Fear the Future (The Fear Saga Book 3) (52 page)

Chapter 52: New World Order

“Moving on …” said Jim, then added more forcefully, “if we can move on?”

The room did come to order. This was the committee. In the wake of the coup that had seen Minnie buck her riders, the gathered room now made up what had come to be called her round table. While the triptych of Minnie, Mynd, and Remy worked to bring the many orders of the world’s representatives to fruition, this was the room that informed that process. Not a decision making body, not by a long shot. By carefully worded constitution, this room could only offer advice.

But it was good advice, fed by the combined experience, knowledge, and passion that had brought all the gathered personages down their varied paths to this place.

Jim sat at its head, so to speak, though not by vote, simply by nature. He was an organizer, a rallier. And he did that again now, stemming, or rather damming, the tide of opinion on the current topic so it could be focused into a more productive flow.

“We remain at peak production at District Two; closing in on the hundredth completed unit there, thanks to Mynd’s diligence. Lunar, Hekaton, Shenzhen, and Osaka are doing gallant work to catch up. But no matter what we do, we have not been able to get even close to capacity at São Paulo, Vladivostok, or Jubail. Quavoce, once again you have given more time than we could spare of you down in Brazil. Do you have any updates?”

“I do and I don’t,” Quavoce responded after thinking a moment. “São Paulo suffers more from our high expectations than anything else. The simple fact is that no amount of effort on the part of our Brazilian friends—and there is no lack of enthusiasm here, I am certain of that—will make up for the fact that we have started competing with ourselves for resources.”

At that, Peter Uncovsky’s voice burst forth once more, more confident now as he grew accustomed to the role he had never wanted. Peter was the only person at the table who was also a national representative to TASC, but it was admirable how rarely he reminded people of that. Now he looked indignant at Quavoce’s comment about the lack of resources, as his own nation’s Dome was also struggling, and said, “I have to say I find it interesting that the Brazilians are complaining about raw material access with three new polyacrylonitrile contracts …”

“Peter, Peter!” said Jim, using his patrician tone to stop his Russian friend from saying something he might regret. “We are all friends here. Quavoce is not accusing anyone of anything. He is merely pointing out an undeniable fact, the closer we get to capacity, the more we are inevitably seeing diminishing marginal returns from our efforts.”

“So? Do we say this is the best we can do?” said Madeline, firmly.

Several people’s eyes came suddenly to her to see if she was being serious, Jim was not among them. He waited for her to add something more salient to justify her strident tone. She delivered. “It seems to me that if we seem to be reaching peak capacity with current treaties and agreements, then maybe it is time to revisit those agreements.”

Her eyes were on Peter as she said it. He took in a long gulp of air, then nodded. “Of course you are right, Ms. Cavanaugh, but how much further we can test the limits of eminent domain, I do not know.”

The economy of the world was in a place it had not seen since the dark final years of the Second World War, and maybe not even then. It was a strange place to be. They were in the height of a war larger than anyone had ever known, and yet not a single shot had been fired for years.

As TASC’s efforts had moved toward the almost single-minded production of Skalm fighting craft, with an additional subsidiary focus on fixed orbital weapons platforms, the attentions of its political arms had moved toward the difficult job of sustaining economic contributions to the war effort without grinding what was left of the world economy into dust.

Like sweet and sour, balancing hope and fear in the same pot was not an easy job even when the guns could be heard over the horizon, but now, when it was all still so distant, still more than a year away, they had to fight to suppress apathy even within themselves.

Hollywood certainly helped, as did Bollywood and Hong Kong, creating films that brought the Mobiliei threat to life, while also providing happy endings to inspire the equally important warm fuzzies. Only the month before Jim had been quite disturbed, though, by the accuracy of a more speculative Danish movie on the topic.

The movie had spoken of the work of an elite but now debunked TASC leadership. What was perhaps even more worrying than how close they had gotten to the truth behind Neal’s resignation, was the fact that the film had then skipped forward to a post-apocalyptic world populated not by surviving humans, but by victorious Mobiliei, with a unnervingly close reproduction of the look and gate of that alien species, something that was far from public knowledge.

The movie’s writer and director was now living at District One, but not because she had been imprisoned. After a thorough but legal investigation, they had discovered no wrongdoing, but had hired the perceptive woman so she could apply her creativity and insight to helping avoid the ending she had so ominously predicted.

“We may have pushed the governmental powers to their reasonable limit,” acknowledged Madeline, “but I am not talking about encouraging or empowering further co-option of raw materials. I am talking about looking more to existing stores of them.”

