The Code

by Doug Dandridge

  “Riskier to leave them in place, sir,” said the engineer.

  The colonel noted that the engineer was also sweating behind his faceplate, despite the cooling feature of his suit. The man was also nervous as hell, as he should be while wagering his life on the proper decision. Cornelius went with the thought that the engineer knew more about this than he did. His knowledge of demolitions only went as far as what the Imperial Army had taught him for field operations. More than most soldiers, but not as much as these specialists.

  “How are you going to get them off?”

  “I don’t think we can without triggering at least one of them.”

  “So, what’s the solution.” Cornelius prayed that there was one. He didn’t want to have to babysit these things for days or weeks, just waiting for something to trigger one. He still wondered what kind of fool installed an antimatter reactor on the surface of a planet. It was against the law in the Empire, with the exception of the tiny bits powering micro-reactors that could blow a limb off at most if they breached. Then again, the dictator was not the most stable of beings, or the brightest, and it did give him a suicide weapon that his paranoid brain had probably latched onto.

  “I’m having a wormhole flown down, sir. Once we get it in place, we’re going to eject all of these into space and let a ship use them for target practice.”

  Seems like a waste, thought Walborski, looking at the deadly objects. However, it wasn’t like a technical civilization such as the Gorgansha couldn’t make the stuff by the thousands of tons when they needed more.

  “How are you going to move them?” Cornelius thought that jarring the containers in transit might not be a good idea. While the containers themselves were built to stand the normal thumps of transport, there was no telling how the breaching devices would react.

  “Oh, we’re got something for that as well,” said the naval officer. “Don’t worry, Colonel. Just keep any suicidal aliens away from us and we’ll get it done.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  If fighting is sure to result in victory, then you must fight, even though the ruler forbid it; if fighting will not result in victory, then you must not fight even at the ruler's bidding. Sun Tzu

  “The humans have overrun the facility, Lord,” said the Chief of the Secret Police, Matarkus Zalemes.

  “Then detonate the antimatter, you fool,” yelled Gonoras, his stomach flipping over. He couldn’t let the humans beat him. Taking this world intact would be a victory for them, and the traitors they were aiding.

  “I am trying, Lord,” said chief, his face showing emotion, almost panic. “I have tried every trigger we have. The wires seem to be gone, and sending the radio wave signal is doing nothing. They are about to overrun my command post. I may not be here much longer.”

  And I don’t care how long you are there, fool, thought the dictator, keeping his thoughts to himself. No use showing his derision to the fool, since he still might be of use in the near future.

  “The movement triggers should still work, correct?”

  “They should, Lord. But if they don’t move them what good will that do us.”

  The dictator thought he might have something to move them, if he could get them off in time, while the humans weren’t looking for them.

  “Resist as long as you can,” said Gonoras in a firm tone. “And keep trying to send the signal through.”

  The dictator terminated the transmission before he lost his temper.

  “My Lord,” came another com that Gonoras was sure did not foretell good news. “The humans have attacked the prison where we were keeping the fleet hostages.”

  “Kill the hostages.”

  “They have already breached the defenses, Lord. I have never seen anything like them. They moved faster than any living creatures I have ever seen. They killed my outer layer of guards in an instant, and made their way to the barracks.”

  “Can’t you destroy the barracks?”

  “There are too many of them. Thousands. We have no way of doing anything except try to hold them out of the command center.”

  “You are ordered to attack the humans. Break through and kill those hostages.”

  The transmission died. Gonoras wasn’t sure if the humans had interrupted it, or the commander had killed it because he didn’t like the orders he was receiving.

  “Get me Ground Force Sub-commander Thorasis.”

  It took some moments for the Sub-commander to answer. He was at his headquarters, near a missile battery that had been held in reserve, on the assumption they might be able to strike hard when the time was right. None of the weapons were in the class of shipboard missiles, all fifty of them limited to fifty megatons. The dictator thought a couple weapons like that detonating on the reactor facility, or close enough to it, would cause enough shaking to set off the motion triggers.

  “Sub-commander. This is what I want you to do.”

  * * *

  “We’re ready to start the assault on the dictator’s bunker, sir.”

  Colonel Rebecca Yashenko was in charge of the reserve brigade of the Twenty-ninth division, one of his last uncommitted units. She had three battalions of heavy infantry, with the shuttles to transport them in a single lift and fifty fighters to give her fire support. They didn’t know what the dictator had, but from the information they had received it couldn’t amount to more than a battalion. Of course it was a battalion dug into a hard bunker with who knew what kind of heavy weapons.

  Wittmore had been tempted to just hit the bunker with a large number of kinetic penetrators, vaporizing the dictator and all of the loyalists with him. The admiral hadn’t liked that idea. She felt there was a need to capture him, or at least enough of his remains to certify him dead. If he got out of the situation he would always be a looming threat to whomever led after him. The general hadn’t agreed, since his people were the ones at risk. Unfortunately, he lacked the rank to make his opinion count for much more than a suggestion.

