Lisa shrugged, “If you’re trying to beat someone stronger than you lull them into thinking you are so much weaker than they are that you’re not worth worrying about.”
“Note to self,” James said sarcastically, “We’re not worth worrying about.”
“I don’t disagree with you, James, but we should at least watch the data files,” Treya said.
“Where,” Alexander asked. “There’s no place private, and Fjallheim’s already on our backs.”
James smiled, and said, “Katrina told us it was encrypted. Trust it. Besides, the surest way to get Fjallheim’s attention is to sneak off somewhere he can’t see us. I say go for it!”
Alexander sighed and they gathered together in a tight circle.
He began, “Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name . . .”
Everything changed—everything. Alexander was no longer in the troopship.
CHAPTER 20: Engram Encryption
Alexander found himself at home, sitting in his father’s favorite leather chair and watching Holo-V. It was the evening news. A male Terran was explaining various holographic clips to the audience. The clips showed people, masses of people, shouting, waving signs and boiling over barricades like rats scurrying through the streets. The commentator had a look of deep gravity on his face. “There are riots in every major city across Pan America and they have one central theme—freedom. The masses of non-Citizen Unioneers are now in what can only be termed “open revolt.” They are demanding what they call basic human rights: a larger share in the income tax revenues collected from Citizens, the right to own property and the right to vote—and who can blame them?”
“Damned liberal media,” Alexander growled, but it was his father’s voice that he heard. He got up and went into the kitchen. As he took out a bottle of gin from the freezer his mother entered from the mudroom.
“It’s a little early for your martini dear,” she said scathingly, kissing him nonetheless. “Kathy’s not in bed yet.” His parents rarely let him see them drink, or rather his father. Mom had a glass of wine every once and a while, but aside from the sacramental wine at mass and a beer during a football game, Alexander rarely witnessed his father drink.
His dad started the elaborate process of adding ginger to the gin, shaking it in ice and the other steps in his potion making routine, while telling his mom, “The President has just declared martial law over Pan America but that doesn’t include the Unioneers; it only includes those Citizens who might try and protect their property. The mobs are breaking into stores, museums, companies—you name it. Looting is rampant, but the only people being arrested are Citizens. It’s spread from Buenos Aires to Calgary.”
Mom looked worried. “What if they come here?”
Dad laughed in a very unpleasant manner, “There aren’t enough legionaries to get them in here; and the President won’t risk bombing the island, not yet. You’ll be safe enough in the shelter if need be. I’ve expected this day ever since Cass Bar-Judas got into the Senate. The Gaiaists were on the move again. We didn’t finish the job when we had the chance; the powers that be didn’t want the blood of a few thousand hard-core crazies on their hands.” He finished making his drink and strolled out to the living room again. Gesturing to the Holo-V, he said, “Now look at it. Instead of a few thousand radicals in exile we’ve got this, and it’s only going to get worse.”
“How much worse,” Mom asked.
Dad took a sip from his martini. Alexander felt the chilly bite of the ginger and the throat constricting strength of the alcohol. “They’ve got the damned Circuit. They found it on the Methuselan mining vessel and Strauss knew enough psionic tech to identify it.” He took another sip of his drink. “We tried to get it here so we could destroy it.”
“And?”
“Our team was compromised—all of them.”
“Oh my God Jenny,” his mom looked stunned. “Didn’t Jenny go up?”
“Yes she did,” his father said, anger covering his sadness. “I don’t know how the hell I’m going to tell Jonathon about it or James. James didn’t even know his mom was still alive.”
“What about Alexander,” Mom asked forcefully. “He’s up there with whoever murdered them.”
“I know,” Dad said. “We’re doing all we can without exposing them, but now they may be our last hope of stopping this.”
“You can’t ask that of our son, these people are killers, they don’t care about anyone’s life; they’re all about the collective and all that crap!” His mom was really getting worked up, which was a scary sight. “You can’t leave him up there with those murderers!”
“Honey, we’re doing all we can,” Dad said, taking her by the shoulder and trying to calm her. “Alexander is safer in the Academy than any other place in the system. If I brought him back here he’d be nothing more than a hostage. Really, I’m more worried about you and Kathy than Alexander—at least he can do something!”
Mom wiped away her tears, shaking her head, “What are you asking him to do?”
“He and his friends have to destroy the Methuselan Circuit.”
It struck Alexander like a cold Pacific wave in the face. That’s why he was here. He and his friends were the last line of defense against the Gaian plot.
“It going to be guarded,” she protested.
Dad sighed, “I know, but what works in his favor is the Methuselan Circuit can’t be destroyed overtly. The Circuit is built to withstand titanic forces of energy; it’s an almost solid piece of compression-hardened Iridium. You could put the thing in the center of the sun and it wouldn’t damage it. That’s why I haven’t done anything—I don’t know how to destroy it.”
“Who does?”
“Khandar’s son,” Dad said gravely. “The Grand Admiral saw one vaporize when we were in Methuselan space—he knew how to destroy it, and he got rid of all of them, all of them except this one.”