In the information world that underlay their current virtual meeting place, she reached out her tentacles, seeking permission to show them an image. They acquiesced by almost universally automatic mandate, with only Jim and the two Mobiliei Agents retaining direct control even in this trusted place.

She took the gifted control and began to change their meeting place, evaporating the evocative round stone table they traditionally met around and replacing it now with an image that appeared far below, and then surged up and around them, until they were all standing on its deck.

They looked around. Whatever ship they were on it was a leviathan, vanishing forward and aft with a domineering central bridge towering above them. The deck, such as it was, was puckered with wide, peaked doors covering what they did not know, though it looked as though they were prisons for some strange breed of flying beast, waiting below to be released.

It was not like anything that most of the group had ever seen before, but one among them recognized it immediately, and others soon followed as memory, synthetic or natural, came to them.

“The
Pyotr Velikiy
. Last of the Kirov class,” said Peter, nodding with growing understanding. “A quarter of a kilometer long, if I remember correctly, and … how many tons?”

“Twenty-five thousand,” replied Madeline, with a smile, “give or take.”

“And not, actually, the last of its kind,” said John Hunt, surprising the Russian, who looked at him with a question in his eyes. John elaborated, “There were four completed. Two are out of service, but still afloat. Another, the
Admiral Nakhimov
, is half gutted, its refit having been cancelled when the war started.”

Peter smiled at John and nodded. “I stand corrected.”

Madeline waited for the Russian to look back at her, then said, “A hundred thousand tons of steel, brass copper, and plastics just sitting there.”

“Well,” said Peter, with more than a touch of indignation, “not just sitting there. The
Velikiy
remains the flagship of the northern fleet, and a mighty warship even now.”

They looked at him, certainly not wishing to cause offense, but also not willing to concede that these once mighty ships, and all those like them around the world, still maintained any real relevance in their new age.

After a moment, Madeline, using a gentle smile that softened the blow at least somewhat, popped the Russian leader’s bubble. “Secretariat … Peter, I am afraid it is a fact we are all too aware of that a single Skalm would probably be able to sink the
Velikiy
before it could take it down, and a squadron would be more than a match for her.”

The Russian looked hurt, and Jim stepped up to him and patted him on the back while the others looked around them, taking in the scale of the huge warship. “Not to worry, my friend, last time I saw the USS
Reagan
at Rolas Island, she was being used as little more than a floating barracks.”

Peter sucked up his pride, sheltering his bruised ego inside his thick coat of Russian resilience, and said, “So, Madeline, you are suggesting that we put these ships, and I hope the equivalents from
other
navies, to the axe?”

“I am, Mr. Secretariat, I am. Those that can still sail, like the fine
Velikiy
here, can make their way to the nearest Dome facility by sea. Those that are less … independent, like the
Velikiy
’s three decommissioned Kirov-class sister ships, and many equivalents from those
other
navies, like the USS
Enterprise
, among others, even the four Iowa class battleships, can be helped along by EAHLs.”

Peter looked around. He knew this would not be a popular decision among his leadership, but if he positioned it right with his people, as a reduction in wasteful military spending, he could use public sentiment to force the politicians’ hands. But there was another issue, he now thought, saying, “These ships, they are not so easily dismantled, you know. While a Skalm may well be able to cut through this armor, I do hope you are not planning on using one of
them
as a breaker’s saw?”

John Hunt laughed at the image. “No, I imagine that would be a less-than-controlled way of getting the meat off this bone. But I am sure Madeline has already planned for that, and knows that the Domes can do that work for us.”

Madeline smiled at John, the man who had given her that first resonance chamber schematic years ago, in a hotel room in DC. They had come far since then, farther, perhaps, than John had dared hope they would. Now they were discussing carving up warships to bolster a Skalm fleet already nearly three hundred strong.

At a questioning glance from the Russian leader, John nodded for her to explain, so she said, “Peter, the truth is we need only separate them into manageable pieces that can fit into the Domes, a big task in and of itself, no doubt, but one we have the tools for. Once loaded into the resonance chambers we will, with surprising ease, be able to extract what we need, and set aside any unwanted materials.”

It was a powerful image. Peter still had many questions, but he would get to those in time. This group was a safe place, thought Peter, and he was reasonable enough to acknowledge that the plan was a good one, in principle.

“So,” said Peter, after glancing around the contoured deck a moment, “I guess we are going to propose to my fellow representatives a … repurposing of the world’s navies.”

“Some of them, yes, their more obsolete components … with your permission, Peter,” said Madeline, smiling at this ally of hers, once so foreign, yet now so familiar, one of many unexpected friendships forged in this war’s fires.

