"I have an authorized launch code, do you concur?" the captain of the USS Nebraska said.
"I concur," the executive officer said, swallowing hard. They'd already reprogrammed the targeting of the missile.
"I concur," the navigation officer said, pulling the red key out to hang on a necklace around his neck. The weapons officer was responsible for making sure the weapon launched and followed its track but if the sub didn't know where it was then it would hit the wrong spot. There's no such thing as a "near miss" with a nuke. Be off by a fraction and it was going to hit Orlando or Gainesville for sure. They'd checked the course track twice and even gone up to periscope depth for a GPS reading. It still didn't make him happy to be firing a nuke at Central Florida.
"Concur," the engineering officer said. He already had his key dangling from his hand.
"Concur," the weapons officer said. The youngest of the five officers required for launch authorization was silently crying.
"Insert keys," the captain said. When all five were inserted he continued. "On my count of three, one, two, three," and they all turned. They actually had a few fractions of seconds to play with but it was best to be sure. Green lights turned red and a klaxon started going off.
"Tube twelve is opened," the weapons officer said. "Tube twelve is armed and reports ready to fire." His hand shook over the covered switch.
"I'll take it," the captain said. He stepped up behind the weapons officer and lifted up the switch. "Are we targeted?"
"All clear," the weapons officer said, stepping back from a board he never wanted to see again in his life.
"Firing," the captain said, flipping the switch downward.
There was a dull rumble and then a shaking sensation as pressurized gas pushed the missile out into the water and then the missile ignited. The sub was moving and it ignited behind them but it still sounded like a depth charge going off close alongside.
"Send message to COMSUBLANT," the captain said to the communications officer. "1432 hours Zulu, this date, launched one missile from tube twelve. Target Eustis, Florida."
It had been necessary to do more than simply clear the area. The Russians were barely a nuclear power anymore but they still maintained a nuclear watch and informing them was a good way to avoid an accidental WWIII. Then there had been the press, and the United Nations. There had been acrimonious recriminations even before the launch on Tennessee, which, because it was an uninhabited area, had occurred first. Protests had broken out in Washington, New York and San Francisco, not to mention throughout Europe where major riots were reported. Then there was the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which prohibited nuclear testing, especially aboveground. A Presidential Finding had been written covering the fact that this was not a Test but an act of war. The Test Ban Treaty didn't cover those. Despite that fact, France, China and Pakistan had all immediately stated that they considered the treaty nullified and intended to restart nuclear testing immediately.
The Titcher had engaged the MIRV warheads on the way down. There had been some fear that the nukes might prematurely detonate—the Titcher weapons seemed to form some sort of fusion reaction when they impacted—but that was not the case. Four of the MIRV warheads from the first firing and three in Eustis made it through the Titcher fire and detonated.
"We've been asked to warn people, again, not to look in the direction of Eustis," the anchorman said. He looked haggard and worn from being on camera for most of the last three days. He was doing voice-over for low-light camera which currently showed an open field with a line of pines at the far end, the moon rising in the background. "Our cameras have been specially shielded but anyone looking at the impact from within about fifty miles is going to be flash-blinded. If you experience flash blindness, call your local 911 operator and remain calm. The blindness will pass. Everyone within seventy miles of the event is reminded to please open windows in your home and take pictures off the wall. Secure fragile objects. The military says that the impact will be at any time. All we can do, is wait."
There was a short, unusual, period of silence on the television and then the screen flashed white. The camera that had been being used for feed was not shielded but New York switched immediately to another which was and the video showed a series of domes of fire. The light must have been blinding; it was bright even through the heavy filters on the camera.
Dr. Weaver got up from the chair and went to the door, opening it and leaning out to look north. Sure enough, there mushroom clouds were twining amongst each other. Robin had squeezed into the door behind him and it was a sensation he thought he'd remember for the rest of his life, watching mushroom clouds reaching for the troposphere, roiling and pregnant with evil, while two small but firm breasts pressed into his shoulder blades. He noticed that he was enormously horny. And he remembered that he'd forgotten to call Sheila back and tell her that he wasn't in Washington and wouldn't be in Huntsville any time soon.
Just then the ground shock hit and he had to clutch the door frame to keep from being knocked out of the trailer. Robin grabbed him for the same reason and it just made things worse.
"We need to get inside before the blast front gets here," he said, leaning back into the room.
"Yes," she said in a small voice.
"We're right at the edge of where the military will let civilians stay," a reporter was saying in an excited voice. "We just got hit by the blast front . . ." For a moment he was drowned out as a wave of noise enveloped the trailer. It shook on its foundations and one of the computers gave a pop and the monitor showed "No signal" but other than that there was no damage. "And that was extremely frightening but we're in a bunker and we rode it out fine."
"Is there any danger of radiation in your area?" the anchor asked.
"Well, we've got radiation detectors and they haven't gone off," the reporter said. "The military says that the bombs are going to be as clean as they can make them, since they're bursting in the air. And the winds are from the west, so the explosion is downwind of our current location. Units of the Third Infantry Division are standing by and I can hear them revving up the motors in their big tanks and fighting vehicles. They're going to go right into the blast zone as soon as they get the okay and try to snatch back the gate from the Titcher. I understand it's going to be much harder in Tennessee where the terrain doesn't let them get their fighting vehicles up to the gate."
"Thanks for that report, Tom," the anchor said. "And you take care, you hear? We've got another report from Oak Ridge, Tennessee, which is close to the gate up there. Melissa Mays is standing by with a live report."
