Darkness: Book One of the Oortian Wars

by Iain Richmond

  UN Special Ops Air Guard, Jilin Province Confederation of Chinese Republics

  200 klicks northwest of Al-som Island,

  Korean Empire

  Sonic booms thundered above the Hamgyong Mountain Range when three T-11 rocket ships led by Lieutenant Jack Falco dropped out of the upper atmosphere. A panicked voice sounded over their coms. “This is Major General Khan. Tear out your LINKs! Go to analog now! Confirmed! We are compromised! Repeat! We are compromised! Over!”

  The background noise of the United Nations Command Center filled Falco’s COM with a cacophony of confused voices. Orders in various native tongues bellowed from every UN station as all personnel in the command center tried to warn their governments on a free COM line. Major Khan’s voice rang muffled, then roared clear, “Manual only! Complete the mission! Over!”

  Lieutenant Falco quickly shut down his computer; the cockpit’s glow faded and was replaced by shaking needles on rarely used gauges. He reached up to the base of his skull, just beneath his helmet, fingers fumbling to find the release on his LINK. He pulled hard on the tiny pellet that for decades had safely connected his brain to the cyber world.

  A shooting pain, followed by brief disorientation, and Lieutenant Falco was literally flying by the seat of his pants.

  “Sir?” One of his wingmen broke the COM’s silence. “We need the LINK or our stealth mode is worth—”

  “God damn it!” Falco pushed forward on the yoke as the ship to his starboard sliced across his nose and slammed into his other wingman. Debris from the collision clanged off his cockpit; red pulp spread across his canopy.

  “Oh Jesus.” Falco’s voice trembled. “They said to pull the LINK out. Fuck!” He was closing in on the mission’s coordinates. He tried the COMs again.

  “HQ, this is Falcon. Eagle and Hawk are down. Do you read? Eagle and Hawk are down. Over.” A steady static filled his helmet.

  “Complete the mission,” he whispered, and armed his missiles. His eyes fell to a photo taped to his instrument panel of a striking woman and small bright-eyed girl sitting in her lap.

  The antiquated range sensor flickered from green to yellow.

  “Come on!” Falco yelled at the yellow light. He glanced at his current position, finger hovering over the launch switch. Yellow held, then flashed to red as the obsolete firing system established a visual lock.

  He released a guttural scream. “Fuck you! HAMMER DOWN!” Lieutenant Falco fired.

  Six missiles flew from their cradles. Seconds later, they arched high into the atmosphere, above a tiny island off the east coast of the Korean Empire before dropping like arrows toward the tiny landmass. Quickly reaching supersonic speeds, each missile was programmed to remove layers of rock, concrete and steel before the next impact – a mountain-leveling jackhammer.

  Three red objects appeared on Falco’s helmet display – incoming. Within seconds, his T-11 released all of its counter measures. He knew it was a useless act. Only the processing speed of the LINK could have tracked and fired the necessary rounds from the chain gun to destroy the missiles. The LINK now possibly infected, the LINK embedded in his wife, daughter, and over half of the world’s population. All for a ‘better life.’

  Falco monitored the chasing objects closing in on him while he listened to the static of a dead COM. He adjusted his flight path to ensure the wreckage would fall harmlessly over the Sea of Japan. Falco tapped the photo of his wife and daughter. “Love you, ladyfriend, and you, my dearest piccola farfalla, my little butterfly.”

  A quaking hand moved toward a bright red lever and stopped. Warning lights flashed across the console of his cockpit, the chasing missiles only seconds from their objective. Tears rolled down Falco’s jaw.

  “Not like this,” he whispered, and slid the picture of his wife and daughter into a side pocket on his flight suit, mumbled a prayer to the sky god, Jove, and pulled the eject lever.

  Korean Empire Terror Militia bunker

  Al-som Island

  Sirens wailed inside the bunker. Vice Marshal Ri looked up as another impact vibrated through the structure and focused on the concrete slab above. “Yes, you are right, all is finished.” She raised her sidearm. “You have done great work…” She paused, realizing she had no idea what his name was. A single, muffled shot cracked and the limp body of the programmer slid off the chair and hit the ground.

