by Adam Vance
But the tipping point had been reached – all the renewable energy in the world couldn’t turn back global warming now, or the rise of the poisoned oceans over the coasts. And denial wasn’t an option anymore.
On a grim sort of bright side, world population had dropped by two thirds since Collapse, which, brutally but efficiently, had eased the strain on the remaining resources.
300 miles above the Earth, the transport opened to release the pod bundle, and a shuttle grabbed them for the ride down. As the shuttle descended towards Berlin, he could see the cranes hard at work, dismantling disused skyscrapers so their steel bones, their copper wiring, their pipes and their glass, could be repurposed in the building of arkships.
The old city still stood, the stone and concrete useless in outer space. They landed inside the gates of Charlottenburg Palace, the home of Department 6C. At first, it had seemed like a good idea, moving the Department into a building of historical importance, sending the message that “Preservation” was what colonization was all about. But as resentment built among those still here against those who got to leave, having someone referred to as “HM” running the operation from a palace became political fodder for the Hasteners.
The once-magnificent parks and gardens behind the Palace were gone now. The trees had fallen victim to blights, and the water in the lake’s lazy channels had evaporated in a drought, never to be refilled. The desolate space was filled now with VTOL pads and shipping containers full of scrap metal, waiting for transportation to the arkshipyard in orbit.
Huizhong McAllister came down the steps of the Palace as soon as the tubes were deposited on the ground. She was dressed in her usual sensible but flattering tan suit, which complimented her white hair and sharp green eyes.
She smiled and shook the Captain’s hand. “Dieter. So good to see you.” Like a seasoned politician, she made the rounds of the rest of the team, inquiring after their families by name, and offering them the hospitality of the Department showers and cafeteria.
She and the Captain walked the confection-like halls of the Palace, avoiding the workmen stripping the precious gold off of mirror frames and cherubs.
“So why the urgency?” he asked her.
“In a minute,” she replied. “What’s your take on Tiamat? Will the colony regroup? How did the Hierarch react?”
He told her what he thought as they walked towards a more secure area. She had the facts; she wanted his analysis, the information he wouldn’t embed in a transmission that could be intercepted.
They did their three-factor authentication at an incongruous heavy steel doorway, a portal from the 17th century to the 22nd.
“Something you should know,” she said as the doors closed behind them. This room was impenetrable by any signal or pulse, and had no electronics in it. There were two comfortable chairs, and a bar. HM was of the Churchillian persuasion when it came to how much liquor a leader could imbibe in one day and still do the job.
“Drink?” she said, pouring herself a hundred-year old Scotch from a ninety year old bottle.
“Laphroiag? Yes.”
She handed him his glass and they settled into their chairs. “The doctors tell me I should give up drinking hard liquor. That it only brings my next Lazarex date closer.”
“I say if you’ve lived to, is it a hundred and forty nine, now?”
“I just hit an even 150. While you were on Tiamat. I forgive you for not sending a card.”
“Happy belated birthday, then.” He raised his glass to her, and they each took a celebratory sip. “If you’ve lived that long, I’d say it’s time to enjoy what’s left.”
“I got a call from a contact of mine in the Ministry of Finance. An alarm went off in their systems. Someone shorted stock in the Tiamat CC, just before the attack. The minute the word of their insurrection came in on the pouch, the stock crashed, the trade was executed, and then the money vaporized.”
The various colony corporations allowed the earthbound to invest in the success of a colony. They were long-term investments, and any profits they could reap were years or decades away at best. But it gave people hope, including the hope that a windfall could be exchanged for a ride off earth. Money wasn’t a factor in Selection, of course. Ideally, anyway.
“And there’s no trace of it?”
“No. I would almost say it was done by an AI.”
The Captain shook his head. “Impossible. There are no highfunc AIs anymore.”
“Not that the government is aware of,” she said. “But. That’s not the real news. You know we still had a dozen Contact ships out there.”
The Contact ships were probes sent across flashspace to look for new habitable worlds. They did disappear from time to time of course, hit by asteroids or solar flares or sucked into black holes.
“We ‘had’ a dozen?”
“We lost three in the space of a week. In the same sector.”
He thought about it for a moment. “It could be coincidence. Space is big and mean. There could be more radiation in that area, or…”
“A week after that, FJ Seven was out scouting Bradbury for its colonial potential, when they saw…ghosts. Irregular blips on their scans. Which got increasingly rare, until they were gone.”
“And what’s your thinking on this?”
She sighed. “Call me crazy, because this is my intuition talking…”
“You think we’ve made contact.”
“Yes. With a civilization bigger, stronger, and faster than ours. I ran a probability forecast through a NAI. Its conclusion was that, positing that if it was aliens, that they had captured the Contact ships in or near their own space. From that tech, which is already ten years out of date, they learned how to avoid our older detection systems. Apparently they can travel across flashspace much faster than we can, if that’s even their technology. They might even have something better.
“At any rate, that’s what they did. They entered our sphere of influence a hundred times faster than we got to theirs with the Contact ships. Of course, FJ Seven has the latest and greatest scanning systems, and sort of saw them. So the aliens had to relearn how to disappear, which they did in a matter of hours.”
