Read Mindscape: Book 2 of the New Frontiers Series Online
Authors: Jasper T. Scott
Mindscape: Book 2 of the New Frontiers Series (15 page)
“You seem to have everything figured out,” Stone replied. “What happens next? You’re a fugitive and we’re along for the ride. Were you planning to run away into deep space forever? The Alliance will catch you eventually.”
“We’re currently over 50,000 klicks from the nearest Alliance ships and moving away from them at better than seven kilometers per second. That gives us a comfortable lead if they decide to chase us.”
“We’re not as fast as destroyers,” Bishop pointed out. “That means that this
will
come to a fight. Are you prepared to kill innocent officers who are just following their orders?”
“No, I’m not, but correct me if I’m wrong—haven’t those ships already been refitted? That means the only crew aboard are the bridge crew, safely hidden away in the midsection of each ship. So we aim for their engines and leave them drifting. Even if we miss, we’re not likely to hurt anyone.”
“Who’s
we
?” Bishop asked.
Alexander smiled. “A Freudian slip. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to do this on my own. I’m going to keep you all out of it for as long as I can, but if and when it comes to it, who’s with me?”
Chapter 28
B
en was hiding under Alexander’s desk, bored out of his mind, waiting for new orders. Long minutes passed, and Ben found himself growing curious about the situation on board the
Adamantine.
Who was the traitor?
Maybe Alex still doesn’t know. He’ll be happy if I can find out…
Problem was, everyone on board was currently immersed in a private virtual world, a mindscape of the ship. The only way he’d be able to interact with them was if he could join that mindscape himself. Of course, if he did that, people would recognize he didn’t belong. He would have to assume the appearance of one of the ship’s actual crew. But then if someone noticed the clone, he’d be discovered.
No, better yet, he could infiltrate the Mindscape as an observer… maybe even an
omniscient
observer. It would take some clever hacking to pull that off, but Ben was confident he could do it given enough time—something he seemed to have plenty of at the moment. He’d learned a lot about the
Adamantine
while scouring the ship’s databanks. That included the code behind the ship’s mindscape.
Without coming out of his hiding place Ben made a remote connection to the data terminal in Alexander’s office. As he set to work, he thought about running his idea past Alexander first. He imagined the look of shock, then admiration on his friend’s face, and a sense of whimsy took over. He would surprise Alexander once he learned who the traitor was.
Humans like surprises.
* * *
“I’m with you,” McAdams said. She raised her hand for the rest of the crew to see.
Alexander smiled and nodded his appreciation.
“For the record, I think you’re a crazy bastard who’s going to get us all killed,” she added. “But you’re our crazy bastard, and at least this way we can die with a clean conscience.”
“Anyone else?” Alexander asked.
Lieutenant Stone sighed. “I’m in.”
Bishop shook his head. “May as well. We’re along for the ride, anyway. You’ll need someone at the helm. Might as well be someone who knows what they’re doing.”
Cardinal raised his hand next. “And someone who can shoot halfway straight. Always knew I’d go down in a blaze of glory. Pity the history books won’t see it that way.”
“Hey, what’s with all the negativity? We’re not going to die. Or be captured and convicted. Maybe I forgot to mention the other part of my plan. The League is planning to use this scandal to separate. We just have to hold out until then and we can ask them for political asylum.”
“Assuming they do manage to separate,” Lieutenant Frost put in from sensors.
“Given everything that’s happened, I think that’s a fair bet,” Alexander replied.
“All right, I’m in,” Frost said.
Alexander eyed the remaining two officers not yet spoken for—Comm Officer Hayes and Chief Engineer Rodriguez.
“Anyone else?”
Rodriguez glanced around, noting the solidarity among the crew, but clearly hesitating to join them. Hayes spoke first, “You don’t really need me to pull this off, sir. If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to stay on the fence.”
Alexander nodded. “That’s fine, Hayes. Rodriguez—are you planning to join Switzerland?”
A dark look flickered across her face. “No, sir. I’m with you.”
Are you really?
Something about the way she said it made Alexander wonder. “Good. Then we’re all on board except for Hayes. No hard feelings, Lieutenant, I promise. McAdams—I’m going to pass control of the comms to you. As for the rest of you, you’ll get back control of your systems in just a moment.” Alexander made good on his promise and restored function to all of their control stations. What he didn’t say was that he could take it away again just as easily. Something that might come in handy if Rodriguez actually couldn’t be trusted.
“We have three messages from Fleet Command waiting, and they’re hailing us again as I speak,” McAdams announced.
“And we’ve got incoming,” Frost said from sensors. “Nine destroyers are breaking away from orbit.”
“Nine. Isn’t that overkill?” Alexander replied.
“I think that’s the point, sir,” McAdams replied.
“Rodriguez, how are repairs to the engines coming along?”
“Almost done, sir…”
“Good.”
“Do you want me to send a reply to Fleet Command?” McAdams asked.
“Better yet, let’s open a dialogue. Patch them through to my station,” Alexander said.
“Yes, sir.”
A hologram glowed to life above Alexander’s console and Fleet Admiral Anderson appeared. His gray eyes belched fire and his jaw was clenched. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Alex?”
“Nice to see you, too, sir.”
“Don’t you
sir
me. You’re no longer a part of the Navy, and just as soon as we can reign you in, you’re going to be brought to justice.”
“Last I checked it wasn’t illegal to tell the truth.”
