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Chairman Daniel Markis gazed out over the well-manicured green grounds of the Carletonville Research Laboratory, the low-key but heavily guarded home of the Free Communities Council central administration building. His office’s floor-to-ceiling plate glass window made it seem as if he could roll his office chair backward into open space, but the material was actually thick and bulletproof up to at least fifty caliber. The burgeoning nanotech industry had provided new materials of all sorts, and the tough stuff it was made of was just the first of many.
A certain vulnerability to attack was the price he paid for the view. That gave Karl Rogett, his security chief, fits, the idea that one heavy weapon would decapitate the FC government. Then again, it gave the man something to do.
Daniel shrugged to himself. All life was risk, and despite what people thought, the FC would not fall apart without him. Someone always stepped up and filled a power vacuum, and all of the council members were competent.
His secure terminal beeped at him, the one that faced away from the window. He rolled the chair over to it, sliding his keycard into the slot. Pressing his fingertips to the scanner, he repositioned his head to let the laser simultaneously check his retinal patterns. Karl told him they would soon be installing a DNA sampler “based on Meme technology.”
That phrase was becoming very common in research circles these days.
In fact, humanity’s nemesis was perversely responsible for much of the progress in the world right now. Technology was just one aspect. Daniel considered Earth’s fragile newfound semi-unity to be far more important, and inspiring. He wondered if it would all fall apart once the threat abated.
He also wondered whether it ever would abate – at least within his lifetime. If the intelligence info captured from the Meme scout ship could be believed, the enemy empire spanned thousands of worlds.
How can we stand against that? And if we do, how long will it take to beat them?
If it wasn’t for the vast distances involved, and the limitation of the speed of light itself, he would have given humanity no chance at all. Right now they were in a race: only nine short years until the next attack came. In that time, he had to organize the world to build some kind of military force that would not only beat this Destroyer super-ship of theirs, but defeat it decisively enough that Earth would retain enough capacity left to rise to the next challenge. A Pyrrhic victory that left them prostrate would merely delay the inevitable.
On his terminal, he read a decrypted message from Cassandra Johnstone, his spymaster: a report he had been waiting for. In reply, he typed instructions for her and fired it off to her location in Antarctica.
Daniel hoped she could pull off the operation she proposed. She was confident, but the opposition was formidable, and at least as clever as she was. If it wasn’t for a certain blind spot in the opponent...
He wondered about Cass’ potential blind spots...and his own.
He shook his head. Covert ops were a necessary evil, not something he relished. It made him chuckle to think that the most traditionally religious among his inner circle was also his most devious. A Jesuit he might have expected in the role, but not a southern Presbyterian drop-forged into a highly effective CIA field agent in pre-Plague Moscow.
Himself, he believed in God, and right and wrong, but didn’t think too deeply past all that, which saved a lot of arguments with his agnostic scientist wife, Elise. He figured if God cared about Earth or the rest of the universe, He was sure a hands-off kind of deity, and expected people to take care of their own problems.
Such as the Meme Empire.
Which was one hell of a problem.
That reminded him. He called up another file on the screen and perused it for at least a half hour, ignoring calls and a couple of intercom buzzes from his administrative assistant Millie Johnstone. Eventually he decided on a course of action, and sent another set of instructions to his spymaster. This time, however, he followed it up.
Opening his office door, he called, “Millie, could you get your mom on the secure line please?”
From behind her desk, she looked like the spitting image of her mother Cass, especially as the Eden Plague had returned the elder Johnstone her youth. However, the daughter seemed to have no particular love of the world of spies, preferring to be the good right hand of Earth’s most influential, though not overtly powerful, man.
“You know, you could just call her yourself.”
“I can never get that stupid phone to work right. Just dial her up and transfer her, will you? Thanks.” Daniel backed into his office and closed the door, waiting for the beep that told him the line was live on the exotic-looking box: the custom-made one with the rather ordinary handset that sat on one end of his desk.
