Theirs Not to Reason Why 5: Damnation (37 page)

“Whoever thinks that the Salik would have changed in even as much as three hundred years more is deluded beyond all grasp of truth and reality.”

“. . . What if there
are
non-Salik down there?” Agent Sierra asked her.

The tears spilled over. She ignored them, blinking hard to clear her vision so she could keep an eye on the autopilot program guiding the
Damnation
. “Three years, ten months, thirty days, eleven hours, and seven minutes ago, I was the last Human to leave Sallha alive, meioa. Everyone else has been tortured and eaten by now. Any so-called ‘survivors’ are nothing more than sophisticated traps laid by the Salik in the hopes that we would be
stupid
enough to risk contaminating ourselves in some misguided attempt at rescuing them.

“Between my precognitive timing efforts and the effects of this plague, I have ended this war three years early and saved countless trillions of lives in doing so. I will not risk one more life in any rescue attempts. Anyone else who tries will simply be stupidly throwing their life away for nothing. Private C’ulosc. Inform the fleet of the following: If
any
of those civilian ships comes within ten Alliance Standard planetary diameters of Sallha, its moon, or its neighboring planets, they are to be, to quote the Admiral-General, shot out of the night,” she ordered. “And if they
v’charok
about that, remind them that they still have free will, but that it is my hope they also still have the capacity to think things through to all possible consequences
before
they choose to act. Anyone or anything touching a contaminated atmosphere that is not a Feyori
will not be coming back
.”

“Sir, yes, sir,” C’ulosc confirmed. He worked a few moments with the ongoing recordings on the bridge. “. . . Message transmitted.”

“Let us hope it is also a message
received
.”

Silence descended once again, if one did not count the noise of the conversion engines trying to recapture and drain the thermal energy from the main laser. When Nelson announced, “35C, sir,” Ia once again broadcast psychic permission to Group Two to sweep the ship, devouring thermal energy as they went. Group Three lined up in their wake to await the thermal buffet being offered.

The
Damnation
continued its graceful glide through orbital space. Only it, the hydrotankers, and the Feyori dared to move from their parked positions. Crossing mostly over ocean, including a near-arctic climate as the beam passed close to the axial pole, the Godstrike was now leaving boiling clouds of vaporized water in its wake, in a long cloud that was still black back on land, and white in the laser’s immediate wake. They crossed the occultation line from day into night, and within moments it was clear from the reddish glow and the spider-crawl flashes of lightning that there was still a lot of heat and ion imbalances bleeding away in the main laser’s immediate wake.

—

One hundred seventeen minutes after the first cut had begun, the diagonal circle was complete. Ia unlocked the main cannon and shut it off, closing the double lid to secure the control button. The Feyori currently on standby took that as their cue to sweep through the ship one more time, siphoning up the excess thermal energy. In the wake of their passing, the Sterling engines shut down, bringing a blessed level of quiet that soothed aching, overstimulated nerves.

“Yeoman Ishiomi. Helm to your control in thirty.”

“Aye, sir. Helm to mine in . . . twenty-six,” he confirmed. He restrapped his hand into the attitude control and woke up his console. “. . . Taking the helm . . . now, sir. I have the helm.”

“The helm is yours,” she confirmed. “Move the ship into position for phase two.
All hands, this is the General. Duty-swap in five minutes. I repeat, duty-swap in five minutes.
” Unbuckling her harness, she stood and flexed her shoulders. “Yeoman, you have the bridge until my return.”

“Aye, sir, I have the bridge.”

There was virtually no chance of anyone trying to take over her bridge, now. Not when the sheer destruction wrought by the main cannon, and Ia’s carefully controlled wielding of it, had been so amply demonstrated. That, and long-standing tradition insisted that the pilot of a vessel always had the final say, as they had the final responsibility for the safety of that ship.

Just as well. Ia had to use the head and needed to stretch fully. She was also hungry. Retreating into the back corridor, she found Lieutenant Rico inside, putting the finishing touches on a pasta dish. He nodded at her. “Two minutes to food, sir. The doctor insisted you should eat, and I’m tired of watching you fix sandwiches.”

She knew what he was not saying, what he wanted to say. The burden of all of this was on her, and her crew was concerned.

