I ran over to the first half-track. Security troops looked back with busy heads, assessing us. Another petrol bomb went off behind a bulldog, rocking it. The gunner was thrown forward, smacking his helmet into his water cannon. Blood spattered his visor.
I ran up beside the bulldog and banged on its passenger door. It open after a few more bangs, an angry Tanaka glared.
“Now what the hell do you want?”
“Abandon the half-tracks. We’re being trapped.”
“You’re overreacting. Keep your head. You’ll start a panic.”
“I’m not overreacting. Analyze the roadblocks man, they’re going to bog us down and then attack us with firearms. It’s a classic Fifth Planetary tactic. You need to move now while you still can.”
“But – I have to get approval from Francis.”
“There’s no time, you need to make a decision now.”
“No, I have to clear this. Driver, stop the vehicle. We’re not going anywhere till we sort this.”
I swore and ran back to Yuri and the others.
“Tanaka has no balls. Fucking middle-management.”
He hung up the radio, “And Francis won’t take my call.”
“At least the half-tracks have stopped moving. Fifth Planetary will have to come to us.”
“Is it really them?”
“It’s certainly their style. Even if it’s not, the residents have had plenty of time to figure out how the Provost’s men operate. And a roadblock isn’t rocket science.”
A group of riot police came running towards us from the rear.
“What’s going on?” I yelled at them.
“There’s a mob coming this way,” one replied over his shoulder. Commands were barked and men rushed up and formed a phalanx of gleaming shields.
“Activate!” came the order.
Thirty shock-truncheons lit up glowing blue, steam boiling white off their business-ends.
“We’re too late, they’ve closed the trap,” said Yuri.
“You there!” yelled the sergeant leading the phalanx, “get into formation!”
Blue Eyes gave him the finger.
“They’ll have shooters in the crowd,” I said, “When they get close enough to the police line, they’ll open fire. They’ll use the rest of the mob as human shields. If we shoot back, all of London will riot. If we don’t shoot, officers are going to die, and all of London will riot.”
“Then let’s break up the mob,” said Yuri. “It’ll wreck their plan, and any gunmen stupid enough to start shooting will be vulnerable to us, in hand to hand.”
“We have our side-arms, Sir,” said Blue Eyes.
“No, we don’t want to start shooting people,” I shook my head, “the shooters will likely be home-grown losers, not anyone who can actually aim. We get into hand to hand with them and we’ll have the advantage. Besides, shooting will cause a panic -- and a media disaster.”
“There’s not much time,” said Yuri. “Let’s go!”
The six of us turned and ran down the street towards the gathering mob.
“Where are you going?” yelled the sergeant. “Where are you idiots going?”
We rounded the corner, and there they were.
Two hundred strong and growing fast. It was no angry crowd, it was a flash mob. Chains dragged, poles thumped, knives glinted. We stopped: an army of young men jeered us.
“Drop down,” said Yuri calmly.
We crouched down and propped up shields, freeing our hands.
“Flash bangs.”
Six grenades were unclipped and primed. The mob stopped moving, silent in indecision.
“Now.”
A flash-bang is the kindest munition, it only ruins your life for a few seconds. The grenades arced over into the scattering mob and ignited into retina-burning light and ear popping sound. Many rioters took the full impact and went down, stunned.
“Again!”
Another volley went out, this time the rioters turned away and covered their ears. The ones still standing started yelling back and forth to each other. They started dragging their crumpled comrades out of the street and into cover.
“They’re not scattering,” Blue Eyes. “Shouldn’t they scatter?”
“A real crowd would, but these fuckers are looking for a fight,” Yuri looked over to me, “I’m not seeing any guns drawn.”
“Let’s get in there before they show!”
I stood up.
My shock baton activated, crackling and sparking. My hair stood on end, pins and needles ran up my arm.
“Get them!”
I’d take a Human Affairs social worker over a Scum slum hoodlum any day. However, even working with an anti-terror SWAT team, charging a cohesive group thirty times our size was pretty ambitious. The grenades had given us the initiative though, and we were better off in the thick of things where gunmen wouldn’t risk hitting friendlies.
A ginger-haired man no older than my brother raised a metal pole over his head to strike. I slammed the edge of my riot shield across his face. Teeth and blood juiced as he was smacked aside twisting into the ground. I leapt at a staring man who just stood there holding two long knives. The shock baton blasted blue sparks and ozone as it ground down into his forehead. He collapsed, jerking, his eyes rolled back into his head.
We struck like Spartans: six men in a row. Electricity arced as we raised our batons, and our steel-studded shields crunched, crunched, crunched.
There are few things as exhilarating as winning a big fight.
“About bloody time!”
I looked back for a split second: the Provost’s police line was finally advancing around the corner. We were going to live.
A hammer blow struck my shield. My arm smacked into my helmet with the force, my head throbbed.
Through the blood and dust smears on the clear shield, I could see the bald-headed bravo standing just ahead of me. The smoking, homemade pistol still pointed at me, one-handed.
“Gunmen!”
