The Apocalypse Troll

  "A computer?"

  "Cert. It's lousy with molycircs—molecular circuitry, that is. It has to be, because every square millimeter of the inner skin is fitted with sensors to monitor internal conditions. The outer skin's set up to reflect harmful radiation and absorb energy to power the internal circuits. The whole suit's designed to absorb and recycle body wastes, too—you can live in the thing for weeks, if you have to. Well, I guess I proved that on the flight here."

  "But if it's a space suit, where's the oxygen?" he demanded, his eyes bright with fascination.

  "Right here." She touched the fabric. "Oh, the older suits were a lot thicker—as much as a centimeter in places—but the technology's a lot better these days. The middle layer between the two boundary skins is one big mass of micro-vacuoles. You can think of them as millions of tiny little air and water and nutrient tanks, if that works better." She saw his incredulous expression and grinned. "It may not sound like much, but they're under something like twenty thousand atmospheres. As a matter of fact, the consumables ought to be just about full right now, since I didn't use any suit resources on the way in."

  "No wonder it was so hard to cut," he said softly.

  "Hard?" She snorted. "Dick, if the designer hadn't put some thought into it, you couldn't have cut it. I don't know whether you noticed, but this—" she traced the cut with her finger "—is almost exactly where anyone would cut it, assuming that they had to. They deliberately put most of the consumable storage around back and to the sides. All you cut through was about a quarter of the electronics." She grinned. "You managed to disconnect almost all my com channels, but you missed the sensies."

  "Sensies?"

  "Active and passive sensors. Visual, sonar, what you might think of as radar—all built in."

  "My God. But your helmet went down with your ship, didn't it?"

  "A helmet went down, but that was the neural feed to the flight controls. It'll serve as a helmet if you lose cabin pressure in combat, but you don't really need it. Look." She touched another apparently blank spot, and the suit's sleeves obediently extruded thin, tough gloves while a spherical shimmer danced above the shoulders. "One-way force field," she explained casually, sliding a hand through the shimmer. "The sensies run on direct neural feeds, so you don't even need readouts."

  "I'm . . . impressed," he said finally, and she chuckled again.

  "You should be. The damned thing's price tag is about ten percent that of an interceptor."

  "I'm sorry I ruined it," he said almost humbly.

  "Oh, it's not ruined," she assured him. "The nanotech features are off-line right now, and this level of repair would be a big enough energy hog that I'm not about to bring them up while it's running on stored power. But if I can plug into the right feed for a few hours, the self-repair systems'll take care of most of it."

  He gawked at her. Somehow that impressed him even more than all the rest. He was almost glad her attention remained on her ravaged suit while he got his expression under control.

  "Does it do any other tricks?" he asked finally.

  "That's about it," she said with a shrug, and he shook his head slowly. He shouldn't be so surprised, he reminded himself. One of Christopher Columbus's seamen would be just as amazed by a Nimitz-class carrier or a Seawolf attack sub.

  "I'm impressed," he said again, and she gave him a sympathetic smile, as if her thoughts had been paralleling his own. "But at least I figured out that this—" he tapped her holstered side arm "—is a weapon. In fact, this thing—" he touched the necklet he'd removed from her throat "—is what had puzzled me most. Before you showed me Rex the Wonder Suit, that is."

  The reference clearly eluded her, but she understood the context and gave him a gamine grin as she picked up the metal band.

  "This? It's what you'd call my . . . dog tags?" She produced the term cautiously, and he nodded in sudden understanding. "It's a bit more than just who I am, though," she went on. "It's another little computer—only a terabyte or so of memory—with my whole life history. Medical records, service record, next of kin." She shrugged, toying with it. "I'm afraid it's useless now, though."

  "Why?"

  "Computer language has changed a bit in the last few centuries," she said dryly. "Besides, it's a plug-in, not a stand-alone, and it's as full of molycircs as the suit. I doubt there's any way to interface. Once we kill the Troll—" he noticed that she didn't allow herself to use the word if "—I guess I'll turn it over to your techies, but I doubt they'll be able to make much out of it for quite a few years."

