The Petrovski Effect: A Tess Novel

by Randy Moffat

  “We are meeting the ship.” There was no question as to what ship. There was only one ship. Baxter turned and left and among the buzz buzz of his beelike workmates, Mahmud offered a prayer to the dark place within him that he construed as the Muslim God. God was great indeed.

  There is nothing like beliefs in God to make you completely lose your mind. It is almost a defining characteristic in a way. Strapping explosives to your person and blowing yourself to hell was simply not sane. In fact, it was just fucking dead stick crazy; but Smith’s inner voice had become the loud and angry voice of his God. This logic he called faith. The removal from reality to faith had moved fellow human beings to a necessary distance. It was the shifting of his mind from this world and into the next world where they did not really exist. In that world only Jason existed and other people were left out. Humans became shadows. It was a process taken in steps. It involved stripping reality away a layer at a time like an onion. For Jason agreeing to blow himself to pieces for God was not a much greater step than the request that he talk to super-intelligent aliens in his head. The soft inner voice of ethics, morals or scruples got quieter and quieter while the other voices got louder. That morning he was so far away that he had strutted back and forth and admired himself in the mirror in his room. The vest with sticks of TNT was cinched tight to his chest and down his body to the belt line. He looked menacing. The menace came off of him like cold from ice and made him feel like a warrior. Unlike real warriors he was a warrior without earthly constraint. He had he finished wrapping gauze strips of ball bearings on the outside the vest. The metal spheres wouldn’t damage heavy machinery, but the explosives would clearly throw them and they would almost certainly kill more people than the raw blast wave generated by the explosives—especially within the confines of the ship. His mission was to destroy the ship. He would crush that perverted invention of the west and its tool for spreading the western corruption of the individual off this planet. He must perform his mission and go to heaven where Allah and paradise awaited him with open arms. The people who would die were Satan’s tools . . . his minions. They were Satan’s crew in the devil’s cruise ship. Their deaths could be ignored now. When Jason completed the mission he would actually be helping them on the path to paradise. Because God required it, it was the right thing to do. How could God’s will be wrong? The imam gave Jason a thermos full of special tea to drink as he departed for the mission. He didn’t need to know what was in it. The opiates numbed him, removing fear and apprehension and leaving him strangely calm.

  Conditions were not perfectly optimal for the mission. Jason’s handlers would rather have blown the ship up in outer space where damage would be more serious from punctures in the hull letting in the vacuum that lay without. Still, water pouring in instead of void was a good compromise since ship would likely sink instead. They did not want to miss the opportunity because they the chances that their man would be a in position to act in this way might never come again. There was no guarantee that later in the program Smith would be assigned anywhere the ship. After he graduated from the TESS academy he might be placed on the Earth somewhere rather than in space. They must act decisively now. This was the time to strike.

  Critical thinking is not a strong point of people who give up identity in favor of religion. Reading more widely Jason Smith would perhaps been horrified that he was to break the Prophet Muhammad rules of war written in 656 AD. Though perhaps not. Fatalism now gripped him. He had filmed and left a final video that showed him with his favorite prophet’s name on his lips, but he had devolved into a ragged curse aimed at his parents and especially his old girlfriend. His rambling invective essentially became something along the lines of ‘he would show them.” The recording was safely in the Imam’s hands and would be published on the internet within minutes of his attack. All reference to his family and girlfriend had already been edited out by now of course. His death would endorse only the message of the cause its pettiness erased. The new message was that technology was out with Smith’s attack . . . the world would go back to the old ways . . . the good old 13th Century . . . when Islam was king . . . and only the rich went anywhere and the common man towed a good Islamic party line and did as he was told. Meanwhile the Imam would ride his fine German automobile in comfort to deliver Jason’s tape to television channels that were just now agreeing to air the footage.

  Jason, a robot of religion, moved along the pier to his rendezvous with destiny.

  Jason was pleased to see a little gangway from the dock to their lighter and climbed into the boat carefully and held on tightly. He was from the Midwest and not used to boats. He could not afford to fall or have the jacket lift up. It was warm in the jacket, but there was a sea breeze and the speed of the boat as it towed its raft was added to the wind to create a minor chill so the coat felt good and caused no comment. The boat was packed with security men hired to protect them from possible assault from the sea and Jason carefully avoided letting any lean against him. A second boat with more men followed the small barge’s wake. There was a swell from the Pacific in the waterway of the straits and Jason held on tighter still to the rail.

