Rumors of Salvation (System States Rebellion Book 3) (2 page)

Murphy
took a deep breath and said, “All right. I’ll co-operate in return for that
personal Pardon and for a written guarantee that SSU planets will be able to
determine whether to remain in the FPS or not. I want a couple more guarantees
too. I want a guarantee that I’ll be with your fleet when it attacks Hadley and
a guarantee that after the Empire is defeated, I’ll be taken back to Sparta.
You’re right, I do want payback for Midgard, and I want to see it with my own
eyes.”

“I
can live with that,” said Masterson. “What about you, Sergei?”

“Yeah,
I’m okay with it too. You’ve got yourself a deal, Commander Murphy. We’ll have
that written guarantee approved by the Council and in your hands within 24
hours. These guards will escort you back to your cell now.” Chenko gestured to
the two guards.

After
Murphy and the guards had left the room, Chenko stood up and collected his
notes. “You did a good job convincing him, Frank. It’s a good think I kept my
mouth shut too. I’m not that good at lying. The Council’s never going to honor
that guarantee. You and I both know that allowing planets to leave peacefully
will be the kiss of death for the FPS.” When Masterson remained silent, Chenko
said, “You don’t agree?”

Masterson
sighed. “I agree that the Federation would dissolve away if planets were
allowed to vote themselves out of it, but that’s not what’s bothering me. I
still can’t understand why Trojan is acting this way. He passed his loyalty
test about as well as anyone could. How does an officer with that kind of
dedication suddenly put the whole war in jeopardy by turning his back on
everything he’s ever believed in? There’s got to be something more to this than
we know, and don’t say he’s gone nuts. That’s just a convenient label to hide
the fact that we don’t know what’s really behind all this.”

“If
I had to guess, I’d say that his Majestic computer is behind all this, but we
won’t know for sure until we land troops on Hadley,” said Chenko as he got up
and walked out.

Day
201/2552

Hadley

Trojan
closed his eyes as he entered his office because he knew what was coming.

“Status
report ready,” said Majestic in its distinctive feminine voice.

Trojan
sighed and said, “Proceed.”

“Reports
have arrived during the last 24 hours that riots have occurred on Gryphon and
Hespera. Local Empire forces were able to restore order. However, this data
confirms a rising trend-line in civil disturbances. Unless space and ground
forces are ordered to use nuclear weapons to quell uprisings, the probability
of mass resistance leading to the overthrow of the Empire will rise to 34.5
percent. Approval to use nuclear weapons at the local Field Commander’s
discretion is requested.”

“Request
is denied. Next item.”

“Implantation
of communication devices has improved efficiency by the amount estimated prior
to implementation. Request that senior ground force and space force officers on
or in orbit around Hadley be ordered to accept implants.”

Trojan
shook his head. He’d seen some of the support staff manning the Majestic
Complex who had volunteered to have the communication device implanted at the
base of their skulls. He had always found the look in their eyes disturbing.
Majestic’s contention that having direct electronic communication access to
human brains improved efficiency might very well be true, but he’d be damned if
he was going to order his officers to accept those devices.

“Request
is denied. Next item.”

“Analysis
of operating efficiency of this device after the Phase II expansion has
confirmed that the capacity expansion has met expectations. Request approval to
begin Phase III expansion.”

Trojan
shook his head again. The Phase II expansion of the machine’s computer chips
plus the pyramid-shaped protective shell made of collapsed matter had taken
over three years to complete. According to Majestic, its ability to analyze
complex questions quickly had improved by almost 100%. In hindsight, Trojan was
now of the opinion that the increased capacity wasn’t worth the manpower and
resources that had been diverted away from other priorities.

“You’re
already an order of magnitude more capable than any other computational device
in existence. Why do you need further expansion?” asked Trojan.

“Further
analysis of potential advances by SSU Brain Trust shows a 41 percent
probability that they will build a superior computational device.”

“Prior
to your Phase II expansion, you told me that such an outcome had a 38 percent
probability. Now with your expansion you’re saying the probability of them
building a device that can outthink a Phase II Majestic is even higher? I would
have thought the odds would have gone down. Request denied. Next item.”

“End
of items,” said the machine. Trojan looked at the wall where the speaker was
located. The abruptness of that last sentence almost sounded as if Majestic was
in a funk. He decided that it had to be his imagination.

“Fine.
Until tomorrow then,” said Trojan. By prior command, Majestic would not attempt
to communicate with him again for the next 24 hours unless there was an
emergency or something urgent. Without that standing order, the machine would run
on constantly while he was in his office. He had plenty of other items to deal
with without Majestic adding to the load. He looked around his office with
satisfaction. The room was much bigger and much better decorated than the space
set aside for that purpose inside the Majestic Complex. Having a palace built
that was suitable for the Emperor of a Galactic Empire was one of his better
initiatives. Living underground in that Complex had eventually become quite
intolerable.

Day
233/2552

Midgard

Murphy
stepped out of the tunnel and looked around. He never tired of looking at the
inside of the extinct volcano that was now a shipyard. The bottom of the
volcano was deep enough that it would be difficult for any orbiting ship to get
a good look at the interior. Anything other than looking down from directly
overhead would miss the construction activity. Convincing the senior military
people on Earth to move the shipyard from Midgard’s moon to this location had
been difficult, but worth it. The extraction, refining and manufacturing
processes were still located on the moon, but this time they were completely
underground. If the Empire sent more ships to snoop around, there was a good
chance they’d miss detecting any activity on the moon at all. Without the
moon’s abundant metal resources, building warships on Midgard itself would be
extremely difficult, but with the decreased risk of detection came the
trade-off that the finished parts had to be physically transported from the
moon to the volcano shipyard. Murphy had convinced the Project Management to
provide one very large freighter that only had to make the trip twice a month
instead of more frequent trips by a smaller ship. Less trips meant less risk of
detection too.

Looking
over to the construction bay, Murphy nodded with satisfaction at the progress
being made on the prototype ship. While Earth didn’t have detailed technical
information on the Empire’s stealthy ships, the basic principles of eliminating
all curved surfaces in order to redirect incoming radar waves away from the
sender were well understood. This prototype ship would test the hull design,
and it was big enough to carry sufficient missiles and missile launch tubes to
be a useful offensive asset if the testing proved that the design worked. Assuming
the tests went well, they’d build at least one more of the same 200-meter
diameter class ship while they designed a much more capable 400-meter diameter
cruiser. That was about as large a ship as they could get through the mouth of
the volcano.

He
reminded himself to go over the simulated combat tests of the proposed
radar-picket drones before the end of the day. If they worked as well as the
theory said, then Federation ships would have a decent chance of defending
themselves against the Empire’s stealthy missiles. The difficult part was
knowing from which direction the enemy missiles were coming. If they knew that,
they could launch multiple picket drones to scan the incoming trajectory from
multiple directions. Stealthy missiles might be designed to defect radar energy
coming from their targets directly ahead, but it was impossible to deflect
radar energy coming from every possible direction. Radar scans coming from the
side had a better chance of bouncing right back to the drone that emitted them,
and once they had a fix on an incoming missile, the ship’s anti-missile lasers
could destroy it. That was the theory. It looked good on paper, and the
simulated tests seemed to confirm it, but Murphy knew that simulations were
only as reliable as the assumptions going into them. The only test that counted
was the one with real drones versus real missiles, and they weren’t ready for
that yet.

The
downside to working deep within a cone of volcanic rock was that the bottom
never got direct sunlight. By the end of that day, Murphy was tired of
breathing the warm air smelling of ozone and metal that typically filled the
volcano. He wanted to breath clean, fresh air and see a sunset for a change. A
contra-gravity work platform took him up to the top of the volcano and landed
on the edge. The breeze at that altitude and time of day was refreshingly cool,
and with no cloud in the sky, the setting sun was wondrous to behold. As he sat
there watching the sun dip below the horizon, he wondered for the nth time if
he had made the right decision. Enough time had passed for the Empire to start
looking in Earth’s direction. Empire warships had made high speed passes of
Earth, which Admiral Chenko had described as reconnaissance missions. Earth had
a lot of space-based assets, but with the exception of space stations, none of
them were military in nature, and the space stations that did belong to the
military were weakly defended. Army Chief of Staff Masterson had confided to
Murphy that the Federation Council was convinced that Trojan would eventually
land his ground troops on Earth in spite of the fact that Earth still had the half
a million soldiers who were originally intended to be sent to Trojan for the
war against the SSU. Masterson had also hinted that a new Majestic-type
computer was being built on Earth. That, combined with those troops who were
now available to defend Earth, seemed to suggest to Murphy that any attack by
Trojan’s ground forces would fail.

In
any case, news from various sources were showing that the Empire’s campaign
against the SSU and the rest of the Federation was succeeding. Empire troops
were now patrolling the streets of all the main SSU planets that were capable
of building spacecraft, plus most of the Federation planets that had the same capability.
That left hundreds of Federation and SSU planets where the population or
industrial base was too low to be able to build their own ships. Unable to put
up any kind of fight, those planets were told simply to acknowledge the
Empire’s authority over them or face orbital bombardment. As far as Earth could
tell, most of them had chosen the former alternative, and the Empire didn’t
even need to station troops there.

It
had taken a long time, but additional news finally did come back from Sparta
via independent freighters that traded with both sides. The data regarding what
had happened on Sparta after Empire troops landed had contained a single
sentence to the effect that a Major Foster had blown herself up in the presence
of the senior Empire Ground Force Officer and three others, thereby killing all
four Empire soldiers. Murphy knew there was only one female Major Foster and
had cried when he read that news. His Cate was gone, and there was now nothing
worth going back to on Sparta. The only thing he had to hold on to, to make
life worth living, was the vengeance he desired for the deaths of his people on
Midgard and now also for Cate. The irony of him working for the very people
that had set in motion those forces that had killed them wasn’t lost on him.
When he thought about that aspect, he didn’t know whether to laugh or to weep.
He knew that trying to reconcile those feelings could lead him down a slippery
slope to an abyss where his sanity was concerned, and so he put those thoughts
out of his mind and concentrated on his vengeance.

With
the sun now almost gone and the light fading fast, he decided to go back to his
quarters, listen to some music and finish off that bottle of vodka that a
friend had smuggled in from Earth. However, there was one ritual that he hadn’t
done yet. He looked around and found a rock the right size. Picking it up, he
braced himself and threw it down the outside slope of the volcano as far as he
could. It bounced and rolled down a long way before he lost sight of it. What
was it that some ancient philosopher had said? If a rock is about to fall off a
cliff anyway, it deserves to be pushed? Whoever had coined that phrase had got
it right. There was something very satisfying about doing exactly that kind of
thing, whether it be a rock sitting on top of a volcano or a galactic empire on
the verge of collapse. With a chuckle, he activated the platform which took him
back inside the volcano.

Day
244/2552

Hadley

Romanov
slowly exited the shuttle and stopped to smell the fresh air. After being
cooped up in a ship for the last six months, it was a welcome break to stand on
firm ground and breath natural air again. He was tired, not mentally or
physically tired, but rather his soul was weary of the fighting. Trojan had
promised him a rest after mopping up the key planets of the SSU, but that rest
never appeared. There was always one more planet to secure, and one more after
that, and one more after that, and… He knew it wasn’t Trojan’s fault. It was
Majestic. The damn machine either didn’t know about human limits or didn’t
care. His faith in Majestic’s infallibility was crumbling too. The bigger the
Empire got, the more resistance reared its ugly head. He was starting to have
serious doubts about the viability of the whole project. Maybe bringing all of
humanity under a firm guiding hand just wasn’t possible. Majestic’s optimistic
projections back when it first brought up the idea of an Empire were rapidly
turning out to be way off the mark, and for a machine supposedly as sophisticated
as it was alleged to be, that was a huge blunder. On those rare occasions when
he allowed himself to get drunk, he would start to wonder if Majestic was
manipulating Trojan and humanity for its own inscrutable agenda and if those
projections were nothing but deliberate misinformation. Such thoughts had
always seemed somewhat absurd in the cold light of sobriety.

He
shook his head as if to clear away those dark thoughts and made his way to the
waiting air-limo that would take him to Trojan’s Palace. As the vehicle
approached the huge building, Romanov looked at it carefully and nodded. What
an improvement that place was over the cramped corridors and small rooms of the
Majestic Complex. Being literally inside Majestic had always given him a tinge
of claustrophobia not to mention a bit of paranoia too. Had Majestic been
listening in to every conversation between humans during their time there?
Get
a grip, Ivan, it’s just a machine,
he reminded himself.