“Why did he destroy them?”
“He knew how they could be used,” Dad said, finishing the rest of his drink. “They had Gaiaists in Golkos society as well; this is like a present from God for those people—that is, if they believed in God!”
“Alexander can’t work with Khandar,” Mom gasped, her hand covering her mouth.
Dad moved in front of a mirror, and Alexander could tell that he was looking right at him. “That’s up to Alexander and Khandar. They need to be the new men in this galaxy; it’s their time. If they fail, the Methuselan Circuit will destroy our history, our traditions and our very way of life. The Methuselan Circuit uses psionic energy to make an entire planet acquiesce—people will know that it’s being used to subtly control their minds but they won’t care. That’s what they want; they must not succeed! Son, go on to the next file. I have confidence in you, I have faith in you; don’t ever forget that. You have my love. Thanks Alexander; thanks for being my son.”
They image stopped and all four of them found themselves looking at each other. Then they all looked at James. His eyes misted over and his jaws worked hard as if he were struggling to say something. Finally, he just nodded at the Rosary.
Alexander held the next bead, and began, “Hail Mary, full of grace . . .”
The scene shifted, and though Alexander still felt himself within his father, he was no longer at home. Instead he was in an office, in fact he recognized the office—it was the Commandant’s office in the Academy. The quarters were cramped, more because there were six other people in the office all crowded around a single Holo-V. Because he was within his father’s view he recognized the others. Commandant Augesburcke sat glowering behind his desk. Seated next to him was a Seer’koh and Treya’s father, a handsome Chem who stood very stern and tall looking over the Holo-V. The rest of the party was made up of Alexander’s dad, Lisa’s dad, Katrina’s dad and James’s mother—all in the black on black uniforms of the Special Forces. His dad briefed the Commandant and guests.
“This file was covertly recorded by one of our FBI agents at
a Gaian meeting in San Francisco last month, February 23, 2191.” That was ten years ago! His dad started the file, forwarding through some of the introductions to point out persons of interest. “You will notice among others, newly elected Senator Cass Bar-Judas, Doctor Nussbaum, Head of the Political Science Department at Berkeley,” he mentioned several other people before pointing out the speaker, “and finally Doctor Strauss who was perhaps the most active and radical of the Gaian terrorists. He’s personally responsible for at least three scores deaths in bombings, but he was unfortunately never convicted—the masterminds of terror seldom are. Now sir, if you will listen to the speaker, Doctor Strauss, you’ll get a pretty clear picture of the threat to the Academy and to the Terran Empire as a whole.”
After his preamble, which was as exhausting as his classroom lectures, Strauss began to get more animated, pounding the lectern and pointing his fingers at unseen phantoms. It seemed almost funny to Alexander, who’d seen the same tirades at the system before, until he started to listen to the words used by the Doctor. “We’ve all see the debilitating effects of Capitalism and moralist dogma on our society, how it’s moved us farther and farther away from the Gaian Utopia of equality. We know, as a truth, that equality through freewill is the best means of achieving utopia, but we also hold that forced equality will gain the same ends, albeit through more violent means. We are not afraid of that. Rather we embrace it. As Senator Bar-Judas clearly stated in his campaign, we preach—excuse the theocratic expression—we subscribe to “Hope and Change.” Of course, it’s not necessary for the masses to know what that means so long as they follow along!” There was a rumble of laughter.
“How do we achieve this?” He began to pace the stage, lowering his gaze at certain people as he talked, much the same as in the classroom. “We achieve this by changing the conversation, changing our traditions and changing our history. That is, we speak about “equality” not “opportunity,” we speak about “rights” not about “achievement.” We marginalize celebrating archaic religious events like Christmas and Easter, recognizing that they lead to effectual morality. We subvert our educational institutions with people of like mind, which push the patriotism of Alexander, Washington and Lincoln into the dustbins of pseudo-history and replace them with the philosophies of Marx and Mao.” He paused and wagged a fat finger. “There are some, who will remind us of the mistakes of the past, mistakes that no rewrite of history can assuage. We can’t hide from the fact that Gaiaist philosophy comes from Marxism and Communism, and that no such system has ever been successfully integrated into a society without mass bloodshed. It’s true that Marx himself admitted to the need of re-educating as much as fifty percent of society and exterminating as much as ten percent of the population to make it work. It’s obvious that path won’t work on populations already tired of war and bloodshed—so what’s the answer?”
He waited, pausing for affect, and then he smiled.
“We cause crisis, promoting fear of bloodshed and we jump in at the opportune time to offer solutions. These can start small in concert with our power, but the end game is always the same, only now we have a tool for control of the masses. This tool replaces the fear that Stalin and Mao used for control. It is, forgive the expression, Heaven sent for us. It was discovered during Alexander of Infamy’s invasion of Methuselan space—the Methuselan Circuit.