  The bunker shook violently from a close impact. Vice Marshal Ri’s knees and ankles snapped under the force, she screamed and crumpled to the floor. Another impact flung her broken body into a concrete wall, a pool of blood growing under her fractured skull. A last gasp, a sickly smile, “I will be remem—” A thousand tons of rock, steel and concrete buried Vice Marshal Ri and the ocean followed.

  2

  Morning, 12.05.2216

  Falcone Estate, Palermo, New Sicily

  Two Year Anniversary of the Terrorist Attack

  Jack Falco sat at his father’s massive oak desk, a silver-framed photo of Lucia and Ziza in one hand, a glass of scotch in the other. His reflection on the picture’s glass showed heavy bags under puffy eyes and silver streaks painting his temples, adding decades to his once-youthful thirty-five years.

  Real pictures of Falco as a young grav-fighter decorated the walls. One photo had an actual news clipping above it. The headline read, “FIGHTING FALCON OVERCOMES the Lion of Tibet!” Next to them, frames of changing images on dated hologram feeds flashed the smiling faces of his father and mother surrounded by acres of grapevines. Jack, wondering about the wisdom of returning home with all its associated memories, placed the picture of his wife and daughter down and rested the scotch glass next to a small rusted key.

  Falco stared at a large, rectangular piece of unscathed oak, shining in the center of the desktop. Around the shape, scratches, smudges and watermarks formed as spilled scotch ate through the finish. Combined, they created a strange mosaic he had never noticed. The old typewriter or key pounder as he liked to call it had protected the desktop from a month’s worth of heavy abuse. He opened the shallow center drawer above his lap and pulled out a thick stack of worn paper covered in type-driven ink.

  Real paper was the key, the Doc had said. She spoke of the therapeutic importance of putting feelings, thoughts and experiences on paper each day. Tapping the typewriter keys, hearing each stroke hitting the texture and pressing into the weight of the paper involved all the senses and brought healing to a broken heart and fractured mind.

  Writing what Falco felt would free him. The accounts of nightmares fueled by identifying the bodies of his dead wife and daughter. Describing the world he returned to, the world he could not save. A world seventy percent less populated and missing the only two people he could not live without. But I have, Falco thought. For two years to the day, I grieved, I felt every fucking emotion a person could and still be alive.

  He knew the real reason for the thirty-day period. The government of New Sicily and hundreds of others around the world created the ‘Writing Month’ as simple proof to show they tried. Tried to prevent the massive number of suicides that continued to drop the remaining global population far below replacement levels. A grief-stricken humanity was exterminating itself.

  Write for a month prior to throwing yourself off a bridge and your estate transferred cleanly and fully intact to the next in line. Put a bullet in your head without the documented ‘Writing Month’ and your estate was held up for years with over half forfeited to the local government.

  Falco reached towards the glass and pulled back. “Let’s get this over with,” he coldly stated and began flipping through the stack of pages. The top page was dated 11.05.2216 and at the bottom of the stack was 12.04.2016. Falco had kept the agreement he made with Doc. A month of ‘writing therapy’ and then what he did was his business and would not affect the Falcone Estate. His distant relatives would inherit the place that was so important to his parents without government interference. It was time to join his family.

  He pulled
the ancient key-pounder from the corner of the desktop. The old steel casing fit perfectly over the pristine rectangle in the desktop’s center. He rolled in a final sheet of paper, picked up his glass, threw back the rest of its contents, refilled it and set it down. The keys felt cold and foreign under the calloused tips of each finger, but it was time.

  0800, 12.05.2216

  The world continues to burn the endless stack of bodies. Two years later and the gray ash sifts downward, ever falling, never a pause, always there. I drag it in with every breath: its slippery layer lines my clothes, my sheets. It comes through the tiniest of holes and fissures, ever searching for the one responsible.

  The cloud follows me. The dead continue to burn, carried on the hot draft up and out of a thousand furnaces burning across the world, all day, every day for two years… and still the bodies go from freezer to furnace, over and over again. All they want is the chance to catch a breeze and hunt the man that could not save them during life.

