Rumors of Salvation (System States Rebellion Book 3)

by Dietmar Wehr

  “Ah, somehow I think there’s more to that story than you’re letting on, Commander Molitor. May I call you Rachel?” Molitor nodded. “Thank you, Rachel. In any case, I’ve been tasked by both General Masterson and Admiral Chenko to assume command of this Base AND all operations resulting from it. I have a recording of that authorization in the case that my assistant is carrying. I’m sure you’d like to see it. Is there somewhere private where we can do that?”

  Molitor thought fast. “Yes, there is. My team here,” she nodded towards her security staff, “will make sure all of your people get settled in while you and your assistant follow me to the conference room.”

  “Fine. Lead the way, Rachel,” said Rollens.

  Molitor relaxed a little bit when it became clear that’s Rollens’ two armed men were not trying to follow them to the conference room. She was organizing her thoughts for her intended discussion with Rollens over her status as an ex-Empire officer as she led the three of them into the small conference room. Suddenly, Rollens grabbed her right wrist from behind and twisted her arm behind her back. With her arm on the verge of breaking, she was in too much pain to say anything as he forced her upper body to bend over the conference table so that she was lying face down.

  “I was told to be on the lookout for Tigershark and her crew. Majestic’s going to be very pleased when it learns that you and your ship have been brought back into the fold, Rachel. Now unfortunately the procedure that my assistant is getting ready is going to hurt, but you’ll survive.”

  As Molitor struggled to breath again so that she could say something, she felt the back of her uniform collar being pulled back and she realized what ‘the procedure’ referred to. She did manage to scream before the pain rendered her unconscious.

  Day 185/2555

  Midgard orbital space:

  Coral Sea

  Drake nodded as Molitor’s face appeared on the main display.

  “Nice to see you again, Rachel. How’s your neck?” he asked as casually as he could. Prior to returning to Excalibur, he and Molitor has agreed on an exchange of code words to warn each other in case one of them had been implanted. Molitor had convinced him that she believed the implant device was sophisticated enough to prevent the host from voluntarily revealing his or her compromised condition. Therefore it would not let the host say the agreed upon words, ‘my neck hurts because of the metal device in it’. Only someone who hadn’t been implanted would be able to say those words. So if Molitor answered his question with ‘my neck’s fine’ or something similar, then he’d know that she’d been compromised. If she answered correctly, she would then ask him about his neck and wait for his response. Her response surprised him.

  “No need to worry about me, Roland. There’s nothing on my neck. Here, I’ll show you.” She turned so that her back was to the video camera and pulled her collar down so that her neck was clearly visible. No metal device was visible. After a few seconds, she turned back around.

  “Satisfied? How about you? Did the demon Majestic get to you?” Her tone was light, almost playful, and Drake was struck by the jarring difference between her present light-hearted mood and the very serious attitude she’d displayed when she showed him the dead body of her former C.O. The fact that she wasn’t sticking to the script also bothered him. The struggle against the Empire was serious business, and she had left him with the impression that she understood that and could be counted on to follow the procedures they had agreed upon. He decided to respond in a similar tone. If he said that his neck hurt because of the metal device in it, her implant might realize that she’d been forced to respond the wrong way.

  “My neck’s fine too, Rachel.” He was about to tell her about the change in plans and the evacuation of the Base when a thought occurred. If it turned out she wasn’t implanted, then she’d have every right to be pissed at him. “I’ve brought a couple of thousand scientists and their families. That why I brought seven ships back. Coral Sea will land inside the Base first. Why don’t you come aboard first so we can work out the details?”

  “Wonderful! I’ve got something to show you, so I’ll bring a couple of people with me.”

  I’ll just bet you have, thought Drake. “Very good, Rachel. See you soon. Drake clear.” When he was sure the transmission was cut, he walked over to the Weapons Station. A quick inspection of the anti-boarding system’s status confirmed that the knockout gas, designed to prevent the unauthorized boarding of the ship, was available. Activating the intercom, Drake said, “Attention, crew. I believe that the Midgard Base has been compromised. This is what we’re going to do.”

  Molitor walked back and forth as the Coral Sea gently descended into the volcano. The ship, that had been undergoing modifications, had been moved to make room. She looked behind her at the now implanted security contingent that was ready to take control of Drake and his ship. She looked over to the side where Rollens was standing. So far, his presence was unknown to Drake. She hoped that Drake had interpreted her responses correctly. It had taken all her concentration to walk that fine line between giving him a warning response and not alerting her implant that she wasn’t being co-operative. She seemed to have pulled that off, but was dismayed that Drake was bringing his ship down instead of following his own planned response of heading back to Excalibur. If Rollens succeeded in taking control of Drake and his ships, then Majestic would learn where Excalibur was and could use the faster ships to send troops there and take over the Brain Trust too. That would end all hope of saving the Human Race from eons of slavery and mass death. Somehow she had to come up with some way to save Drake from his own folly, but she couldn’t think of anything!

  When the ship finally touched down and the boarding ramp started to descend, she felt that familiar pressure in her head that told her that the implant wanted her to act.

