by Rick Partlow
“It’s theoretically possible,” Misha told him, “but you would have to take the whole building and the equipment that supports it, which reaches fairly far underground. Given enough time and the right materials, it might be possible for me to use the Duplicator to reproduce itself. That would take quite a bit of experimentation.”
McKay nodded, but he wasn’t totally certain that the sentient system was telling him the truth. He thought perhaps Misha was worried that he wouldn’t be brought along if the equipment were moved.
“Tell me something, Misha,” McKay said, “why exactly do you think we can do any better against the Destroyers than your Builders did? Seems to me they were a hell of a lot more advanced than us and they still wound up losing.”
“The Builders were much more advanced than you technologically,” Misha admitted. “But the focus of their society was exploration and expansion, both of their civilization and their knowledge. They were not a race of warriors and they were caught completely unprepared. Their system of government was open and based on consensus. It led to slow decisions.”
“So, what do you think we should do, Misha?” McKay was afraid he knew the answer.
“After what I learned from the captives that were brought here from your ship several years ago,” Misha said, “I think your current government is a good starting point. You need to make it more centralized, though, and give more power to the President and less to the Senate. Really, what might be best at this point is what I think you would call a military coup, with you leading it.”
“Me?” McKay was genuinely surprised. “Why me?”
“You are, from what I understood from the reports, very popular with your general public and the military rank and file.” Misha smiled, as if he were giving McKay a high compliment with his assessment. “It would not be a difficult thing for you to recruit enough followers among your space and ground forces to take over your government, particularly if you present to the people evidence of the threat from the Destroyers. And, of course, you would have the advantage of the military technology that I could provide for you.” The avatar shrugged. “However, if you do not feel comfortable in such a role, you could instead throw your weight behind the current President and have him declare a state of emergency that would last indefinitely.”
McKay felt a chill run up his back at the casual way the computer was suggesting he stage a coup and take over the government. Still, it wouldn’t be wise to voice his feelings. There was no telling what the thing could do if it felt threatened.
“At any rate,” Misha went on pleasantly, “whatever your actions, someone in your military or government will surely see the deadly nature of the Destroyer threat and seize power. I merely suggest that you doing so would be the least wasteful in terms of the battles that would have to be fought.”
“Even so,” McKay said, trying to keep his tone neutral, “would we have enough time to get ready for the Destroyers?”
“They did not attack the Builders until we had been using FTL travel for nearly a thousand years,” Misha pointed out. “After a thousand years of unified government and a focused effort to build up your military might, I’m sure you will be prepared to defeat them.”
A thousand-year Reich, McKay mused. Where’ve I heard that before?
And the damn machine was one hundred percent right. If McKay didn’t take it up on its Faustian offer, someone else sure as hell would.
McKay nodded, his decision made.
“Well,” he said, putting what he hoped was the right note of thoughtfulness into his voice, “you’ve certainly given me a lot to consider, Misha. I’ll return soon and speak to you about this again. Right now, I have to go see to the offloading of some equipment.”
He latched his helmet back in place and strode purposefully out of the chamber, wondering with every step if some high-tech weapon would strike him down before he could make it outside. Nothing did, but somehow the paranoia didn’t leave him as he stepped out into the gathering darkness. Even the floodlights his people had set up didn’t seem to penetrate it. He wasn’t sure anything could.
Vinnie saw him and started to walk up to him, but he waved the younger man away, stepping off into a shadowed area where no one would see him.
“Joyce,” he called over the Admiral’s personal ‘link, his stomach roiling.
“I’m here,” she replied after a moment. “Everything okay?”
“No, I don’t believe it is,” he told her honestly. “I need you to have your weapons techs pull the warheads off of four Shipbuster missiles and have them fitted with time delay detonators, then have them brought down here ASAP.”
