Einstein Must Die! (Fate of Nations Book 1) (47 page)

His hand quivered, and the pistol barrel danced in front of her face. Her eyes never left his, though, and he knew she was seeing him, truly seeing him, as she always had.

He felt the judgment in her eyes and knew he was being found wanting.

Without a conscious thought, Thomas snapped the gun down and jammed the barrel under his own jaw. One round, up through the mouth and into the brain, would end all the troubles.

His finger tightened on the trigger.

CRACK
!

Thomas blinked, unsure why he wasn’t falling to the ground dead. He looked down and the pistol was gone.

He turned and saw a fading wisp of white smoke from Beowulf’s forward shredder. His daughter had shot the gun from his hand, saving his life.

He stared blankly up at the tank, disturbed that there were no eyes to connect with.

“Honestly, Father, I expected more from you,” Madelaine said.

BON VOYAGE

NINE MONTHS LATER

WARDENCLIFFE, NEW YORK

“Are you quite ready yet?” Savannah asked, arms folded over her chest, taunting him.

Tesla waved a hand in her general direction. “Yes, yes. Just another moment.” He bent over his worktable, running his fingers over data sheets and progress reports. “Good, that’s good,” he muttered to himself, scanning the documents.

He straightened up and faced her.

“I think it’s ready.”

Savannah giggled, and her hands flew to her mouth. “I can’t wait to hear her reaction, Nikola! Let’s go!”

“Let’s,” he agreed. He joined her, and they walked together down the main hallway of his new laboratory. The bullet wounds had healed, but he still walked with a slight limp.

The MacArthur grant money had been a windfall at precisely the right time. With the sudden funding, Tesla had purchased two hundred acres of land on Long Island, New York. It lay adjacent to a rail line, and offered all the space he needed to continue his work.

After the RCA had been safely removed from the battered Beowulf, and Madelaine’s safety ensured, the original tank had been decommissioned and disassembled. It was agreed that a civilian contractor of Tesla’s stature could get the job done faster than the military.

The main building went up quickly, and once they were operational, General Houston had helped them secure several military contracts, each of which were lucrative enough to let him develop his ideas to fruition. Sensing a technical powerhouse developing, J.P. Morgan and George Westinghouse both invested in the new startup venture.

Edison’s Menlo Park was still going strong, but focused on safer, market-driven ideas. At Wardencliffe, Tesla’s lab chose to expand frontiers.

Tesla and Savannah strode through the large building, dodging the army of technicians they’d hired almost immediately after the business in Boston. With money no longer a limiting concern, they’d recreated their own Rabbit Hole, one under civilian control.

Their sole focus in the past nine months had been continuing the work on Beowulf’s successor, and today was the unveiling.

As they darted around workers and scientists, a familiar voice called out.

“Hey, Nikola!” He turned and saw George racing toward him, his arm draped over Sophia’s shoulders. “A banner day!”

“Very much so,” said Tesla, smiling. “We were just going to get her.”

“Perfect, we’ll see you there,” he said, wheeling Sophia through the crowded space. She grinned and waved as they dashed away.

Tesla followed behind Savannah, who was practically sprinting toward Madelaine’s room. As they entered, she interrogated them.

“So today I finally see it? Finally?” she asked, with a teenager’s whine.

“Only because you’ve been so patient,” said Savannah, rolling her eyes.

“Whatever. I’ve been cooped up in here too long. Show me!”

The array cube had been installed at the new lab as soon as the main building had gone up. They’d done what they could to occupy her, wiring up cameras and sensors for her to stay in touch with the outside world, but life at her speed grew boring fast without heavy stimulation.

Still, they’d asked her permission to develop the Mark II privately, and unveil it as a present. Reluctantly, she’d agreed, and that room was the only one in the lab where she had no sensors or cameras to let her participate in the work.

The anticipation had been good for her, thought her mother.
It kept her mind buzzing on possibilities
.

“Today’s the day, honey,” Savannah said.

Tesla lowered a powered crane and moved the array to a wheeled carrier. He’d made it himself, complete with a portable power supply, just for this day. It would have been far easier to show her by wiring up one more camera, but Savannah insisted they bring her to it. Tesla agreed. Some things must be experienced in person.

Satisfied she was safely moved, he connected a “sensory box” and set it on top of the cube. The box contained a camera, microphone, and speaker, giving her basic communication abilities while they moved.

He and Savannah pushed the carrier forward, and together they steered her down the hallway. Workers made room for them as they approached, and soon they stood in front of a large door labeled “Cerberus.”

“I like the name,” said Madelaine. “Sounds wicked.”

“Well, if you like that…” said Savannah, pushing the door open.

Tesla wheeled her inside the cavernous room, and she got her first look at her new body.

“Oh my God,” she said. Even through the small portable speaker, the awe in her voice was clearly audible.

The new class of tank, code-named Cerberus, was twice the size of the Beowulf tank and completely redesigned for the future of warfare.

“I’ve heard bits and pieces of conversations,” Madelaine said. “But this is…”

“Yeah, we did all right,” said her mother. “Your tax dollars at work.”

Tesla stepped forward so she could see him, and he pointed to the gargantuan tank.

“It’s nuclear powered, Madelaine,” he told her. “A fission reactor. Practically unlimited energy.” He walked down the side of the tread that dwarfed him.

“Your chainguns all feed from a centralized ammo source, and you’ll never run out,” he continued.

“Never?”

“Well, to be more clear, you can create your own ammunition from scrap metal found on the battlefield. So, effectively—”

“Wow,” she said.

Savannah stepped forward. “The crew compartment is larger and more comfortable, and the entire assembly is waterproof down to sixteen hundred feet. In case you ever need to do that sort of thing again,” she said, grinning.