"I'm here in Oak Ridge where the best way I can describe it is a festival is going on," the reporter said in a bemused voice. "About a thousand people, lab workers, shopkeepers and others including schoolchildren were out to watch the nuclear attack on the Titcher stronghold. All of them were wearing the same dark glasses we had been issued by the military and when the bombs went off they broke out in spontaneous cheers. Since then it's just been an air of carnival. People have opened up beer kegs and started a barbeque in the town square. I'm talking with the mayor of Oak Ridge, Phillip Lampert. Thank you for speaking to us, Mr. Mayor."
"My pleasure, Melissa," the portly man said. He had a sandwich in one hand, a beer in the other and heavy, dark-tinted, goggles dangling around his neck.
"Can you explain these remarkable events?"
"Well, as I understand it, some sort of particle was generated at the University of Central Florida . . ."
"No," the reporter corrected. "I mean this . . . this . . . party. Most people would be crying at the sight of a nuclear weapon going off right next door."
"Well, little lady," the man said in a voice like he was speaking to a small child. "Since 1943, when the U.S. government decided that the best place to hide their new super bomb research was a sleepy little town in the Tennessee mountains, Oak Ridge has been the main site for nuclear research in the entire United States. Some towns have steel plants, some towns have the local car and truck plant, Oak Ridge has nuclear weapons. We don't make them here anymore, but we live with their existence every day of our lives and most of the people around here have never seen a shoot . . ."
"A what?"
"A nuclear explosion," the mayor continued. "Above ground nuclear testing was ended before you were born but they used to take our parents out to Los Alamos to see the shoots, sort of like taking the employees to another factory to see how their parts are used. Besides, from what I've seen of the Titcher, it was the smartest thing the President could do and it took a lot of b . . . courage. I'd rather watch fireworks than have them invade the town."
"But aren't you worried about fallout?" the reporter pressed. Surely some of these idiot rednecks were going to have to realize that setting off a nuclear weapon was much worse than any conceivable alternative.
"Little lady . . . I'm sorry, what was your name again?"
"Melissa Mays," the reporter said, tightly.
"Miss Mays, did you have a job when you were in high school?"
"Yes," she said. "But the question was about fallout."
"What was the job?" the mayor pressed.
The reporter took a moment and then said: "I worked in a McDonald's."
"And I'm sure you were a bright spot in that cheerless place," the mayor replied, giving her his very best "I know you think I'm a male chauvinist and I just don't care" smile. "Miss Mays, between my junior and senior year, and again between high school and going to UT, I worked in a lead-shielded room pouring batches of green, glowing goop from one beaker into another beaker. I met the woman who is still my wife in that lab. We have two beautiful children who are straight-A students and neither of them have two heads. Now, Miss Mays, do you really think I'm going to be troubled about a little cesium from an airburst?"
"No," the reporter admitted in a defeated tone. "Thank you, Mayor Lampert," she added then turned to the camera. "Well, that's the news from Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where the party looks to continue into the wee hours of the morning."
"Thank you, Melissa, for that . . . illuminating report," the anchor said, bemusedly.
"Gotta love high-tech rednecks," Weaver said, turning down the sound.
"I can't believe they're having a party for God's sake," Robin said.
"I can," Earp replied. "You've clearly never been to Oak Ridge. I think the mayor is wrong, the radiation has had an effect: they're all insane. No, they're crazy but not insane. They just know what they're talking about and it makes them seem a little crazy. The mayor was right. Nuking Eustis was a tragedy; people lost homes and possessions that they loved and cherished and they'll never get them back. There might have even been a few that were missed by the evacuation sweeps and were killed. The only thing that was lost in the hills of Tennessee were some deer and bear and undoubtedly some rare and endangered species of plants and salamanders. But they were going to be lost anyway if the Titcher weren't stopped. The Titcher consider it their job to make everything endangered, rare or extinct except Titcher. They're a pain in the ass. Wish we could be one to them."
Weaver was smiling at the rant but he stopped at the end. "Say that again."
"Well, the Titcher see it as their job . . ."
"No, the last bit," Bill said, closing his eyes.
"I wish we could be a pain in their ass," Earp replied.
"Got it," Weaver said, opening his eyes. "Thanks. I need to go find Chief Miller."
"I've talked with three or four other physicists today," Weaver said to the secretary of defense and the national security advisor. The President and the Homeland Security director were both out showing the flag and trying to explain why it had been necessary to nuke two spots in the continental United States. "And we're all pretty much in agreement that what the bosons are doing is establishing stable wormholes."
"And those are?" the secretary of defense asked.
"Basically what we're seeing," Weaver replied. "Instantaneous 'gateways' to another place. Meisner, Thorn, and Wheeler are the main guys to go to; hell that is why THE general relativity book is known as MTW rather than Gravitation as it is titled. I sent an email out to Kip Thorn and one of his colleagues Michael Morris but got "Out of Office" replies. I then tried Stephen Hawking but he didn't respond except to say that they were "interesting" which means he'll think about them for eight years or so and then point out several things I missed but conclude I was right despite not taking enough care in my assumptions. The one thing we're not getting is neutrino emissions, that I know of, but neutrino detection is very difficult. I've got a call out for a mobile neutrino detector but the only one is in Japan. The point is that one theory of wormholes is that if you dump enough energy into them, they destabilize."
"How much energy?" the NSA asked. "Electrical or what?"
"Well, bigajoules, actually," Weaver replied. "Like, a nuke."
"You want another one?" the SECDEF asked, angrily. "At the wormhole? A ground burst? Do you know what sort of fallout that will cause?"
"Yes, sir," Bill replied. "But I'm not planning on detonating it on this side."