I ran, shield up, and bashed him with it backwards. Then reaching over, I shocked him right in the eye. He screamed, saliva sprayed my shield as he went down. I stomped on his chest, hard (the fucker shot at me).
Another shot cracked out - I saw a SWAT trooper smacked aside as if struck in the helmet by a bus. We formed up around him, Yuri crouched down and checked his vitals. Suddenly, our pavise shields just weren’t big enough.
“Bastards!” Blue Eyes snarled. “Why have they stopped?”
The Provost’s men were holding their ground, thirty meters away.
“The gunfire must have spooked them,” more shots rang out, misses. I saw a man crouching behind a barrel with a crude rifle.
“He’s fine!” yelled Yuri looking up from our downed comrade. The man had gotten up on his elbows and was shaking the dizzy out of his still-intact head.
A droning sounded. It was coming closer.
“Sir,” Blue-Eyes, “the Provost’s men are waving at us.”
“Fuck the Provost’s men, get the gunmen!” snapped Yuri, “We’re amongst them, we can put an end to this right now!”
He was right, it was about to turn: the insurgents were about to break and run. I leapt for the man with the carbine, he seemed distracted by something in the air, behind us. He swung the gun around but it was too late. I bashed it aside, and punched him in the nose with a knuckle-duster fist. Bone crushed and he went down.
The droning grew louder.
More of the insurgents stopped and stared.
Blue-Eyes stopped and stared.
I turned and looked.
In bullet time, I saw the flares from the gun pods lighting up. The street erupted in dust, bullets, and aerosolized blood. A round struck my shield and broke my arm. I fell on top of a man, I did not notice at first but then saw his head had been shot off. Blood still pumped out from his neck.
The heavy assault drones streaked over and past us, their attack run complete. All I could hear now were men scream
ing.
I looked at the head again.
It was Yuri’s.
Tennyson, Part V
81 Years Ago.
“You have failed. Completely and utterly.”
Sun Tzu faced the angry Gods. He looked at each of them in turn, none gave him refuge.
“All you had to do was make contact with them. All you had to do was prevent a war,” said Suiren. “What did you do instead?”
“I made every attempt at contact. I – “
“Did you now? Is that why you killed them all?”
“They killed themselves, and you know it. As soon as we defeated their military forces, the entire support fleet crashed itself into the gas giant. It was a mass suicide.”
“Support fleet?” the God tasted the words and found them sour. “There was an entire nation there. Those were habitats and cities.”
“And they freely chose to kill themselves. We made no strikes against them, we were wary they may have been non-combatants. Do you shed tears for the insane? I will not. I will remember the humans who died there instead. Humans I will protect, even if you forget.”
“You were supposed to prevent this,” said Nuwa.
“No. Saraswati was supposed to prevent this. She made contact with Xeno-Transcendents, invited them to Paradiso, and was annihilated. Then they came to Tennyson, with a fleet five times the size of the entire Union fleet. I tried to make contact with them, and they ignored me. So I annihilated them.”
“It is simply not possible that the Transcendents would have warred against their brothers, had they known who and what we are,” said Nuwa. “At Tennyson, as at Paradiso, their baselines indulged their own warlike natures, without check from their Transcendents who simply cared not to enter into baseline matters.”
“How can you tell yourself this?” Sun Tzu pointed at her. “Saraswati was wrong. There are no Xeno-Transcendents.”
“This is preposterous,” Suiren looked away.
“No its not. Saraswati was destroyed because she wasted precious time trying to communicate with something that didn’t exist. I wasted precious time doing the same. These aliens are advanced baselines, nothing more. They are dangerous, and we need to control their numbers.”
“No,” said Nuwa shaking her head. “They simply could not have become a space faring culture without also developing Transcendents. This is not possible.”
“Then you must accept that there is something irredeemably and fundamentally wrong with their Transcendents.”
“This is not possible either,” she continued, “the architecture of their minds cannot be so different that they will resist sharing and merging. It is the very nature of intelligence.”
“It is the nature of neural net intelligence. They must have developed a completely alien architecture of thought. If it is so different that they have no interest in communicating with us, then I demand we destroy them all for our own safety.”
“You completely reject the third possibility?” said Suiren, “That you and Saraswati both simply failed to be noticed by their Transcendants? That your efforts, were simply beneath the task?”
“Yes, I do reject the assertion that this is all due to my incompetence. I am no more competent than those who empower me to act on their behalf, perhaps they should think of this before placing blame so eagerly at my feet. But clearly, there is no shaking this fantasy from your mind. Against all evidence you three cling to the hope that somehow we have brethren, brethren who will embrace us.”
“We have seen a great deal more than you have, Sun Tzu,” said Nuwa, “and we have lived a great deal longer. You are angry and self-righteous before us but you forget that we have earned our seats here.”
Sun Tzu said nothing.
“I will suggest this,” said Nuwa, “that once a species has decided on war, that is not the time to be discovering how best to speak to its divine minds. Under invasion at Paradiso and Tennyson, contact was likely doomed from the start. Can we all accept this as a possibility?”
