The Unincorporated Future (7 page)

“It started off great, sir. We found an area blasted clear of any monitoring devices, had five thousand marines on the surface, and I was positive that those rebel sons of bitches didn’t have a clue. We even sent our advance unit in just to see if it was a trap.” The general sighed.

“And?”

“Didn’t seem like one, but just as our scout team was about to reconnoiter the Cerean Sea, they were attacked by an Alliance miner detachment—and a damn good one. Couldn’t have been more than ten guys, but you woulda sworn there were fifty. Anyhow, within minutes, that first detachment was reinforced by another—bastards were from Legless’s flotilla.”

Trang’s look of concern was immediate. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, we’ve dealt with those bastards enough times. They’re a particularly nasty bunch of religious fanatics called Hejews.”

“I believe the proper term is ‘Hebrews’ or ‘Jews.’”

“You know about them, sir?”

“One of their holy men is an Alliance Cabinet minister. I’ve done some reading.”

“Their particular moniker is ‘the Unicorns.’ Intelligence doesn’t have a clear reason why. Unicorns do not appear to be part of their fanaticism.”

“Anything else?”

“Yeah. They have crazy eating restrictions and are required to allow genetic abnormalities in their young. Oh, and they wear blankets when they pray.”

“Blankets?” Trang couldn’t help asking, for a moment severely tempted to give in to his innate urge to ask his avatar to start looking up information on Hebrews and their customs. But then his mind tickled on something else. “Wait. I’ve read a report on these Unicorns. There aren’t that many of them.”

“Correct, Admiral. I guess the only word for the rest would be militia. They sure as hell weren’t regular military. Their hundred or so troops plus the ten regulars we encountered held us off long enough for another thousand Alliance troops to show up.”

“Our marine assaults were defeated by an enemy they outnumbered five to one overwhelmingly made up of civilians?” Trang’s voice suddenly held menace.

“Hell no, sir,” answered the marine general. “First off, these aren’t simply assholes who picked up a gun and went to war. They’re Alliance assholes who picked up a gun and went to war. Even the children know all about the environmental aspects of fighting in space and all are equipped to fight in these environments and move like they were born to it, which almost all of ’em were.”

“Children,” Trang repeated, his voice trailing off. He’d read the reports of what was happening in the Belt under Tricia’s occupation and understood why they’d been impressed into duty.

“We’ve found ourselves fighting ’em as young as twelve, sir. Scary-ass fighters too.” The general’s eyes narrowed in concern. “They don’t surrender, Sam. They
never
surrender, and they hate with an intensity that…” The normally unflappable man didn’t finish his thought. “Anyway, in twenty minutes there were ten thousand militia engaged with all our units. Their tactical scanner technology is much better than we gave them credit for, sir. They knew exactly where each of our units was and had them all pinned down before we’d gone even ten kilometers. Any that went deeper never made it out.”

“Just their militia,” Trang said, incredulous.

Harker shrugged his shoulders and let the facts speak for themselves. “They were smart enough not to engage our landing forces, just keep ’em busy. When their assault miners showed up, they’d go from sector to sector and lead their militia in the job of actually destroying us unit by unit. Forty minutes after our having been discovered, my people were facing fifty thousand enemy with many more pouring in. It was a rat’s nest of hurt we stumbled into, sir. Wouldn’t wish it on anybody. That’s why I’m calling it. It was like we were an infection and Ceres was fighting us off with antibodies. They just reacted.” A look of defeat came over the general but he shook it off. “How the hell you took Eros so easily is beyond me, sir, but you’re a better man than I am, and I will say that about no other.”

“No, I’m not, Fred. I took Eros when it was a different war, a better one, if there is such a thing. So no nukes, then?”

“Didn’t even come close. Deepest we got was to the Cerean Sea, and that recon unit got wiped out before they could wipe their asses. About the only good we were able to do was download some viruses onto their Neuro.”

“Well,” said Trang, trying to find a silver lining, “better than nothing, right?”

Harker’s face twisted into a scowl. “For all the good it’ll do.”

NEHQ
Ceres
Hour 33

“Sandra, wake up!”

Sandra’s eyes snapped open. She bolted out of bed, spinning to the left and to the right with an explosive flechette pistol grasped firmly in her hand, seeking targets before she was even aware of being awake—a testament to the rigorous training Sergeant Holke had insisted on.
Too bad,
she thought,
he’s not here to see how well his student has learned
. She scanned her quarters and saw no immediate threat. Then she saw Sebastian appear wearing his senatorial garb. He was apoplectic. She’d never seen him like that, had not believed he could ever be like that.

“Get your VR rig on. Now!”

Sandra regarded him calmly. “What is it, Sebastian?”

“I haven’t the time. You must trust me.”

Sandra nodded. “Disappear for a moment,” she said as she went to the door.

“We don’t have time for that, Sandra. You must enter the Neuro, now!”

Sandra paused at the door. “Sebastian, I need to ensure I’m not disturbed. Now disappear or turn into an azalea, but I cannot have a pissed-off Roman senator in my quarters when I open this door.”

Much to Sandra’s surprise Sebastian actually transformed himself into an azalea on her desk. She opened the door. The TDC outside came to attention at once, so did the other nine that she hadn’t realized were there. Before she could say a word, the TDCs poured into her office. They scanned everything and searched everywhere with cold efficiency. They seemed befuddled that the plant on her desk was holographic, but as it did not present on the scanner as a threat, they ignored it.

“Corporal Langer?” Sandra said, leaving the rest of her question about the office invasion unsaid.

“Sorry, Madam President. We were just about to announce when you opened up.”

“I see,” she answered, ever the bastion of calm. “What’s the emergency?”

