The Armageddon Inheritance

  "A core tap," Chernikov said levelly, and Horus jerked in his chair.

  "Are you out of your-?! No. Wait." He waved a hand and made himself sit back. "Of course you're not. But you do recognize the risks?"

  "I do. But we must have that power, and Earth cannot provide it."

  Maker, tell me what to do, Horus thought fervently. A core tap on a planet? Madness! If they lose control of it, even for an instant-!

  He shuddered as he pictured that demon of power, roused and furious as it turned upon the insignificant mites who sought to master it. A smoldering wasteland, scoured of life, and raging storm fronts, hurricanes of outraged atmosphere which would rip across the face of the planet....

  "There's no other choice?" His tone was almost pleading. "None?"

  "None that my staff have been able to discover," Chernikov said flatly.

  "Where-" Horus paused and cleared his throat. "Where would you put it?"

  "Antarctica," Chernikov replied.

  There's a fitting irony in that, Horus thought. Anu's enclave hid there for millennia. But a polar position? So close to the Indian Ocean bio-system? Yet where would I prefer it? New York? Moscow? Beijing?

  "Have you calculated what happens if you lose control?" he asked finally.

  "As well as we can. In a worst-case scenario, we will lose approximately fifty-three percent of the Antarctic surface. Damage to the local eco-system will be effectively total. Damage to the Indian Ocean bio-system will be severe but, according to the projections, not irrecoverable. Sea-level worldwide will rise, with consequent coastal flooding, and some global temperature drop may be anticipated. Estimated direct loss of life: approximately six-point-five million. Indirect deaths and the total who will be rendered homeless are impossible to calculate. We had considered an arctic position, but greater populations would lie in relative proximity, the flooding would be at least as severe, and the contamination of salt rains would be still worse when the sea water under the ice sheet vaporized."

  "Maker!" Horus whispered. "Have you discussed this with Geb?"

  "I have. It is only fair to tell you he was utterly opposed, yet after we had discussed it at some length, he modified his position somewhat. He will not actively oppose a core tap, but he cannot in good conscience recommend it. On the other hand-" agate-hard blue eyes stabbed Horus "-this is his planet only by adoption. I do not say that in any derogatory sense, Horus, yet it is true. Worse, he continues to feel-as, I believe, do you-a guilt which produces a certain protective paternalism within him. If he could refute the logic of my arguments, he would oppose them; his inability to support them suggests to me that his own logic is unable to overrule his emotions. Perhaps," the hard eyes softened slightly, "because he is so good a man."

  "And despite that, you want to go ahead."

  "I see no option. We risk seven million dead and severe damage to our world if we proceed; we run a far greater risk of the total destruction of the planet if we do not."

  "Marshal Tsien?"

  "I am less conversant with the figures than Marshal Chernikov, but I trust his calculations and judgment. I endorse his recommendation unreservedly, Governor. I will do so in writing if you wish."

  "That won't be necessary," Horus sighed. His shoulders slumped, but he shook his head wryly. "You Terra-born are something else, Vassily!"

  "If so, we have had good teachers," Chernikov replied, eyes warming with true affection. "Thanks to you, we have a possibility of saving ourselves. We will not throw away the chance you have given us."

  Horus felt his face heat and turned quickly to another point.

  "Maker! I hope you didn't plan on discussing your concerns in order of severity. If your munitions problem is worse-!"

  "No, no!" Chernikov laughed. "No, this is not quite so grave. Indeed, one might almost call it planning for the future."

  "Well that has a cheerful ring."

  "Russians are not always melancholy, Horus. Generally, but not always. No, my major concern stems from the high probability that our planetary shield will be forced back into atmosphere. Our ODCs will be fairly capable of self-defense, although we anticipate high losses among them if the planetary shield is forced back, but our orbital industrial capacity will, unfortunately, also be exposed. Nor will it be practical to withdraw it to the planetary surface."

  That was true enough, Horus reflected. They'd accepted that from the beginning, but by building purely for a weightless environment they'd been able to produce more than twice the capacity in half the time.

  "What do you have in mind?"

  "I am about to become gloomy again," the Russian warned, and Horus chuckled. "Let us assume we have succeeded in driving off the scouts but that Dahak has not returned when the main incursion arrives. I realize that our chances of survival in such an eventuality are slight, yet it is not in me to say there are none. Perhaps it is unrealistic of me, but I admire the American John Paul Jones and respect his advice. Both the more famous quote, and another: It seems a law inflexible unto itself that he who will not risk cannot win. I may not have it quite correct, but I believe the spirit comes through."

  "This is heading somewhere?" Horus asked quizzically.

  "It is. If we lose our orbital industry, we lose eighty percent of our total capacity. This will leave us much weaker when we confront the main incursion. Even if we beat off the scouts quickly and with minimal losses-a happy state of affairs on which we certainly cannot depend-we will be hard-pressed to rebuild even to our current capacity out of our present Imperial planetary industry. I therefore propose that we should place greater emphasis on increasing our planetary industrial infrastructure."

  "I agree it's desirable, but where do you plan to get the capacity?"