"Oh."
"And I think we should send an assessment team in after the explosion, maybe before as well."
"You can't get an armored vehicle through the gate," the SECDEF pointed out. "And people outside of vehicles will be at risk from residual radiation."
"Not if they're in a Wyvern they won't."
"Oh. My. God." Chief Miller said in a voice of awe.
The suit was crouched on its knees, multijointed metal fingers splayed out on the recently laid gravel. Its "chest" was open and a seat and arm-holds were clearly displayed along with a complicated control panel. It was vaguely humanoid, like an artist's rendition of a robot, with an idealized human face on the "helmet."
"The original design came from a gaming company of all things," Bill said, walking around the suit. It gleamed silver in the overhead lights, a titanium shell laid on a Kevlar underlayer. "The first ones were unpowered and the best aerobic workout you'll ever have. But they were designed for a later powered version. We just tuned the design up, put in piezoelectric motivators, sealing, environmental systems and improved the electronic suite. Oh, and a little radioactive shielding."
"Why?" the SEAL asked.
"See the big box over the butt?" Bill asked. "Americium power generator."
"So I'm going to get irradiated when I use it?" the SEAL asked.
"I've got over a hundred hours in one." The physicist sighed. "You wear a radiation counter back by the reactor. So far I've picked up about as much radiation as you would at a day on the beach in Florida. Don't even get me started on flying; I took a radiation counter on a flight one time and it raised my hair."
"Really?" the SEAL asked. "I've flown in a lot of planes."
"Really," Bill replied. "Besides, it's the only power source we have that can run one of these things for more than a couple of hours. It's got some bugs, it tends to want to disco occasionally, but you get past it. This is just a prototype, you understand."
"How hard is it to learn to use?" the SEAL asked.
"Pretty easy," the physicist said. "The electronics suite takes some getting used to. Oh, it walks like Frankenstein and it feels as if you're on ice all the time, but you don't fall down."
"I don't like the idea of standing up all the time," the chief noted. "That just makes you a big damned target."
"Notice the wheels on the elbows, knees and, if you look, under the belly on there," Bill said. "It's actually easier to low crawl over a flat surface than to walk. You can't see unless you activate the camera on top of the helmet."
"I want," Miller said. "Oh, man, do I want. Screw the bugs."
"Good," the physicist replied. "This one's yours. As soon as we get you fitted."
"Why?" the SEAL said, suddenly suspicious.
"We're going to take a little stroll," Bill replied.
"Where?"
"Eustis."
"Oh, shit."
They rode on the front glacis of an M-1 Abrams, their armor-clad feet dangling over the front, one hand hooked over the barrel of the main-gun, the other clutching their weapon.
The "accessories" for the Wyvern had included a shipping container filled with appropriate weapons. These ranged from .50 caliber machine guns, the venerable M-2 or Ma Deuce that dated to WWII, through the more recently designed "Dover Devil" to a new Czech 12.7mm, then onwards and upwards culminating in a massive cannon that dominated one of the walls of the shipping container.
"What's that?" Chief Miller had asked. He was clearly a man who had never seen a bigger gun he didn't like.
"It's a South African one-hundred-thirty-millimeter recoilless rifle," the armorer said, proudly. He was a heavyset gentleman in his fifties, gray haired where there was any left, with a pocket protector containing five colors of pens and an HP calculator dangling from his belt. But he was clearly inordinately fond of his weapons. "It was one of the guns they were looking at for the Stryker Armored Gun System but they turned it down. It had been sitting around in a depot for a couple of years when we picked it up."
"Can you use it with a Wyvern?" the chief said, stroking the two-and-a-half-meter barrel. It had a big shoulder mount about a third of the way back from the end and an oversized grip and trigger.
"Oh, yes," the armorer said. "Reloading, of course, is slow."
"I'll take it," the chief said. "And one of those Gatling guns. And you got any pistols? How about swords?"
"Chief," Bill said, chuckling. "Even with the Wyverns there's only so much you can carry. Why don't you take the 30mm?"
"What 30mm?" the SEAL asked. "Besides, if I've got a choice of thirty or a hundred and thirty, I'll take a hundred and thirty any day. I'll just reload fast."
"This 30mm," the physicist replied, pointing to a weapon hanging on the left wall.
It looked . . . odd. It had clearly been modified for use by the mecha-suits but beyond that the barrel looked oddly . . . truncated. "What the hell is it?" Miller asked.
"Well, you know those guns the A-10s use . . ." Bill said, smiling.
"No shit!" the SEAL replied, clearly delighted. "Besides, there's no way you could fire one of those things off-hand in a Wyvern. The recoil would kill you."
"Oh, we had to modify the ammo a little bit," Bill admitted. "Just like the 25mm Bushmaster I'm going to haul. But it's still got depleted uranium penetrators and I think you'd be surprised at what you can do in a Wyvern. Just remember to lean into the shot."
So lying beside the chief was the 30mm chain gun and lying beside Bill was a modified 25mm Bushmaster, the same gun carried by the Bradley Fighting Vehicles. On their backs were integral ammunition packs but they'd been warned that the ammunition would not last long at full rate of fire. They had external radiation counters, which were running right up into the bottom of redline, internal radiation counters that were down in the bottom of yellow and riding behind them in pride of place a large sack.
The ordnance technician who had assembled the special satchel charge had explained it as carefully as he could.