“Good God, Jason,” Minishimi hissed as if she’d been slapped. “Are you certain? All that advanced technology…”
“Some gifts come at too high a price,” he told her, shaking his head inside his helmet even though he knew she couldn’t see it. “The technology only comes with Misha attached, Joyce; and Misha is batshit insane. He wants me to use what he’s offering to stage a military coup and take over the government, so we can be better prepared for when his enemy gets here in a thousand years.”
“I’m not worried about you suddenly turning into a Caesar,” she protested with a sharp, humorless laugh.
“Not me,” he agreed. “Although if his Destroyers were bearing down on us, I might be more worried about the temptation. But tell me this, Joyce: how many people would you trust with this?”
He didn’t say the rest, but he knew she’d figure out what he had to leave unsaid. Would you trust President Jameson with this?
“Can you do this, Jason?” she asked him, finally.
“I have complete authority over this expedition,” he told her. “You’ve seen the recorded Presidential orders. That’s not to say he’ll like it, but…”
“I understand,” Minishimi said, resignation in her tone. “I’ll have the warheads down to you in a few hours. I hope you still have a job when we get back, Jason.”
He sighed heavily. “At this point,” he told her, “that’s the least of my worries.”
* * *
Captain Tandy Lee didn’t bother to try keeping her emotions off her face. Normally, she would have maintained a professional demeanor no matter how much she resented the situation; but this was less a case of stupid orders and more a case of hijacking. She shot a glare at General Kage where he stood off to the side of her command station, observing the bridge displays silently. One of his Republic Guard troops was stationed on the bridge as well, currently standing motionless under one gravity of Eysselink drive thrust but next to an extra acceleration couch he would use when the thrust was cut off. The man was fully armored and a wicked-looking assault rifle was strapped across his chest, his gauntleted hands resting on it lightly.
The threat the armored figure represented wasn’t the least bit subtle, and she knew there were others posted in the Auxiliary Bridge, Engineering, Weapons and the Hangar Bay. Kage wasn’t leaving anything to chance, particularly since they had arrived in the Novoye Rodina system almost two days ago. She wasn’t sure if they’d been detected, but they hadn’t been hailed so she was guessing not. She’d thought about trying to have Engineering send a gravimetic signal surreptitiously, but she was being watched too closely for that. And she wouldn’t be able to send anything electromagnetic until the drive field was down.
It had taken nearly two days to cruise into the system under one gravity analog but now the planet loomed in their forward screens: an ugly, scarred thing with its dull greens and blues interrupted by large stretches of dead black…where the clouds didn’t cover. She couldn’t see the Farragut on the screen; she knew it was around the other side of the planet, and not by accident.
“We have thirty minutes to orbital insertion,” her Helm officer announced. “Going to one half gravity.” The press against them halved, making Lee feel as if she was about to bounce from her seat.
“Are the shuttles prepped?” Kage asked, and Lee knew he wasn’
t asking her. He nodded at an answer only he could hear. “I’ll be right there.” The Guard General stepped towards the bridge exit, then paused and looked back to Lee. “I’ll be leaving a few of my men behind, of course, just to ensure everything happens in good order. We wouldn’t want any accidents spoiling this historic occasion, would we, Captain?”
“No, we wouldn’t want that,” she muttered at his back as he left the bridge.
She shot a glance at the armored trooper, then slowly and carefully pulled her ‘link from her belt and tapped a message into its keyboard with her thumb, holding it low and out of sight against her right thigh. It was a message to Admiral Minishimi, and it would automatically be sent once the field went down. She put the ‘link back on her belt and sat back, closing her eyes in resignation.
It was all she could do. She knew it wasn’t enough.
Chapter Thirty Two
“Couldn’t we just nuke this place from orbit?” Vinnie Mahoney asked over their private channel as he and Jason McKay watched the weapons techs from the Farragut unloading the warheads from the lander with a pair of motorized cargo jacks.
