The Orion Plague

by David VanDyke

  That armor was a wonder in itself, composed of the most advanced materials developed by humans, plus a layer of nano-constructed ferrocrystal duplicated from the recovered Meme probe, thus turning their own technology against them. This combination yielded the equivalent of one hundred meters’ thickness of cold-rolled steel, sufficient to ward off even weapons of another Orion, save only the nuclear blasts.

  Last and finally came the beam weapons, Larry’s babies: fourteen lasers to be mounted at the top rim of the cylinder where it started to curve toward its rounded nose. This allowed each maximum possible traverse, and by accounting for the ship’s spin, all of them could be brought to bear simultaneously on any conceivable target by the simple expedient of pointing the ship’s nose directly at it.

  Larry popped a second beer tonight. Hangover was a thing of the past, except for diligent alcoholics, those benighted souls that dedicated themselves to Bacchus as if determined to prove the Eden Plague helpless against their self-destructive tendencies. He wasn’t one of those, and two beers, even the double-strong brews here, would have little effect on a man of his superb health and body weight. He raised the big canister in a toast to the men and women pouring their sweat, their souls, and their blood into its construction. At least twenty people had already died and hundreds had been severely injured as they cut every conceivable safety corner, never-ending payment for this great work of the hands of mankind.

  He stared at his small contribution, the regenerating stub of his right little finger that wiggled pinkly at him like an unfamiliar larva. No matter, he thought. What’s important is that I get the beam weapons working and that I am going along.

  The fight with Shawna had been fierce as such things went, alternating shouting and tears, the children crying in their rooms. It hurt his heart to remember it even now.

  “Why do you have to go!” she’d screamed at him. “You’re not military! You’re an engineer, you have children, you’re needed here…” Then she’d collapsed in his arms weeping, an unfamiliar action for such a strong woman.

  Before he left he put down his A. E. Houseman poems and wrote her a note in his own hand, drafting it over and over until it was just right:

  I have to do it, love. This is what men do. It’s programmed into our genes, to stand with spear upheld against the fall of night and all its terrors. We wouldn’t be men if we failed to answer that call.

  Nothing’s better for a man than to put his gifts to use in service to a greater cause, and I’m the right man for this job. It’s because I love you and the kids that I am going. Tell them I love them very much, and try to understand.

  I’ll see you when we’ve kicked their asses.

  All my love,

  Larry

  He heard someone else come up onto the roof, and he swung around to see a female figure as he folded the note into his pocket. “Jill? Jill Repeth?”

  She sat down next to him, hugging him with one arm. “Hey, Larry. I heard you came up here sometimes. Contemplating our destiny?” She waved her arm at the harsh lights that lit Orion like a machine-age monument.

  “No doubt. Rick here too?”

  “He’s here. He’ll be a Comms officer. We called in favors with Markis.”

  “I’d heard. Seems funny, him and me going. Not being military and all.”

  “Yeah. Usually I get all the fun.”

  He laughed. “Well, my fun meter’s been pegged ever since I got here.” He finished off his beer with a slurping sound. “You know I see Spooky now and again. He’s a two-star now. Runs the Space Marine program, when he isn’t doing some new voodoo with the aborigines.”

  “I’d like to see that in action. Catch me up on everything, will you?”

  Larry rolled to his feet. “Let me grab a couple more beers and I’ll tell you all about it.”

  -25-

  Spooky Nguyen observed the disciplined ranks of his Space Marines with an immense feeling of satisfaction. In formation they faced the towering ship as it loomed over them. Awe-inspiring, even for me, thought Nguyen. More so for them, their first real encounter with the warship they will fight from.

  On his right, their left, stood the hundred-odd men and women of the training cadre. Their role as trainers was transformed today into an advisory one. No longer instantly and blindly obeyed, now they would provide expert evaluation as the so-called White Team for the continuing exercises. And as soon as this group was done, they would start on another. It took a special kind of person to train those who would go off to fight, knowing you had to stay.

  In the center, four hundred and fifty strong, were the Line Marines, the result of selection and training and the best possible version of nanites compatible with Eden physiology. Although the ship’s crew was drawn from many nations – an inevitable concession to obtain the other powers’ help – the Marines were all Australian citizens he had personally selected. Not all were born on that continent – several mountain-bred Nguyens stood among them, for example – but all had sworn allegiance to the nation, and all were Edens.

  He laughed to himself, though his face revealed nothing. In the days of sailing ships and iron discipline, Marines were a ship’s Captain’s insurance against mutiny. The modern age had largely forgotten this fact, but Nguyen hadn’t.

  Thus, on his left stood the smaller formation of his enforcers, innocently termed Guard Marines. Free of the Eden Plague’s confining moral influence, these were uninfected full nanocommandos, infused with the most powerful version of combat nano available. As Mao had said, all power comes from the barrel of a gun, and his enforcer Guards could impose their will – his will – at any time, with calculated violence.

  He did not think they would be needed in that role, but he did not obtain and maintain his position by being careless. And their superior combat abilities might mean the difference between success and failure, even while their superb ruthlessness allowed them to do things Edens couldn’t.

