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

It
was almost ten minutes later when he walked into the, in his opinion,
ridiculously high-ceilinged room that Trojan used as his office. Romanov had been
inside cathedrals with lower ceilings. Trojan met him with his usual friendly
greeting, a handshake and a clasp of his shoulder. With the greeting over, Trojan
stepped back and looked at him with a critical expression.

“Damn,
Ivan, is it my imagination or are you looking older than the last time I saw
you?”

Romanov
wanted to say that fighting a war for almost two decades was bound to make
anyone look older, in spite of the anti-aging drugs that were widely available,
but he kept his comments to himself. He smiled and nodded instead. He firmly
resisted the impulse to point out that the Emperor himself no longer looked the
way he had back in ’39. There was a limit to what his friendship with Trojan
would tolerate.

“Well,
never mind that. Come over here and let’s both of us get comfortable while we
talk. Tell the bar robot what you want to drink, and order a melon brandy for
me. I’ve acquired a taste for that locally produced liquor, especially when
it’s been aged a decent amount. Come to think of it, order two local tobacco
cigars too. Smoking those things is another habit I’ve picked up since you were
here last. I don’t know why it took me so long to start, considering how many
years I’ve lived on this planet.” By the time Trojan was finished talking, both
men were seated in very comfortable chairs and the bar robot was hovering
nearby.

With
the drinks in hand and the cigars lit, Trojan began the conversation. “I know
you’ve been in the field a lot these past few years, and as far as I’m
concerned, nobody could have done a better job. Unfortunately, Majestic’s
calculations show that we’re falling behind the probability curve. Even though
the Empire’s growing, the rate of growth has slowed significantly, and that
means that the risk of an uncontrollable uprising is growing. The key is Earth.
As long as it remains unconquered, the Empire’s not safe. I know you don’t
think we’re strong enough to take it without using nukes, but time is not on
our side. Earth’s population is sufficiently large that they can recruit and
train troops faster than we can transport them from other planets. We’re going
to have to support what troops we can muster with orbital bombardment.” He
paused for effect before continuing. “And that includes using nukes if that’s
what it takes. We’ve come too far and invested too much time, effort and sweat
to let it all collapse now, Ivan. I hope you can see the necessity of doing
whatever it takes to bring Earth into the Empire.”

Romanov
kept his face passive. The moment he’d been dreading for years was finally
here. He’d compromised his principles and his honor to avoid a future where
Human Civilization would be blasted back to the edge of oblivion, and here his
Emperor was telling him that he might have to order nuclear weapons used on the
billions of people inhabiting humanity’s home world. And not just humanity’s
home world. Earth used to be his home too. He doubted he would ever again be
able to walk the streets of Earth without bodyguards.

After
taking a puff of his cigar and a sip from his drink to give him time to
organize his thoughts, he said, “If the invasion looks like it’s going to fail,
I’ll authorize the minimum level of bombardment that I think will accomplish
the mission. After all, what good is having a home world that’s suffering
through a nuclear winter?”

That
wasn’t the unconditional commitment that Trojan was looking for, but he
understood that his favorite Admiral could only be pushed so far, and Trojan
wasn’t prepared to replace him at this point.

“I
trust your judgement. You’ve never failed me, and I know you won’t fail me this
time either. Majestic has the orders ready to bring our ships and troops to a
state of readiness. That will take several months. You’ll be able to stay here
on Hadley during that time, and we’ll have plenty of opportunities to talk
again before you lead the attack on Earth. Okay, enough talk about death and
destruction. Let’s talk about something else.”

Romanov
relaxed as they chatted about the kinds of things that male friends chat about.
How much longer their friendship would remain was a question that he didn’t
want to think about just now.

Day
246/2552

Hadley

Senior
Lieutenant Evanka Nolan’s aircar gently settled to the ground at the prescribed
landing site near the entrance to the Majestic Complex. As she got out, she
looked around. This was her first time at the MC and she found the surrounding
landscape eerily desolate. There was a steady wind blowing sand and Hadley’s
equivalent of tumbleweed across her field of vision. Looking over at the
entrance to the impressive pyramid structure where Majestic was housed, she saw
two armed guards watching her carefully. She hoped her brother had gotten her
message about visiting him and had notified the guards that she was not a
security threat.

By
the time she reached the entrance, her brother was standing there reassuring
the guards that she had permission to enter. After a quick hug and a few words
of greeting, he led her through the round opening. They chatted about family
and the war as they made their way down the very long escalator and through
another round opening. Seconds later, they entered a room where the far wall
was a large view screen. It was showing a continuously changing pattern of
colors against a pleasing blue-green background.

