Plague Wars 06: Comes the Destroyer (15 page)

Absen pressed his lips together. “Between a quarter and ninety percent. Assuming we win. If we lose…all of them, and all of us.”

“Ninety thousand men…”

“And women. All of them volunteers, all of them psych-tested and willing to use the Final Option.”

“All of them heroes, you mean,” the reporter replied, tapping notes on his tablet.

“You’re damn right, and you can print that,” Absen growled.

The onlookers turned in silence to watch out the window as the prototype’s takeoff thrusters powered up a few more percent and vectored downward. It didn’t take much in three percent gravity to lift the jumbo-jet-sized craft off the deck and send it drifting upward, outward into interplanetary space.

Lockerbie said, “Strap in, people, and we’ll tag along.” The passengers hastened to do that and she lifted nonchalantly after the A-24, using easy blasts of her chemical thrusters. The shuttle was not a high-priority enough craft to rate one of the valuable fusion engines. Soon, though, as production ramped up, they would be common, and humanity could stop relying on the cloned Memetech motors.

“Can we keep up with it?” Absen asked the pilot.

“For as long as he is just testing maneuvering thrusters, sure. If he lights the main engines…not a chance.”

“Well, let’s just watch history from a safe distance, shall we?” General Tyler spoke from the rear.

Lockerbie shook her head in amusement. “Haven’t lost a flag officer yet, sir,” she declared with a chuckle. “Besides, I’m in line to get one of those babies, and I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

“Isn’t that the woman’s line, Alan?”

“Skull.”

Rae stared at her husband’s avatar, perched there on the edge of their bed. “Okay…what’s that signify?”

Skull leaned forward, his eyes unwavering. “I have an idea for the Aardvark program.”

“But you want to run it by me before you talk to Absen? Okay.”

“No. It’s more than that. It involves you, and us to an extent.”

“Go on.”

Skull stood up and began to pace, his feet making faint sucking sounds as they pulled loose for just moments from their connection to the rest of him, the ship. “You know, I used to not give one shit about the flyboys. Well, the Marine aviators were all right, but the frickin’ zoomies…up there in the air dropping bombs while we lay in the mud getting shot up.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Rae stood up and made as if to embrace him but he pushed her gently away.

“Don’t distract me, please.”

“So what is it?” She sat back down, idly smoothing the blanket.

“I think we should tell them about engrams.”

Rae leaned back to stare. “You’re kidding. That’s a tremendously disruptive technology. Things are humming along smoothly, and you want to tell Earth’s population that we can copy minds and put them into Memetech containers?”

“So we wait until the last minute.”

“But why?”

“Because,” he rounded on her, looking for a moment like his old, anguished self, “they don’t have to die. The pilots. We could copy them and put Memetech control modules into the Aardvarks, and they would fight just as well.”

Rae’s brow furrowed in thought. “I’m not so sure. I guided you through a prolonged period of adjustment and…I…” She ground to a halt.

Skull knew why; she still could not bring herself to admit she had edited his engram. Perhaps now was the time to force the issue.

“You removed my suicidal impulses.”

Her hand flew involuntarily to her mouth before she forced it back down. “You knew?”

“I know myself. I remember how I used to feel, even if I don’t actually feel that way anymore. I’ve had six years to think about it. I figured it out.” He smiled. “I do have a lot of brainpower available.”

“I just didn’t want to fight with you, or lose you again.”

“I know. It’s all right. I forgave you long ago. But what about all the pilots?”

Rae waved her hands as if to fend off his argument. “As I was saying, it would take a lot of work by trained specialists to guide the minds through their transitions, otherwise a significant portion of them may go mad.”

Skull shrugged. “Then those that go mad we just snuff out and try again. Eventually we’ll have enough stable ones that will go fight and die for humanity.”

“That’s monstrous!”

“Why?” He looked genuinely puzzled.

“It would be creating and then destroying thousands of intelligent, sentient minds. It would be murder!”

