by B. V. Larson
Epilogue
SystemLord, much reduced in sized, brooded inside the tiny escape drone. As large – or as small – as a missile, it held his concentrated essence in far too little protoplasm to feel comfortable. As he departed the system under high acceleration, he decided after all that he would not take a personal name. After this ignominy, it would be the height of foolishness to distinguish himself from all of the other SystemLords in the Empire.
Not that he would retain his title once he reported in. He’d be lucky to be a ship commander.
This will be a long trip, he thought. I don’t really think I’ll mind.
***
Formations of Hippos stood honor guard alongside the thinned ranks of surviving Marines. Once Admiral Absen – briefed by Ezekiel Denham – explained the difference between planetary Underlings and moon-based Purelings, the human warrior force took to their new allies with surprising ease. It helped immensely that the Underlings helped hunt down and ruthlessly exterminate all Purelings in the moon base with the enthusiasm of Mongols slaughtering Russian peasants.
Overhead, the massive Weapon was briefly turned to a gentler use. Emitting at a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of its power, it lit the ceiling of the enormous main chamber with a warm yellow light. One hundred thousand newly-awoken civilians sat in hastily-cut rock bleachers overlooking the ranks of Marines and EarthFleet personnel.
Thunder rolled at a signal from Admiral Absen in the reviewing stand, and slowly, to the measure dirge of bagpipes and Bodhran drums, one hundred separate lines of coffins emerged from the tunnels to the right. Over the next hour more than nineteen thousand boxes, draped with Earth’s banners, were set down before them in neat rows by their comrades. Many contained nothing more than a token DNA sample from BioMed records, or some object of remembrance, yet to their brothers and sister in arms every one of them held the sacred remains of EarthFleet’s finest.
I wish I could have the whole million civilians here to see this, Henrich Absen thought. I’ll have to settle for mandating everyone watch the video in full 4D sensurround when they wake up. They need to understand the price we paid for their lives, and their freedom, and never forget. Never forget, and be ready…because this is only our first conquest.
Because for damn sure it’s not over.
The End
Novels from the PLAGUE WARS Series by David VanDyke
Eden Plague
Demon Plagues
Reaper Plague
The Orion Plague
Army of One
(A Star Force Series Novella)
by
B. V. Larson
Author’s Note: For those fans of the Star Force Series, the events in this novella occur concurrently with CONQUEST, the fourth book of the series.
The first thing you will notice is that this story is not from the point of view of Kyle Riggs (but it is very much part of the Star Force story). That’s because I originally wrote this piece to fill in behind-the-scenes information concerning key events that were occurring on Earth without the knowledge of Riggs. I was never able to fit this part of the story into the series itself, as the Star Force books are written entirely in the first person, and Riggs can’t be everywhere at once.
If you haven’t yet read through book four of the series, there might be some minor spoilers for you here…
-BVL
-1-
Several weeks before the machines returned to Earth, an interview for a very special job was carefully arranged. Two men met one another in a hotel room that was supposedly neutral ground. One of them was a professional assassin, and the other was a self-important suit who worked for the newly reimagined CIA.
Outside the seventh floor window, Arlington, Virginia, was spread out in all its brick-and-mortar glory. The southwest corner of the Pentagon building could be easily seen across the Potomac.
The assassin, referred to by members of the community only as “Bjorn”, was not in a sightseeing mood. He was all business.
His interviewer from the Agency seemed to sense this, but he also seemed not to care. The case agent was a typical example of his breed: white, male, balding and overconfident. He had told Bjorn his cover name at the start of the interview, but Bjorn had already forgotten it because he had no interest in filling his mind with vague aliases.
“So…your name is Bjorn?” the suit asked, reading from the screen of his tablet. “Doesn’t that mean ‘bear’ in Swedish, or something? That’s about as euro of a name as you can get, and you don’t look like you come from Europe.” The interviewer looked up at Bjorn and smiled, enjoying his own joke.
Bjorn stared back at him flatly, until the interviewer cleared his throat. Bjorn realized in surprise that he already wanted to kill this man, which had to be some kind of a record. In most cases, it took hours for him to dislike another man enough to want to put a bullet in him. He wondered what year it would be when a half-black guy didn’t have to listen to any jokes.
Finally, Bjorn spoke: “I guess my heritage is what you might call ‘mixed’,” he said. He didn’t add the words “you asshole” but he felt like it.
The suit chuckled. “You do have a sketchy past,” he went on, “Delta originally, then off the grid. We have a dozen hits attributed to you, but without any real pattern. You appear in a town—and then someone dies in an interesting way that same night. We know that you’re effective, but what are your core beliefs?”
The question brought a flicker of amusement to Bjorn’s face, but not to his eyes. What kind of mercenary worried about core beliefs? In Bjorn’s opinion, the interviewer was a fool. But he was a fool who must be dealt with. Bjorn had been out of work for nearly a year now, and his accounts were running dry. In this country, whether aliens were invading from the skies or not, this man and a thousand suit-wearing fools like him held the purse strings for all freelance hitmen.