“Evanka,
meet Majestic!” said her brother enthusiastically. She looked at his face and
saw what could only be described as joy bordering on ecstasy. She had heard
rumors that the support staff at the MC had begun to idolize Majestic, but she
had always considered those rumors to be gross exaggerations. Now she wasn’t so
sure.

“Welcome
to the Complex, Senior Lieutenant Nolan.” The deep voice coming from all around
her had a strangely soothing quality to it.

“Is
that the machine talking?” she asked her brother who nodded.

“Yes,
you are hearing the voice of Majestic,” said the voice. “Communicating in this
way is slow and inefficient. There is a much better way. Your brother will show
you.”

As
her brother turned so that his back was to her, she heard him say, “Pull my
collar down a bit and you’ll see an implant device just below my hairline.”

She
did as he instructed and saw a silvery, round metal device that had very tiny
lights blinking on and off. She found it more than a little disturbing.

“Wouldn’t
a transceiver in the ear do the trick?” she asked her brother.

“God
no!” he said quickly. “A transceiver would still require listening to words.
This implant connects directly to my brain. Majestic and I have a link that
doesn’t rely on the spoken word. It’s much faster, and I get a pleasant buzz
from it too. I’ve never been so happy!  You can experience this happiness too,
Evanka. The procedure is quick, with minimal pain.”

“I,
ah, don’t think I want to do that,” she said slowly. Her brother spun around so
quickly it startled her. He grabbed her left arm, and before she could ask him
what he was doing, she felt someone else grab her right arm. Both grips were
surprisingly strong.

“Don’t
resist. It’ll hurt less that way,” said her brother in an apologetic tone. As
both men dragged her away she heard Majestic’s voice again.

“Majestic
has instructions for you to obey when your ship is in orbit around Earth, and
you will obey Majestic. Eventually all humans will obey Majestic.”

Evanka’s
anger turned to horror as she noticed her brother’s expression. His eyes were
wide open, and he was smiling. He was looking directly at her and clearly must
have seen her distress, but instead of helping her, he was smiling! She tried
to free her arms, but both grips were too strong, more like metal clamps than
human hands. She felt herself being lifted off her feet as easily as if she
were a rag doll. She called to her brother for help, but his expression didn’t
change. He was looking at her, but something inside her said he wasn’t seeing
her and maybe wasn’t hearing her either. As they carried her down a long
corridor, her calls to her brother eventually become one long scream.

Day
298/2552

Earth
orbitals:

Chenko
walked quickly into the Defense Center Operations room. The holographic display
in the center of the room was showing the tactical situation around Earth for a
radius of twenty light seconds. From his vantage point on the upper level, he
was able to tell that the large deep space radars orbiting Earth had picked up
ten ships emerging from hyper-space. They were roughly a quarter of a million
kilometers beyond Earth’s hyper-zone, travelling at a modest 89 kilometers per
second.

“How
long have they been there?” he asked the Duty Officer who was now standing
beside him.

“They
arrived just over eight minutes ago, Admiral. No transmissions of any kind, and
they’re not answering our challenges.”

“Those
have to be Trojan’s ships. The SSU was crushed months ago. We know that Trojan
has radar-invisible ships. Have the opsats spotted anything?” asked Chenko.

“No,
sir, nothing so far.”

Chenko
wanted to curse, but held his peace. It would be bad for morale for the staff
to see the Navy Chief of Staff lose his cool. Clearly those ten ships were not
radar-invisible, and he doubted if Trojan would send them here where they’d be
vulnerable to Earth’s network of x-ray laser satellites similar to the ones
defending Makassar and Hadley. Those stealthy ships had to be somewhere within
the volume of space shown on the display, he was sure of that, but so far the
optical sensor satellites hadn’t noticed any unusual optical anomalies.

“Have
all our orbiting stations been put on alert?” he asked the D.O..

“Yes,
Admiral.”

“Good.
Now order them to evacuate those stations immediately. If Emperor Trojan is
sending ten ships, then it’s not a social call, and I don’t think he’s going to
waste time trying to capture those stations intact. If I were in his shoes, I’d
have ordered my fleet commander to destroy those stations, so we’re not going
to take any chances. Get those people down on the ground now, Commander.” The
D.O. hurried off to execute his orders.

