Gravity Wars: Saturn Protocol, page 4
Maybe Tal had a point. Maybe he should have acquiesced or at least looked more deeply into the concept of a giant railgun.
Assur studied the tablet in his hands and began to scroll through it. He found, as he studied the charts—
This was incredible. If he were the Earthlings, if he ran their society, he could easily defeat this colony. The correct decision—
Assur groaned aloud and set the tablet on the desk. He put his arms on the desk and rested his head on them. He groaned once more, a pitiful sound.
I have killed my own in order to remain in power.
The ability to do that must have come from the iron in him. Did the iron come from his father, Enki, who had once been Chief Marshal of the generational ship? Or did it come from his mother Ningal? The latter seemed ludicrous at first. Except that Ningal’s Grandfather Sargon had taken a ceremonial knife and marched onto the Akkad’s bridge, plunging the knife into the throat of Ship Commander Anat. Why had Sargon done that? Because Anat had been making the wrong choices for the People?
Abruptly, Assur stood.
“I can’t believe it. I come from a line of assassins.”
In fact, that was how Assur had acquired high power in the first place. No wonder he felt a knot in his stomach. He was trying to prevent what he and his had done. Surely, there was a Valiant brave and cunning enough to defeat him.
“Not so far,” Assur said. “So far, I have defeated them all.”
He slumped back into the chair and continued to read the tablet. What he found was plain and succinct. The colony did not have the industrial base to win the war unless the Earthlings were complete morons. Perhaps he could even use the word “retards.” But the Earthlings weren’t retards, were they? They had shown themselves as cunning and resourceful. Perhaps they were dumber and weaker than Valiants—
Assur continued to scroll through the tablet as he studied one graph after another. In order to impose their will upon humanity, in order to crush, possibly exterminate humanity… that would only come many years in the future. Now, the colony had to survive. To survive, they had to knock down Earth’s industrial base even as they accelerated their own.
Unfortunately, the humans had snatched some Valiant technology. That was going to make Valiant victory even more difficult.
Assur squinted, staring at nothing.
Sub-Commander Tal had been right. He had used Dreadnought Gilgamesh to buy existence for everyone aboard the Voyager. If Assur had not done that, the Vim missiles would have won by destroying the Akkad.
He had to sacrifice the Gilgamesh. Now, though, when they needed the Gilgamesh most, the Dreadnought was not here. It would take too many years for the next Dreadnought to appear. By that time—
“I know what will happen.”
Assur wanted to tear his hair out. This was so galling and unbelievable. The charts… no wonder they tried to murder him.
Assur stood and began to pace while clutching the tablet, continuing to scroll through it, studying Earth charts and Valiant charts. The answer was clear. There was only one way to do this. They could not risk their precious ships going to Earth. They needed the ships at Titan for defense. Valiant superiority at space fighting probably wouldn’t last long, as the humans were quick learners.
How could he have been so blind? How could he have not seen it sooner? They had to build the magnetic rail. Even that was going to be iffy. The time needed to construct it, and the energy and the power requirements, and the precision of the shots…
Assur continued to scroll, read and study the strategic implications.
The charts—he had slain the brain trust he needed to win this war.
“I had to kill them. I had to do it,” Assur said.
He closed his mouth. He could feel himself losing self-control. He could feel it slipping away from him. Was this madness? Was it his conscience hammering at him for what he had done these past few days?
“Get a hold of yourself, get a grip,” he said.
Assur sat and rested his hands on the desk. He contemplated, thought and reconsidered. Then he continued to study the charts and the analysis.
The magnetic rail line, the railgun—he would have to stop constructing the Dreadnought. They had built… they were not going to cannibalize the rising skeleton of the Dreadnought. That would be a mistake. He couldn’t go backward, but things were going to have to change.
Here was the thing. He had slain those trying to tell him the will of the People, and the will of the People was clear. The strategists had figured it out. They could not build the Dreadnought now and beat the humans unless the humans made ghastly mistakes. They would have to lure the humans into making those mistakes. Before that, he needed a weapon, a railgun 200 kilometers long to send iron projectiles at Earth.
Assur yanked his hair in frustration and stood abruptly. He used his fingers to comb through his hair. He had made his decision. The People had spoken. He had slain several of the messengers. Now it was time to placate the People.
The People needed his determination. They needed his ruthlessness and cunning because they needed unity of command. That was the only way to defeat the Earthers. That was the only way 170,000 could defeat billions through making the right choices every single time and by losing minuscule amounts while making the humans lose massively.
The humans had small railguns on their Orion ships but they did not have a railgun like this. They had other advantages. One of the Valiant advantages was having lesser gravity wells. Titan possessed fourteen percent Earth’s gravitational pull.
Assur switched off the tablet.
It was time to rehabilitate the cadet, using the fellow who had followed his conscience and warned the Chief Marshal. Such a one would be dangerous. He was a Valiant who spoke the truth. That made him invaluable but it also made Naram Sin dangerous.
“I must walk a tightrope,” Assur told himself.
