Stone dogs, p.53
Stone Dogs, page 53
And it could fight an Imperator-class cruiser, quite handily; hence the large bridge crew. Lefarge looked hungrily at the spread of trajectories on the board before him. Those Snakes were going to get a very unpleasant surprise, if push came to shove.
"Sir?" That was the Sacajawea's captain, Ibrahim Kurasaka.
"Sir?" Lefarge said in turn. He outranked the other man, but there was only one commander on a bridge. For that matter, his manning a board here was irregular, but there were times when the book didn't matter all that much.
"Ah… Brigadier Lefarge, I'm getting a damned odd pattern of visuals from that Snake pleasure-barge."
"I'll be glad to take a look," Lefarge said. An image blinked into the center of his screens, and he narrowed his eyes. Not a random pattern… Suddenly, he chuckled harshly.
"You didn't go through the national Scouts, did you, Captain?"
"No, Brigadier, I didn't," Kurasaka said. He was Javanese-Nipponese, and the Indonesian Federation had not been advanced enough for a universal youth-movement back then.
"That's an antique system; Morse, it used to be called. Probably in the datastore; let me… yes." He raised one hand with enormous effort against the drag of acceleration and began keying. After a moment: "Oh, my God."
"Marya, Marya! Ma soeur, ma petite soeur—"
For a moment she was lost, content simply to hold him.
Then she pushed herself to arm's length. There was shock in his eyes, enough that she was startled. Do I look that bad? Forty hours of stim, but still—
"Fffff—" Appalled, she stopped. The stammer she had overcome so long ago was back. Not now, not now! A medical corpsman was floating down the connecting tube behind her brother, crowding along the wall to let the squads of Intelligence types past as they headed for the quick ransacking of the Mamba that was all the available time would allow. She had an injector in her hand, and the single-mindedness that went with the winged staff that blazoned her elbow. Antistim and trank.
"NNnnnnno!" Marya stutterred, pointing. Her brother half-turned, cut off the medic's protest with an angry gesture.
"You need rest," he said. The words were banal, not the tone, and there were… yes, tears at the corners of his eyes.
Tears are for later, she thought, and felt a flat calm return. A deep breath in.
"Lüi-sten," she said slowly. "Therrre is a bbbbiological…"
CENTRAL OFFICE. ARCHONAL PALACE
ARCHONA
DOMINATION OF THE DRAKA
NOVEMBER 4, 1998
0500 HOURS
"So." Eric von Shrakenberg looked around the circle of the table. "Is that the consensus?"
Louise Gayner snorted and snapped a thumbnail against the crackle-finish of her perscomp. The others glanced sidelong at each other; the Supreme General Staff representatives, the Directors of War and Security, the Council members. No teleconferencing, not for this. A dozen human beings, and they were all those who must be consulted in this matter.
Silence. Nods. At last the head of the Staff spoke:
"Excellence, we've already lost twenty percent of our capacity to this damned comp-plague, and there'll be mo'. Must be mo'. The Stone Dogs are our only hope. If we lose that there's nothin'. There's no time. Excellence; every moment we wait is a nail in our coffin."
The Archon looked down at his fingers. They're waiting for my decision, my choice. The thought was hilarious, enough so that he did not know whether laughter or nausea would be more fitting. All my life I've wanted to set us free, he thought. free from a way of life based on death. Now my only chance of it is to inflict more death than the combined totals of every despot and warlord in the whole mad-dog slaughterhouse we call human history. My choice. Could it be Yolande's fault? Could it be anyone's fault that it had come to this, the whole of human history narrowing down to this point? Ten thousand generations, living, rearing their children, working, dreaming, going down to dust, and now… He would say the words, and they would be like a sword across all time, no matter the outcome. If there were humans at all, a generation hence, they would call this the decisive moment. The ultimate power, and in his bands.
A leader is someone who manages to keep ahead of the pack, he knew bitterly, feeling the cold carnivore eyes on him. There was exactly one practical choice he could make, within the iron framework of the Domination's logic, and the Draka were nothing if not a practical people. Or he could refuse it, and the only difference would be that he would be safely dead in twenty minutes. For a second's brief temptation he wished he could; it would spare him the consequences, at least.
