by Bob Mayer
“The music makes it easier to remember the words,” Nosferatu said. He plunged into history to keep her from focusing on the sound outside the tube. “After the Black Death, which the Airlia instigated, and then the Hundred Years War and—“
Nekhbet interrupted. “There was a war that lasted one hundred years?”
“Off and on for over one hundred years,” Nosferatu said. “England versus France primarily, but other countries would join in and out on either side as the winds blew. It was a very confusing era.”
“Humans,” Nekhbet said with scorn.
“We are half human,” Nosferatu said.
“Do not remind me. It is why I am so weak.”
“After experiencing so much death, people needed a way to encapsulate the experience,” Nosferatu said. “After all, death is the great equalizer. Even we will die one day, my love.”
“You’re cheery,” Nekhbet said, but her voice was very low, indicating she was close to passing out once more.
“I’m answering your question, Nekhbet.”
“Yes, yes, go on.”
“It is better in French,” Nosferatu said.
“Everything sounds better in French,” Nekhbet agreed.
Nosferatu shifted language. “’Emperor, your sword won’t help you; scepter and crown are worthless; I’ve taken you by the hand; for you must come to my dance’.”
Nosferatu fell silent. Nekhbet’s breathing was shallow and steady and he assumed she had fallen asleep.
Her words belied that: “What is outside making such a racket?”
“Death,” Nosferatu said.
“Ah.” Nekhbet was quiet. “So you have reason to be morbid.”
“It will pass,” Nosferatu said.
“You just recited a poem about death taking everyone. It will come for us eventually.”
“It will, but not today.”
“Now you’re being optimistic,” she said. “I am not sure which I prefer.”
Nosferatu clutched her tighter.
CHINA
With a population of 1.4 billion and the world’s largest military at 2.285 million service members, only a fool would invade China. However, the Chinese military did believe in Sun Tzu’s dictums: The art of war teaches us to rely not on the likelihood of the enemy’s not coming, but on our own readiness to receive him; not on the chance of his not attacking, but rather on the fact we have made our position unassailable.
Thus they had prepared for the unlikely: being invaded.
As part of that preparation they’d considered the most likely type of attack: nuclear.
During the Cold War, the Russians had prepared a doomsday weapons system they named, appropriately, Dead Hand. It was a command and control system loaded into the nosecone of an ICBM and designed to be launched when all leadership was gone. The ultimate mutually assured destruction. When a computer algorithm determined that the Russian leadership had been decapitated and that there was no one left with authority to launch a retaliatory strike, Dead Hand would launch that ICBM. Once in the upper atmosphere it would automatically transmit launch orders to all Russian ICBMs, whether land or sea based.
The Chinese had studied that system, and an American equivalent, Omega Missile, and decided to go in a different direction. It wasn’t about nuking the rest of the world as a last resort. It was about nuking the rest of the world in a way that would insure it was, indeed, Doomsday. A true deterrent.
They called their program King Yan. In Chinese mythology King Yan is the god of death and the ruler of the ten kings of death. The goal of King Yan is to have the highest level of nuclear deterrence, enough to make the US and/or Russia think twice, thrice and more before attacking China which owned a relatively small number of warheads. While the US and Russia boast roughly 7,000 warheads each, China has only a little below 300. Thus, it has to make them truly count.
The first thing it did was build the world’s longest range ICBM, the Dongfeng-41, aka the East Wind. It is a road-mobile, solid-fueled rocket that meant it can easily be moved and hidden and launched quickly. With a range of 15,000 kilometers, the DF-41 can reach any target in the world.
The Chinese had looked at the prospect of nuclear war practically, much as Sun Tzu would have appraised an inherently insane prospect. They’d decided that Dead Hand and Omega Missile had the concept backwards. They began with the premise that if China had to battle the United States and/or Russia in a nuclear exchange, the world was already doomed. Therefore, the logical solution was to make even an initiation of nuclear warfare that involved China a doomed event.
To that end, the Chinese ‘salted’ almost all their strategic nuclear warheads. The concept of ‘salting’ a nuclear bomb had been introduced, rather warned against, by Leo Szilard in 1950. Given he was the scientist who had come up with the idea of a nuclear chain reaction in 1933, and worked on the Manhattan Project, one would think his warning would have taken root. Nevertheless, the United Kingdom did test one in Australia in 1957.
The concept is to enhance a nuclear warhead with a material that would ‘salt the earth’, making it uninhabitable for generations due to radiation. Cobalt-60 was the original material designated to be used. The Chinese had gone one step further and added tantalum, a very difficult to produce heavy metal, to their warheads. A nuclear weapon salted with tantalum would salt the area of disbursement with lethal gamma rays for hundreds of years.
Then they notified both the Americans and the Russians about it. In essence, the Chinese were saying that any nuclear attack, not just a decapitation strike, would be the end of the world.
The Chinese double-downed on strategic nuclear warfare. They took the conclusion of the ‘sentient’ computer in the movie War Games which determined the only winning move in a nuclear exchange was not to play; don’t start it and you won’t lose.
