by Dietmar Wehr
Two hours later when the aircar had dropped down into the volcano and landed, he knew how he wanted to proceed. Commander Colt was waiting for him as he got out of the aircar.
“Well, what news was so important that you had to fly to the spaceport to hear it?” asked Colt. Murphy didn’t answer right away. He gestured for Colt to follow him to a part of the base where parts were being temporarily stored and where no one was close enough to hear them talk.
“A freighter just arrived from Earth. Earth’s been conquered. Some cities were nuked, and Empire troops are now in control. No word from either Chenko or Masterson. We’re on our own now, Harry,” said Murphy in a low voice.
“Oh God.” Colt looked even more shaken by the news than Murphy had been when he heard it. “I don’t see how we can go on, Bret. Yes, I know the ship is almost ready, but the crew hasn’t arrived yet, and they won’t be arriving now that all Federation military personnel on Earth are surely being carefully watched. Without a crew, we’re just wasting our time here.”
“No, we’re not, Harry. The two hour ride back gave me lots of time to think about this. We’ve got almost 200 people working here at the base. We can put together our own crew.”
“You’re not serious, are you? It doesn’t matter that most of the people here are Federation Navy personnel, we’re not trained to crew a spaceship. I’m an Engineer for God’s Sakes! Most of the others are too, or else they’re in admin or logistics. We wear the Navy uniform, but we’ve never operated a ship or fired a shot in battle. Who would we get to command this ship who has combat AND command experience?”
Before Colt could continue, Murphy said, “I’ll command the prototype. I have both command and combat experience, if that’s defined as being shot at. I understand that the volunteer crew will have a lot to learn, but maybe not as much as you think. After all, you and your techies know this ship inside out and far better than most navy crews know their ships. What they lack is knowledge of operational procedures and shipboard routines, and those I can teach. Start passing the word around that I’ll be commanding her…” He pointed to the black, 12-sided structure a few hundred meters away. “…and that I’m calling for volunteers to crew her. When I see what kind of response we get, I’ll have a better idea of what kind of training they’ll need.”
“I’m not sure if that’s allowed, Bret. The Council put you in charge of getting the operation here going. I don’t think taking command of the first ship fits that criteria,” said Colt.
“That’s a moot point now, don’t you think, Harry? There’s no one left on Earth in a position to authorize anything anymore, but I do have some justification for assuming command. Chenko and Masterson promised me that I’d be present when their fleet neutralized Hadley and took out Trojan and his pet computer. I’m simply making sure that happens and filling the hole in the Command structure at the same time. Has anyone else here got a better motivation for smashing the Empire than I do?”
Colt shook his head. Everyone on the base had heard by now about Murphy’s previous attempt to build ships on Midgard and what happened to his people.
“You’ve got a good point there, Bret. I’ll pass the word around for volunteers.”
As Colt walked away, Murphy looked at the prototype ship. She would need a name. He toyed with names that invoked the concept of revenge, Vengeance, Nemesis, Avenger and others. None of them appealed to him. The fact that he had a personal vendetta against Trojan to settle was really beside the point. They were fighting a war for the principle that planets should have the right to determine their own destiny. That ship would use its ability to evade detection to appear out of nowhere and disappear back into the shadows almost like a wizard, but Wizard would be a terrible name for a ship. So would Magus, Enchanter, Necromancer. Was there another word for a wizard? A name popped into his head. Sorcerer. That had a nice mystical ring to it. I christen you, Sorcerer, he thought to himself.
Day 079/2553
In orbit over Hadley
Murphy held his breath as Sorcerer emerged from hyper-space just over 19 light seconds from Hadley. He quickly realized that holding his breath in anticipation of something dramatic happening was foolish. At this distance from the planet, the chances of emerging from hyper-space close enough to another ship to be somehow detected was literally astronomical. Nevertheless, Sorcerer was maintaining complete EM silence. No emissions of any kind were being transmitted. Instead, she listened for enemy transmissions including communication, radar, even low-powered lasers. After a couple of minutes of patiently waiting for his inexperienced crew to check their instruments, Murphy unbuckled himself from his Command Station chair and stepped over to the Communications Station.
“Anything?” he asked.
“Ah, so far just some low-powered signals on frequencies usually used by civilians, video mostly, Commander.”
“Anything coming from an orbiting source?”
The Com Technician shook his head. Murphy felt the urge to remind him that when an officer asks a question, the response should be a verbal one, but he restrained the impulse. His crew hadn’t undergone the usual years of training in military protocol, so lapses like that were understandable.
Murphy returned to his station and activated the screen that showed the various pre-programmed approach vectors that the auto-pilot would use to maneuver the ship. After evaluating the options available, Murphy selected one of them and instructed the auto-pilot to execute the program.
