Buck Rogers- A Life in the Future

by Martin Caidin

  A Life in the Future

  "Pineys," President Logan intoned. More lights glowed in what had been New Jersey.

  "Sacramentos . . . Now, there's a gang of crazies, but they're made up of combat veterans, men and women both. Their kids learn how to shoot and kill almost as soon as they can walk. They're the best survivalists in the business. They live off the land, and they rebuild some amazing weapons as well as improvising their own. The Mongols—and the Han, mainly Chinese— have wanted to wipe them out ever since they sent up an old missile and blew hell out of a Han TransPacific liner. Killed everybody. They stripped the dead bodies, cut up the wreckage for spare parts, and fed what was left of the crew and passengers to their wolves."

  "Wolves?" Buck immediately felt like a foolish echo.

  "Trained wolves, bears, other animals," Kane broke in. "They've got some kind of psychic connection with those beasts. We don't know just what it is, but nothing on the ground can get near them without all hell breaking loose. Even their falcons carry miniaturized electronics signals to use when they spot anything."

  "Sandsnipers." President Logan went on. "They work the beaches along the northeast coasts. A horde of small subs. They live in trees as well as other natural facilities. Like the Sacramentos, they have an affinity with sea mammals. Orcas, dolphins, seals, and other sea creatures are trained and fight to protect the humans."

  "Susquannas." Bergstrasser added to his voice to the others. "An offshoot of the larger Wyoming group, which is big enough to be considered an orgzone of their own. They're at odds with the main Wyoming bunch, so they've named themselves the Delaware Gang."

  "And here," Wilma said as more lights came on, "is the Wyoming Gang. We've mentioned them before, but they're another concentration that's grown big enough to be an orgzone. They're actually organized into a widespread group of camps, much as the old Roman army. I was part of this gang."

  She paused, and when she resumed, Buck hung on her every word. "The leader called himself Brutus Magnum. He claims he's a reincarnated centurion. I was a lot younger then, and I was his woman. I didn't like the idea of being tied down to someone who

  Buck Rogers

  had the fighting skills of a Roman but no more brains and sense than a common drunk, which he also was every chance he had. I bring this up for only one reason. He lost me in a poker game to some of his cronies. I was supposed to be their mistress."

  The small room was silent. "I killed Magnum with a poisoned dart from a crossbow. Then I offered to take on the rest of them as well. I got away with it because the other women of the camp stood by me. They said the killing was justified because of the loose way Magnum played with my life. But I left the gang after that. Commodore Kane heard what had happened, and he felt any woman with that kind of guts belonged in his outfit. He sent in a chopper team at night. They detonated blinder flares, and in the confusion, they snatched me out of there. End of story."

  Kane picked up the thread. "What we've been trying to get across to you, Buck, is that there're another thirty or forty gangs out there, spread all across the country. Split up the way they are, they control only their own immediate territories. They don't work together at all. If they did—well, you would see the beginning of a unified force in Amerigo, something we haven't had for a very long time."

  President Logan gestured for attention. "Wilma, dim the lights, please." The holographic presentation darkened. "Now bring in the Han Airlords."

  Fifteen bright lights speared through the gloom. Every one was topped with the forked-lightning insignia of the Mongol fighting command. Buck couldn't believe it. Mongol enclaves throughout this country?

  Logan seemed to read his thoughts. 'T know. It's hard to believe that even after decades of war, this country still isn't free. Nor does it work well as a single organization."

  "But how ... or even why do you permit these enemy garrisons to remain here?" Buck spoke the words slowly to fight back his astonishment.

  "Frankly, we're exhausted," the president replied. "All of us. We've been engaged in nearly constant battle for almost a hundred years. The population of this planet was once nine billion people. Seven billion of those are dead, and another half-billion are merely surviving. Many of them, badly irradiated and infested with toxic wastes and biological agents, live on the brink of death. Buck, we are just plain worn out. We and the enemy as

  A Life in the Future

  well." He saw the changing mood on Buck's face and gestured to forestall an interruption.

