Omnipotence: Book I: Odyssey

by Geoff Gaywood

  All eyes turned to Arlette.

  “It was just instinct,” she said with a shrug. “What can I say? Something inside me just reeled it off.”

  There was silence. A mutter in the background on the line from Ceres sounded very much like ‘Jeanne d’Arc’.

  “I beg your pardon, Marcel?!” said Arlette, visibly irritated.

  “I didn’t say anything,” said Marcel. “Must have been a crossed line.”

  “Well, this is not a strategy!” snapped Arlette. “Where are we going with this?”

  “Let me give you a fireside space story instead,” said Genes. “The Gods of Andromeda and the Milky Way know that their galaxies are going to collide and are real nervous about the outcome. Andromeda sends a boarding party to the Milky Way. The Milky Way God is really pissed but is all out of thunderbolts, so he gives a human who happens to be in the vicinity a sneaky bit of data so she can zap the Andromeda guys. Finito!”

  The laughter that followed was more about Genes’ terminology than his ideas.

  Julia intervened. “I think we need to give the Commander some space on this,” she said. “Let’s come back to it. Can I call in Benny to do the damage report?”

  When they did return to the topic of defence strategy, Henri set out the context once more.

  “As Cobus pointed out before, we are now closely monitoring signals to and from the alien satellite at LDST 2. If it is in contact with any source within the Omega 16 system we will know we have another Dark Shadow to deal with. If the nature of the signals it is getting down LDST 2 from Andromeda changes, we can probably assume that we’ll be expecting a new arrival. For as long as neither of these things occur, we can assume no immediate threat.

  “We need the alien satellite to stay where it is because it is currently our only source of data. However, if we are expecting trouble from something on its way up LDST 2 we have to be prepared to act immediately. Therefore I propose to put an attack satellite up within striking distance of LDST 2, and also to corral another asteroid that we can use in the Omega 16 system or put down LDST 2 in the path of an incoming ship. We’ll call it First Defence. Is that approved?” It was.

  “OK,” he went on. “Now let’s consider our choices if we detect another alien ship within Omega 16. If it starts to move towards us or 16-4 we should assume that it intends to attack us. It is possible that it will instead move towards LDST 2 as a means of escape, in which case I propose that we let it go. Any other views?”

  There were none.

  “Right. So the worst-case scenario is that Dark Shadow II comes out of hiding and decides to come over and finish us off. Do we stay or do we go?”

  Nobody responded.

  “Let’s look at the two options: one – we stay. We don’t want to wait to see if he’s going to respond to our friendly greeting; we pick our moment and attack him.”

  “But he’s ten times our size!” wailed Julia. “A head-on confrontation would be suicide!”

  “I didn’t say anything about a head-on confrontation,” replied Henri. “If there’s anything you learn at military college, it’s that you don’t confront a superior force. You use guerrilla tactics.”

  “Guerrilla tactics? We hide behind convenient orbiting boulders and take pot-shots when he’s not looking!?”

  “Please, Julia!” said Arlette.

  “No,” went on Henri, “We use multiple vehicles and vary the tactics.”

  “Multiple vehicles?” queried Arlette, “We’ve only got one … No, of course we’ve got the two landers but they’re not armed.”

  “We might change that,” said Henri, and suddenly Arlette saw that they might.

  “Of course they are very manoeuvrable,” she conceded.

  “Can’t we use a steerable asteroid like last time?” cut in Marcel.

  “Yes and no,” said Henri. “Yes, we can, and no, not like last time.”

  “To your earlier point about guerrilla tactics,” added Genes thoughtfully, “we might use multiple steerable asteroids, some as decoys, others as missiles. We could make this place full of nasty surprises for a huge ship like that.”

  Henri looked at Arlette, raised his eyebrows and smiled. There was an unspoken message there – something like ‘when will this guy run out of creative ideas?’

  “Thanks, Genes,” he said. “In scenario one you would be responsible for setting up a network of steerable asteroids in various orbits around Ceres that we could use to keep Dark Shadow II wondering which day of the week it was.”

  Cobus was grinning all over his face. “I love it!” he said.

  “OK, boys,” said Arlette, “enough of the gaming, let’s look at alternatives.”

  “Option two,” said Henri. “We wait until it’s clear that Dark Shadow II is on its way, and just at the point when they are committed to their course at full speed, we come around Ceres at full power going the other way, back towards LDST 1, and escape!”

  “There’s too much wrong with that to even comment,” said Genes. Everybody seemed to agree with him.

  “Henri, put together a detailed plan for option one,” said Arlette.

  “Commander, could I have a word?” asked Julia as the meeting broke up, and then, when they were alone, “You’re not going to go soft on Genes, are you?”

  “Of course not! He’s a murderer and a traitor!” Arlette retorted. “I’m just using his mind.”

  “Good. In that case you need to watch your body language,” said Julia. She did not elaborate. “But I’ve got something a bit more delicate to talk to you about,” she went on.

  “Yes?”

  “Yes. I want to talk about the experience you had when you gave that critical instruction to Genes about the boosters.”

  Arlette looked at her cautiously. “Yes?”