While the Americans and Russians had theoretically always understood an all-out nuclear exchange between them would be devastating to the entire planet, perhaps fatally, the Chinese had added themselves to the equation.
While the Russians launches had been wiped out on the first Core pass, and almost all the American land-based systems by subsequent passes, the Chinese had handled things differently. They hadn’t attempted a launch of any of their ICBMs when the Core initially orbited. Quite the opposite, they’d gone out of their way to disperse their truck-launched systems into bunkers. Nevertheless more than half had been destroyed by the Core, which had utilized its intercepts and scout reconnaissance to locate and target them.
China had also ignored the nuclear exchange between Pakistan and India, rightly judging that it was going to be limited to the southern side of the Himalayas. While some of their lower territory was affected, the Chinese were keeping their focus on the larger issue: the Swarm.
The warship drop had almost caused the leaders in Beijing to order a launch, but they’d held back. Then the EMP pulse had taken out their ability to order that launch. Such an event had been considered, but the extent and power of the Swarm’s blast was far greater than anything they’d prepared for.
Thus, when the warships finally landed, command and control of the remaining weapons devolved to the surviving senior Chinese general, hidden in a remote bunker in western China who had direct launch control over a third of the missiles. The senior civilian and military leadership in Beijing had been wiped out. Scattered and mostly incoherent reports were flooding in about the warships and what was coming forth from them as they touched down.
General Zhou was a veteran of the Sino-Vietnamese war in 1979. Since the Old Guard from the Korean War was long gone this made him one of the few officers in the Chinese military who had combat experience. The fighting had lasted only 27 days with both sides claiming victory. While that brief conflict was considered insignificant in history it had been brutal in its conduct. As they withdrew from Vietnam, after claiming victory, the Chinese had conducted a scorched earth policy. Zhou had seen first hand what conventional ‘salting the
earth’ could do.
From the top level of his bunker, just above ground level, Zhou watched what came out of the closest warship. He had direct control of King Yan. A single ICBM that could transmit launch codes to the surviving salted ICBMs. Whether they would launch had been a subject of much debate among his subordinates over the last 48 hours as the warships hovered overhead. All the ICBM control systems had been hardened against EMP as that was a side effect of any nuclear blast. The issue was: had they been hardened enough? The King Yan missile was functional so the preponderance of opinion was that the others would also work.
His aide was fidgeting as they watched the spiders and Naga and Cthulhu and Medusa’s spread out. “We do not have much time, General.”
“We have all the time we’re ever going to have,” Zhou replied. He rubbed a finger along a scar on the right side of his face, the result of a Chinese mortar falling short of its intended target. Other soldiers always assumed the wound was from the Vietnamese. He’d explained for years the actual source until finally it had grown old and futile. Best to let them think what they wanted to believe.
Twenty-seven warheads on nine missiles.
That was what they thought they still had control over. They wouldn’t know until they launched the King Yan.
Strategically targeted as they were, that handful of missiles would ‘salt’ much of the world, making it uninhabitable for hundreds of years. Of course, a nuclear ‘autumn’, if not a winter, had already been initiated by the Indo-Pakistan nuclear war. Did it even matter?
General Zhou watched people being ‘thralled’ by the Swarm. “Why do they want us?” he wondered out loud.
The sound of automatic weapons firing echoed in the command and control bunker.
“Sir, we have been breached.” His aide has his sidearm drawn.
“What are you going to do, son?” Zhou asked him.
His aide looked at him and Zhou could see the fear in the man’s eyes. Zhou put one hand on the young man’s shoulder and leaned close. “You must be brave.” With his other hand he fired his own pistol into the aide’s heart.
There was shock on the man’s face, but he died quickly.
Zhou slammed his hand down on the destruct button. Thermal charges in the command and control center exploded, incinerating himself and all of the staff.
The salted missiles remained in their silos.
WARDENCLYFFE, SHOREHAM, NEW YORK
A simple definition of the difference between the brain and the mind is that the brain is physical hardware and the mind is thinking software. The brain is a physical organ. It is part of the nervous system that extends throughout a human’s body.
The mind is more than the brain. While it might be primarily ‘headquartered’ in the brain, it is a culmination of thought, perception, emotion, memory, imagination and more. It is the awareness of our consciousness. Animals can interpret their environment, but not understand it. Humans are different and there lies the horror of the Swarm thrall.
Reuben Shear could not control his nervous system. Thus his muscles were no longer his. The Swarm parasite inside him was meshed with his spine and through it, into his brain. It was moving him, step by step, toward the arm of the warship a mile away.
Shear’s brain could feel the pain as he pushed through a thicket of thorn bushes. Most importantly, his mind was aware it had no control. It was a hundred times worse than that waking dream where one is aware, but cannot move no matter how much one tries.
He was aware of blood seeping down his legs from the parasite boring into him. Aware of the hand that had been crushed by another parasite. Beyond awareness, he could imagine a horrible fate awaiting him once he was inside that warship. He had no clue what that might be, but if this was the forerunner, the end could not be good.
The parasite wasn’t very adept yet as he stumbled over a root, falling face down and his hands didn’t instinctively reach out to break the fall. Instead, his face smashed into the hard packed dirt, his nose breaking. The intense spike of pain from the middle of his face would normally have elicited a scream, but he could not scream.
