The Orion Plague

by David VanDyke

  “No, not that I know of.” Spooky said, still with his back to Larry. “I believe DJ has received text messages from time to time, but no video or audio, and he has not shared their contents with me. Actually, I have not asked. If there was something I needed to know, he would tell me.”

  “You really trust him, don’t you?” Larry asked.

  Spooky spun about with widened eyes. “Of course. Don’t you?”

  “I do. I do, my kids play with his, and Shawna and Elise are inseparable…”

  The smaller man looked sidelong at Larry. “But?”

  “No ‘but’…well, perhaps. You know how they say power corrupts. Like the Roman emperors had someone to whisper in their ear, ‘remember you are mortal’ or something like that. But who does DJ have?”

  “Elise? You? His other friends? But why do you say this? Is there something you have seen, something you have noticed about him?”

  Larry shook his head. “Not really. Just a feeling…like, he used to say he would be happy to step down as soon as the crisis is over. He doesn’t say that anymore. He just kinda…assumes he’ll always be the chairman. I mean, he’s won every yearly election hands-down.”

  Spooky laughed, waving a hand in the air. “But he held the elections. If he ever fails to do so, then you have something to worry about. I think he is just growing into his role after all this time. Once the crisis is ended, you will probably see real political challengers emerge, and then we shall see how he reacts. No, my friend, do not worry about Chairman of the Free Communities Council Daniel John Markis. Without him and his constant politicking, the Orion project would not be on schedule and fully resourced.” He seized Larry’s sleeve for a moment and leaned in close. “And keep this in mind if you ever think about spreading these thoughts: to save the world, we should embrace the Devil himself. DJ is far from that. Speak with care. If we were to lose him, we might well lose Earth.”

  Larry’s knees knew a moment of weakness as he realized the truth of Spooky’s words. I take DJ for granted, don’t I, because I see him every day back home. But he is probably still the single most important individual in the world, and there are still people out there that want him dead. Hell, there are people who think we should welcome the aliens and their conquest. Lunatics. He patted Spooky’s clutching hand and sighed. “I got you, Spooks. I got you. I’ll remember.”

  “Good.” He let go of the sleeve. “Now, come, let’s go get some food at a place I know nearby. Anderson’s. Really good noodles.”

  Larry laughed. “Asian food. I’ll be hungry again in an hour.”

  “Then you can eat again in an hour. Australia is a prosperous country. We have enough food for even your appetite.”

  They laughed as they walked out of the big steel barn into the noisy Outback night.

  -22-

  US Navy Captain Henrich J. Absen’s appointment to command the ship had been a hard-fought political battle; much of the world still did not want an American in charge. Eventually the “best man for the job” argument won out. The fact that the crew came from over a hundred nations helped soothe their fears as well.

  It also might have had something to do with the common knowledge that he and his submarine had taken a heavy toll on the Australians in battle, and that an Australian Psycho enabled by a Free Communities special operation had killed his wife and children. He was unlikely to be a puppet to them or anyone.

  Balances of power. The world’s political leaders were not stupid. They recognized what control of the world’s most puissant warship ever built meant, and the crew manifest was heavily scrutinized, trying to ensure no one nation or power bloc could take over.

  Absen thought to himself how odd it was that very little had been made of the Aussie Marines. Perhaps the fact that they could not run the ship themselves was deemed sufficient to thwart a takeover, but in his experience a gun to the head was a damned fine motivation for cooperation. He put a few bugs in a few ears but he didn’t have enough influence to force anyone to listen, not as close-run as his own appointment had been.

  And he certainly wasn’t going to risk that. He wasn’t in it for the glory, or even the unique opportunity. Absen genuinely believed he was the best man for the job. He’d served overseas and under them with other nations, he spoke four languages, and he’d done his NATO tours in Belgium back when there was such an organization. They’d offered him a third stint there, but he’d turned it down for a shot at sub command, and he was glad he did.