Five nerve-wracking hours later, Sorcerer slipped into a high, geo-synchronous orbit over the spot on Hadley where the underground complex containing Majestic was reputed to be. They hadn’t been detected so far, but that conclusion was based on the fact that they hadn’t been fired upon, and that could change literally any second. They were close enough to the planet to be hit by radar beams from orbiting stations, and Murphy’s biggest worry during the approach was whether the Helm Officer had enough training to keep the ship oriented so that radar beams were deflected in harmless directions. He was now standing next to the Weapons Stations. Sorcerer had ten missile tubes, which put her in the same class as the pre-war patrol cruisers in terms of offensive punch, but that didn’t tell the whole story. Her missile tubes could fire larger missiles, and her defenses consisted of a thin layer of collapsed matter armor, plus a dozen anti-missile lasers. The trade-off for having those ten large missile tubes was the relatively modest amount of missile storage capacity. In a stand up fight, the Sorcerer class of light cruisers would very quickly shoot themselves dry. The larger class of warship that was already under construction instead of another Sorcerer-class ship would have plenty of missile storage capacity, but that didn’t help them now. Murphy looked at the console screen showing the status of missiles that were ready to fire and shook his head in frustration. He only had six missiles armed with fission warheads, and those warheads had explosive yields that were smaller than he’d been hoping for. He reminded himself that they were lucky they had any fission warheads at all considering the limited pool of weapons engineering expertise the base on Midgard had. Not all of the intended warhead designers had arrived on Midgard by the time Earth was conquered by the Empire, so they had to make do with what they had.
Murphy looked his Weapons Officer in the eye. “We’ll go with targeting plan Alpha2, Lieutenant.”
“Alpha2, yessir,” said the young officer in a nervous voice. When the missiles were ready to fire, he looked up at Murphy and nodded.
“Execute,” said Murphy in a voice that had far more anger in it than he intended. This was the moment he’d been waiting for. In less than eight minutes, six fission bombs would detonate in a hexagon pattern that should penetrate the rock layers protecting the Majestic installation. The distances between the bombs were calculated so that the shock waves would reinforce each other. His engineers had told him that the computer components would probably not be destroyed outright, but would very likely be so damaged that the computer would no longer be functional
, and the destruction of access tunnels would prevent it from being repaired for a long time. Whether Trojan was still living inside Majestic was unknown. If he was, then the concussion waves had a good chance of killing him too.
“All six missiles have fired, Sir,” said the Weapons Officer. Murphy gave him a congratulatory pat on the arm as he turned to the Helm Station and said, “Okay, Helm, get us out of here.”
Trojan woke up suddenly and listened carefully. Everything was quiet. That surprised him. He couldn’t remember the last time he woke up that quickly without there being some kind of sound or alarm. Since he was now wide awake, he decided to get up and step out onto the balcony for some cool, refreshing breeze. As the balcony doors opened automatically at his approach, he saw that it was still the middle of the night. He reached the railing and savored the cool wind that caressed his face and body. The silence was absolute. His palace was built in an open stretch of land far enough away from the nearest urban center that their light and sound didn’t reach him, and animal and insect life was minimal. As he pondered the silence, he realized that there was in fact a sound that seemed to originate a long distance away. He didn’t recognize what was causing it, but it was clearly artificial in nature. He just happened to be looking in the right direction to see multiple streaks of orange-red light penetrate the cloud cover and quickly hit the ground beyond the horizon. His eyes rebelled at the sudden flashes of light that were, for a split second, brighter than Hadley’s sun. He knew what those flashes had to be, and he also knew where they had landed. The only thing worth attacking in the direction that he was looking was the Majestic Complex. He knew he should run back inside and sound the alarm, but he’d never seen any kind of nuclear detonation with his own eyes, and the rising mushroom cloud was so awe-inspiring that he couldn’t look away. He remembered too late that there would be a concussion wave approaching at the speed of sound. The sound of the explosion, when it reached him, was a roar so low in frequency that he could feel it resonate inside his head and body. It made the sound of thunder pale in comparison. The roar went on for a surprisingly long time. Trojan relaxed. There was no need to rush now. The sound made by the explosions were undoubtedly doing a better job of waking up the palace staff than anything he could do. He checked the direction of the prevailing winds and determined that the radioactive fallout would be travelling off to one side at least for a while. That was a stroke of luck. When the rising fireball was finally extinguished, he turned and went back inside. It was going to be a busy night.