“The Methuselan’s powered their civilization by mining the power from other civilizations—a unique and brilliant concept. They would send a mining ship to a target system. The ship itself was designed to absorb a significant portion of a planet’s power generation and beam it back to the Homeworld. This had the two-fold effect of providing free energy for Methuselah and hamstringing any potential rival civilization. Why harness the energy of a star if you can destroy a rival at the same time?” He stopped and shrugged, “Of course most civilizations wouldn’t invite the Methuselans to mine their Homeworlds, so they came up with a way of coercing their acceptance—the Methuselan Circuit. It transmits a psionic wave that calms the emotions, a form of emotional lobotomy for the target population. Populations function perfectly well, but it makes them acquiescent, as if we handed out a lifetime supply of pot. The difference is that you can’t make everyone smoke pot, but with the Methuselan Circuit they simply have no choice. Once we’re in power, we’re there to stay.”
He raised his hands at the growing murmur in the crowd. “I hear your clamoring, what about the Fleet, what about the Legions? Well, they can be subverted just as well as the universities can, it’s just more ticklish. The key is the Academy. We already have a deal worked out to get the Chair of the Armed Services committee for Senator Bar-Judas, but as a member of the committee he gets certain appointments. The first two have been made. Doctor Nussbaum will be a Professor of Galactic History and yours truly will be Professor of Physics.” There was a round of applause, to which Professor Strauss bowed, and then his smile broadened. “As to the rest, you have no idea how powerful the promise of becoming Commandant of the Academy can be. Decorations be damned, those of the Legion are as willing to sell their souls for power as we are!”
The Holo-V froze on the smiling face of Strauss.
Treya’s father was the first to say something. It was predictably Chem. “I see no reason for debate about this. Send the whole lot to Pantrixnia! Alexander’s Tyrannosaurus can deal with their petty conspiracy.”
“I can’t say that I disagree with you, Ambassador,” Augesburcke said grimly, chewing on his mustache even as his father and illustrious grandfather had. He looked at Alexander’s father. “You’ve made this report to the Pro Consul?”
“Yes sir, but the Pro Consul reports directly to the Senate Armed Services Committee—they declined to view the presentation.”
“The declination was signed by Senator Bar-Judas I suppose?”
“Yes sir, the Pro Consul was summarily removed from command for insinuating there could be such a political scandal. He currently resides on Titan under house arrest.” Alexander watched them all shiver at the thought of that inhospitable world with its methane seas and ammonia rain. “Sir, I and my associates are risking not only our careers but our lives and our families in sharing this with you. All files with this information were destroyed except this one. We are the only people in the Galaxy who know about the Gaian conspiracy.”
“You took a huge gamble Commander Wolfe,” Augesburcke told him.
“I am the great nephew of Alexander of Terra,” his father said. “You are the grandson of Admiral Augesburcke who served under Alexander. Ambassador Skreen is the Great grandson of Admiral Skreen, who served with Alexander in the Methuselan Wars to great glory, and lastly Admiral Churl is of the House of Nazeera, whose house bonded with my own in the marriage of Alexander and Nazeera of great renown. If I can’t speak honestly in this company then our fight and our empire is at an end.”
“Well said, Commander Wolfe,” Ambassador Churl told him. “Be at ease. All of Chem are with you.” He looked around the room. “None of the Galactic cultures can afford to lose Terran leadership; none of us can afford this Gaian pestilence to sweep the galaxy!”
Augesburcke nodded, “We are agreed but is Grand Admiral Khandar apprised of this? Certainly he would demand to be a part of this fight.”
Alexander’s father cleared his throat. He handed Augesburcke his compad. “The Grand Admiral knows about this meeting but respectfully declined to enter the Terran system.”
“Why,” Augesburcke asked as he took the compad. Then he read it. The Commandant’s swarthy features turned white. He looked up at the assembled group, and announced, “Commander Wolfe has been ordered to assassinate one Grand Admiral Demetrios Khandar, the Commander in Chief of the Golkos Armed Forces. It is signed by Senator Bar-Judas of the Terran Armed Services Committee, Pro Consul General Montgomery and President Koor of the Golkos Council. This is a Death’s-head Order.”
Ambassador Skreen asked what that meant.
“It means if Comma
nder Wolfe does not carry out his orders successfully it will be considered an act of treason.” Augesburcke said gravely. He looked at Alexander’s father. “You told Khandar about this?”
“I owed him that for his service to the Empire and the Galactics,” he said. “The Grand Admiral is waiting for me on Chev-Pruul, the hunting world of the Seer’koh. The Grand Admiral used to hunt there with Alexander of Terra as well as Ambassador Skreen’s family, with whom the Grand Admiral has always revered. The Ambassador has graciously allowed us to use a portion of the planet for one final hunt.”
The room fell silent until Ambassador Churl crossed his arms and nodded in agreement. “The Grand Admiral will depart in honor then; that is a great gift for a warrior. It is well done!”
The Methuselan Circuit Page 21