  "The only reason we still exist, even as a fragmented nation, is that both sides decided that we simply had to end this insanity of mass destruction. If the war had kept up, we would have been throwing rocks at one another. We no longer had fleets of missiles. Our bomb production plants were destroyed. We destroyed their ability for mass delivery of their most effective weapons."

  "Stalemate?" Buck spoke up again.

  "In a way. Perhaps you'll understand this better if you take a hard look at your own history. In the First World War, the Japanese were allies of America. In the next war, we were bitter enemies, and we did everything we could to kill Japanese anywhere we found them. We were allies with the Russians in the Second World War, but as soon as it ended, we stood on the brink of nuclear hell with them for nearly forty years. This country came into being because we fought a life-and-death battle with the English, and when that fighting was over, we could hardly have been closer allies. Look at Korea! Fighting a war by special rules that limited the area of action and even the types of weapons. Berlin, Vietnam, Iraq, Iran . . . the list is almost endless, and you lived through most of it."

  President Logan turned to Kane. "Take it from here, Kevin. Run through the high points of the drill, please."

  Kane picked up the narrative without a pause. "You already know, Buck, that the Chinese and the Mongols mounted a massive offense against North America. They had already taken over most of the Asian lands, and we were next in their master plan. At the same time, while Europe was fractured by its own fighting, the Mongols swept through most of that continent. Perhaps that was what saved us, because those battles and the subsequent occupation of Europe tied down enormous enemy manpower and weaponry. Then we had another stroke of fortune. The Mongols that swept out of their remote regions were a different breed than the men who had followed Temujin—Genghis Khan— centuries before. Genghis Khan's hordes were barbarians in almost every aspect of life, not simply against their enemies, but even within their own ranks. They lived under brutal conditions, severe weather, limited food production, and with nothing that approached the mechanized industries of the West. What they

  Buck Rogers

  did have was a ruthless approach to their opponents. They were superb horsemen, experts with bows and arrows and lances, and deadly with swords. Nothing could stand up against them in those early days of Mongol conquest.

  "If we had fought such men when the Mongols came ripping down through Canada, the war wouldn't have lasted a month. The best horsemen and great armies in the open are helpless against the effects of hydrogen bombs. We could have killed them off like bugs. No one lives through a few million degrees of heat, to say nothing of thousand-mile-an-hour winds and ionizing radiation. In fact, we took out a good half of their armies that way.

  "But this is a different breed of Mongol. They're ruthless, but they're also cunning. They're terrific horsemen and foot soldiers, but they were right up there with us in operating modern weapons. What we didn't know, when we were slaughtering their invasion force, was that the Mongols held their Chinese allies in contempt. Almost all of the troops we destroyed were Chinese, not Mongols, who were never very great in number. They sent in the Chinese as cannon fodder.

  "They attacked many of our cities with hydrogen bombs, just as we wiped out their cities. But they pulled off one of the neatest stunts of the war. They managed to occupy several dozen of our cities without venting their barbarism. What they did, in effect, was to entrench themselves in thos
e cities, so to get them out, we'd have to destroy our own populations as well."

  Buck nodded. "Standoff again."

  "Exactly. Keep in mind they were not embroiled in occupation on different continents. Communications were going to hell in a handbasket, so the different power groups within the Mongol organization began jockeying over who would be top dog. Over the years, the dust began to settle.

  "Their tight-knit organizations in China began to unravel at the seams. As soon as they occupied China, history repeated itself The Chinese cooperated with them. They obeyed them and offered no resistance. The Chinese have done that for thousands of years, and what worked before worked again. As of right now, and for the last hundred years, the Mongols have managed to isolate themselves across the Asian lands. They no longer have the capacity to explode out of Asia. They're totally corrupt. New

  A Life in the Future

  leaders are killed off regularly. They operate under what closely resembles an ancient feudal system, and the Mongols who occupied so much of our country do everything in their power to make sure it stays that way."