Chenko
activated the in-house com device he’d been given when he entered the facility.
“This is Admiral Chenko. I want the tactical display to show our optical sats
and our defense sats.” The display immediately showed dozens of moving dots.
Chenko knew that the green dots were the optical satellites and the yellow dots
were the x-ray laser satellites. The opsats were in a relatively low orbit where
they could circle the Earth quickly while they looked up to try to detect
objects passing in front of background sources of light like the sun, moon,
planets or distant stars. The x-ray sats were further out to minimize the
impact on the ground when they exploded. If Trojan’s stealthy ships really were
within 20 light seconds of Earth, the opsats weren’t seeing them. Looking for a
dark object against a mostly dark background was pretty difficult. If, on the
other hand, the opsats were moved into higher orbits and looked down instead of
up, they would have a better chance of spotting a dark object against Earth’s
lighter background. The question was how high was high enough and how high was
too high. If he moved them to the edge of the hyper-zone, the gaps in coverage
between one opsat and the next would be huge, and Trojan’s ships might slip in
between them. If the opsats were moved halfway, the gaps would be much smaller,
but there was no guarantee that Trojan’s ships would be at a lower altitude. It
was the kind of decision that military strategists dreaded. If he guessed
wrong, every living human being on the planet might pay the price, and if he
did nothing, they might still pay that same price. Chenko made his decision.

“This
is Chenko. Move our opsats to three hundred thousand klicks altitude asap, and
re-orient their sensors to look down while they’re ascending.” Almost
immediately the green dots started flashing to show that they were maneuvering.
Chenko hoped his roll of the dice would pay off. Most of Earth’s orbiting space
stations were at lower altitudes, and if Trojan’s warships were maneuvering to
attack them, they might drop that far down before firing. If the opsats still
didn’t see anything at 300K kilometers, he could always move them even higher.

1st
Empire Fleet Flagship Conqueror:

Romanov
paced from one side of the spacious Bridge to the other and back again. His
squadron of five stealth cruisers were carefully maneuvering closer to Earth in
order to maximize the accuracy of his point defense lasers as they attempted to
pick off the 55 x-ray laser satellites that were Earth’s primary defensive
assets. Once those lasersats were destroyed, he could order his ten troop
transports to move down while his cruisers fired missiles with tactical nukes
at selected military targets such as troop concentrations, ground-based missile
batteries, etc. All that would take time, and getting his cruisers into the
right orbital position to take out the lasersats had to be done very carefully.
As seen from a position over the North Pole, the lasersats orbited
counter-clockwise. His cruisers would orbit in a clockwise direction and use
optical sensors to pick up the lasersats’ silhouette against Earth’s lighter
background. Once each of the defense satellites’ positions were known with
precision, his ships’ laser turrets could disable them all within a few
seconds.

He
checked Conqueror’s status on the main display sidebar. Altitude was just over
350,000 kilometers and dropping. That meant that it would be another 44 minutes
before they reached their target altitude. He was just about to call the
Officers Mess and order coffee brought to the Bridge when the main display
switched to tactical mode and pinged for attention. All five of his cruisers
were launching missiles!

“Who
ordered a missile launch?” he yelled out as he turned to look at Senior
Lieutenant Nolan, his Weapons Officer. Her anguished expression caught him off
guard. Instead of replying, she pulled out a pistol from inside her uniform
jacket. Romanov had just enough time to wonder why she was carrying a weapon
while on duty on the Bridge contrary to regulations when he saw her point the
pistol at her weapons console and fire several times. The swarm of tiny,
tungsten darts fired at high velocity penetrated the console and turned it into
useless scrap. As he opened his mouth to ask her what the hell she was doing,
she shifted her aim until her pistol was pointed at the Communications Station.
The Com Officer, who had turned just in time to see her destroy her Weapons
Station console, leapt up from his chair as she fired again. Some of the darts
hit his right shoulder and spun him around. The rest hit his Com Station
console with predictable results.

By
now Romanov was no longer trying to ask questions. He had made up his mind to
physically stop her from doing anything else, but just as he started to move
toward her, she swung her pistol around to aim at him. Instead of focusing on
the pistol, he stared at her face. If he didn’t know better, he’d have said
that she was in extreme pain based on her facial contortions, and if she was
feeling pain, it seemed to be getting worse. She hesitated for a fraction of a
second, then closed her eyes. Romanov, who was less than a meter away by now,
was certain that she was going to fire. He must have had tunnel vision, because
the body of one of the other Bridge personnel seemed to come out of nowhere,
knocking her arm aside just as she pulled the trigger. Romanov felt a sting in
his right arm from one of the darts as it hit a glancing blow. The other darts
missed him. Before she had a chance to re-aim, he was close enough to block her
aim and use his momentum to knock her down. By this time, two other Bridge
personnel had also reached her and were trying to subdue her. He marvelled at
the fact that even with three men attempting to hold down her arms, she was
still making it difficult. Where did she get that kind of strength, he
wondered. When it was clear that she no longer held the pistol and was finally
subdued, Romanov got to his feet and looked back at the tactical display. While
he and his people had been focused on Nolan, his ships, including Conqueror,
had continued to fire multiple missile barrages. The missiles of the first
barrage were almost a quarter of the way to Earth by now.

