Storming Heaven

Chapter Twenty-Seven

“We’ve unlocked the starboard weapons pod, sir,” the engineer said. “The technicians report that they can reload the weapons pod at your command.”

Andrew nodded, only slightly distracted from the report he was reading. The Defence Force preferred to use written reports where possible, rather than direct memory downloads, for a reason that had been lost somewhere in the mists of time. The crews might complain about the delay, but it made a certain kind of sense. Too much direct memory downloads could harm a mind.

“Tell them to get on with it,” he ordered, shortly. “We have a deadline to meet.”

And it might just be a real deadline, he reflected. The pre-mission briefing had gone over the uncertain nature of the new weapons, to such an extent that he was worried that the researchers who had designed them weren’t sure what they would do either, let alone the crewmen on the starships. They’d designed the weapons and the Fabricators had produced thousands of them rapidly, but what if they failed? Ironically, if the weapons didn’t work, they were going to be even more ineffective than before; their standard compliment of weapons had been stripped down to allow them to carry the newer weapons.

I suppose that that would be the advantage of a larger ship, he thought, ruefully. The Killers could house as many weapons as they liked on their behemoths — although they had only displayed one weapon — but the destroyers were too small to carry more than the bare minimum of weapons. It would have been nice to have a larger ship, he decided, but only when they figured out how to shield against the Killer weapon. A larger ship without a shield would just be a bigger target. The destroyers could move effortlessly around the Killer starships, ducking and weaving to avoid their shots, yet a larger ship would have problems evading their fire. Unless the new weapons worked better than advertised — and he knew better to rely on it — they wouldn’t even gain any firepower advantage from a larger ship. Their weapons would be as ineffective as the Lightning’s weapons.

Lighting herself was orbiting an unnamed asteroid shipyard in interstellar space, over twenty light years from the nearest star. It made Andrew wonder, when he’d first been informed of the location, just how long the Defence Force had known that it was possible to blow up stars. If the nearest star was destroyed, it would be twenty years before the asteroid felt any effects… and it would really be little more than a wave of radiation, lethal to unprotected forms of life but easily handled with a proper shield. If the human race started blowing up hundreds of stars, they would render thousands of planets uninhabitable… although they had been uninhabitable anyway, as long as the Killers were out there, watching for targets. New Hope’s death had provided yet another reminder that the Killers were implacable. They couldn’t be reasoned with, or dissuaded from their course…

And yet, the Killers had fled Sparta. It made no sense to Andrew. They had been in a position to seriously wound the Defence Force, yet they hadn’t taken advantage of it. There was no reason why they should have fled, unless they were worried that the human defenders might blow up Sparta’s star to get at them… hell, that might have been the answer. The Killers were powerful, but they couldn’t survive a supernova. Had they been, for the first time, afraid of the human defenders? They hadn’t even launched any other attacks since the Cinder had been created.

He put the report down — ignoring the faint shivers running through the deck as the weapons pods were replaced — and called up the live feed from the Cinder. No one knew who had first coined the term, but at least the star wasn’t hiding behind a CAS number any longer, just in time to die. The former gas giant was still wracked with strange energies, as if a witch’s brew was being formed from the devastation, and the Defence Force had ordered the researchers to remain well away from the planet, just in case. Andrew couldn’t fault the decision; the Technical Faction’s researchers, in his experience, tended to try to get just a little closer to anything interesting, which sometimes meant that they were too close. The Faction had lost hundreds of starships to situations that any competent Captain would have avoided. The Defence Force couldn’t afford that luxury.

The scientists studying the dying planet were perplexed. It simply wasn’t behaving as the simulations insisted it should have behaved. It should have either blown up completely and created a new asteroid field, or collapsed down into a tiny fraction of its former self. It had done neither. The lead scientist had speculated that there was still a reaction burning away down inside the Cinder, but he hadn’t been able to suggest just what had happened, or why. The gas giant’s core was as unreachable as ever.

At least we understand the remains of the supernova, he thought, as he flickered over to the next section. The supernova had burned itself out, leaving only a tiny echo of its former self… and a devastated system. Human explorers were crawling all over it now, trying to learn as much as possible before the Killers returned to reclaim their system, even if they died in the process. They had already located several other pieces of Killer technology, although nothing as large and prominent as the massive Killer starship, and had high hopes of discovering more. They even wanted to explore down inside the remains of the gas giant, although Andrew was convinced that that was dangerous — and futile. Nothing could have survived the holocaust he’d unleashed on the Killer settlement within the mists.