  Now he walked the strange corridors of his earthbound command, familiarizing himself with it before the dry runs started next week. He nodded sagely at the scurrying workmen, the hurrying crew, and the Marines with their unloaded weapons racing hither and thither, assaulting empty rooms and getting in the installers’ way.

  His ship. Orion was strange, and familiar. Metal bulkheads and ladders – stairways to a civilian – cabling, lights, airtight hatches and doors – the same kinds of things in every ship or boat on which he’d ever served, were as he expected. But right now everything was sideways, as the normal orientation of the crew would be feet toward the cylindrical skin. Right now on the ground, everyone walked on the walls.

  There were mockups in different places, of course, to train the crew on damage control and repair, but it wasn’t the same. The ship, assuming it even made it to orbit, was an untested thing, the first of its class. If he succeeded, he would make history.

  If he failed, likewise.

  Now, as much as he would have liked to immerse himself in his incipient command, he had a long trip to make, shortened only by his insistence on being flown in the back seat of a double-seated trainer-model stealth fighter. Its supercruise would reduce the trip, Australia to Richmond, from seventeen hours to seven. Scant consolation, as in payment he would be catheterized and wedged into a cramped seat. Still, less than two months from launch, time was of the essence.

  And mostly, as a bubblehead, he wanted to take his first and maybe his last ever flight in a supersonic jet fighter. If everything went as planned, soon he would be taking a much more impressive flight.

  -23-

  Chairman Daniel Markis’ recommendation for the cyberware implantation had been enough, as they expected it would be, but in the end Rick Johnstone stayed home while Jill winged her way back to Septagon Shadow at Patuxent River, Maryland. For months he’d thought about returning and believed he would be all right. After all, he wanted more – more access, more equipment, more ability – but ultimately he just couldn’t face the thought of going back under the knife, especially not in that place.

  But that was where the cyber-bionics program was. Governments are eminently practical when they want to be, and it made no sense to spend scarce resources to transfer the lab. Rick had also heard rumors that some of the staff had been kept on, under the watchful eye of minders. He’d read the history of the weapons programs after World War Two, where droves of German scientists, some of them genuine Nazis, had been “rehabilitated” and put to work. He was under no illusions.

  Shari hadn’t been found, by that name or any other, but every time he thought about going to Pax River, really thought about how it would be, he got the shakes. Like holocaust survivors who couldn’t bear to face the ovens and the camps, even cold and empty of malice, it just wasn’t in him to go there. Not yet.

  So he left Jill to go alone, feeling ashamed, burying himself in the virtual world of his head, learning to use what he had rather than hoping for what he hadn’t. It may have been running away, or it may have been therapy. Either way, it was the best he could do.

  Jill understood. Her heart was at peace as she dozed on the long flight to Fort AP Hill. Rick had his demons, she had hers, but getting fitted with this equipment wasn’t one of them. Anything that makes me more effective at my job is a good thing.

  The Burn Rooms held no horror anymore; painkillers and pathway blocks turned the terrifying into the merely miserable as her nervous system was rewired to accept the impulses
and the actual presence of the cybernetic connections. The surgeons and cyberneticists were conservative; no more wholesale experimentation on humans, even with their consent. It was a step-by-step process from now on, this building of cyborgs, using the tried and true.

  Even so, the results were often spectacular. Less than three days after the procedures were finished, Jill Repeth - she'd decided to keep her own name after all - bench-pressed one thousand kilograms. Her bones, laminated with a new ferrocrystal substance derived from the technology of the recovered alien probes, creaked but seemed in no danger of cracking. Her muscles, augmented with electromagnetically-activated expanding-chain polymers, worked smoothly to raise and lower the ton of steel on the bar.

  And she knew that if she wanted to, she could have thrown the thing across the room, limited more by leverage than power. Theoretical limits put her strength at more than twice that, but testing those boundaries might result in a fiasco, such as complete detachment of muscle from bone and concomitant healing time.

  More important was the endless physical therapy that taught her to use less, not more, of that power; how to control it, so that she could stroke a baby’s cheek as well as snap a tree in half. She was glad Rick's Septagon cyberware had no physical combat components; she knew he would hate himself if he made a mistake and hurt someone.

