by Jim Roberts
"Get out! Now!"
The Doctor almost exploded out of his wheelchair, yelling at the top of his lungs. Both Whisper and Orchid were completely taken aback at the once feeble old man's abrupt change of temperament.
"Sir, please let me explain−"
The old man would hear none of Danny's attempts to talk. "There is nothing to explain! It was a failure, do you hear me? A failure." The Doctor spun his chair and began pushing himself frantically around the room. "I told them it would never work! I swore on the soul of my wife and son! But they didn't listen! God damn them!"
In his frenzied outburst, the Doctor's wheelchair hit a large cluster of books and threw the man off balance. The chair tipped over and the old doctor went sprawling on the ground, coughing and hacking violently. Orchid and Whisper bolted forward to help the old man. He batted their arms away and pulled himself to his knees. With a herculean effort, he managed to haul himself up and into his chair, gasping for breath as he closed his eyes in exhaustion.
"Sir, you have to help us." Whisper stood back to give the Doctor some room to breathe. Orchid put a reassuring hand on the old man's shoulder. The old man swatted it away angrily.
Mobus couldn't look either of them in the eye. "I thought I was finished with all that. Thought I could just wait here until...it was over." He wiped his mouth, trying to regain his composure. "We had tried to do the unthinkable with...with the Code. It was going to be our testament for future generations." The Doctor's face turned hard, "But it was all for naught. Dreams run dry when you fuel them only with good intentions."
Orchid decided to look around the house while the Doctor spoke. Whisper reached down and picked up the book Mobus had thrown at them.
"The Guns of August," Whisper said, reading the title aloud, "What's it about?"
"What? Oh, that. Just a history book. I do love history books." The Doctor stretched out his hand. Whisper handed the book back to him. "It's about World War I. How the unconscionably cyclical nature of war changes and advances with time. It was a primary text of President Kennedy. He gave it to all of his advisors, wishing that they too would learn from the mistakes of the past." The Doctor regarded the book with a smile then tossed it on the broken coffee table beside him, "I don't know how much either of you know about me, but I used to teach AP Psychology at Berkley. Years ago, now."
"What exactly are you a Doctor of?" Whisper asked, folding his arms. "You don't really hit me as the kind of person Olympus would be interested in."
"Hmm. You don't do your homework do you metal man?"
"There is no information available on you. No aliases, nothing."
Mobus sniffed. "Of course there wouldn't be. Mobus was a name given to me by Olympus. By the Imperator himself. It was their way of providing us with an internal identity."
That name. Imperator.
Danny had heard the word back at Fortress Liberatio.
"Who is this 'Imperator?'" Whisper asked, moving around the room slowly. Through the cracked window against the south wall of the house, Whisper saw the forest beyond, still drenched in thick fog.
"He is the high commander of Olympus. He commissioned the creation of the Code of War."
Whisper turned and knelt down to speak to the wheelchair bound man face to face.
"Doctor−what is the Code of War?"
The Doctor chuckled softly, then he began to laugh−an eerie sound amidst the shambles of the farmhouse.
"You may as well have asked me to explain a Black Hole, boy."
Whisper was nearing the end of his patience. "Doctor, just...start at the beginning."
"You're a cocky bastard, aren't you?" The Doctor replied, amused at the request. "Fine. I was brought onto the project five years ago. Besides my work in Psychology and Philosophy, I have a PHD in Partial Differential Equations. I was foremost in the field, at least in America. Lived there the last half of my life." Mobus paused for a brief moment, as if the memory of a time long past made him nostalgic.
He continued, "I had been attempting to design correlating calculations about the nature of war. I formulated a hypothesis that I could fully understand war itself by a single equation. It was a sort of hobby I had been working on for some time. My father had died in Korea, you see. I never knew him. I always felt I had been robbed of him by this petty thing called war."
Whisper leaned against one of the flimsy walls of the farmhouse, listening intently.
