond the fields, sitting quietly on the open savanna, a swarm of machines bathed in a dark-red glow. The elder thought they might be copters, but there was no cockpit for a pilot, and each vehicle had a flat plate across its top. The plates were solid black despite the surrounding reddish glow, as if they were soaking up the light.
Eventually the machines started to whir once more, lifted into the air, and departed to the east.
Everyone breathed a sigh of relief and went back to bed.
With his head once more wrapped in his immersion helmet, Jonathan sat at his console and looked at the submerged remains of Lagos through the eyes of the robots he controlled. “See the plasma arc cutter slicing that rebar? Then bring up the other bots in this swarm and roll the concrete block into the channel.”
His student, an exceptionally bright nineteen-year-old from the Palestinian refugee fleet, nodded, then realized that nodding did not work at all when you were both wearing those helmets. “I get it, and I really think I’m ready to try it myself. May I have a go with this one?”
Jonathan chuckled. “Awful big piece for your first go.” He released the controls. “Take over.”
The kid was going to be a great assistant to him soon enough. For the moment, however, he was only a little bit more helpful than Clay had been in Selman.
He heard someone walk into the room and switched his helmet to transparency.
Ciara stared at the two of them, anxiety written on her face. “How close are you to done?”
Jonathan flipped the helmet back to the underwater view. “Real quick.” He put his swarm to work helping his student’s swarm wrestle the last block, which had a delightful collection of rebar spikes sticking up everywhere, into place. “Done.”
Ciara breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank God. They’re moving out.”
Jonathan smiled laconically. “Not far.”
Fan felt oddly nervous. She had had very little experience with being devious and deceptive, she now realized. Throughout her life, she’d mostly just charged through, bulldozing anyone in her path with her Red Princeling status or with her new position on the Standing Committee.
But she was only the second most powerful person in China. A certain amount of deviousness was required to maneuver the President for Life through life’s intricacies.
Showtime.
The United States Capitol Building, designed to house all the sausage-making machinery associated with passing legislation for America, held a number of rooms with cleverly designed dividers. Push the dividers back to the walls, and you had an immense ballroom. Pull the dividers into place, and although the room remained ballroom-wide, it was quite shallow. This made for great press photography if the turnout for your big announcement was on the smaller side. With the right camera angle, in the shallow room, you could make a couple dozen people look like a packed throng of hundreds.
In retrospect, Fan was not surprised that the Taixue, Lenora’s flagship, had several rooms like this as well. Fan was just admiring the maskirovka when Lenora entered the room and made a beeline for her.
Fan nodded.
Lenora swept the room with her eyes. “This should work quite well.”
“It is once again a pleasure to have the opportunity to learn from a master.”
Lenora gave her a hard look, which finally yielded to a smile of sorts. “Don’t you forget it.”
Clearly, something was on Lenora’s mind. Fan waited patiently, another thing she might have learned from Lenora.
Lenora visibly steeled herself. “I’m flying to the main BrainTrust fleet.” She waved a hand at Chunlan in the middle of the crowd that was forming. “Not only is it difficult for me to be here when Chunlan is the official boss, but one way or the other, I think I’ll be more useful there when the crunch comes.”
Fan gave Lenora a hint of a smirk. “I had expected as much.”
Lenora finally smiled. “Of course you did.” She pinned Fan with another glare. “While Chunlan might be officially running things, there has to be someone who is actually running things while I’m gone.” She closed her eyes. Her nostrils flared. She then turned a thoughtful expression on her student. “I’m leaving you in charge.”
Fan had always viewed herself as being more or less in charge, but having Lenora make it official staggered her.
And it thrilled her. She might have all of China to order around, but that was due to an accident of fate. This was an acknowledgment of excellence. It was embarrassing to be so pleased, but still. She had earned the respect of her teacher.
Fan half-bowed. “I won’t let you down.”
Lenora’s expression turned bemused. “I suspect you’re right. Make sure you don’t.” With that, she departed.
Chunlan stepped up. “How long will this take?”
Fan shrugged. “Not very long. A few minutes, hopefully.”
Chunlan relaxed. “Good. I’m hoping to make it over to the Mount Helicon in time to have lunch with my son and daughter.” Chunlan’s children were students on the archipelago—another reason the captain had developed an easy relationship with the BrainTrusters.
Fan turned back to the deceptive room, now packed with soldiers. “Lights, camera, action!”
Everyone hushed and turned to watch as she flicked on the wallscreen.
Guang appeared. “Fan. Delighted to hear from you.”
“You too, President for Life.”
Guang nodded his head in acknowledgment.