The starship shivered again, reminding him of the Community’s reaction to the supernova bomb. There had been an unholy delight at the news, at how the Killers had finally been hurt as badly as they’d hurt humanity, but there had also been fear, fear of what could happen if the supernova bomb was used again. Humanity’s settlements were vulnerable to expanding blast waves, perhaps far more vulnerable than the Killer settlements were, and there was no reason why the Killers themselves couldn’t destroy whole stars. It seemed to have slipped their attention that the Killers didn’t need to destroy whole stars. If a fleet of Killer starships arrived in a human system, it would tear through the defences and shatter the human settlement. They didn’t need to resort to blowing up entire stars.

But some of the other responses were even worse. There were groups — and a growing body of public opinion — that called for the deployment of additional bombs, hitting every known Killer star. They wouldn’t care if they had to dismantle the entire galaxy to wipe out the Killers...and Andrew was ashamed to admit that he would have once agreed. Before he’d seen the Cinder System devastated and the Killers slaughtered, it would have been easy to demand their extermination, but now… he remembered watching the Killer cities fighting for life and shivered. They, like humanity, had been at the mercy of the storm. It made them almost human. He almost felt sorry for them.

He shook his head, angrily dismissing the thought. The Killers had slaughtered billions of humans and exterminated countless alien races. They didn’t talk to the victims, nor did they have a cause; they just came, saw and exterminated. They showed no mercy to their targets; why, then, should humanity show mercy to them? They hadn’t had any cause to go to war with Earth, or the countless other worlds they’d devastated; until recently, humanity hadn’t even been able to hurt them. He hoped, savagely, that they were reeling in pain, stunned at the blows they’d taken. It was nothing more than the down payment of what humanity owed them. The Community might have its political factions, it might scrabble over each and every thing humans could scrabble over, but they all shared one single belief. The Killers had to be stopped, whatever it took.

Yet stopping them might mean nothing less than destroying half the galaxy to save the rest. Andrew had looked it up. On average, almost every major star system possessed at least one gas giant, although there were notable exceptions. Were they all Killer settlements? If the human race had spent the last thousand years settling planets rather than asteroids, they would have expanded over the entire galaxy; had the Killers settled every gas giant? He had a vision of two very different races co-existing without even being aware of each other; there was little for humans and Killers to fight over, really. They didn’t even compete for the same words. Could they — should they — destroy the galaxy in order to save it?

“Captain,” Gary said, breaking into his thoughts. “We have a confirmed link to the weapons pod. Implosion bolts and particle cannons are online and ready to engage targets.”

Andrew nodded. “Excellent,” he said. The Defence Force had amassed no less than ten attack wings of destroyers, armed with the new weapons, to face the Killers. They all had to pass through the shipyards as quickly as possible before they moved to the new system, the system that humanity was about to kill. “Helm, take us to a holding position and keep us there.”

“Aye, sir,” David said. Lightning thrummed slightly as he brought up the drive field. It was easy to believe that the starship was a living entity, eager to be out in space again; indeed, with the AI distributed throughout the ship, it effectively was a living entity. Andrew suddenly had an impression of how the Killer starships had to operate, with the Killer bound so closely to his ship that they were one, and suppressed a sudden burst of envy. The Killers might be able to handle being bonded to a starship, but the humans who had tried had gone mad. “We’re under way.”

“Once we get there,” Andrew added, “bring up the tactical simulations. We need to practice using the new weapons in combat.”

He pulled up the data on the Shiva System — as some wag had dubbed it — and examined it quickly. Shiva was far from any known human settlements, although the possibility of a completely hidden colony could not be discounted, and even if the Killers did track them down, they shouldn’t be able to find or destroy anything else. He doubted that that was a real concern. The Killers had shown no difficulty in tracking down humanity’s settlements when they wanted to find them. No one even knew how they did it, unless their sensors were far superior to humanity’s…

“We’re in position, sir,” David said.

“Bring up the simulation,” Andrew ordered. He pushed his thoughts away for later consideration. “Use a standard simulation first, and then we’ll get tricky.”

“To slay another star,” a voice said, behind her. “It almost seems beyond comprehension.”

President Patti Lydon turned, but she already knew who was behind her, who had materialised in her personal chambers without passing through the elaborate security precautions intended to preserve the life of the President of the Community. The MassMind representative looked as strange as ever and she looked away, unwilling to stare into the strange face. It just kept reminding her that there were billions of humans in the MassMind, looking back at her. Her own parents occupied their worlds deep inside the system. It would have been easy to talk to them, to hear their advice, but she couldn’t. It wasn’t something the President could allow herself.

“We killed a star and countless Killers,” she said, shortly. “Do you approve of the slaughter?”