Finally the encrypted call came. “Cass? Yes, I sent you a secure message about the Septagon Shadow rogue cyborg program file. I want to turn it over to President McKenna.”
“Is that wise?” Not surprisingly, Cassandra sounded skeptical. “The U.S. clandestine services are still riddled with leaks and informants – some of them mine, that’s how I know. If you do that, you might as well just post it on the internet.”
“I figured you’d do some work on it before we did that. Some redaction, a bit of exaggeration here and there...you know the drill.”
Her tone brightened. “That’s not a bad idea. But they won’t like being used to pass disinformation.”
“Well, that will be on them. I want to give it to him Eyes Only, U.S. President. If he can’t keep it to himself, maybe we can trace the path of information and find out where it’s going.”
“A stalking horse? Daniel, you’re learning!”
“It’s just an idea, and I’m sure you and your people can refine and fancify it a lot...but that’s my plan. The why and what is up to me, the how is yours. And, even if it doesn’t bring our quarry out of the woodwork, it may prompt McKenna to prioritize the hunt with his people.”
“Why? The U.S. captured the Septagon labs and low-level researchers. We acquired almost all the information worth having, and got to study Rick as a living test subject before he went into space. If their top people got away, so what? The Free Communities will probably catch up in applied cybernetics in the next couple of years, especially with Australia pushing for the technology to be used in the Space Marine and Fleet programs.”
Daniel chewed the inside of his cheek for a moment, trying to put into words what was really just a hunch. Thinking aloud helped him structure his arguments. “Look...in the last decade we’ve seen three world-changing technologies developed: Meme-adapted biotech, Earth-grown nanotech, and the new cheap access to space through the cloned Meme fusion drives. I can’t shake the feeling that cybernetics will be equally important, and we can’t let a rogue entity develop it into something that we aren’t ready to deal with. Those prototype Shadow Men proved to be worth five or ten nanocommandos.” He sighed. “It’s an arms race we can’t really even afford to run, much less lose. It will distract from the real effort – preparing for the Destroyer. I’d much rather find them and take them down now, than wait for them to hit us at a time and place of their choosing.”
“All right, all right,” Cassandra replied. “I’ll prep the file. I’ll make it lead the Americans to exactly the conclusions we want. And I’m sure you want me to tell Rick when the time comes.”
“Tell Rick?” Daniel’s confusion seemed clear. “What does your son have to do with anything?”
Cassandra’s eye-roll came through in her voice. “Just like a man. Daniel, he and Jill Repeth are still up there working on the space defense program. Jill is one of President McKenna’s favorite go-to operatives. As soon as you start this ball rolling, he will call for her to come down and join the hunt for Septagon Shadow, and Rick’s not going to be happy.”
“Well, you’re his mother.” Daniel’s tone was falsely light.
“And you’re his boss. He’s a Free Community of South Africa citizen now, not an American, and I swear to you, Daniel Markis, that I am not going to be the one to tell him Jill is dead, or worse. That’s on you.”
He could hear her breathing rasp through the satellite phone line, and he took a deep lungful himself. “Fair enough. It’s on me, as you said. Now...about that other thing; the other guy.”
“You still want to just ask him to come? I’d rather try to finesse it.”
“Cass, you just want to win the spy game. He’s not a man to take kindly to that.”
“On the contrary. I think he lives for it. And he’s your friend. He showed that when he returned the children.”
“Yes...” Daniel shifted the receiver to his other ear. “But I’d rather not presume upon friendship. Golden rule, and all that.”
Silence reigned on the line for a long moment, then Cassandra went on. “Perhaps I can split the difference. How about if I let him discover you would like to talk to him? Then he can make up his own mind about whether it’s aboveboard, or a bluff, or a double bluff.”
“Ad infinitum. I can live with that. Anything else?”
“Not now.”
“All right. Have fun in the snow.” Daniel put the phone down, then turned back to watch the sun set warmly across the laboratory campus, thoroughly happy not to be in Antarctica.
I shot two arrows in the air...they fell to Earth, I know not where.