Fan stepped to the side so the President could see the massed troops. “As you can see, I have brought over plenty of Marines to make sure we have control of the Fuxing.”
Guang’s smile broadened. “Well done, Fan.” He peered at the assemblage. “I don’t see that white woman at all.”
It would have been impolitic to tell Guang that
Lenora had gone off to help defend the BrainTrust. He would have asked why Fan hadn’t arrested her instead.
Fan knew exactly how Lenora would want her to answer. She tossed her long silky hair behind her. “Lenora? I expelled her from the archipelago.”
Guang raised an eyebrow. “Really? I wouldn’t have expected you to go the extra distance. Where’d she go, anyway?”
Fan gave him a light and airy shrug. “Who cares?”
Ciara stepped off the Global Express spaceship and breathed the fresh ocean air. She listened to her mother’s voice in her head.
“Stupid,” her mother reiterated. “There is no reason at all for you to leave the Prometheus and go back to the main BrainTrust. I’m probably going to lose your father in the attack. I can’t lose you too.”
Her mother’s voice turned pleading. “Come here to the Fuxing. No one’s going to attack this fleet. They think they’ve already taken it.”
As Ciara walked to baggage claim, she shot back at the voice in her head. “Somehow, one way or the other, I can help. You can’t stop me from going. I’m an adult now. For heaven’s sake, I run my own archipelago!”
She nodded at Rubinelle and her troops, who’d come along with her, as they all watched the bags slide along the conveyor. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed one of the bags, a very large blue one, bounced as if it were alive. A second big bag, a brown one, bounced next to it. Then both bags disappeared around the corner of the carousel and her sea-green bag slid into sight.
After fussing with her bag for a second, she started to walk away slowly, searching for the odd blue and brown bags. Eventually, she spotted the blue one, upright now, being rolled away by a young girl—a girl she recognized, walking next to a young boy she also recognized.
Ciara sped up, half-running in her fury. “Shura! Kingsley! What are you doing here? I told you to stay home!”
Shura turned her big bright brown eyes on her in surprise. “Ciara! I’m so glad you’re here. We don’t know how to find the CyberWar Combat Center. They told me it’s on the Chiron. Do you know where it is?” Her eyes turned mournful.
Ciara spluttered. “What do you think you’re going to do in the CyberWar Center? Your specialty is plant genetics.”
Shura, who had stood up to dictators far scarier than Ciara, gave up the innocent act and glared at her. “Honestly, you should know I have more skills than that.” She pointed at her partner. “But the really important thing is that I brought him. Kingsley is a genius with computers. I didn’t think he’d be able to make the trip without me. Should I have left him to make the trip alone?”
Ciara marveled at the beauty of the deflection the little girl had just tried to perform on her. She growled. “And that was the last flight from the Prometheus, so I can’t send you back.” She pursed her lips in thought.
At that moment, another furious voice interrupted her cogitations. Her mother shouted, “Ciara! What are you doing here? I told you to stay home!”
Thinking very fast, Ciara spun to her mother, who had presumably just stepped off the last flight from the Fuxing. Ciara turned her big bright sea-green eyes on her in surprise. “Mom! I’m so glad you’re here. We don’t know how to find the CyberWar Combat Center. They told me it’s on the Chiron. Do you know where it is?” Her eyes turned mournful.
Ciara felt a thin line of perspiration break out on her forehead as she wondered whether her mother would marvel at the beauty of the deflection Ciara was performing on her.
Almost everyone on the Chiron had elected to stay through the battle, due to the confluence of two rather contradictory beliefs. First, they believed that the Chiron would come through the fight reasonably intact. Second, they believed there would be horrific numbers of injured and wounded, and the Chiron would be filled to the gunwales with patients in need of the best possible care.
However, even with most people staying, plenty of freshly unoccupied cabins remained. Ciara, Lenora, Kingsley, and Shura commandeered a couple of them on the Appalachian Spring deck. Then, while Lenora went off to coordinate with Amanda, Ciara took the kids on a truncated tour of the ship on the way to the Blue Lagoon deck, where the temporary CyberWar Combat Center had been constructed in one of the Accel classrooms.
Ciara went out of her way to take them down to the Wenara Wana deck. “If we’re very lucky, I’ll be able to introduce you two to Dr. Dash. I suspect you both have a great deal in common with her. I look forward to seeing what happens when the three of you talk.”
As Ciara tapped politely at the entrance to Dash’s office, Kingsley’s eyes focused on the sheet of yellow legal paper framed by the door.
