Thunder & Lightning

by Christopher Nuttall

  “No bet,” Ellsworth said. Open fighting was banned among the Belt; if people really wanted to fight each other they could go to a designated space for it, where the fight would be watched – and happily bet on – by other Rockrats. If they fought in the bar, they would be arrested and caned for endangering others. He wondered, briefly, what their dispute was. “And stop changing the subject; where do you stand?”

  “Interesting little issue, isn’t it?” Ian said, looking away from the two opponents and back to Ellsworth, who grinned at him. “You do realise that the aliens have effectively blocked us off from most of our own market? Even if we can still send supplies to the moon, the destruction in Earth orbit means that they won’t have much of a market for our ore, will they? If we don’t respond in some way, the aliens might push us around some more, but at the same time, we have a chance to radically redefine the power balance in the solar system.”

  Ellsworth gave him his patented Look of Extreme Irritation. “Why are bartenders always philosophers?”

  Ian smiled. “Because we see you men of the common herd, naked and alone, stripped of all inhibitions by the demon drink,” he said. “My entire life has been devoted to proving what scum are my fellow men – while proving just how neat in miniskirts my fellow women are – and being a bartender just helps convince me that I’m right.”

  Ellsworth laughed. “I should have known not to expect a straight answer,” he said. The thought made him smile; miniskirts weren't very popular on asteroid habitats, not least because sudden changes in the gravity or air pressure could send them soaring upwards, revealing everything a lady had to the world. “If we’re discussing such matters, why do we daring space pilots have free booze, but not a free ticket to the whorehouse?”

  Ian didn’t smile. “Because then you’d spend all of your time in the brothel,” he said. “Does that answer your question?”

  “A serious answer, please,” Ellsworth said. “Why…?”

  “Because even whores have to work,” Ian said dryly. A whore was a respected woman in the Belt; she satisfied the lusts of countless men, and, it was generally agreed, had to be kept happy. A handful of men had found wives among the women who came to the belt and ended up as prostitutes, but they didn’t remain in the same asteroid; most wives had continued the long tradition of being refugee women from Earth. It explained Ellsworth’s own face; several different branches of the human family tree combined in him. “I can make booze free – or almost free – but whores need to get paid.”

  “How true,” Ellsworth said. He eyed the brothel with interest. “I think that I’ll go see what paradise can be found between…”

  His phone vibrated against his hip. “Excuse me,” he said. He brought it to his mouth and tapped the speaking key. “Ellsworth.”

  “Jake,” Kyle Short said. His voice was surprisingly grim, but then it had been getting grimmer and grimmer the more the aliens showed just how hostile they could become. They’d invaded Earth and kicked human ass, they’d trapped Earth and blockaded it from its normal input of supplies from the Belt; they weren't to be trifled with. Some Rockrats had even suggested trying to come to an accommodation with them before it was too late. “Can you come to my office please?”

  “Of course,” Ellsworth said. A request from the Chairman of the Rockrat Association was as good as an order. Everyone respected Short; he wondered with a flicker of irritation just how long that would last if Short tried to train spacers in the principles of space warfare. “I’ll be on my way at once.”

  It was only a short walk to the office of the Chairman, placed within the Rockrat Association Headquarters; he passed through a throng of Rockrats looking for work, or opportunities, or even the latest economic news, before entering the private area. It was unguarded; the consensus was that the Chairman and the members of the board were entitled to some privacy, and no one would break in on them unless they had urgent business. The entire section had been decorated with paintings; he smiled when he realised that most of them had been drawn by children in Freeport One’s only school. Education was a serious issue in the belt, but it concentrated around science and engineering; the soft studies had no practical application in the Belt. From time to time, someone in the Belt would try to study humanities, realize just how little they related to the cold equations in space, and give up in disgust.

  The hatch was closed, he realised, as he walked up to it. That was a surprise; part of the unwritten rules were that it had to be left open, even if no one came close enough to check. He pressed his hand against the door sensor and, moments later, the hatch hissed open, revealing Kyle Short, sitting at his desk. He wasn't alone; there was a second person in the room, a short blonde woman with her hair clipped neatly around her skull. She would have been beautiful if she had let herself; as it was, his instincts recognised a genuine threat when they saw one. Even sitting, perched on the edge of a chair, he had the uncomfortable feeling that she was preparing to jump up and bite him. The air was very tense…

  “Jake,” Short said, very dryly. Ellsworth took the seat Short waved him to and waited to hear what was happening. “You won’t have met Cindy” – he nodded to the woman; no, Ellsworth realised now, more of a girl – “have you?”

  “No, Mr Chairman,” Ellsworth said. Cindy looked at him, her gaze challenging, before she looked back at Short. The feeling in the air only grew darker. “I don’t think I’ve had that pleasure.”

  “Cindy is part of my family, several steps removed,” Short said. Ellsworth blinked; Short, with his half-Chinese, half-Anglo features, could not be related to Cindy, surely. If there had been a textbook definition of the ideal Aryan woman, Cindy would have qualified with ease; her picture would have been in all the textbooks. He remembered, a while back, a group of nutters in the Belt trying to force-grow improved humans; he wondered, just for a moment, if Cindy was descended from those experiments. “All you have to know is that there was an argument and my branch of the family does not often talk to hers.”