“I have no beliefs,” Bjorn said. “At least, none that reach longer than my arm.”
The suit frowned slightly and flicked at his tablet some more. “What about the machines from the stars? You must have an opinion about the aliens?”
Bjorn shrugged. “I don’t.”
The interviewer stared for a second, then leaned forward. “We know more about you than what you’ve listed on your resume. For instance, we know you’ve been on a Nano ship.”
For the first time, Bjorn was surprised. He hadn’t thought it was possible for this man to surprise him, but he’d managed it. He felt his mind kicking into an entirely new gear. Up until this moment, he’d been almost bored with the interview. But now, he was on guard.
“What else do you know?” Bjorn asked.
The interviewer sat back and smiled broadly, happy to have gotten a response. Bjorn felt his dislike for the agent intensify. This, then, was the source of the man’s inner confidence. Usually, when suits met with freelance killers they were at least nervous. But this fellow had been overconfident from the start. That could only mean he felt he had this particular vicious dog under control. Bjorn didn’t like the implications.
His eyes drifted around the room. Peepholes? Could there be a squad in body armor on the other side of these walls, ready to pounce? He’d checked out the hotel in advance hours ago. It was standard procedure for him, but possibly he’d missed something.
Finally, his traveling eyes landed on the window and the view of the gray river outside. There were plenty of places to hide a camera and a microphone in this city. It was one of the most camera-filled regions in the world.
The interviewer watched his reactions with interest. “In answer to your question,” he said, “we know all about your relationship with the Nano ships. One of them took you aboard on the night of the initial invasion. You passed all the tests for obvious reasons. But, among all the humans ever to have done so, you alone were determined to escape the ship. You weren’t swayed by its offers of power, and you were able to escape its defensive systems, everything meant to keep you aboard.”
The interviewer looked at him, eyebrows arched expectantly. He still wore that confident smile. “Nothing about this story rings a bell?” he asked. “Is there anything you might want to add?”
“In my business, one does not give out information unnecessarily.”
“Right,” the agent said, nodding. “I get that. But unfortunately, it is necessary. You see, we didn’t call you here to hire you for a hit. We have plenty of people who can do that. You’re much more interesting to us than your typical thug. You have a ship out there that loves you, and you would make it very happy simply by climbing back aboard her. You know that, don’t you? Once in a Nano ship, you could rejoin Star Force and then you could…tell us about it.”
Bjorn now understood the agency’s motivation. They wanted his ship. They wanted a free introduction into Star Force. But he also knew that his old ship had found another commander and no longer served him. He couldn’t call it or contact it. He wouldn’t want to if he could. He thought about explaining all this to the interviewer, but rejected the idea. He decided to go with a simpler way out.
“I’m not a spy,” he said. “Get an intel guy.”
The interviewer shook his head. “Due to certain…misunderstandings, the Star Force people are paranoid. They only offer membership to people they trust. They trust people in Nano ships, who are almost all amateurs. We really need you, and no one else can do this job.”
Bjorn stood up suddenly. The interviewer stiffened at his unexpected movement.
“I’ll do it,” Bjorn said. “Put a hundred thousand in the drop-box and I’ll infiltrate Star Force.”
The interviewer took a deep breath and smiled. His confident exterior returned in full force. “Excellent,” he said. “There are a few more formalities, however. If you’ll just sit down a moment longer, please?”
Bjorn stood there for several seconds, considering. He had no intention of spying on Star Force for this fool. It wasn’t his kind of work. He liked to keep things clean and simple. Not long-term commitments. No choosing sides. He did his hits the night he arrived in a given town, just as the man had described, and then he vanished again. By morning, he liked to be on a plane bound for another continent.
The agent frowned at him and seemed slightly exasperated. “There’s a lot of money riding on your next move. Don’t you think a hundred K is worth a few more minutes?”
Bjorn had already decided to skip picking up the money, although he needed it. He just wanted to get out of this room. When a deal went sour, his standard operating procedure was to agree to whatever they wanted and leave the country. That was usually a good way to escape a meeting like this. Once he was out of the reach of whoever he’d been dealing with, he could vanish. Usually they were upset, but not so upset that they would try to burn him.
He was very good at vanishing. Southern Spain, Indonesia—those were perfect places to go when a man wanted to vanish quickly. But this meeting wasn’t going as planned. Realizing he was going to have to keep playing this game for a while longer, he reluctantly sat down again.
The interviewer pulled a briefcase up onto the small circular hotel table between them. He opened it and a moment later placed a pair of wrist straps on the cherry veneer tabletop.
“No lie-detectors,” Bjorn said.
The interviewer sighed. “We have to do it. Just for purposes of protocol. I apologize.”
Bjorn frowned. He stared at the unit, then at the man. He made a hard decision. As his first escape plan wasn’t working, he decided to proceed with Plan B.
“All right,” he told the agent. “But could we close the curtains first?”
“Why?”
“I don’t like being on camera.”
