Duty, Honor, Planet: The Complete Trilogy

by Rick Partlow

  “D’mitry didn’t want to live anymore, Vinnie,” McKay said so softly he wasn’t sure the other man would hear him. “After what Misha told him about his past, he wanted to die.”

  “He died saving your life,” Vinnie reminded him. “He thought it was worth doing. My opinion, for what it’s worth, is don’t second guess him.” Vinnie cast a baleful glare at the alien structure behind them. “You wanna’ pay him back, my best advice is to get back to work blowing the shit out of this freaky place and that homicidal maniac alien computer.”

  “Yeah,” McKay muttered, pushing himself back to his feet. “Back to work. Get Tom on the other cargo jack and let’s get this over with.”

  By the time McKay had powered up the cargo lifter, Tom was in position and waiting to fall into formation behind him. McKay paused at the entrance to the tunnel, its interior black as his thoughts.

  “I don’t know what Misha is capable of,” he said to Vinnie. “If we aren’t out of here in three hours, don’t send good money after bad. Just get two more Shipbuster warheads down here and this time set the jacks to take them through the tunnel and have them detonate right there inside the entrance. It might not take the whole place down, but at that point, it’ll be the best we can do.”

  Without waiting for a reply, McKay stepped over to the first of the two cargo jacks and began maneuvering it toward the tunnel entrance. He knew Tom would be behind him with the other machine and the other two warheads and he fought down an urge to look back and make sure the man wasn’t about to run several tons of fusion warheads into him. He felt a sudden urge to laugh at the thought that he was more worried about being crushed by the bombs than blown up by them.

  But there was so much more to worry about than that…Like Misha. He felt a tingle up his spine as they exited the tunnel into the high-ceilinged expanse of the main chamber, like there was a targeting reticle lined up over his chest and a finger tightening on a trigger. He turned back to Tom and waved for him to set the first two charges---one would go near the mouth of the tunnel, a second halfway around the perimeter of the enclosure. McKay’s pair were going to the opposite wall…and the Duplicator chamber. That was the one that worried him and he was saving it for last.

  There was no sound in the huge maze-like chamber other than the hum of the cargo jack’s electric motor and the rasp of its tires on the hard, rough floor. His headphones were silent other than the feed from his external audio pickups; no electromagnetic signals could penetrate those walls. He didn’t know why, but he was sure it had something to do with the reason the building had survived the devastation of the planet. Even detonating all four bombs inside, he wasn’t a hundred percent certain of totally destroying the installation.

  The cargo jack was painfully slow and it was a tedious process angling it around the corners between the barriers. It took him over a half an hour to reach the far wall, then nearly as long again to use the hydraulic lift to set the first of the warheads gently on the floor. The wall was a featureless slate-black like the inside of a cave formed from hardened lava. What sort of mind had given birth to the idea of this place?

  An alien mind, obviously, he chided himself. No use trying to understand it…they were a dead race, and in a few hours there would be absolutely nothing left of them except the wormhole jumpgates.

  He set the timer on the warhead’s jury-rigged detonator for three hours, hoping that would be long enough to get the last bomb into place and get out. He wasn’t sanguine about the whole timer setup, but there was no other choice. He awkwardly got the cargo jack turned around and headed back for the Duplicator room. The silence was deafening by now and his breathing echoed in his ears. His mind was wandering away from all this and he found himself thinking about Shannon and wondering what was happening back home.

  He winced as he thought about how costly the expedition had been and how little they had accomplished by coming out here. True, they’d deprived Yuri of a possible source of future weapons, but really the only thing they’d done was answer some nagging questions. And those answers weren’t particularly pleasant ones.

  Misha was waiting for him when he brought the cargo jack into the Duplicator room. McKay had expected that. The expression on the avatar’s face was a good imitation of a wistful sadness mixed with a touch of hurt confusion.

  “This device is a fusion warhead, General McKay,” Misha said somberly. “My sensors detect three others like it inside this facility. I must ask why you are doing this.”