“It’s war.” Skull raised his palms. “It’s no different from sending men into battle knowing some will die.”

“No. No, I won’t do it, but not just for that reason. Okay, I might agree with your argument to a point, but there are other considerations.”

“Such as?”

“Such as,” she stood up to pace along with him, “Earth’s politicians might think this was a solution, making these…slaves. And what happens to them afterward? Do we just have them fly ships forever?”

“Why not? The Meme would.”

“We’re not Meme! Humans don’t deliberately use people like that. Or they shouldn’t, not in cold blood.”

“We could give them a choice. Fight, fly, be turned off…if we chose the right people for engrams, they would almost all volunteer to fight. We can figure out what happens afterward.”

Rae shook her head slowly at first, then more vigorously. “No. I won’t do it. It’s too cold-blooded. Also…” She lifted her eyes to meet his. “Humanity needs heroes and martyrs. This would not be the same in the public mind.”

“Oh my God. Now who’s cold-blooded?” Skull faced her across the room.

“Dammit!” Rae raised an arm, her fingers pointed at the ceiling, one hand on her hip. “Let me tell you a story.”

To Skull this position seemed odd, until he remembered a hazy bit of history about Greek and Roman oratorical traditions. She’d assumed a position mimicking an ancient senator or teacher. “Go on,” he said.

“In the early days of Rome, every male citizen was required to serve in the legions, a tradition handed down from the Greeks. Once Rome conquered an empire, they were allowed exemptions, stand-ins, and payments to individuals to take the place of the soldier. Of course, only wealthy people could afford this, so gradually the vaunted cohorts turned from truly egalitarian institutions into something made up mostly of the lower classes. Those aristocrats with enough honor or ambition to serve used their influence to secure commissions as officers, sometimes buying them outright.”

“I’m not talking about anything like that,” Skull objected.

“Keep listening. Eventually all of the legions were made up of a majority of non-Romans. Whole units of auxiliaries from subject nations fought alongside them. The military forces always had their politics – not to mention the Roman Civil War – but now they were becoming unreliable. Do you know what the Empire began to do?”

“I’m sure you’ll tell me,” Skull replied with gentle amusement.

“They continued substituting gold for blood and steel. You might say individuals already hired mercenaries to serve in their places, but eventually the Empire began hiring whole mercenary units with uncertain loyalties.” Rae stopped there, breathing heavily, and let her hand fall, staring at it as if only now recognizing what she was doing.

“Nice speech. So you’re saying using engrams would be like hiring mercenaries? How is that different from launching missiles with computer brains?”

“Because missiles are extensions of their ships. They are not independent fighters. They are not substitutes for combatants. If we provide people with an option to stay at home and avoid risking themselves or their loved ones, they will take it. Oh,” she held up a hand again, “not the military people at first. They’ll protest and feel bad. But the decision makers, the civilians in charge, will take the easy option, and it will be
wrong
. If people give up the willingness to put their lives on the line and sacrifice for their homes, their families, their clans, their nations, and their planet, then they are already beaten. This is why the Greeks beat the Persians, why the Russians beat Napoleon, why the Vietnamese beat the Americans and why the Afghans beat the Russians.”

“Draft exemptions lost us the Nam?” Skull laughed with a bit of his old edge.

“Part and parcel of a loss of national will. Doing as you suggest will sap the will of humanity. It will cause enormous debates about what a human being is, what life and death is, what kind of rights such engrams have, and so on endlessly. It’s a recipe for disaster. It’s reason number one that no one but us knows you are alive.” Rae ended her vehement diatribe by shaking Skull’s avatar by his shoulders. “Besides, we don’t have the ability to make thousands of control pods to hold engrams.”

“All right,” he replied, taking her hands in his. “I’ll take your word for it. The Raphael part of you has a lot more experience with people and politics than I do. It seemed like a good idea.”

“Lots of good ideas have hidden downsides. Don’t stop thinking, Alan.”