The agent snorted. “You know there are no cameras in here. You did a sweep hours ago.”
Bjorn gestured toward the window. The interviewer pursed his lips in annoyance.
“This city is full of cameras,” Bjorn said. “They’re everywhere, and I’m sure a few of them are focused on these windows right now.”
“All right,” the agent said. “Just to put you at ease.”
The agent got up and drew the curtains. They were the blackout shades designed to block out sunlight and let a jet-lagged salesman sleep in if he wanted to. The two men were suddenly cast into gloom. The interviewer pulled a chain that dangled down from a hanging lamp over the cherry-veneer table. A circle of yellowy light illuminated them both.
“Happy now?”
“Ecstatic.”
Bjorn allowed the man to affix the padded cuffs to his thick wrists. He frowned throughout the process. Tiny metal sensors pressed against his skin.
“Now, first question: are we in Arlington, Virginia?”
“Yes.”
“Did you eat breakfast this morning in the hotel?”
“No.”
“Very good. Have you undergone nanite-injections, administered by your ship?”
Bjorn stared.
“Well?”
“I’m not going to answer that.”
“Not even if it means losing this job?”
“I don’t care.”
The interviewer made a note on his tablet. He seemed irritated. “All right, it isn’t necessary that you reply to that one. Let me ask another: have you been aboard a Nano ship?”
“Yes.”
“Did you take the alien tests and survive them all?”
“Yes.”
“Very good…” he said, doing some more tapping.
Bjorn wondered what the agent got out of this process. The man seemed to be enjoying himself. He wondered if the man had a psychological complex that caused him to feel pleasure when he had the upper hand on a killer. He liked to hold the tiger’s leash. Bjorn’s frown deepened the more he thought about it.
“You’re scowling,” the agent said. “Are you ready for the next question?”
“Stop wasting time.”
“All right. Next question: Do you plan to overthrow the U. S. Government?”
“What? No.”
“Do you associate with people who do wish to overthrow the U. S. Government?”
“No.”
“Hmm,” the interviewer said, frowning. “Do you wish to elaborate on that one?”
“No.”
The questions went on, but at the end, the interviewer was left chewing his lip. He heaved a sigh.
“I’m sorry, Bjorn, but this isn’t going the way I’d planned. If you have something to hide, you should do a better job of it. You’re a pro, after all.”
Bjorn frowned. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“One of the questions—you lied. The machine registered a distinct response pattern.”
“Then it’s broken.”
“I don’t think so.”
Bjorn stood up again. “In that case, I’m sorry to disappoint you. I’m not a suitable candidate, as I said. I’ll be going now.”
“Just a minute,” said the interviewer. “You’re always in such a hurry to leave! I have an idea. Just take this pill, please.”
The agent pushed a capsule full of greenish liquid across the desk toward Bjorn, who made no move to pick it up. It looked like pain medication.
“I don’t think so,” Bjorn said.
“Look, it’s the only way. I’m authorized to bump up the offer to make it worth your while. We’ll give you five hundred thousand today. And then an additional five hundred thousand when you submit your first intel report on Star Force.”
Bjorn was surprised by the amount, but he still didn’t reach out for the pill on the table between them. “What is it?”
“It’s a knock-out pill. I have to give it to you before taking you in. You must understand,
you’re an assassin full of nanites who has just failed a loyalty polygraph. I have to take you in and have the experts figure out what the problem is. We want you working for us at all costs—but there are formalities. The suits will want you to come clean.”
Bjorn’s lips twitched upward for a moment. “You’re a suit.”
“Right, well—I meant the suits who are higher up the food chain that I am.”
Bjorn picked up the pill. He looked at it suspiciously. Then he looked at the interviewer.
“You’re sure you want me to do this?”
The overconfident smile came back, but this time Bjorn could see an edge to it. The agent was nervous underneath.
The man was wise to be uncertain.
Bjorn lunged. He grabbed the interviewer with his left hand, clutching a wad of cloth over his chest. His hands found a lump there, in the breast pocket. He squeezed, and the object inside the man’s front jacket pocket crunched in his incredibly powerful grip. He ripped it out and wires came free like the guts of a fish. He dropped the recording device on the table between them. It was completely destroyed.
The interviewer then made two mistakes: first, he went for the pistol under his arm, and second, he opened his mouth to yell. Both moves were understandable, but they sealed his fate. If he’d remained perfectly motionless, he might have survived the encounter. But Bjorn had been injected with nanites a year ago, and they had transformed him from simply a smooth, highly-competent assassin into a true machine of death.
Bjorn’s hands moved with such blurring speed and irresistible power that before the interviewer could make a coherent sound, it was all over. Bjorn snatched away the pistol and shoved the green capsule into the agent’s open mouth.
He followed up by clamping the man’s mouth shut with one large hand. The interviewer’s eyes rolled in terror. He ignored Bjorn’s other hand, which held the gun. Both his hands and all his attention were on the fingers that held his mouth closed. He strained, but he could not remove Bjorn’s grip.