The Unincorporated Future (35 page)

“And please remember,” J.D. called out, “to return the Medal of Victory to that display case when you’re done. They’ve only given out the one.”

If Katy heard her mother’s last request, it wasn’t readily obvious. She was too busy running around the room, getting ready for the big showdown. J.D. then turned to the officer, switching her face back to that of the Stygian warrior. “You were saying?”

“Oh, yes,” answered Britannia, “the grav field. Marilynn suggested it. As an icebreaker of sorts.”

J.D.’s face contorted further. “Icebreaker?”

“Yes. A demonstration.”

“Of what? How to piss off her boss?”

“On the contrary: to impress you.”

“Well, she’s doing a pretty poor job of it. And how did she crack the code, anyways? It requires my
living
DNA
and
a specified pass code. As far as I know, I’m the only one who should’ve been able to turn that blasted thing on. So would you mind telling me how the hell that”—J.D. once again indicated the melee of debris—“is even happening?”

“Actually, Admiral,” answered Britannia with a slight upturned lip, “there is one other.”

J.D.’s eyes narrowed. “One other
what
?”

“One other person who knows your code.”

“Impossible.”

“Please, Admiral—” Britannia invited her to sit, which J.D. did. “Admiral, first it is vital you be briefed so that I can tell you what is on that frigate.”

J.D. looked askance at Marilynn’s emissary, instinctively reaching for her sidearm. “What’s going on here, Lieutenant? What’s happening on
my
ship?”

Britannia looked over to Katy. “No, she is not in danger. I assure you.”

J.D. didn’t bother asking how the lieutenant knew what she was thinking, but then again, there was something eerily familiar about the woman.

“It’s essential you be brought into the loop.”

“The loop about what?” demanded J.D.

“A secret,” replied Britannia. “Possibly the biggest of the last three hundred years. It propelled us to victory in Omad’s Last Raid, and has enabled Marilynn to pull off some of the ‘miracles’ she and her team have of late been associated with.”

“I’m listening.”

“Think back, Admiral, to everything you found curious either about Marilynn’s behavior or the alacrity with which she’s managed to do the seemingly impossible. Most recently, her coup at Wang’s lab in stemming the autodestruct of trillions of bits of information. The secret I speak of and ready to be viewed as a file within your console has already proved its worth in battle and may ultimately enable us to crush our enemies. Please,” insisted the young lieutenant, “read.”

J.D. regarded the woman for a long minute and then nodded her quiescence. She lifted the holo-display tablet up from the tabletop and began to read. The first few pages dealt with the early advances in VR technology and quantum mechanics—droll textbook stuff. Next, a vid of Sandra O’Toole appeared and the President suddenly began talking about avatars, a subject J.D. couldn’t care less about. Soon, however, the import of what Sandra was saying became clear. As the holo continued with demonstrable proofs, mathematical precepts, and past segments of history played out with the perspective of the avatar influence, J.D. grew intrigued, then concerned, then confused. Even with the evidence in front of her, she simply did not want to consider it—a result, she now realized, of avatarity’s successful inculcation of entire generations of humanity to ignore their very existence. Intellectually it made sense, but emotionally, it could not.
And they’re our allies,
thought J.D., shaking her head in disbelief. A small laugh escaped her lips.
Not so magical after all, are you, Marilynn?

J.D. slipped the flat panel back into the table and regarded Britannia more keenly. “Why you, Britannia? Why didn’t Marilynn tell me this herself?”

“Because Marilynn is on that frigate speeding toward Ceres, and it’s critical she makes it there.”

“Why wouldn’t she?”

“Because the information she has to deliver to the Avatar Council on Ceres is worth murdering her for.”

“Is that why she was messing with the mainframes?”

“Yes. She was covering her tracks. Anyone looking for her will have ‘just missed her.’ Anyone checking in on her quarters for random security scans will see her either working or sleeping. She’ll be occupying this ship in spirit but not in body.”

A serene silence pervaded the room, interrupted only by the play explosion sounds Katy generated as her “ships” fell from the “sky.”

“I understand,” answered J.D. “What do you need me to do?”

“Pretend as if Marilynn is here, but occupied. Don’t draw any attention to her, and if possible keep her name out of any conversations. Ideally, she’ll arrive at Ceres well before anyone’s the wiser.”

“I can do that. I’ll just need to rearrange some things.” Britannia nodded as J.D. pulled out her DijAssist.

“avatar,” called J.D.

The figure sitting in front of J.D. suddenly transformed. Though Britannia’s face remained the same, nothing else did. This person had soft, windblown, golden brown locks that fell like a waterfall over her supple shoulders down past the small of her back. Her once deep-set brown eyes were now crystalline blue and sparkled brightly. The uniform transformed into a pale blue fitted peasant dress that looked both casual yet graceful all at the same time. Her waist was secured by a kelly green rope belt matched by a wraparound wristband on her left arm—the entire picture being that of a beautiful waif or even some woodland fairy. J.D. was tempted to look on the creature’s back for a set of wings. The woman smiled impishly and accommodated the fleet admiral by turning slightly, revealing a set of soft downy plumes.

“See, Mama Bo, I told you,” said Katy, now standing proudly in the middle of her theater of war. “An angel.”

“avatar?” asked J.D. with a look of utter incredulity.

“Actually, my name is Allison.”