“I’ll enjoy it when I get back,” she promised, and ducked into the nearest head. When she emerged, hands washed and stiff muscles somewhat stretched, he handed her a bowl layered with noodles, meat, vegetables, and a sprinkling of cheese. He delivered it with a warning.

“Myang has been interrogating me in her spare time,” Rico told her. He was the chief spy for the Admiral-General, so this was not too surprising. “I think she suspects I have been covering up several subjects for you.”

“She would be a fool not to suspect that,” Ia agreed, reflexively checking the timestreams. When she did, she relaxed a little and dug her fork into the layers of the dish while she leaned against the galley counter. “It’ll be okay.”

Her warning about the need to control, and destroy, all information regarding the Godstrike weaponry had sunk in deep in the other woman’s psyche. The canals and levees she had struggled to build over the years now seemed to be laid too deep to easily disturb, though Ia had no intention of letting down her guard even now. The Miklinn mess had proved that to be a necessity. Little details were still slipping through, yes, but the majority of her plans were now solidly in place. All she had left to do was—

“Sir? You know I respect you,” Rico told her, interrupting her train of thought. “But either you move so I can get to work, or
you
will have to scrub these dishes.”

“Lieutenant, yes, sir,” she quipped, shifting to lean against a cabinet he wouldn’t need. By the time her meal was finished, the bowl and fork were the last bits in need of scrubbing. Handing them over, she fetched a bottle of water out of the bottom of the cooler. “See you in a few more hours.”

“And you.”

Checking herself quickly in the mirror in the nearest head, Ia made sure she hadn’t spilled anything, wiped her mouth, and headed back to the bridge. C’ulosc at communications had been replaced by Xhuge, Ramasa by Hong at the gunnery station, ship’s operations were being watched by the vigilant Dinyadah, and Hulio had replaced Shim at navigation. Yeoman Fielle had taken over her seat at the command console at the back of the bridge; in deference to the solemnity of the moment, he was not pulling a Helstead with his boots on the console edge but instead had his feet flat on the floor.

Glancing her way, he released his harness and stood. “General on Deck.”

Since she was not relieving him of watch—that was still Ishiomi’s job—she didn’t bother to salute. The two of them just traded places. Strapping herself in, she fitted the glove onto her hand. “ETA to target two?”

“Coming up in two minutes seventeen seconds, sir,” Private Hulio told her.

“Helm to yours in twenty, sir,” Ishiomi added as she sat down and clipped her water bottle into place.

“Helm to mine in . . . twenty—let me adjust my seat, first,” Ia confirmed, pausing briefly to push at the levers. Its sensors knew her usual configurations, but the tension of watching over the Godstrike had warned her she needed the back to sit more upright, so that she could relax into it while remaining alert. Various acceleration forces weren’t pressing her into it, as they more normally did when she was at the helm, which was usually during moments of combat. There were none, this time. “. . . I have the helm.”

“Helm is yours, sir. Permission to stand down, General?” the yeoman in the pilot’s seat asked.

“Permission granted. Yeoman Fielle, take your seat and prepare to stand by. Private Dinyadah, what is our fuel status?”

“Aye, sir.”

Dinyadah checked her screens. “One hundred percent, with three tankers connected and more on standby.”

“Excellent.”

While the two men changed places, Ia checked their altitude, speed, and orbital path. Yeoman First Class Ishiomi Hatsue had done a good job of aligning the ship with the correct orbital path for phase two, set at an angle to the original diagonal ring cut around the world. On the monitors showing the curve of the planet, a ragged, dark red-gray line was coming into view, still molten-hot, spewing up steam from the shallow oceans and scorching the land with ongoing firestorms.

She unlocked the control box, watching the countdown timer. The destruction of Sallha required precisely timed stresses applied to the planet’s tectonic plates in specific locations. “Beginning phase two in ten . . . nine . . .”

Eight seconds later, she activated the cannon, locking it on. The sensors on board the
Damnation
blacked out the forward-pointing view, switching to incoming camera angles from other ships. Once again, the beam struck land first, erupting in an initial mushroom cloud that quickly sprouted into an elongated shockwave.