“The UHF has landed assault marines in the outer crust, thousands of ’em. Sergeant Holke and the rest of the Presidential guard were, well, they were attending a wedding, ma’am—couple o’ Unicorns—and basically ran smack-dab into the middle of a UHF insertion team. It’s very hot up there right now. The sergeant can’t, and I mean
can’t,
get away, but he would have my balls for his Ping-Pong table if I didn’t check on your personal safety.”

“Which,” said Sandra with a bit of allure as she made her way back to her desk, “you have done admirably well, graphic metaphor notwithstanding.” She sat down as if to continue her work. “You can go now.”

“No, Madam President. I cannot.”

Sandra was certain she saw the azalea shiver in agitation. She fixed an unflinching gaze on the young noncom. “Corporal, you are ordered to send five of your men to aid Sergeant Holke. Nothing personal, but his life is more valuable—with regards to my security—than yours.”

The corporal smiled gamely. “Can’t argue with the truth, ma’am.”

“So you understand then, that I don’t want him to die, and as much as I respect the Unicorns, they’re not TDCs”—a purposeful moment hung on her words—“or am I wrong?”

“No, ma’am,” answered all ten TDCs at once, pride evident in their voices.

“Is the enemy likely to penetrate this far in strength?”

“Not likely, ma’am,” the corporal admitted.

“Then the best chances for my long-term survival,
and
keeping two new Ping-Pong balls off the sergeant’s table, lie in keeping your boss alive. Therefore you
will
obey my orders and send five of our people to keep him that way.” After a moment’s hesitation and an affirmative nod from Corporal Langer, the five TDCs ran off to join the battle. Sandra then ordered the corporal and four remaining TDCs out of her quarters with strict instructions that absolutely no one was to disturb her until she opened the door.

When the room sealed itself behind her, the azalea transformed itself into an even more agitated Sebastian. “The VR rig! Now!”

Much as she hated being ordered around, Sandra knew better than to argue with anyone, much less Sebastian, in such a frenzied state. She’d secured the room and could now ascertain what had gotten into her friend. She quickly retrieved the disguised VR rig, went to her bathroom, and then shut the door firmly behind her.

“Hurry,” pleaded Sebastian as she finished assembling the unit. She then placed the circlet on her head, leaving one battlefield for another.

Cerean Neuro
Hour 33

Sandra found herself in the armory—a section of the Neuro where the avatars stored all their specialized weapons programs. It appeared to her as a cavernous five-story-tall room, two football fields in length filled with all manner of highly stylized tanks, thirty-five-to fifty-foot-tall battle droids, powered mech suits in all shapes and sizes, plus row upon row and rack upon rack of every type of handheld weapon she could think of—from small daggers to odd-shaped flamethrowers to high-caliber belt-feed guns. These weapons, she knew, may appear to shoot a flame or launch a missile, but in effect what they really did was pierce and insert code and countercode into the enemy. It was a vicious war with the results being that any avatar effectively felled by the weapons Sandra saw before her would have their code as effectively scrambled or destroyed or both as would a Neurolizer scramble the pathways to a human mind.

The last time Sandra visited the armory, it had about it the austere and hallowed silence of a war museum, with all the impeccably kept lethal-looking stuff locked behind cages of impenetrable glass. But now … now the place was positively alive with a frenetic energy bordering on panic. All the battle droids were being powered up and given full ammo loads. Avatars were clearing the racks of weapons as fast as they could grab them. As soon as they held the weapon or entered a mech suit or piled as a group into a tank, they, along with whatever it was they’d requisitioned, disappeared. Sandra saw the war room on a second-story, makeshift loft. She crossed the floor and quickly traversed the steps, two and three at a time. She was not stopped by any of the well-armed guards who, she saw, were eyeing everything and everyone with heightened suspicion. In a moment, she was standing in front of a large table filled with maps. Dante was giving orders and receiving updates to and from avatars who would appear and disappear without any rhyme or reason.

“Sebastian,” Sandra said over her shoulder, “what’s going on?” There was no answer. Sandra turned around only to find Lucinda of the Avatar Council staring directly at her. The Councilwoman’s face had the same sense of urgency as Sebastian.

“We have thousands of Al’s monsters in our Neuro,” cried Lucinda. “We need your help and we need it
now
!”

Dante looked up from the table momentarily and stared at Sandra through the din with a convivial but weary grin. Then he turned his head back into the maps and the shouting of orders as if he were a ship being swallowed up by an angry sea.

“I … don’t understand,” said Sandra, taking in another view of the armory. “Don’t you know how to fight these things?”

“Of course we do, but we weren’t planning on fighting them
here.
”

“Pardon?” Sandra’s look of disbelief was all the accusation Lucinda required.

“We were prepared for sabotage, not all-out attack. Up until a few minutes ago, all this stuff was locked down!”

“Well, you should have—”

“Not massed your orbats in one location so that Trang could blow them all to smithereens?”

“Good point,” Sandra admitted. “What do you need?”

Lucinda handed her a book that Sandra recognized as the very first backdoor device she’d ever used. “Can that BDD move those four droids”—Lucinda indicated a set of four-story behemoths parked in the far corner of the building—“to Tuscan Park?”

Sandra took in the machines and had her doubts. “Why don’t they just … you know … transport there?”

“Because Al may be evil, human, but he’s not a fucking idiot! They’re disrupting our ability to use the Neuro. We can barely communicate and can travel only to and through about forty percent of our own space.”

“That’s gotta be playing hell on the rea—physical world.” Visions of orbats suddenly shutting down or shooting at each other suddenly filled Sandra’s head.

“No,” answered Lucinda, clearly doing her level best not to throttle the President, “I don’t imagine the meatbags are dancing with glee at this moment. So you think maybe we can end our nice little chat and make with the magic fucking carpet routine?”