McBride stood, hands clasped behind him, eyes fixed on the unchanging ebony vista shown by the large viewscreen in his stateroom. The view didn't come close to the gaudy splendour of the Inner Systems, but nevertheless the black was still flecked with a sprinkling of stars. The sparseness of the Fringe somehow making each spark seemingly possessed of a greater fragile importance because of its rarity.
I hate the waiting. The answer will still be the same. It always is.
He'd been given the position of First General because of his methodical nature; someone who wouldn't waste opportunities by taking chances too quickly. Now, after two decades of deliberation and cautious strategies, McBride had simply had enough. It was impossible to carry on -- for him, for those he commanded, for the families still living in fear on the home worlds -- there had to be a change.
The door chimed and McBride opened it even before recognising the voice on the intercom.
“Any change?” The silence from his aide was word enough. “Pass my apologies on to the senior staff and let them know I’ll see them at nineteen thirty in the briefing lounge.”
McBride leaned forward, his lined forehead pressing against the cold smoothness of the viewscreen.
Something had to be done.
* * * *
The lounge buzzed with muted conversation as Hutsen walked in. He suspected news of the meeting had spread through the fleet like a virus and speculation would be rife. Personally, he didn’t think General McBride was the type to retire unexpectedly like this. Nevertheless, the General was noticeably missing from the last damage assessment report and had then hastily convened this meeting. Something was afoot; that much was certain.
Carefully threading his way to the far end of the lounge, Hutsen avoided all but the briefest of contacts with his fellow officers. It was a personal rule he had, designed to deliberately avoid the rumour mill as much as possible. He preferred to hear the news - whatever it was - unprejudiced. That way he guaranteed his reaction would be independent -unclouded by the pointless speculations of others.
A hush descended and Hutsen hastily abandoned his just-acquired coffee to find a seat, not for the first time annoyed by the General's typical unannounced entry. McBride paced to the raised dais at one end of the grey metal-lined room, spending several minutes shuffling sheets. Hutsen heard the murmur in the room increase; the General was delaying and everyone knew it.
“I’m sure you have all had time to examine the details of the latest report.” McBride's voice was flat. “It makes for typically hard reading. Our attack was 93.7% ineffective on the first line of the enemy’s defences. Of the remaining munitions, only 0.41% survived the second line. The enemy’s third line had no trouble in cleaning up the remnants.”
“The enemy launched the predicted counter-offensive immediately. Our first line defences stopped almost 90% of their attack and the second line cleared the rest with no munitions getting through to the third. No losses occurred on either side.”
“This offensive has been the most expensive we have ever conducted. It has taken over two years to plan and nine months to prepare the munitions and weapons delivery systems, not to mention the expenditure in terms of both materials and fleet operational costs.”
“Ladies and gentlemen, we have been fighting The Pact for over one hundred and thirty years. Ever since we drove them from our home worlds we have been trying to deliver the blow that would finally give us victory and peace. We have failed, entirely.”
“Not one among us remembers peace. Our children grow up knowing nothing but endless war; our elderly die seeing our enemy's crimes go unpunished. Our entire culture is caught up in a war that we have been unable to win in over a century. Everything is sacrificed in the pursuit of battle: family, home, culture. All of these mean nothing against our shared desire for absolute victory. We are the animals, the Barbarians, intent on wholesale destruction, just as much as our enemy is.”
Muttering bubbled up around the room and Hutsen wondered just what the General was leading up to. If you're going to retire, just say so and name your successor, he thought. No one needs a big speech and no one will think less of you. Who knows - perhaps McBride had finally gone senile and become a Reformist.
“Some have asked how we could fail. Many say we have been the victims of treachery.” McBride looked around at the assemblage. “Does anyone here believe any among their fellow officers have put in less than one hundred percent?”
“We haven’t failed. Our predecessors didn’t fail. For one hundred and thirty years we have pursued justice tirelessly and with clarity of purpose. But we have been betrayed.” Again the General's eyes scanned the room, his words raising a soft murmur of negatives. “Remarkable; certainly one of you knows the meaning of my words.”
Hutsen glanced around those closest to him, his suspicions aroused like everyone else's. There hadn't been a spy found among among them for over sixty years. With constant biometric and GenID testing the whole concept was ridiculous.
“Calm yourselves, there is no enemy within our ranks. I refer to an individual among us with the clarity of vision to see beyond our problems and dare to imagine a solution.” McBride abandoned his notes. “Over the last few hundred years we have developed increasingly sophisticated weaponry. The technology, power and precision of our armaments are inconceivably higher than those we started with."
"Intelligent, autonomous delivery systems can pinpoint their assigned targets with such precision that, unhindered, we could target an individual member of the enemy forces and kill or incapacitate him, while leaving those beside him untouched.”