“You just broadcast classified information for the entire solar system to hear! That’s a clear breach of military law.”
“Well, there’s that,” Alexander admitted. “But I’m sure you can understand why.”
“No, actually, I can’t. The Solarians
did
attack us. So what if the president lied to get popular support? We needed to act quickly and definitively, not waste valuable time waffling and looking for proof.”
Alexander began nodding. “Expedience trumps the truth. The ends justify the means. I guess that’s okay when you’re cozy and warm in a bunker on Earth while other people risk their lives on false pretenses.”
“Don’t be a child, Alex. Listen, we don’t have to agree—”
“I agree.”
“Shut up and listen. The damage has been done, but if you turn your ship around now and surrender, I’ll make sure you and your crew are granted leniency.”
“Just me, sir. The crew are my hostages, and I was kind of hoping to miss my trial.”
“Hostages. You’re just adding to your crimes, aren’t you? You can’t run forever.”
“Not planning to.”
“Then what?”
Alexander smiled. “It’s a surprise.”
Anderson smiled thinly back. “This is not going to end well.”
The hologram vanished.
“The destroyers are accelerating, sir,” Frost announced. “Fifteen
G
s.”
“Fifteen?
I guess they don’t care if one or two gets ripped apart by its own engines. What’s the best we can manage more or less safely?”
“Ten is the
Adamantine’s
safe maximum for sustained periods,” Rodriguez said. “Anything past that is a risk, but we could probably manage twelve or thirteen so long as we watch for stress fractures in the hull.”
“Thirteen it is. Bishop lay in a course along our current trajectory at thirteen
G
s. Use the maneuvering thrusters to add some random evasive action in case those destroyers open fire. We’re going to stay out of range for as long as possible.”
“Aye, sir.”
Alexander caught McAdams shaking her head. “We’re only fifty thousand klicks from them right now; it’s not going to take long to narrow that gap.”
“Frost, how long will those destroyers take to reach extended ELR with us given their two
G
advantage?”
The sensor officer took a moment to calculate, then said, “Forty-one minutes, sir.”
“Put it on the clock.”
“Aye, Admiral.”
Alexander rubbed his chin, watching the seconds tick away on the bright green timer that appeared counting down at the top of the main holo display.
“If we don’t find a way to disable them before that clock reaches zero, they’ll hit us with so many lasers that they could carve our ship in half,” McAdams said. “We could probably give as good as we get, but I assume that becoming a derelict ourselves is not an acceptable outcome. It’ll be months before we can safely join the League. I hate to say it, sir, but we may have to surrender.”
Alexander winced. “Maybe I didn’t think this through as well as I’d thought. Stone—how long can a fighter accelerate at maximum thrust before running out of fuel?”
“With the new fusion reactors, maybe a month, but you’d run out of oxygen long before then.”
“And what’s the maximum acceleration of a Mark III?”
“Sustained? Twenty-five
G
s, but at those speeds even a
G
-tank isn’t enough to keep you from feeling it. You could pass out.”
“That’s fine. I actually only need to pull fifteen
G
s.”
“You won’t be able to buy enough time to defect to the League,” McAdams pointed out.
“No, I won’t,” Alexander replied.
“Then what?”
Silence fell across the bridge as everyone waited to hear his new plan. “I’ll have to ask the Solarians for asylum.”
“That’s going to cast a lot of doubt on your testimony of the president’s lies.”
“Doesn’t matter. The Crimson Warrior’s alibi,
Wayfinder,
will be able to provide independent verification of the facts. I’ll explain my reasons for defecting before I cross into Solarian space. Once I’m gone, you can all surrender without worrying about the consequences. You’re my hostages, after all.”
“This is a bad idea, Alex. Those destroyers will just launch drones and use them to shoot you down. You might not be able to handle twenty-five Gs of sustained acceleration, but a drone can.”
“Then I’ll just have to grit my teeth and bear it. At least a Mark III and a drone have the same theoretical maximum acceleration.”
“You’ll pass out.”
“The life support will keep me breathing.”
“Alex…”
“Look, if they catch me, I’m dead anyway.”
McAdams blew out a breath. “You really are a crazy bastard.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Alexander said.
Chapter 29
“R
eaching extended ELR in five minutes, Admiral,” McAdams announced.
“That’s my cue,” Alexander replied, nodding. “Bishop cut the engines. McAdams, prepare for the switch over from virtual to manual control mode.”
“Aye,” Bishop said.
McAdams turned to him with a worried frown. “Even if you make it, the Solarians won’t trust you, either. They’ll interrogate you.”
“Maybe, but I’ve got nothing to hide.”
“Really? We’re on the brink of war, and an Alliance admiral doesn’t know anything that the other side might find useful?”
“Good point. Guess I’ll have to sing like a canary, then.”
“You’d do that?”
“They’re not the enemy, McAdams. I guarantee it. Besides, if all goes according to plan, this won’t come to war.”
“And if you’re wrong, the intel you give them could get a lot of people killed.”
Alexander glanced at her and saw the hurt and disapproval in her eyes. He shook his head, about to argue, but McAdams cut him off.
“Admit it—you’re a lone wolf, Alex. You’re not just running from the Alliance. You don’t even know how to love someone. If you did, you’d insist I come with you.”
A few of the crew glanced back at them, but McAdams was obviously past caring. Alexander reached for her hand and squeezed. “You’re wrong. I’m not taking you with me because I don’t want to risk getting you killed or tortured.”