"The material in the device is an expansion-form explosive," the tech said. "Instead of just exploding in one place the material continues to explode on the wavefront and expands through any open space. They tested it on an old mine back before the Afghanistan war and it blew out a steel door at the back side of three hundred meters of tunnel. The thing is, it will do a number on anything but, probably, those centipede tanks. But it's going to probably explode out of the gate as well. It's not as effective in an open area as enclosed, but it's going to be a hell of a blast in the local area. So you'd better run like hell."
"How long do we have?" the SEAL asked.
"How long do you want?"
"Seven seconds."
There was a short battalion of Abrams and Bradleys parked a thousand meters from the gate, all of their hatches shut and their environmental overpressure systems going full-bore. The ground radiation count was high and the vehicles were going to have to be decontaminated after they were withdrawn. More likely they'd be scrapped; after a few hours at ground zero they were metaphorically going to be glowing like a Christmas tree.
Airbursts of nuclear weapons were relatively clean and caused limited radioactive fallout. But the pulse from the fusion explosion irradiated everything in a large circle. The alpha and beta particles, as well as gamma rays, struck common materials, carbon, silica, iron, and transmuted them to radioactive isotopes. Sometimes they were split and formed highly radioactive isotopes of lower-weight elements.
So the ground zero of even the cleanest nuclear weapon was highly radioactive. The radiation would fade over time, most of the particles would degrade in no more than a year and while some lingering radiation would exist for thousands of years to come it would be not much beyond background. Hiroshima, which was hit by a relatively "dirty" bomb, had been resettled since the 1950s. The only sign that it had ever been destroyed by a nuclear weapon was the memorial at its city center.
In the meantime, though, Eustis was hot as hell.
As the Abrams drew to a stop in front of the gate it was the bad time. The firesupport from the vehicles in their defensive positions behind was blocked. If the Titcher came through the gate the Abrams would be blocking the defending units. So far, no Titcher had come through the gate since the explosion. But bad things tend to happen at the worst possible time.
So Weaver and the SEAL hurried. They had planned this carefully and practiced it once, all the time they felt they could afford. They set their weapons down, leaning on the front of the Abrams, and grabbed the big bomb off the glacis. It had been secured with duct tape but the tape tore loose easily at the yank from two Wyverns.
They set the bomb down a half meter from the gate, retrieved their weapons, set them down to either side of the bomb and then Weaver waved at the Abrams, whose driver put it immediately into reverse and stomped the gas.
Chief Miller, in the meantime, seemed to be doing a routine from Saturday Night Fever, his feet moving back and forth and to either side while his hands flailed wildly in the air.
"Excited, Chief?" Weaver said over the radio.
"Damned disco dance, you were right," Miller said, panting.
"Steady down, just quit trying so hard and it will damp out," Weaver replied. After a moment it did and the chief stooped and grabbed one of the handles on the bomb with both hands, hooking the release tab over his thumb. "Ready?"
"Ready," Weaver said, stooping and picking up the bomb.
"One," Miller said, starting the swing.
"Two," Weaver, replied.
"Three!" they both said, letting go just short of the apex of the arc.
Weaver turned and picked up his Bushmaster and then started into a clumsy run. The mecha-suits did tend to walk like Frankenstein, a problem of lack of mobility in the "ankle" of the suit and complete lack of feedback, but they could get up a fair turn of speed and he was going just about twenty kilometers per hour when a giant picked him up and tossed him in the direction he had been going anyway.
He hit hard and a yellow light popped up, indicating that his left arm power system was down. That was really going to suck.
He rolled onto his belly after a couple of kicks, centered his right arm under him and used it to lever himself to his feet. It would have been nearly impossible for a normal human but the Wyvern's design made it surprisingly easy. Which was good because he could tell from the feel that the left arm was under muscle power only. His internal rad counters were higher, also, and he figured he'd popped environmental somewhere. That was really going to suck.
The chief was up as well and running back to the gate so Weaver made the command decision that he'd ignore those minor little issues. He picked up his Bushmaster and clumsily trotted over to the gate, carrying the Bushmaster in his right hand.
"You okay?" the chief said.
"Couldn't be better," Weaver replied, hooking up his ammo feed slide. "You?"
"Peachy," the SEAL answered, manually cocking the 30mm. "Okay, let's rock."
With that the two of them bent over—the mecha-suits were fourteen feet tall and could barely fit together though the gate—and stepped, lurched really, through the looking glass.
"I think he's losing it," Crichton said, turning up the news broadcast.
"Who?" Earp replied, looking up from the latest bulletin from FEMA.
"The CBS anchor," the sergeant replied.
The anchor was beginning to show signs of the strain of trying to keep up with the news.
"Another Titcher gate has opened in Staunton, Virginia," he said, pronouncing it, correctly, as Stanton. "National Guard units have responded but the initial attempt by state police to stem the attack has failed with heavy casualties among the state police. In other news the State Department has announced that the Mreee have officially requested the loan of mobile nuclear weapons and that the Russians have agreed to sell the U.S. several SS-19 mobile missile launchers. . . ." The reporter, who had won his spurs in Vietnam reporting all the news that was detrimental to the United States and who had been a quiet, but major, advocate of the antinuclear/antimilitary brigade for decades, was reporting the latest news with a rictus smile. "The Mreee have relayed a request from the Nitch, a race of intelligent spiderlike creatures . . ." He stopped and giggled. "I can't say this. Yes, I know, I'm reading it on my TelePrompTer but this can't be happening! This JUST CAN'T BE HAPPENING!"
The screen changed to a female anchorwoman who was rubbing furiously at her nose with her index finger. She looked up in startlement and then recovered quickly.
"We seem to be having some technical difficulties in New York," she said with studied aplomb. "In other news . . ."