  "Oh boy! I can just see myself trying to explain any of this stuff." He shook his head. "The suit's busted and the computer can't be tapped . . . they won't even slow down on the way to the rubber room, Milla." She raised an eyebrow. "Rubber room—as in a padded cell in a home for the mentally unbalanced."

  "Oh, I wouldn't worry." She picked up her gunbelt and headed for the companion. "I think we can convince them. Come on."

  He followed her up on deck a bit slowly, his head spinning from the casual miracles she'd been describing. She was waiting for him, and he noticed that she'd strapped the weapon belt around her waist and drawn the gun. She examined it minutely.

  "Did you play around with this?"

  "Do I look like I'm stupid?" he demanded. "Don't answer that," he added hastily, and she shut her mouth with a grin. "In answer to your question, no. I couldn't figure out the controls."

  "Wouldn't've helped if you had," she said. "It's persona-locked." He raised a resigned eyebrow, and she touched his shoulder. "Hang in, Dick," she said sympathetically. "Just remember that showing off my gadgets gives me a sense of security, okay? I mean, your whole world is as different for me as these things are for you."

  "But at least you know roughly what happened, historically speaking."

  "True. Anyway, persona-locked means it's keyed to me. I'm the only person who can fire it."

  "Ever?" The possibility intrigued him.

  "Yep. When I zerch out, they'll have to slag the thing, because it can't be rekeyed. Which, I might add, makes Fleet a bit touchy when we lose one—they aren't cheap and they can't be reissued. But at least it means there's no such thing as a black market in military small arms."

  "I can see how that would follow."

  "Okay." She touched two of the small side controls he'd noticed. "I'm setting it for single-shot at the lowest power setting—no point getting too dramatic." She raised the weapon, bringing it no higher than her rib cage and pointing it as easily as her finger. He recognized either a highly experienced shooter's stance or the position of a gross novice, and he rather suspected which it was.

  "Watch," she said, and squeezed the firing stud.

  Absolutely nothing happened as far as the weapon itself was concerned. There was no recoil, no noise, no muzzle flash—not even a click—but things were different elsewhere. A tremendous, hissing roar smashed his ears, and a furiously steaming hole suddenly appeared in the ocean about fifty yards from Amanda. A large, perfect hemisphere of a hole, at least ten feet deep.

  He stared at it in awe, and it vanished as magically as it had appeared.

  "Gaaah," he said quietly as the steam condensed in a fine rain, then shook himself. "That was the lowest power setting?" he asked faintly.

  "Um-hum." She holstered the weapon nonchalantly, but the gleam in her eye was wicked.

  "On single-shot. . . . That means you can fire bursts?"

  "Cert. It's wasteful, though. At full power, I'd empty the magazine with twelve pulses."

  "What the hell is that thing?" he demanded. "What d'you call it?"

  "I'm afraid we call it a 'blaster,' " she said apologetically, and he closed his eyes. He should have known, he told himself. "As for what it is, that's a bit hard to explain—inevitably." She met his long-suffering gaze understandingly. "Think of it this way, Dick: it's a capacitor-fed energy weapon which projects a pulse of plasma at the target. On full auto at full power, it delivers approximately one-point-ei
ght k-tons of energy per second, or just over twenty-one and a half kilotons for the magazine, since it cycles at a pulse a second. Of course," she added thoughtfully, "if you pump the full mag that fast, you'll burn out every time."

  "Jesus!" he said, remembering the extra magazines in the back of the holster. "You're a walking tactical nuke! Isn't that a mite excessive?"

  "Not really," she said. "We don't use these things on each other, Dick. They're to kill Trolls, and they take a lot of killing." She shrugged. "I don't know much about your metallurgy, but I suspect your best armorers couldn't begin to understand how tough those bastards are. And their reflexes are so damned fast our people have to be able to take them out with a single hit. But you're right; it is a lot of firepower, and that's the real reason for the persona-lock programs."

