by Rick Partlow
“Put him through, Franks,” McKay said with resignation in his voice, stepping out of the locker room and out into the corridor.
“That’s just it sir, he’s…”
“He is here,” said a harsh voice behind him, a voice as sharp and unyielding as the edge of an axe. McKay turned to see a trim, compact man in an impeccable grey uniform approaching. His craggy, scarred face was chiseled out of amber, his dark eyes clouded with a roiling anger. His hair was dark and wavy and the only thing that gave a clue to the man’s age were deep lines on either side of his downturned mouth.
“General Kage,” McKay nodded. They were indoors and he wasn’t formally reporting to the man, so a salute wasn’t warranted. Not that he would have given one anyway…
“I thought I would find you here, playing your child’s games, McKay,” Kage said with derision in his voice. “Perhaps if you put as much effort into your job, your recommendations to the President on the Inferno situation would have been more rational and less impossibly optimistic.”
“I had trusted people on the ground in Inferno, General,” McKay shrugged, unconcerned. “I listened to their recommendations and passed them on up the chain. Well, up the last link of the chain,” he grinned maliciously, “since I do only report to the President.”
“I am well aware of the unwarranted trust President O’Keefe has in you and your department, McKay,” Kage ground out. When he was upset---which, in McKay’s experience, was most of the time---you could hear a hint of his odd accent: Japanese by way of Peru. “While you can make light of it, it is my troops that will have to deal with the results of your miscalculations when the criminal scum you’ve arrogated into a political party rise up and try to take the Inferno colony from us.”
“Inferno isn’t yours to keep or not, General,” McKay reminded him. “It belongs to the colonists, not the Colonial Guard and not the Multicorps. You’d have less trouble if you and your troops remembered that. As for the political situation, Governor Cho seems to be handling it well…he has the parties talking instead of shooting, which is an improvement over the first time I visited.”
Kage’s mouth snapped shut on his automatic retort. He shoots, he scores! McKay thought, fighting down a laugh. He had last visited Inferno as a Second Lieutenant, the platoon leader of a Marine Reaction Force, sent in to rescue a Colonial Guard unit that had been captured, along with their armory and weapons, by the local rebels. He had defeated over 400 rebels at the cost of eight of his Marines’ lives and when the local CG Captain had tried to interfere with his medics treating a civilian casualty first before a CG trooper, McKay had beat the shit out of him.
He’d expected to be court-martialed, but instead the original head of his department--- Colonel Kenneth Mellanby, the legendary “Snake”--- had transferred him into Intelligence and tasked him with setting up a new special operations team. He’d been assigned Shannon Stark, Vincent Mahoney, Jock Gregory and Tom Crossman as the kernel of the new team and they’d been given a shakedown mission to guard Valerie O’Keefe, daughter of then-Senator Daniel O’Keefe, on a goodwill tour of the colonies on behalf of the Economic Justice Association. That had put them on Aphrodite when it had been invaded by the forces of the former head of the Russian Protectorate, Sergei Antonov, long thought dead in the Sino-Russian War.
McKay and his team had been instrumental in defeating Antonov’s attempt to conquer Earth, which had made McKay and the rest legendary figures and made his position as the new head of Fleet Intelligence nearly unassailable. By bringing up Inferno, he had not only reminded Kage of the fact that he had pulled the CG’s fat out of the fire before, but tangentially that there was no way Kage could get around his authority.
“McKay,” Kage finally spoke again after a visible attempt to control himself, “you may think that there is nothing that can threaten you, but I will tell you this: if those rabble on Inferno cost the lives of even one of my men, I will make it my mission in life to see you pay for it. You should try to remember that you, too, are capable of making a mistake.”
“I’ve made plenty of mistakes, General Kage,” McKay shrugged. “I do try to learn from them, however. Given the history of the Colonial Guard’s dealings with the colonists on Inferno, I’d think you’d want to try that, too. If you are actually concerned about your troops, my advice would be to stop trying to put down the New Dawn Party and start trying to give them a stake in the future of the colony beyond digging up iridium for the mining firms. People don’t want to burn down cities when they own part of them. That’s Republic policy.”
