Live Free or Die-ARC

by John Ringo

  "Following the nematode attack there are five viruses. Four strike more or less simultaneously, the fifth strikes last. All of the viruses are aerosol vectors as well as blood pathogens. All of the viruses have a long infectious period followed by rapid terminal phase. They're fairly merciful, actually. The nematode attack is the most painful and the pain period is mercifully brief.

  "There is a virus loaded to eliminate a host of genetic disorders including color blindness. Then one that attacks anyone with a reduced immune system. One that eliminates anyone with genetic propensity for cancer or several auto-immune disorders such as lupus. Then one that attacks several teratogenic conditions. Those will attack simultaneously and, based on probable infection period, quite soon. Which are all very much overkill because the last one kills anyone who does not have a gene for blond hair. I'm not sure what the purpose of that is. But it will eliminate 90% of your world population. It does, however, strike very last so you have some time. It will initiate in between ten and fifteen days depending upon method of transmission. The others will be entering initiation phase soon if they have not already."

  "Holy God," Dr. Tobias said. "Blonds? What the hell do the Horvath have for blonds?" The doctor was a completely natural brunette.

  "There is no definitive proof that this was a Horvath attack," Louisa said. "The organisms were crafted using Glatun equipment, but that is the same equipment the Horvath use. And the Rangora. The specific codes that would have identified the machine that produced them have been erased."

  "That's to think about later," Tyler said. "Louisa, the World Health Organization is a unified planetary body. Surely you can work through them?"

  "It has to be requested," Louisa said. "There are species that are so . . . rejective that they do not ask for help to the point of termination."

  "We'll get someone to ask for help," Tyler said. "Please be ready to respond. Call you back." He paused and frowned. "Damnit. I don't know anyone in that part of the government."

  "I'll send you a number," Louisa said.

  ". . . still trying to find out if there are any additional . . ." Leona said then looked at her phone. There had been a distinct 'click' as if Dr. Qau, current head of the World Health Organization, had hung up. "Hello? Hello?"

  "Dr. Cline, this is Tyler Vernon," Tyler said. "Just listen for a second and don't hang up or talk. There are six pathogens, not one. I'm sending you a download, it's actually on your computer, giving an outline. The Glatun can stop this in its tracks but they need the head of the WHO to contact them and request help. And he'd better do it right now because four more are about to go into terminal phase. We have about three days to stop this or we're going to have a mass die-off. I'm done. You talk."

  "How mass?" Leona said. "And where's the file?"

  "Opening it now," Tyler said.

  "Nice being able to own someone else's computer," Leona said, scanning the document. "This is fairly open-ended. What's the source?"

  "My pilots I sent to Glalkod were infected," Tyler said. "And they're monitoring our systems. The Glatun medical AIs probably have a better handle on this than you."

  "Is this Horvath?" Dr. Cline asked. "And . . . blonds? Why blonds? That will kill off . . ."

  "Most of the human race," Tyler said. "Most of the US, obviously. All of Africa, China . . . And we're still trying to figure that out. It doesn't really matter, though. All that matters is getting it stopped."

  "Last question," Dr. Cline said. "Why me?"

  "I dunno," Tyler said. "One of the Glatun medical AIs gave me your number."

  "Nice to be famous," Dr. Cline said, dryly.

  "Not . . . really."

  "This is Courtney Courtney with CNN and I'm here at the LFD Corporate Headquarters where a protest is heating up. Excuse me, sir, what are you protesting?"

  "The Vermon Worms!" the man screamed at the camera. In his twenties with scraggly long hair and a ratty beard, he was waving a sign that said 'End the Oppression of LFD!' "This is all the fault of that bastard Tyler Vernon!"

  "Why do you say that?" Courtney asked.

  "The Horvath would just leave us alone if it wasn't for Vernon!"

  "Yeah!" The speaker was a female version of the speaker with the exception of the beard. Wearing a t-shirt that was out of date in 1970 and waving another placard with the motto 'Peace Now!' she clearly knew what she wanted out of life. "The only reason the Horvath have poisoned us is Tyler Vernon! Vernon Has To Go! Vernon Has To Go!"

  "Vernon Has To Go!" the guy started chanting in time. Soon the whole crowd was chanting.

  "And there you have it," Courtney said. "There's a lot of anger being directed at Tyler Vernon, Susi. These people think Tyler Vernon has to go."

  "Interesting report, Courtney . . ."

  "Go where exactly?" Tyler asked. "Jupiter? Uranus?"

  It had been three days since he'd contacted Louisa and Glatun medical ships had already arrived. They were able to convert nannites for the viruses quickly but there were six billion people on the planet and not all of them were easy to contact. For that matter, there were a some governments that were resisting the distribution, notably Butan and Myanmar except for their junta and military in the latter case. Then there were areas with poor security or failed states, the usual sorts of 'leave it with us and we'll distribute to the right people' countries like China and even in the US people who weren't going to take that 'alien devil medicine.' The Glatun were willing and able to drop a shuttle anywhere they were welcome. And could be sure they wouldn't take a MANPAD.