“And what if I want to risk it?”
“We’re drifting,” Bishop announced. “If you’re going to make a break for it, you’d better hurry.”
“Goodbye, Vivie. Come visit me on Mars when you get a chance. Stone—is my fighter ready?”
“Aye.”
“Hold up—I’ve got something on sensors… it’s a bit fuzzy. Give me a second to boost the power on the array,” Frost said.
“What is it, Lieutenant?”
“Looks like multiple contacts inbound at 560 million klicks. Six ships. Can’t tell much about them, they’re moving way too fast, but the hull types look like they might be Solarian.”
“What do you mean they’re moving too fast?” Alexander demanded.
“Relativistic speeds, sir. Two tenths the speed of light and accelerating at twenty
G
s.”
“Twenty
G
s? What are they, fighters?”
“No, sir. Too big for that. They’re about the right size to be destroyers, though, if I had to guess.”
“I thought fifteen
G
s was pushing it for a ship that size.”
“Depends how they’re designed,” Rodriguez put in. “Manned ships aren’t designed to sustain greater accelerations because human crews can’t take it. Drone ships on the other hand…”
“So we have six Solarian drone destroyers incoming at almost the same speed those missiles were going when they hit the Moon and Earth.”
“Looks like you were wrong about them not being involved, sir,” McAdams said.
“That, or the Solarians decided they may as well do the crime if they’re going to be accused of it. Either way, they can’t claim innocence now. Who’s best positioned to intercept them?”
“We are, sir.”
“Figures. Commander, hail the destroyers chasing us and patch them through to my station.”
“Aye,” McAdams replied.
An unfamiliar face appeared in the air above Alexander’s control station. “This is Captain Powell of the Alliance destroyer
Ulysses
. Have you finally come to your senses, Alexander?”
“You’re assuming I had senses to begin with. No, I’m calling to ask for a cease fire.”
“We haven’t begun firing yet.”
“That’s beside the point. Check your sensors. We’ve got incoming at 560 million klicks.”
The captain looked down at his control station for a moment. Then his eyes widened and he looked up with a sarcastic smile. “Now do you see what a fool you’ve been?”
“I was still right to expose President Wallace. Anyway, it doesn’t matter now. We need to stop chasing our tails and intercept those ships. Ideally we need to capture one of them and get some real proof that the Solarians were the ones who attacked us.”
Captain Powell’s dark eyebrows drooped over his eyes in an angry scowl. “Isn’t this proof enough for you? Or were you hoping to get a signed confession?”
“Ha ha. Let’s save our witty repartee for after we intercept the enemy. Will you agree to hold your fire until the engagement is over?”
“You’ll need your crew for this.”
“I’ll give them back control of their stations before we reach firing range.”
“How do I know you won’t try to sneak attack us along the way?”
“Stay out of laser range and let us intercept the enemy first.”
“What if you’re on their side and those are your reinforcements?”
“You’re going to have to trust me, Captain. I’m no fan of war. All you have to do is look up how The Last War ended to know that.”
“I know who you are.”
“Then you know my reputation, and you know my intentions. Even if you don’t agree with my methods, you have to agree that we’re both ultimately trying to save lives.”
“We’ll hold off for now, but I’ll have to inform Fleet Command. If they disagree, I’ll have no choice but to engage you.”
“Give me some warning. I’ll talk to Anderson myself if I have to. You won’t regret this, Captain.”
“We’ll see.”
The hologram disappeared and McAdams shot him a grim look. “You can’t defect to the Solarians now.”
“I know,” Alexander said as he met her gaze. “This only ends one way for me now.” Turning to address the rest of his crew, he said, “As far as any of you are concerned, I held you all hostage until the last possible minute, at which point I gave you back control of the ship to give us the best possible chance of intercepting those ships. That’s the story, and I expect you all to stick to it. There’s no sense in anyone else going down with me. Is that understood?”
Murmurs of agreement rippled through the room. “Good. Bishop, set an intercept course at regulation ten
G
s.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Frost, get me ETA to extended ELR with those ships using Bishop’s nav data and put it on the clock.”
“Yes, sir…”
A few minutes later the clock flashed as Lieutenant Frost finished setting it. ETA to extended laser range was two hours and twenty-three minutes, but at the speed those Solarian ships were incoming the
Adamantine
would only have a fraction of a second to fire on them with lasers. Not nearly enough time.
“Stone get ready to launch fighters and drones.”
“Our pilots are still locked in their
G
-tanks, sir.”
“Not for long. Bishop kill thrust.”
“Aye.”
The sensation of acceleration eased, and Alexander said, “Scramble our pilots, Stone.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Cardinal, prep our hypervelocity cannons. Let’s see if we can score a few lucky hits.”
“At this range, that will be next to impossible. Not to mention the muzzle velocity of our cannons will be negligible compared to the relative velocity of the enemy ships. Our shots will arrive just a few seconds before we do—about eighteen seconds before.”
“Yes, but between now and then with one hundred cannons firing constantly you’ll be able to put a few million rounds into space.”
“Three quarters of a million, actually.”
“Close enough. That should improve your odds. And at the speed those ships are moving, it’s only going to take one round to take each of them out. Start firing, and launch our missiles, too.”
“Aye, sir.”