No. At seventh and last, I am a von Shrakenberg, and I have my duty. Besides that, if nothing else it would give Gayner too much pleasure.
"Activate the Stone Dogs," he said; his voice had the blank dispassion of a recording. "Force Condition Eight. Service to the State."
"Glory to the Race," came the reply. There was another brief pause, as if the men and women gathered around the table were caught in the huge inertia of history, the avalanche they were about to unloose. Then they rose and left, one by one.
Gayner was the last. Eric watched her with hooded eyes as she snapped the perscomp shut; time had scored his old enemy more heavily than he, for all his extra years. Only traces of red in the gray-white hair, and there were spots on her hands.
"Happy?" he said, at last. There was a curious intimacy to a perfect hatred, like a long marriage.
"Not particularly," she replied, straightening her cravat. Their eyes met. "The Yankees… that's not personal. They're cattle." Then she smiled. "Yo', on the other hand. Ahhh, come the day, that will make me happy."
"Nice to know Ah can afford anothah human being such satisfaction," he said. There was no particular hurry now; neither of them was much involved in implementation. The snow was moving down the slope. Still glacial slow, but there was no stopping it. "Headin' fo y' bunker?"
"No." She looked up at the wall. "I've got a transsonic waitin'. I'll sit this one out in Luanda. Home." Gayner looked at him again. "But don't worry. I'll be back."
DOMINATION SPACE COMMAND PLATFORM MOURNBLADE
LOW EARTH ORBIT
NOVEMBER 4, 1998
0900 HOURS
The commander of the battle platform looked up sharply. "That's the code," he said. His second nodded, confirming. They were in the centrum of the platform, and the Chiliarch allowed himself a moment's pride; this was the newest and best of Space Command's orbital fists.
"Initiate Zebra," he said.
There was a heavy tension on the command bridge, but no confusion, no panic. This was what they had trained long years for; if any of the operators at their consoles were thinking of homes and families below, it made no difference to the cool professionalism of their teamwork.
"Preparin' fo' launch," the Weapons Officer said.
The commander touched his screen.
[Detonation sequence activated]
"What the fuck—that's not the launch protocol." There was controlled alarm in his voice. "Weapons, pull that sequence!"
Frantic activity. "Suh, it's not respondin! The central comp's not acceptin' input."
[Ten seconds]
A warning sent through Security crept into the Chiliarch's mind. "Dump the core, over to dispersed operation." A sound of protest from the Infosystems Officer; that would reduce their combat capacity by nine-tenths. "Do it, do it now."
"Initiatin'… suh, it won't respond. Null board."
"Get in there and slag the core, physically, now."
[Seven seconds]
Fingers were prying at access panels. Hands tore bunches of wire free, and sparks flickered blue.
[Five seconds]
Sections of screen were going dark. He could see globes of fire rising and flattening against the upper atmosphere, down below on Earth. Vortexes of black cloud were gathering.
[ Three seconds]
Even now there was no panic. Desperate effort… Impossible, he decided. The Chiliarch closed his eyes, called up a certain day. He was small again, and his father was lifting him…
[Two seconds]… up so high toward the tree…
[One second]… with Mother smiling, and…
[ Detonation]
WASHINGTON HOUSE DEEP SHELTER
FEDERAL CAPITAL DISTRICT
NEW YORK CITY
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
NOVEMBER 4, 1998
"This had better be worth it, compadre," Carmen Hiero said, fastening her robe. It was the early hours of the morning, and she reached grumpily for the coffee. Then she saw her aide's face, and gulped without tasting. "Something more about those broadcasts?"
"No, still just harmless modulated signals," the aide said. "But there's something else… Madam President, the chairman's gone to the Denver War Room." Thousands of feet under a mountain; she felt something clutch at her windpipe. That was where the real decisions would be made, as was right and proper; the Alliance was sovereign, not the member states. "Please, the briefing's being prepared." It was a short walk to the War Room; even after all these years, she still found the salutes a little incongruous for an elderly Sonoran lady in a housecoat.