  Ellsworth could fill in the rest of the story now; Short’s father had gone out to the Belt, married a Chinese refugee from Earth, and had mixed-race children. Cindy, who looked around sixteen – which could place her age as anything from fourteen to thirty in the Belt – and her family had remained on Earth. It wasn’t that uncommon a story in the Belt; Ellsworth had met plenty of brothers – technically, half-brothers – who no one would believe were actually related.

  “That is very interesting,” Ellsworth said, after a long pause. It might have been interesting, but all it was – all it could be – was gossip… and the Belt didn’t really share such private information. “Might I ask what it has to do with me?”

  “Cindy works for the United States Space Force,” Short said. “She has something of a proposition to put before you.”

  The obvious joke rose to Ellsworth’s lips, but he forced it down; there was neither time, nor the moment. “A proposition,” he said, tasting the word. “Didn’t the USSF and every other space force in existence just get its ass kicked?”

  Cindy uncrossed her legs and leaned forward. There was nothing remotely sexual in the movement; it was more like watching a tiger licking its lips before prowling forward to prey on a hapless, hypnotised sheep. Her body, Ellsworth couldn’t help, but notice, was very muscular; wherever she had been, she had had to have been spending much longer on the exercise machines than USSF regulations ordered.

  “Not all of it,” she said with a smile. “As my great uncle said, we have something of an offer for you.”

  Ellsworth forced himself to lean back and relax. “I’m all ears,” he said. “What do you have to offer?”

  “My great uncle says that you can be trusted,” Cindy said. “I want you to swear, now, that you won’t share anything I tell you with any living soul, unless I give you permission to share it.”

  Ellsworth felt a flicker of irritation. “The word of a Rockrat is always good,” he said. It was true enough; a Rockrat w
ho broke his word would very rapidly discover that the remainder of the community wanted nothing to do with him. “However, seeing you insist, you have my word.”

  Cindy spoke briefly, her sentences short and choppy. “We have established a secret production facility out in the belt,” she said. “The idea was to prepare for a possible war between the Great Powers. The base was never meant to produce a war fleet on its own. The net result is that we have a shortage of real manpower.”

  Her breathing had grown louder; Ellsworth realised that going that far was difficult for her. “We need you to provide the manpower,” she said. “We are prepared to offer you the posts on board the ships. It might be the only way of saving Earth.”

  Honesty and ambition struggled in Ellsworth’s mind. Honesty won. “It’s an interesting idea,” he said. “However, we have been having problems just training with the ships we do have. We… well; it’s very much a case of the blind leading the blind.”

  Cindy nodded, unsurprised. Ellsworth wondered just how much Short had told her before he’d been summoned to the meeting. The thought of a secret base in the Belt wasn’t surprising; the Rockrats had more than a few secret installations that they’d never bothered to tell the IAU about. The IAU had been silent ever since the aliens had opened fire; Ellsworth knew that around two-thirds of the Rockrat population would raise a glass to the aliens if they had exterminated the bureaucratic organisation. Even so, the sense that there had been a military base – close by, or Cindy would never have been able to come to Freeport One, but not too close or a Rockrat would have stumbled across it by now – was a violation.

  “I brought along a handful of training officers,” Cindy said. “I myself am going to remain on Freeport One until the outcome of the conflict is decided, one way or the other. The other Rockrats will be told that the spacecraft are being produced by a Rockrat group and they won’t know anything about American involvement.”

  Ellsworth balked. “Ah… Cindy, that won’t work,” he said. “The Belt operates on a principle of openness. I can’t tell people that those spacecraft are from a base most of them will know perfectly well does not exist.”

  Cindy blinked. “You cannot tell them that the Association established a secret base?”

  Short spoke before Ellsworth could say anything. “Any use of Association funds or equipment would have to be voted on,” he said. “It would be far too easy for anyone with an inquiring mind to pierce the deception, they would realise at once that we had lied to them, and demand a full conclave to establish the truth. Whatever the outcome, I would be tossed out of office; they won’t tolerate me lying to them.”

  Cindy shook her head. “Sir… Kyle… Uncle…we dare not let the aliens know that we have a fleet in production,” she said. “If they find out about it, they’ll come and destroy the shipyard…”

  “They would have to find the shipyard first,” Short pointed out.

  “If they find the shipyard, they will destroy it,” Cindy said. “Once that happens, the entire war is almost certainly lost; the aliens can hammer away at positions on the ground from orbit, and then…well, they can just keep dropping asteroids until the governments down there bend over, lower their trousers, and spread their legs. Out here? Well, they might not want Rockrats around; you must know your own history, right? Destroying Freeport One would always have been easy; a single nuke in the right place would shatter the asteroid…and the aliens have certainly proven themselves ruthless enough to do something like that. You could be looking at the end of human independence…”

  Ellsworth coughed, just loudly enough to get her attention. “Perhaps there is a way around the problem,” he said. He found himself liking Cindy, oddly enough; she would have made a good Rockrat. “Why don’t we tell everyone that we are putting together the manufacturing equipment from the stations that were boosted out here before Earth was blockaded, and train on that basis? If the aliens catch wind of it, they’ll think they have time to let us invest all that effort before they come along and destroy it all. If someone – later – realises the truth…well, at least we built the force beforehand, so whatever the outcome, we can launch the counterattack.”