  My wife and daughter mix with the others on a breeze or gust or latch onto a raindrop to rest on a cool stone, only to dry and again be carried off on the sole of a shoe or covered in the shit from a dog.

  Why does any of it matter when I am responsible for the death of billions? Two years and I feel the weight of it in the stares of survivors walking the cobbled streets as zombies. I wish I had never been pulled from that raft. The sharks were ready, I was ready. I should have gone then. I need to go now. There is nowhere I can run to, nowhere I can hide. Two years was as much as I could bear. Know that I did everything I could and it was not enough.

  I go to see my family.

  ~ Giacomo Francis Falcone

  Falco focused on the echo of the last tapped key. The writing had helped, he thought, just too little too late. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered reaching for the picture of his wife and daughter.

  Taking the rusty key, he opened the drawer, and pulled out a perfectly maintained 1938 Glisenti revolver that had been in his family for over two centuries. Falco carefully set the picture face down on the desk and held the gun in his lap, slowly turning the cylinder, clicking through each new cartridge. An action he had done a hundred times since they died… No… since I let them die.

  His mouth opened wide, the barrel cold on his soft, upper pallet. Fifteen degree angle, he thought, breathe deep, it’s OK, breathe, and squeeze…

  A jarring knock hammered at the front door. Falco pulled the gun out of his mouth, shook his head and cleared his throat, the revolver feeling foreign in his shaking hand. He dropped the gun in the drawer, closed it hard, and moved cautiously toward the front door.

  “Who is it?” Falco felt the veins pounding through his head, his own voice a stick rattling a metal garbage can.

  “Vice Admiral Hallsworth, United Nations Navy. Now cut the shit, Lieutenant Falco. Open this goddamn door and get an old friend a drink.”

  He ran his fingers through his mop of graying hair, pulled his hand down his bearded face, looked at his week-old jeans and T-shirt. “Shit,” he grumbled. Giving up, Falco opened the door.

  Hallsworth, The Giant, as his men lovingly referred to the man in private, was a mountain. Falco had forgotten the sheer mass of him, let alone that he could drink anyone under the table. And I’m already there, he thought.

  “Good to see you are still with us, Lieutenant.” He pushed straight past Falco, headed to the study and dropped into a chair next to the bottle of single malt. Hallsworth helped himself to an extra glass off the shelf behind him and poured a fistful. “You still like the good stuff. Just like your father.”

  Falco trailed into the room, eased into his seat behind the desk. “Yes, Vice Admiral” – he exhaled loudly – “I find that it helps me sleep at night.”

  “And during the day, by the looks of you.” Hallsworth stared until Falco broke the uncomfortable silence.

  “How can I help you—”

  “Jack, you look like shit warmed over.” Hallsworth didn’t let him finish. “Yes, we lost two-thirds of the world’s population to the most cowardly and horrifying act of terrorism in the history of our planet.” He grabbed his glass again, took a gulping chug, and continued as Jack looked blankly ahead. “You lost your wife, your daughter – hell, we all lost family and friends. There was nothing you or the rest of us could do about it. They broke into the most securely encrypted system ever created and—”

  “Seventeen seconds.” Falco swallowed hard. His eyes felt hot; tears wanted to come but were long gone. “Seventeen seconds before I blew that bunker to hell and back. That evil bitch uploaded a malicious code that stopped the hearts of over twenty billion people. Used our own LINK system… seventeen seconds before I killed her. Malicious code increases your junk-feeds, for god’s sake. It doesn’t kill you.”

  Falco took a slug of scotch. They used a system we willingly implanted in our own brains to commit mass murder, he thought. A system that made us more efficient, more connected… “More connected to what?” Jack whispered.

  Hallsworth refilled his glass and took another heavy gulp. “None of us could have known the LINK system could be compromised. Hell, we have been using encrypted radio waves for centuries with only minor hacking issues.” He took a deep breath and leaned in. “You can sit here and drink yourself to death in the idyllic surroundings of the Falcone Estate or you can clean yourself up and buck the fuck up. I have an assignment for you.”