  “I’ve heard what you said to the others, but I’ve also watched the video, and Genes made a cogent point. We don’t really have an explanation for an event that saved this ship and everyone on it, and possibly a lot more than that.”

  “What did you see on the video?” asked Arlette.

  “I saw a look of incredulity, like you were receiving a message that was almost too good to be true,” said Julia. “If you want to watch it with me in slo-mo, you’ll see it as well.”

  Arlette looked at her for a long time. “Yes, I did get a message,” she said quietly. “It just had complete … authority. I could not have failed to repeat what I was told.”

  “Did the voice say anything more than the instruction you repeated to Genes?”

  There was another long silence.

  “Yes,” she said. “It said, ‘You will save us’ and then the booster coordinates. That’s all.”

  “Us? Save us?”

  “Yes.”

  “You must have thought about it. Do you have an explanation?”

  “No,” said Arlette simply.

  “Well, what you surely will realise is that what you have just told me would classify you as psychic.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Have you tried to ask your ‘voice’ for an explanation?”

  Another silence. “Yes.”

  “What happened?”

  “I tried to ask it who it was. I felt a presence. The words ‘You know that’ came into my mind.”

  “Do you know, Commander?”

  “Perhaps. I don’t know.”

  “Are you going to tell me?”

  “Don’t push me any more, Julia,” said Arlette.

  The report on the Dark Shadow incident that reached Mission Control caused immense consternation and debate. Knocking out an unmanned satellite was one thing; destroying an intergalactic spaceship, almost certainly at the cost of a large number of alien lives, was quite another. It was an act of war on an unprecedented scale that could have unimaginable consequences for the future of the human race.

  On the other hand, on what basis was the human race to concede its own Milky Way to an alien civilisation from another galaxy? What ri
ght did the Andromedans have to colonise our planets? If we were not prepared to stand on the tiger’s tail, should we just accede to extinction?

  The response that reached Arlette was a masterpiece of political ambiguity. ‘Avoid confrontation’, ‘use force defensively’, ‘proactively defend “our” Ceresian territory’, ‘seek practical compromise’.

  “Bullshit,” said Arlette, and filed it.

  However, a lot of excellent military advice was forthcoming, which resulted in significant upgrades to the performance of landers 1 and 2, and their conversion into formidable attack craft.

  But it was the asteroid defence system that really impacted the morale of the crew. Genes devised a system of eight asteroids with exclusive elliptical orbits, either around Ceres or one of its moons. Each had the capability of quite astonishing changes in direction at relatively short notice, using the ‘parasite’ control systems that had been landed on them, and the interacting gravitational fields of Ceres and its moons. When it had been put in place and tested, there were those, particularly on Prometheus, who rather hankered after a little trial of strength with Dark Shadow II, which, they felt, was almost certainly coming.

  “I talked to Arlette after the Dark Shadow incident,” Hannah was telling Jafar, “and she has no doubt that it was a supernatural agency of some kind that delivered that data into her mind. She said it was a crystal-clear response to her call for help and she had received an immediate response: ‘You will save us’ and the coordinates. She doesn’t want to tell the other members of the command team explicitly because she fears they’ll think she is losing her grip. I believe her but I can’t get my head around the implications.

  “Apparently General Lee at ISEA went spare when told that Dark Shadow had been destroyed. What were we supposed to do, let them have a second shot at us?

  “The colony is coming along fine. The atmosphere down there on Ceres is wonderful. Everybody seems to be happy to make a contribution and appreciative of what others are doing. The quality and variety of the food is astonishing and everyone seems to get such pleasure from every little achievement; you would love it.”

  Hannah’s message left Jafar feeling extremely uneasy. He really was not able to take the idea that Prometheus and its crew were under the protection of a deity seriously and he was worried that the mental faculties of the leadership were cracking up in the wake of the bizarre events that they had experienced. He tended to share General Lee’s view that the destruction of an alien spaceship was extremely bad news and wondered whether this brave little mission might not ultimately lead to the doom of mankind.

  “The world press had a field day with the destruction of the alien spaceship,” he announced in his response. “The saintly pioneers of Prometheus are now perceived by many as galactic buccaneers. Religious noodniks everywhere are staring up into the sky, looking for alien invaders. In Europe and India there have been huge protests calling for apologetic approaches to be made to the Andromedans. I was in Berlin yesterday and witnessed an anti-ISEA demonstration there. You can’t believe how angry and frightened these people are. I interviewed a few of the protesters and many see that the only prospect of a secure future for the human race has been blown away. They are formulating a message in a mathematical code that will be sent down the wormhole to Andromeda. I wish you would discourage further engagement with the Andromedans if you possibly can.”

  Jafar looked away.

  “There’s an appalling heatwave in central Europe and the Rhine is so low it’s closed to water traffic,” he went on. “The price of bottled water is astronomical and you can’t sit outside a restaurant without people coming up to you and begging – in Berlin!”

  He smiled. “Now some good news. I have finally managed to get Shan and Shiv back from Bangladesh. We have formed a cooperative here in our block to look after them. They are really lovely boys, three and four years old, and they just absorb everything they hear and see. You would be captivated by them.” He smiled again. “I miss you – please come home soon.”