  "With your permission, I will discontinue the production of mines."

  "Ah?"

  "I have studied their capabilities, and while they are impressive, I feel they will be less useful against the scouts than an increase in planetary industrial capacity will be to our defense against the main incursion."

  "Why?"

  "Essentially, the mines are simply advanced hunter-killer satellites. Certainly their ability to attack vessels as they emerge from hyper is useful, yet they will be required in tremendous numbers to cover effectively the volume of space we must protect. Their attack radius is no more than ninety thousand kilometers, and mass attacks will be required to overpower the defenses of any alert target. Because of these limitations, I doubt our ability to produce adequate numbers in the time available to us. I would prefer to do without them in order to safeguard our future industrial potential."

  "I see." Horus pursed his lips, then nodded. "All right, I agree."

  "Thank you."

  "Now, Marshal," Horus turned to Tsien, "you mentioned something about operational problems?"

  "Yes, Governor. General Amesbury's Scanner Command is well prepared to detect the enemy's approach, but we do not know whether we would be better advised to send our units out to meet them as they move in-system after leaving hyper or to concentrate closer to Earth for sorties from within the shield after they have closed with the planet. The question also, of course, is complicated by the possibility that the Achuultani might attempt a pincer attack, using one group of scouts to draw our sublight units out of position and then micro-jumping across the system to attack from another direction."

  "And you want to finalize operational doctrine?"

  "Not precisely. I realize that this almost certainly will not be possible for some time and that much ultimately will depend upon the differences between Achuultani technology and our own. For the moment, however, I would like to grant Admiral Hawter's request to deploy our existing units for operational training and war games in the trans-asteroidal area. It will give the crews valuable experience with their weapons, and, more importantly, I believe, give our command personnel greater confidence in themselves."

  "I agree entirely," Horus said firmly. "And it'll also let us use some of the l
arger asteroids for target practice-which means the Achuultani won't be able to use them for target practice on us! Proceed with it immediately, by all means, Marshal Tsien. Vassily, I'll take your recommendations to the Council. Unless someone there can give me an overpowering counter-argument, they'll be approved within forty-eight hours. Is that good enough?"

  "Eminently, Governor."

  "Good. In that case, gentlemen, let's get into our suits. I want to see ODC Two firsthand."

  * * *

  The Achuultani scouts gathered their strength once more, merging into a single huge formation about their flagship. A brilliant F5 star lay barely five light-years distant, but it held no interest for them. Their instruments probed and peered, listening for the electromagnetic voices they had come so far to find. The universe was vast. Not even such accomplished killers as they could sweep it of all life, and so worlds such as T'Yir were safe unless the scouts literally stumbled across them.

  But other worlds were not, and the sensor crews caught the faint signals they had sought. Directional antennae turned and quested, and the scouts reoriented themselves. A small, G2 star called to them, and they went to silence it forever.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  "Barbarian!" Tamman shook his head mournfully as he took a fresh glass of lemonade from his wife and buried his sorrows in its depths.

  "And why might that be, you effete, over-civilized, not to say decadent, epicure?" Colin demanded.

  "That ought to be obvious. Mesquite charcoal? How... how Texan!"

  Colin stuck out his tongue, and meat juices hissed as he turned steaks. A fragrant cloud of smoke rose on the heat shimmer of the grill, pushed out over the lake by the park deck's cool breezes, and the volley ball tournament was in full cry. He glanced up in time to see Colonel Tama Matsuo, Tamman's grandson, launch a vicious spike. One of the German team's forwards tried to get under it, but not even an enhanced human could have returned that shot.

  "Banzai!" the Sendai Division's team screamed, and the Germans muttered darkly. Jiltanith applauded, and Matsuo bowed to her, then prepared to serve. His hand struck the ball like a hammer, and Colin winced as it bulleted across the net.

  "Now, Tamman, don't be so harsh," his critic's wife chimed in. "After all, Colin's doing the best he knows how."

  "Oh, thank you, kind lady! Thank you! Just remember-your wonderful husband is the one who courted bad luck by broiling tai in miso last week."

  Recon Captain Amanda Givens laughed, her cafe-au-lait face wreathed in a lovely smile, and Tamman pulled her down beside him to kiss her ear.

  "Nonsense," he said airily. "Just doing my bit to root out superstition. Anyway, I was out of salt."

  Amanda snuggled closer to him, and Colin grinned. Dahak's sickbay had regenerated the leg she'd lost in the La Paz raid in time for her wedding, and the sheer joy she and Tamman took in one another warmed Colin's heart, even though their marriage had caused a few unanticipated problems.

  Dahak had always seemed a bit pettish over the Terran insistence that one name wasn't good enough. He'd accepted it-grumpily-but only until he got to attend the first wedding on his decks in fifty thousand years. In some ways, he'd seemed even more delighted than the happy couple, and he'd hardly been able to wait for Colin to log the event officially.