"Score one for reality overload," Crichton said as he turned the sound back down. "Failed his SAN roll."
"Just proud to be here," Earp replied.
"I gotta ask," the sergeant muttered. "Look, Earp's not a really common name . . ."
"My great-great-grandfather was a cousin," Earp replied. "A wanted felon up around Dodge City. They had a gentlemen's agreement; Wyatt didn't come up where Ryan was and Ryan didn't go near Tombstone."
"Thought it might be something like that . . ."
And in other news, Weaver tripped, almost immediately, on a dead dog on the other side of the gate.
The Titcher side of the gate was littered with dead and dying aliens, many of them torn limb from limb by the big explosion. As he lurched forward Weaver caught a glimpse of one of the rhino-tanks over on its side, one leg blown off and green lightning rippling over its surface.
There had been thousands of aliens in the gate room and most of them had suffered some effect from the expansion bomb. But many of them had simply been stunned or thrown off their feet and they were getting up and charging the humans who had been imprudent enough to invade their space.
Weaver felt glad he'd fallen as a line of needles passed through the space he would have occupied standing up. The armor of the suit probably would have stopped them but better to be out of the way. He toggled his top-side camera, brought the Bushmaster up to his shoulder one-handed, propped it up as best he could with his left hand and opened fire.
"I can't see!" Miller shouted. He was prone as well, with his chain gun up, but it was firing sporadically, many of the rounds flying over the heads of the aliens.
"Toggle your top camera!" Weaver yelled. "Setting Three! Setting Three!" He aimed at a rhino-tank that was just heaving itself to its feet and was pleased to see the 25mm rounds splash goo out of its side. The tank shuddered, did a couple of side steps and then lay down again, its legs twitching. Fortunately it didn't explode.
Other than that he wasn't getting very many impressions. The lighting in the room was badly damaged, probably from the explosion, but it was strong enough that it was interfering with the automated low-light circuitry of the cameras. They kept switching from normal to low-light setting. There was also a smell, harshly chemical with a slight undertone like rotten fish. He knew he'd smelled it somewhere before but he couldn't quite place it. On the other hand, he knew for sure that his quarantine integrity had been breached to hell and gone.
There were lots of thorn-throwers, lots of dogs and he was hammering out rounds, single shot, carefully aimed using the laser sight on the Bushmaster. Standard Bushmasters had neither laser sights nor a selectable switch but the armorer, who had a Ph.D. in engineering, was a foresighted man and had made some adjustments. Weaver noticed that the SEAL had started to get his fire under control and assumed he had switched cameras.
"What, exactly, are we doing here?" Miller asked as he took out another of the rhino-tanks. There were so many of the Titcher in the room the tanks couldn't seem to decide whether to fire or not. Or, maybe, they didn't want to damage the room. Good.
"Getting a look at what is on the other side before we nuke it," Weaver replied.
"Good, we've done that," the SEAL said. "Time to do the Mogadishu Mile."
"What?"
"Run away, run away!"
"Oh, okay," Weaver replied. He hooked his hand under him and pushed up to his knees then up to standing. Then he froze.
"What the fuck . . . ?" he heard Miller mutter.
The thing was probably just the right size to fit through the gate. It was, essentially, a mobile green cone that looked like nothing so much as a mound of manure. Tentacles that might have been purple extended from its base and it was glowing, faintly. It also was waddling towards them serenely through the chaos of the gate room.
"I don't know what the fuck that is," Weaver said, taking a step back and lifting his Bushmaster as well as he could with the functional right arm. "But I think we should shoot it."
"Damned straight," the SEAL said, flicking his selector switch from semi to full auto and letting out a stream of depleted uranium penetrator rounds.
What the SEAL had failed to consider was that he had previously been firing from the prone, where the mass of the suit was in contact with the ground. Also, he had been firing single shots, each of which shoved the heavy suit back a few inches. If things hadn't been so chaotic he might have considered the recoil of those shots. But he did not. So when he pulled the trigger, intending to send out a controlled burst of three rounds, the recoil staggered him backwards through the gate as his hand automatically clenched, a monkey reaction from falling, on the trigger.
The first round, however, hit the thing squarely on the front of the cone. The second was near the top, just to the left of a small, brightly glowing patch. Where the third was didn't really matter because by that time the thing had exploded.
Weaver had also been knocked back by the recoil of his weapon but he was actually in the process of gate transference when the explosion, categorized from later inference as right at sixty megatons, occurred.
Collective 15379 was nonresponsive. How interesting.
"Collective 12465, report on physical conditions near Collective 15379," Collective 47 emitted.
"Mushroom cloud and radiation emissions categorized as sixty megaton quarkium release," Collective 12465 reported. "Outer collective processes 12465, 3456, 19783 damaged. All functions 15379 terminated."
15379 had reported attacks by fission/fusion weapons and had registered intent to respond with a quarkium unit. Collective 47 had automatically given assent. Once a bridgehead had been secured with sufficient standoff to prevent destabilization of the wormhole the quarkium unit would be detonated and then colonization could recommence with the local area seared of hostile forces.
Something had somehow predetonated the quarkium unit.
Collective 47 could not be said to feel anger or sadness at the demise of the subcollective called 15379. Collectives were, essentially, immortal and 15379 might have, in time, created as many subcollectives as Collective 47, thereby increasing the Race and ensuring its security. Not to mention that the subcollective was a major supplier of vanadium and a few other trace metals as well as a huge source of biological material via two slave races.