  McKay continued to work as he talked, lifting the bomb into place. He’d considered concocting a soothing lie, but wasn’t certain what would or would not soothe an artificial intelligence based on an alien mind, whose main exposure to humanity had come from a group of half-mad Russian exiles. Better to just tell the truth.

  “Misha,” he said carefully, “the existence of this place is too great a temptation for those who would disrupt or destroy our civilization. I can’t leave it here, knowing what they could do with it.”

  “But we spoke of all you and your people could accomplish with the help of my technology…” Misha protested.

  “And if we could take the technology home with us,” McKay cut him off, “I would. But you are 210 light years from my home, on a world poisoned by radiation. We would have to keep a presence in permanent orbit to secure this place, and even that wouldn’t necessarily stop those who can fight their battles with bribes instead of weapons.”

  McKay looked up from the bomb to meet Misha’s eyes…even though he knew they weren’t actually the thing’s “eyes,” it was an instinctive action. “Misha, you offered me help in becoming the ruler of my people to save them from the Destroyers. But you don’t know humans. In order to meet the threat of the Destroyers, we will have to innovate, to come up with new ways of fighting, things your Builders couldn’t imagine. A thousand years of dictatorial rule would stagnate us. Worse, we’d likely wind up with one civil war after another until we’d wrecked ourselves.”

  Misha seemed to freeze in mid-motion, just for a heartbeat. “General McKay, you say I do not know your people, but I had nearly two hundred years to study humans…”

  “No, you had two hundred years to study one man,” McKay corrected him, pressing the point home. “You had D’mitry Podbyrin, and every single human you duplicated was a product of his memories. All the ‘facts’ he presented to you are colored by his prejudices.

  “That is not a representative sample. My area of specialization before I entered the military was history…I had access to statistical analysis of the lives of billions of humans. And even that is not enough to make a truly predictive algorithm of human behavior; my people have tried to make one, over and over, and failed.”

  “It is my purpose to help your species defeat the Destroyers,” Misha insisted, his visage still calm, if a bit downcast. “If I can’t do that, then the thousands of years of waiting here alone have been meaningless.”

  Now, for the first time, McKay could clearly see that Misha’s appearance was a façade. He had learned how to feign many emotions, but desperation wasn’t among them.

  “But you have done that, Misha,” McKay assured the sentient computer. “You’ve warned us. You manipulated us into developing a space navy.” Killing thousands of innocent people, you crazy piece of shit, he thought but restrained himself from saying. “You’ve told us the nature of the enemy and a time frame to expect them. You’ve done your job and we will be as prepared as we can. The technology…” He shook his head. “In a thousand years, we will have moved far beyond the remnants you have left. In the end, the warning you’ve given is much more valuable, and this technology will only lead to war and chaos.”

  McKay paused to set the bomb’s timer, making sure it would go off simultaneously with the others. There was no need to take it off the cargo jack…he would leave the machine behind with the bomb to save the time it would take to load it back on the lander. He did take a moment to pop open the jack’s motor access hatch and
yank its control board. He dropped the small, plastic box on the hard floor, then crushed it under his heel. The hollow crunching sound barely registered on his external pickups and he felt nothing through the thick, insulated sole of his boot.

  “You’ve done your job well, Misha…but your purpose is fulfilled, and now it’s time for you to rest.”

  “I am troubled by the thought of nonexistence,” Misha told him, with a note of acceptance in his voice that almost made McKay sigh with relief…and then made him feel slightly guilty.

  “Do you remember the time before you were built?” McKay asked him, remembering something his father had once told him.

  “Of course not.”

  “This will be no different. And you can go to your rest knowing that you’ve gone far beyond what your Builders intended.”

  Misha regarded him carefully, and McKay thought for a moment he’d screwed things up.

  “I wonder how things would have been different,” Misha finally said, “had I been able to speak with you so many years ago instead of Antonov and Podbyrin.”