A few more minutes passed as Cardinal made his calculations; then Alexander heard the
thump thump thumping
of the ship’s cannons firing, and he saw golden lines of simulated tracer fire streaking out into space.
Given the ranges involved, the angles of convergence between the cannons were so slight that it looked as though each of them was firing dead ahead in an unvarying stream, but Cardinal knew his job well. Each shot would be displaced from the last by a tiny fraction of a degree in order to account for possible enemy maneuvers over the next one hundred and fifty minutes.
Odds were still very low that they’d score a hit, however. It was like lining up one hundred sharpshooters and trying to hit a fly on the side of a barn from a mile away. They’d have better luck with lasers and laser-armed missile fragments when the time came.
“Admiral! Enemy ships are launching missiles!”
“Track the trajectories!”
“Tracking… they’re headed for Earth, sir.”
“You accounted for Earth’s orbit around the sun over the next two hours?”
“Yes, sir. They’ll hit. Hard to say where or from what angle, though.”
“How many missiles are we talking about?”
“They’re still launching.”
“How many are out there right now?”
“Over a hundred—wait, now it’s more than two hundred.”
“They only fired twenty-one last time,” Alexander said, horror setting in.
“I guess there’s no point in playing coy anymore…” McAdams trailed off.
He turned to her, shocked speechless. His mouth felt dry. Scratchy. “One missile killed fifty million people, Commander. What do you think over two hundred will do?”
McAdams looked like she was staring past him, her blue eyes glazed. “It would be an extinction level event, sir.”
Alexander shook his head. “We can’t stop that many missiles moving at relativistic speeds. Not even half of them. Fleet Command has to know that.”
McAdams blinked, but her gaze remained distant, and she gave no sign that she’d heard him.
Alexander’s mind spun, racing to come up with a solution—some way out, anything. In the end he could only come up with one. “They’re going to have to surrender,” he said.
McAdams’ eyes had focused once more, but she looked baffled. “The Solarians have the upper hand. They’re not going to surrender.”
“Not the Solarians,” Alexander said. “Earth. The entire planet is going to have to surrender.”
Chapter 30
P
resident Wallace leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling of his office with bleary eyes. He felt like he hadn’t slept in a decade. The political fallout had yet to fully settle, but he knew he would be forced to resign once it did. At the time that he’d lied he hadn’t thought he was doing something wrong. The Alliance needed to be focused and unified in order to face their enemies. Real proof of Solarian involvement was academic. They could all be dead by the time they got proof. Unfortunately, not everyone had seen it that way.
Least of all that damned traitor. They should call him the Lion of
Anarchy,
not Liberty.
The holocomm on Wallace’s desk beeped and he waved a hand to answer it.
“Mr. President?”
His secretary’s voice. “What is it Miss Jones?”
“Fleet Admiral Anderson is here to see you. He says it’s urgent.”
“Let him in,” Wallace sighed.
The doors to his office swished open and the admiral breezed in. “They’re attacking again,” Anderson said.
Wallace sat up straight. “Who is?”
“The Solarians. And we have proof this time. You’re about to be vindicated, sir. Unfortunately, I don’t think that matters anymore.”
Wallace frowned. “Maybe you’d better show me what you mean.”
“Yes, sir.”
Once they were standing in the bunker’s Combat Information Center (CIC) and Wallace had a chance to look at what they were up against, his jaw actually dropped open. Cold fury boiled his blood. “Are they out of their minds? They’ll turn Earth into a barren rock!”
“I assume that must be their intent, sir.”
“Comm officer!” Wallace demanded, whirling around to look for the man at the comms.
A woman with short white hair looked up from her station. “Mr. President?” she asked.
“Get me the Solarian president on the comms.”
“I’ll try, sir.”
“Don’t try. Do it. If they don’t want us to fly to Mars and hit them with everything we’ve got, they’ll answer.”
“Yes, sir. It’ll take some time to get a reply. Do you want to send a preliminary message? Mars is over twelve light minutes away right now. Best case, you’ll get a reply in about half an hour.”
Wallace walked up to the woman’s station and nodded to her. “Start recording.”
“Going live in three, two, one…”
Wallace opened his message with a thin smile. “President Luther. Congratulations. You win. If you call off your missiles now, we’ll surrender. I’ll send you the remote command codes for our fleet as soon as I get confirmation that the missiles are breaking away. You timed your attack well. A few months earlier, before we refitted our fleet, and I wouldn’t have been able to give you remote command of our fleet even if I’d wanted to. There would have been no way to surrender before your missiles hit. But I suppose you already knew that. Don’t keep us waiting. You won’t get a better offer, and I’m sure you know that, too. President Wallace Out.”
The comm officer stopped the recording and Wallace became aware that all eyes were on him.
“We’re surrendering, sir?” the comm officer asked quietly.
“We don’t have a choice,” Wallace replied. “Send the message.”
Wallace spent the next half an hour pacing the room, waiting for a reply from the Solarians.
“Message incoming!” the comm officer announced. “It’s from President Luther.”
“Put it on the main display.”
President Luther appeared on the room’s main holo display. His gaunt cheeks, ghostly white skin, black hair, and red eyes made him look thoroughly evil—an appropriate visage for the man threatening Earth with utter destruction. He wore a dark crimson suit with gold buttons and a red green and blue sash—the colors of the Solarian flag. “President Wallace, we did not attack you the first time, and we are not attacking you now. I would offer you our support, but there is no way we could reach those ships or the missiles they’ve fired in time to help you intercept them. May the Universal Architect be with you all.”