Mobus went on, smiling somewhat as he spoke, "I felt I was on to something and had published a rather brilliant paper in the Journal of Statistical Physics." The Doctor's smile faded as he went on, "It made little progress in the scientific community. But I was convinced my theory of a unified 'Code of War' was sound. I believed I could understand the nature of war. But no one cared and no one listened."
Mobus gripped the wheels of his chair until his hands began to turn red. "I felt betrayed. My peers thought I was wasting my time on a silly experiment. They said the nature of war was incalculable. But I said they were wrong."
The Doctor took a deep breath, his eyes staring far away, "I was visited by a man who told me he'd read my work. He gave me a fake name at the time, but said he represented a group of people very interested in what I had come up with. He asked me to join a group of physicists and computer experts to design something for him. I jumped at the opportunity." Mobus smiled sardonically. "It didn't hurt that they said they would pay me a fortune."
From across the room, Whisper saw Orchid shake her head.
"It was an opportunity I couldn't pass up. I worked with some of the world's greatest minds. Geniuses unparalleled in their fields. Computational Physicists, nanotechnology experts, neuroscientists−we all came together to work for this man," Mobus hesitated before speaking again, "−this man I would come to know as the Imperator of Olympus."
The farmhouse was silent for a moment. Whisper was hanging off each word the man said, trying to make sense what this man was telling him.
After a brief pause, Mobus spoke, "We worked for over two years, without a break in a secret facility somewhere in Europe−I never learned where. Things went fine for a time. We succeeded in the breakthrough I was always looking for−creating a calculation method to contain all of the world's history in war and conflict into a single binary code."
Whisper listened, entranced.
"This Code was able to quantify all understanding of war−tactics, logistics, history, political agendas and the general ambiguity of conflict itself into a simple breakdown at a binary level. We had created something that could, effectively, lift the Fog of War in a battle."
Orchid frowned, "What do you mean 'fog of war'?"
The doctor was annoyed by the interruption. "It is an old statement made by Carl Von Clausewitz, a legendary Prussian General. He hypothesized that war was, in itself, a complete uncertainty: that three quarters of the things on which all action in War is based are lying in a fog of uncertainty, to a greater or lesser extent. In a strange, abstract way, the Imperator wished to use the Code to somehow explain those remaining three quarters."
Mobus stopped, as if by a painful memory. "But then we began to grow suspicious."
"Suspicious how?" Whisper asked.
"It became clear what we were working on was not a simple theory, as we'd been led to believe. The Imperator began to push us in...another direction. He wanted something immediate and tactile. We informed him that in order to enhance the Code to the degree he wanted, it would require actual field data; information culled, so to speak, from the front lines of war itself."
Mobus paused to cough: a wet, hacking sound that made the two Peacemakers concerned. He waved them off, irritably. "We were put to work in designing safe zones−areas around the world in the hot zones of war. Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Columbia, Egypt, pretty much anywhere in Africa. The safe zones were areas where we could silently monitor war as it occurred, filtering everything we discovered through the binary Code. Massive super-computers, running on process
ors capable of 28.1 petaflops per second, attempted to quantify the very nature of war into a physical object that could in turn by used as a weapon."
"I've heard enough of this bullshit!" Orchid said, advancing on the old man. Whisper intervened, putting himself between Mobus and the JSDF sniper. "You had better start making sense and quick, old man!" The JSDF soldier was clearly out of patience.
"At ease, Private." Whisper said, his raspy voice calming the young woman enough to make her back down. Danny turned to the Doctor. "You have to forgive us if this all sounds really hard to swallow, Doc."
"I am trying to be as straightforward as I can, Mister Callbeck. You're forgiven if you can't understand it."
"Then make us understand."
