Warrior Chronicles 2: Warrior's Blood (25 page)

“That presents some problems of its own, because I don’t want that job. I’m going to fight the crystals. I have no interest in dragging humanity down that road with me, and even less in being an ambassador.”

“Okay,” Rand said, “I had planned on talking to Cort about this later, but I might as well throw it out there for all of you. Cort, as far the alien laws are concerned you are the ruler of this system.”

“Aw fuck. That’s not acceptable. You have to find a way out of that, Rand. I’m not kidding.”

“There’s no need,” Black said. “We can’t join their government, so we don’t have to worry about their laws.”

Cort held one hand up and said, “Okay. Again, that’s a problem you guys have to deal with. I’m not going to be the ruler of this system. Back on topic, I am willing to protect the other two alliances if they accept our annexation of North America. If they don’t accept it, I will let them burn before lifting a finger to help them. Beyond that, it’s on your shoulders to negotiate.”

Verne changed the topic with, “It is all academic until we hear from Mr. Sike. I recommend we table this subject until then. In the meantime, we need to talk about how to stop the crystals. Regardless of what we decide about anything else, we have to determine if and how we can fight the crystals. I believe Kim has been working with her weapons people about that.”

“Yes I have, though we had to bring in the astrophysics people too. In the end, we only came up with two viable solutions. Which we choose depends on the nature of the crystal, and we aren’t sure how we are going to get a sample. The collaborative government does not have the information we need. If the crystal is ‘single domain’, meaning it has a uniform magnetism, then we can destroy it much more easily. We would need to get an oscillator into the mantle and tune it to the resonant frequency of the crystal. Then we wait for the oscillations to build up to the point that the planet shatters. The first problem is that we won’t be able to determine the resonant frequency of the crystal without that sample I talked about. We can design an oscillator that will determine the resonant frequency on its own, but it would take a lot more time to build and would not work as quickly.”

“Okay,” Cort said, “what’s the other possibility?”

“Method two relies on a black hole. We go the one closest to the target planet, and accelerate an asteroid or small planetoid using the ‘Penrose Mechanism’. Then we kick it out of the orbit of the black hole precisely targeted at the planet, and smash the crystal to dust. The problem here is mathematics. Jim Real says it would be like threading a needle from a few billion kilometers away. Now if we can generate a black hole in the target system and use it to accelerate a mass into the planet before letting the singularity collapse again, it would work. Humans have never generated a black hole the size we are talking about though, and Speral says the last race brought in to fight the crystals failed at this method. A similar process would be to generate a black hole in system and let it consume the planet. The astrophysics people say this could just be delaying the problem though, as the crystal was apparently ejected from the Sagittarius-A to start with.”

“God, smart people make my head hurt.” Cort leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.

“This time you cannot lay it on us, though. This is your decision,” Verne said.

“You know Doc, at first I thought you were just trying to keep me honest with all your mouthing off. Now I think I’ve pissed you off somehow and you just want to pay me back for it.”

“You did, Cort,” Verne smiled. “No one has ever offered me a wolf.”

“That can be rectified. Will you get off my back now?” Cort laughed. “Okay, I want two teams working on it then, Kim. Three people work on the black hole, gravity, migraine inducing crap. Everyone else works on a fractional coilgun.”

“Coilgun?” Kim asked.

“Yeah, Goog... er, look it up. Finally I know something you people don’t.” Cort was clearly pleased with himself. “It’s similar to railgun. but uses a barrel instead of rails. The projectiles also have coils. In my time they used a sabot round but they were largely experimental. In the early twenty-first century, they deployed them militarily against near Earth objects.”

“Oh, you mean a Gauss cannon,” Kim said.

“Goddammit,” Cort said, the exasperation in his voice clear.

Kim didn’t bother telling anyone she was looking it up as Cort spoke and she went on to say, “That would actually work well, but it only solves the delivery problem. What about the projectile?”

Cort said, “The first thing I thought of was two barrels. One fires a large plasma mass into the planet. The sheer mass of the target will force it to bore into the planet’s mantle, then we can follow it in with a slightly smaller torpedo that follows the first mass down the hole. The torpedo will have the oscillator in it.”

Kim responded, “That brings me to a problem with the oscillator. It will require an enormous amount of energy. More than we can put on board.”

“We wouldn’t be limited by size in this case. How big does the power source have to be?”

“We are talking about shaking a planet apart, Cort. We can’t build a power source that large.”

“Then we have to get power from the planet. Can you harness energy from the core?” Cort asked.

Doctor Black responded before Kim could, saying, “I will have to ask my people, but we should be able to.”

“Let’s talk ships now,” Cort said. “Bluntly, I’m not worried what you guys want for the colony or Earth, just what I need to do my job.”

“We need to decide
how
we are going to do that then, don’t we?” Verne asked.

“No, I mean a ship to land me on one of the crystal planets so I can get you a sample.”

Kim sat up and almost screamed, “You can’t be serious! You are
NOT
landing on a planet that turns everything on it to crystal!”