He had done what he needed to do, as the People needed unity of command. But now… it often took a lot for him to change his mind. But when he needed to change his mind… he must do it for the People’s survival.
“I have heard,” Assur said into the air, “I have heard your will and I will relent to it. I will no longer brand you in the face but I will work tirelessly to defeat the Earthlings.”
That meant the giant railgun system, at least in Assur’s mind, was already under construction.
-7-
EARTH
MARCH 2065
Colonel Mike Steele, one of the few space marines to have returned from Neptune, hurried down a Parisian boulevard near the Seine River. He wore an old-style trench coat, hat, and boots, and walked through drizzle with his head down. He had just finished dinner with two comrades who had also made it back aboard the Corsair-class alien vessel stolen from the Akkad’s hangar bay.
The Corsair had reached Earth three and a half months earlier.
That meant three and a half months of being in detention undergoing tests, questions and endless blood draws. Steele had run far too many miles for the testers and sweated gallons for them. He had recounted his exploits aboard the alien Voyager at least a hundred times. The space battle and then the debriefing had both been horrific experiences.
The journey to Neptune had been particularly terrifying, the ride back not so much. For some of the men, it had been a bacchanal with their chosen alien woman. Some of those aliens, Valiants, were giving birth. Those births were producing boys and girls, many with a slight blue tinge to their skin. It was fascinating and mindboggling.
Steele thrust his hands into the pockets of his trench coat as he continued along the Seine, ignoring the drizzle.
He wasn’t as lean as he used to be, although he was still of average height. The hat hid his blond white buzz cut. His greater weight was due to a gloppy yellow solution injected into him and others before the space mission. It had biologically changed the space marines, made them stronger, with their muscles and bones a bit more dense than before.
In the distance, through the evening drizzle, Steele eyed the Eiffel Tower. He knew that three suspicious characters were trailing him, had been trailing him since before dinner. They hadn’t been visible during the meal, not with three space marines together. Since then, though, like wild dogs chasing zebras on the Serengeti Plain, they were closing in, moving nearer to him.
Steele sighed.
The injections had made him and his fellow space marines immune to most diseases. The catch to all that? They were all going to die young. The trainers had informed them about that before the space mission. They needn’t have worried. Space flight and then battle had slain ninety-nine percent of the space marines launched at the aliens.
What had the surviving handful learned out there?
Steele shook his head. What hadn’t they learned?
The aliens were human, big, strong, and scary smart. Even the women were bigger and stronger than most human men, although not stronger than Steele.
He glanced over his shoulder and saw one of the trailing three glide under a streetlight as the man headed toward him. What did the three plan? To rob him, kidnap him or kill him? Who had sent them or was this their initiative?
Instead of panicking, Steele continued with his kilometer-eating stride as if nothing was wrong. Maybe an incident along the Seine was just what he needed.
One of the big-shot corporation heads, James Petty, was the ruler of orbital space. The CEO had offered him a position up there, but Steele had turned him down.
Steele had badly wanted to reach the surface. He was in Paris because he was heading to Hungary to speak with his ex-wife. She had returned to her home country a long time ago. Steele wanted to convince her to let him take their son back to the States with him to train in the Steele philosophies and ideals.
He had called, but she would not answer. He had tried different approaches: letters, flowers, texts—nothing worked. His ex-wife had hated him ever since John was born.
How old was John Steele now: fourteen, fifteen?
Mike Steele frowned, feeling the tightness in his gut. It wasn’t from the fools trailing him. Heaven help the three if they tried to pick him up, which it appeared they were going to try. He was in a bad mood for a particular reason.
At dinner, one of his comrades had complained of a stomach cramp. Later, the man had spat blood into a napkin, trying to hide it.
Steele understood the significance of the blood. All the space marines’ days were numbered. He didn’t show any symptoms yet, but he bet they were coming. The Corpocratists didn’t care what happened to their tools. James Petty, for all his offers, was a user like the rest. Steele was sure Director Anwar Gray and the others were the same or possibly worse.
Steele forced his thoughts away from that. He needed to take a tube train to Budapest tomorrow. He’d already purchased the ticket. Now he needed to figure out what he would say to his ex.
He was nervous about how his ex would respond. What had happened to John during these intervening years? It was imperative that he take John back with him. During the journey to Neptune, Mike had resolved to train his son in the Steele way of thinking and acting. Nothing else mattered compared to that.
John was the Steele future. He was the Steele past.
This much Steele had learned out there. The aliens meant to enslave or exterminate the human race. From what he had witnessed aboard the Corsair ship coming home, the Valiant women were tough and pushy. Luckily, his space marines had been pushier.
There was another problem. Steele had survived the intense fighting at Neptune. The Western States of America hadn’t survived the coming of the aliens. The government had made peace with the Corpocratists because the world was under siege. The aliens might be few in number, but they had superior tech and were bigger, stronger, and smarter.
Steele wondered if that was what it had been like when the ancient Aryans had migrated into Persia or India and taken over.
