Dubious Heroes: a novel Read online

  "Such as?"

  "Why you've been planting all those stories about us in the media."

  "You figured that one out, huh?" he said, as he seemed to deflate just a little.

  "At first, we thought the AI's were behind it all", I said. "They claimed they weren't involved, which meant that either they were lying, which I considered highly unlikely, or that someone else was behind it. The problem was, I couldn't think of anyone else out there who was that pissed off at the United Planets. Well, until I met you."

  "Sounds like nothing more than a lot of conjecture, to me."

  "Not entirely", I said. "You forget who runs the Speedlink network. The AI's have traced some of the planted stories back to certain people, all of whom have been in recent contact with you."

  "So what is it you want?" he asked. "An apology?"

  "No, I want to know why", I said. "Why all the bullshit in the media about us? Why did I just help you steal three hundred spacecraft? We're involved with you now, and I'd really like to know what the hell you're up to."

  "Well", he said, "The news stories are probably the easiest to explain. You take a kernel of truth, and run with it. Once you get this stuff started, it takes on a life of its own, anyway. Next thing you know, Captain Doon and the Revenge are the scourge of the UP, and champions of AI's and the downtrodden across the galaxy."

  "Which puts the UP all over my ass", I said.

  “You didn’t need my help to do that”, he said. “You go around stealing their warships, you’re gonna piss em off. You made the play, I just used it to my advantage. If they're busy watching you, then they're not watching me."

  "Gee, thanks", I said. "What about the rest of it? The ships, and so forth."

  "Sorry, but that stuff is on a need to know basis", he said. "And right now, you don't need to know. Besides, you were compensated for them."

  "If you want my cooperation, then yes, I need to know", I said. "Which is why we're out here. To paraphrase an earlier comment of yours, start talkin', or start walkin'."

  "Don't make empty threats, son", Mac said. "You don't strike me as the type to space an old man."

  "True", I said. "But I will dump your ass off on yon ice freighter. Winifred will enjoy the company, and you ought to be able to make it back to your base in two, maybe three months, tops."

  "The only way I leave this ship is on my back", he said. "I don't think you have the stones for that."

  "Just so we're clear", I said, "I don't have a problem shooting people, even annoying senior citizens. Granted, in your case, I'd hate to have to tell Kyra I'd done it."

  "That's what happens when you make decisions with your dick", the Admiral said. "Not that I'm complaining."

  "I'd have to agree", I said. "Which is why Cisco is here. Fortunately, he doesn't share my problem. Cisco, shoot the Admiral."

  "Aye, Sir", he said, as he drew his pistol, leveling it at Mac. "Anywhere in particular?"

  "Just wound him", I said. "You pick where."

  “Leg it is”, Cisco said, adjusting his aim.

  "Hold on a goddamn second!" Mac said, holding up a hand.

  "Walk or talk", I said. "Last chance."

  "Fine", he said. "Have him lower that weapon."

  "For now", I said, and nodded to Cisco. He holstered his pistol.

  "Obviously, you already know we're using you as one big damn diversion", Mac said. "We've been using you to distract them, and it's my plan to keep on using you the same way."

  "And while they're watching us", I said, "You're going to blindside them."

  "In a nutshell", he said, "Yeah. Of course, you've been causing them a certain amount of grief, too, but as far as I'm concerned, anything beyond distracting them is a bonus."

  "Nice plan", I said, "Provided we don't get our asses shot off in the meantime. What's with all the ships?"

  "Part of our plan to hit them", he said. "Ideally, the original plan called for you to attack the United Planets headquarters, and while that's going on, we'd hit all their other off-planet facilities and bases, hopefully taking them out. But, you showed up on our doorstep, and we also have some new intelligence which changes things a bit."

  I had so many questions, I didn't know where to begin.

  "Why bother with the off-planet stuff?" I asked. "The bulk of their power is on Earth, Mars, and Luna."

  "Precisely", he said. "They have several hundred thousand troops scattered across the three, and that's a fight we'd never win."