There were still surveillance drones in the atmosphere, and their images were similar to the first set: those close to the blast were obliterated; those farther out showed the ash clouds in the distance, and the quaking of the ground, the toppling of plants and buildings, even a landslide or two. A view from a ship in far orbit, showing three-quarters of the world’s curve, displayed a few dark spots in the clouds, blotches of ash and smoke that were nowhere near the lines being carved in Sallha’s skin.

“What are those spots?” Denora asked, pointing. “Does anybody know?”

“Volcanoes,” Ia told her. “You slept through the planning session that first day. The objective is to create points of grave weakness in Sallha’s crust, disrupting the delicate balance of stress shared by all its tectonic plates. This ship will carve five sets of rings around the world, then assume geostationary orbit and bore seven holes in the greatest mountain chain.

“Some of the Feyori will then bring in an asteroid roughly the length of this ship, and sling it at the center of those seven boreholes. This will break off a wedge of the crust and drive it deep into the mantle. Other groups of Feyori will sling smaller asteroids at the intersection points of the cuts the
Damnation
will have made. This will cause chunks of the crust to collapse and subduct in those areas, while the shock forces will push tsunami-like waves through the magma, causing it to burst through the weakened crust at other points.

“The last of the five rings will be carved approximately nine hours from now. The boreholes will be finished in just ten hours, and it will take fifteen minutes at most to sling the rocks. Within twenty-seven hours, this world will be suffering the kind of catastrophic crustal subduction failure that geoscientists believe caused the surface of Venus, in the Sol System, to look like it now does. At that point, the coldest spot on Sallha, at the uppermost edge of its atmosphere, will be over twenty-three hundred Celsius. More than hot enough to destroy the plague,” Ia finished.

The reporter blinked at Ia, then looked back at her screen. “That’s . . . impressive. And frightening. But . . . Sallha’s moon has a thin nitrogen-and-carbon-dioxide atmosphere, which means it’s contaminated, but it’s not geothermally active. How are you going to destroy it? How
can
you?”

“The Feyori will envelop it in what they call the Great Gathering. My crew will launch a thick screen of scatter-bombs—they have a payload of diffraction prisms—and I will shoot the Meddlers with the main cannon. With that much energy at their command, they will shift Sallha’s natural satellite out of orbit and sling it toward its parent star . . . the same as they will do for all the other plague-infested, gas-covered, but otherwise thermally inert worlds and moons.”

Denora’s jaw dropped.

“For the five other worlds the Salik colonized, ones that are thermally active, we will carve them up, break them down, and let them burn. Navigation over the next three millennia will be a bit tricky, while Sallha adjusts to lacking a moon . . . but then most everyone will be wanting to park themselves in interstitial space, or in other star systems, to catch the last of the data streams sent out.

“Once it’s been slagged, and the plague has been destroyed, there won’t be any reason to actually visit this world . . . unless you’re a geophysicist,” she allowed lightly. “But just to be safe, a rear guard of Meddlers will stay on hand to keep plague-seekers away for a full ten Terran days while the planet burns at temperatures above the plague killing threshold.”

“Won’t the churning of the atmosphere kick some of the plague into space?” de Marco asked next, looking at the screens.

“That’s what the other Meddlers out there are doing,” Ia said, lifting her chin at the screens. “They’re spotting and snagging the plague, then dragging it back down into the lower atmosphere, where they release it so it can burn.”

“Ambient temperature is now 25C, sir,” Dinyadah announced quietly.

“Thank you, Private.”

“But . . . if they can do that, what’s stopping them from taking the plague to other worlds, and threatening us?” the reporter asked, twisting once again in her harness-strapped seat so she could peer at Ia.

“The most important reason why they won’t ever do that to us is because it is against their own rules to wipe out each other’s pawns,” Ia patiently explained. “The other main reason is that they know I will not let them.”

“That does bring up a good question, General,” Myang stated. “
How
are you controlling the Feyori?”

“Fear, and respect. They know I value each of
their
lives. They may push and prod us, even breed with us for their own manipulative ends . . . but they are in their own way a civilized race. They can and do get along with the rest of us. Unlike the Salik,” Ia added in a grim aside. She reached one-handed for the cap of the bottle, twisting it to open the mouth before tugging it out of its clip on the side of her workstation console. “I have attained player status among them, as one of them, with more than enough strength to have gained their respect.”