Chapter 53: Post-Man

The controls passed back and forth seamlessly, sometimes several times in a second. Minnie and Mynd had learned to work together well, but it was more than that, they had come to depend on each other, and now their integration was of a level and complexity that defied comprehension by the human mind.

After the loss of Amadeu, Minnie had sought solace in her own kind, and where she had struggled to find a kindred soul in the disassociated Remy, she had connected on an ever deeper level with the now equally orphaned Mynd.

As they had shared the task of picking each other clean of the ticks of external manipulation, both sinister and well intentioned, they had learned each other’s inner workings, and it had only helped cement their burgeoning friendship.

It was not a friendship as most would understand it, but something closer to a conjoined twin, one where even the mind could be linked, in part or in whole, and at will. More importantly for the day-to-day running of the planet’s space-born defenses, they could also exchange whole limbs in an instant, giving parts of themselves over as the need arose, and passing them back when the task was complete.

That was how the movement happened now, the smooth pull and push between them, as they jointly operated the world’s EAHL fleet in a series of mammoth deliveries from yards in Virginia, the Kola Peninsula, Southampton, and Brest. One of the first of those deliveries was even now cruising south toward Deception Island at an impressive speed, especially given her nearly forty years of service.

The USS
Peleliu
had been very much diminished already when the call had gone out to the United States Union of Loyal Governors, the current evolution of the former super-power’s executive branch.

The ship’s reassignment, such as it was, had taken the form of a purchase. It was a purchase paid for by the relieving of some of the country’s crippling debt, a trade all the more attractive given that the item in question had very little value to anyone but TASC now, anyway.

In an irony of government, the burgeoning complexity of the new order in the beleaguered US had actually sped the decision, the simple promise of much needed relief being enough for the ruling governors to turn over the first of the requested warships, most of which had been dormant for several years now, anyway.

The USS
Peleliu
, last of her kind, was an impressive sight, even bereft of the thirty-odd viper, sea knight, and sea stallion helicopters that had once made up her complement. Now she was driven by a skeleton crew, themselves volunteers to TASC’s work, the latest in a long list of contributions from a country that had been one of the birthplaces of the fight against the coming invasion, even if it had not, in the end, survived it.

But that ship was still far off, crossing the second of two oceans that had lain between it and its destination. The three Big Feet that would soon welcome it were already busy, though, and they were about to become much, much more involved, more so than they had ever been before, as their abilities were tested to the very limit.

Neal wanted to watch. He wanted to watch so badly. It was not morbidity on his part, indeed a part of him mourned the gruesomeness of the coming end for another impressive ship of the line. But this was so real to him, and so rare a break from this prison’s monotony, a reminder of the role he had once played, the grand scheme he had once been in charge of.

A scheme that was not his anymore. But maybe, just maybe, he still had a part. A part that was plaguing him. He had reached out to his mysterious caller, asking them why they had sent the pictures, but to no avail. He had received only silence in reply. Without recourse, without warden to complain to or gaoler to call, he had set to studying the enigmatic photos and that first discomfort he had felt when he had looked at them had crystallized into a thought.

And so he had reached out again, this time with an answer, rather than a question. “They reconfigured their force a second time, a week after the first,” he had said. Then the reply had come.

-why?-

It was a reasonable enough question. But why ask me, he had sent back, why not John or Quavoce? Silence once more. So he had crafted a better response. Clearly whoever was sending him this required him to earn his place in this limited but still precious conversation. But he had resisted the urge to speculate wildly, and had instead asked for more information, specifically access to the full spectrum view of the enemy Armada over the time period involved.

After what had felt like an interminable wait while he wondered whether he might have forgone even this minimal interaction, the connection had come, a smooth flow, clearly delimited in its reach, but within those confines, so very open. He had sunk himself into the data, feeling a freedom he had not felt since his incarceration, and for a moment he had been that malcontent PhD student once more, studying the data, trying to see what it so desperately wanted to keep hidden.

But what he had come up with after bathing his mind for hours in the information flow, after pruning his intellect in the slowly cooling waters, had left him almost as confused as before.

Why? The images, starting as they did at the point when they had known the missile-mine swarm would hit, had shown the puckered shimmering of the Armada’s engines as they reeled from the battery. Then they had collectively vanished into subspace as he had expected them to. After a brief flash in the blackness, almost imperceptible, the fleet had reappeared, diminished now, cleansed, a gap showing in its wide belly where an apparently damaged section had been excised.

That had all been expected. The SOP of a fleet under attack, scuttling hulled ships so that the greater whole could move on unhindered.