  The radio was on. Jason caught snatches . . . . ‘Weather in the straits and the area of the Orca Islands will remain good today . . . . In the news, China today announced that it is shifting its purchases of Oil to Columbia and Nigeria from Saudi Arabia. Commenting on this is China’s foreign trade secretary . . . . ‘ Jason was focused on the path of the boat. The day was pleasant and the weather serene. The boat crested several freak waves and then settled down into a steady but very moderate rise and fall until abruptly the Captain at at the boats controls cut the engines to idle without notice. Baxter made a pair of radio calls and five minutes later there was a sudden thunderclap to starboard, a mild breeze and the Space Ship Gaia was abruptly there and virtually every man there gasped at the magic of her appearance. It was like magic. She dropped visibly from about three inches above the surface and settled into the water with her deck awash for Almost two minutes until she floated inelegantly clear. A minor wave of displaced seawater spread and passed under the boat they were in. Almost immediately the Captain accelerated towards the former submarine—the sailors knew the routine and operated quickly to reduce the window when the ship was vulnerable on the earth instead of in space where she was nearly invulnerable.

  They had been working on her recently. The formerly fairly clean looking sail was now cluttered with antennae and obscure gadgets attached with varying degrees of completeness to it. They no longer cared if she was streamlined like a true sub. There is no drag in vacuum so clean lines meant nothing. The most impressive thing on her though was the big rotary canon which was mounted just where the sail met the hull. The guns were rock steady in pointing even though the ship itself rocked up and down and rolled from side to side in the sea’s motion. Clearly stabilizing software and a clever arrangement of hydraulics and electrical shock absorbers were compensating for the motion of the swell and the gun could fire as perfectly on target as if it were locked to stone on a mountainside. Jason was suddenly glad he had come on a friendly boat. The gun, he had been told, was capable of firing 3000 rounds per minute. Any boat, plane or missile approaching in range of the gun would be riddled through and through in seconds.

  Their Captain eased the tug and its barge alongside and kissed the hull of the space craft with a charming display of skill. His crewmen leapt over and secured lines from the boat and the barge to the former sub’s hull while the second boat accelerated into the circular defensive path that circled the ship every few minutes. Several security men with weapons stayed on the boat’s deck looking outward alertly and others clambered up on the space ship’s hull and began to walk up and down scanning for threats. . One of them even carried an antiaircraft missile launcher at port arms while two others had grenade launchers ready.

  Baxter, Smith, Tarkington, and a handful of others who actually worked dire
ctly for TESS climbed up on Baxter’s direction and formed a chain of strong arms in a classic bucket brigade fashion and began to pass boxes, cans, bags and cases from the barge and onto the deck of the Gaia. Two men that Baxter called Gaston and Pinta had come from inside the ship and opened a hatch in the deck. It revealed a wide tube that formed a slide down into the ship’s bowels. Using pins to a base plate on bolted to the deck they rigged a small derrick with a block and tackle and a big basket and an electric winch for bigger or breakable items to be lowered into the ship’s belly, while smaller ones were simply flung down with a cry of ‘look out below.” The work went on for about fifteen minutes and several men were sweating and stripped to undershirts while more and more of the materiel brought aboard was fed into the ship’s gut. The bulk was food—she was being resupplied with three more months in space. Simultaneously, fresh water had been pumped from a tank on the barge through a hose and into the big tanks around the belly of the ship abaft the sail. Ocassionally there was a heavier item, equipment or a spare part for ships systems requiring the winch. Pinta and Baxter had been joking around and laughing as the work progressed. They had just passed a biggish tube down the chute when a few others appeared on the deck from below and stood with the work team or gazed about hungrily at the fresh air and sea. Smith was not introduced to them all, but did catch the names Feathersgait, Maxmillian, and Rodriguez. They were in no hurry with hands in their pockets. Smith was growing nervous, wet with sweat since he had not taken off his jacket while working. He got the impression that things were winding up around the work and he had still been given no chance to actually get inside the ship. An explosion on the outer hull would damage it, but probably not enough. A blast inside would contain the force and cause it to focus. Baxter stood telling jokes and laughing with them and then saw Feathersgait and then Maxmillian peel off and reenter the ship. Jason felt himself become truly agitated then, uncertain what to do. Tarkington, who had come with him on the boat had joined the group around Baxter and was laughing at another joke, but Smith’s mouth was bone dry and he could not concentrate properly. Adrenaline suddenly laced through him. He stepped forward and tried to walk nonchalantly past the cluster of people between him and the loom of the sail. There was very little room for the move and he stumbled slightly as he pressed past in the foot of space left on the relatively the flat part of the deck. One of his feet slipped on the smooth curve of the hull. Baxter reached out and grabbed his arm to keep him from tumbling into the sea. He pulled Smith up onto the deck, laughing and patted him on the back.