But the loss of Collective 15379 could be borne. It would decrease the status of Collective 47 to a degree and reduce its balance of essential trade. But those, too, could be borne. What was questionable was whether the Race could afford another species to damage it so severely. The Race had encountered many species in its expansion from gate to gate and some of them, the Alborge for example, were significant threats to the survival of the Race itself. If the Alborge ever exerted themselves they could erase the Collective in a span of time that had no meaning. But would be very, very short. The sophonts of world 47-15379-ZB might, in time, become such a race. That could not be borne.
"All subcollectives," Collective 47 emitted. "Reestablish contact with gates to world 47-15379-ZB. Initiate twenty-five percent increase in all combat unit systems, ground, air, space and liquid, emphasis on systems level four through seven. Order all slave races to initiate assault plans; deception plan is terminated."
Collective 47 was going to war.
Susan McBain was puzzled.
The portal in Mississippi that had so startled the survey team by its vacuum opened onto a planet. It wasn't quite a vacuum, simply very thin atmosphere. About what you'd expect on Mars. The planet looked a bit like Mars, as well, except for the lambent purple sun that was setting in the east. It was dry and desolate, the ground scarred for miles and miles, somewhat like the outskirts of Newark.
None of that had Susan puzzled.
What was bothering her was the biology of the planet, such as it was.
She had received samples from the initial survey team and decided that they just couldn't be right. The survey team was an environmental company that normally responded to hazardous waste spills. It had gone to the far side, collected samples of soil and air, and returned. Then a large metal plate had been put over the gate to prevent more loss of atmosphere.
Despite the fact that the survey team was supposed to avoid contaminating the samples, they had to have done so. Otherwise the biology of the far world made no sense.
Oh, it was alien, to be sure. She had tentatively identified a type of archeobacteria in the soil and it was unlike anything from earth. But what was bothering her was dichotomies. The soil was almost entirely depleted of any form of nutrient; there was no phosphate, nitrate or any trace material useable by plants in it. It was almost, but not quite, pure silica and iron with some traces of elemental carbon.
However, "almost" wasn't "pure." Besides the archeobacteria, there were traces of proteins all over it. More proteins than you'd get, say, in clean sand in the desert. And the proteins were not the same as those found in the archeobacteria. Not even vaguely the same. They used completely different amino acids for one thing. Amino acids different from Earth's and different from the Mreee. In fact, the only place she'd seen amino acids like those were from Titcher remains. Which was why she suspected contamination. The same company had done some clean-up work with the Titcher and the only thing she could think was that they had contaminated the samples.
So she had leaned on her connection to the Anomaly study and gotten a plane from the Army to carry her up to the site. An airlock had been installed vice the former plate and she had first gotten into an environment suit then had herself decontaminated. Then she went through to the other side.
The Army had wanted to send a security team through with her, but she had cited the possibility of contamination. Actually, she just was tired of dealing with soldiers.
The far side had been as described but Susan had noted something that had passed right by the survey team. Yes, it looked like an abandoned primordial planet from one perspective. But Susan had grown up in the phosphate mining zone of Florida where the highest hill in the region was mine tailings. And if you let your mind wander you could imagine you were in the middle of a giant strip mine. Maybe one that was as big as the world.
She put that aside and walked well away from the gate until she got to the edge of a hill that she was pretty sure the survey team hadn't tested. She got down on her knees and started collecting samples. Technically she should throw a ring and make sure that it was random sampling but at the moment she was only trying to satisfy her own curiosity.
As she was tipping a sample into a canister it fell over and she noticed that the ground was shaking. She considered the possibility of earthquake but the shaking was rhythmic and rapid, BOOM-BOOM-BOOM, more like artillery fire or something. She looked up and around and that was when she saw it.
There were mountains to the east, how far away was hard to tell in the thin atmosphere, and without anything for a comparison she had assumed they were far away, maybe twenty or thirty miles, and quite large. But they must have been closer and smaller because walking around the edge of the nearest was a giant green daddy longlegs. It was half the height of the mountain, at least. Her mind buckled as it tried, and failed, to put the beast into anything like normal reference. Then she noticed that, following it and running among its six legs, were smaller creatures. Even at the distance she could recognize the rhinoceros and centipede tanks of the Titcher. There were other things, as well, like smaller spiders, about twice the height of the rhino-tanks. But the thing about all of them were that they were tiny, like grains of sand, next to the giant daddy longlegs. The thing was as big as a mountain, maybe as much as a thousand meters high.
And it was headed this way.
"What happened?" Miller said as his eyes opened. He was in a hospital again. This was getting annoying. And he had another blinding headache. He pushed that aside, willing himself to ignore it; pain was weakness leaving the body.
"You're in Shands Hospital," a female voice answered. "There was an explosion at the gate."
"Not again," he muttered. "Look, call my wife and tell her I'm alive this time; she was furious the last time I disappeared."
"I'll make sure she knows," the nurse said, giggling.
"How's Dr. Weaver?" Miller said, sitting up. He felt incredibly weak, like he had the flu or something. He put that aside as well. There were things to do.
"I don't know," the nurse replied. She was a mousey female with short brown hair. "There was no Dr. Weaver admitted with you." She put her hand out as he started to get out of bed. "You're really not in any condition to go anywhere, Mr. Miller."
"The hell you say," the SEAL replied, sliding his legs out of the sheets and sitting up. There was an IV in his arm and he noticed that this time it was a yellowish liquid that he recognized as plasma or platelets. "Where'd I get hit?"
"You didn't," the nurse replied. "But you did sustain some severe radiation damage. It appears that a nuclear weapon was detonated on the other side of the gate. It apparently sent out a lot of radiation."
