Defeat (7 page)

“
Aiden, do you
agree?”

His Chief of Staff
nodded.

He stared at General Vanek a
moment. The man stared back, and the President stabbed his finger
at him.

“
You get them,”
he commanded. “You get every last one of them. I don’t care if they
have one spaceship or twenty spaceships, you get every one of them.
Do you understand me?”

“
Yes,
sir.”

“
And don’t hold
anything back. You throw every anti-satellite missile, every nuke,
everything we have at them. The Soviets are dead and don’t you
worry about keeping anything back for the Chinese. I’ll convince
them to do the same. They saw what happened. You use everything we
got.”

The General stood straighter.
“Yes, sir.”

“
Ladies and
Gentleman,” he said, looking at the group assembled around him. He
knew his wife listened from a distance, behind the group. He also
knew there were reporters on board who would record his next words
for posterity. “Ladies and Gentleman, it’s time to save the world.”
There were smiles and then someone clapped. Everyone clapped. He
stood and smiled back at them, reaching out to touch them, to shake
their hands, to put his hand on General Vanek’s shoulder. The man
looked nervous, but he knew how to do his job. They all had to do
their jobs now. It was the most important moment in the history of
the United States of America.

He had never been
prouder to be its President.

Drone 1804 sized up the asteroid
in front of it. It was four per cent smaller than its lowest
acceptable parameter, but it understood that mass was just as
important as size. It fired a small energy pulse at the rock and
evaluated the spectra of the material that vaporized from the
shot.

It was a carbonaceous asteroid as
expected, over seventy per cent of the asteroids in this system
were carbonaceous, but it contained higher than normal levels of
nickel and iron. 1804 calculated the total estimated mass assuming
a homogeneous concentration of nickel and iron based on its sample,
and decided that the rock in front of it would meet the parameters
of its mission.

1804 fired a tiny jet of gas to
propel itself towards the rock, then extended six clawed legs out,
rotating so the legs would touch down on the asteroid. They gripped
into the rock, 1804 vibrating them and sending a small current into
them to guarantee a firm hold. Then it went to sleep, content it
was prepared for the next step in its mission.

It didn’t sleep long. A proceed
ping was received. 1804 sent a confirmation request, which it
received within an acceptable time period, and it confirmed
calculations it had already made. The next target window was soon,
so 1804 wasted no time in a second, confirming calculation. It
“looked” at its target, then closed its eyes.

It appeared just above the planet,
outside of the atmosphere still, the rock it was attached to
hurtling towards its target with the momentum it had picked up from
the jump. 1804 quickly calculated the location of impact of the
asteroid from its present trajectory, and decided it was within
acceptable parameters. If it hadn’t been, 1804 carried insufficient
fuel to move the rock. It would have had to jump the rock to
another location, then try again, jumping back towards its target,
imparting the momentum the rock would need to carry it into the
atmosphere.

Most rocks that hit the atmosphere
of a planet strike it at an angle, and the rock burns up on impact,
only fragments reaching the planet and usually doing very little
damage. Even large strikes can sometimes be survived if the
asteroid hits the atmosphere at a shallow enough angle.

Directing rocks straight down into
the atmosphere provided a higher guarantee of success. And this
rock was on target in a manner that pleased 1804. It had done well
in selecting this rock within sufficient time to employ it as
ordered, and it pleased 1804 to have been successful in targeting
it correctly.

It disengaged its legs and used
its jets to push away from the rock, then jumped away from the
atmosphere a short distance to bleed the momentum it had also
picked up from the jump. It didn’t want to enter the atmosphere. It
was not equipped for such a mission and aerodynamic heating would
surely have destroyed the drone, rendering the AI that was now 1804
useless, essentially dead.

It stabilized itself in orbit over
the planet and watched its handiwork.

The meteor entered the planet’s
atmosphere, heading on a direct course with the ocean on the
trailing edge (from 1804’s viewpoint as it watched the planet
rotate) of a continent that fanned out across the planet like a
pair of bird’s wings.

1804 didn’t know the name of the
continent or the ocean, didn’t know that the local inhabitants
called it North and South America, or that they called the ocean
the Pacific Ocean. It didn’t know that almost 300 million people
lived on the west coast of those continents and that most would be
killed by the tsunami caused by the meteor it had just released. It
didn’t know that each of those 300 million people had names, had
mothers and fathers, had friends and family and loves, had jobs and
responsibilities, had strengths and weaknesses and individual
personalities, had overcome obstacles to achieve their goals, had
given in to weaknesses, and had tried to find some purpose in their
lives. 1804 didn’t know any of those things.

And it didn’t care.

The aftershock hit while Christina
climbed the ladder to exit the silo. She held on. The few seconds
it lasted were terrifying, and Christina wanted to cry, but all she
could do was cling to the rungs of the ladder and focus on not
letting go.

“
That was a bad
one,” Zombie muttered below her.

The shaking finished, Christina
continued her climb with a sense of urgency. She wanted to be off
the ladder before any more earthquakes hit. Shane had opened the
hatch above them, and cautiously exited the silo, rotating around
the opening with his carbine ready.

The Colonel had insisted Christina
be armed also, and she wore a pistol on her hip. She had never done
that before. She had gone through basic weapons qualification like
all military officers, but could never imagine firing a weapon in
anger. If there were looters on the base, as was always possible
the Colonel had said, it would be her airmen’s job to take care of
them.