The weapons were huge, each the size of a small groundcar, and their casings gleamed menacingly in the glare of the floodlights. The plain around the alien structures looked almost empty now that the Fleet Marines and most of the technicians had evacuated, taking their shuttles with them. All that was left were the two assault shuttles that had brought down McKay and the Special Operations teams that still patrolled the area, and now the cargo shuttle from the Farragut that had brought down the bombs.
“Look around you, Vinnie,” McKay said. “Whatever killed this planet, that place survived it. I don’t think I’ll take the chance that our missiles could do what the Destroyers couldn’t.”
“The Destroyers,” Tom Crossman murmured, stepping up behind them. “Sounds like a fucking football team.”
McKay shrugged. “It’s a translation from Russian of a word in an alien language. You wanna’ coin a different phrase, now’s the time.”
“Huh,” Tom grunted thoughtfully. “The Enemy sounds too generic, I guess.”
“How ‘bout the Big Bad?” Jock suggested from where he stood over by the lander ramp, inspecting the placement of the cargo jacks. “Boss level?”
“Congratulations,” Vinnie said dryly, “you two have managed to come up with the only names worse than the Destroyers.” He faced McKay, meeting his eyes through their visors. “Do you buy the story that thing is selling, sir?”
“If I totally bought the story,” McKay told him, “I wouldn’t be taking four multi-megaton fusion warheads inside that building. This whole thing is a Pandora’s Box, Vinnie. Only difference is, I’m not stupid enough to let anyone open it.”
“We’re ready to take ‘em inside, sir,” Jock announced, waving the technicians away as he took control of the cargo jacks.
“All right,” McKay said, trying to ignore the lost feeling in the pit of his stomach. “Have the techs board their shuttle and get back to the ship. Tom, you and I will…”
“So, it’s true,” a voice came over his headphones via the general address frequency. “You’re going to destroy this place.”
McKay looked around reflexively and saw D’mitry Podbyrin approaching, looking a bit lost inside his vacc armor.
“D’mitry,” McKay said, surprised. “I thought you left on the last shuttle up.”
“They wanted me to go,” the older man admitted, “but I told them I needed to talk to you first. In truth, I wanted to see what you were going to do here.”
“This place is too dangerous,” McKay explained to him as the Russian stopped a meter in front of him. “Misha is too dangerous, especially after what he did to us…and to you.”
“There is part of me that is telling me to scream at you,” Podbyrin told him, his voice flat and tired, “to attack you and try to keep you from doing it. But I know now that this is just what Misha did to me…it is not too difficult to fight.” He made a gesture McKay didn’t recognize but it looked vaguely obscene. “Fuck this place, Jason. It is nothing but a nightmare I can’t wake up from.”
“Let’s get it over with,” Tom Crossman said, “so we can get out of these damn vacc suits. This thing smells like old socks.”
“General McKay,” he heard a voice over his headphones and saw on the HUD that the transmission was from Lt. Commander Osteen, the pilot of his lander. “We have incoming shuttles. Four of them coming over the horizon. They must have broken orbit on the other side of the planet from us; if they’re coming here, they’ll be landing in a few minutes.”
“Shuttles?” McKay repeated, eyes narrowing in confusion. “Shuttles from where?”
“Jason,” another voice sounded inside his helmet, and this one he recognized without needing to check the readout. It was Admiral Minishimi.
“Joyce?” he answered immediately. “We got shuttles coming in…are they from the Farragut?”
“Negative,” Minishimi told him grimly. “I just got the warning a few minutes ago from Captain Lee.”
“Warning? What warning?”
“It’s General Kage,” she said, her voice heavy with resignation, as if they should have expected this. “He commandeered the Bradley and forced Lee to bring the ship insystem. He wants that Builder technology, and he’s going to take it at gunpoint.”
“Damn,” McKay muttered. “Nothing’s ever simple, is it?”