The look on Cort’s face began as surprise at Kim’s outburst, but changed into to something almost deadly, as if the woman had pointed a gun at him. No one watching was able to say exactly what passed between the two in that challenge, but Cort’s next words to Kim were cold and calculated. “Miss Point, need I remind you that I am the military leader of this government. What I do and do not do in the name of our defense is not up for debate. You yourself said that we cannot fight this thing effectively without getting samples of it. So let me tell you exactly what I am going to do. First I am going to take a ship to low orbit over one of the crystal planets. Then I am going to land a shuttle on it and watch that shuttle get consumed. You people are going to use that data to figure out a way to buy me enough time to be able to take a sample without becoming a crystal myself. I would highly recommend you consider how I am going to transport it as well.”

Kim could barely look at her screen. Cort could see she was trying to look everywhere but at his image. She was fuming and he wasn’t backing down. “Because then I am going to bring it back here and put it in some sort of a lab on one of the moons. I believe you might want to build that lab in such a manner that it is not connected to our systems in any way, because you do not yet know how this enemy propagates. Finally, I am going to repeat that process at least two more times to find out if the crystal forms the same way every time.”

“Now Miss Point, do you have a problem with anything I just said? Because if you do, I would suggest you remove yourself from this group. Perhaps you have forgotten, but I have only one job. That is to protect our people. I will do anything in my power to accomplish that task. Do you understand?”

Kim nodded to answer his mordant question, but it wasn’t good enough for Cort. “I asked you a question and I expect an answer. Do you understand what my role here is?”

“Yes, SIR! I understand completely, SIR! Excuse us a moment, everyone,” Kim said as she looked down and muted the others. After opening a private audio channel to Cort, she stared at his location on her monitor. The vitriol filled words spilled from her like a dam had burst. “I also understand that you are so afraid of caring for someone else that you constantly look for ways to die. I don’t understand if that is to ease your own pain, or is it just the guilt you feel because you can’t save us all? Maybe it’s because you think everyone who loves you pays a price they can’t afford.

While the others couldn’t hear what she was saying, they couldn’t help but see and feel her emotion. When Kim felt tears starting to form, she muted their image of her as well and continued. “Well, that’s not your decision, Mr. Big Man. You don’t get to pick who loves you. And you don’t get to pick who worries about you. And you sure as fuck don’t get to make those choices for
me
! So forgive me if your announcement caught me off guard. It’s not every day someone I love tells me that he is going to take on an entire Gods damned planet by himself! Oh, and in case you have forgotten, this is the second time that a little gem like that has been laid on me, and the last time my fucking husband didn’t come home because he was trying to terraform
this
Gods damned planet! So I am going to work my ass off to figure out a way to get those samples without you having to turn into a Gods damned gemstone! Do
you
understand what
my
role is here?”

Kim wiped the tears from her face and went back to the open channel. “Mr. Addison and I have discussed it, and we have decided that our group needs to come up with another way to retrieve the crystal samples. I would appreciate any suggestions or input that the rest of you may have, because like me, I am sure you can all see the multitude of flaws in the plan put forth by our esteemed protector.”

--

As was normal for Cort, he excused himself when the meeting turned away from military matters, and Kim Point soon followed. The others remained online for a few more minutes. “What just happened?” Rand asked.

“I think we just saw someone rein Cort in,” Rhodes said.

Rand had to admit it looked like it, but only responded with, “No way.”

“I am more than a little concerned about it, to be honest. It shifts the balance of power among us.” Verne always looked for the potential hazards in any situation and his words echoed the fear everyone else felt.

“You guys know Cort,” Rhodes said, “he hates being a part of this government. He always has, but we keep laying more on him. The reality is that he would rather be left alone until we need him.”

“But we always need him,” Rand added.

“Do we really?” Black asked. “Chief is right. Think about it though, couldn’t someone else have gone with Speral? I’m not saying someone else would have gotten the concessions Cort did, but they probably wouldn’t have offered as much either. Everything is black and white to him. That’s not how diplomacy works. We need him when we can’t do our job. That’s the reality, you know. We shouldn’t activate him until we fail. We have this nuclear option that means we never have to be good neighbors. We need to stop relying on him. Especially now, because this crystal thing is going to consume all of him for the foreseeable future.”

Rand asked, “So what do we do?”

“I think Kim is doing it for us,” Rhodes replied. “So for now we wait.”

--

Cort sent Dar an update and spent the rest of the day learning everything he could about crystal. Zandra sensed his mood and was herself very somber for the rest of the work day. After a walk in the park and dinner, they went back to his office to send one more message to Earth. Before he could close his comm line, a new line activated. It was Rand.

“Hey Gramps, got a minute?”

“Shoot, Rand. Though I suspect I know what this is about,” Cort replied.

“So tell me then.”

“You want to know what is going on with Kim, how it affects my judgement, what happened between Clare and me, and what I think Dar is going to do.”

“So again, tell me then.”

“If you were anyone else I’d disconnect right now,” Cort sighed. He had spent the day wanting to talk to Dar about this mess, but knew that Dar had just as much on his shoulders as Cort himself did. Rand was the next best option. Looking at the pictures on his desk of the family that was dead and buried centuries ago, he knew he needed to talk or he would end up in a bad place that night. The place in his dreams where reality and nightmare merged into one, leaving him sleepless and lonely and unsure of himself.
Maybe that’s the worst of all, being unsure.
He looked at Rand again and spoke. “I wanted to talk to you about Clare in person, but I guess this will have to do.”