  Falco felt like he had physically crawled out of a bottle of scotch after spending the night swimming in its contents. He looked to Vice Admiral Hallsworth and changed the subject. “You know, we should skip the scotch and drink the family wine. My people were walking through the vineyards on Mount Etna in 500 BC. A century before the French knew what to do with a grape!”

  Hallsworth smiled. “Yes, your father loved that speech. Loved to espouse it at the dinner table with friends and family. It was usually followed by… Falcone’s have the strength” – Falco joined in, and the two men’s voices echoed in the study – “of Ancient Greeks, make love like Italians, and have the intellect of Arabs!”

  Falco loved his father and missed the man that took the time to raise a son while his peers passed the duties to hired help. Falco found himself staring at the lock on the drawer that held the old revolver.

  “Jack!” Vice Admiral Hallsworth barked. “I see the photo face down on your desk. I see the way you look at the drawer where that ancient shooter of your great-grandfather has always been kept, one I have fired on many occasions while visiting this place. Not to mention, I have been in daily contact with your Doc and your thirty-day Writing Period is over. Time to stand up, son! We’ve got work to do.”

  Falco straightened. “I need to get far away from this.” His hands raised as he swiveled in his chair, voice a low growl. “Everything reminds me of them. I can’t escape the ashes of the dead. Loved ones killed because they didn’t have time to pull that goddamn LINK out of their fucking skulls!”

  Hallsworth stood, walked over to Falco, and placed his hand on his shoulder. “It’s time. You started your career in the space program, and an opportunity knocks again. Jack, I have a Cyclone Class, deep-space scout ship waiting for you. You are one of the best pilots we have left, and back in the day, you were the craziest son of a bitch I knew. The time for mourning has passed. The United Nations needs you.”

  “One of the best?” Falco replied with a forced grin. “Deep space? I thought we were only scouting around the Mars Station. Have we already sucked out every ounce of mineral profit in the surrounding asteroid fields?”

  Hallsworth rolled his eyes. “Yes. They have, and to the point, it seems two years of peacetime helped resurrect a decade-old and once top-secret project designated OORT133. Building spacecraft and space stations instead of supporting huge militaries is actually easier on the budget.”

  “Not to mention the mineral revenue isn’t all bad either,” Falco stated.

  “Still have to pay for programs, and yes, mineral righ
ts are important. Your choice, Lieutenant Falco.” Hallsworth set his empty glass on the oak desk and sat back down. “Captain your own vessel up there” – he pointed to the ceiling – “or sit here and play with your little gun. The decision is yours, but either way, the ship departs in two weeks and needs a captain.”

  “Sir.” Falco’s face tightened. “How can we protect our starships from enemy hackers if we couldn’t safely encrypt the LINK system?”

  “A valid question, and one the UN spent every available resource to answer.” Hallsworth fell silent.

  “And?” Falco asked.

  “They have assured me that the new end-to-end encryption is unbreakable. The Battle-Net has permanently replaced the LINK system. If needed, you can shoot Data-Pods ship-to-ship and back to the Mars Station.” Hallsworth raised an eyebrow, “If, of course, you are not in a hurry.”

  “Battle-Net?” Falco winced.

  “Ya, I know,” Hallsworth echoed, “but the top minds at the UN wanted a system name that future enemies would think twice about attacking.”

  “Well then, I am now brimming with confidence.” Falco leaned forward. “What about the boat, who is she?”

  “An old friend, we brought her back from the dead and retrofitted her for the long haul.” Hallsworth held his stare.

  Falco’s eyes burned bright. “How is that possible? She was destroyed. Fell two weeks before the terrorist attack. I saw her with my own eyes, dropping from the Mongolian sky. She was the final large-vessel casualty in the Korean Empire conflict.” He looked hard at the Vice Admiral. “And what was left of her,” Falco’s teeth came together, “was scrapped!”

  “Easy, Lieutenant. Not our best call, which is why we reversed it. Mothballed her hull in bay twenty instead.” Hallsworth nodded. “But, the Anam Cara is good as new and docked at Lunar Station.”