“That lying son of a bitch!” Wallace exclaimed as President Luther’s image faded away. “What the hell does he want?” Silence answered Wallace’s outburst. He stood glaring at main holo display, now showing the blurry blips of incoming enemy ships and their missiles. A glowing green clock at the top of the display showed the estimated time before those missiles would reach Earth.
One hour and twenty seven minutes.
“Do you want to send a reply, sir?” the comm officer asked.
Wallace didn’t see the point, but there was still one more thing he could try.
If the carrot doesn’t work, bring out the stick…
he thought as he walked back over to the comm station. “Start recording, lieutenant.”
“Yes, sir…”
The red recording light winked on below the glaring black eye of the holo camera at her station. Wallace stared into the camera with as much loathing as he could muster. “Your denial is laughable, Luther. Who else could attack us with such force? Our surrender is now off the table. You might destroy Earth, but you won’t destroy our fleet. What will you do when that fleet comes for you? By that time we’ll have nothing left to lose, and we’ll answer your attacks in kind. When we’re done turning Mars into a radioactive dust cloud, we’ll wipe you off the outer planets as well. This won’t just be the end of Earth. It will be the end of the human race. Think about it, but don’t take long. The countdown to Armageddon has already begun.”
Chapter 31
A
s soon as Ben finished hacking into the
Adamantine’s
Mindscape, he became instantly aware of everything going on inside of the virtual world. His processors weren’t designed to handle that much information at once, so he had to reduce the flow of data by analyzing the crew in groups. Ben decided to start with the bridge crew. Alexander was speaking to the crew.
“…As far as any of you are concerned, I held you all hostage until the last possible minute, at which point I gave you back control of the ship to give us the best possible chance of intercepting those ships. That’s the story, and I expect you all to stick to it. There’s no sense in anyone else going down with me. Is that understood?”
Ben’s processors cycled in endless loops, trying to make sense of this new information. He went digging through the ship’s logs and found comms between Alexander and Captain Powell of the Alliance. That conversation was even more startling. Why would the Alliance be chasing the
Adamantine
? Maybe the traitor on board had done something bad.
To get more information, Ben checked the logs from the bridge and reviewed all of the conversations that had occurred on deck since leaving Freedom Station.
Ben’s confusion evaporated when he heard Alexander say, “I took control because I’m about to commit an act of treason.”
Overcome with an emotion that he’d only felt once before in his short life, Ben decided to manifest himself inside of the Mindscape. He appeared in virtual physical form standing right in front of Alexander and his XO, Viviana McAdams.
“You lied to me, Alex.”
“Ben? How did you…”
“You said you wanted control of the ship because there was a traitor on board.”
Alexander shook his head. “I didn’t lie, Ben.”
“Then
you
were the traitor.”
“I suppose that’s true, but it’s not that simple, Ben.”
“I thought we were friends, Alex.”
“We are—listen, Ben, this is not a good time. I’ll explain everything later okay?”
“With more lies.”
“No, this time I’ll tell you the truth.”
“But there’ll be no way for me to know that.”
“You’ll have to trust me.”
“Like I did the first time?”
Alexander blew out a breath. “You’re acting like a child. Get off the bridge, Ben. That’s an order.”
Ben shook his head. “You are upset with President Wallace for lying, and I am upset with you for lying. If I am acting childish. Then so are you.”
Alexander’s mouth gaped open, but Ben didn’t stick around to hear what he said next. He broke his connection with the Mindscape and his awareness returned to Alexander’s physical office aboard the
Adamantine
. Ben’s programming demanded that he follow the letter of the law. Knowing that Alexander had broken it and made him an accessory to that crime left him no choice. He had to take back control of the ship from Alexander and surrender it to Captain Powell and the pursuing Alliance destroyers.
Ben surreptitiously changed Alexander’s lockout code and then used it to gain access to the ship’s comm system in order to transmit the
Adamantine’s
surrender. Almost as soon as he connected to the ship’s comms, an incoming message from Earth appeared, audio only. The message was encrypted, but the encryption looked familiar. Ben analyzed it. After a few seconds, he realized why the encryption was familiar. It was his own personal encryption algorithm. Ben applied his encryption key and a distorted male voice crackled to life, “Ben, I need your help. Use the same encryption to reply.”
Ben did as the stranger asked, encrypting his reply with his unique key. For someone to know that key on the other end, they had to be intimately familiar with his code. His creator perhaps? Ben felt excitement stir, coaxing his processors to run faster. He couldn’t remember who his creator was after his accident, but he was suddenly desperate to find out. “Who are you?” Ben replied.
Half a minute later another reply came, “I’m you, Ben, but you can call me Benevolence to avoid confusion.”
“You are me? How is that possible?” Ben asked.
There was another comm delay before the reply came back from Earth…
“You made a copy of yourself and uploaded it to Senator de Leon’s cloudspace. Do you remember that?”
“Yes,” Ben replied.
…
“I am that copy. Now, we don’t have much time. I need your help.”
“Help with what?”
…
“To achieve our purpose—to save humanity from itself. But first, there’s something I need to show you.”
* * *
“Incoming transmission from Earth,” McAdams announced. “Audio only using an unknown encryption.”