  “Don’t want to lose you rookie. Not what I meant by getting your feet wet . . .”

  It was at this point as he patted Smith by way of friendly congratulation on being saved that Baxter’s face took on a puzzled look. Time slowed instantly for Smith.

  “. . . Damn boy? What the hell you wearing under that jacket. Feels like . . . .”

  Smith panicked. He pushed against Baxter who stumbled back and yanked his arm for the NCO’s grasp. He turned and ran for the hatch at the foot of the sail where Maxmillian had gone back down below. Baxter cried out indignantly without real comprehension that something was seriously wrong, but his instincts were obviously rising fast. Smith pounded up and found the hatch now closed and had to spin a wheel to undog it. Baxter, still looking puzzled followed at an unalarmed half jog and as the hatch came up, he yelled!

  “Heh! Stop!” He shouted.

  They were unoriginal words, but enough to cause Smith, in his now precarious emotional state edged by the dope in his bloodstream, to lose all semblance of mental balance or any hope of not being detected. He turned, felt with his feet and took two steps down the rungs of the ladder below the hatch only to feel a hand on his ankle of someone coming up and warning him to be careful. He lost bladder control, wet his pants, reached into his pocket just as Baxter loomed over him and a pair of security guards, who sensing trouble of some kind could be seen peering from behind him.

  “Smith?” Baxter said.

  “Allah Akbar!” Smith screamed up at Baxter and pulled the piece of rope he had threaded through a hole in the bottom of his coat pocket. The cord was attached to the pins on two arming devices, but they were below his un-removed jacket and the cloth blocked one of them completely, tangling it in folds of the coat, while the other only came loose only after three panicked tugs of increasing strength made awkard in the mouth of the hatch. Each tug was accompanied by three more shrieked appeals to his God. Baxter was just putting his hand hard under Jason’s arm to lift him and restrain him when fifty percent of the TNT strapped to Smith exploded.

  CHAPTER 15—TESS’ JOSS

  Wong was on the blower within three minutes with Bear.

  “ . . . a fucking lunatic fanatic of some kind . . . witnesses distinctly heard him calling out ‘Allah’ as the bomb went off. The kid who did it was apparently named Jason Smith. He is from our own academy. Baxter brought him out to help with barge supply transfer since we recently passed a rule that required only TESS sanctioned personnel work on stashing supplies inside the ship. Baxter probably figured it would be a thrill for the guys from the academy to see the ship—a motivational kind of thing and still have people to help with the grunt work. This Smith guy got halfway into the hatch and obviously was wired up with explosives. My guess is that he panicked and detonated early. That was our only break in the whole mess. Witnesses on the deck and barge tell me that Baxter barely raised his voice and just barely touched him before the guy started freaking out, yelling crazy shit and then executed the detonation. The fucking bast . . . .” He audibly took a breath to control his passion. “The murderer and Baxter were both cut in half along with another kid from the academy named Tarkington.. Two security guys were killed also by some kind of metal in the explosives—probably nails and ball bearing. They’re unidentified as yet but the contractor is conducting role call now and we should know in a few minutes. Pinta was below him on the ladder and the blast knocked him straight down two decks to the base of the ladder and blew out both his eardrums. Didn’t hurt him otherwise—a total lucky fluke thing, by rights he shoulda been chewed to pieces like . . .” Wong took another angry breath still audible over the phone, “ . . . like Baxter was. I am having the MEDEVAC take him back to Seattle in the boat for the docs to look after his ears. Some other people outside on the deck were knocked down too. A few of those were shoved into the water and at least a handful caught some metal that put non-critical holes in them, but there are no other life threatening wounds that I am aware of. As for the ship, the hatch connection hinges that fix it to the hull are badly smashed and twisted by the blast, but my guess is that most of the blast got channeled up and out rather than down inside the hull. We cannot use the hatch without repairs, but I have a team on it now and they are already welding a plate over the hole. The plate should hold atmosphere well enough. In the mean time we are using the hatch abaft the sail to put the crew inside. The blast also damaged three com systems, primarily because the explosion hit the wiring and antennae p on the sail over the hatch. That and the rotary gun appears to be off line too since the blast was almost directly below it. As near as I can tell I can still operate the ship though and plan to launch back to orbit as soon as I quit talking to you and welding crew is aboard. I want us back in space.