Christina’s job was to do what she
did best: connect to the network, find out what was happening, and
bring a report and as much useful gear as she could back to her
boss.

Climbing out of the hatch,
Christina wondered how she had suddenly become the Colonel’s
wunderkind. She had simply grabbed her computer during the
evacuation, something no one else had thought to do, and when none
of the antiquated equipment in the silo worked, she had been the
only chance to find out what was going on.

Not that she had had much
success.

With a gun on her hip, Shane and
Zombie on either side of her, scanning everywhere, MP23 carbines
ready to shoot at anything hostile, she felt more nervous, more
anxious, than at any time in her life.

She would have thought the base
the safest place in the world, but after a couple of days in the
silo with no information, a general paranoia set into the command.
When the first major earthquake struck, they thought they’d been
hit by a nuke. A team took air samples and decided it hadn’t been a
nuclear missile, but the lack of connection to the network, a lack
of connection to any network, and thus the lack of information
about what was happening heightened the Colonel’s
anxiety.

So he had sent Christina up
top.

He said he should be going
himself, but that he had to stay behind and besides, she was the
only one with any brains left in the outfit. Christina couldn’t
read the man, she had never been able to understand him, but she
accepted the compliment and her assignment.

Nothing moved up top.

The sun was warm, which felt good
after two days in a hole, but there was no breeze off the ocean.
Usually the sea breeze cooled the base on hot days. The long grass
around the silos didn’t move, just sat still, baking in the
heat.

They decided not to use the
evacuation tunnel to get back to their building, but to stay up
top, walking through the fields where they could see around them
should looters have decided to come on base. Although the country
appeared to be at war with someone, the aliens or the Russians, it
still wasn’t clear to them, Christina doubted Vandenberg was a
strategic target. She didn’t expect to run into enemy
troops.

The main base was eerily quiet.
There were no security police and no evidence of any other base
personnel. Either everyone was in shelter or had fled.

“
This creeps me
out,” Zombie commented.

Christina nodded
agreement.

They squeezed through an internal
gate, passing packs through the narrow opening, and headed for the
614th’s headquarters. Christina’s airmen walked on either side of
her, their MP23s ready, safeties off, alert for anything, but not
knowing what they should be alert for.

Shane held his arm up, and the
three stopped.

Christina listened and realized at
the same moment as the airman that someone had left a door open,
and it knocked in its frame when a gust of wind caught it. She
breathed again, surprised that she had been holding her
breath.

They continued up the street, it’s
emptiness continuing to be unnerving.

The front door to the headquarters
opened with a swipe of Christina’s badge, and her two airmen
entered the building first, guns ready. Christina hoped no one had
stayed behind. They’d probably get shot if they poked their head
out right now.

“
Ma’am, I think
we should take the stairs instead of the elevator,” Zombie
suggested.

Christina imagined being trapped
in an elevator. No cell phone to call for help. No one around to
stumble in on them. She shivered.

“
Good
suggestion,” she replied.

Zombie opened the door to the
stairwell and looked up, then down. He entered slowly, holding the
door open but not taking his eyes off the stairs in both
directions.

“
You next,
ma’am,” Shane said.

Christina followed, taking the
door from Zombie and holding it for Shane. He followed her in
backwards, making sure nothing moved behind them. It crossed
Christina’s mind that they were probably being too cautious, but
she felt gratitude for their concern for her safety.

Four stories down to her office
level.

She patiently walked between the
two men, but they also seemed to relax a little as they
descended.

Until they got to the stairwell at
their floor.

Zombie asked Christina to draw her
sidearm and stand beside the door, out of the way of the line of
fire from someone inside. Shane crouched on the lower flight of
stairs, his body mostly shielded, his MP23 pointed at the door.
Zombie swiped his badge, waited for the click, then opened the door
slowly.

No bullets came out, and Christina
breathed again.

Zombie went in first while Shane
covered him. The door closed behind him and Christina worried for
him, trapped alone in the offices. She swiped her badge and opened
the door. Zombie, about ten feet into the area, turned suddenly,
pointing his gun at her, then holding it up in the air.

“
Sorry, ma’am.
You scared me.”

“
I’m sorry,
Zombinique.”

“
It’s clear in
here,” he said, turning away from her again. She held the door open
as Shane scrambled to his feet.

As they moved through the offices,
motion sensors triggered lights. It was like coming into the office
first in the morning. Christina had to remind herself that it was
all automated and not someone running in front of her turning
lights on. Being alone in the building was as unnerving as walking
down the empty base streets.

She found her spot in the command
center and took her pack off, pulling her computer out and setting
it up. The airmen continued to patrol around the office area,
making sure it was secure.

As soon as her machine began to
boot up, Christina got tunnel vision, focusing only on the task at
hand.

She watched the operating system
scroll by, she always booted up in the os, and then it prompted her
for a password.

She entered it, and the computer
stalled for a moment, trying to connect to the network and
authenticate. Failing that, it would authenticate her on the
machine itself, leaving her disconnected.

She waited.

Eventually she could see her
desktop, a picture in the background of her and her husband in
Hawaii on the beach, with an error message that no network
connection could be found. She expected as much.