No Marigolds in the Promised Land

by T S Hottle

  Danaq laughed, but it sounded a bit ominous. "They're with us because it serves their purposes. Wouldn't be surprised if they collapsed the Pass themselves, then did something that made it even harder to bring ships into their system. I'm telling you, Friese, they're leaving. They know something's going to happen."

  Havak emerged behind them, followed by Shonsi. "Well?"

  "Our genius landlubber here plotted us four wormhole jumps. I just adjust for what we know is out there and take gravimetric readings at each stop."

  "Wormhole jumps?" asked Shonsi. "But we're going to warp."

  "We are," said Havak. "But I think the sergeant is using what she knows to plot each leg of the trip. How long to Dakota?"

  "She's got us within five hundred kilometers of the surface of Awis," said Danaq. "And I'm the bastard that can put us there."

  Havak laughed. "Don't get cocky, kid. This ain't a chess match." She took her seat and tapped a commlink. "Ling, are we ready back there?"

  "Warp power at your command," said Ling. "Say the word."

  "Mr. Danaq, fire her up."

  Within seconds, the entire universe collapsed into the light at the end of the tunnel.

  DAY 35

  Solaria, Farno (formerly Farigha)

  Log Entry: 18-Mandela, 429 – 0709

  Good morning. I'm having what may be my last cup of real coffee, my last reasonable facsimile of real food, and my last good piss in a flush toilet. Today, we cram good ol' Rovers 57 and 114 full of small drones, freeze-dried coffee, ration bars, and emergency medical supplies. Persephone is working on programming a spider and a dalek to function as a surgical team, so she can have hands in case I'm incapacitated.

  This morning's note of joy from the hyperdrone announced that the "secret vessel" ™ is headed for Dakota to pick up equipment for the rescue mission. Okay, first question. You've built a ship to travel interstellar distances. I realize warp drive is not wormhole travel, but if ships are equipped with thrusters, free-fall guidance systems, and EM drives for in-system travel, why would you not include projection drive on a warp ship?

  Second, why send a ship that's probably going to take a month to get here? If they sent it to, say, Amargosa via projection drive or through a hypergate, then I could see warping here. I'd wait a week for that. But every day, it seems our intrepid pioneers of an outmoded FTL theory are getting stuck somewhere.

  I'm tired, oh, powers that be back on Mars and Earth, and I want to go home. Navy, you owe me. You're the ones that didn't bother to defend this place or give us an emergency means of communication home.

  And let me say this to our beloved Fleet Admiral: Fuck you.

  Since Fleet Admiral Tran is a moron, and his underlings have to engage in skullduggery to do what a decent civilization should do without thinking anyway, I'm packing the rovers in case the land squid turns out to be very hostile or I can't come up with a way to…

  Persephone, is it possible to make a fusion reactor catastrophically explode?

  Technically, our fusion weapons are miniature fusion reactors that have no place to vent their energy. Why?

  I want to make a bomb. A big one.

  That's right. The Kingdom of Farno and Empire of 2 Mainzer is about to become a nuclear power.

  At this rate, I'll crack FTL by myself, and the Navy can suck it.

  Yes, Admiral Burke, I am pissed. Please relay that heartfelt fuck you to Fleet Admiral Tran at your earliest convenience.

  Awis, second moon of Frankenstein, Anpetu Wi System

  16-Mandela, 429 – 0909

  The light at the end of the tunnel exploded into a giant orange ball of cloud someone had dubbed Frankenstein. Anpetu Wi and its core world, Dakota, had been settled and run by the Sioux and Cherokee nations of Earth's North America, but someone had a warped sense of humor in naming the rest of the Anpetu Wi's planets. One planet, with a high sulfur content in its crust and prone to volcanic activity, had been dubbed Quetzec Cul, a Qorori phrase that Friese discovered translated loosely as "Montezuma's revenge."

  "Americans are weird," was all Danaq said when Friese found this in the ship's database.

  "Awis Control," said Shonsi as the ship settled into free-fall, "this is the CNSS Alcubierre, here to retrieve a shuttle for classified mission to the rim."

  "Alcubierre, Awis Control," said a stern male voice, "we had no hypergate ticket and no evidence of a wormhole. You're not a projection drive ship. Where did you come from."

  "Control," said Havak, angrily punching a button on her armrest, "this is Commander Linda Havak, Alcubierre Actual. Our presence, mode of propulsion, and mission are all classified. Please refer all questions to Admiral Burke, Tian Regional Command."

  "We did," said Control. "All we got was stonewalled."

  "Is the shuttle ready or not?"

  "Well…"

  "Here it comes," said Danaq. "The Navy's left hand didn't bother telling its right hand what to do."

  "Mute," said Havak. "That's because the Fleet Admiral has his head up his sizeable ass. Open comm." She waited a beat. "Control, we had technical difficulties in getting here, as I'm sure the hyperdones sent by Admiral Burke informed you. That shuttle should have been ready two days ago."

  "Well…"

  "'Well' is a hole in the ground with water at the bottom. Where the hell is my shuttle? We're on a rescue mission."