Skull just shrugged.

Once disarmed, its plagues, warbots and Purelings – low-grade Meme mitoses blended with blank-minded cloned subject races – had stamped out each planet’s resistance and prepared the populace for its new role as part of the Meme Empire. Those of the race who wished to, had blended with their new subjects, taken their positions of power, and set out to organize their new slaves. With labor compelled from the lower races and the depth of technological knowhow resident in the new masters’ memory molecules, it would only be a few tens of cycles before these new worlds took their places alongside the thousands that made up the True Race’s holdings.

The third encounter had been a fight, though one that Destroyer 6223 had been destined to win. Around a Jovian gas giant a dozen shark-like ships had attacked and done some slight damage to its body using primitive physical means. Specifically, the things had bitten chunks out of its hide. The creatures had proved themselves surprisingly agile, dodging hypers time and again, ultimately succumbing only to close-range fusor blasts.

After that, they had been brought on board and put in bio-stasis chambers for future study. As Destroyer 6223 was not a scientific vessel the majority of examination would have to wait until it was able to drop off the samples on an appropriate Meme world. The ship itself, about as intelligent as an Earthly dolphin, only vaguely wondered where its enemies had come from, and why they were in space.

The crew of eighty-one Meme aboard knew, but did not care. The creatures had originated from the gas giant, obviously evolved in its atmosphere but having made the leap into space just like they believed planetary forms spread from sea to land.

One trium of Meme, an Investigator threesome combining the functions of scientists and intelligence analysts, postulated that the things had not evolved, but had been bred for war by sentients deeper beneath the masking layers of heavy gas. Their suggestion was diffidently noted and filed away as having no relevance. Meme could not live in such an environment unless they somehow blended with such creatures, and the environment was so inimical that they simply had little interest. What sensual pleasure could there be in floating within clouds of hot gas?

If and when such theoretical sentients presented a threat, they would be dealt with. Meme feared nothing living. Only the machine cultures, such as Species 447 with their enormously destructive Deathbringer-class ships, had ever truly challenged the Empire. That had made blending with the remnants of their race all the sweeter.

As with all living things, these experiences influenced the outlook of the warship and crew, therefore when the initial reports from the unnumbered scout ship in their next scheduled system reached them, their interest was minimal. In fact, the main reason they took time away from their endless mental games and expended effort at all was boredom. It had been years since the most recent battle and Destroyer 6223 Commander One found entertainment in directing and supervising, as did Two and Three, the others of the Command trium.

Below them, tria of various sorts such as Executives, Engineers, Biologists and Weaponers grudgingly examined the incomplete data that had been beamed from the Survey craft before it had lost contact. From its entry into the Humans’ system, to its examination of the old Watcher base, to its clumsy but valiant attempt to propel an asteroid to impact the resistant sentients’ world, they looked at the whole encounter.

Their examinations intensified when they found reports of the fission-fusion detonations around the asteroid and Survey craft, and the few images available of a mechanical warship much more massive than the Meme ship it had clearly destroyed. It seemed as if the trium of Pure Forms aboard had escaped immediately before its death.

From the limited evidence available they came to the only possible conclusion: this attacker was no match for Destroyer 6223.

First, the mechanical warship was less than one percent of the giant Meme ship’s size. Its acceleration was pitiful, as were the speed of its explosive missiles. Kinetic and coherent-light weapons seemed plentiful but could not possibly do enough damage to threaten Destroyer 6223. They had beaten the Survey craft only because of the gross mismatch of size.

Cautious by nature, the Investigators had provided scenarios assuming threats of eight, sixty-four, and 512 of such enemy ships at once. The last scenario presented a defeat possibility approaching fifty percent in a straight-up battle, but dropped to zero when maneuver was factored in. It would take another enemy order of magnitude to present a serious challenge to a Destroyer.

Given all available data, the likelihood of the Species 666 Humans possessing enough such large ships to be really dangerous hovered just above zero.