  Training sessions for the less kinetic but still useful systems – cameras in her eyes and comms in her inner ears and jaw, an oxygen extender next to her lungs, an artificial heart to augment or replace her natural one, and several other interesting modifications – were long, and intense. Still, she relished it all, and once she had passed all the tests, she was not surprised to be sent to Richmond on the regular turboprop shuttle.

  Ironically, almost two hundred years after the city had made its bid to be the capital of a new nation, it was rapidly becoming something like that now. With New England devastated, it was a center of East Coast rebuilding. As the great shipyards of the Norfolk area were only just starting to be cleared, the always-politically-savvy US Navy had established an administrative headquarters here, close to another center of power.

  A civilian, not a Marine or even a sailor, led her to the briefing room inside that HQ, and the woman rebuffed her gentle attempts at finding out why she was here. The room contained eight other cyborgs; the equipment might not show but they were unmistakable to her by the way they moved. Most of them wore military uniforms, as she did, but she was the only woman. Nothing new with that.

  The two men who walked in and shut the door were definitely not cyborgs, and as one wore eagles on his lapels, the first uniform to notice called the room to attention.

  The civilian was an Eden that Jill recognized: Special Envoy Travis Tyler, a retired full General who now acted as one of President McKenna’s personal troubleshooters, a position of vast power within the zone of martial law. He looked quite a bit like his dead son, whom he had personally executed for treason and worse. She shuddered when she thought of what that must have cost him.

  The other was an older man, meaning by definition a normal, non-Eden. Wearing the working khakis of a Navy Captain was her first tipoff. She used her telescopic implant to read his nametag: Absen. I know that name from somewhere…

  Her musings shut down as Tyler said, “At ease, take your seats.” Once they had, he went on, “I’m Travis Tyler. If you don’t know me, ask someone later, but I’m not here for me. This,” he gestured at the other man, “is Captain Henrich Absen, and the reason you are all here. He’s your new principal, and you are now his personal security detachment.”

  The room fell silent, with no muttering or whispering to test discipline. Tyler nodded. “Some of you know, some have figured it out: Captain Absen is to be Orion’s skipper. With a crew from over a hundred nations, the captain’s safety will be paramount. I know some of you were hoping for something a bit different – a bit more offensive in nature. Dreams of heroics, capturing or killing aliens, perhaps. And that might happen. But your only priority right now is to train and integrate yourselves, to become the most capable personal security detachment ever created. And in keeping with your clandestine nature, you will all be known as, and trained as, ship’s Stewards.” Tyler’s eyes swept his audience. “Captain?” He nodded to Absen, nodded also to the rest, then took his leave.

  Absen cleared his throat as he stepped forward to stand in the aisle between the seats of the first row. “Good afternoon, lady and gentlemen. I’m your new principal, and I’m going to spend a lot of time with you because of that, but I’m not your team leader. This man is.” Absen indicated a fit-looking black man in a suit. “His name is Dwayne Tobias, and he comes to us from the Presidential detachment of the Secret Service. He’s in charge because of his experience in this kind of work.”

  Absen pursed his lips. “Now I know all of you are probably supercharged alphas, ready to take charge of every damned thing around you. That’s why I am making this perfectly clear. Every one of you is an Eden. Every one of you is a Septagon cyborg. Every one of you is at the top of your profession. But this man has more than thirty years of experience in personal security, and as of now every one of you serves at his whim. If he doesn’t think your attitude is correct for this work, you’ll be sent packing for some Earthbound assignment. No appeal. No Orion. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir,” they answered in near-unison.

  “All right, then. I’ll turn you over to him, and then I’ll see you all on the plane in…” he checked his watch, “…an hour and forty-five minutes.” Then he walked out.

  “Plane?” said one of the men in front of Jill.

  “Plane,” responded Tobias. “We’re all going to Australia, to train on the Orion. Now I got a short briefing for you, and then you all go get your gear and hustle back to the bus at the front of this building.”