  Friese bit her tongue, wanting to chime in with "What are the coordinates to Well? And do they speak Humanic there?" It had been funny in basic training.

  "It's… um… at the Dakota Yards," said Control. "We did not have one to spare here."

  "You mean you could not have sent an EM drive ship to Dakota to pick it up?" Havak was out of her chair and pacing, glaring at the swirling clouds below as though she could see the faceless man on Awis. "Are you telling me that I'm going to have to commandeer an EM ship to go pick one up?"

  "Commandeer?"

  "Holy shit. Who am I speaking to? Are you Navy or Border Guard?"

  "Cybercommand, ma'am," said Control. "E-4 Tamarcho, Commander."

  "I want your O-5 or O-6 on the line right now! And tell her or him that Admiral Burke has court-martialed flag officers for less." She muted so the poor enlistee would be saddled with her wrath. "This may take a while. Danaq, find us a berth. Shonsi, Friese, take five. I'll send for you when we get our ride to Dakota."

  Solaria, Farno (formerly Farigha)

  Log Entry: 16-Mandela, 429 – 1019

  I've done the math. I've combed our admittedly fragmented database. I even checked the owner's manual. And there is a way to build my own fusion bomb from a rover. Whoo hoo!

  The good news? Like Persephone said earlier, Compact fusion weapons tend to be commercial fusion reactors deprived of a place to send their power. So why don't fusion accidents involve mushroom clouds and thousands of people vaporized? Because fusion reactors in a normal setting can't even function under those conditions. The reaction simply stops. If there's an explosion, it's either hydrogen or helium from the core escaping or the water pumped through the system breaking free. You have more problems from a violent thunderstorm.

  Which brings me to the bad news. Just by their very nature, the reactors here on Farno, formerly Farigha, are all commercial. Even the rovers' reactors. By the time a rover's reactor is deprived of shedding any energy it produces, the reactor will have shut down, and you basically have a tank of hydrogen and some radioactive scrap metal that needs buried for about fifty years.

  Unless…

  See, fusion is all about lasers. In commercial plants, they're not even powerful enough to create a fusion reaction that can breach containment. Anything that would create such a breach would also disable the lasers. So no kaboom. A wise woman once told me there's always a kaboom, but in this case, there's no kaboom. Mars's view of Venus will continue to be obstructed.

  In fusion weapons, you need to have overpowered lasers fusing too little hydrogen in too small a space. You can actually change your mind a
bout using one until about ten seconds before detonation, although if it's mounted on a missile or a kinetic rod, those on the receiving end will call you a dick for all eternity unless you destroy the delivery system. Missiles explode. Kinetic rods pretty much do what the fusion device would have done.

  My delivery system will be the rover. But I need to overpower the lasers. For that, I'm going to need to take a little trip. There are five rovers parked in the first pit stop on the way to the next dome. Two of them are shiny and new and were meant to be used in the construction of three more domes. Once online, our next project, while heating up the surface of Farigha and pumping tons of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, was to build an enclosed underground highway to ring the equator and link all the domes. Since that's not happening for a while, the Citizens' Republic of Mars can do without a couple more rovers.

  In reality, they can do without the fusion generators for those rovers. I'm going to replace the anemic lasers inside the fusion plant for Rover 19 with larger ones used by the drones for construction. Those, I'll rig up to two fusion cores lifted from the newer rovers. The lasers inside a rover's fusion core are powered up by the solar wrap and only draw enough energy to compress whatever hydrogen is in the system. The resulting helium is drawn away, cooled, and vented, which makes a fusion-powered device on this planet easy to spot.

  I plan to disable the safeties, cap the helium vent, and pump enough energy into the core to fuse all the hydrogen at once. There's not much left in 19's core, which I put in Rover 57 to use it up. Conservation and all. But I can swap 57's original core back and use 19's for the bomb. Sure, I could use a new fusion core for my improvised nuke, but I have to live here after I blow up the land squid. Working on the assumption Burke's ship is going to stumble around for months until the idiot in Antarctica gets his head out of his ass and sends a warship, I need all the fresh power supplies I can get. There's enough hydrogen in the core from 19 to make this work, but I'd have to switch it out for a new one in a few months. And really, when you fuse all the hydrogen at once, why do you need a full tank?

  Persephone will power up and drive both rovers from the pit stop herself. In the meantime, I'm going to swap 57's original core back in and give 19 its old core back. Then I have to gut 19. Rip out the life support, the soft brain, and the supply storage. In fact, I'm going to have to rip out the control console. Persephone will drive 19 as well remotely. There will be no soft brain for her to inhabit, so 19 will be basically just another drone.

  All this is to make room for the two fusion cores I plan to install. These will be vaporized at detonation. It's really an inefficient way to make a bomb. But then look at the design of World War Era hydrogen bombs. Those set off fission reactions to trigger a fusion reaction. Dirty and wasteful, and I wonder how Earth ever recovered from the dozen or so bombs that were fired.

  Persephone calculates that we have three or four days before the land squid arrives at Solaria, more if it decides to investigate the vaults under New Ares and the pit stops. She's found a freight drone idle in the desert since the night of the Event. We hope the land squid will get curious and try to take it apart.

