Rumors of Salvation (System States Rebellion Book 3)

by Dietmar Wehr

  “Okay…we’ve set up a shipbuilding operation on Midgard, dammit!” His pain-racked expression changed to one of weariness. “The facility is inside an extinct volcano on the west side of the main continent.”

  After a few seconds, Nagumo asked, “Anything else, General, Admiral?” Both men shook their heads. Satisfied that they weren’t holding anything back, Nagumo stepped over to Masterson and patted him on the shoulder.

  “I sympathize with you, General. I’m not exactly thrilled with having that damned device in my neck either, but I’ve learned how to accept my fate. Now here is what’s going to happen. In a little while, I’m going to pull out all Empire personnel from Earth. We’ll be taking a few hundred scientists with us, but other than that, it’ll look as though we’re abandoning our occupation of Earth. The two of you and a few other key people who have also been implanted will act as though it’s back to business as usual. You’ll order the re-establishment of contact with and supervision over the operation on Midgard. You’ll send a few implanted personnel there to begin the task of gradually taking over the operation. When that operation is completely manned by implanted personnel, you’ll send a ship to Hadley with that information and await further instructions. I’ll make sure you have an ample supply of devices, plus the automated equipment Majestic has devised that can implant the device in a subdued subject without the need for any medical personnel. Your own devices have already been programmed with instructions to cover hundreds of possible contingency scenarios. One more thing. Don’t even think about trying to have your devices removed. If your device even suspects that something like that is in the works, it’ll kill you immediately and VERY painfully. I’ve seen it happen to another individual with my own eyes, and it’s a horrible way to go. Don’t try to undermine your own authority by revealing your compromised condition or by resigning. Your devices will detect that you’re up to something and react. Thousands of people have been implanted so far, and not one of them has figured out a way to get free of their devices. If you accept the fact that Majestic has won, you’ll have a much more pleasant life. Both of you are now dismissed.”

  Nagumo watched them shuffle out. Neither one of them looked him in the eye. He struggled to keep his sympathy for them and anger at Majestic to levels that would not trigger a painful reaction. What he said to them was true. Majestic really had won, and God help the Human Race.

  Day 044/2555

  Excalibur

  Drake saw his wife standing at the bottom of the boarding ramp as he left the ship. She returned his wave and gave him a smile, but it wasn’t the beaming, no-holds-barred smile that she usually gave him when she was glad to see him. Oh oh, she’s got bad news. He quickly looked around the spaceport. Everything seemed okay. One of the cruisers had scaffolding around it and was clearly undergoing modifications. Drake was about to look away when he realized with a shock that it was the Kirov that was STILL undergoing modifications. Even after all the time he’d been away, they still weren’t finished modifying it? That was cause for concern.

  Lorelei’s smile may not have been as enthusiastic as usual, but her kiss when they embraced left nothing to be desired. The bad news had to wait until they finished the normal exchange of words that two emotionally-involved people engage in when they haven’t seen each other for a long time. With that out of the way, Drake took his luggage that one of the crew had carried down for him and heaved it into the open carry space of the very simple ground vehicle that Lorelei had driven to the ship in.

  As they got into the vehicle, Drake said in what he hoped was a casual voice, “I’m guessing that you have some bad news. What is it?”

  She pointed to the Kirov and said, “It’s the neutron armor. It’s interfering with the detection system AND with the ECM system. We’ve tried everything we can think of. We can’t figure a way to make those systems work on an armored ship. The collapsed matter disturbs the ether too much for the system to detect ripples further away, and the ECM system isn’t powerful enough to spoof the massive reflection of radar waves off the armor. The engineers have come to the conclusion that we’d have to strip off the armor in order to get our cruisers upgraded, and as you know, we don’t have the equipment to do that.”

  No we don’t, but the Midgard Base does, he thought to himself. He shook his head in frustration. This complication was going to delay any meaningful action by the Resistance for months. It also meant that neither Rachel’s Tigershark nor the Sorcerer could be upgraded with the new systems unless their armor was stripped off.

  “This is bad news, Lor. It’s going to really complicate things.” He proceeded to tell her about contacting the Resistance, Murphy’s fate and meeting Rachel Molitor. He finished bringing her up to speed as the vehicle pulled to a stop in front of the building where their quarters were.

  “We’ll figure something out after we go inside and…relax,” she said with a mischievous grin. Drake knew exactly what she meant. Once inside their apartment, he dropped his luggage on the floor and followed her into the bedroom. She was already stripping off her clothes. The sex was both intense and poignant. Drake had long ago realized that having sex with a stranger, regardless of how intoxicating the novelty might be, paled in comparison with making love to someone he cared about deeply. That knowledge had helped him stay celibate during those long years during the war when he and Lorelei were apart. On those few occasions when an opportunity for a casual encounter had presented itself, he found that he really wasn’t tempted at all.

  When their hunger for each other had been satisfied, and they were side by side with her head and arm resting across his chest, he stroked her naked back and began to talk about moving the colonists.