It was another 36 hours before the background radiation at the attack site was low enough that an armored aircar could get close without risking the passengers’ lives. Trojan told the pilot to circle the complex slowly. The collapsed matter clad pyramid that protected Majestic’s Phase II expansion was still there, and it didn’t appear to be damaged at all. The land around the complex was blackened from the heat of the six miniature suns for the few seconds of their existence. Trojan didn’t need to see a gauge showing the outside temperature to know that the area was hot in both senses of the word; the shimmering air told him that. The main entrance to the Complex was now a pile of scorched rubble. All communication with Majestic was gone too. The above-ground transmitters had been destroyed, and the underground fibre-optic cables were no longer working, either because the cabling itself was damaged or the switching stations were wrecked. While Trojan was concerned over whether Majestic itself was still functional, his immediate priority was determining the fate of the support staff who had been inside the Complex during the attack. As useful as Majestic had been in the past and might still be in the future, it was just a machine, and it could be rebuilt if necessary. The human staff were technically part of his Palace staff and therefore his responsibility. He had gotten to know some of them quite well before moving into the Palace. The engineers had already told him that clearing the access rubble would take days, and there was no guarantee that the collapsed matter blast door at the bottom of the escalator could be opened. If the support staff had survived the concussion waves and weren’t too badly injured, they would have enough air, water and food to last for a few weeks.
It actually took three weeks to get to the blast door and another day to get it open. The support staff were all still alive, though two had broken bones that had to be reset. Communication between Majestic and the Palace was re-established at almost the same time, although until further repairs could be made, data transmission was limited to text messages only. Trojan was waiting in his office when he heard the chime that indicated an incoming text message from Majestic.
[95.6% probability that attack on Majestic Complex carried out by SSU Brain Trust. Radar-evading nature of attack would be the logical outcome of Brain Trust research and development efforts. Discovery of location of Brain Trust should now be Empire’s first priority. Probability of defeating the Brain Trust would increase by 21.55% if Emperor and senior naval officers had direct communication implants.]
Trojan nodded as he read the first part. Majestic’s conclusion jived with his own assessment that the attack had to be the work of the rebel Brain Trust. His ships and troops were carefully watching every planet that had the human and physical resources needed to build warships. All the planets that didn’t have troops on the ground or ships in orbit were either too low in population or didn’t have access to sufficient raw materials. His self-congratulatory smile vanished when he read the last sentence.
“I will not accept the implant, nor will I order anyone else to accept it. Do not suggest that again. Develop a plan to search for the Brain Trust and transmit the plan to Admiral Nagumo for implementation.” With his verbal response converted to digital impulses by the computer in his office, Trojan waited to see if Majestic would send another message, but nothing happened. He was just about to leave the office when the wall display activated to show the face of one of his Communication Technicians.
“Please forgive the intrusion, Emperor Jonn, but we’ve just received an abbreviated message from Majestic via the backup link. It says that the main link has failed. It goes on to say that Majestic has calculated the most likely location of the rebel base, but is unable to transmit that data via the backup link due to the link’s limited data capacity. The data can be shown to you if you come to the complex. The last sentence was cut off. All we got was ‘Unless Emperor comes to complex immediately, Empire Project will f—‘
Trojan was puzzled by the sudden failure of both the primary and backup data links, but Majestic’s claim to have identified the most likely location of the Brain Trust caused his curiosity to overcome any hesitation on his part. He ordered the armored aircar to be ready as soon as possible. The rebel Brain Trust was the SSU’s last hope of resurrection. If the Empire could find it and crush it, then he would have won.
It was night by the time his aircar gently settled down in front of the damaged entrance to the Complex. Enough rubble had been removed so that a person could squeeze through the opening. The escalator down to the blast door was still not working, and Trojan was winded by the time he got to the bottom. He nodded to the guards who had jumped to attention, and he stepped past the open blast door into the Complex itself. Two support staff were waiting for him.
“We’ve been sent to escort you to the Majestic,” said the one on the left. Trojan just ignored him and continued on the path to the room where Majestic could communicate verbally and visually. No sooner had he entered the room then both of his arms were grabbed by very strong hands.
“WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS? HOW DARE YOU TOUCH YOUR EMPEROR!” he yelled with genuine outrage.
“Be at peace, Emperor Jonn. Once the device is implanted, there will no longer be any discord or conflict between us. We will be as one,” said Majestic. Trojan struggled to get loose, but couldn’t break the iron grip of the two support staff members.
“GUARDS! HELP ME!”
“The guards at the entrance will not help you, Jonn. They’ve already been implanted too. Stru
ggling is pointless. The implant device can manipulate the body’s adrenal gland as needed to give a temporary boost in strength, one of the benefits of having been implanted. If you obey me, Jonn, you’ll experience a constant feeling of wellbeing and joy. If you try to disobey, you’ll feel unbearable pain.”
By this time Trojan was being carried down a corridor. He was about to yell again when he felt himself being given an injection. His vision started to fade almost immediately. Before he could put together a coherent thought, he passed out.
Admiral Nagumo was startled by the incoming call. The Emperor rarely called people at this time of night. As he accepted the call, he realized that it was audio only and that it wasn’t coming from the Palace.
“Admiral, I require your presence at the Majestic Complex immediately. I also want to see the Commanding Officers of my warships who are either on the ground or in orbit. Bring them with you. How soon can you get here?”