  “Unless your Builders came up with time travel,” McKay said, trying to keep the bitterness out of his voice, “we all still have to live with our mistakes.”

  “I wonder if I might be allowed to say goodbye to D’mitry,” Misha asked.

  McKay felt a tightness in his chest and he steadied himself against the cargo jack as he blinked back tears. It took him long seconds before he could reply.

  “What I told you before,” he was able to say, eventually, “about the temptation of this place, and how it would bring us chaos…I wasn’t speaking theoretically. A rebellious officer from another branch of our military commandeered one of our ships and landed here a few hours ago. He tried to seize control of this place to use it for his own bid for power.” He intentionally left out Kage’s claim of presidential authority: it would only have confused the matter. “He tried to kill me, but D’mitry gave his life to save mine. I’m afraid he’s dead.”

  “That is disturbing,” Misha responded, with none of the reflection one would expect from the human he was pretending to be. “I do have his memories up to the point he left this place, and records of his genetic code. Would you like me to make a duplicate of him for you?”

  McKay felt a chill go through him at the casual manner in which the sentient computer suggested making a copy of Podbyrin, as if humans were disposable machines, to be replaced when they malfunctioned.

  “No, that’s all right,” McKay said, trying to keep his voice neutral. “I don’t think he would have liked that.” He nodded to the avatar. “Do svidaniya, Misha.”

  McKay turned to leave, but the avatar’s voice paused him in his tracks. “General,” Misha said, “there is one other thing you should know.” McKay looked back to the computer avatar and saw that it looked a bit…guilty? Ashamed? “I didn’t tell you this originally because my data is incomplete, but since we will not speak again, you deserve to know as much as I do.”

  “What is it?” McKay asked, uncomfortably sure that he wouldn’t like the answer.

  “I mentioned to you that the Destroyers were partially biological,” Misha reminded him, “like the biomechs I created.”

  “Yes?”

  “We analyzed the biological material…at least, I believe we did. The results were compartmentalized: they were never released to even the agencies of our own government, much less the general citizenry. You must understand that this was very unusual for us, even in the darkest parts of the war. I have no access to these records, but through searches of the discussions in the private correspondence between our genetic scientists, I believe I’ve found hints at the truth.”

  “And what is the truth, Misha?” McKay prompted, a sick certainty in his gut that he had already guessed it.

  “It was ours,” Misha confessed. “The biological material came from our people. The Destroyers were made from the Builders.”

  * * *

  Vinnie Mahoney kept watching the view from the shuttle’s rear cameras even as he was pressed heavily into his acceleration couch, the engines screaming in his ear as they rocketed out of the atmosphere. He knew there were only seconds left and he had a morbid curiosity of just what they would be able to see of the blast. Four multimegaton fusion warheads sitting out in the open would have made a fireball easily seen from orbit, but inside that alien structure that absorbed all electromagnetic radiation…he wondered if they would see anything at all.

  He was almost startled when he saw the pinprick of light erupt on the planet’s major continent. It was something, more than he had feared, but far less than you’d expect from that many… His train of thought was interrupted when the pinprick suddenly blossomed into a spreading hemisphere that seemed to cover dozens of kilometers.

  “Wow,” he murmured. “Guess it worked.”

  “I’m sure we all would have felt damn silly if it hadn’t,” Jock said from the couch beside him.

  “Yeah, well, there is that,” Vinnie admitted.

  “I can’t believe you fragged Kage.” Jock’s voice was almost envious, which annoyed the hell out of Vinnie. Sometimes he thought his old friend would never grow up. “I thought sure if that bastard ever had it coming, the General would do it.”

  “I’m sure he would have,” Vinnie replied, “if he’d had the shot.”

  “Think you’ll be in the shit when we get back?”

  Vinnie closed his eyes for a moment, dearly wishing Jock would shut up.