  “Go ahead, Colonel. The dictator can’t do anything more with his big bomb. Hit him hard, but don’t take too many chances. I would rather have him in hand tomorrow than lose more of my people.”

  “Understood, sir,” replied the colonel, ready to get on with it. “We’re skids off the ground in one minute.”

  The com faded, replaced by one showing the fleet admiral.

  “General. We have Gorgansha ships from Goran’s fleet coming through our gates. I’m hoping they can talk some sense into the people that are still resisting down there.”

  That would be nice, thought Wittmore, though he didn’t think it would work with all of them. There were true believers on the planet, people who thought the dictator was the Universe ordained ruler of the world, and they would die to protect him. Even though he wouldn’t do anything for them except use them for his own purposes.

  * * *

  Walborski found himself staring at the operation in combined fascination and fear. The wormhole gate was open on one side of the chamber, its mirrored surface almost hard to look at. The chamber itself was in a vacuum, since the space it opened up to was the definition of airless, and the Ranger colonel had donned an environmental suit so he could witness the operation.

  One of the engineers stood in a specially made exo, one with four forks sticking out in front. It shuffled forward, its magnetic soles holding it to the deck. The engineer was in a full spacesuit within the exo, his hands on the double joysticks that controlled the forks.

  The colonel wanted to ask him questions but held himself in check. The last thing the driver needed was to be distracted. He maneuvered the forks, carefully setting them to cradle the sphere, keeping them well away from the box on the top. The forks locked into place, leaving no room for the sphere to jostle. The forks lifted with painful slowness, and the exo backed up without changing the orientation of the cargo. The driver turned it, aiming it directly for the wormhole.

  “This is the tricky part,” said the engineer, sliding the exo forw
ard on its grabber units, the feet barely touching the deck but still locking it close with the magnetic grapples on their bottoms. There were multiple cameras around the room, giving the driver a full stereoscopic view of the chamber. He moved forward carefully, until the sphere was a centimeter from the horizon of the wormhole. A push of a joystick and the sphere slid forward over the lower forks, until it touched, then penetrated the horizon. It stuck in place for a moment, then moved quickly as it was pulled in through one smooth motion and disappeared from the chamber.

  Another viewer showed the sphere leaving the wormhole, a couple of million kilometers out in space. If drifted off, slowly, to not adding much jostling to the sphere. It continued to drift away on a course it would follow for eternity, unless some gravity well caught it. It would not exist long enough for that to happen.

  The exo turned, moving faster, until it was lined up with the next sphere. Now it moved again with exquisite care. The forks again moved to surround the sphere, and soon the second one was on its way to the wormhole.

  Only eight more to go, thought Walborski, feeling the sweat flow down his face. All of the spheres would go through the wormhole. They weren’t about to take chances on any of them, but once the rigged spheres went through, they would probably be home free, and the others would be easy.

  “Colonel,” came the voice of General Wittmore through the com. “We have a launch from three thousand kilometers to your north.”

  “What is being launched?” asked Walborski, pretty sure of the answer, since the general was contacting him.

  “We believe they are fusion missiles. Fifty of them. Targeting that complex.”

  “Shit. If they hit here?”

  “They will probably set off those devices, and the entire continent is gone. Our ships in low orbit are targeting them, and we’re vectoring fighters on them, but there’s the chance that one or more might get through. Move those devices through the wormhole as fast as you can.”

  The colonel looked over to where the engineer was inserting the third sphere into the wormhole, leaving seven more to go. Again, there was no telling if another type of trigger might be on the other thirty-one storage containers. The way to bet was they weren't, but it wasn't smart to gamble with so many lives.

  “How long until they get here?”

  “At their rate of acceleration, about seventy-four seconds.”

  Cornelius looked around is shock. The engineer was working on getting the fourth sphere on the lift, and if he worked fast he might get a fifth out before the missiles struck.

  The colonel of course didn’t want to die. But his greater concern was for the rest of his people, and all of the civilians who would also be killed. Their effort would reduce the blast by about twenty percent. So maybe more people at the periphery would survive. Unfortunately, the heaviest concentration was near the center of the blast area, so if anything went off, all of those were dead.

  His decision tree had shrunk to two choices. Hurry the engineer up and risk a detonation from the motion switches they weren’t sure existed. Or take their time, and risk a hit by the fusion missiles. The colonel decided to trust in the fleet, and pray.

  * * *

  “Do you want to die?” asked Captain Gunnar Thorswald through his translator. He stood glaring down at the senior Gorgansha they had captured in the control room.

  “I will gladly give my life for my Lord,” growled the Gorganshan officer.

  “And all of these people around here? You’ll just let them die?” Thorswald squatted down, putting his eyes near those of the recumbent officer. “Believe me, we are assaulting the headquarters of your fearless leader as we speak. No matter what else happens, he is through.”

  The Gorganshan looked doubtful, if the captain could read his expressions correctly. He wasn’t even sure that they had something up here that could deactivate the devices attached to the antimatter storage containers. He might be wasting his time. But what better did he have to do with his time before he was vaporized?