“We have nano-chemical weapons that can be applied safely over vast areas, capable of causing the wholesale destruction of any form of vegetation, animal or material we choose - if undisturbed. Our intelligent missiles are capable of outsmarting anything, exceptanother AI. Independent and distance controlled assault ships can lay waste to an entire planet, if they can penetrate a planet’s defences. We have controlled-radiation weapons that can destroy entire populations and yet leave cities, plants and animals intact, if only we could deliver them to their targets.”
“We have been betrayed, but it is technology that has deceived us, leading us blindly into a never-ending war with its seductive promise of greater effectiveness. It is technology that promises victory, and delivers only stalemate.”
“For every missile we invent, the enemy devises a defence. For every piece of nano-technology we create, our opponents find a way to sterilise it. For every ship built, there’s a ship hunter and for every radiation harnessed - a shield.”
The General took a heavy breath and Hutsen watched as perspiration ran down McBride's shaved head to splash onto the plinth. The speech seemed to be a lunatic ramble, and yet… there was something eerily familiar about some of the ideas.
“Looking back at history, ladies and gentlemen, we see an undeniable progression; a trend so simple that no one has even noticed it before. Every advance made in weapons technology increases the cost of manufacture, but it also simultaneously increases the weapon’s fragility.” The whole room jumped as McBride slapped the plinth. “The smarter our armaments become, the easier it is to disrupt them. Put a Genius Plus rated AI in a munition - the enemy scrambles it with an EMP; we breed more effective bio-weapons - they develop a more powerful counter-agent. Every time our technology increases in ingenuity, it becomes easier to circumvent and more costly to produce.”
“In the distant past our ancestors fought with sticks and stones. If you defeated your enemy and took away his weapons, what did he do? He went into the forest and got more. You couldn’t defeat him - only kill him, and if you didn't kill him he would vanish in to the night, only to return later, tougher and wiser.”
“A month ago one of you published a piece of work examining this phenomenon and, knowingly or not, provided the line of thought that brings me here today.”
Hutsen gasped as his chest tightened, sharp intakes of breath painfully raked in against a suddenly dry throat.
“Today, we initiate a completely new strategy. One that will finally bring us the victory we desire so much. Before I continue though, I’d like the man responsible for this inspiration to join me up here on the platform. Captain Hutsen?”
Surprised faces turned towards Hutsen, those towards the back of the room scrambling out of their chairs for a better view as he lurched to his feet and half-stumbled to the dais.
McBride couldn't be talking about his article. The work had been historical, a theoretical analysis of technology in war. Hutsen had always been interested in primitive means of warfare and weaponry, but he didn't imagine it had any practical worth.
“The choice seemed obvious. I certainly had reason enough to think our planned attack would be as unsuccessful as previous ones, but after considering the article for some time, the Captain’s inspiration made the answer clear.”
Hutsen shivered as the General clapped him on the back in a hearty gesture, his earlier confidence shattered into a billion fragments at being placed so unexpectedly in the spotlight.
“I may not have a bent for ancient history like the Captain, but I still know how to write a decent search script. It didn’t take long to find what he had only hinted at in his article and here are the details.” McBride pressed a button and everyone in the entire room blinked simultaneously as they received the InfoBlip broadcast; a side effect of the detailed schematics being delivered to their biological pathways via the standard military implanted Secure Memory Cache.
Hutsen went over the plans in his mind. As always with an InfoBlip, although the information seemed to jump inside the brain instantly, it took several moments for it to percolate into conscious memory and feel familiar. He didn’t recognise the brutish lines and proportions typical of the device, but it had the ugliness typical of the 'dark ages' of history.
A short tube held what turned out to be a simple propulsion system, not much more than a steam tube really, the top of which was crowned with a thick walled sphere. Peeling back the various physical and electrical Overlays revealed two hemispheres surrounded by some basic chemical compounds. Even with his knowledge of history, Hutsen couldn’t recall seeing anything quite like it.
Hutsen snapped his attention out of the Cache, and absorbed the shared bewilderment visible around the room. Clearly no one else had any better idea of what the object was. Was McBride building the drama up deliberately? Hutsen felt he was watching some stage performer showing the bare minimum to tease an audience, just enough to have everyone cooing and gasping in the aisles. Why doesn't he make it clear?
The General gripped the top of the podium and leaned forward, his chin jutting in a way remarkably similar to the caricatures of him that went around the mess rooms. “The device is so simple it could be considered crude. It has no intelligence, its components are rudimentary at best and the materials cheap and plentiful; and there lies the secret of its potential. My plan is equally simple: we will mass produce these devices in their thousands, aim them at the enemy worlds and launch them.”
“Why won’t they get stopped, like all our other attacks?” Hutsen couldn’t see who asked the question but it was an obvious one.