“For now,” Kage snorted. “Presidents change, McKay. You’re this President’s golden boy, but I wouldn’t get too comfortable in the position.”
Before McKay could respond to that, Kage turned on his heel and strode purposefully down the corridor and through the exit.
“Whaddya suppose he meant by that?” Jock wondered. “Next election ain’t for another seven years.”
“He’s just talking out his ass,” Vinnie shrugged. “As usual.”
“Either way,” McKay said, “we’ve got more important things to worry about.” As he spoke, Shannon Stark emerged from the woman’s locker room in her Intell blacks, her dirty utilities in a bag slung over her shoulder. “Shannon, tell them about the reports from the Scouts.”
“We had an observation post in a system near the inner frontier,” Shannon told them quietly. “They were checking out a habitable there, fourth out from the primary. They’d been checking in every two months with a regular military patrol, then, about four months ago, the patrol cruiser found this.” She pulled a tablet out of a thigh pocket and touched the screen, bringing up a video feed, then turned it around so Vinnie and Jock could see it.
The picture was a recut and remixed video that started in orbit around the green and blue planet, then descended with the lander through a thick, stormy atmosphere to circle above a tall, old-growth forest. The trees were subtly different from terrestrial flora, yet similar in a way that convergent evolution had, they found, made almost inevitable. Here and there, as the shuttle passed lower above the treetops, the two former Marines could see a local flyer, aloft on four wings. Finally the picture dissolved in a cloud of dust and fire as the lander came down on VTOL jets, and then the view switched to the helmet camera of a Marine, walking point in a wedge formation of other grey-and-black camo’ed, body-armored ground troops.
Their rifles swung back and forth in a constant scan as the trees slid by on either side; tall, broad-leaved plants tugged at their weapons and harness and once in a while an out-of-focus flitting dot spoke of swarms of flying insect-like life. Then the trees gave way to a wide clearing, the darkened ground speaking of the recent clear-burn that had established the base. As they moved into the clearing, video cut together from different helmet cams showed several domes sprayed from buildfoam, linked together with walkways lined with flat, local paving stones.
Even from more than a hundred meters away, Vinnie and Jock could see the scorch marks on the outer walls and the jagged edges where the doorways had been blown in with some sort of explosives…but no smoke. Whatever had happened was long over. As the images grew closer, the pockmarks of bullet impacts became clear, and on the paving stones leading to the door of one of them was an all-too-familiar dark red stain.
When the image moved to the interiors of the buildings, it was more of the same: bullet holes and blood, but no bodies and no equipment other than some cheap, plastic furniture. Vinnie was about to ask if that was the end of the video when the view swung downward, to a glint of brass wedged behind a broken table. A gloved hand reached down into view and pulled the object free, revealing a spent brass cartridge casing. Vinnie’s blood froze in his veins. No one had used brass-cased ammo in over a century. No one except…
“There were no bodies found,” Shannon told them quietly, switching off the picture and stuffing the tablet back in her pocket. “Every piece of electronic or mechanical equipment, every weapon
, every vehicle, everything useful was stripped away and missing. There were a couple dozen of those cases found, mostly buried in the dirt.”
“It’s Antonov,” Vinnie murmured. “The son of a bitch is back.”
Chapter Two
Staring at the rat-faced, slicked-back lobbyist across the desk from him, Daniel O’Keefe wondered idly why he had ever wanted to be President. It was all he had dreamed of since the time he was nine years old and had watched a documentary in school about Calvin Elliott, the first President of the Republic, the man who had brought the whole planet away from the edge of the abyss of the Sino-Russian War. He had worked his way up from a volunteer for a Provincial Commissioner to running for that office himself after graduating college, to the Republic Senate…and now for the last three years, he had been the leader of all humanity
Usually it felt like a sacred responsibility combined with the most thrilling experiences ever---a sort of cross between the Pope and a fighter pilot. But at times like these, it felt like a neutronium anvil hung around his neck and he understood why every president he could remember looked so much older when they left office than when they were elected. He looked at his grey-haired, open-faced reflection in the display on his desktop and wondered if the new lines he saw around his eyes were just his imagination…
“I understand what you’re saying, Mr. Fourcade,” O’Keefe said slowly, trying to keep the perturbed sigh out of his voice, “but I can’t change Republic immigration policy based on the needs of the mining consortium. The colonists on Inferno do not exist to make your multicorp more profitable.”