  -24-

  To Larry Nightingale Orion looked rather like an oversized Iowa corn silo sitting atop an inverted bowl of equal diameter. It was far from the elegant birdlike designs of science fiction warships. In fact, it most resembled an old-fashioned rocket or missile itself, merely upscaled a dozen times in every dimension. He sat and stared at the thing from the roof of his trailer parked a mile away, and still it looked big, like a larger and uglier cousin of that London Gherkin. Almost every night, or perhaps he should say morning since he seldom stopped work before midnight, he wound down by drinking a beer while watching it poised in the actinic glare of the sunlamps that illuminated the technicians’ single-minded hive-like activity.

  More than four hundred meters tall and a hundred wide, it could have been a round art-deco skyscraper having more in common with a classic jukebox than a modern spacecraft. Those dimensions made it seem squat, menacing, and brutish, despite its enormous size.

  Structure and superstructure completed, now the Orion swarmed with technicians installing the myriad systems that would put flesh on her bones. They laid massive cables of mingled copper, gold, silver and platinum alloys throughout, the wealth of nations. These would carry the incredible flows of electricity that would power the internal systems, external mechanisms, and most of all, the stupendous and numerous weapons.

  Generating these rivers of power were the Russian-supplied fusion-fission hybrid molten salts reactors. These used fission to build heat and pressure sufficient to initiate controlled fusion, yielding enormous power for their size. They were also highly experimental, temperamental, and took a team of Russian experts countless man-hours to keep them running.

  Along with these vital installations came all the lesser but still necessary fittings – electrical motors, fans and air ducting, water and sewer lines, bunks and lockers, tables and chairs, computers and screens, sensors, fire controls, and of course, weapons.

  The offensive missiles went in first. The weapons engineers first installed a gross of enormous converted Trident SLBMs akin to the ones that had murdered two hundred million people so recently, each in its own canister below the armored outer
skin.

  Next came an even thousand Russian Grackle hypervelocity anti-ship missiles, and another thousand US-made SM5 multipurpose guided missiles. Each was fitted with a miniaturized nuclear warhead. These weapons they mounted in box-launchers of one hundred per rack, bolted in a ring to the waist of the ship. The engineers took to calling this “Orion’s Belt.”

  The launcher arrays had no armor and just enough shielding to protect their electronics from cosmic radiation. These were expendable, made to be fired quickly in massive missile salvos. Once a rocket flew free, each emptied box would be pumped full of expanding foam that rapidly solidified, forming a layer of ablative armor that also guarded against chain reactions in case of damage.

  After this came one hundred twenty British-made Arrowfish rotary counter-missile launchers, able to spit out hundreds of small seeking weapons designed to destroy incoming projectiles.

  Then came the kinetic weapons. Twelve Dahlgren-made Behemoth electromagnetic railguns were set in internal turrets, their traversing mechanisms directing not the barrel, but rather the entire gun, to minimize the size of the external firing port. Operating in vacuum, these would spit one-kilo steel spheres by the thousands, accelerating them to ten thousand meters per second, sufficient force and velocity to pulverize asteroids.

  The other gun system mounted was a Swedish Bofors-made close-in-weapons system, properly termed CIWS but commonly called an R2-D2, after the famous Star Wars droid. Each weighed twenty tons, but even so managed to resemble the famous robot, with its squat round-topped cylindrical shape. Its electrically-powered Gatling spat over eighteen thousand rounds per minute, guided by an automated integrated laser and radar system that not only aimed the gun but transmitted data to its bullets in flight.

  Of course, there was no air to fly through, so no guidance was possible, but the system told each bullet precisely when to fragment into one hundred forty-four individual pieces, turning those eighteen thousand rounds per minute into over two and a half million individual projectiles per gun. This meant a mindboggling two hundred and fifty million individual projectiles could be vomited into intervening space in one minute. It was these R2D2s that were tasked with the final line of defense of the Orion, save only the thickness of twelve meters of armor.