"Oh, hell."
"The gates in Eustis, Tennessee and Staunton are all closed, with a big burst of radiation at each. And there's an admiral that's been calling for you every couple of hours."
"Shit, shit, shit, shit . . ."
Bill tried to open his eyes and realized that he didn't have any eyes to open. There was no sensation of heat, of cold, of having a body at all. There was no sound, no light, no sensory input at all. The universe was formless and void.
"Sensory deprivation," Weaver thought. Okay, what happened? He remembered stepping back to the gate. And a flash, he thought. "Am I alive?"
Well, sure, otherwise who is asking the question.
"What am I?" he asked. Where am I? could wait. Get down to base principles. "I am a thinking being." Good, so he at least existed in some form. But sensory deprivation was tricky. The brain anticipated continuous feedback, little signals sent down the nerves and received back like a computer network that is constantly sending out packets. If it didn't get feedback it sent out more and more packets until it overloaded. Which was why sensory deprivation was such a great tool for torture.
"On the other hand, that assumes I have a brain," he thought. And nerves.
"This really sucks," he thought, bitterly. So, what had happened? He and Miller had shot the cone thing as they were retreating out the gate. Something had happened after that. There had been quite a few attack units in the gate room, like they were staging for another assault. So the cone thing was probably supposed to follow up the assault. Maybe some sort of weapon. A nuke? Possibly. So had they predetonated it? If so, as close as it was to the gate, the wormhole, it could have destabilized it. If so, what did that mean to him? Maybe he was dead and this was the afterlife. If so, where were the angels? Then he thought about a few of his life experiences and considered the alternatives. Okay, where were the demons with pitchforks?
"Neither a particle nor a wave," he thought. Caught in Schrödinger's box. I'm a cat that might be alive and might be dead. Now if I just had some equivalent of opposable thumbs, or, by preference, a crowbar. "Excuse me? Would you let me out of here?"
He suddenly found himself in a car, going down a winding mountain road. There was a huge semitrailer in his rearview, riding right on his tail. He instinctively knew that if he slowed down the semi was going to run him right over and he really would cease to exist. But he couldn't go too fast because around every turn there were low-slung police cars with beady-eyed officers clutching radar guns. If he went too fast the police would catch him and then he would cease to exist as well. He didn't know how he knew that but it was an absolute certainty as strong as the fact that he had to breathe.
He looked down at his speedometer and slowed down, slightly, but nearly ran off the road, actually bouncing off a guard rail and barely regaining control of the car. He got back on the road but by that time he had lost track of how fast he was going and tried to look at the speedometer again. It was impossible; he couldn't know how fast he was going and where he was at the same time.
"Oh, shit," he muttered, careening around the twisty road, trying to watch the road and instruments at the same time and failing miserably at both. "I'm an electron."
The crazy road race continued for some time, sometimes uphill and then, crazily, he would find himself going downhill without having reached a crest, the semi always on his tail, crashing into him any time he slowed down too much. When they were going uphill it would fall behind a little bit but it would come barrel-assing up behind him on the downhills. And always there were the police.
He got to a trance-state where he had a vague notion of where he was in the road and also how fast he was going. Not a perfect control of either, but a good approximation. He was all over the road though. And then, suddenly, the road ended in a guard rail right around a steep corner. He slammed on the brakes but the semi hit him from behind and he found himself flying through open space. Then the car, nose down, hit a wall on the far side and exploded.
He came to, lying on the ground at the bottom of the mountain, pieces of the car all around him. He could barely see them, out of the corner of one eye. He tried to move his head but it was immobile, his vision skewed up and to the left. He rolled his eyes and saw his torso, only slightly bleeding, lying on the ground next to him with a leg on top of it. Then the leg jerked into motion and slid over to the shoulder socket and attached.
"That's not right," Bill muttered, wondering how he could speak without lungs to provide the air.
There was more thumping and bumping around him and then he could turn his head. He got to his feet, clumsily, leaning slightly to one side, and looked down.
He had one leg and one arm attached as "legs." He had a leg as his right arm and his left arm was attached, backwards, on his right. One buttock was just below him on his chest and he noticed that it wasn't his chest but his back; his head was on backwards. And there was something tickling his hand.
He pulled the hand around, holding it upwards behind his back where he could see it. What was tickling his hand was Tuffy.
"You're real," he said. He noticed then that there still was no sensation. He hadn't felt the turns on the road or land under his feet. He could see, but there was no sound of wind, no smell, no feel. Except for the tickling sensation from Tuffy's fur.
"What is reality?" The words formed in his head. They weren't even words, just the knowledge that such words had formed.
"I'm a physicist, not a philosopher," Bill replied. "You're real."
"At your level, what is the difference?" The words were like lead weights in his mind.
"We're better at sums," Bill said. "And you're real."
"I thought that physicists hated it when people said 'sums'?" the creature replied, honestly sounding puzzled.
"I'm supposed to have legs where legs go and arms where arms go and you're arguing semantics?"
"Nonetheless, when all was uncertain you clutched for the certainty of philosophy," the creature said.
"Descartes was one of the greatest mathematicians of all time," Bill replied. "I didn't read about him in a philosophy course, I read about him in a tensoral calculus course. His 'I think because I am' thing was just blind panic."
"Yet you continue to use your mind, to apply logic, even when your butt is sticking out of your chest. Many would have gone insane."
"I made my SAN check," Bill answered. "I was an electron, all that 'I can't know my velocity and location at the same time' bullshit in the car. Now I'm a busted-up electron that has been badly reassembled. I suppose it's a metaphor for something. I'm still trying to figure out the cops. They looked just like Virginia State Patrol, except that Virginia State Patrol doesn't usually have fangs that are dripping venom and yellow eyes."