  But there were six billion people on the planet. Getting 99% of those before the Brunette Killer kicked in would be great. That would mean only sixty million people dead. The CDC had one server doing nothing but crunching mortality reports on Johannsen's Syndrome and that already passed sixty thousand dead. And it was now having to separate for the 'pre-existing condition' viruses. That was how the CDC referred to them. 'Pre-existing conditions.'

  "So . . . the Horvath nuked Cairo, Shanghai and Mexico City because of you?" Driver said. They were watching the news from a side office off the main command bunker. Tyler had decided it was a good idea to head back to earth, mostly to make sure Petra and the girls got their shots. He was starting to think that wasn't the best move.

  "There hasn't been a reference in the mainstream media in which the Horvath and the orbital strikes were mentioned together in three years," Tyler said. "In fact, there have been no references to the orbital strikes except in passing. They've been wiped off the radar by the Western press. Unmentionable. Those countries still mention them, but even then they don't mention the Horvath in the same paragraph or sentence."

  "I'm starting to see what you mean by Stockholm Syndrome," the command center manager said. "The police that want to rescue you are the problem, not the terrorists holding you hostage."

  "Bingo," Tyler said, lightly. Then he grunted.

  "What?"

  "An insight," Tyler said, pulling up a picture on one of the screens.

  "Who's that?" Driver asked. The picture was of a heavy set 'German' looking middle-aged male in a very expensive suit.

  "Kurt Van Guter," Tyler said. "He's the lead negotiator with the Horvath in South Africa. And . . ." Tyler said, bringing up another picture. This man was thinner and harder looking with high Slavic cheekbones. "Anton Aleksandrov. Head of Interstellar Negotiations for Angara Artel. And . . ." the last picture was of Courtney Courtney from CNN.

  "Blond," Driver said. "Blond. Blonde."

  "And, of course, then there's . . ." Tyler put up his own picture.

  "Brunette."

  "I just damned the whole human race by my hair color," Tyler said. "The Horvath probably have a really hard time telling us apart. But the color of our hair is pretty noticeable."

  "Okay, now that's where I have to draw the line," Driver said. "Time for me to drag out the pin."

  "What pin?" Tyler asked, confused.

  "The pin for your head, sir," the center man
ager said. "Maybe the Horvath chose the whole blond thing because of who they had good relations with. I'm not sure whether to include the media in that or not while seeing your point. But I doubt they targeted the rest of the world - China, India, Africa . . . surely they can tell skin color differences - because of Tyler Vernon. That is sort of reverse arrogance of an amazing degree if you don't mind my saying so, sir."

  "Advanced but unsophisticated," Tyler said, musingly. "Oh, I take your point, colonel. And I'll accept that that was my inner Evil Overlord coming out. But it was a very unsophisticated attack. They may deal with an Afrikaner but the actual mining is done by what I'm sure Mr. Van Guter would call 'bleks.' The generally accepted rationale given for them not previously trying to wipe out the human race and just occupy the planet was that it was easier to just exact tribute from us. And keeping the rest of the world more or less functional kept the mines working better. They've clearly changed strategy."

  "Which means we don't have any choice at this point," the former colonel said. "We're going to have to fight."

  "With what?" Tyler asked, leaning back and interlocking his fingers behind his head.

  The colonel gave him a long and meaningful look.

  "It won't focus enough," Tyler said. "You know that. Ninety terrawatts on a space the size of my palm and we might breach their shields. Every mirror we've tried has turned into space confetti. Collimaters, since we're not dealing with a laser, spread and weaken the beam. And generally turn into space confetti."

  "Bet Ruby works."

  "If we can get it formed," Tyler said. "If we can get it ground. If it's pure enough. If we can get it cooled enough. If, if, if. I'm not happy betting the security of earth on if."

  "Kind of past happy," Driver said.

  "The first time we aim SAPL at the Horvath they're going to start taking it down," Tyler said. "It's not hardened. It's not distributed nearly enough. Six major targets and you've got a bunch of mirrors pointing light beams into deep space. A VSA that works, another sixty BDAs and it will be harder. Three years. You know this."

  " 'Ask me for anything but time'," Driver said. "Napoleon Bonaparte. Speaking of short guys."

  "He wasn't, actually, below normal height," Tyler said. "Ask me for anything but . . ." He paused and looked into the distance. "Sorry, important call." Tyler closed his eyes. "On speaker. Hello, Admiral."

  "Hello, Mr. Tyler," the commander of SpaceCom said. "I was wondering if you'd be willing to come down to DC to talk."

  "I can guess about what," Tyler said. "I assume you won't have the SPs waiting for me? Or the FBI?"

  "No, sir," the admiral said. "Not where we're going."

  "When?"

  "Friday at nine AM? At the Pentagon?"

  "Be there," Tyler said. "Just try to make sure they're actually prepared for me to get there because if anybody finds out I'm pretty sure the protesters will be out in force."

  "We'll take care of that, sir."

  "Out here," Tyler said. "Well . . . I would rather face a thousand deaths . . ."

  "What are you going to tell them?"

  "The same thing I just told you."

  "So that's it," Tyler said. "According to the intelligence we've gotten through Glatun commercial sources and our best estimate of how much power we can put on target, SAPL cannot penetrate the Horvath shields. And even if it gets through the shields, it's got to cut fullerene armor. And in the meantime, they are going to be counter-firing its soft-skin mirror systems so power is going to degrade fast. We find it supremely unlikely that SAPL will be able to stop the Horvath."

  "You've just launched a new VSA mirror," the Chairman said, looking around at the assembled joint chiefs. "The VSA . . ."

  "Is designed to handle enough power," Tyler said. "We haven't done a full-scale test. There will be only one VSA. The last one lasted thirty seconds which might be enough to do some serious damage. It still won't stop the cruiser. There is something that might, which brings me to a question."

  "Which is?" the Chairman asked.

  "I'm going to ask a simple question and I'm going to anticipate a simple, or at least honest and open, response. If the answer is, you don't have the need to know, I'm going to walk out of the room and you can figure out how to fight the Horvath entirely on your own."

  "That's pretty damned ugly of you," the Chief of Staff of the Air Force said.

  "We're either in this together or we're not," Tyler said. "We hang together or we will assuredly hang separately. Clear enough."

  "Again, the question," the Chairman said.

  "Can the rounds on the Star Fury, God what a stupid name, do a pen or drop the Horvath shields?" Tyler asked.

  "Uff da," the Chairman said, leaning back. "You're right, you aren't cleared for that."

  "Thank you very much for your time," Tyler said, standing up.

  "You can't just leave!" the Air Force COS said.

  "Unless I'm . . ."

  "I said you're not cleared," the Chairman said, placatingly. "I didn't say I wasn't going to answer."

  "Now just wait a damned minute . . ." the AF COS said.

  "No, now shut the hell up," the Chairman said, angrily. "If we need to get the Secretaries in here to hash this out, we will. But Tyler's right. We have information he has to have to make an informed decision. He's got information we have to have. It's a two way street. Star Fury, and I agree that's a damned stupid name, is your pet project . . ."

  "Figures," Tyler said.

  "Does it penetrate or not?"

  "You don't even know?" Tyler asked.

  "We've never been able to get a straight answer," the Marine Corps Commandant said.

  The AF COS sat back in his chair and folded his arms. Then he waved them in frustration.

  "Maybe!"

  "Maybe the SAPL will work," Tyler said. "Maybe the BFG will work. Maybe, if, sort of. Yes, or no?"

  "Can you say yes?" the AF COS said.

  "I can say how it works and what might and might not," Tyler said. "I can give people enough information to make decisions. I've given you five the information I have. What you recommend to the President is up to you. But if you want me to throw away SAPL you'd better have a better something to throw on the table than a gun that maybe works. Because SAPL by itself will not. So how does it work?"

  "This is really God damned classified," the AF COS said. "I'm not sure I should be discussing it with an uncleared civilian."

  "Fish or cut bait time," Tyler said. "The full progress of the disease is supposed to be done in a week and a half. By then I can have Steve back here and he can try, again, to get that POS off the ground. But I'm going to fight tooth and nail against committing SAPL if it's on its own. It. Just. Won't. Work. So how does the penetrator work? What's the output?"

  "The way that the penetrator is supposed to work," the AF COS said, shrugging, "is using counter-rotating high-density gravity fields. They're more like a vortex. Think of a gravity tornado."

  "Which Dr. Givens discovered, accidentally, by getting her hair torn off," Tyler said.

  "You got that part of the briefing?" the AF COS said.

  "They wanted money," Tyler said. "Which means you have two larger, lower power, gravity wells being generated. They said they were having problems generating them at all. What gives?"

  "That's why I said 'Maybe,'" the AF COS said. "Generating consistent grav fields is difficult. The round, we call it a breacher, works by generating two fields, as Mr. Vernon said. At the intersection of the fields, and they're not low power but the highest power we can generate, a vortex forms. It can only be formed for about a half a second. There's a lower power . . . gravity probe, sort of like a lance, that sticks out the front. When it encounters a gravity field, the breacher power kicks on. If it works, it will drop the shields in the affected area. The way it works is by essentially . . . hitting back against the plates. The power is carried through the pseudo gravity field of the generator back to the plates. Depending on Horvath design, about whic
h we know very little, if it works at all it will either drop them for a moment, until their breakers reset, basically, or it will kill them by causing a plate shred."

  "That . . . sort of makes sense," Tyler said, thoughtfully.

  "Thank you," the AF COS said, sarcastically. "It hasn't been tested. We've activated a breacher round, but we've never activated it against a shield because we don't have one. And we haven't even test fired the gun with a breacher. And, last but not least . . ."

  "You can't get the craft to fly," the Chairman said.