  Buck kept his questions to short phrases. "How do they manage that?"

  "The Mongols in Amerigo call themselves the Han Airlords. They are intelligent, capable, tough as nails, and above all, very realistic. Once they had exhausted ourselves in their hundred-years war against us, a sort of uneasy truce set in. Nothing was set on paper; it was just plain common sense for all concerned. Lobbing hydrogen bombs around had become insane. No one used nuclear weapons anymore. Again, stalemate. They lacked the forces in Amerigo to overcome us, and we were in the same boat. We were so spread out and splintered we couldn't mount any major offensives against them."

  "Where are we now?" Buck pressed.

  "Amerigo—the former America—is broken, like a clay tablet that's been dropped on the floor. The pieces can be put back together again, but not until we shift the balance of power between ourselves and the Han Airlords. They're the real masters of the worldwide Mongolian Empire. They ignore Europe because it's devastated. They couldn't care less about Africa. The Mideast looks like one enormous sandy garbage dump. South America supplies us with foodstuffs and does the same for the Han, who rule their empire from the fifteen major cities they occupy."

  "You let the food get to them?"

  "Of course! We'd be in real trouble without that food. We don't have the agricultural foundation anymore, and we don't turn out synthesized food on a mass basis—not yet, anyway. We need food from South America. So we get ours, and we let the Mongols get theirs, and nobody interferes with those shipments. We would both rather be able to eat than starve."

  Buck shrugged. It made sense, in a way.

  "The Mongol organization has several different major factions. The Han Airlords rule what they can here in Amerigo. They haven't made any mass attacks for many years, being content to enjoy the spoils of war. That's all in our favor. They're entrenched behind their defenses, and without opposition or com-

  Buck Rogers

  petition from us, they have slowly been poisoning themselves. They're not as sharp as they used to be, except for a few select groups who want to rule their own areas."

  "What's their main base?"

  "The entire Los Angeles basin, with direct underground connections north into San Francisco and south into San Diego."

  "Someone mentioned a bunch called the Golden Dragons."

  "The Mongol Secret Society. Something on the order of what existed in your Germany. The Gestapo and SS. What the Japanese called the Kempi Tai, or Thought Police. The United States had its CIA, the Russians their KGB, the Hungarians their AVA, the British their Mi-Five, and so on. The Golden Dragons are spread throughout the Mongol Empire, but ruled from the United States, with the Asceptic City, or Celestial City, as the main center. There's one in China, but the main headquarters is in what used to be Chicago. That's where the Celestial Mogul holds court and runs the works. Wilma, bring it up on the holo, please."

  Buck and the others studied an enormous domed structure thirty miles in diameter at its base, a translucent dome encompassing a magical scene of beautiful buildings.

  "Is that shimmer I see real or just an effect of the holo projector?" Buck asked.

  "It's real. They've developed genetic science to the point where they all live an average of a hundred and forty years or more. The place is absolutely antiseptic, sealed off within the dome. The shimmer, as you call it, is a force field against bacteria, viral invasion. It's about as germ-free as anyone could make it."

  "Which also makes it terribly vulnerable," Buck mused aloud.

  "Very good," President Logan spoke up. "Obviously, if we were able to punch a hole through that crystal palace, their population wouldn't last a week."

  "It seems to me you could take out their brain center with a single stroke," Buck said, pushing the point. "My next question is why you haven't done that."

  "Because we can't follow through with enough manpower or firepower to go through another damned war!" Kane barked. "What we have now is a delicate, crazy balance. If we took out

  A Life in the Future

  that blasted dome center without being able to follow up, those Chilean naval and submarine forces would blockade all food shipments to us. We're not ready for that yet. We're working as hard and as fast as we can to make ourselves self-sufficient, but it takes time. First we've got to get our act together, get the various gangs of Amerigo to start working with each other."

  Silence followed Kane's last remarks. It lasted long enough for the pieces to come together for Buck—for this is where he entered the picture.