"What's the status?" she asked, sinking into the command chair. There was a tired smell of cigarettes and stale coffee, under the artificial freshness.
"They've gone to Force Condition Eight," the general said. "Full mobilization. Evacuations in progress; nearly complete, in fact. Nothing overt, not yet; we're matching, of course. No panic…" Unspoken, the knowledge that the civil defense measures were inadequate passed between them. Yes, yes, general. I did my best. Pray that we will not see how far short of enough that is.
"And they're continuing that crazy broadcasting. The experts say the only thing it's going to affect is the homing sense of pigeons. Evidently that's in the same range, planetary magnetism or some such. And… yes, Denver says the Project people in the Sacajawea did match velocities with the Mamba."
Hiero nodded. She had always felt that name was a little ill-omened; Sacajawea had led Lewis and Clark on their expedition to the northwest. Heroic, if you looked at it from a Euro-American perspective, but even if the family did not talk about it, there were indios in the Hiero background. And from their point of view, of course— She forced her mind back to the present. Best not to think too much of the past, here and now. That way lay thinking that somehow she could have prevented this.
"They're—" He frowned. "That's odd, they're making a Priority A broadcast, from the shuttle."
She snorted. "Get me Orbital Three. Split screen, and call up the Sacajawea broadcast."
Reason fought with sick dread. It made no sense-, the balance had not changed. Von Shrakenberg was still in power over there, and still a rational man, for a Draka. They had been counting on that, on him keeping the Militants out until the Alliance was ready…
How could they have found out about the Project? she thought; that was enough to send a stab of pain from the incipient ulcer through her stomach. "Milk," she said. No. It must be more. They would know we are not ready.
"Madam President, we're having a little trouble with the link to Orbital One," the comtech said, puzzled. "The signal's odd. Here's the Project broadcast."
It was Brigadier Lefarge. She sat bolt-upright at the sight of his expression. "To all Alliance bases and personnel. To all Alliance bases and personnel. The Domination has engaged in a,"—his voice paused, as if searching for words—"an act of bio-psychological—"
She felt a sudden quietness spread from the tech's desk, rippling out. "Put them on central screen, and get Orbital One," she said. Oh, my children. "Now. Vamos."
The communications desk of the orbital battlestation came on, but there was no one behind it. Silence, then a flicker. Then the image on the screen jumped, to the command deck. A man turned to look at them, and Carmen Hiero crossed herself reflexively. There were screams, and one of the techs started vomiting on her console. The man on the screen wore the uniform of an Alliance general; there were deep nail-gouges down the side of his face, and an eye hung loose on a stalk along his cheek.
"Urrrrrrr," he said, advancing on the screen pickup. They could see the body behind him, broken and floating in the zero-G chamber. Little else; too much blood was coming from the throat. More floated around the general's mouth. "Aaaaaaaaaa." The mouth swelled enormous, and a slick grating sound came through the speakers; the sound of teeth on crystal sandwich. The general was trying to gnaw his way to the command room on Earth. Wet mouth on the screen, and the teeth were splintering now. Chewing, with shreds of tongue hanging between the jagged ends. "Ah. ah.gggggg."
Below her in the War Room the tech was screaming again, but now he was standing, tearing out handfuls of his hair. The president lifted her hands against the sight, and the fingers turned on her. They smiled, showing their fangs. Burrowed toward her face and began to feed, smiling.
Pain. That was the first thought. Then, absurdly: So this is what madness is.
She stood, floated upward, landed on feet that rooted themselves deeper than the world. That was terrible, because she must run, she must hide, the Anglo girls at Mt. Holyoke had sprinkled brown sugar over her sheets again and—
—She was walking down the corridor towards the elevators, and the wall kissed her shoulder wetly. A tech was kneeling in a corner, hands locked around her feet, shivering with a tremor that sent waves of blue into the air in time with her whimper. Hiero pulled her own hands away from her face, feeling the tendrils stretch and pulse. A man stumbled toward the tech and squatted before her. He had a fire-ax in one hand, and mass of bloody tissue in the other; the spurting wound between his legs showed what it was. He held it out to her, and Hiero wanted to weep with the numinous beauty of the motion that smelled of pomegranates.