“There’s a lot of new enhancements to show you,” said Tesla. “But take a look at the main cannon.”

She focused the camera lens up on the mammoth barrel. “It’s really big,” she said.

“Big, but also completely revolutionary,” he said. “No shells. It fires superheated plasma, generated straight from the reactor.”

“Nikola, this is incredible! How did you do this all?”

A male voice answered from behind them. “Never underestimate the spending power of a government at war.”

“General Houston!” cried Madelaine. “You came!”

The general came forward, into her line of sight. “Course I did. It’s a big day for you, and us too. We expect big things from you.”

“I don’t know what to say,” replied Madelaine. “Just…thanks. And I’ll do my best.”

“I do believe that,” he replied.

“So we’re ready to get you integrated with Cerberus,” said Tesla. “We’ll run tests for a week or so, then you’re good to go.”

“They’re really sending me to England?” she asked.

He nodded. “Taking the fight to the enemy, as it were.”

“A little scary,” she admitted.

“You won’t be going alone, rest assured,” said the general. “We’ve assembled quite a fleet to accompany you.”

“All right,” Madelaine said, taking in the sight of her new body. On both sides it extended beyond the angle of her camera view. “I’m ready!”

Tesla turned to her, facing the camera lens. His smile said a lot. How much they’d gone through, and how much she had in store for her future.

“Then let’s begin,” he said.

***

The next week was a blur of systems integrations, hundreds of function tests, and dozens of calibration adjustments.

The work on Cerberus had been a priority for nearly a year, but those labors were now complete. Tesla and Savannah were now gearing up for a second grand vision.

Ground had been broken for a massive radio tower, like the world had never seen. The plans were daunting in their scope, including a fifty-five-ton steel sphere atop a huge tower and sixteen iron bars driven hundreds of feet into the ground to allow current to flow and seize hold of the earth. When completed, Tesla declared that a worldwide radio network would be possible, with instantaneous communication anywhere on the globe.

Even his investors questioned the sanity of the project when Tesla himself explained, “It is necessary for the machine to get a grip of the earth. Otherwise it cannot shake the earth. It has to have a grip…so that the whole of this globe can quiver.”

By the end of the week, Madelaine had thoroughly explored her new body and its abilities. Several times she marveled at how much Tesla’s lab had managed to include in the newly built tank. Her radio gear had been dramatically enhanced, and once Tesla finished his radio tower, she should be able to stay in touch with them, even from England.

The new weapons were stunningly impressive, and her ability to regenerate ammunition made her smile inside. But what truly delighted her was the digital library Tesla had personally overseen.

He’d built a dozen crude versions of her own array and put them to work scanning books for her, converting them to a digital format she could access. A lab worker would slide a new book into position, and devices would flip through the pages, scanning them at superhuman speed. In the eight months they’d been working around the clock, they had built a digital library of 148,000 books. And it was all installed in her memory, ready to be enjoyed and studied.

He’d included every book on military strategy and tactics that the general recommended, then everything he could find on Europe’s geography, armies, and leadership. Then he filled out the list with a vast array of popular literature, history, science, mathematics, politics, and the arts, including one title he knew would delight her when she came across it: a compendium of saucy limericks.

Final preparations were being made for her long journey.

The crew chosen to go with her into battle had trained relentlessly for months, learning her subsystems and the details necessary to repair her in the field. While Savannah had at first pleaded to be on the team, she realized reluctantly that she didn’t have the needed background, and would only take a slot away from someone more qualified to help Madelaine, in case she was hurt.

Tesla understood her fear and sorrow at staying behind, watching her only daughter go to war. He could have justified taking a crew slot for himself, but he had a backlog of new inventions to create, both for the war effort and for mankind’s benefit in general. And he felt a strong kinship with Savannah. They worked perfectly together, and he didn’t want to leave her side.

There was no transport ship capable of carrying Cerberus, so an oil tanker had been converted for the job. A broad steel platform had been welded over the ship’s main deck, extending over each side. Madelaine would carefully drive onto the platform, and there she would be carried across the Atlantic, bound for England.

Her transport would be the centerpiece of a naval armada of smaller, well-armed ships, tasked with protecting her during the journey, as she couldn’t fire her plasma cannon during the voyage without capsizing her own transport.

The lab’s huge hangar doors were pulled aside, opening the room to the outside.

It was time for her to head down to the dock and then board her transport ship.

Tesla stood beside Madelaine, as they looked through the open doors to the world outside.

“I’m a little scared, Nikola.”

He nodded. “So are we.”

“Rook to bishop’s three,” said Madelaine.

He was glad she remembered their unfinished game. He closed his eyes and visualized their board in his mind.

Tesla frowned. He’d seen this coming. Her attack was precise and relentless. Despite the impending sense of a noose closing around his neck, he’d been unable to fend her off.

“I believe that’s checkmate,” she offered, helpfully.

“Yes, yes,” he agreed, wondering how he’d been so thoroughly trounced.

He opened his eyes again. “I thought I was good at chess.”

“You are, Nikola. I’ve been playing against a dozen of the techs, and you lasted longer than any of them.”
 

“Damning praise,” he said. “That business with the knights was evil.”

“I invented that. Call it the Bertram Gambit.”

Tesla smiled. “Well done, young miss. He’d be proud of you.”

Savannah joined them, looking out the huge doors.

“I guess it’s time,” she said.

Madelaine spun slowly in place, aligning herself with the open doors, facing the bright sunshine of an early summer morning. She pulled forward to the opening, then stopped with her forward armor just emerging from the doors. It had been nine long months since she was outside, and the vast openness of it now seemed intimidating.