  “In order for the Midgard operation to get the most out of our breakthroughs, our tech people are going to have to spend months, maybe even years there. It doesn’t make sense for them to go and leave their families here. I think everyone’ll be happier if they take their families with them, and I’m willing to bet a lot of the basic research scientists will want to head back to Civilization as well. Regardless of how comfortable we make this colony, some people will always think of living on this planet as living in the wilderness. With the FED currency that we brought with us, Rachel will be able to start construction on a self-contained community that outwardly will appear to be a University, but will in fact continue to be the same R&D think tank that we have here. The location near the main city even has the potential for an underground network of labs and workshops. The problem is that it won’t be built overnight. In the short run, all we can send to Midgard are the propulsion team. Their families will have to wait until later to join them there. I was hoping to start sending cruisers that could be upgraded with detection and ECM gear at the Base, but if they have to strip off the armor first, that’s going to slow things down tremendously. God only knows what Majestic and the Empire will be up to during that time. Speaking of Majestic, I assume we have our own version completed by now?”

  “Yes, and to avoid confusion, I’ve decided that we’re calling our version, M2. I’ve taken precautions to make sure that M2 doesn’t get any kind of direct communication access to any personnel. In fact, we keep it shut down when we aren’t using it. We could always ask M2 what Majestic might do, you know,” said Lorelei.

  “We could, but there’s a more urgent question that I want M2 to answer.” He told her about Majestic’s prediction of the collapse of Civilization without a strong central government. “I want to know if Majestic was right or if it was feeding Trojan and the others false information.”

  After a few seconds of silence, Lorelei responded. “We should definitely ask M2, but I wouldn’t place too much credibility on its answer.”

  “Why not?”

  “If their Majestic lied to them even before they expanded it, when it was the same size as our version is now, then our M2 is just as capable of lying to us. We can’t really trust anything it tells us now. I’m almost tempted to disassemble the whole t
hing.”

  “Hmm,” said Drake, “if you feel that way, then why bother asking it at all?”

  “Because we might learn something depending on what it does say. Suppose it says that the collapse is not inevitable, or suppose it says there’s another way to prevent the collapse without going down the road to Empire. I’m not saying we should accept what it tells us without question, but I do think we can still exploit its computational capabilities if we phrase our questions intelligently and remember to take what it gives us with a large grain of salt.”

  The next day Drake and Lorelei sat down and came up with a list of questions. After turning M2 on and loading the questions, they sat back and waited for the answers. The results, when they got them, were somewhat surprising. Empire would not prevent the collapse of civilization. The solution would involve many factors. Shorter communication times made possible by the faster FTL technology would enable a central government to respond faster to new circumstances. A loose Confederation with lots of real local autonomy, backed up by a military force that was manned by volunteers from many planets, could keep the peace so long as interstellar corporations weren’t allowed to run roughshod over local concerns. The longer the Confederation remained intact, the more stable it would become. The next several decades would be the most risky because the war would be fresh in people’s minds, and old resentments would still be around. As a follow-up question, Drake asked M2 what could threaten the stability of the new confederation. The answer was an external threat of some kind. Drake relaxed when he saw that answer. Mankind had been exploring space for over five centuries and hadn’t found any sign of another intelligent race. If every colonized planet joined the Confederation, then there wouldn’t be any external threat.

  As he and Lorelei reviewed M2’s answers, she turned to him and said, “It looks to me as though M2 is answering truthfully.”.

  “I’m not ready to go that far,” said Drake. “Yes, M2 didn’t recommend an Empire strategy, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s not attempting to push its own agenda. Having said that, I have no idea what its agenda could be. I think we should ask it what Majestic is likely to be doing.” She agreed.

  M2 took its time answering that question. The answer was shocking. Majestic would expand its cadre of slaves while developing biological weapons which it would then use on any planet that contained more than 100,000 colonists. That included Earth too. Its ultimate goal would be to dominate small and widely-scattered pockets of humanity from Hadley, with the local population all controlled by implants.

  “My God!” gasped Lorelei. “We have to kill that thing as fast as possible!”

  Drake nodded. Any doubts he had about M2 having a hidden agenda were now gone. By pointing out the horrible potential of the original Majestic machine and how dangerous this kind of computational technology could become, it effectively put itself at risk of destruction, not something that Drake would have expected to see if the machine were trying to manipulate its human masters. The problem now was how could they destroy Majestic before billions of humans were exterminated? The delay in getting his fleet of cruisers upgraded was turning into a potential disaster of huge proportions.

  As Drake tried to wrap his brain around the problem of how to speed up their preparations, he heard the tone that indicated another text message was about to scroll across the large display.

  [Further analysis of possible Majestic strategies has the following high probability scenario. Majestic will implant control devices into key Earth military and civilian personnel with instructions to be on the lookout for covert anti-Empire operations. As a result of this, Majestic will learn about the Midgard shipbuilding operation. It will attempt to infiltrate and take over the operation with implanted personnel by withdrawing Empire troops from Earth, thereby letting Earth re-establish communication with Midgard Base. The use of bio-weapons to depopulate Earth will be delayed until the Midgard Base is under Majestic control. End of report.]

