by Dietmar Wehr
Masterson sighed. “I agree that the Federation would dissolve away if planets were allowed to vote themselves out of it, but that’s not what’s bothering me. I still can’t understand why Trojan is acting this way. He passed his loyalty test about as well as anyone could. How does an officer with that kind of dedication suddenly put the whole war in jeopardy by turning his back on everything he’s ever believed in? There’s got to be something more to this than we know, and don’t say he’s gone nuts. That’s just a convenient label to hide the fact that we don’t know what’s really behind all this.”
“If I had to guess, I’d say that his Majestic computer is behind all this, but we won’t know for sure until we land troops on Hadley,” said Chenko as he got up and walked out.
Chapter Two
Day 201/2552
Hadley
Trojan closed his eyes as he entered his office because he knew what was coming.
“Status report ready,” said Majestic in its distinctive feminine voice.
Trojan sighed and said, “Proceed.”
“Reports have arrived during the last 24 hours that riots have occurred on Gryphon and Hespera. Local Empire forces were able to restore order. However, this data confirms a rising trend-line in civil disturbances. Unless space and ground forces are ordered to use nuclear weapons to quell uprisings, the probability of mass resistance leading to the overthrow of the Empire will rise to 34.5 percent. Approval to use nuclear weapons at the local Field Commander’s discretion is requested.”
“Request is denied. Next item.”
“Implantation of communication devices has improved efficiency by the amount estimated prior to implementation. Request that senior ground force and space force officers on or in orbit around Hadley be ordered to accept implants.”
Trojan shook his head. He’d seen some of the support staff manning the Majestic Complex who had volunteered to have the communication device implanted at the base of their skulls. He had always found the look in their eyes disturbing. Majestic’s contention that having direct electronic communication access to human brains improved efficiency might very well be true, but he’d be damned if he was going to order his officers to accept those devices.
“Request is denied. Next item.”
“Analysis of operating efficiency of this device after the Phase II expansion has confirmed that the capacity expansion has met expectations. Request approval to begin Phase III expansion.”
Trojan shook his head again. The Phase II expansion of the machine’s computer chips plus the pyramid-shaped protective shell made of collapsed matter had taken over three years to complete. According to Majestic, its ability to analyze complex questions quickly had improved by almost 100%. In hindsight, Trojan was now of the opinion that the increased capacity wasn’t worth the manpower and resources that had been diverted away from other priorities.
“You’re already an order of magnitude more capable than any other computational device in existence. Why do you need further expansion?” asked Trojan.
“Further analysis of potential advances by SSU Brain Trust shows a 41 percent probability that they will build a superior computational device.”
“Prior to your Phase II expansion, you told me that such an outcome had a 38 percent probability. Now with your expansion you’re saying the probability of them building a device that can outthink a Phase II Majestic is even higher? I would have thought the odds would have gone down. Request denied. Next item.”
“End of items,” said the machine. Trojan looked at the wall where the speaker was located. The abruptness of that last sentence almost sounded as if Majestic was in a funk. He decided that it had to be his imagination.
“Fine. Until tomorrow then,” said Trojan. By prior command, Majestic would not attempt to communicate with him again for the next 24 hours unless there was an emergency or something urgent. Without that standing order, the machine would run on constantly while he was in his office. He had plenty of other items to deal with without Majestic adding to the load. He looked around his office with satisfaction. The room was much bigger and much better decorated than the space set aside for that purpose inside the Majestic Complex. Having a palace built that was suitable for the Emperor of a Galactic Empire was one of his better initiatives. Living underground in that Complex had eventually become quite intolerable.
Day 233/2552
Midgard
Murphy stepped out of the tunnel and looked around. He never tired of looking at the inside of the extinct volcano that was now a shipyard. The bottom of the volcano was deep enough that it would be difficult for any orbiting ship to get a good look at the interior. Anything other than looking down from directly overhead would miss the construction activity. Convincing the senior military people on Earth to move the shipyard from Midgard’s moon to this location had been difficult, but worth it. The extraction, refining and manufacturing processes were still located on the moon, but this time they were completely underground. If the Empire sent more ships to snoop around, there was a good chance they’d miss detecting any activity on the moon at all. Without the moon’s abundant metal resources, building warships on Midgard itself would be extremely difficult, but with the decreased risk of detection came the trade-off that the finished parts had to be physically transported from the moon to the volcano shipyard. Murphy had convinced the Project Management to provide one very large freighter that only had to make the trip twice a month instead of more frequent trips by a smaller ship. Less trips meant less risk of detection too.
Looking over to the construction bay, Murphy nodded with satisfaction at the progress being made on the prototype ship. While Earth didn’t have detailed technical information on the Empire’s stealthy ships, the basic principles of eliminating all curved surfaces in order to redirect incoming radar waves away from the sender were well understood. This prototype ship would test the hull design, and it was big enough to carry sufficient missiles and missile launch tubes to be a useful offensive asset if the testing proved that the design worked. Assuming the tests went well, they’d build at least one more of the same 200-meter diameter class ship while they designed a much more capable 400-meter diameter cruiser. That was about as large a ship as they could get through the mouth of the volcano.