  That was when the trouble started, for Imperial conventions designating marital status sounded ridiculous applied to Terran names, and Dahak had persisted in trying to make them work. Colin usually wound up giving in when Dahak felt moved to true intransigence-talking the computer out of something was akin to parting the Red Sea, only harder-but he'd refused pointblank to let Dahak inflict a name like Amandacollettegivens-Tam on a friend. The thought of hearing that every time Dahak spoke to or of Amanda had been too much, and if Tamman had originally insisted (when he finally stopped laughing) that it was a lovely name which fell trippingly from the tongue, his tune quickly changed when he found out what Dahak intended to call him. Tamman-Amcolgiv was shorter; that was about all you could say for it.

  "Methinks it little matters what thou sayst, Tamman," Jiltanith's mournful observation drew Colin back to the present as she opened another bottle of beer. "Our Colin departeth not from his fell intent to poison one and all with his noxious smokes and fumes."

  "Listen, all of you," Colin retorted, propping his fists on his hips, "I'm captain of this tub, and we'll fix food my way!"

  "Didst'a hear thy captain speak of thee, Dahak, my tub?" Jiltanith caroled, and Colin shook a fist at her.

  "I believe the proper response is 'Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me,' " a mellow voice replied, and Colin groaned.

  "What idiot encouraged him to learn cliches?"

  "Nay, Colin, acquit us all. 'Tis simply that we discouraged him not."

  "Well you should have."

  "Stop complaining and let the man cook." Vlad Chernikov lay flat on his back in the shade of a young oak. Now he propped one eye open. "If you do not care for his cuisine, you need not eat it, Tamman."

  "Fat chance!" Colin snorted, and stole Jiltanith's beer.

  He swallowed, enjoying the "sun" on his shoulders, and decided 'Tanni had been right to talk him into the party. The anniversary of the fall of Anu's enclave deserved to be celebrated as a reminder of some of the "impossible" things they'd already accomplished, even if uncertainty over what waited at Birhat continued to gnaw at everyone. Or possibly because it did.

  He looked out over the happy, laughing knots of his off-watch crewmen. Some of them, anyway. There was a null-grav basketball tournament underway on Deck 2460, and General Treshnikov had organized a "Top Gun" contest on the simulator deck for the non-fighter pilots of the crew. Then there was the regatta out on the thirty-kilometer-wide park deck's lake.

  He glanced around the shaded picnic tables. Cohanna and Ninhursag sat at one, annihilating one another in a game of Imperial battle chess with a bloodthirsty disregard for losses that would turn a line officer gray, and Caitrin O'Rourke and Geran had embarked on a drinking contest-in which Caitrin's Aussie ancestry appeared to be a decided advantage-at another. General von Grau and General Tsukuba were wagering on the outcome of the volley ball tournament, and Hector wore a dreamy look as he and Dahak pursued a discussion, complete with neural-feed visual aids, of Hannibal's Italian tactics. Sarah Meir sat with him, listening in and reaching down occasionally to scratch the ears of Hector's huge half-lab, half-rottweiler bitch Tinker Bell as she drowsed at her master's feet.

  Colin returned Jiltanith's beer, and his smile grew warmer as her eyes gleamed at him. Yes, she'd been right-just as she'd been right to insist they make their own "surprise" announcement at the close of the festivities. And thank God he'd been firm with Dahak! He didn't know how she would have reacted to Jiltanith-Colfranmac, but he knew how he would have felt over Colinfrancismacintyre-Jil!

  "Supralight shutdown in ten minutes," Dahak announced into the fiery tension of Command One's starlit dimness, and Colin smiled tightly at Jiltanith's holo image, trying to wish she were not far away in Command Two.

  He inhaled deeply and concentrated on the reports and commands flowing through his neural feed. Not even the Terra-born among Dahak's well-drilled crew needed to think through their commands these days. Which might be just as well. There had been no hails or challenges, but they'd been thoroughly scanned by someone (or something) while still a full day short of Birhat.

  Colin would have felt immeasurably better to know what had been on the other end of those scanners... and how whatever it was meant to react. One thing they'd learned at Kano: the Fourth Empire's weaponry had been, quite simply, better than Dahak's best. Vlad and Dahak had done all they could to upgrade their defenses, but if an active Fleet Central was feeling belligerent, they might very well die in the next few hours.

  "Sublight in three minutes."

  "Stand by, Tactical," Colin said softly.

  "Standing by, Captain."

  The last minutes raced even as they trick
led agonizingly slowly. Then Colin felt the start of supralight shutdown in his implants, and suddenly the stars were still.

  "Core tap shutdown," Dahak reported, and then, almost instantly, "Detection at ten light-minutes. Detection at thirty light-minutes. Detection at five light-hours."

  "Display system," Colin snapped, and the sun Bia, Birhat's G0 primary, still twelve light-hours away, was suddenly ringed with a system schematic.

  "God's Teeth!"

  Jiltanith's whisper summed up Colin's sentiments admirably. Even at this range, the display was crowded, and more and more light codes sprang into view with mechanical precision as Sarah took them in at half the speed of light. Dahak's scanners reached ahead, adding contact after contact, until the display gleamed with a thick, incredible dusting of symbols.

  "Any response to our presence, Dahak?"