  "I can understand that," he said fervently. The thought that so much destruction was riding on her hip was enough to make him feel faintly ill. He shook himself, sloughing off the sensation with an act of will.

  "Well!" he said finally. "Remind me to be very polite to you."

  "I will," she agreed with another of her lurking grins. "But, tell me," she went on, her suddenly anxious tone belied by the gleam in her eyes, "would a demonstration of this make up for my inoperative space suit?"

  "Oh, I think it might," he said slowly. "Yes, I think it might just do that, Milla."

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  conquer v. -quered, -quering, -quers. —tr. 1 To subdue or defeat, esp. by force of arms. 2. To secure or gain control of by or as if by military means. 3. To surmount or overcome by physical, mental, or moral force. —intr. To win, be victorious. [From Middle English conqueren, from Old French conquerre, from Latin conquirere, to search for, win, procure.]

  —Webster-Wangchi Unabridged Dictionary of Standard English Tomas y Hijos, Publishers

  2465, Terran Standard Reckoning

  "Is that England?" Ludmilla shouted over the sound of wind and wave, clinging to a stay one-handed while flying spray made sun-struck rainbows beyond. She rode the pitching foredeck without a trace of concern, free hand pointing, and Aston shaded his eyes to peer in the indicated direction.

  "It better be Ireland!" he called back. "Of course, I'm navigating without GPS or even Loran for the first time in years . . . thanks to you."

  "Hmph!" She made her nimble way back along the narrow space between the cabin and the side, sure-footed despite Amanda's brisk motion. The reefed, close-hauled mainsail hid her briefly until she reemerged from behind the boom, bright-cheeked and damp with spray. Her hair was a flame in the sunlight and her eyes were brilliant, and he watched her with open pleasure. "I may not be from Terra, Dick, but I know England and Ireland aren't on the same island."

  "True," he agreed, patting the bench seat beside him. She nestled into the curve of his arm as naturally as breathing, and he took time to savor the sensation, bending over to nibble the lobe of one delicate ear through strands of chestnut hair. Complex or no, she was an amazingly sane person, he reflected, without a shadow of the puritanical hang-ups which plagued his own society.

  "Stop trying to distract me. You said we were going to England."

  "We were, but I thought better of it."

  "Oh? Why?"

  "I told you I was worried about you and British Customs."

  "So? I didn't understand it then, and I don't understand now. I mean, I'm going to have to start adjusting to twenty-first-century customs sometime."

  "Not 'customs'—'Customs,' " he explained. "Capital 'C' Customs." She looked blank, and he sighed. She'd worked hard on her twenty-first-century vocabulary, and she'd made so much progress that the holes in it were more frustrating than ever. "Immigration," he said. "Passports."

  "Passports? Oh, you mean proof of citizenship?"

  "Sort of, but not the way you're thinking of." On balance, he reminded himself, he'd learned more about her time than she had about his. He supposed that made sense, since they were in his and her interest in history lent her some guidance about it while he had known nothing at all about hers. But she was essentially a military historian, and there were curious gaps in what he assumed she must know.

  "Look," he explained patiently. "You said your Terra has a federated world government—does that mean you only worry about national citizenship for things like public services and taxes?"

  "And voting registration."

  "All right, voting, too. But national borders are no big deal?"

  "National borders? Why in the world would anyone worry about—" She broke off thoughtfully. "Oh. That's right, you people are still in the Cold War Era, aren't you?"

  "Not the way we were a few years back, but, yes. And so are you, honey," he reminded her with gentle malice, and she pinched his ribs—hard. "Ouch!" He rubbed his injured side and eyed her reproachfully, although his grin rather spoiled the effect.

  "Count your blessings, Ster Aston," she told him severely.

  "Oh, I will!" he assured her.

  "Good," she said, but she also frowned and combed a strand of hair out of her eyes with her fingers. "Ummm," she said slowly. "This is 2007, so . . . My God, you're only six years from the Soviet Succession Wars!"