“Unlike conventional weapons, stopping these is not easy. If you don’t destroy the thing outright it can still be almost equally deadly when it lands. Even if it fails to detonate, the widespread contamination is fatal to life. Additionally, as there are no sophisticated controls, the enemy will have problems detecting and tracking the incoming weapons. Unlike normal weapons, they broadcast virtually no detectable signals; also they are ballistic in nature, requiring nothing to guide them to their target. They are entirely self-contained.”
“This is ridiculous. Once the enemy understands what is happening they will simply shoot them down.” Again Hutsen didn't manage to identify the speaker but the crowd murmured its agreement.
“That might be possible, if they manage to work out what is happening in time, if they are able to launch enough manually controlled defences in time. But remember we will have thousands of these in space simultaneously; they won’t be able to stop them all.”
“What about radiation shields? Won’t they block them?”
“A shield only stops radiation and these weapons produce none until they detonate – which will be inside the shields.”
Hutsen was too shaken to say anything. Like the rest of the room the significance of the device was shocking. If the General is right, then it could only mean -
“Fellow officers, this device is our saviour, our deliverance. The next attack we make on the enemy will be the last, I assure you." The General's eyes glistened brightly as he looked around the room. "Finally, we will all be able to go home.”
* * * *
McBride waited in his stateroom with even less patience than previously, frequently peering at the viewscreen as if just with his own senses he would be able to detect some difference in the unchanging pattern of stars; but the universe stubbornly refused to reflect anything as mundane as human action. For all his certainty, questions of ‘what if’ still haunted him. He heard the door slide open and his aide addressed him in a reverential half-whisper.
“Captain Hutsen is here, General. Should I show him in?”
McBride nodded. Out there, scores of worlds belonging to The Pact were also waiting, though with far less knowledge of the impending storm. How would I feel if I were on one of those worlds now? Would some form of precognition, a base instinct for self-preservation, bring a feeling of unease? Would I look up at the sky and feel the approach of the maelstrom?It seemed unlikely and part of him hoped they wouldn’t. They may be the enemy, but even after one hundred and thirty years, they deserved to die without that fear.
“General? Is everything alright?” Hutsen said.
McBride turned away from the viewscreen reluctantly. “Yes Captain, everything is well. I was just caught up in the moment.”
“It is an historic occasion, everyone is on edge waiting. You must be proud to think that you’ll be the one who finally delivers victory.”
McBride smiled. The Captain seemed so young and eager; ever since the briefing the Captain’s star had been undeniably ascendant. After this final battle it would seem only right to name him as his successor. McBride wondered if he himself had ever been that young. It seemed hard to believe that he could have been.
“Is everything in order?"
“Yes, General. The launches were 99.1% effective and the enemy’s defences have shown no reaction to the devices’ approach. As the weapons contain no signalling equipment there is little for the enemy to detect and the calculated track gives us…” Hutsen glanced at the clock. “…one minute till first impact.”
McBride nodded and turned back to the stars, hands clasped lightly behind him.
“Sir, we’ve arranged some long range orbital pickups covering their home world. Shall I put it on the screen?”
McBride looked at Hutsen sharply. “I didn't authorise that. What if the enemy detected them?”
“They may have done, Sir, but we routinely use such devices, as do they. The pickups are in extreme orbits so it’s doubtful they would be perceived as a threat.”
Hutsen manipulated the controls and the scene shimmered to reveal a large green and blue planet hanging in space. Isolated in its grandeur, the reflected light from its surface effectively drowning the stars around it. The left third was cropped off by the night-time terminator, leaving a dark patch against the blackness of space.
Without warning a series of pinprick diamonds of light erupted, a coruscating blanket that quickly swept across the dark surface. Even when the flashes washed onto the bright daylight side they were still easily visible in the combined intensity of the blasts.
“My god!” McBride’s whisper was ragged and harsh.
The screen switched to display an intercepted surface transmission broadcast to one of the enemy's orbiting satellites. The face was blurred, skin melted as if part of an oil painting smeared by a careless child, half the jaw missing. Behind the figure lay a carpet of blackened sticks and debris that took both McBride and Hutsen several minutes to identify as the smashed limbs of others caught in the blast. Each corpse carrying a blackened carapace of what had once been living, feeling flesh.
The figure on screen was trying to talk perhaps, but the obscene half mouth didn’t permit such and after several attempts the figure slipped, thankfully, out of sight.
In the distance, the tossed remnants of the city left standing by the initial detonation now lifted into the air, vaporised as the shock wave completed the destruction. A nihilistic aggregate that guzzled everything as it tumbled away from the grotesque mushroom-shaped cloud that billowed skywards behind it.
The screen hissed with static before fading abruptly to black.
Hutsen pulled the General towards him, desperately searching for answers in the older man’s face. "What happened?"
McBride sank to his knees - hands hiding his face as he staggered to his knees.
“We won…”