  Now, you may be asking yourself why I would want to make a fusion bomb to destroy the modern alien version of a Viking lander. Fair question. It is, after all, like swatting a fly with a starship's railgun. Unfortunately, if the fly is carrying white fever or ebola, and all you have is a starship's railgun, then the railgun is all that stands between you and certain death. Or, five days of hallucinations, shitting out of every orifice, and the disappointment that you will survive in the end if it doesn't kill you first. I don't know what the squid can do. I don't know its defensive capabilities. I do know it will quite likely not survive a sudden blast of heat about the temperature of the surface of 2 Mainzer. And since this whole enterprise is designed to keep me alive until whoever the hell Burke sent gets here, I'm going with the literal nuclear option.

  DAY 38

  Ken-Tuck-Ee City, Dakota, Anpetu Wi System

  21-Mandela, 429 – 1022

  Like every other Navy planetside facility, the local command for the Anpetu Wi system occupied a spectacularly dull block building in the least interesting section of Dakota's capital. This one appeared to have been a block of local granite that someone had hollowed out. Friese knew better. Most buildings were either 3-D printed or raised by nanite colonies that self-destructed upon completion. With its darkened windows and seamless surface, however, it looked more like one giant block.

  It offended Friese. Border Guard and the Marines tried to make their buildings somewhat inviting. Naval orbital facilities looked like works of art from a distance. Why the Compact's most visible branch of the military chose such anonymous eyesores for their own presence on land escaped her.

  "Three days for this," muttered Havak as they approached the building. "This had better be worth the wait."

  Friese avoided pointing out that one of those days had been spent in transit. Besides, Havak was right. A shuttle should have been waiting for them to take back to Alcubierre long before they arrived on Dakota. To her knowledge, the local commander was not only a force admiral, one star vs. Burke's three, but he reported directly to Burke herself. Strange how the Navy did things.

  As with the local command on The Caliphate and Navy Command on Earth, no guards stood at the entry. They were scanned and interrogated by a primitive AI that already had their bio-signatures. Friese needed only to state her name and stand still while the machine mind looked her over. In she and Havak went, doors automatically opening for them and wall lights guiding them to their destination.

  Which turned out to be a literal white room. No windows, no visible doors. Even the door they entered disappeared completely from view when it closed behind them.

  "Interrogation room?" asked Havak. "Did we do something wrong?"

  The force admiral who entered from a door on the opposite side of the room stepped inside. He was a local, a big man whose demeanor suggested someone more of Bromdarian descent or that of some other euro-heavy world. Burke's uniform looked just like that, a uniform, something even a flag officer wore to work. This admiral's uniform reminded Friese of some World War Era dictator in love with his own image.

  "I'm Force Admiral Red Cloud," said the man, his voice low and modulated. "I command this sector. May I ask why you are hounding my personnel for a shuttle without authorization?"

  Friese watched Havak as she clearly tried to restrain herself. The commander, Friese guessed, had little patience for those enamored with their lofty positions. Good thing she wasn't there for the meeting with the Fleeet Admiral.

  Havak held up her palm, for a second, giving Friese the impression she was going to slap Red Cloud. "Orders from Vice Admiral Burke. Direct orders."

  Red Cloud studied Havak's palm tatt and frowned. "I warned her against this. It's both our careers if I participate. What is this Alcubierre anyway? Why did we not have a hypergate transit or a wormhole event when you arrived?"

  "That's classified," said Havak. "And yes, I've got orders from Vice Admiral Burke and the G-5."

  Red Cloud's gaze settled on Friese. "You're an enlistee. And from another service. How did you come across knowledge of this… 'classified' ship?"

  "I was granted clearance and assigned to this mission," said Friese. "By the Fleet Admiral himself." Well, by Burke, but in the presence of Fleet Admiral Tran and his spooky sidekick.

  "I see," said Red Cloud. "I will need confirmation."

  "My ship has two hyperdrones, both projection drive capable," said Havak. "I can request confirmation from Admiral Burke herself, or even the Fleet Admir—"

  "That will not be necessary."

  Behind Red Cloud, the seemingly ageless yet aged figure of Tol Germanicus appeared to emerge from the wall itself. Friese suspected the walls had holographically camouflaged entrances, that this might be a room designed by Cybercommand for what was euphemistically called "enhanced interrogations." Such inter
rogations tended to stretch the restrictions under the Compact to the breaking point.

  "Mr. Germanicus," said Red Cloud, turning and snapping to attention. "I had no idea you were…"

  "Rest easy, Force Admiral," said Germanicus. "I'm a civilian, not a Joint Chief. I am also assisting my dear friend, Admiral Burke, on this. What can I do to help?"

  Friese wasn't sure, but "What can I do to help?" translated in her mind as "Why are you disobeying orders, Admiral?" While this mission was obviously Burke's idea, Germanicus drove the bus on it. How else would have he this much access to a secure Naval facility. Friese found it creepy.

  "Sir," said Red Cloud, as if forgetting Germanicus's comment that he was only a civilian, "this mission has no documentation, no confirmation code from Earth, and no record of this vessel's passage into the system when it requested berth over Awis."