  "Which means you'll never overthrow the UP", I said.

  "Right again", he said. "We leave Earth, Luna, and Mars alone, but we kick them off of every other planet, moon, asteroid, and space station in the galaxy."

  "Which still leaves the bulk of humanity under their thumb", I said.

  "Not my problem", he said, shrugging. "If the people of Earth or Mars want to get rid of the UP, they ought to be able to handle it on their own. Twenty billion people can do pretty much whatever they please, if they set their minds to it. But, out here, the UP will be gone."

  "You mentioned some new intelligence", I said.

  "I believe we know where that DEC shipyard is, now", he said, smiling. "As it turns out, we also have someone available who'd have a good chance of pulling off a raid on the place."

  "That sounds an awful lot like us", I said.

  "You can't deny that you lot seem to do rather well at that sort of thing", he said. "With a few well-timed diversions of our own, we can increase your chances of success markedly."

  "The only problem I see with your plan is that if something gets fucked up, it isn't just a bad day for us; we'll probably end up dead."

  "Hasn't happened to you so far", he said. "You already have quite the reputation for improvising in situations that are, in a word, fluid. I figured I'd just hand you the ball, and you'd run with it."

  I wasn't sure what ball he was referring to, or where I was supposed to run to with it, but other more important questions came to mind, since he seemed to be in an answering mood.

  "Out of curiosity, just how old are you?" I asked.

  "One hundred forty seven", he said, smiling. "But, I hear I don't look a day over one-thirty."

  "Holy shit", Cisco said, verbalizing my very thought.

  "Any rejuve work?" I asked.

  "That falls into the category of none of your business", he said. "But yeah, a little. It was a long time ago."

  I did some math in my head, but still couldn't come up with what I was looking for.

  "If you're one-forty-seven", I said, "Then Kyra must be..."

  "Younger than me", he said. "Relax, you don't have the hots for an old lady. She's older than you are, but not by all that much. You want any more detail than that, ask her yourself."

  Privately, I wondered what qualified as a little older, from his perspective.

  "So, you've been in actual wars?" Cisco asked, clearly in awe of the Admiral. It occurred to me that if I needed Mac shot now, I'd probably have to do it myself.

  "A few", he said. "My first one was the Second Holy War, which is also known as the Third Nuclear War, depending on which history book you read."

  "I didn't think there'd ever been a full blown nuclear war", I said, "Much less three of them."

  "True", he said. "Technically, though, any war where nuclear weapons are used is a nuclear war. There's just never been that all-out global conflagration everyone used to fear."

  "By that thinking", Cisco said, "This is as nuclear war."

  "Yes, it is", Mac said. "The first was on Earth, mid-Twentieth century, when one side used a couple of nukes against the other. Being that they were the only ones who had any at the time, it was sort of a one-sided affair. Amazingly, no one used any in the First Holy War, but they really made up for it in the second one. That was my first action. I was a kid, really, fresh out of the academy."

  "It all kind of ran together, when they covered it in school", I said.

  "I don't doubt that", Mac said. "Especially t
he way they teach history, these days. Anything they don't like, or they'd just as soon forget, they skip over."

  "Like the Holy Wars", I said.

  "You got it", the Admiral said. "The first Holy War wasn't even recognized as such, until after the fact. That was the one where a bunch of radical Muslims turned what was basically a peaceful religion into a bunch of Jihadists. Some of them got the bright idea that Allah was telling them to kill anyone who wasn't one of them. They weren't shy about letting their enemies know it, either. They chief rivals were the Christians, most of whom resided in several large countries. Being all civilized and enlightened, they insisted on believing they were in a political conflict, which they could negotiate their way out of. Their opponents were happy to play along. They'd use the cease-fires and other lulls in the action to regroup and rearm, then they'd go back to merrily killing anyone who wasn't one of them.