His body clumsily got to its feet and continued on the journey. Although he didn’t control his vision, he could see. There were others moving in the same awkward fashion toward the Swarm warship.
As he got closer, through his despair, Shear realized the parasite was getting better at controlling his body. He was stepping over obstructions now. Avoiding the difficult way and taking the easier.
Is that what they wanted? He wondered. Slaves? Bodies to do their bidding?
The flat end of the warship’s arm was touching the ground, extending up to the orb. As Shear entered he was jostled by other humans funneling in. They pressed against each other, tighter and tighter in an area two hundred feet wide and across. The only light was from the opening he’d come in.
Shear was staring at the back of an old woman’s head, the grey hair dirty, filled with leaves and sticks. He could see blood dripping from her left ear.
The worst part was the abnormal noise from hundreds of people packed so tightly together. A mixture of harsh breathing, coughing, vomiting and underneath a despairing, inarticulate moan. The door slid shut and there was absolute darkness.
Then they all swayed as the floor jerked.
An elevator took them upward into the orb.
Everyone swayed once more as the elevator abruptly stopped.
All was still.
It was the most hideous smell Shear had ever experienced. Piss, shit, vomit, the coppery odor of blood, sweat and through it all, that distinct, indescribable smell of fear.
THE FACILITY
Asha had her hand on the boy’s forehead. It was cool to the touch, slightly below normal body temperature.
“He’s gone,” Sofia said. “He is no longer of us.”
The boy was staring up, eyes blank.
“He’s alive,” Asha said. She glanced at Joe. The old Native American shook his head. They’d seen this before. The boy was alive, but he was no longer not just ‘one of us’, he wasn’t capable of higher level cognitive functioning. Sofia had christened them appropriately: Fades.
Asha lowered her head and said a prayer. Then she said: “This is my fault.”
“So is Sofia,” Joe said.
Asha looked over at Sofia who was standing several feet away in the examining room inside the medical building. Her dark eyes glittered in the faint light.
“How many more are fading?” Asha asked her.
Sofia closed her eyes for a moment. “Forty-two total.”
“And the rest?” Asha asked.
“All of us are fine.” Sofia walked up. She reached out and lightly touched Asha’s shoulder. “You told me that we, the Metabols, are different. But you didn’t tell me how. Why do you say this is your fault? What did you do to us?”
Asha was seated on an examining stool. Joseph was in a chair on the other side of the boy. Asha indicated a stool for Sofia. “It will take a little bit to explain.”
Sofia sat down, her legs not quite reaching the floor. With her feet dangling she appeared to be the young girl that she was, but her questions and demeanor indicated a maturity far beyond her years.
“You remind me of your grandmother so much,” Asha said.
“Is that good?” Sofia asked.
“Very good,” Joseph said. “She is a great woman.”
“But she is gone,” Sofia said.
“She is doing her duty,” Joseph said.
“Do you know where she is?”
Asha shook her head. “We have no idea. But that’s a good thing. She is safe.”
“Mrs. Parrish is with her, isn’t she?” Sofia asked. “And she is evil, right?”
“Yes, but your mother is with Professor Leahy and they are in control.”
Sofia didn’t say anything in response to that.
“Please explain us,” Sofia said.
“It started,” Asha said, “when we realized we
needed a self-contained population. At first our primary concern was maintaining the human race’s genetic diversity. To do that requires forty thousand people specifically picked from around the world and then strict regulation on breeding for future generations. That was out of the question. As I told you, the threshold was optimally at ten thousand to prevent dangerous inbreeding in successive generations. Practically speaking, given the physical limitations of the facility we could build—“ she indicated the cavern—“and the capacity of the mothership if that option was exercised, that wasn’t possible. We could only accommodate five thousand. Still, if everything went right, that would be enough. But only if certain things didn’t happen.
“We were preparing for two possibilities. One was a long interstellar journey at sublight speed since the mothership didn’t have a ruby sphere. In that scenario the Myrddin would commandeer the derelict mothership in orbit, retrofit it, and then send it off among the stars. It would be a multi-generational journey at sub light as we knew one cannot keep a person in a sleep tube indefinitely without permanent damage.” She paused.
“And the other?” Sofia said.
“Here,” Asha said. “The Facility. To hide in here, as we are doing, and ride out a catastrophe. At that time we were thinking more in terms of climate change finally deconstructing civilization or nuclear warfare. It would be the equivalent of that space journey, just not going anywhere. The Chosen would wait.
“In either scenario,” Asha continued, “it wasn’t just the internal genetic issues. There were other factors. For the interstellar journey, the biggest danger was putting everyone on one ship. A single catastrophe would end it all.”
“Which is what my Nana Maria is doing right now,” Sofia said.
“Yes,” Joseph said. “She is among the stars.”
“And what would these catastrophes be?” Sofia asked.
Asha stared at the amazingly composed young girl. “A collision. A meteor strike. A system failure aboard the mothership.” She pointed up. “An encounter with an unfriendly alien species such as the Swarm or the Airlia.”