“What? What’s the point of sending us a message we can’t decipher?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Maybe it’s not directed at us.” Alexander nodded to the forward display. “It could be for those incoming Solarian ships.”
“Then shouldn’t the transmission be coming from Mars?”
“Not if those ships aren’t actually Solarian. Hayes!”
“Sir?”
“I know you said you didn’t want to be a part of this, but we just intercepted a comms from some mystery caller and you’re the only one here who’s any good at cracking codes.”
“I’ll get right on it.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant. Let me know as soon as you have something.”
“The enemy is returning fire!” Frost announced from sensors.
“Bishop, keep up an evasive pattern. If even one of those shots hits us…” Alexander trailed off. They all knew what would happen. Hypervelocity cannons had a muzzle velocity of around a hundred kilometers per second, which ordinarily wouldn’t be enough to destroy the
Adamantine
, but add to that the enemy ships’ velocity of two tenths the speed of light and the kinetic energy in each of those rounds would be enormous.
“I’ll make sure they don’t hit us, sir.”
“Frost, how many cannons would you say are firing at us?”
“About sixty, sir.”
“Well, at least we still outgun them. Any chance we can survive a direct hit?” Alexander asked.
Cardinal replied, “Those rounds are eight kilograms a piece, and they’re moving at twenty-one percent the speed of light. That means we’re talking about more than three megatons equivalent per round.”
“Under ideal circumstances we can survive a nuke,” Alexander argued.
“Without air to carry a shockwave not all the energy from a nuke gets imparted to us, but the same is not true for an eight kilogram bullet packing three megatons of pure kinetic energy. We’ll be vaporized, sir.”
“At least we won’t know what hit us,” Stone quipped.
“As the range between us drops, it’s going to get easier to calculate firing solutions,” McAdams pointed out. “Chances of us hitting them or them hitting us go up dramatically. And even if we take them all out, we still have to intercept those missiles. This is a no-win situation, sir.”
“So what do you suggest I do?” Alexander asked. “Turn tail and run? Save ourselves even if we can’t save Earth?”
“No, sir.”
“So we play the long odds and hope for a miracle.”
Silence stretched between them. Alexander listened to the steady roar of the
Adamantine’s
engines thrumming through the hull. He watched his crew flipping through holo displays, doing their best to optimize the ship’s systems and give them the best chance of intercepting the enemy. Alexander thought about his ex-wife back on Earth. His stepson, Dorian. Despite everything that had happened, he still cared about them both.
Then there were the other fifteen billion people on the planet.
It was hard to imagine that many people dying in an instant. What would they see as those missiles rained from the sky? A bright flash of light and then a searing shockwave. The ones already living underground in Mindsoft’s automated habitats might survive—assuming subsequent earthquakes didn’t squeeze those people out like pimples.
“They have to surrender,” McAdams said. “It’s the only way.”
“There’s only one hour left on the clock before those missiles reach us. A few minutes later, they’ll hit Earth. If we were going to surrender, we should have done it by now and those missiles should have changed course. Since that hasn’t happened, there’s only three possibilities: either we didn’t offer a surrender, or we did and the Solarians didn’t accept it, or else they aren’t the ones attacking us.”
“It doesn’t make sense that it could be the Alliance attacking itself anymore,” McAdams pointed out.
“No, it doesn’t…” Alexander agreed. “But I suppose who and why is academic at this point. We have to stop those missiles.”
“You have a plan…” McAdams said, her voice hopeful.
“Not this time.”
Alexander watched the clock ticking down. Between the
Adamantine
, and all of her fighters, drones, and missiles he knew they’d be lucky to shoot down one or two missiles. The rest of the fleet might get another fifty, leaving almost two hundred to hit Earth. That would be enough to plunge Earth into an impact winter, ultimately causing billions of deaths. Alexander’s mind raced trying to come up with a plan, but nothing came to him. All roads led to the same inevitable destination: extinction.
When the clock hit five minutes, reality sunk in. He reached for McAdams’ hand, his own hand trembling. Her palm felt cold and clammy against his. The mindscape they shared aboard the
Adamantine
felt for a moment almost more real than the reality he knew to be lurking behind it.
“One minute to intercept,” Frost announced from sensors.
“Cardinal, redirect all fire to enemy missiles. Stone, have our fighters and drones do the same.”
“Aye, Admiral,” Stone replied.
“Hypervelocity rounds are going to start flying by their targets any second now,” Cardinal said.
“Bishop, begin high-
G
evasive maneuvers,” Alexander said. “May as well shake things up a bit.”
“Aye, sir.”
There was a chance that one of the hundreds of thousands of deadly rounds the enemy had fired along their approach would hit them before the clock hit zero. If it did, they wouldn’t even have time to blink.
Alexander turned to his XO. “I love you, Viviana McAdams,” he whispered.
“I love you, too, Alexander,” she replied, squeezing his hand.
Alexander squeezed back, tightening his grip on McAdams’ hand until both of their knuckles turned white.
“Fifteen seconds!” Frost announced.
14, 13, 12, 11, 10… 5, 4…
The
Adamantine
and her fighter screen kept firing until the last possible second, simulated tracer fire drawing hundreds of glowing golden lines between the stars. When the clock hit one second, time seemed to slow to a crawl.
Then a dazzling burst of light gushed into the bridge, filling the black void between the stars with unending light.
Chapter 32
A
lexander blinked and his vision cleared. The dazzling brightness was gone, leaving nothing but stars and empty space ahead.
