Rumors of Salvation (System States Rebellion Book 3) (15 page)

“Okay,”
he said slowly. “I’m convinced. After seeing this, I think I need a stiff
drink, and we definitely need to talk. If you tell your flight crew that my
boys can take the controls, we’ll be back on my ship in less than ten minutes.”
He was a little relieved when she nodded without any hesitation whatsoever. She
and Drake kept their conversation to a minimum on the way back to his ship.
Molitor guessed that Drake needed time to collect his thoughts and ponder his
next move. She did too. This just might be the most important meeting of the
whole goddamn war.

Day
276/2554

Earth

Dr.
Munenori Tanaka woke with a start at the sound of his bedroom door being torn
off its hinges. He looked in shock as black-clad, armed men stormed into the
room.

“Who
are—“ Before he could finish his sentence, two of the intruders rushed over to
his bed and flipped him onto his stomach. He was surprised at how strong they
were! “Wait! What—“ He stopped talking when he felt them effortlessly rip his
shirt off and then push his head down into the pillow.
My God, they’re
trying to suffocate me!
He tried to get free, but his arms were pinned down
as firmly as if there were elephants sitting on them. Even as his fear surged
and panic threatened to overwhelm him, a part of his mind remained calm enough
to wonder why someone wanted to kill Earth’s pre-eminent expert on infectious
diseases. The sudden excruciating pain at the back of his neck put a stop to
any further thoughts.

Nagumo
had insisted on being present when General Masterson and Admiral Chenko were
brought to the Empire Fleet Flagship’s Medical Bay for implantation. Masterson
resisted the most strenuously. Chenko seemed resigned to his fate. When the
procedures were complete and both men had recovered from the pain enough to
stand up and walk, they were led to a conference room where Nagumo was waiting.

“What
in God’s name have you done to us?” shouted Masterson, wincing when he finished
his sentence.

“The
resurging pain will continue unless you get your outrage under control,
General. This is Majestic’s way of expanding its influence. The device in each
of your necks will monitor your actions, emotions and autonomic responses. It
will also deliver instructions that it deems appropriate to whatever situation
you’re in. For example, Majestic needs to know what covert or overt anti-Empire
projects have been started since the Empire was declared. If you know of any
such projects and try to lie about it, your implants will detect the evasion
and respond accordingly. You first, General.”

Before
Masterson could ever utter a sound, he gasped in pain.

“It’s
no use, Frank. We can’t beat this. Tell ‘em about Midgard before you have a
heart attack,” said Chenko in a voice heavy with resignation.

“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 thing.”

“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.”.