Instead she walked into the elevator and keyed for the surface. It shot upward and inward, compressing her into a fetal curl. Bones snapped and flesh tore as it masticated her, rolling her into a ball that it spat out into the corridor. Tissue and fragments flowed together and she crawled along a carpet that moaned in pain and writhed away from her. Something grabbed her and jerked her upright. Insect-stick limbs, oval body, buzzing wings, centered in a face she knew. What is this monster doing with Roderigo's face? she thought, and felt rage seep wetly out her stomach. Words spattered around her, heavy with evil oils. She lunged forward and it ran, ran before her out onto a balcony beneath a sky that shivered and thundered.
Light blossomed, and there was a moment of total clarity as her melted eyeballs ran down her cheeks. Then—
SEABED, ANGOLAN ABYSSAL PLAIN
MALVANIS SSN-44
NOVEMBER 4, 1998
1005 HOURS
"Damned fragmentary, Captain," the Exec said. The lines scrolling up the screen were the long-wave relay from Hawaii. "What the hell does that mean?"
"The first part's an all-points from some Space Force johnny," Jackson replied, rubbing one hand across the other. She felt a little off, as if things were blurring at the edges. Christ, I can't be coming down with the flu now of all times. "The stuff after that is completely garbled. Rerun the first, the comp ought to have decoded it by now." That was Nav Command for you, nothing better to do than cryptography.
Wanda Jackson read the report over, once and then again, then turned her head to look at the Exec. Her hand reached for the controls, and she keyed the general circuit.
"Now hear this," she said. "All hands. This is the captain speaking. All hands will proceed to the nearest medicomp and take the maximum waking trank dose,immediately. Remain calm. Once you have taken the medication, report to sickbay by watches."
The Exec handed her an injector; she pressed it against her neck and felt a cool bite. A wall of glass came down between her and the world, imposing an absolute calm. That was close. The sick feeling at the edge of her vision was still there, but now she could feel it as something apart from her. The captain touched another control, this time to sickbay.
"Dr. Fuentes?" she asked.
"Si, Capitan," he answered. Dull, heavy tone. Good.
"Have your psychotropic basket of tricks ready. You understand?"
"Si."
Still with the flat lack of caring; trained reflex would take over, when motivation was gone. That would be enough, until they took the counteractants. Paranoia and schizophrenia were reasonably well understood, and you could suppress the symptoms quite readily, for a while.
It would reduce their efficiency, of course. But they could do the job. Good thing I don't care much what must be happening, she thought idly, and rose to head down the corridor.
OFF THE COAST OF NORTH ANGOLA
2,500 METERS ALTITUDE
NOVEMBER 4, 1998
1035 HOURS
"Oh, shit, oh, shit," the pilot of Louise Gayner's aircar was saying as he fought the controls.
"Pull yourself together, man," she snapped, and looked down at her wrist. 1035, November 3rd; not a day she was going to forget very soon.
Perhaps that was a little unfair, she thought, as he quieted. The aircraft was down low, no more than two thousand meters, and doing better than Mach 2; not bad, considering the turbulence since the blast front hit. That had probably been Lobito, considering their position on the coast; a medium-sized port city. Pity. Thought they'd stick to counterforce. The weather outside was turning strange, with cloud patterns she had never seen before. Nothing on the standard channels, nothing but the roaring static bred by the monstrous electromagnetic pulses that were rolling around the earth. High-altitude detonations. Her aircar was EMP hardened, of course…
Nothing but cloud above, choppy blue-gray ocean below, visually. The radar was crawling with images, higher up: hypersonic craft, decoys, suborb missiles, bits and pieces of this and that. She swallowed, and realized with a start that her throat was dry; her flask was steady as she raised it to her lips. Wine and orange juice; to hell with the doctors. Two more traces, lower down,fast. From off to the west, only a few kilometers ahead of them. Something lanced down out of the sky, a pale finger that touched one of the traces. The explosion was a bright blink against the sea; the other trace was gone away, over the horizon.