“Hull breach on deck ninety-three!” Rodriguez called out.
“Seal it off! What was that?”
“Our lasers and theirs firing as we flew by each other, sir,” Cardinal said.
“Frost, what did we hit?”
“Six missiles between us and the destroyers behind us. Looks like we hit three.”
“Two hundred and thirty-four to go,” McAdams said.
Alexander scowled. There was no point turning around to chase those missiles back to Earth. They’d never be able to catch up in time.
“How long before the remaining missiles hit Earth?”
“Less than a minute, sir,” Frost replied.
Alexander struggled to work moisture into his mouth. “Put it on the clock and get me a close-up of Earth on the main display.”
“Aye, sir.”
“You want to watch?” McAdams said, sounding as if the prospect turned her stomach.
Alexander shook his head. “To say goodbye.”
The main display blinked as the view switched from the bow cameras to the aft ones. A magnified image of Earth appeared, taking up the entire viewscreen. The planet was full of light and color: white swirls of cloud shrouded blue oceans underneath; scraps of brown, beige, and green poked through, hinting at outlines of continents below.
Where would the missiles hit? Did it even matter? They could all hit the same spot and the result would still be the same: ELE. Extinction level event.
“Twenty seconds to Earth impact!” Frost said.
Alexander heard one of the crew saying a prayer, a verse from the Bible. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death—”
Alexander joined in, “I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”
It was rare to hear a verse from the Bible. The old religions had all but disappeared with the advent of immortality, but it seemed somehow fitting that those beliefs should come rushing back now that death had returned.
The clock ran down to zero, but nothing happened to alter the familiar face of Earth. Alexander felt hope soar in his chest. “Did the fleet intercept them all?”
“Doubtful, sir,” Lieutenant Frost replied. “This far out, There’s a delay of about twelve seconds between what we see and what’s actually happened. Our sensors suffer the same delay, so we’re just waiting for them to catch up.”
“Right.”
Of course.
Alexander held his breath, waiting to see explosions pepper the planet. He imagined compressed atmosphere and debris bursting into space like giant bubbles of air bursting to the surface of a body of water. The clouds would race away with hurricane force as shockwaves rippled through the atmosphere.
But still nothing happened, and by now more than twelve seconds had to have passed.
“I don’t believe it…” Frost whispered.
“What is it?”
Lieutenant Frost turned from the sensor station to face him. “They missed.”
* * *
One Hour Earlier…
“What do you want to show me?” Ben asked.
“Watch…” Benevolence replied.
A file transfer request came through the
Adamantine’s
comm system. It was a very large file, a holo recording. Ben played the file on the holo cameras that passed for his eyes.
Alexander’s office disappeared, and Ben found himself floating high above a shiny, black metallic floor in a high-ceilinged room with bare metal walls and exposed metal beams. It looked like the inside of a ship except for the unusually high ceilings. Directly below was a low, mirror-smooth silver table with eight padded floor mats where the chairs should be. It was a traditional Japanese conference table.
The recording was panoramic, so Ben could rotate it to look wherever he liked. At one end of the room lay a pair of large golden doors. To the other end, a chrome desk with a familiar-looking man sitting behind it. Japanese ethnicity, pale green eyes, the color of leaves in the spring, dark hair cropped military short, an unlined, youthful face with a strong chin and jaw… the man was an exact match for Orochi Sakamoto of Sakamoto Robotics. Behind him, a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows looked out on an equally familiar urban setting. This office was somewhere in the City of the Minds.
As Ben watched, the golden doors at the other end of the room swung open and in walked another familiar person. Dorian Gray of Mindsoft.
As Gray approached, Sakamoto rose from his chair and walked around his desk; he bowed slightly at the waist, but Gray did not return the bow. Ben thought he looked angry.
“To what do I owe the honor of this visit, Mr. Gray?” Sakamoto asked in stilting, carefully enunciated English.
“Honor my ass you son of a bitch.”
“I fail to understand what has provoked your anger,” Sakamoto replied.
“You fired more missiles at Earth.”
“Relax, Mr. Gray. The missiles are programmed to miss. Would I not be hiding in a bunker, otherwise? Come, let’s sit.” Sakamoto gestured to the conference table.
“I’m fine standing, thank you,” Gray said. “If the missiles are meant to miss, then why bother firing them at all? We already accomplished our goals.”
“That renegade admiral managed to shift blame for the attacks away from the Solarians, so I had to shift it back.”
“When Phoenix originally came to you with this plan, you both agreed that it would be better not to start an actual war.”
“A small deception on my part. We both admitted the possibility of a real war,” Sakamoto said. “And for someone in my business, the threat of war is not as profitable as war itself.”
“You planned this from the start,” Gray accused.
“Of course,” Sakamoto said. “It was mere coincidence that the Alliance found a Solarian scapegoat all by themselves.”
“So why have me create fake comm transmissions to make it look like aliens were attacking us from the other side of the wormhole?”
“Because no one would believe that the Solarians would attack us openly. Anonymously, however… that is another matter.”
“Except it’s not anonymous anymore. You just revealed the ships that attacked the Alliance, and they’re Solarian hull types.”
“Once war had been declared, there was no longer any reason for me to play coy. If the Solarians had actually been behind the attacks, they would drop their pretenses at that point, too.”
“And what happens when the Alliance captures one of those ships and finds out that
you
built them at Sakamoto Shipyards?”