“Well, you’re the closest thing to an AI that I know, so I’m not surprised the NAI agreed with you. Friend or foe,” he mused. “Either one could drive that. They didn’t assault FJ Seven, and if their tech is that advanced, then maybe they don’t want us to find them, maybe they want to be left alone, or don’t think we’re advanced enough for them yet.”
“It could be.” She got up and refilled both their glasses before finishing. “But the blips had a pattern, before they stopped. They were headed on a course that could easily be one that would take them here, to the solar system.”
“I have to say,” he said, hastily emptying his glass, “I can’t help but go into operational mode when I hear that. In case it’s foe and not friend.”
“That is what I was hoping you’d say, Captain.”
CHAPTER EIGHT – CROWD CONTROL
The Department 6C cafeteria could be a guilt-inducing experience, Captain Chen thought. Its ceiling frescoes featured plump ladies frolicking with fat cherubs, an ironic reminder of the past. In the rest of Berlin, people were subsisting on the Basic Diet. But in here, arrayed below the frescoes was a mouth-watering selection of fresh salad makings, vegetable curries, real rice and wheat pasta, and even slabs of protein cake that didn’t taste like glue. And a beverage that even smelled like coffee.
“Am I dreaming,” Archambault said, “or do I taste…butter?”
Cruz took a bite of her curry. “Olive oil, maybe. Still. Tastes fantastic.”
“So,” Kaplan said. “What, honestly, could we do if this is a ‘foe’ situation? If we’re looking at overwhelming force.”
“Go rogue,” Cruz responded. “Go off the grid and go guerrilla. Into the jungle. Or what’s left of it.”
“You mean stay on Earth?” Kaplan raised an eyebrow. “Don’t we h
ave a better chance hiding out on some far-flung planet?”
“Why would that be better?” Chen asked.
Kaplan waved his fork around. “To some degree, we’re the enemy here already. FJ, I mean. People resent us. We keep them from busting down the doors to new worlds, we keep order when they get to the new worlds, we ‘take sides’ when we defend the resident populations. We’re the cops, basically. So. Imagine that Marvin the Martian lands and takes over. Do we have the hearts and minds here to build a resistance? No.”
“Depends on how Marvin takes over,” Hewitt said. “If he comes in with guns blazing, these good people are gonna want someone who can blaze back.”
“Think about it,” Chen urged them. “Think on your history. Why does one power conquer a lesser one?”
“Resources,” Hewitt said. “Wealth.”
“Glory,” Cruz added. “A militaristic society that fetishizes combat. But then, I’m the Weapons sergeant,” he grinned.
“Distraction from the problems at home by pouring the distracted into war,” Archambault added. “The Nationalist, World War I model, where revolutionary energy was diverted into combat, and all the young men of revolutionary age were killed.”
“Racism,” Kaplan added. “Ethnic cleansing, the urge to destroy the ‘other.’”
“So,” Chen asked his team, “without knowing anything about them other than that they’re technologically superior, and a potential threat, what would you suggest as our contingency plan?”
“Prepare for insurgency,” Archambault said. “Get all the FJ units on the plan. Prepare to scatter across the known worlds. We’ve also got two worlds under observation, with no colonies yet – Bradbury and Asimov. Nobody there to rat us out to the new Overlords.”
The others nodded their agreement.
“Insurgency,” Chen said thoughtfully. “You all know the Boot Rules, though.”
They did. 21st century historian Max Boot had identified the three requirements for successful insurgency. First, a willingness to take casualties. There were 600 members of the FJ forces across a dozen worlds. That didn’t leave a lot of room for acceptable losses.
The second rule was that insurgents required some form of outside assistance – funding, weapons, temporary shelter outside the borders of the conflict state. That would be off the table, obviously.
“We don’t need to worry about rule number three, necessarily,” Cruz argued. “Yeah, you need a full-sized military to actually defeat the enemy, but we don’t need to defeat them. We just need to be Afghanistan, to beat them back and out. Cause enough attrition that it’s not worth their while to stay.”
“Which only buys us time till the next round,” Kaplan said.
“Which is better than nothing,” Chen said. “Buying time might be the only thing we can do,” he said decisively.
Archambault and Cruz looked at each other, silently noting the use of “can do” instead of “could do, if necessary.” Of course, mission planning inherently assumed that the worst had already happened.
“Comms, get ready to set up a meet with the rest of the FJ squads. If the situation goes badly, we’ll need a face to face, to keep our discussions off the grid.”
“Risky,” Hewitt frowned. “Fish in a barrel, if they want to nail us.”
“They’ll nail us for sure if they intercept conversations about our plans,” Comms said.
“Yes, you’re right about the risk,” Chen said. “But if Contact happens and I don’t feel good about it, I want to see as many of our people in person as I can, and get the sense of how many will be behind us on this.”
A pause. “You think maybe they wouldn’t be?” Hewitt asked.
Chen sighed. “I think they will be. But you know, we’re all tired. Sick of fighting. What if Sky Daddy shows up to make it all better? How many of us would be overjoyed if we didn’t have to fight anymore?”
He sighed. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to this. Let’s hope it’s Alf the Friendly Alien and not Marvin the fucking Martian.”
His comm chimed and his contacts alerted him to a message from HM. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Captain, there’s a situation at the Xichang embarkation station. It’s looking like a riot that might develop into a full scale revolt. And…” She sighed. “I don’t have a lot of people I can trust in China right now. Pouching details to you now.”
The Captain accepted the pouch, and copied it to his team. They ran down the halls to the landing pad, and Department functionaries hastily made way, hugging the walls.
The shuttle was waiting outside. They jumped into their pods, sealed themselves in just as the shuttle took off, and went through the video and data on their contacts.
Today’s launch at Xichang was a big deal. It was the first embarkation for Alderaan, which some people thought was an inadvisable name – after all, in the film that inspired the naming, that planet had been blown to bits. A new colony departure was always a potential flash point for dissent – those who were “Left Behind” had a focus for their disappointment, and their anger.
Crowds were massing outside the station perimeter, and the video didn’t look good. The initial protestors, waving signs and shouting slogans, had been subsumed by a more aggressive group, who were throwing rocks and smoke bombs at the guards. The count looked to be about a thousand people and growing.
“Social has a rumor that a lot of the people in the embarkation line are wealthy citizens,” Comms reported. “Someone ran a facial recognition program on the feed.” Video of the embarkation was publicly broadcast. It was meant to be a celebration of humanity’s continuity, a “bon voyage” moment. Captain Chen often doubted the wisdom of that as a PR move.
“Then they correlated the facial recog results with some hacked financial data. And broadcast the stats on Social. About 15% of our new colonists are from the top 1%.”
“Shit,” Chen whispered. “Okay. Are they holding the countdown?”
“Negative.”
“Engineering, get on that. Stop that countdown clock.” The giant clock, like the ones that used to sit outside American space launch sites, was meant to encourage an air of festivity. Now it would do the opposite.
“Selection” was a tricky formula. It was calculated mostly on skills, temperament, and genetic diversity. Attempts were made to keep members of the same culture or community together – for instance, Australians on Tiamat.
But pure luck made up some part of any group. Everyone had to have a chance, a ray of hope, or the whole project would fail. The “lottery mentality” had to be encouraged – however slim your chances of being randomly selected, you had to believe “it could be you.”
But not everybody here was on the rioters’ side. Some of them desperately wanted to see that ship lift off. Everyone was encouraged to donate their eggs and sperm to the colony ships, promised that their future children could be born on other worlds. This gave colonies even more genetic diversity than the handful of living bodies onboard could provide. This “afterlife” had become as important to people, if not more so, than the one they’d been promised after death by their religions.
But if that many rich people were on the bus, then someone had gamed the system. That was HM’s problem now. FJ One’s problem was how to keep a protest from turning into a riot.
“Let’s go in with crowd control mentality, people. Weapons, I want stunners and clubs visible. Small arms concealed.”
“Roger that.”
“Engineering, what’s the temperature down there?”
“It’s hot. 36 degrees. Humid. You want some cooling?”
“Definitely. Subtle, please.”
“The megafans should be online today.”
Like most Chinese cities, Xichang still had the gigantic suction systems built to blow inversion layers of pollution out of the city and into the surrounding countryside. The end of toxic industrialism, and private ownership of cars, had obviated most of the need. They were only turned on to handle the mass
ive pollution generated by a colony ship launch.
The shuttle touched down slowly in front of the gate, allowing the mob time to scatter, and the blast of air from its VTOL jets gave the recalcitrant a push back.
“And some cloud seeding would be nice. A good, soaking rainstorm.”
“On it.”
“Ma’am,” Chen said, getting his boss on the line. “We need an order to the colony ship to disembark. These folks need to see the line going in reverse.”
“I suppose the launch window is shot,” HM sighed.
“Yes, ma’am. We’re going to need a do-over on Selection here.”
“Shit,” she cursed. FJ Nine had already laid the groundwork with Alderaan’s natives for the colonists’ arrival, which had been timed to coincide with an auspicious series of dates in their local religious calendar.
The squad’s pods extruded from the shuttle, and tilted vertically so they could land on their feet in defensive positions when the doors popped open.
“Comms, I need some disruption on the feeds. See who’s broadcasting the most incendiary messages and lock them out.”
“Roger that. Do you want any sonics?”
“Not yet. But put a couple transmitters in place just in case.”
The team’s field caps could withstand the force of a heavy object. They didn’t drop their cap bills into face shields yet, though. Coming in with face shields and riot gear was a signal to the crowd that this was a riot, and they’d usually act accordingly. All the team members were over six feet tall, which made a daunting impression, the sort that mounted police had used back when there were still horses on Earth.
The Captain held his hands up, a peaceful gesture. He used his override to access the public address system that would have, in better circumstances, counted down to zero and liftoff.
“Folks, we are aware of the situation here. Please take a look at your feeds, and you’ll see that the ship is unloading. I repeat, unloading. The ship will not depart today.”