  The shockingly high percentage of full-nano carriers that went mad was something of a problem – perhaps one in nine - but the deadman switches he had ordered installed had functioned adequately. As soon as a commando exceeded certain physical parameters, precursors to madness, a tiny bead of explosive nestled next to his heart shredded that vital muscle. “An unfortunate side effect of the nano, quite unpredictable,” the medics declared when it was used.

  It was even true, in a way.

  Each body was buried with full honors of course, after all evidence was removed. The Guard Marines accepted this attrition in stalwart fashion, a fair trade for their supreme status.

  Nguyen brought his mind back to the task and raised his voice to carry his speech to the troops. “Ladies and gentlemen of the Free Australian Space Marine Corps, you are the elite of the elite. You have the best equipment, inside your bodies and out, that the human race can provide. In less than two months you will be boarding this ship and you will be launched into space. Along with your naval counterparts, your mission will be nothing less than to save Earth from potential destruction by implacable, ruthless aliens.”

  “Until then, you will train on site. You will become thoroughly familiar with this vessel and every possible method of attack and defense. You will train with vehicles, weapons and every tactic the think-tanks have invented. You will become, like Marines of seafaring nations before you, jacks of all trades, able to fill in for the crew to run the ship, able to defend the ship, and able to assault the enemy ship or ships.”

  “I salute you and encourage you to engage with your officers and the White Team as you train. Blind obedience is not needed here; there is much that is new, and every man or woman needs to have input until orders are issued. Train well, so that you may fight well.” With that he turned the formation over to Colonel MacAdam, who he knew would keep them well in hand.

  The hardest thing about the training over the next few weeks – besides forever stumbling over the construction teams and vice versa – was their inability to spin the ship.
Designed for its floor and bulkheads to be largely interchangeable, it was impossible to get an accurate feel for operating within the ship until they got into space. Once there the Orion would turn constantly on its long axis, providing several critical benefits.

  The first and most obvious was gravity. Humans were used to having up and down, with their water pouring from carafe to cup and falling from shower-head to drain. Without gravity a thousand systems would have needed reworking, whereas with it they were able to use many commercial off-the-shelf items. Toilets were the most obvious example: a simple water-powered machine with gravity, an engineering nightmare without. People also lost strength and bone density without gravity, and they had no idea how long they would have to live on Orion. It was certain that they would never be landing the ship itself on anything larger than an asteroid.

  Then there was weapons fire. Spinning the ship was a cheap, relatively surefire way to ensure most if not all weapons could be brought to bear on any target in turn, a kind of rolling broadside. Computers stabilized everything, making the difficulty of aiming into a relatively simple process.

  The third benefit was distribution of incoming fire across the available armor. If a concentrated barrage of enemy weaponry were to strike one place on the ship, it might break through. Constant rolling spin would help ensure separate strikes hit different parts of the armor, increasing the chance of avoiding damage.

  That was the theory, anyway. No one really knew what it would be like in practice.

  But Nguyen’s – MacAdam’s – Marines tried as many crazy, unorthodox, and difficult things they could on the ground – attacks and defenses of parts of the ship, from inside, from outside, from underneath and above, with their assault suits and without, in every conceivable condition.

  Nine more died, from skyscraper falls and weapons errors, and from madness. The full combat nano and the Eden Plague apparently were still the most violent of dogs and cats, brought into close proximity only at peril. This was demonstrated most graphically when they found a Guard Marine and a Line Marine dead, locked in an intimate embrace. The Guard’s grimace of madness evidenced the reason for his death, hers less so. Eventually the investigation showed that in his convulsions he had wrenched the Line Marine’s neck and spinal column apart. They found her short blonde hair glued to the floor by her own blood.

  ***

  In the end, Major General Nguyen did not hold Ekara to his promise to join the crew of the Orion; once the great ship lifted, it would never come back to land, and he knew the R&D minister would be needed to continue the work of the shipbuilding program. There was some talk of having a shuttle aboard to return some personnel to the Earth after launch but in the end this extra complication was discarded.

  Instead, Nguyen settled for ensuring Ekara would be present in the bunker a mile from launch. This placed him within the crash zone if the Orion’s drive failed early in its liftoff. Though the risk was small, at least Ekara would face the chance that millions of tons of falling battleship would crush him for any negligence.

  Of course, if the Orion failed, the Earth was likely doomed as well. Even so, Nguyen found that immediate consequences usually had more influence on the thought processes than delayed ones.

  Now that this issue had been settled Nguyen tuned his thoughts to the makeup of the ship’s complement and ancillaries.

  Aside from the Marines, more than three thousand men and women would crew the ship, mirroring an oceangoing vessel. They included pilots, gunners, engineers and machinists, specialists in computers and power generation and nuclear weapons and intelligence and communications – the list seemed endless.