  "So now the Half-Breeds think you're just a bunch of patsies." Buck grinned. "Which is just what you think of the Mongols in their germ-free city with its plastic cap."

  "Ouch!" Kane blurted out. "That hurts, but I'm afraid it's accurate. If you succeed in taking out this Hoffman fellow, that could be the spark to get our people thinking of themselves as a nation again instead of a bunch of renegades who don't give a damn about anyone except themselves. But even they realize that their long-term future is hollow. It's the same old story—we pull together or we go down together."

  "If I do shoot down Hoffman, what happens next?" Buck asked very deliberately.

  Logan rose to his feet. "The Half-Breeds have said if they lose that battle, if we emerge victorious, they will throw in their lot with us. They'll swear allegiance to the Federated Republic of Amerigo. And if they do that, we know that several other gangs will be right behind them."

  "What if Hoffman takes me?" Buck asked.

  Wilma spoke up, her voice strained. She grasped Buck's arm. "Don't even think about that!" she exclaimed. "Don't you understand? It's almost as if some supreme power is giving us a second chance. Here you are, out of nowhere, and now you're the fulcrum for all of us! If you lose, we all lose."

  He stared at Wilma, hardly believing what he saw. Tears ran down her cheeks as she wept silently. He had the strangest feeling those tears were for him.

  Kane joined Wilma. He rested a hand on Buck's shoulder. "We've told you only parts of the whole picture. It's too much to take in all at once. You need some time to absorb what's really at stake here. You see, we're also running out of energy. Our nuclear reactors are junk. Even the thermonuclear plants are desper-

  Buck Rogers

  ately short on fuel. You can't operate a deepspace fleet on oil or coal."

  "What?"

  Kane raised his eyebrov/s. "I said you can't operate a deep-space fleet—"

  "Hold it right there!" Buck interrupted excitedly. "We have a fleet in space?"

  Kane had a crooked grin on his face. "The start of one, anyway. We need to rebuild our lunar industrial bases. The helium three is our key to just about everything in our future—"

  "Hold it again," Buck said, then his voice rose. "Just hold it!" He shook his head. "I'm going to fight a battle to the death in an airplane more than four hundred years old, and you're talk
ing about space fleets? This is crazy!"

  "Maybe so," Kane shot back, "but it's real."

  "Look, it's getting late. If I'm taking off in the morning to fly to Asheville, I want to do another check on my plane from nose to tail to make sure they did the modifications exactly as I ordered. We can pick up this insane conversation later." He paused. "If there is a later, that is. One more thing. Wilma, you can help me with this. I want to pack my parachute personally. From what I've heard, you people use flying belts or something like that?"

  "Yes," she confirmed. "But they're too big for the cockpit of your fighter."

  "As long as the parachute fits."

  An uncomfortable silence followed her words. Buck glanced from one face to another. He didn't like what he saw. Finally Wilma broke the impasse.

  "There—there aren't any parachutes. Buck. We thought there were, but when we tried to repack one, it fell apart."

  "No parachutes," Buck said in a hollow voice.

  Killer Kane slapped Buck heartily on the shoulder. "Well, there's only one thing to do then, Buck. You'll just have to whip that crazy loon's butt."

  Marcus Bergstrasser moved forward. "I know how these people fly. Buck. This Hoffman is good, but I'm convinced you'll beat him."

  So why do I feel like a fly about to drop into the spider's web? Buck wondered.

  A Life in the Future

  Buck eased the Messerschmitt into a gentle climbing turn so he could look behind him. The lowering sun glinted with golden light off the wings and rotors of turbine choppers. One big jet transport and at least six other machines, filled with people, accompanied the ancient German fighter. Buck eased back to level off the plane and checked his flight chart. Asheville lay dead ahead, a long strip atop steep-sloped hills. He eased back on the throttle to start his descent.

  The closer he came to his destination, the more he realized just how far the word must have spread about the upcoming duel. Alongside the runway, he saw dozens of vehicles and a bewildering variety of flying craft.