He reminded himself to go over the simulated combat tests of the proposed radar-picket drones before the end of the day. If they worked as well as the theory said, then Federation ships would have a decent chance of defending themselves against the Empire’s stealthy missiles. The difficult part was knowing from which direction the enemy missiles were coming. If they knew that, they could launch multiple picket drones to scan the incoming trajectory from multiple directions. Stealthy missiles might be designed to defect radar energy coming from their targets directly ahead, but it was impossible to deflect radar energy coming from every possible direction. Radar scans coming from the side had a better chance of bouncing right back to the drone that emitted them, and once they had a fix on an incoming missile, the ship’s anti-missile lasers could destroy it. That was the theory. It looked good on paper, and the simulated tests seemed to confirm it, but Murphy knew that simulations were only as reliable as the assumptions going into them. The only test that counted was the one with real drones versus real missiles, and they weren’t ready for that yet.
The downside to working deep within a cone of volcanic rock was that the bottom never got direct sunlight. By the end of that day, Murphy was tired of breathing the warm air smelling of ozone and metal that typically filled the volcano. He wanted to breath clean, fresh air and see a sunset for a change. A contra-gravity work platform took him up to the top of the volcano and landed on the edge. The breeze at that altitude and time of day was refreshingly cool, and with no cloud in the sky, the setting sun was wondrous to behold. As he sat there watching the sun dip below the horizon, he wondered for the nth time if he had made the right decision. Enough time had passed for the Empire to start looking in Earth’s directio
n. Empire warships had made high speed passes of Earth, which Admiral Chenko had described as reconnaissance missions. Earth had a lot of space-based assets, but with the exception of space stations, none of them were military in nature, and the space stations that did belong to the military were weakly defended. Army Chief of Staff Masterson had confided to Murphy that the Federation Council was convinced that Trojan would eventually land his ground troops on Earth in spite of the fact that Earth still had the half a million soldiers who were originally intended to be sent to Trojan for the war against the SSU. Masterson had also hinted that a new Majestic-type computer was being built on Earth. That, combined with those troops who were now available to defend Earth, seemed to suggest to Murphy that any attack by Trojan’s ground forces would fail.
In any case, news from various sources were showing that the Empire’s campaign against the SSU and the rest of the Federation was succeeding. Empire troops were now patrolling the streets of all the main SSU planets that were capable of building spacecraft, plus most of the Federation planets that had the same capability. That left hundreds of Federation and SSU planets where the population or industrial base was too low to be able to build their own ships. Unable to put up any kind of fight, those planets were told simply to acknowledge the Empire’s authority over them or face orbital bombardment. As far as Earth could tell, most of them had chosen the former alternative, and the Empire didn’t even need to station troops there.
It had taken a long time, but additional news finally did come back from Sparta via independent freighters that traded with both sides. The data regarding what had happened on Sparta after Empire troops landed had contained a single sentence to the effect that a Major Foster had blown herself up in the presence of the senior Empire Ground Force Officer and three others, thereby killing all four Empire soldiers. Murphy knew there was only one female Major Foster and had cried when he read that news. His Cate was gone, and there was now nothing worth going back to on Sparta. The only thing he had to hold on to, to make life worth living, was the vengeance he desired for the deaths of his people on Midgard and now also for Cate. The irony of him working for the very people that had set in motion those forces that had killed them wasn’t lost on him. When he thought about that aspect, he didn’t know whether to laugh or to weep. He knew that trying to reconcile those feelings could lead him down a slippery slope to an abyss where his sanity was concerned, and so he put those thoughts out of his mind and concentrated on his vengeance.
With the sun now almost gone and the light fading fast, he decided to go back to his quarters, listen to some music and finish off that bottle of vodka that a friend had smuggled in from Earth. However, there was one ritual that he hadn’t done yet. He looked around and found a rock the right size. Picking it up, he braced himself and threw it down the outside slope of the volcano as far as he could. It bounced and rolled down a long way before he lost sight of it. What was it that some ancient philosopher had said? If a rock is about to fall off a cliff anyway, it deserves to be pushed? Whoever had coined that phrase had got it right. There was something very satisfying about doing exactly that kind of thing, whether it be a rock sitting on top of a volcano or a galactic empire on the verge of collapse. With a chuckle, he activated the platform which took him back inside the volcano.