Mobus sighed. "In the end, it all came down to two discs. Two collections of data on revolutionary pieces of technology capable of holding 500 terabytes of data each, heavily compressed and encrypted. The first disc was the Operational half. The second was the Tactical half. Each disc of the Code would be brought to a safe zone for a set period of time where surveillance drones would feed it every matter of information possible about the conflict in the area. This was to provide the binary code a modern example of warfare to add to its exhaustive database of historical conflict."
Mobus itched the IV needle in his hand, "But that was where my time with the project ended. I was deemed no longer valuable at that point and shuffled off, with a generous settlement. I, along with others, were sent off around Europe with new identities. We were lucky, I suppose. Olympus could have just as easily eliminated us. I think they wanted to keep us around, just in case something went wrong with the Code."
Danny regarded the man for a brief moment. "Hate to break it to you Doc, but you're the last survivor."
Mobus didn't look surprised. "I'd figured that when you came through that door. I had paid a sizable amount of my recompense to that slime Kutsenko to give me a different alias than what Olympus had. I didn't want them to ever find me again." The Doctor scoffed. "Never trust a Russian."
Whisper paced around the room, the servos of the suit humming quietly as he moved. "Okay Doctor, let us say this is all true. These two discs, your involvement, everything. What is it that Olympus wants to use it for?"
"That is the billion dollar question, isn't it?" Mobus moved his wheelchair over to a corner where piles of clothes, books and other miscellaneous things were piled. After a minute of rummaging, he pulled out a small computer tablet. He flicked it on.
"Ah, good, it still has a charge." The scientist handed it to Whisper. "I think this will answer some of your questions, Mister Callbeck."
Orchid moved behind Danny to watch the device. A pre-recorded image began to play. It seemed to be some sort of security video, with a digital readout at the bottom, listing the date as June 2, 2011. In the video, a team of men and women in lab coats performed a demonstration of some sort of surgical procedure on a man lying on a table, face down. Orchid blanched as she saw that the back of his head had its skin spread back and part of the brain was exposed. Whisper watched as one of the lead surgeons placed what appeared to be a metallic object the size of a guitar pick into the open incision.
Whisper raised his helmeted head to look at the Doctor.
"Keep watching." Mobus said, gesturing to the tablet. "These are merely the early tests."
Abruptly the image changed. The date read February 12, 2012. A team of soldiers were performing highly physical calisthenics on a large field somewhere in a desert location. The team of twenty men moved through an obstacle course with shocking efficiency. Each man seemed perfectly in tune with the man ahead and behind him. In fact, it was downright eerie how close the soldiers operated with each other. Entire movements were replicated by the soldiers almost as if they were being controlled by a single hive mind.
The Doctor continued, knowing by heart the image that Whisper was watching. "We discovered that by inserting a nano-reciever into the cerebral cortex of an applicant, we could beam the Code−essentially the sum of human knowledge in warfare−into the mind of the applicant."
Whisper, perplexed, turned back to watch the video. Abruptly the image changed to show a different location. Several men were writhing atop hospital beds. The image was silent, but it was more than apparent they were screaming bloody murder.
"What happened to them?" Whisper asked.
"Those were the initial Centurion tests. We discovered that the minds of less disciplined individuals could not handle the breakdown of the Code functions. It would lead to massive side-effects, including stroke, inoperable brain tumors and permanent insanity."
The image on the tablet went dark. Whisper lowered it, his own mind raging with questions.
Orchid spoke first, "How many men did you kill to test this Code?"
Mobus shook his head. "Who knows. Olympus cared little about the costs, they only wanted results. It wasn't my department anyway. I stole that footage before I left, in case I needed leverage."
"What was the point of it all Doctor? Why inject a Binary Code into a man's head?"
"Think about it, Mister Callbeck. A soldier with every tactic ever known by every commander who ever lived. A man able to think in unison with his brothers in arms. A man who knows no fear whatsoever because he has the mind of a pure soldier. What do you think something like that is worth? Think of what an entire army could do with something like that!"