  * * *

  Colonisation on the surface of Ceres proceeded apace in the weeks after the Dark Shadow incident. The new two-storey Orange House entered its final stage of construction, and a roof was built of local wood rafters and locally made tiles, flashed with gleaming local copper sheeting. Only the windows, of optical grade plastic, were imported from the stores on Prometheus. The colonists were immensely proud of their settlement, especially now that they had fully equipped individual rooms and quite extensive areas in which to spend their leisure time during the long Ceresian nights.

  Giuliano the cook continued to produce new dishes of astonishing variety and originality, and had taken under his wings a couple of maintenance engineers who felt that cooking was to be their ultimate expression of personal creativity. However, it was probably the smell of freshly baked Ceresian rye bread that attracted them most.

  Several of the varieties of fruit found in the Dale of Plenty had now become staple favourites, and required restocking every few days. The militia charged with this task were always meticulous about covering their skin, and to their relief saw neither spitting spiders nor army ants for weeks on end. On their final day of duty before crew rotation, a team led by Kharkov arrived at the Dale some four hours after sunrise as usual, and drove into the centre of the grove to begin work. They were properly kitted out and masked, but felt no need to carry weapons other than the knives they used to cut the fruit off.

  They approached their task with enthusiasm, and had taken to singing a novel version of the cook’s favourite Rigoletto vocal quartet as they worked, replete with unconventional noises and an improvised text that was less than complimentary to the lady to which the music had originally been addressed. Just as they reached the chorus, which now ended with “… took her knickers o-off!”, Kharkov turned around to see that a large spitting spider had crept between them and the truck which contained their arms.

  “Keep very calm, guys, and turn around slowly,” mouthed Kharkov by CTT to his colleagues. They did so. The spider rose and stiffened. “We’ll split up, Bennet and Koh to the left, Zandy and Kruger to the right. Be ready to use your knives until you reach your weapons, then shoot to kill. Ready, go!”

  The four of them separated and raced through the undergrowth, trying to confuse the creature as they looped around it. The spider reacted by running this way then that, spitting out yellow venom in all directions, until it selected Kharkov and charged. He ducked and weaved through the low branches, then managed to shin up a rather flimsy tree, just escaping the creature’s snapping fangs. Two huge, hairy legs reached up towards him and began to pull the tree over as he hung on precariously by his hands and crossed ankles. The spider, unable to make an impression by spitting venom at Kharkov’s posterior, then used a third leg to give it a sharp poke.

  “Ow!” yelled Kharkov. “For God’s sake, kill it!”

  Koh was the first to reach the truck. He grabbed a weapon, spun around and opened fire. He did a pretty good job on the spider, but a bullet penetrated the branch that Kharkov was hanging from and it broke, dropping Kharkov, branch and all, straight on top of the frenzied animal.

  Kharkov rolled himself into a ball, spun off the creature and smacked straight into a tree trunk, concussing himself.

  “What a mess!” said Koh with disgust, surveying the phlegm-spattered scene. “Let’s get him in the truck and go home. Leave the fruit, I’ve gone off it.”

  At the subsequent debrief the question was raised as to whether the spider’s presence was a coincidence or a deliberate ambush.

  Chuck Connolly was baffled. “I can’t understand how you could have been so preoccupied that you didn’t notice the spider creeping up on you,” he said. “We were lucky that our protective clothing held up and Kharkov wasn’t poisoned. In future we will always post an armed lookout.”

  No one mentioned Verdi.

  Cobus had just returned from an enjoyable week on Ceres in copper pipe prod
uction, but was rather glad to take back from his deputy the pleasant task of confirming to the mission leadership each morning that there were no unusual communication patterns to or from the LDST 2 alien satellite in the last twenty-four hours.

  He was to be disappointed. He knew the moment that he took his seat in front of his monitor that an entirely new type of chatter had begun between the alien satellite and a new source down, and possibly moving in, the wormhole. He immediately initiated the processes to launch an attack rocket and a replacement satellite, and activated a change in course of the First Defence asteroid. Then he called Arlette and reported the news to her.

  31

  Silver Streak

  Henri and Marcel were enjoying breakfast in the early morning sunshine on the newly completed first-floor terrace of the Orange House, when Arlette approached, frowning. She told them the news, then sat down to join them. “How confident are you that we can knock it out before it clears LDST 2?” was her first question.

  Marcel looked at Henri. “It depends on factors outside our control,” he said. “It’s a race against time. We don’t know how long it’s been coming up the wormhole, or how long the wormhole is, or what speed it is travelling at. If we apply our own experience, we’ve got plenty of time – at least twenty-four hours – to spare.”

  Arlette relaxed a bit. “It’s just a feeling I have,” she said, “that they won’t allow themselves to be beaten by that asteroid collision trick a second time.”

  “Well, it’s the best trick we have,” put in Henri. “A few million tons of rock and ice moving at high speed can do more decisive damage to a large spaceship than any tactical weapon available to us here.”