“I can scramble a few assault shuttles to support you,” Minishimi offered. “I can get your Marine platoons down there…”
“Negative,” McKay said decisively. “They won’t have time to get here before Kage’s troops land. We’ll have to take care of this ourselves.” He snorted humorlessly. “Unless you want to shoot the assholes down for us.”
“By the time missiles could get there, they’ll already be on the ground,” Minishimi surprised him with her response. “And unfortunately, we are out of position to use direct fire weapons.”
Jesus, McKay thought, she’s serious!
“General Kage has committed mutiny and insubordination,” the Admiral told him, seeming to read his mind. “And he could very well be on the way to treason…or murder. Be damned careful around him.”
“I guess I was right, Joyce,” he replied quietly, a touch of bitterness in his tone, “about there being someone to fight. McKay out.”
He hesitated for just a moment, looking at the horizon and half expecting to see the shuttles approaching already.
“Vinnie,” he transmitted over the command frequency, “get the teams ready. We’re about to have company…”
* * *
Hikaru Kage stepped down the ramp of his shuttle with the weight of history on his shoulders.
This is what I was born for, he thought with satisfaction, feeling the crunch of the soil beneath his armored boots. He had led men into battle, led them to victory; he had rebuilt the Colonial Guard into the Republic Guard Corps and restored its reputation; but this, this was his true destiny. Here, on this desolate alien world, he would lead humanity into a future that spanned the galaxy.
The tall, cyclopean walls of the alien structure waited before him like some ancient temple, still a dull black even in the glare of the floodlights, and the entrance was a stygian darkness that beckoned him hypnotically. He nearly took a step towards it before he came back to himself and focused instead on the three vacc-suited figures who were moving towards him from where the assault shuttle and the cargo lander squatted beside each other in a contrast of sleek deadliness and utilitarian ugliness.
It was impossible to tell one man from the other in the bulky vacuum armor, but the IFF beacon on the center figure of the group was active and his own helmet HUD displayed the owner’s identity: it was General McKay. Kage felt a feral smile spreading across his face inside his helmet. He’d wished for many years for the opportunity to rub McKay’s nose in the dirt and here it was. McKay probably thought he was going to grab the credit for s
eizing the alien technology and bringing it back to the Republic, but Kage was not about to allow that.
He quickly scanned the rest of the area but picked up no other IFF transponders. He knew there were more of them out there, somewhere, but he could detect nothing on thermal or infrared, and the instruments on the landers hadn’t picked up anything on their approach. Which meant that the rest of McKay’s force had to be either in the two landers, inside the building or spread out in the darkness with their suits powered down, waiting…
“Captain Matienzo,” Kage transmitted on a private frequency to his deputy commander, who was coordinating the unloading of the two platoons he’d brought with him from the Bradley.
“Yes, sir?” Matienzo replied crisply. The man was a damn good officer, who had proven himself in combat during the second war with the Protectorate.
“Deploy Third Platoon on a sweep a kilometer from the perimeter of the LZ and find those Special Operations troops. There can’t be more than a squad or possibly two out there, and I want them surrounded and disarmed. Use whatever force is necessary.”
“Roger that, sir,” Matienzo snapped off. After a moment, Kage saw twenty of his troopers splitting off from the rest and double-timing off to the east of the Landing Zone.
He nodded with satisfaction, then drew his sidearm from the holster affixed to his chest armor and turned back to McKay and the others approaching with him. Closer now, he could see that the man on the General’s right was Colonel Vincent Mahoney, while the one lagging behind to McKay’s left was the old Russian officer, D’mitry Podbyrin. Mahoney was armed with an issue carbine, but it was slung casually and his hands were at his sides. McKay had a holstered sidearm but his arms were crossed over his chest.
“Good evening, General Kage,” McKay transmitted on the task force frequency. His tone was strangely convivial, as if he didn’t recognize any threat.
“Why the vacc suits, McKay?” Kage asked, matching the other man’s careless attitude. “The air here is breathable, if not pleasant.”