Mobus tossed the tablet onto the coffee table. "They were never able to get the Code to work at full capacity on any of the Centurion applicants. Octavia, the woman who headed the research and development team, believed she could synthesize the Code to a manageable size, so important details−like small unit tactics and weapons handling−could be safely stored in the Centurion's brain. In any case. I left before it could be tested."
"Doctor," Danny said, his mind working to figure this insane story out, "What if Olympus didn't have both halves of the Code? What would it mean to them to have both?"
"The Code can essentially work with only one half, but each half contains parts of the whole. In order to be truly effective, you would need both halves." Mobus raised an eyebrow. "Why do you ask?"
"Because my team has one half of the Code. We destroyed the other in Kazinistan."
Mobus's eyes went wide. "You have the only half of the Code?"
"As far as we know, yes. I watched the other fall into a pit of flame."
Mobus shook his head. "No my boy, that wouldn't destroy it. The Code discs are made of a hardened Osmium outer layer. The discs are designed to weather everything from EMP blasts to extreme heat and cold."
"In any case Doc, can you tell us how to unlock the Code?" Whisper asked, his heart racing at everything he'd just been told.
Mobus sat back in his wheelchair, stifling another cough. Hooked onto the back of the wheelchair was a small canister of O2. The Doctor yanked over the mouthpiece and put it to his face, breathing deeply of the fresh oxygen. When he had finished, his face looked wane and exhausted.
"Sorry. Lymphoma. Makes it hard to breathe. In answer to your question, Mister Callbeck, no I cannot help you there. I had no part in the design of the physical Code discs. Octavia is the only person I know who could unlock the discs and I have no idea where she is."
Whisper placed his armored gloves against his waist, head bowed in thought. Everything they had learned had only opened up more questions. Orchid had a completely flummoxed look on her face, hardly comprehending the extraordinary story they had just heard. A biometric Code capable to distilling the entire human experience of war into a person's brain? It was too absurd to contemplate.
But what if it wasn't?
Danny had to admit the Centurions he'd seen the past few months had been fighting with laser precision. They had almost gotten the best of his mates several times. Maybe there was some truth to it.
But something still didn't sit right. The Code couldn't just be about making Centurions function better as a team. There had to be more
to it.
Whisper looked out the window at the forest beyond. The fog had begun to clear, bringing with it a thin, depressing rain that began to fall. Danny felt the emptiness of his surroundings, even through his inch thick titanium armor. Even it couldn't protect against a feeling of utter hopelessness.
* * *
AGRIPPINA HAD become aware of the farmhouse after walking through the woods for nearly twenty minutes. It was a pathetic mess of a structure in a small clearing straight ahead. She would reach it in a few minutes. The Olympus harlequin ordered her Praetorians to take up positions around the north of the house, staying cloaked within the confines of the forest. She wanted the pleasure of killing Mobus herself, for putting her through this ridiculous escapade of traveling around Europe just to end his miserable existence.
It was almost time for this cat to strike.
And Agrippina wanted to sharpen her claws.
Chapter 18
The Battle of Hatfield
Sadoma, Zimbala, November 25th
The Black Hawk powered over the border between South Africa and Zimbala, expertly controlled by Izy Cordova. Hatfield was still twenty-odd minutes away, by Joe's count. Holding onto the safety handle above him, the Peacemaker leaned out to look at the landscape beneath the speeding helicopter. Vast cornfields separated the southernmost country of Africa with Zimbala. Dried maize provided much of the foodstuffs for poor countries like this one. Walsh had pointed out that all of the farms were under the grip of Musabe, who's first act when he had become President years ago, was to put all food production in the country under the control of the state.
Keep your citizens hungry, keep them easily controlled.
Joe shook his head, hating to think of the countless people who had to go to bed hungry in a country where those at the top lived like kings. He glanced over to his companion of the seat opposite to him. Rourke was looking out the other side of the bird, but from Joe's point of view, it didn't look like the SEAL was looking at anything in particular. The man seemed a thousand miles away. Joe became worried.