  “Get moving, Rachel!” yelled Rollens. Sighing, she stepped forward. Her security contingent followed. With the ramp now down, she walked up to the main hatch that was sliding open. To her surprise, Drake wasn’t standing in the opening. Neither was anyone else for that matter. That was unusual. As she stepped into the ship, she heard Drake’s voice over the intercom.

  “I’m in the main conference room on deck three, Rachel.” Drake watched her team’s progress via internal video from his station on the Bridge. As soon as she and her three companions entered the elevator and the doors had closed, he nodded to his Weapons Officer and put on his oxygen mask. By the time the elevator stopped at deck three, not only were all of its occupants unconscious on the floor, but knockout gas was also pouring out of the open hatch into the base of the volcano. Drake didn’t know if the ship had enough gas to subdue everyone on the Base, but the knockout gas was heavier than air and would settle into the lowest levels of the Base. If they couldn’t incapacitate everyone, they could at least take out most of the Base personnel. When they had used up all their knockout gas, they vented it clear of the ship, closed the main hatch and checked Molitor and her entourage.

  Fifteen minutes later, Molitor and her three companions were securely strapped down to tables in the Medical Bay. Careful physical examination of their necks showed that each was implanted with a device that had been surgically placed below the skin so that a cursory examination of the neck would not show anything unusual. It was time to test the new method for freeing the host from the device’s control. While Drake was making contact with the Resistance, Lorelei had asked M2 how an implanted device could be removed or deactivated without killing the host. M2 had obligingly come up with a design for a machine that would generate a very high intensity but also localized electro-magnetic pulse that would overload and melt any electronic circuitry within a radius of a meter or less. A prototype of that design had been built by the time Drake came back, and he had taken it with him for use in exactly this kind of scenario. His Chief Medical Officer wanted to try it on Molitor first, but Drake said no. They would try it out on one of her companions.

  The test was succe
ssful from the point of view that the body didn’t seem to suffer any adverse reactions from either the pulse machine or the implanted device, however until the subject woke up from the knockout gas, there was no way to know if the brain had suffered any damage. While they waited for the test subject to wake up, Drake checked with the Bridge concerning the situation outside the ship. As far as the ship’s external video cameras could tell, there was no movement at all in the Base. If there was anyone still unaffected by the knockout gas, they were staying well hidden. After a few minutes of breathing pure oxygen, the test subject woke up and immediately declared that he was free from the implant’s control. Drake told the medical personnel to use the pulse machine on Molitor next. It wasn’t long before she woke up and said she was free too. The final confirmation of that fact was when she insisted that her implant be removed using local anesthetics. The removal procedure, also designed by M2, proved to be a complete success with minimal internal bleeding. Molitor would have to stay immobile for a couple of days to let the wound heal, but she was awake and mentally alert. She told Drake what had happened. Everyone on the Base had been implanted by the time his ship arrived. He then told her about M2’s warning and the pulse machine. He also told her about the plan to completely evacuate the Base, including all personnel and all equipment. There wouldn’t be time to upgrade Sorcerer’s and Tigershark’s hyper-drives, so those ships would have to be abandoned and either disabled or destroyed to prevent them from being used by the Empire. Moiltor’s obvious sorrow at losing her ship quickly disappeared when Drake told her that she’d be getting another command when they got back to Excalibur.

  The task of searching the Base for the rest of the personnel proved to be time consuming. With no way to vent all the air in the bottom of the volcano, the knockout gas continued to permeate the Base. Drake’s people had to wear breathing gear as they searched every nook, cranny, room, corridor, etc. Eventually all the base personnel were found and accounted for. It took even longer to disable their implants. Removal of all 221 implants would have to wait until later.

  When Rollens woke up and realized he was no longer controlled by the device in his neck, he revealed some disturbing information. The ship that had brought him to Midgard had taken back the technical information on the detection and ECM systems. That information, along with the existence and location of the Base and the mining operation on the moon, would soon be on their way back to Majestic. Majestic would also learn that the Brain Trust was somewhere in the Murisaki Cluster, although none of the Base personnel knew exactly where. Drake had been careful to see to that. He also revealed that the withdrawal of Empire forces from Earth had included the transfer of several hundred experts in the biological sciences from Earth to Hadley. That fit in perfectly with M2’s prediction that Majestic was going to develop and deploy biological weapons of mass destruction.

  With all Base personnel now free from implant control, the evacuation of all the equipment began, hampered by the residual presence of enough knockout gas to be a concern. Eventually, natural convection of air currents would dilute the gas to the point where it was harmless, but that would take months. In the meantime, the disassembly teams had to wear breathing gear while they worked. It took almost 10 days to get everything stowed inside the fleet’s cargo holds. When the bottom of the volcano was as bare as they had originally found it, and the fleet was accelerating away from Midgard’s moon after picking up the mining equipment, Drake felt he could finally relax. They had finally pulled it off, and Rachel was now up and around as well. He tried not to dwell on the fact that the Empire would soon have the ability to detect ships at long ranges. Even the new ECM systems couldn’t prevent a ship from being detected via ripples in the Ether. At least the Empire hadn’t gotten their hands on the new x-ray laser turret technology. What did concern him now was the delay in getting the shipyard set up on Excalibur. The trip back would take months, and when the equipment was operational, it would take more months to strip the armor off his cruisers and upgrade them with the breakthrough technologies. What could Majestic accomplish during that time? He was afraid to think of the possibilities.