"Who do you think keeps an eye on the particles in your universe to ensure they don't exceed the speed of light? And who destroys them when they do?"
"Cops with yellow eyes and fangs?" Bill said. "Makes as much sense as anything Einstein ever said." Bill thought about something else and found himself laughing out loud. "And blue lights!"
He found himself back in the car, in the race down the hill. Tuffy was hanging from the rearview like a brown, fuzzy dice, swinging back and forth, attached by a silver thread that looked infinitely thin.
"Uncertainty principle," Bill muttered. "I got it the first time." His body was whole again, two hands on the wheel, bitterly trying to stay on the black stuff.
"All of reality is based upon uncertainty," Tuffy said. "Certainty is impossible."
Bill was certain that the police would kill him if he sped up. So he sped up. Before long he had a chain of police cars following him, blue lights flashing. One pulled alongside of him. He looked over and the cop reminded him of a Virginia State Patrol officer that had pulled him over on I-81 the one time he had been stupid enough to drive to Washington instead of fly. Same fat face, same expression of casual disinterest in his existence. The dripping fangs and yellow eyes like a snake's were at variance, though. So was the cop's action, which was to ram into the side of the car—Bill suddenly realized it was a Pinto—and shove it off the road into space. He'd somehow expected a ticket and a lecture on safe driving on twisty roads.
The cop car followed and the whole line behind it came along, the line of cars flying off into the canyon and impacting on the wall on the far side.
Bill woke up back on the ground. This time both his arms were in the place his legs should be, his torso had been switched for his abdomen and his head was on sideways. Tuffy was perched on his butt, which was about where his shoulder should be. That was when Bill realized he had his head up his . . .
"You're real," Bill said. "I don't know about any of the rest of this Heisenberg stuff and I refuse to believe that I'm an electron, especially one with free will. But you're real. And I think you're trying to tell me something. Couldn't you just send an e-mail?"
"Yes, Bill, I'm real," Tuffy replied. "I'm the realest thing you'll ever meet. Realer than a mountain falling on your head. Realer than a planet, realer than stars. More real, by far, than death. I'm as real as it gets."
"This isn't real, I know that," Bill replied. "I can't be talking without lungs."
"Who says that you're talking?" Tuffy noted.
That was when Bill realized that he couldn't actually hear himself talk.
"So what is reality?" Bill asked. "Really."
"Do you want to see?" Tuffy asked.
"I've always wanted to see," the physicist admitted. "Since the first time I asked myself that question."
"I thought you said you weren't a philosopher," Tuffy said, dryly.
"Well, you were right, at this level the only difference is that we're better at sums."
"Okay, I'll show you reality."
Bill suddenly found himself squeezed in on every side. There were Tuffys all around him, pressing him in, making it hard to breathe. They were on his back, in his hair, pressing against his mouth.
"SAN check time," he said, noticing that he did not, in fact, have to breathe and that he hadn't actually spoken. Just that certainty that he had.
"You're doing well," Tuffy said. It was all of them and one of them at the same time. "This is the ultimate reality."
"What? Fuzzy stuffed animals?" He noticed that while there was a moment of panic it was actually quite comfortable. He also noticed that what he was standing on was Tuffys; they were squirming under his feet.
"Your scientists describe universes as soap bubbles," Tuffy replied.
"For the masses, yeah," Bill said. "I can do the sums, though."
"Equations, Bill."
"Not if you're a high-tech redneck," Bill replied. "Then it's sums."
"As you will. But what they do not ask is: in what medium do the soap bubbles float?"
"Well, they do," Bill pointed out. "But it's like asking what's the whichness of where or what is East of the Sun and West of the Moon."
"This is the reality beyond the universes, the whichness of where."
"Plush children's toys?" Bill asked. He'd had a girlfriend once who had collected Beanie Babies obsessively. It pained him that she might have had a better handle on reality than he did.
"Sometimes, bubbles are created within the bubbles," Tuffy replied. "When they reach the wall of the outer bubble, if there is a bubble on the other side of the wall, they open a hole between the bubbles. Just for a brief moment, or eternity in another way of speaking. This form that you see is obviously not our real form. We are what is outside the soap bubbles. The child was carried through in the instant of the bubble being formed, caught in the interstices between the walls, where we live. She, in a way, made this form, a form that she could understand and love. So, to you humans, yes, reality is plush children's toys."
"And now I'm caught in it, too," Bill said. "That thing exploded and shoved me into the interstice, right?"
"That is as close to the reality as you're going to get, yes," Tuffy answered.
"How do I get back?" Bill asked. "Click my heels together and say: 'There's no place like home'?"
"This is the reality that is everywhere and nowhere. You've always been home."
There was a brief moment of disorientation and Bill was lying on his back. He was in the Wyvern. The cameras were all inoperative but he could see through a small armored plate in the chest. There was blue sky above him with high cirronimbus clouds drifting across it. All of the electronics on the Wyvern were out but he could still move his arms and legs, and fingers seemed to be where fingers were supposed to be and toes were down where toes were supposed to go.
He got the arms of the Wyvern moving and rolled himself over on his belly, then levered himself onto his side.
He was at the edge of a town. The walls of the strip-mall in view were pockmarked with bullet holes and one end had burned. He could see buildings in the distance that were somewhat higher. The place had a familiar feel and after a moment he figured out why.
"Staunton," he muttered. "Why the hell did I have to end up in Staunton?"