“We cannot not approve,” the MassMind said. “We are the thoughts and feelings of those who watched the Killers kill without mercy, without hate, without even the simple dignity of being recognised as an enemy. We are their lust for revenge, their desire for a safe universe for their children, and their determination to do whatever it takes to end the threat, once and for all. The supernova bomb may have deep philosophical implications and more worrying implications for the power balance within the Community, but to us it is just another weapon, one to be used against the Enemies of Humanity.”

“There are times when you worry me,” Patti admitted. “Are you sane?”

The representative shrugged. “Define sane,” it said. “We believe that we are as sane as it is possible to be, and we have that disconnected self-awareness that humans so noticeably lack. We are sane.”

Patti frowned. It was odd, and she had never thought of it before, but only a handful of former Community Presidents had downloaded themselves into the MassMind. Tabitha, of course, had been the first President and she had downloaded herself, but of the four hundred and seventy Presidents who had followed her, only eighty-one had downloaded themselves. Some of them had existed before the MassMind had been created and probably didn’t count, but the others…? They had accepted death without the continuity provided by the MassMind. It bothered Patti, now. Had they had their own discussions with the MassMind to unnerve them, or to convince them not to add their memories to humanity’s collective gestalt?

“Am I?” She asked, finally. “Are our plans sane, or those of a madman?”

“There is little sane in the Killers and their actions,” the MassMind said. “Our desire for revenge is only one part of it. We also have no reason to believe that the Killers would leave us alone indefinitely, even after we blew up a star. We cannot talk to them; we cannot bargain or compromise. We can only fight or run. We can do both.”

Patti felt her eyes narrow. “Do you believe that the Killers were attempting to communicate with Sparta?”

There was a pause. “We do not know,” the MassMind said. “We possess enough computing capability to unlock the secrets of many alien languages, but the Killers are utterly alien, with little in common with humanity. Their technology has taken a very different path to our own. We may never be able to communicate with them on any real basis. Indeed…

“The Community that survived the destruction of Earth was a fairly united culture, although they would have denied it,” it continued. “Although there were political and religious differences, they shared a common background and a common sense of what was what. That was not true on Earth; different people, with different cultural backgrounds, acted differently to the same stimulus. It was not always easy to fully predict what a person from a different background to your own would do, even though you believed that they would do what you would do — or differently, because you believed the stereotypes about different cultures. It was hard to separate out your unspoken assumptions about your own culture, nor was attempting that a good idea.

“But the Killers are truly alien. We may share nothing in common with them. We may never accomplish anything more than an uneasy truce.”

“I don’t understand,” Patti said. “They didn’t share the same science…?”

“Cultural background,” the MassMind said, flatly. “There were societies that believed that the older a person was, the wiser they were, and therefore tended to dismiss the young. There were societies that believed that one group of humans was inherently inferior to their group, or that women were little more than grown-up children, unsuited to handle their own affairs. They tended to run into problems when they blended societies together; some would simply find themselves disobeying the law to maintain their own cultural imperatives. The result was civil unrest and disruption.

“By contrast, our society is effectively uniform,” it added. “We have lost a degree of diversity in our development. This was effectively inevitable. Was it a good thing?”

It carried on before Patti could answer. “Our society is perhaps the healthiest known to mankind,” it continued. “Our people can explore any perversity they want within the virtual worlds created by tiny amounts of my computing power. The urges that lead to crimes against humanity can be indulged, or countered, without having to allow innocent people to get caught up in the firing line. We have beaten want and hunger, famine and plague. For the first time in human history, there is enough for everyone — unless the Killers come to call. The deprivation experienced by thousands of humans over the last fortnight was the first time in their lives that they had experienced such suffering. The living might truly have envied the dead. Our society is so great, yet we are at the mercy of a force we don’t control; the Killers.

“We must safeguard ourselves, or die.”

Patti felt her eyes narrow. “Is that why you told me about the supernova bomb?”

“Correct,” the MassMind agreed. “We have a perspective on humanity that no human — no mortal human — is capable of sharing. We had to encourage the deployment of the one weapon we knew could hurt the Killers. The Admiral’s… displeasure at the information leaking out into the public sphere is effectively immaterial compared to the need to hit back, whatever the risk. We must maintain confidence in our own society. Far too many humans have already retreated completely into artificial worlds.”

“But you could simply kick them out,” Patti pointed out. The MassMind controlled all of the virtual worlds. “You could even just reshape the worlds so that they become less hospitable.”

“That wouldn’t solve the underlying problem,” the MassMind concluded. “Those humans lack the one thing all humans need; hope. They must have a reason to hope and hitting back at the Killers, storming the very face of Heaven itself, is the only thing that will encourage them to get back into human society. We have no choice.”

There was a chilling pause. “The Killers must be defeated so that we can live.”