  Day 302/2555

  Director of Shipbuilding Operations Sanders stepped off the small transport ship and was greeted by his inner circle of assistants and managers. Normally they would be glad to see him, but not this time. He could tell from their expressions that they had now all been implanted while he had been on Hadley. Majestic was not wasting any time in consolidating its control of the industrial operations on Makassar. Sanders wondered if Emperor Jonn was even alive now that Majestic no longer needed him to carry out its directives.

  “Welcome back to Makassar, Boss,” said one of his managers. “What was so important that you had to get the word straight from the horse’s…ah, demon’s mouth?”

  Sanders waited to see if the implant would punish the manager for calling Majestic by a disparaging name, but nothing happened. The lack of concern over what its minions called Majestic apparently wasn’t important enough to the machine to bother with. Are we now that unimportant? He wondered.

  “The, ah, horse wants us to build a very special ship. It’s going to be bigger than anything we’ve tried to build before. One thousand meters diameter.” The shocked look on their faces was probably the same look that he’d had on his face when Majestic had informed him.

  “Please tell us you’re joking, Boss,” said the manager who had called Majestic a demon.

  Sanders shook his head. “Afraid not. It’s going to be big with lots of cargo space, and I mean LOTS. No armor, so we won’t have to worry about that. There’ll also be a new kind of detection system and a new kind of electronic countermeasures system. Don’t ask me where that came from. Majestic wouldn’t tell me, and I didn’t feel the urge to ask. Here’s the bad news. It has to be ready in 34 weeks.” He closed his eyes as he listened to the shouted declarations that the deadline was impossible to meet. He had tried to explain to Majestic that based on past experience, a ship that big would take at least a year to build. The momentary surge of pain from his implant reinforced Majestic’s reply that failure to meet the deadline would not be tolerated.

  When the group was finished explaining why the deadline was impossible, he opened his eyes and said, “Majestic made it very clear that it will make us all very sorry if we don’t achieve that deadline. I don’t think I need to go into details about what that means. Here are the specs for the ship.” He took out a small memory block capable of holding terrabytes of data and flipped it to his Deputy Director. “We don’t have any time to waste. Let’s get started.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Day 357/2555

  Excalibur

  Drake threw down the data tablet in frustration. The latest progress report on preparations for the upcoming military campaign was still talking about delays and more delays. Striping the armor off the hulls of the cruisers was taking far longer than anticipated. M2’s technical analysis was now projecting that it would be faster to add turrets containing the new laser technology to the converted freighter/carriers than it would be to get the cruisers to the same level of capability. What complicated the issue even further was that progress on developing a practical superluminal photon laser weapon was proceeding so quickly that if they waited a few weeks longer, they could install the far more deadly superluminal lasers instead of the x-ray lasers on the carriers. However, even a few more weeks delay could mean the difference between preventing the deaths of billions of humans or arriving too late.

  The combat simulations between various types and quantities of Resistance forces versus Empire forces of differing capabilities only muddied the waters. If Empire ships didn’t have the Ether detection system installed, then even the modified freighter/carriers with x-ray laser batteries could take them on and beat them. But if Majestic did what M2 predicted it would do and not only gave its fleet the new detection system but also miniaturized it small enough to fit into missiles, then Resistance forces
armed only with x-ray lasers could potentially face annihilation depending on the number of ships on either side. Superluminal lasers were the only factor that could tip the odds in their favor regardless of what upgrades the Empire ships had. But for them to get the most use out of the superluminal technology, there had to be at least three ships data-linked so that their detection systems could triangulate enemy ships’ locations precisely enough that the superluminal lasers could aim and hit them at very long ranges. The more data-linked ships there were working together, the farther the lasers could shoot accurately.

  Drake needed to get a second opinion on the situation, and he called Molitor. She quickly responded to his invitation to come to his office. After getting settled and exchanging the usual pleasantries, Drake got down to business.

  “I’ve just read the latest progress report on the shipyard activities. It’s not good. Here’s the situation we face now. Removing the armor from our cruisers is proving to be so difficult that we might be ready faster if we switch to arming our carriers instead. The question is with what? As you know from your work with the tactical simulations, five carriers armed only with x-ray lasers might end up being overwhelmed if they run into Empire ships that also have Ether detection systems and missiles equipped with Ether homing systems. Even if there wasn’t the delay in getting the armor off, our eight cruisers would have only a marginally better chance of winning that kind of engagement. The only real tech breakthrough we have that can tip the tactical scales in our favor is the superluminal laser, but even the most optimistic time estimates will delay having all five carriers armed by another five to six weeks on top of all the other delays. Since you’re going to be my Field Commander for this campaign, I want your input with regards to this question. Do we send you out with x-ray lasers only or wait until we can field the superluminals, even if that means that Majestic will have more time to execute its extermination agenda?”