History told the stories of one group, stronger, tougher, or culturally superior to the natives, coming in and taking over. It hadn’t just happened to the New World Indians or the aborigines of Australia, but everywhere since the dawn of time. Heck, maybe the Neanderthals had died out because Cro-Magnon men had been too tough for them.
Did it make a difference the aliens could have human babies? Was it like a donkey and horse producing a mule? Would the children be sterile? No one knew yet, but if the children could breed true… wow, that would be a game changer. That meant Valiants and humans had a common ancestor. The aliens having Sumerian names also meant something important.
Steele half-turned and noticed out of the corner of his eye the three hurrying toward him. One held a black-matte gun along the length of her pant leg.
Did the three believe him unarmed, easily frightened by a gun?
Steele didn’t have a gun, but he did have a knife. It was illegal for anyone not in an armed or secret service to carry a weapon. This wasn’t like the Western States of America, where everybody had a gun and went about armed.
Steele snorted.
Where the law said you should go unarmed, there it was best to carry.
Steele shifted, reaching into his coat sleeve. He pulled the blade from a forearm sheath and set it in a trench-coat pocket. Then he turned and regarded the three, wondering what kind of high tech or trickery they would try to use on him.
-8-
The woman with the gun was considerably smaller than the other two. They were big boys for non-space marines—heavies. They all looked Caucasian. No, that was wrong. A streetlight shone in the woman’s face. She was Asian.
Steele smirked.
Did they think he wouldn’t hit a woman? Normally, if the woman acted in a lady-like fashion, he would never think of hitting her. But if she was going to come at him as a man, well, them’s the breaks. She would get what she had coming, if that’s what it took for him to remain free.
“Yeah, what do you want?” Steele said, deciding to get the ball rolling.
The husky fellows looked at each other. The woman made a slight motion with her gun as if he should raise his hands.
“Hands up,” she said, confirming the idea.
“Well, how about this?” Steele asked. “You can go to hell.” He turned and started walking away from them.
Even with the patter of the rain, he could feel them coming faster toward him.
“Herr Steele,” the biggest said, reaching out and grabbing his left shoulder.
Steele had been listening closely. He spun, and in the rainy streetlight barely saw the truncheon swigging down at his face.
Okay, nice, Steele said to himself, as everything seemed to slow down for him. Now he knew the rules.
Steele bent his head forward. The truncheon connected with a thwack against the top of the head. The blow staggered him. There was no doubt about that. But his right hand shot out, plunging his knife into the chest of the tough Kraut. It was possible the blade smashed ribs aside as it went in. Steele could feel something resisting the thrust. Then the blade entered the heart. The pained gasp of his foe told Steele as much.
Steele withdrew the knife and shoved the Kraut away from him. The muscle man staggered back into the other one rushing close.
Steele was already moving to the side to disrupt his enemies’ plan.
They had initiated the combat after his question. That surely meant they were trying to kill him, kidnap him, whatever. It didn’t matter anymore. They had started it.
Steele heard the sharp bang of a gun firing. There were three, relatively quiet shots. The gun must be small bore. It was definitely gunpowder. Did the slugs have extra-lethal packets aboard?
The bullets didn’t reach him, but Steele did reach the next heavy. The knife slashed the throat. The heavy sprawled back, blood jetting in the air from the terrible gash.
The woman pivoted with her raised gun, following Steele’s maneuver, holding the gun with both hands.
Steele hurled the knife, hoping to forestall any more shots now that she had a bead on him.
By sheer chance, the end of the handle hit her square in the forehead. He hadn’t meant that. He’d meant to kill her. In any event, the impact was hard. She staggered back, tripped a heel against something, went down, and cracked the back of her head on the pavement.
That saved Steele from having to punch a woman in the face to finish it. That was probably for the best.
He collected the knife off the pavement. Afterward, he looked at the three lying there. He thought about taking their IDs, but what was the point? What would he learn? He considered taking the gun, though.
Steele shook his head and knelt beside the German. He wiped the bloody blade clean on the man’s coat, carefully slid the knife back into the forearm sheath, stood, straightened his trench coat, and continued as before. Oh yeah, his heart was beating fast. He had a bitter taste in his mouth. He didn’t like to kill unnecessarily, but he didn’t like guys trying to knock him unconscious, either. Should that have cost them their lives?
Steele wasn’t sure if that was a decision he should have to worry about. They had come at him. He had not come at them. Thus, he decided he would forget about them. However, he needed to think about the reasons for their attempt.
Steele ran up some stone stairs, hurried down several streets, and caught a bus headed out of the city.
It was best to leave Paris.
What did their attack mean precisely? What had he started by killing the two heavies?
Steele shook his head as he gloomily sat in one of the bus seats. What a world. What a life. Imagine him having gone all the way to Neptune, farther than any Earthman had ever been, and returning with a cargo of alien women—some of them rather beautiful. If you liked the big, heavy-boned type, you liked Valiant chicks. They weren’t Steele’s ideal of beauty. They certainly weren’t ugly, though.
The bus stopped at places, started again, took turns, and then Steele noticed flashing lights headed toward them. Some of the flashing red lights were in the night sky.