The doctor opened the door. “Ciara!” Dash hugged her, then turned to her two companions. “Who do we have here?”
“I’m Shura.” Shura shook Dash’s hand. “Very nice to meet you. Everyone has told me so much about you.” She grabbed her companion by the arm and shook him to get his attention. “And this is Kingsley. He’s a math prodigy and a computer genius.”
Dash turned to Kingsley, who continued to stare at the framed paper, which was covered with equations. Kingsley distractedly muttered, “Hello.”
Ciara started to bark at Kingsley to be more polite, but Dash held up a finger to shush her.
Dash watched Kingsley intently until he pointed his finger at a line two-thirds of the way down the sheet. “This isn’t complete.”
Dash brought her hands together prayerfully. “You are quite correct.” She hurried back into her office and brought out a full legal pad. Again the top sheet was covered with equations. “These are the rest of the pages. What do you think?”
Kingsley took the pad from her and examined it briefly. “This is beautiful.”
Dash looked at Ciara. “These pages were the last work of Dr. Carl Kraemer. He was working on it when he died while undergoing my first-generation therapy.” She sighed. “He gave it all to me, begging me to make sure it was completed.” She touched the framed paper. “So I hung this here, hoping that someday, someone would look at it and understand it well enough to continue the effort.”
Dash looked down at Kingsley and rubbed his head. “How would you like to stay here on the main BrainTrust after this war is over? I promise you’ll like it.”
Captain Wilson Tucker of the Virginia-class submarine South Dakota radiated calm for his crewmen. Remaining calm was not merely a requirement in which he’d been trained by the Academy. The training had been baked into his very bones, perhaps even before birth, by his father, who had also been a navy captain. And by his grandfather, and his ancestors dating back to the Battle of the Chesapeake during the Revolutionary War. Captain Tucker fully expected his son, and his son’s sons, to train and to experience the same moment of discipline before battle he was now experiencing.
So he radiated calm. Inside, of course, he bubbled with excitement.
They had had so many years of peace that no one understood the shape of naval warfare between worthy adversaries any longer.
Calling the BrainTrust a “worthy adversary” seemed a bit of a stretch, though. He was running in ultra-quiet mode, but who out there could detect him? He certainly couldn’t be heard by the Russian submarine to the north; his people had detected it about a hundred miles off and watched with amusement as it slunk close enough to the BrainTrust that they could attack with baseballs if desired.
The South Dakota had listened to the thwapping noise as a Russian minisub tooled back and forth, presumably carrying troops for the pre-battle boarding action the Russians had demanded as part of the Alliance bargain. What they wanted from the isle ships was above the captain’s pay grade.
What the captain did know was that excluding the Russian sub, everybody was holding back except the Americans, who moved in from the east. The Chinese fleet was slowing down in the west, still closing but not as fast. The Russian fleet, the captain noted with disgust, was mostly dawdling to the north.
His sonarman gave him an update. “Remember the ship
coming from the southwest, that no one topside can detect? Well, whatever it is, it’s still running straight and true at almost thirty knots. Noisy thing.”
Tucker remained impassive. He looked again at the photonic sensor display. The clock was running down. When it struck zero, he had been informed that his shots would mark the beginning of the engagement.
His men had been scanning the isle ships constantly, looking for the least indication of preparation for battle, ever since the enemy fleet had finally stopped moving to the southwest at their pitiful four knots. The only thing odd was that all the ships seemed to ride a little higher in the water than the North Carolina had reported. He couldn’t imagine what was causing that, but he also couldn’t imagine how it could make a difference.
His torpedoes were already prepped and loaded. His target was the ship deemed most likely by intel to be the ship from which the BrainTrust would command its forces, such as they were. Wilson Tucker was a little uncomfortable firing on this particular vessel—it was a medical ship, after all—but if it were indeed the flagship, it was the only sensible target.
The Chiron loomed large, dead center in the display.
15
Decisively Engaged
Decisive engagement: In land and naval warfare, an engagement in which a unit is considered fully committed and cannot maneuver or extricate itself. In the absence of outside assistance, the action must be fought to a conclusion and either won or lost with the forces at hand.
—United States Department of Defense, official definition
Admiral Beck spoke to an audience of dead-quiet disapproval. “I want them shot down.” He did not yet say it as a command, but rather as a desire to be considered.
His staff officers, experts in every aspect of naval warfare, were reluctant to argue. His adjutant Lieutenant Lambert, however, was still young enough to believe himself invulnerable. He spoke quietly. “Those satellites are the only thing that stands between all of humanity and another plague engineer like Khalid.”
Braintrust- Requiem Page 26