  Thorswald looked over at the body of the male who had been in charge of this whole operation. The Chief of the Secret police was thought to be one of the evilest males on the planet, just one step below the dictator. He had been a true believer, and had fought till the end. A dozen ten-millimeter rounds had brought on that end, and the chief had bled out quickly on the floor, his alien blood, a different shade of red than a human, pooling around him.

  “Come on. We don’t have much time. Do you want to go to whatever hell your people believe in?”

  “I don’t believe in an afterlife, human,” hissed the male.

  And that’s a problem, thought Thorswald, shaking his head. If they did have a religion, he might be able to use that leverage against them. He wasn’t the most religious of people himself, but the built-in guilt from his childhood did still have an effect on his adult behavior.

  “Then what about what your people think? There will still be Gorgansha left, and they will vilify everyone who supported the dictator.”

  “The Artificial Lifeforms will make sure none of us are left,” said the male, a little bit of conviction in his voice. Enough? It didn’t seem like it. “Only the dictator can save us.”

  “We’ve defeated the Machines,” said Thorswald, closing his eyes and shaking his head that these people had believed the lies.

  “This is true?”

  “It is true. So, will you give me the code.”

  “I wish I could. But only the chief had that knowledge.”

  Crap. So I’ve just been wasting my time.

  * * *

  “No go, sir. We killed the only son-of-a-bitch that knew the disarm code.”

  “You tried, Captain,” said Walborski, watching as the engineer lifted the fifth sphere from the stack and started to turn around. He checked the timer in his head. Forty-nine seconds till impact. They would be able to get a sixth through, but four would still be there to detonate. If the triggered containers weren’t on the top of the pile they might be able to drag the rest of them to the wormhole and toss them in. It wouldn’t stop the blast, but it would reduce it to something that would only totally destroy everything for four or five hundred kilometers in every direction. Still a hundred million or more deaths, but better than more than a billion. Unfortunately, they would jostle the ones that they couldn’t afford to do that to.

  “Admiral,” said Walborski into the com, bypassing his own commander and going to the only one he thought might be able to help. “Can we get some help here.”

  * * *

  “Are you ready, Commander?” asked Beata Bednarczyk, looking into the face of the young captain of the destroyer.

  The Kong Mihn had started dropping into a very low orbit for the last minute, moving faster than was safe until it touched the stratosphere. Imperial ships could actually touch down on the surface of a planet if need be, their grabbers able to counteract almost any gravity field short of a black hole.

  “Almost, Admiral,” said Commander Joshua Lightspeed, the strain of his mission showing on his pale face. “There’s a lot of jamming going on, and we’re having problems tracking the missiles.”

  “I need you to track and fire on those things. Even if it’s a shot in the dark.”

  “But.”

  “We only have thirty-seven seconds. Thirty-six. So open fire.”

  The commander nodded and looked off the holo, shouting a command.

  Beata followed the action on another holo, watching as all four laser rings on the destroyer glowed with power, then released forty beams each, sweeping them around over the target area. Another holo showed the ground underneath the destroyer. Lasers, normally invisible, were showing through the dust and smoke that covered the area. The lasers struck objects on the ground, turning buildings into ash, torching forests, most probably killing many animals and people.

  Given time they could sweep the jamming away and pinpoint the missiles. At thirty seconds they didn’t have that time. Something had to b
e done, and quickly.

  Beata didn’t like the decision she would have to make. She preferred decisions that gave her everything she wanted, the most damage to the enemy, the least to the people on her side. Unfortunately, she was about to order something that would coat her own hands with the blood of millions of innocents.

  “I want you to detonate a counter missile in front of the missiles. Full strength warhead.”

  “But,” stammered Lightspeed, “that will destroy everything below it, for hundreds of kilometers in every direction.”

  Yes, it will, thought Beata, closing her eyes and grimacing at the thought. The counter had a hundred megaton warhead, enough to possibly take out a shipkiller with a near miss. It wouldn’t be carrying any kinetic energy into the ground, but the blast would be bad enough. There wouldn’t even be time for the Gorgansha beneath it to seek shelter.

  “Those are your orders,” she ordered, voice flat. “No questions. Do it. Now.”

  The commander stared at her for a couple of seconds, and the admiral was wondering if she would have to relieve him of command. That would waste more time, something they didn’t have. She was just about to order it when the commander nodded and turned away to shout out an order.

  “Firing,” called back his tactical officer.

  The atmosphere flashed fire as the counter ripped downward at thousands of gravities, reaching thousands of times the speed of sound in seconds. That flash was overwhelmed an instant later as the one hundred megaton warhead detonated. Everything in the air for hundreds of kilometers was battered by the blast wave, knocked to the ground. The missiles were shredded before they were blown away.

  Fusion warheads were not antimatter weapons. An antimatter weapon would still go off as the containment breached. A fusion warhead was a precision instrument, and any damage to it rendered it inoperable.

  Everything on the ground for fifty kilometers in every direction from the detonation smoked, flared into fire, then blew out when the blast wave hit. Buildings, trees, animals, people, all were instantly destroyed.