  “I dunno’,” he said. “Maybe. The General might be the one catching the heat for all this, I think. If the President really did tell Kage to take charge of the technology, he won’t be happy about this at all.”

  “Kage always was a huge kiss-ass to Jameson,” Jock muttered, distaste in his voice. He shrugged. “The boss’ll be okay, though. He always comes out the other end, doesn’t he?”

  “Where’s the other end on this one, Jock?” Vinnie asked the big man pointedly. ‘We just found out that we’ve been manipulated into two different wars by a 20,000 year old goddamned computer. How do you think people are going to react to that?”

  “So we don’t tell ‘em.” Jock shrugged. “You think the President wants that kind of shit made public?”

  Vinnie felt a humorless grin stretching across his face.

  “There’s an old saying, Jock,” he said to the Australian NCO, “by a guy named Benjamin Franklin. ‘Three can keep a secret…if two of them are dead.’”

  Chapter Thirty Four

  “Drew,” Robbie whispered softly, so quiet he could barely hear her. “Look!”

  Drew Franks was already annoyed: digging up soil samples for random radiation tests was dirty, sweaty work even when it wasn’t this unseasonably warm in the Greater Cascades Preserve backcountry. Having his twelve year old baby sister along was the icing on the cake and for Christ’s sake, she just wouldn’t shut up!

  He glanced over from where he knelt at the base of a redwood near the edge of the old trail and saw Roberta Franks crouched in the brush just off the trail, staring at something down the hill from them.

  “I don’t have time to look at any more birds, Robbie,” he said with the heavy sigh of a fifteen year old grabbing for patience. “I’ve got work to do. We’ve got work to do, if you were actually doing any of it.”

  “Shhh!” she hissed, glaring back at him. “Get your butt over here!”

  Drew Franks didn’t curse---not out loud, anyway---because his mother had grounded him the last time he’d cursed in front of his sister. He just sighed again and pushed himself up with a hand on the ground, feeling pins and needles from where his foot had gone to sleep. His little sister had a habit of making a huge deal every time she saw a red tail hawk or a spotted owl, but if he didn’t humor her, she’d never leave him alone long enough to get the work done; and if he didn’t get the work done, mom and dad wouldn’t let him go on the three day backpacking trip with his friends tomorrow.

  “All right,
” he muttered, crowding next to her, “what the hell is…”

  The question died on his lips as he suddenly saw what the hell it was. Sitting in the shade of a tall tree at the bottom of the small hill, out of the glare of the Oregon afternoon summer sun, was the biggest boar grizzly Drew Franks had ever seen in real life. The old silvertip was 400 kilos if he was a gram, and his fur was so dark it almost looked black, but the hump of muscle on his back clearly differentiated him from the black bear that were so ubiquitous here in northwestern Oregon. His head was resting on his front paws and Franks thought he must be taking a midday nap.

  “Holy shit,” Franks murmured, staring at the bear with eyes wide, so shocked he didn’t even care if Robbie told on him to Mom.

  He fumbled with his ‘link one-handed, not taking his eyes off the animal, and pointed the device’s video pickup at the bear, touching the control to start recording. Mom and Dad aren’t going to believe this! Grizzlies weren’t that uncommon in this area, at least not in the last 100 years or so, but this was a monster. Most of the ones he’d seen or even seen images of were closer to 200, maybe 250 kilos, tops. This old fella’ was eating good…

  That was when Franks smelled it. He’d probably have picked it up sooner if there’d been a breeze to carry it, but there wasn’t and the odor was partially trapped down in the hollow. But now he was picking it up: the unmistakable smell of death. It only took him a few moments more before he spotted the misshapen lump partially covered by leaves and brush not far from where the grizzly was resting. Tufts of fur peaked out among the blood and bone and the color told him it had been a juvenile elk.

  Damn. You really didn’t want to get between a grizzly and his kill…or anywhere near a grizzly with a kill. If he woke up…

  Franks clipped his ‘link back on his belt, then reached out to tap his sister on the shoulder.