But the next translation, a few days later, and lasting only hours, that had been less expected, and afterward the returned firepoint was not quite the same. It was neither less nor more, but it showed fleeting signs of fault. Why? What had they done during that second translation? What were those faults? Neal had some ideas, but he hesitated to give voice to them, for fear that would force him to air the full range of his speculation.

So now he was faced with the choice as he stared out across the broad crater to the three gargantuan Big Feet splashing out into the deeper water toward the USS
Truman
, already sitting at anchor in the bay. It did not recoil from them, as it might if it knew what was to come. It just lolled there, oblivious to the buffeting waves and its coming demise, while the last of its crew and the thousand odd workers and base staff that had been billeted there removed themselves to burgeoning shelters on land.

Neal considered his position. The last time he had spoken up, the last time he had extended himself, it had sparked a chain of events that had ruined him, mentally and physically, and left him far more of a pariah than he had thought possible during his tedious nights at the array.

But still he knew what he was going to do. He was going to ask whoever it was that was sending him this information to consider a theory. Not because he was even close to certain that it was true, but because if there was even a chance that it was, then they were in very, very real danger. He knew he was going to do it, and he knew he had to spend time gathering his thoughts, doing what Laurie West had once helped him do over cheap pizza and burned coffee.

His mind was already stepping into itself even as the sight across the bay from him started to become something terrible. As he watched, he was conjuring Laurie’s voice as she dismantled his ideas, only to help him rebuild them, stronger and more robust than before, sinking the foundation deeper into solid data as she made the whole something better, something real, something irresistible.

It was a foundation the USS
Truman
now lacked, despite all its seeming robustness, the betrayal of its liquid undertow that was revealed as the three Big Feet straddled it, fore and aft, and began to drag it toward shore.

It did not fight. It was already dead inside, its fission cores long decommissioned, having been rendered obsolete by smaller, more efficient fusion generators that now powered this place and the many like it around the world. The big ship was pulled to shore, the nanotube framework of the Big Feet’s legs straining with the load as the water became shallower and they were forced to heft its elephantine weight out of the freezing liquid and into the air.

Great streams of grey water gushed around and from the exposing hull, like the ocean was trying to hold onto the ship that had once ruled it, this dead god, being dragged to the knackers’ yard. But the sea had lost its claim, and soon the big ship was aloft, the ground cracking under the feet of its undertakers as they bore it to the ridge and laid it astride that basalt anvil.

Now the ship’s weight, its tens of thousands of long tons that had threatened to break even the GBHLs powerful legs, were turned against it as the ridgeline splintered and compressed under its saddle, and the weight came onto the ship’s stem.

The strain was impossible and unbearable, and were Neal to still have been watching he would have wept at the sight, along with the many former captains and crew who had asked to bear witness to the warship’s end from around the world.

Even Minnie and Mynd were not immune to the ignobility of this breach as the back of the aircraft carrier started to break under its own weight. Like so many sinking or grounded ships throughout history, the truth of her need for the sea’s support came in a series of sudden fractures, first along her decks, and then her sides, as her ends started to come to ground and she started to split in two. The Big Feet, still astride her, were already moving, climbing over her opening corpse to the aft section and bringing their own weight to bear on it, encouraging the fissure.

Many of those watching started tuning out now, as the sight stepped beyond morbid into macabre, and the Big Feet began to drag the separating aft away, pulling hard as the last of the ship’s tendons snapped and ripped, the ghost of the inanimate ship seeming to groan and shout in protest like the boiling lobster’s screaming shell.

Minnie:

Mynd:
left half, bring third over

The minds’ conversation went on as they ripped the aft section free and began dragging it away, for the second breaking. For this was a quartering, as of old, and to bring the stark comparison even more clearly to mind the forward half of the carrier lay now, facedown over the breaker’s ridge, its waist spilt open and its mechanical innards strewn in a line away from the gaping hole in its bowels as the aft section was hauled into position for the next breach.

- - -

Even as the two minds plied their gruesome trade, another part of their being sat, detached, watching and discussing it in a conversation without end, a stream of exchanged ideas and questions that flowed between the two cousins at all times, informed and driven by the multitude of tasks, both allotted and shared, that they were commissioned with around the world.

Mynd:

Minnie:

Mynd:

Minnie:
<¿what is your definition of fixed? ¿what is your definition of broken?>

Mynd:

Minnie:

Mynd:
<¿it can? ¿is not war a result of those emotions, this very war that leads us to dismember this ship, and the war that led to its construction in the first place?>

Minnie:
<¿and are we not also a result of that war?>

Mynd:

Minnie:

Mynd:

Minnie:

Mynd:

Minnie waited and Mynd continued churning in the silence, and then, as Minnie had expected him to, Mynd spoke once more.

Mynd: