The Orion Plague (17 page)

He could see the vast storage yards with
their truck-like crawlers carrying pieces of ship. Once the
concepts had proven out, serial production had begun. Australia,
and thus the Earth, was not betting everything on this one vessel.
As fast as they could, they were making ready to assemble more. If
everything went perfectly they would be able to launch a ship every
two months. But only Orion would be ready to defend Earth when the
alien Meme arrived.

Every week Nguyen visited the assembly site –
with the rubber-stamp permission of Minister Ekara of course – and
simply took it all in.
This is my brainchild
, he thought.
Without me this nation would still be building missiles,
nuclear-armed rockets as a last-ditch defense against a hopelessly
superior enemy. Without a ship like this the aliens could simply
stand off and pepper Earth with plague after plague, or worse,
chunks of asteroid. Wipe us out like the dinosaurs. Now, the entire
world is contributing, pouring precious resources into Australia –
my Australia. And I alone had the vision to see it and the
fortunate influence to make it happen.

And then a different mental voice reminded
him:
Remember, thou art mortal.

The vast construction complex teemed with
eager Edens, all working sixteen hour days, striving to save the
Earth. It was a strange dichotomy in Nguyen’s mind that on one hand
thanked his ancestors for such willing slaves, and on the other
allowed him this contemptuous cynicism. He despised them as
individual drones, but appreciated them
en masse
; Psychos
would never have done so well.

We were made to be the masters, they the
slaves. Once this crisis is past, we – no, admit it in your secret
heart, I – will rule. To reign immortal over a world, perhaps an
interstellar empire...but there is much work to be done, and these
aliens will not go gently into that good night.

Remember, thou art mortal.

He turned back from the balcony into his
guest office and knocked softly on the door to the adjoining room.
After a moment Minister Ekara opened the door with a smile. “I
trust you are satisfied with our progress?”

“Very.” And he was. Ekara was a particularly
efficient manager for projects of this type, nearly
obsessive-compulsive to make things run on time. Nguyen remembered
reading of Albert Speer, the Nazi Minister of Armaments that had
rationalized the German war machine late in the war, not soon
enough to save his nation. This resemblance made Ekara useful.

Nguyen went on, “I would like to review the
weaponry and Marine facilities, if you can spare some of your staff
for a couple of hours.”

“Of course.” In reality this seemingly
off-the-cuff request was part of a complex dance of trading favors
and personal politics; Ekara’s staff had been preparing for the
meeting, based on Nguyen’s well-known intentions, for at least half
a workday. Maintaining the fiction that they could do it on a
moment’s notice, however, allowed Ekara to seem even more competent
than he already was – a stroke for his ego.

Nguyen spent the next several hours with the
production experts on site. As head of Direct Action, the fact that
he would be providing the nano-fortified Space Marines justified
this leeway. The way they were expected to be employed became a
justification all its own.

When he had first proposed the concept of
boarding the enemy ship in space, the scientists and engineers had
stared at him in disbelief, had called the concept impractical if
not completely impossible. Once he had reminded them that he had
commanded the only mission ever to board and seize an enemy nuclear
submarine at sea, they had become slightly more receptive. And when
he had pointed out that if they wanted to have any chance to
acquire and use the enemy’s technology they would need a force
trained to cleanse the enemy life form from their vehicle and
capture it, they had agreed. Everyone involved thought it was the
longest of long shots, but the payoff would be enormous.

It would have been extremely helpful to have
Raphael’s shuttle available to examine, as an example of what they
might face from the alien ship. Unfortunately, with Skull Denham
out in space with the blended alien, most of the enemy tech was out
of reach.

Not entirely, though. At great risk a Direct
Action team had recovered the latest alien plague-spreading probe
from where it fell to the seabed off the Chinese coast. Even now
his people studied it in his secret laboratories, accompanied by
selected scientists from Ekara’s department.

Nguyen had hopes that the alien biotech would
hold the key to blending nanotech with a modified Eden Plague,
resulting in even more powerful supersoldiers. Ekara’s people
wanted to find more macroscopic applications: materials technology
was the most obvious area, and also its tiny but powerful fusion
drive.

Apparently the Meme aliens had no concept of
operational security. Had humans designed the probe to inflict its
plagues on an alien race – at least, had Nguyen – it certainly
would have self-destructed after its mission, rather than
soft-landing for easy recovery. Perhaps that was their usual
modus operandi
, to reuse their biomachines. Probably their
mindset simply was not flexible enough to easily grasp the concept
that they now fought a technological enemy that was determined to
defend itself by any means necessary – including using the enemy’s
tools against it.

“How is the probe exploitation coming?” Ekara
asked Nguyen, though he certainly had read the daily reports his
own technicians filed from the Direct Action labs.

He simply wants to hear it in my own
words
, Nguyen thought,
to be reassured of our relationship.
As if he could detect if anything was amiss, were I to wish to hide
a betrayal. No, James, you are as good an ally among our Outlier
subspecies as I could expect to have.

“Slow, but promising,” Nguyen replied. “The
materials studies have yielded several very useful approaches in
development of new structural and armor alloys. Unfortunately,
deciphering their fusion technology is a greater challenge and is
unlikely to yield results in time for Orion’s launch. Their biotech
is another order of magnitude beyond even that; my people say it
will take years before they are able to duplicate it even at the
most rudimentary level.”

Ekara nodded, phlegmatic. “Yet we possess it,
and if we assume their biotech is, let us say, hundreds of years
advanced over ours, we shall have it in mere tens.”

“I suspect if it were hundreds of years ahead
of us, we would all be dead,” joked Nguyen gently.

“Perhaps their strategies are not as advanced
as their weapons.”

“I choose to hope that they are – how would
the Americans say it – one-trick ponies.”

“Meaning?” Ekara’s expression was more than
politely interested; he seemed to hang on every word.

Nguyen tapped his nose to indicate a secret.
“Perhaps these fearsome aliens are so used to wiping out races with
their biotechnology that they lack other weapons. Or at least,
their other weapons are not so fearsome.”

“Then why this ship?” Ekara waved vaguely
toward the
Orion
site.

Nguyen smiled. “Shall we wager the human race
on my opinion, no matter how erudite? I think not.”

“You are wise, Brigadier Nguyen.”

The Vietnamese looked carefully at the slim
Australian half-Aborigine, wondering whether this flattery was
sincerely motivated. After a moment he relaxed, trusting his own
judgment, ignoring his professionally suspicious nature. “We are
both wise, Minister Ekara, to work so closely together, unlike some
of the others.” Nguyen bowed, careful to keep any trace of irony
from his voice or manner.

Ekara returned the bow with his head and
heels, almost Germanic in its motion.

On such courtesies are empires built
,
thought Nguyen.

After discussion of the Marine facilities,
personal weaponry, and boarding and counter-boarding equipment, he
went over the ship’s heavy mounted weapons plan. While not strictly
his purview, he felt competent enough to at least observe and ask
pertinent questions, several of which had already prompted
improvements. And since he had taken a personal hand in securing
the promise of their delivery from the South-African
directed-energy weapons program, he had a moral right to at least
observe. The Free Communities were well ahead of the rest of the
world in this area.

The South African state, heavily influenced
by Chairman Markis and his wife Elise, had originally hoped to make
the experimental lasers, grasers, masers and particle beams into
nonlethal weapons for terrestrial use. Instead, now they would
build a dozen or fourteen enormously upscaled versions for mounting
on the
Orion
, dwarfing the fabled turrets of oceangoing
battleships.

Fortunately it did not appear that Eden
conscience against killing extended to the aliens. There was simply
no biological basis for humans to detest killing non-human enemies,
so Nguyen was confident that the crew of the Orion would use these
terrible weapons without moral impediment.

When he finished his visit he praised Ekara,
his facilities and his teams in a short recorded message for
distribution during their next scheduled break. After that he left
with Major Alkina, thoroughly satisfied.

The wedding was a formal one. The bride was
resplendent in modern Marine mess dress, with a blinding white long
skirt and high-collared jacket, and rows of medals topped by the
Navy Cross, the highest possible US military award save only the
Medal of Honor. Jill could hardly complain; three quarters of MoH
recipients were awarded it posthumously. The veil wasn’t exactly
standard issue but she figured the Corps could forgive her that
aberration in her uniform, just this once.

The groom, not being military, was attired in
the finest tuxedo Johannesburg’s tailors could produce.
That’s
okay
, Rick said to himself.
A wedding is the bride’s day,
but it’s the marriage that matters.
And as a soon-to-be married
man, he had to think about married things, like a house, and
furniture, and bank accounts and things like that, he figured. No
more all-night online gaming sessions – well, not many – and then
there was sleeping together. Not sex, just…sleeping in the same bed
with someone. It sounded great, until he remembered how light a
sleeper he was. Any little thing tended to wake him up.
Ah well,
climb that tree when I come to it.

His three mothers, as he called them –
Cassandra, Elise Markis and Shawna Nightingale – had organized
everything, along with his sister Millie. Daniel Markis himself
would be his best man, and Roger Muzik was flying out from the US
to give Jill away in the absence of any other father figure, which
was apt. The painfully handsome military officer still engendered
something uncomfortably close to jealousy for Rick, as his
bride-to-be had spent a lot of time with him. On the other hand,
had there been anything romantic between them, it would have taken
hold long ago and Rick would have been left in the dust. He still
had no idea why she had fallen for him instead of one of the heroes
she worked with, so he just chalked it up to good fortune and
thanked God.

He fiddled with his lapel flower and then, as
Daniel gestured to him to take his place, he wiped his sweaty palms
on his trousers.
After all you’ve been through
, he told
himself,
this is nothing. Just a walk in the park.

Except a walk in the park still gave him
sweaty palms. The shrinks weren’t quite sure why intermittent
agoraphobia seemed to be a lingering side-effect of his captivity,
but then, they could never admit psychology was still more art than
science.

As with most men at their own weddings, the
ceremony itself was a blur, a sensory overload. Snippets stood out
in his mind: putting on the rings; Jill’s face as he lifted her
veil; the kiss; the honor guard raising swords high and Rosco
barking as Randy Butler and Denise Lockerbie, its co-chiefs, swung
the flats of their blades in perfect synchrony to slap the bride
and groom on their hindquarters. He was glad everything was on
video, so he could fill in his stunned memories.

He relaxed a lot more at the reception, as
the wine began to flow and he accepted the congratulations and
well-wishes of all of their friends. He was surprised at how many
they had, and how many had made it there considering the frenetic
pace at which the world was working under the looming alien
threat.

Perhaps they all knew that a day or two off
made for redoubled efforts later. Perhaps they couldn’t stand to
miss a good party. Perhaps they thought it would be one of the last
good ones before hell rained down from above.

Rick did remember his wedding night with
crystal clarity, with no need for an extra video camera.

He rubbed his right eye and smiled.

Chief Energy Weapons Engineer Lawrence
Nightingale ran his hands over the carbon fiber barrel of the
enormous laser that squatted with its fellows in the barnlike Orion
assembly building, a mere two miles from the ship itself. It was
the first of its kind, a weapon fit for the Earth’s inaugural
spacegoing battleship.

In basic form the tube resembled a naval gun
of ninety centimeters diameter and more than twenty feet long. The
strong outer sheath merely supported the crystal waveguide within,
and what came out of the business end was coherent light. In fact,
the back part of the gun itself looked similar to the squat
camera-like devices in dentists’ offices or hospital radiology
departments. But this version would transfer gigawatts of energy to
its target. Each pulse delivered the force of a 500-pound bomb.