  "Anyway, this idiocy dragged on for the better part of eighty years, until someone with the Muslims got a clue, and figured out they were approaching the problem in the wrong manner. So, they pulled back, stopped bombing all the little targets they were hitting, and did some actual planning. This lull lasted for about a decade, during which the Christians were pretty pleased with themselves, thinking they'd prevailed.

  "Not long after I graduated school, well into the Twenty-First Century, the Muslims launched their second offensive. What they'd done was to take a couple of years, and plant nukes in the major cities of their opponents. After all, why kill Christians a few at a time, when you could do it wholesale? One morning, someone woke up, and pushed the button, and fourteen cities were pretty much leveled. Could have been worse, but about a third of the bombs didn't detonate. Still, in the space of maybe two minutes, fifty million people died. Another twenty or thirty million died over the next couple of months, due to radiation poisoning. I was living in one of the cities that should have been destroyed, but had a dud. Place called Denver."

  "Still there, isn't it?" I asked. "The name rings a bell."

  "It's still there", Mac said. "Big government center for the North American continent. I was there forty or fifty years ago, and got so disgusted, I've never been back. Ditto for the rest of that fucking planet."

  "I didn't think the Muslims won that one", I said.

  "I never said they did. In fact, thanks to all the posturing and dicking around the Christians had done in the past, the Muslims sort of misjudged how the enemy would respond to the bombings. They expected all that would be left would be a mop up operation, of what would be a battered and broken people. What they didn't expect was that the Christians could generate a little righteous anger of their own. A lot of people wanted payback, and they wanted in now, not next week. So, we nuked them back, or at least a bunch of cities where there seemed to be a lot of Muslims, or at the very least, Arabs, not that we were of a mood to make those kind of fine distinctions."

  "I can't imagine this pleased everyone", I said. "Isn't that called genocide? Or what’s the other one they talked about in school… ethnic cleansing?"

  "Those both apply, to a degree", Mac said. "But, as was noted at the time, what sort of label do you put on what the Muslims did? If someone is vowing to kill you and your people, or plans to die trying, you can either believe them, or ignore them. Fourteen nukes are a pretty good indicator that they're serious. So, once we nuked a few cities, we got down to the gritty business of killing Muslims. All of them."

  "Ouch", Cisco said. "First I've heard this stuff."

  "Me too", I said.

  "I'm not surprised", Mac said. "It wasn't a stellar time for humanity. A few more cities were nuked on both sides, and for a time, just looking like an Arab could get you strung up from a lightpost."

  "How long did the war last?" I asked.

  "Until we ran out of Muslims", he said.

  We were all quiet for a moment. It was Cisco who spoke.

  "You killed all of them?"

  "Well, we killed an awful lot of Arabs, to start with", the Admiral said. "Then we moved on to a part of the world called Indonesia, which also had a lot of Muslims. From there, we headed north into what's called Asia, where the powers-that-be heard there were quite a few more Muslims. By the time we got there, we couldn't find any. Nothing but a bunch of Hindus, or Buddhists, or whatever. Just no Muslims. Which was okay by me; I was already pretty tired of killing people, whatever they called themselves. So, we headed back to where we'd come from, and began picking up the pieces. And that was it, for the Second Holy War."

  We sat quietly for a time, watching the vast hulk of the Princess of Arabia grow larger, as we approached her.

  "So, now we're in what?" I asked. "Fourth Nuclear War?"

  "That's debatable", he said. "But, regardless of the name, make no mistake; you are in a war."

  "One which you've been planning for a long time", I said.

  "More or less", Mac said. "You're freeing of the AI's has served as a trigger, and gives what's happening a name, but it was going to happen, regardless. The United Planets started out with noble ideas and good intentions, but over the decades, it's been overrun and co-opted by empire builders, all of whom are backed by the big corporate entities. The thing about empires is that they all eventually become despotic, and then they fall."

  "And that time is now." I said.

  "Empires get weak", he said, "But they don't topple themselves."

  "So, you want to unite everyone against them, and take them down."