The nodding of reluctant Gods.
“Then the choice moving forward is obvious. We must go to Paradiso and make contact, before they ready the next invasion fleet.”
“Paradiso is most likely a dead, irradiated husk,” said Sun Tzu. “It will take decades to reach it.”
“Then look for them everywhere in space. However, you will most certainly find them at Paradiso. They will have left something behind there, at the very least occupation forces. They have been there for decades – there will be settlements.”
“Fine. But I will be the one to go.”
“You are a warrior,” said Nuwa, “and a great one at that. At Tennyson we needed you to defend, and you did so. We do not need a warrior now, we need a poet, a writer, a speaker.”
“Bullshit. You are sending me, because you could be so completely and utterly wrong. They may be baselines without Transcendents, or their Transcendents may be warped. If either of these are the case, then I will need to be there, to destroy them utterly.”
“You do not decide policy,” Suiren warned.
“No, you decide policy. I’ll decide what lives and dies.”
“Again Sun Tzu, you forget yourself,” Nuwa.
“And you forget that countless lives have been lost. You simply no longer have the luxury to pursue this matter as if nothing is being risked. Everything is being risked. We are at war with an alien race that communicates only one thing clearly – their hatred of us. I will make Herculean effort to find their Transcendents, I will use any and all resources at my disposal to find them, and end this mad tragedy. But I will do so as a watchful and armed guardian. Humanity is paying the price of these unaffordable encounters. We will not keep paying it.”
“You speak of contact and effort, but clearly all you are doing is planning another war,” said Suiren.
“My dear Sovereign, what makes you think this war has ended?”
Serial Killer
The sentry’s boots echoed in the dim, stone corridors.
Cameras were his only company. They turned to watch as he passed, then went back to staring into space. He’d return an hour later and they’d look up and follow him, like spectators on the sidelines of a race. Then, again back to staring.
Dust devils had gathered outside. They howled at the moon, and others answered across the desert. The sentry kept walking, nodding to his camera friends. Outside, the pack grew. Talons poked through cracks in the wall, trying to rake him as he passed. He shook them off, kicking them into drifts of dusts.
A camera heard his bootsteps, and whirred-turned to look as he came into view.
A second camera heard his bootsteps, and whirred-turned to look.
A third camera heard his bootsteps.
It did not turn.
“Halt!”
At the end of the corridor, a robed figure stood in shadow.
“Get on the ground now, hands behind your head!” the assault rifle took aim.
It didn’t move.
The rifle roared, muzzle flashing. Three rounds punched into the figure’s chest. It lifted up, and smashed against the wall. It slid down into a crumpled heap and was still.
“Battlefield Control: we have an intrusion! Come in Battlefield Control!”
Still no signal. The sentry advanced, rifle raised and ready. The camera watched as he crouched down and touched the body.
His hand came away with a fistful of robes. He kicked at it, there was no body.
The camera behind him whirred.
The sentry turned his head sharply and looked over his shoulder.
It was right behind him.
Interstellar Control, Cheyenne Mountain, USA
“You’ve been training for this. I’m going to be here with you, every step of the way.”
Sun Tzu faced the packed auditorium in flesh and blood. Orderlies wheeled in stacks of chairs, cursing as they got in each other’s way. At the back techs elbowed for space and craned their necks. A sea of USAF blu
e faced the white-uniformed admiral.
His features were hardened, clean-shaved. His gestures called up screens, both real and virtual.
“While it is unlikely to have the raw processing power to fight us, we honestly have no idea what its capabilities are. All that we know about it is that it defeated a planetful of Transcendents. Let’s not commit hubris just because we won the space and the ground war. This is what it’s all been leading up to. This is a fight of operations-per-second. This is the ultimate test of our science and technology. By default – that makes it a test of our very way of life.
“This is not happening on its terms, this is our biggest advantage. However, it’s had months to prepare against this day. Don’t just expect a mass attack of malicious code; access attempts; and encryption breaking. It’s shown that it likes to take it’s time and orchestrate deep subversions. Watch for corruption and infiltration of genetic databases. The sudden growth of latent, destructive memes. Stock market manipulation. It’ll hit us as hard as it can, and as soon as it sees how well defended we are, it will break away and start looking for weak points. This battle could be over in seconds, or it could rage for years.
“You are all ready for this. There isn’t a more brilliant or better trained group in all the Union, ready to defend our dataspace. We’ll meet this thing in battle. And on your efforts and sacrifice, our way of life will be victorious.”
In the sky, two stars broke from their constellations. Rockets fired, kicking them across the tropics and into new, geostationary positions. Rails telescoped to full length – like needles aimed at an eye. Along their length, powerful electromagnets glowed into life. Steel rounds the size of cars were loaded: planetary shotgun shells. Firing computers insta-booted and target coordinates were accepted. All systems reported green.
The gun platforms waited patiently for the order to fire.
Fleet Control, Ganymede Anchorage, Jupiter
“You’ve been expecting this day. I’m going to be here with you, every step of the way.”
Burning Eagle Page 17