  Cindy’s eyes narrowed. “No one mentioned a counterattack.”

  Ellsworth laughed at her. “Oh, come on,” he said. “What else could it be for?”

  Chapter Thirty-Three: Desperate Men Demand Desperate Measures

  United States National Command Centre, USA

  “The conference room has been set up, Mr. President,” Colonel Travis assured him as he led Cardona and the ever-present Captain Schaefer down a long corridor into a secure conference room. The two weeks he had spent in the National Command Centre had convinced him that some of his predecessors and their cabinets had been paranoid, although some of their precautions had come in very useful when the aliens had begun their invasion. “We have an encrypted undersea cable link to the various world bunkers; they should find it impossible to trace us back to this location.”

  “Good,” the President said, shortly. Inside, he was composing himself as best as he could; he disliked video conferences at the best of times…and there was no way that the current situation could be considered anything other than a disaster. “Captain Schaefer, please could you remain outside and ensure that I’m not disturbed?”

  “Of course, Mr. President,” Captain Schaefer said.

  Cardona stepped through the door and took a moment to revel in being alone, just for a few minutes; the endless security surrounding him was wearying at the best of times. He had known when he had accepted the nomination, of course, that being the American President had held the dubious title of the world’s most temping terrorist target for over three hundred years…and that the Secret Service had evolved thousands of little security measures to protect the chief executive, but he suspected that the Secret Service would be happier if the President remained in a bunker all the time, handling all of the nation’s affairs through video conferencing.

  It wasn’t possible; a leader had to get out there and press the flesh. He knew that there had been hundreds of plots, mostly Wrecker attempts to strike back at the man who had ordered the deaths of tens of thousands of their comrades, against him; most of them had been neatly foiled before he had ever been in any danger. A handful of plots had almost reached fruition; he had once joked that the only way any member of the public would ever find out about those plots was if they actually came out into the open and took the shot, or triggered the bomb, or…

  But it grated on him. Part of him felt a kind of guilty relief at being in the National Command Centre; here he was safe from almost everything, apart from an alien attack. The Secret Service couldn’t protect him from that; their presence had dwindled, leaving only Captain Schaefer as his bodyguard and escort. The President half-wanted to order him back to the lines, but he’d been reluctant to do that; Captain Schaefer’s determination to protect him and make the sacrifice worthwhile was important. Almost all of the Tomb Guards had died in the defence of Arlington; Captain Schaefer had never quite forgiven himself for not being there to die with his comrades. Cardona understood that.

  The conference room itself was small and simple; he took a seat and waited for the computers to link up with each other. It was just another reminder of just how much things had changed in the last three weeks; normally any conference of the Great Powers would be carried out in Geneva, with face-to-face meetings and some private discussions aside from the primary purpose of the meetings. Meetings weren’t called very often; until the aliens had arrived, they had mainly been called to introduce new world leaders to their peers, and to discuss the growing activist movement on the moon. He could almost feel it working; the computers matching up with their counterparts…

  It was so slow! It had until recently been possible to download an entire terabyte in seconds. Hollywood, Bollywood and the BBC had all faced almost effortless competition from people who thought that their prices were too high; pirate copies of
movies got on to the internet and were distributed across the globe within minutes of their initial release, if they hadn’t been leaked even before then. A handful of landmark lawsuits had ensured that hunter/killer programs had been banned – they just weren’t smart enough to destroy only the right files – and the copyright pirates had won the day. People, in the Cardona’s view, were generally honest, but hated to be cheated; given a chance to even the score a little, they would take it. But even that part of the global economy had come to a halt.

  Faces started to appear in the monitors facing him; the European, the Russian, the Muslim, the British…two empty black viewscreens gazed accusingly upon him, a reminder that neither Prime Minister Akira Miyu or President Liu Jianfeng had survived…or, if they had, they hadn’t made contact. The Kelly Johnston had reported on chaos within China; the tidal waves had destroyed Hong Kong and a dozen other cities along the Chinese seacoast, while the earthquakes had shattered much more of China. Japan’s cities were mostly along the seacoast as well; just how many of them had drowned under the pressure of the tidal waves? The President knew the damage was almost completely beyond calculation.

  A new face had joined them, flickering into existence; Prime Minister David bar Ellis, of Israel. Israel wasn't a Great Power – despite its more or less uncontested ownership of Titan, it would never be a Great Power – but there was no denying there was an alien force close to Israel, one that could be at their land borders within days at most. The aliens had moved rapidly; their sheer firepower could blast anything the Caliphate might put in their way, if brute conquest was what they had in mind. It didn’t seem fair, somehow; between Reform Islam and the European actions in North Africa, the Palestinian Problem had finally been solved…and now the aliens had come to shed more blood in the Holy Land. Israel was still armed to the teeth – it would be a long time before they trusted their old enemies – but most human conventional weapons were useless against the aliens.