Day 244/2552
Hadley
Romanov slowly exited the shuttle and stopped to smell the fresh air. After being cooped up in a ship for the last six months, it was a welcome break to stand on firm ground and breath natural air again. He was tired, not mentally or physically tired, but rather his soul was weary of the fighting. Trojan had promised him a rest after mopping up the key planets of the SSU, but that rest never appeared. There was always one more planet to secure, and one more after that, and one more after that, and… He knew it wasn’t Trojan’s fault. It was Majestic. The damn machine either didn’t know about human limits or didn’t care. His faith in Majestic’s infallibility was crumbling too. The bigger the Empire got, the more resistance reared its ugly head. He was starting to have serious doubts about the viability of the whole project. Maybe bringing all of humanity under a firm guiding hand just wasn’t possible. Majestic’s optimistic projections back when it first brought up the idea of an Empire were rapidly turning out to be way off the mark, and for a machine supposedly as sophisticated as it was alleged to be, that was a huge blunder. On those rare occasions when he allowed himself to get drunk, he would start to wonder if Majestic was manipulating Trojan and humanity for its own inscrutable agenda and if those projections were nothing but deliberate misinformation. Such thoughts had always seemed somewhat absurd in the cold light of sobriety.
He shook his head as if to clear away those dark thoughts and made his way to the waiting air-limo that would take him to Trojan’s Palace. As the vehicle approached the huge building, Romanov looked at it carefully and nodded. What an improvement that place was over the cramped corridors and small rooms of the Majestic Complex. Being literally inside Majestic had always given him a tinge of claustrophobia not to mention a bit of paranoia too. Had Majestic been listening in to every conversation between humans during their time there? Get a grip, Ivan, it’s just a machine, he reminded himself.
It was almost ten minutes later when he walked into the, in his opinion, ridiculously high-ceilinged room that Trojan used as his office. Romanov had been inside cathedrals with lower ceilings. Trojan met him with his usual friendly greeting, a handshake and a clasp of his shoulder. With the greeting over, Trojan stepped back and looked at him with a critical expression.
“Damn, Ivan, is it my imagination or are you looking older than the last time I saw you?”
Romanov wanted to say that fighting a war for almost two decades was bound to make anyone look older, in spite of the anti-aging drugs that were widely available, but he kept his comments to himself. He smiled and nodded instead. He firmly resisted the impulse to point out that the Emperor himself no longer looked the way he had back in ’39. There was a limit to what his friendship with Trojan would tolerate.
“Well, never mind that. Come over here and let’s both of us get comfortable while we talk. Tell the bar robot what you want to drink, and order a melon brandy for me. I’ve acquired a taste for that locally produced liquor, especially when it’s been aged a decent amount. Come to think of it, order two local tobacco cigars too. Smoking those things is another habit I’ve picked up since you were here last. I don’t know why it took me so long to start, considering how many years I’ve lived on this planet.” By the time Trojan was finished talking, both men were seated in very comfortable chairs and the bar robot was hovering nearby.
With the drinks in hand and the cigars lit, Trojan began the conversation. “I know you’ve been in the field a lot these past few years, and as far as I’m concerned, nobody could have done a better job. Unfortunately, Majestic’s calculations show that we’re falling behind the probability curve. Even though the Empire’s growing, the rate of growth has slowed significantly, and that means that the risk of an uncontrollable uprising is growing. The key is Earth. As long as it remains unconquered, the Empire’s not safe. I know you don’t think we’re strong enough to take it without using nukes, but time is not on our side. Earth’s population is sufficiently large that they can recruit and train troops faster than we can transport them from other planets. We’re going to have to support what troops we can muster with orbital bombardment.” He paused for effect before continuing. “And that includes using nukes if that’s what it takes. We’ve come too far and invested too much time, effort and sweat to let it all collapse now, Ivan. I hope you can see the necessity of doing whatever it takes to bring Earth into the Empire.”
Romanov kept his face passive. The moment he’d been dreading for years was finally here. He’d compromised his principles and his honor to avoid a future where Human Civilization would be blasted back to the edge of oblivion, and here his Emperor was telling him that he might have to order nuclear
weapons used on the billions of people inhabiting humanity’s home world. And not just humanity’s home world. Earth used to be his home too. He doubted he would ever again be able to walk the streets of Earth without bodyguards.
After taking a puff of his cigar and a sip from his drink to give him time to organize his thoughts, he said, “If the invasion looks like it’s going to fail, I’ll authorize the minimum level of bombardment that I think will accomplish the mission. After all, what good is having a home world that’s suffering through a nuclear winter?”
That wasn’t the unconditional commitment that Trojan was looking for, but he understood that his favorite Admiral could only be pushed so far, and Trojan wasn’t prepared to replace him at this point.
“I trust your judgement. You’ve never failed me, and I know you won’t fail me this time either. Majestic has the orders ready to bring our ships and troops to a state of readiness. That will take several months. You’ll be able to stay here on Hadley during that time, and we’ll have plenty of opportunities to talk again before you lead the attack on Earth. Okay, enough talk about death and destruction. Let’s talk about something else.”