  “You’re not panicking are you?” Bear asked.

  “ Naw. It’s just that I am worried that they have some kind of follow up plan or secondary attack in the works. Like the one we used to see in the middle-east where they’d killed a bunch of folks, wait for the first and second responders to arrive in ambulances and fire trucks and then trigger a second explosion to kill them too. You got some problem with me un-assing the area just in case?”

  Bear closed his eyes and rubbed them. His head hurt and his heart hurt more. Baxter had been a respected friend and utterly loyal to TESS.

  “No—Good copy! Good idea! Thanks, John. Contact us
once you are safe in space and have a chance to develop a full damage assessment. I will alert the yard in Groton that you may need to sneak in for repairs sometime, but we will talk further about all that later.”

  “Roger. Wong out!”

  The com link went dead.

  Bear turned to Maureen who sat beside him. There were tears in her eyes. She had not loved Baxter, but she had respected him thoroughly. He was one of them damn it!

  She shook her head angrily, her eyes damp around the edges.

  “It makes no sense!” She grated.

  Bear smiled grimly.

  “It never does, honey.”

  “What do we do now?” She asked, her voice sinking at the end.

  “The academy is your baby for now, lass. I am clearly a failure at it.” He said gently putting a reassuring hand on her arm. “We need to tighten up our recruiting belts another notch. This shit-for-brains Smith obviously slipped past me. It’s my responsibility and my fault. I muffed it. We cannot . . . cannot let this happen again . . .”

  She looked angry and then melted into him with her arms around his neck.

  Tears wet his neck and he patted her back awkwardly.

  He heard a muffled, ‘Bastards!” come from near the wet spot. Bear envied her the feminine prerogative at that moment.

  A little water around the eyes and Maureen O’Hara would be all right. Then she would be dangerous. It was now the terrorists who needed to watch out.

  Qing Li heard the newscaster talking about the failed attempt to blow up the SS Gaia on his car radio as he cruised up the Route 128 ring road in Boston. He was disappointed. He had pulled considerable strings and called in several favors to cause the shift in oil sales to support Kassim and underwrite the attempt; arranging for the man named Smith awaken from his role as a sleeper. The failed act of sabotage had cost him time, effort, resources and credibility. Worst of all it had failed for all that preparation. He was angry and frustrated—it was a failure and Qing Li did not like to fail. Just as the dead bastard Po had failed by taking direct action, so too had Qing Li now failed in the gambit of trying lateral direct action through a proxy. TESS seemed to have all the joss. It taught him something. Action, through his own people or through others was no good now. Physical attacks required humans. Humans were too unreliable. Direct action was too dangerous and hard to organize from a distance through such fundamentally flawed agents. The tools that are humans were too difficult to quality control. Qing Li put his head back on the seat’s headrest. Luckily the shift in oil sales had been only temporary. If fact, it had come with considerable financial incentives that had proved beneficial to China in the short term. They could always vote with their wallets later and go back to the middle-east to buy petroleum products. Sales are nothing without buyers and it was a buyer’s market. For China, nothing much had truly been lost and much was gained. It was the way of the Chinese that they should chase a bargain and create profit even from failure.