“WHAT
THE HELL HAVE YOU DONE?” he yelled. “Order—” he stopped in mid-sentence. He’d
been in the process of telling his staff to order the other cruisers to stop
firing missiles and to auto-destruct those already fired when he realized that
he now had no way of contacting the other four ships. A glance at the smoking
Weapons Station console told him that there was no chance of stopping
Conqueror’s missiles. Even his ship’s anti-missile laser turrets were no longer
controllable from the Bridge.

He
heard sobbing and looked back at Nolan. She was no longer struggling and was
now crying with her face turned away from him as much as she could. He squatted
down, grabbed the front of her uniform and shook her to get her attention.

When
she turned to look at him, he asked, “WHY DID YOU DO THAT?”

“Had
to…follow orders…too much pain to resist!” she said in between gasps for air.
Romanov shook his head. Pain? Orders? Her answer made no sense.

“What
pain? Whose orders? Answer me, dammit!”

“Majestic’s
orders. Implant back of neck.” She turned away from him again, and Romanov
noticed something metallic at the back of her neck. Pulling her shoulder so
that she was almost face down, he jerked aside the collar of her uniform. Her
hair wasn’t long enough to hide the round metal device with the tiny flashing
lights. There was also blood seeping out from under the device. It had to be
the direct communication device that Majestic’s support staff had begun
wearing. Clearly it was capable of being programmed to compel specific actions
by an individual even if that individual didn’t want to co-operate. His rage at
Nolan turned to sympathy. She had clearly tried to resist Majestic’s
instructions, but couldn’t.

Turning
her back around so that she could see him again, he said in a calmer voice,
“What exactly were Majestic’s orders, Lieutenant?”

“Program
multiple missile launch by all ships. First wave armed with tactical nukes as
per your order, but the follow-on waves were loaded with high yield warheads.
All missiles were targeted on major cities. Oh God, I tried to resist!”

The
full horror of what was about to happen now descended on Romanov’s awareness.
His stomach threatened to heave, and he fought to keep it down. Hundreds of
missiles carrying high-yield fusion warheads were about to devastate Earth.
Billions would die instantly from the blasts themselves, and billions more
would die within the following days, weeks and months as the millions of tons
of dust blasted up into the upper atmosphere blocked out most of the sunlight
and heat, triggering a massive plunge in temperature. The resulting nuclear
winter would wipe out all plant and animal life. If people weren’t killed by
the radiation from the fallout, they would eventually starve to death. He
looked up at the two men who were holding onto her wrists.

“Keep
her where she is until we can get some security people up here with
restraints.” He didn’t think she would cause any more trouble now, but in light
of her unusual strength, he didn’t want to take any chances. He looked over at
the Com Officer who was sitting up while trying to stop the bleeding from his
wound.

“Lieutenant
Ryan!” The Astrogator jumped forward.

“Sir?”

“Help
Sanchez get to the Medical Bay, and as soon as you pass a working intercom
unit, order Security Personnel to the Bridge.” With his order acknowledged and
the wounded officer on his way, Romanov got up and walked back over to the main
display. The first wave of missiles was only seconds from entering Earth’s
atmosphere.

Romanov
shook his head in despair as he examined the perfection of Majestic’s plan.
Those missiles were all designed to evade radar detection, just like his
cruisers. Earth’s orbiting radars couldn’t see them, and therefore the x-ray
lasersats couldn’t fire at them. Planetary Defense didn’t even know those
missiles were on their way, and he had no way to warn them! His other cruisers
had followed digital instructions from the flagship as they normally would,
under the assumption that he had ordered the attack and that his Weapons
Officer was carrying out his orders. Majestic had thought of everything.

Planetary
Defense Ops:

Chenko
jerked in surprise at the double ping emitted by the tactical display. A double
ping meant that missiles had been detected! He looked down at the display just
in time to see it zoom in to a much smaller scale. Instead of 20 light seconds,
it was now showing everything within one light second. A red triangle was
indicating the position of a newly detected ship, with multiple flashing red
dots representing missiles. Chenko felt a shiver go up his spin as he figured
out where the missiles were going. The optical sensor satellites had seen them
and could track them enough to figure that out, but with the distances
involved, optical data wasn’t nearly accurate enough for the lasersats to have
much chance of hitting them. That didn’t matter though. They had to try.