Offices of Fleet High Command
Ceres

Grand Admiral Joshua Sinclair was a little surprised at how easy it was to plan an assassination. He was glad that Kirk Olmstead was no longer alive, because Kirk’s hatred of Sinclair would have made the former Secretary of Security suspicious of what was happening now. For instance, the formation of a squad of assault miners for the
Rumrunner
might have seemed odd for a ship that was only on courier duty, but people were willing to accept that Joshua Sinclair knew more about everything than they did. Had anyone bothered to look closely, they may have found that the squad of forty assault miners was made up of women and men either from Mars or who still had a majority of their families on Mars. This “Martian calculation” would also hold true for the majority of the crew of the
Rumrunner.
But luckily for the conspiracy, security checks for fleet personnel were the responsibility of Fleet HQ, which meant Joshua Sinclair.

It was true that the Secretary of Intelligence could and did double-check from time to time. But Eleanor McKenzie was new to the job and was too busy mastering its ins and outs to begin poking around an area presumed to be secure. But that still left the problem of what to do about the TDCs and their ever-paranoid leader, Sergeant Holke. However, in a twist of fate, Sandra O’Toole had given Joshua the idea for removing that particular problem. Indeed, by the time Admiral Sinclair was done, the problem of what to do about the President, the Cabinet, the TDCs, and all the key staff was going to be taken care of in one fell swoop. All Sinclair had to do was finish off the touches for a party he was going to throw.

*   *   *

Sebastian was well aware of the plan the grand admiral had made and was impressed by its simplicity. All it would take was just a little help on Sebastian’s part to ensure its success, and that dangerous woman and her most ardent supporters would be eliminated as a threat. In just a little while, Sebastian would once again be called upon to save his people—even from themselves.

Martian Trauma Center
Temporary Government HQ
Burroughs
Mars

The Alliance fleet had been gone from Mars for three days, but that didn’t elicit any sense of joy from the Martian population or prevent the news on the ailing planet from getting any worse. Though the normally balmy planet had been transformed into a wintery gulag, there was very little warm clothing available and few viable manufacturing facilities left to produce them. On average, every major city had enough stored food for up to a month, but whether you could get to it or not all depended on your location and access to transportation. And that was only if rationing could be enforced. Some towns had enough food to last for years while other places had already run out. Power was another problem. The large fusion reactors were run on hydrogen—an element in short supply now that the seas had been turned into roiling cauldrons. The violent waters had destroyed most of the infrastructure, and until they were repaired, Mars would have to be run on portable fusion reactors. But the portable reactors were low-energy output by comparison and were not designed to run 24/7. Thus for the first time in centuries, a major civilization was facing brown- and blackouts.

Had it been up to Hektor, Trang would’ve been ordered to fuck Mars and destroy the Alliance while it was still open for the killing. But Trang had preempted him by issuing a fleet order of his own. The problem was after the big deal Hektor had made about not getting in the way of Gupta’s order, he was stuck with “honoring” Trang’s.

Hektor sighed as his DijAssist reminded him of his scheduled duty. He left his temporary office—which, by a morbid sense of irony, used to be Neela Harper’s—and wound his way through the dank halls until he found the well-lit conference room. Fortunately, the product everyone still had in droves was Daylight, the canisters of sprayable chemical light. He entered the foreign-smelling room and was greeted by the dour and, in some instances, fearful faces of his Cabinet. Except, of course, for Luciana Nampahc, noted Hektor with satisfaction. She was busy on some sort of conference call and had a portable data center with an active holo-display giving her multiple images concerning t.o.p.s, launch capacity, and power levels. She did not cut off her call or cancel her display until Hektor was actually seated.

Luciana did not wait to be called on. She knew her information was the most pertinent and she didn’t believe in wasting anyone’s time. “Mr. President,” she began, “we have a very good chance of evacuating the bulk of the population. And here’s how we’ll do it.” She then spent the next hour giving a detailed rundown of all the resources available and how she was going to use them, starting with the return of the surviving ships of the scattered fleet and the restoring of some main fusion plants to the towns with the lowest food and water supplies. She indicated which population centers had how many supplies and introduced a government broadcasting center to give the planet basic civil service instructions using whatever media outlets were still functioning. By the time Luciana had finished speaking, the rest of the Cabinet got on board and began addressing their department issues with more coherence if not as much detail and optimism.

“Just so we’re clear, Luciana,” said Hektor. “By the time the fleet arrives here in two weeks, we should have the bulk of the population ready to evacuate.”

Luciana nodded.

“They’ll be t.o.p.’d into orbit,” continued Luciana, “allowed to slowly freeze inside those t.o.p.s, and then placed in large packing foam blocks of a thousand persons each. Each block will have a transponder. We should have enough rudimentary industry left to manufacture the amount of packing foam needed to literally pack up our population and leave them in orbit. Hopefully enough debris will have been cleared out to make it relatively safe out there till we have enough ships and booster units to bundle a thousand of these blocks into packages of a million Martians each and send them slowly back toward Earth/Luna. If we’re lucky, we’ll have 6,000 of these mega packages, but in actuality, we’ll probably only get between 4,500 and 5,250.” With that simple calculation 750 million to 1.5 billion humans would be doomed to permanent death.

Hektor exhaled and continued. “The media,” he said, now pointedly looking at Irma, “what little we have of it, will have to carry my address to the planet and the UHF. That message will mainly be comprised of preparing both populations for the magnitude of the coming operation while simultaneously putting the only spin on this disaster that’s possible. Which is, the Alliance is evil and will stop at nothing, and the only reason they didn’t murder us all was because Trang would have made them pay—but if they figure out a way to destroy Trang, they’ll certainly murder us all, and that Mars was just a preview. But barring a major change in popular demand, the idea of peace at any price might be impossible to forestall.”

Irma bowed her head slightly. “That’s it in a nutshell, Mr. President.”

Hektor then turned toward Brenda. “The economy is fucked, and we’re essentially looking at a socialist state once the Martians arrive on Earth/Luna and start to defrost, putting a major strain on an already strained wartime economy.”