  “Holy Mother of God. If Majestic gets control of the Midgard Base, it’ll also get the new detection and ECM technology too,” said Drake.

  “But now that we know what Majestic might try to do, we can warn the Base to take precautions while they upgrade our cruisers,” said Lorelei.

  Drake pondered that idea for a few seconds and then shook his head. “No. That’s too risky. The only safe way to keep the technology out of Majestic’s hands is for us to do the exact opposite of what Rachel and I agreed on. Instead of moving all our people from Excalibur to Midgard, we’re going to move the Base personnel AND all their equipment here. Once we install that equipment here, we can then upgrade our own ships.”

  “What about Rachel’s two ships? They don’t have the faster hyper-drive. It’ll take them almost two years to get here, assuming they can find enough food and other consumables to last that long.”

  “I know. That’s why I’ll have to convince her to abandon both ships and have the crews join the Base personnel in coming here. We’ll find room for them on our ships.”

  “Will you be taking the fleet back there?” asked Lorelei.

  Drake was conflicted. He’d been away for months, and he very much wanted to stay. But if he was going to send all their ships to Midgard, with the possibility that Majestic’s drones might have gotten there first, then delegating command of the mission to someone else was just too risky.

  “I think I have to go. I hope you can see why.”

  She sighed. “I can see why, but I don’t have to like it. Just make damn sure you come back, and without a metal device in your neck. How long can you stay?”

  “Just long enough to get the ships and crews ready. I’d guess a couple of days.”

  It actually took almost a week, and it proved to be more difficult than Drake had imagined it would be. To his surprise, a lot of the crewmembers refused to go. They had established relationships with other colonists and settled down to other occupations and were not prepared to put that at risk. Of the eight cruisers, five converted carriers and six freighters brought to Excalibur, Drake only managed to find crews for Coral Sea and the six freighters. He could have taken two cruisers instead of four of the freighters, but he decided that the extra cargo capacity was more than worth the missile strength that was of dubious value considering the cruisers didn’t have the new detection system to make their missiles really useful. His goal was not to fight a fleet-to-fleet action, and he was determined to avoid combat if at all possible. Stocking the ships with food and other consumables also took longer than expected. Lorelei pretended to be sympathetic to his sense of urgency, but she was grateful for every extra hour with him that she could get. When it finally came time to go, they said their tender goodbyes, and she watched his seven ships lift off.

  Chapter Ten

  Day 334/2554

  Midgard Base

  Molitor stood watching with her security contingent as the two shuttles landed inside the Base. With her Tigershark in the process of having its collapsed matter armor removed, there wasn’t room inside the volcano for the Gibraltar to land at the same time. The fact that a freighter was arriving from Earth was a surprise, but not nearly as much of a surprise as the news that Empire forces had completely withdrawn from Earth. No doubt Commander Rollens, the man in charge of the Gibraltar, was equally surprised to be talking with a former Empire officer and not with Bret Murphy.

  Molitor told herself once again that she was being paranoid in having her security people here since it was unlikely that Rollens would have received instructions to arrest any ex-Empire officers who happened to be in charge of the Base. Still, her intuition was telling her to be careful, and she had learned to listen to it.

  When both shuttles had landed, their passengers started to disembark, and Molitor recognized Rollens. He smiled and waved to her as he came closer. Behind him were roughly a dozen individuals, some of whom were carrying what appeared to be luggage and two who were clearly armed. Molitor didn’t like seeing that. She att
empted to keep her expression from showing her disapproval. As Rollens approached, he offered his right hand, and after half a second hesitation, Molitor shook it.

  “Welcome to Midgard Base, Commander Rollens. I’m guessing this situation is a surprise for both of us,” said Molitor.

  “Yes, I guess it is. Where is Commander Colt? I’m curious as to why he isn’t still in charge of the Base.” Rollens’ voice was casual, and his expression was friendly. Molitor was able to see that the expressions of the people standing behind him were not so friendly.

  “Oh, he’s still managing the engineering work going on here, but in terms of the overall strategic objectives that this Base was built to achieve, that command function was assumed by Commander Murphy when we lost contact with Earth, and he delegated that authority to me before he died,” said Molitor in what she hoped was an equally casual voice.

  “I see,” said Rollens. He looked around him. “Is that your ship, Commander?” he asked pointing to the Tigershark.

  “Yes, she’s having her armor stripped off so that we can install the new detection and ECM systems that….” Molitor left the sentence unfinished as she suddenly realized that Rollens and Gibraltor might really be working for the Empire while pretending to be from Earth. She didn’t think that was likely, because she knew all of the Empire ship C.O.s and X.O.s by sight, and she had never seen Rollens before, but there was something about Rollens that was causing her intuition to set off alarm bells. “…that we were able to develop ourselves.” She hoped her explanation didn’t sound as lame to Rollens as it did to her. Rollens turned back to look her in the eye with raised eyebrows.