“The issue isn’t our profitability, Mr. President,” Fourcade insisted, frowning through his neatly trimmed mustache---he was less adept than O’Keefe at hiding his frustration. “The issue is the future of the Republic’s economy, and the hundreds of millions of jobs dependant on supplies of raw materials from the colony worlds. If we can’t make a profit from resources in the colonies, it will not be worth our effort and investment to keep extracting them.” He spread his well-manicured hands. “You’re going to have inflation, shortages of products we all use…it will hurt the less-affluent more than anyone else. Tax revenues will dry up and you will not be able to fund your…generous incentive packages for emigrants to the colonies, which will make the labor situation even worse.”
“Many of those resources could be produced in space-based facilities right here in the Solar system, Mr. Fourcade,” suggested Svetlana Zakharova, his Finance Minister, from the chair to the lobbyist’s right. She was a tall, broad-shouldered woman with blond hair and pleasant, matronly face, her business suit subdued but expertly tailored. “In fact,” she went on, “if it weren’t for government infrastructure on some of the colony worlds---laser launch systems, for example---paid for by the taxpayers, you couldn’t profitably produce in the colonies at all.”
“The situation has hardly been one-sided,” Fourcade countered with a shrug. “The government couldn’t have built the fleet that helped save our planet a few years ago without aid from the multicorps. As for space-based resources…yes, there are asteroids in the Belt that hold minerals that we can and do exploit, but the Belt facilities are, as you well know, highly unionized. That greatly increases production costs. And the safety requirements for a space-based facility often offset the transportation costs for a planet-based mine.” He sat back, crossing his arms. “But that only applies to resources available from asteroids and the various moons…iridium, nickel-iron, fissionables, water ice, for example. But there are resources that just can’t be had except on a planet---petroleum for one. Drilling is obviously illegal here on Earth and without the oil from Inferno, our chemical industry won’t last a year and you,” he directed that at Minister Zakharova, “damn well know it.”
“It’s clear that we do have a problem, Mr. Fourcade,” O’Keefe acknowledged. “But that problem will not be solved by forcing the underclass to move off-planet so that you can use them as cheap labor. Those days are gone. We will work with the multicorps to come up with an alternate solution; that one is off the table.”
Fourcade sat back, steepling his hands thoughtfully, as if considering his words carefully before he continued.
“There is,” he finally said, “one option that would satisfy our needs and your requirements, Mr. President. I hesitate to bring it up, because I’ve heard of your opinion on the matter…but Senate Measure 1143B has the potential to provide us with a ready and problem-free labor force without exploiting the masses, as it were.”
O’Keefe took a deep breath, trying to keep it from turning into a shudder as he gathered his thoughts to make a coherent objection rather than the vehement “Fuck no!” that threatened to burst past his pursed lips. He fought back nightmare images of superhuman soldiers hulking in camouflaged battle armor and of pale, blue faces with black, shark’s eyes.
“I am uncomfortable,” he finally said, “with the idea of creating a possibly intelligent slave race out of human DNA.”
“We’ve been working on sentient computer systems for decades,” Fourcade pointed out. “I haven’t seen any angst over the possible use of those for our needs. If our labs were given the go-ahead to experiment with the creation of the sort of biomechanical constructs that the Protectorate used against us, they could make certain that the results weren’t sentient by restricting the amount of brain tissue we used. Sure, we would be working from human tissue samples, but we’re not talking about cloning human beings…these would be meat robots, basically.” He shrugged. “They would just be much cheaper to make and maintain than ones made from artificial materials.”