  Every job had a roster in depth, a luxury almost unheard-of in naval ships. Many oceangoing vessels of the past had failed for lack of a critical skill-set, which was also why cross-training was always a high priority. Nguyen remembered tell of one US frigate that sat in port for two weeks unable to deploy – by the book – for lack of its two ASROC gunners’ mates. They finally obtained one from another obliging ship, only to find out that the man, though qualified, was a dedicated Satanist with a penchant for painting pentagrams and erotic art on the deck around his workstation. Guess what, he mused. They went to sea anyway.

  Nguyen suspected that such aberrations would now either be tolerated as immaterial during this crisis, or ruthlessly dealt with. Political correctness had dropped far down the list of priorities, as it always did in time of war. He mused on the irrationality of civilians, fat, safe and comfortable on their sofas, who condemned warriors to prison for such “atrocities” as desecrating the bodies of their dead enemies. A slap on the wrist, certainly, a loss of rank and pay – but prison? He laughed without mirth at such stupidity and betrayal.

  These same pampered masses enthusiastically consumed movies glorifying such fighters as Vikings or Teutonic Knights or American Indians, forgetting that, no matter how noble, those warriors were also quite cruel to their enemies. It was only the definition of atrocity that had changed, not war or warriors itself. You can’t make troops effective by cutting their balls off.

  Fortunately such considerations were largely absent in this coming battle. If MacAdam’s Marines wanted to piss on the bodies of dead Meme, he doubted Captain Absen would complain.

  Nguyen certainly wouldn’t.

  -26-

  Resplendent in full dress uniform, Major General Nguyen awaited his appointment with de-facto Chairman Ariadne Smythe, first of the Nine. Ushered into Australia’s secret political headquarters with all courtesy, he had nevertheless been subjected to a full body scan. He laughed to himself; had he wanted Smythe dead, his nanocommandos would have done the job with brutal efficiency.

  Besides, the items of covert warfare he carried routinely passed full body scans, and this time was no exception. He did not expect to need them, but this visit, on the night before Orion launched, could conceivably upset her. Persuasion might be in order.

  As one of the Nine, he did not have long to wait.

  “General Nguyen, how good to see you,” Smythe stood and said in that plummy accent that tried to match his. He was sure it had morphed subtly in the last months, becoming even more faux-upper-class, but he ignored that for now.

  “Madam Chairman.” He bowed, knowing she disliked being touched. He then turned to shut the door, giving them privacy. “I came to notify you of a change of position.”

  “Really?” She drew out the word, as if richly amused.

  “Yes.” He sat down across from her, sitting at attention, hands flat on knees. “I intend to join the Marines aboard the Orion.”

  She hissed, an indrawing of breath. “You intend? And why should I allow this?”

  “Please, Madam Chairman, let us proceed amicably. I have made arrangements to turn Direct Action over to Colonel Alkina. She is quite competent, I assure you.”

  “Colonel? You jumped her two ranks? Wasn’t she just an army captain two months ago?”

  “She was also a Navy Commander before I reduced her to captain. You know these ranks are just largely formality, a reflection of position and influence. I’d have thought you’d be happy to have someone with less experience in charge of Direct Action. Perhaps she would not so easily identify your spies. Such as your man Murland Fish, who joined my martial arts sessions so recently yet cannot keep his mind on his training for his interest in me.”

  Smythe sat back, placing a manicured hand against her jawline. “Not a spy, merely an observer. After all, you must have such observers keeping an eye on me.”

  “Only at a distance. Only to keep you honest. But I did not come here to spar with you, madam. I came to give you the courtesy of notice of my intentions. Now, I bid you good day.” He made as if to stand.

  “Wait!” she cried. “You still didn’t answer me. What makes you think I’ll let you do this?”

  Nguyen shook his head. “As I said, you should be happy. But in any case, you cannot stop me.” This time he did stand.

  A fleeting r
age crossed her face and she reached for her desk. Before her hand could touch anything Nguyen was there, gripping her wrist. “That was unwise.”

  “How did you do that?” she gasped.

  “Dadirri.” He saw her confusion so explained in simple terms. “Not only am I a master of unarmed combat, did you think I would not take advantage of my own nanobot treatments?” He squeezed slowly until she whimpered. “I could crush your bones right here. I could twist you into a pretzel then wait for the Eden virus to heal you into amusing positions. Or I could simply kill you.”

  He released her hand with a push, then thrust her rolling chair backward into the corner with his foot, following closely, seeing the fear in her eyes. “Make no sudden moves, madam.” He sighed, pointing an accusing finger. “You disappoint me. I had thought you would use your head instead of your…ego. I tell you I am going, because I am the best at what I do. My talents might make a difference at the point of the spear – out there against the aliens.”

  There came a pounding on the door, soon turned into a rhythmic slamming. “Your security personnel wish to enter. If they come in, I will take your head from your shoulders. Call them off.”

  “Stop! Codeword Red Caster Annex! Stand down!” she called desperately into the air. The pounding ceased.

  “Very good.”

  “You won’t make it out of here.”

  Nguyen laughed mirthlessly. “No matter how politically astute, you are a babe in the woods when it comes to this sort of direct action. If I wished, I could send a signal for my people and within ten minutes everyone in the building would be dead, save myself.”