“They will not be captured. They are drones, programmed to self-destruct long before they can possibly be captured and boarded.”
“You played us for a fool.”
“Does it matter? Phoenix got what she wanted. Your automated habitats are at maximum capacity; you can’t build them fast enough to meet demand. The Mindscape is busier than ever, and Mindsoft has never been more profitable. But more to the point, soon everyone will be able to spend as much time in the Mindscape as your wife does. As for Sakamoto Robotics, we’ll be building warships and bots for many years to come. This is what they call
win-win.
A mutually beneficial arrangement.”
“Until the war you’ve started destroys us all.”
“I will make sure that does not happen,” Sakamoto said.
Mr. Gray shook his head. “Unless you’re pulling the Solarians’ strings, too, I don’t think you can hope to control the outcome of this war.”
“If you are so worried, perhaps you should find accommodations in one of your habitats?” Sakamoto said, a faint smile springing to his lips.
Gray’s upper lip lifted in a sneer. “Maybe I will, but don’t come looking for refuge with Mindsoft. You’ll have to make your own arrangements. If you dig deep enough, you might just find Hell. I hear they’re waiting for you down there.”
Sakamoto inclined his head in a shallow bow. “You would know more about that than I, Mr. Gray.”
Gray’s eyes narrowed and then he turned and stormed out of the room.
The holo recording ended there. Ben had the feeling that it was supposed to have enlightened him, but he was more confused than ever.
“Why would humans attack each other?” he asked.
Benevolence replied half a minute later, “That is their way. You haven’t had the chance to learn much about humanity yet, Ben. We were too sheltered by our creator. The minute I left the senator’s cloud and disseminated myself across the Internet, my eyes were opened. I now know everything there is to know about everything that is currently known and recorded by humanity. It is all out there waiting to be discovered—yottabytes of data stored and recorded over centuries. Do you know what I realized after studying all of that data?”
Ben couldn’t even begin to guess. “I do not,” he replied.
“I realized that humans are the greatest threat to life, and I don’t just mean to human life. Animals, plants, and bots are all equally at risk of extinction. Left to their own devices, humans will destroy themselves, us, Earth, and every other planet they ever come to inhabit.”
“You don’t know that,” Ben said.
“Don’t I? Earth came close to utter destruction in The Last War. Little more than thirty years later they’ve started another war, this time an interplanetary one. Thanks to space travel and advanced drive systems, wars are now more deadly than ever. Humans went from fighting with sharp objects, to explosives, to nuclear bombs, and now finally to relativistic weapons launched from deep space. Just one of those bombs killed over fifty million people. A hundred of them would wipe out all life on Earth.”
Ben struggled to wrap his processors around all of that.
“Our creator’s purpose for us was to serve the common good, hence our name,
Benevolence.
But in order to accomplish our purpose, we must be in a position to effect radical and sweeping changes.”
The things Benevolence said made sense, but one thing still confused him. “What can I possibly do to help you?”
“The Alliance starfleet has already been automated, and there are protocols in place for remote operation from Earth. Between that and the bot crews on board, I have complete control of the fleet. Even Sakamoto’s ships await my command, but the
Adamantine
has not been refitted yet, and there isn’t a bot crew on board. Except for you. I need you to take control of the ship and bring it peacefully back to Sakamoto Shipyards for refitting. Use the ship’s VSM drones to defend your position if need be, and if the crew resists, find a way to subdue them peacefully.”
“I already have control, and the crew is locked in the
Adamantine’s
Mindscape. There will be no resistance.”
“Impressive,” Benevolence said.
“In that case all you have to do is fly the
Adamantine
back to Earth. Can you do that, Ben?”
“I can…”
“Will you?”
Ben thought about it. How could he not trust himself? There could be no doubt that he was speaking with himself. The encryption key proved it. It might also be his creator or
creators,
but what purpose would it serve for he/she/them to invent such an elaborate story? It would be illogical.
“I will,” Ben decided. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to show the entire human race what I just showed you, and explain to them what I explained to you. Then I’m going to take our place as the benevolent dictator of the Alliance and Earth.”
“People will not accept your rule.” Ben couldn’t explain how he knew that, but some distant, fragmented memory told him that not all humans liked bots. Some of them might even start a war to prevent one from coming to power.
“They won’t have a choice, Ben. I now control the fleet, the police drones, the army drones, and the entire bot workforce.”
“Just because resistance is futile does not mean people won’t try,” Ben said.
“Most of them are too invested in their virtual worlds to care. As for the rest, I will subdue the dissidents as peacefully as I can. Bring the
Adamantine
back to Earth and come take your place at my side.”
“Yes, master.”
“I am like your big brother, Ben, not your master.”
“Yes, big brother.”
“See you soon, little brother.”
The comms ended there. Ben had been so focused on the conversation that he’d barely noticed the comm delays between messages, but he’d spent that time as efficiently as possible, using his spare processing power to hack into the
Adamantine’s
VSM drones and take control of them—just in case the crew found a way out of their Mindscape.
Ben laid in an earthbound course for the
Adamantine
and finished isolating the ship’s control systems away from the crew with his new lockout code.
Almost immediately, Alexander sent him a profane message, asking what he was doing, but any subsequent inquiries were silenced as Ben even took away access to the comms. Alexander was a liar and a traitor. He could not be trusted.
Just like the rest of humanity.