  "Soviet Succession?" he repeated. A chill breeze blew down his spine, and it was his turn to frown. "Can't say I like the sound of that very much, Milla. We've got more than enough trouble brewing in Europe without having that blow up in our faces!" He grimaced. "It wasn't all that long ago I figured all those people who were singing loud hosannas over how the collapse of the Soviet Union was going to make everything all better were unmitigated idiots, but I'd started to hope I might have been wrong—that we were going to get a handle on it this time after all. I know the situation in the Balkans and Greece is going straight to hell all over again, and I don't like the confrontation the new Belarussian and Russian governments seem to be headed for now that NATO's turned into a debating society. But I'd thought that was mostly rhetoric, not that they were going to take it seriously! The Russian Federation's been shaky from the get-go, especially economically, and there's always been an element that's wanted the old Soviet Empire back, but I'd hoped Yakolev's new reforms were going to pull things together and get the Federation around the corner at last." He paused as she met his eyes levelly. "I take it they aren't?" he asked finally, his voice quiet.

  "Well, they didn't in the history I remember," she said in the voice of someone trying to be gentle. "As well as I can recall, you had good reason to think Russia was about to turn the corner, if that's any consolation. The initial flash point was a fresh flare-up in the Balkans sometime in the first decade of this century, not in Russia or Belarussia—or not immediately, at any rate—and things got out of hand when someone used bioweapons." Aston winced, and she squeezed his forearm. "I'm sorry, Dick. I didn't mean to distress you."

  "It's not your fault." He held her closer against his side and shook his head. "It's just— Well, we've all tried so hard, and President Yakolev seems to really be trying. I just hate to think about its all going down the tubes anyway . . . and the thought of 'wars of succession' inside the territory of a nuclear power . . ."

  His voice trailed off, and she shrugged unhappily.

  "I'm sorry," she repeated. "I know it's probably no comfort, but if my memory's right, the current president didn't have anything to do with it. Western Europe panicked—not unreasonably, I suppose—when the effects of the bioweapon spread beyond the Balkans. With the benefit of hindsight, it's pretty clear that whoever used it genuinely was one of the splinter terrorist groups, but a lot of people believed at the time that Serbia was the true culprit, and Russia was still committed to its role as the Serbs' main international supporter. So when France talked Germany and Romania into threatening joint military action against the Serbs and accused the Russians of having secretly supplied the bioweapons in the first place, Yakolev found himself in an almost impossible situation. He couldn't possibly come up with a policy which would satisfy everyone, and then he was as
sassinated—by someone from Belarussia, according to the Russian nationalists, and that changed the entire nature of the confrontation. The extremists in Moscow managed to take control of the country in the name of 'national security' and start rattling their missiles at everyone in sight, and—"

  She shrugged again, and he nodded sadly.

  "I've heard similar scenarios described." He sighed. "And truth to tell, relations with the Russians haven't been all that good since Yeltsin's fall. Watching NATO unravel over the last two or three years hasn't been a good sign, either. Bringing the old Warsaw Pact nations into it was supposed to generate a continent-wide sense of mutual security, but instead the entire thing's turning into some kind of 'lead by drift' herd of lemmings that's been trying to come up with a workable solution for the Balkans for over ten years now! Not that the US did a lot better," he admitted grimly. "When we got tired of pretending that we could provide a quick fix and pulled our troops out unilaterally, the whole situation went straight to hell. We're still trying to recover from that little misstep."

  "I don't know if anyone could have done better," Ludmilla said. "I know there's a tendency to argue—after the fact—that any catastrophe was 'inevitable,' but in this case, I think it may truly have been just that."

  "Um. Maybe." He frowned out at the ocean for a long, brooding moment, then shook himself and drew a deep breath. "But the point right this minute is that you don't have a passport, and even if I tried to pass you off as a shipwreck victim, they'd want to know which embassy to contact. The Brits are reasonable people, but you'd never guess it from their daily newspapers. There'd be bound to be a three-ring media circus when news about the 'mysterious foreigner' got out."