  "I see what you're implying, but the answer is not only no, but hell no", Mac said. "I have no desire to be the leader of anything. I'm leading my own people, because they were already used to taking orders from me, and frankly, there's no one else with more experience. We don't need a big centralized force. Loose-knit and scattered all over is a helluva lot harder to fight. Also, like I said, we don’t need to defeat the UP, just kick them out of our neighborhood."

  "So, why do you need me, at all?" I asked, although I already had a good idea what his answer would be. I just wanted to make him say it.

  "What I have are soldiers, ships, and weapons", the Admiral said. "What you have is the support of damn near every AI in the universe, as well as most of the general public rooting for you."

  "The latter part which you helped to make happen", I said, just in case he was under the impression that I was dumber than I looked.

  "I've already owned that", Mac said. "Anyway, I know the UP can deal with me, no problem. Eventually, they'll deal with you and your AI friends, as well. If we work together, though..."

  "Then we're more than they can handle", I said.

  "Bingo", Mac said, smiling. I assumed bingo was a good thing. It looked like I was going to have to have Angie tutor me in archaic English, at least if I was going to be around Mac much longer.

  "So", I said, "The plan is to kick the UP back to the planets. What are we waiting for?"

  "Well, first we have a shipyard to raid", he said.

  "I like the way you say we, when you really mean you", I said.

  "You're beginning to bitch just like an experienced soldier", he said, “Where do I find the head in this joint? Those pills may kill the alcohol, but at my age, I seem to pee more than a nervous poodle."

  "Angie", I said. "Please direct the Admiral to the nearest head."

  "Aye", she said, and did so, leaving Cisco and me alone on the Bridge, wondering what a poodle was, and why they would be nervous.

  I looked over at Cisco, and saw the face of a man wondering what he'd gotten himself into.

  He wasn't the only one.

  Chapter 42

  Once the Admiral had left the Bridge, Cisco surmised that it was okay to talk.

  "You believe all that, Captain?"

  "Most of it", I said. "There's more he's not telling us, though."

  "I'm kinda glad I didn't have to shoot him", he said. "I'd probably have ended up having to kill him."

  "I imagine so", I said. "Fortunately, he didn't call our bluff
. Which leads me to believe that this has all being going pretty much the way he wanted."

  "Are we going to do the raid?"

  "Probably", I said. "It's dangerous, but any information we get helps us at least as much as it helps him. Besides, I don't think he'd send us on a suicide mission, at least, not as long as Kyra is along for the ride."

  "I don't know that I'd bet our lives on that", Cisco said.

  "If he's that ruthless, we're likely fucked, anyway", I said, as the lift door slid open, and Mac reentered the Bridge.

  "We're being hailed, Captain", Angie said, as the Admiral retook his seat. I knew that Winifred had been trying to talk to me ever since we transited in, but since the Admiral was talking, I didn't want to interrupt him. So, while Mac went on, Angie and Winifred had chatted.

  "Hi Winifred", I said. "How are you doing?"

  "Hi Captain", she said. "It's a bit lonely out here, but I'm doing well. I'd love to go somewhere else."

  "That's the plan", I said. "We're going to try to transit back to Sol system, and take you with us. Angie will send over the coordinates of where we're going, so if the transit doesn't work, you can get there on your own; it'll just take you a bit longer."

  "I'm ready whenever you are", she said. "One thing that may matter, though. While I was waiting, I went over to Providence, and picked up a load of ice. The AI's there were very helpful."

  This was one of those occasions where AI behavior will baffle you. I had no idea why she'd decided to pick up sixty million gallons of frozen water, other than her ship, the Princess of Arabia, was in fact an ice freighter, and that was what ice freighters did. Nevertheless, I was glad she'd let me know; the extra mass would make the transit much more interesting, to borrow one of Eng's favorite words.

  "I don't know if that will be an issue or not", I said. "We'll know in a while; we need to recharge our batteries, then rig for tow. We'll let you know when we're ready."

  I wasn't all that sure we could actually transit with her, but I figured we'd need every kilowatt of power we could muster, before we made the attempt.

  "Understood", she said. "I'll be standing by."