“And if the technique for producing these…things,” Zakharova said with distaste in her voice, “becomes widespread, we could wind up with someone trying to do the same thing Antonov did and using them as a ready-made army. There are some huge ethical, legal and practical considerations to this sort of enterprise that you are oversimplifying.”
“Any solution to this problem will be complex and problematic,” Fourcade insisted. “But the problem won’t go away because we don’t like any of the possible solutions. We need those resources and if we’re going to maintain an interstellar civilization, we need them as cheaply as possible. If we don’t get them…well, sir, you will be remembered as the President who oversaw the retreat of humanity from the stars, because the colonies will wither on the vine.”
“Mr. Fourcade,” O’Keefe said as he stood, prompting Zakharova and Fourcade to do likewise, “I am sure that we will be able to solve this problem and prevent that from happening. We will be sure to keep the lines of communication open and perhaps I can task my science advisors with finding out how feasible the limitations you mentioned can be.”
“Thank you very much for your time, Mr. President,” Fourcade said, shaking his hand, taking the hint. “I’ll relay your concerns to the board of directors and possibly we can come up with some ideas of our own.”
“I’ll walk you out, Mr. Fourcade,” Zakharova offered, putting a guiding hand on his shoulder and leading him out through the ornate wooden door.
O’Keefe sank back into his chair, feeling infinitely weary. Taking a deep breath, he touched a screen set into his desktop.
“Send in Colonel McKay.”
O’Keefe’s expression didn’t quite brighten when McKay entered the room---he knew why the officer was visiting and it wasn’t pleasant news---but he did feel some of the weight lift from his shoulders. McKay wasn’t quite a friend, but he was certainly an ally and whatever their philosophical differences, he knew that he could count on the man to do his duty, no matter how heavy the responsibility.
“Mr. President,” McKay greeted, shaking his hand. “Thanks for seeing me on such short notice.”
“I’ve seen the video you sent over,” O’Keefe said with a nod, waving McKay into a seat. “So, he’s back.” O’Keefe allowed himself a moment of vulnerability with the military officer that he couldn’t with the lobbyist and rubbed his eyes t
iredly. “You thought he would be, eventually.”
“Yes, sir,” McKay said, a frown passing over his lean, squared-off face. There had been quite the debate five years ago, just after the war, when he had pressured then-President Jameson to mount an all-out search for Antonov’s headquarters. He knew that as long as the former Russian dictator was at large with access to the nanotechnological factories from the alien ruins on his headquarters world, he wouldn’t rest until he had come back and finished the job of conquering Earth. Antonov’s cosmonauts had discovered the wormhole gateway to the ruined alien world by accident, during a mining mission to the asteroid belt, but five years of searching for it had produced no results.
“So, the question becomes, how do we respond and how long do we have?”
“I’ve been researching the area of the frontier where the attack occurred,” McKay said. He gestured towards the star map projected in a recess of the back wall behind the President’s desk. “If you wouldn’t mind?”
At O’Keefe’s wave of assent, he stepped over to the projector’s controls and brought up a section of the Republic’s inner frontier---towards the galactic center rather than away from it. “Here’s the system where the observation post was attacked,” he indicated a main sequence star in the near center of the sector. “We don’t have any manned bases farther in than this, but we have done surveys in a few systems nearby, both manned and unmanned.” He traced an arc of stars in a half-circle around the original one. “There’s a couple with habitable worlds and the early indications are they’re rich in natural resources. I’m wondering if he isn’t working one or more of those worlds for resources and wiped out the observation post so we wouldn’t get wind of what he was doing until it was too late.”
“So it may be too late to catch him,” O’Keefe muttered sourly. “Damn, I hate having him out there like a Sword of Damocles.” His eyes narrowed and he looked at McKay suspiciously. “You could have told me all this via videoconference from Fleet Headquarters. You’re here because there’s something you wanted to ask me in person.”