Ode To Defiance Chapter 24

19

Fire and Brimstone

And there Rained a Ghastly Dew from the Nations' Airy Navies Grappling in the Central Blue

— Alfred Tennyson,

Locksley Hall

, 1835

They were planting the third stick when Dash’s phone rang. She answered, “Chief Hart? Why are you calling? I’m in the middle of something here and must not be interrupted.”

Chief Hart choked on laughter. “I’ll bet you are. Vasily and I just landed on the European spaceport ship and took a copter down to Africa. We’re heading for Timbuktu as fast as we can go.” He explained proudly, “We’re your backup.”

At that moment, Dash’s phone rang with a second call. With a sound of exasperation, Dash apologized to Hart and put him on hold.

Wolf was on the other line. “Dash, Aar and I took the next Global Express out after you left. We’re south of Timbuktu, heading your way. We’re your backup.”

Ping’s phone added to the chorus. She rolled her eyes. “I have such a bad feeling about this,” she said as she put the phone on speaker for Dash.

Rubinelle’s voice came through crisp and enthusiastic. “Empress, I have a battalion of my best women with me, and we are making haste as our trucks permit. We’ve crossed the border into Mali. Please hold your assault until we get there. We’re your backup.”

Dash put her hand to forehead and squeezed her temples. “Let’s get you all on a conference call.”

Moments later all the voices were talking at the same time. Dash overrode them. “Halt. Listen. We are now far from Timbuktu. We are at Khalid’s hideout.” She gave the coordinates. “Now listen carefully. I need you all to stop an hour’s distance from here.”

Wolf complained, “But we can help.”

Hart, seeing where this was going, tried a different tack. “Ping, please tell Dash to let us help.”

Rubinelle came from yet another direction. “Empress, you cannot deny us our part in this heroic battle.”

Ping just looked at Dash and shrugged.

Dash shook her head. “You must listen to me. Understand that Khalid can kill all of you with a flick of his finger.”

Wolf objected. “You don’t know that.”

Dash’s voice turned cold. “I know that because if it were me, I could kill you all with a flick of

my

finger.”

For the first time, true silence reigned.

Dash continued, “If a larger ground assault can help, I will call you.” Her voice cracked. “But I cannot protect you all. I will be hard-pressed to protect just Ping and myself.”

Vasily interrupted, “And Jam.”

Dash smiled. “Of course.” Her voice became distant. “Besides, I have already called for support.”

Rubinelle objected, “What can someone else offer that we cannot?”

Dash’s voice remained distant, although now the air of detachment had a terrifying edge. “I have called for the Inferno. We are to be joined by Hell on Earth.”

Toni wove her entire squadron of Israeli F35 fighters through the briar patch of Egypt’s numerous radar systems. It took time and patience, and an annoying amount of paying attention to the instructions of her weapons officer in the back cockpit of her F35 Adir.

Toni just wanted to throw her engines to max power and plow through while screaming, “Leave us alone! We’re not here for you!”

But threading this needle made vastly more sense, and Dash had given her enough advance warning that she could take her time.

Really, there was no point in hurrying anyway, because as of yet Dash had no precise target coordinates, only the general location where her bombing run would take place.

She had just breathed a sigh of relief, having cleared the obstacle path, when a warning tone told her an acquisition radar had nailed her.

Dammit! Now she’d have to tell half her people to drop their external fuel tanks and fight a rear engagement to give her a chance to reach the real target.

For just a moment, she wished there was a way to talk to the Egyptians cruising up her tailpipe and make them listen to reason.

Then a familiar voice intruded on her headphones on a private channel—an Egyptian voice from years before. “Hey, Stormfront. Guess who’s on your tail?”

Toni ran her tongue over her teeth. “Hi, Jetstream.”

Toni sat at a small table in a cafeteria on the

BrainTrust University

, scraping a teaspoon across the surface of her raspberry ice cream. She then drove the teaspoon through her lemon cake and put the blended confection in her mouth. She licked the teaspoon luxuriously as she stared across the table at her wingman, whom she would probably have to kill someday.

Decades before Toni Shatzki, call sign Stormfront, met Rabi el-Hasan, call sign Jetstream, America had periodically hosted pilots from all over its far-flung network of Cold War allies for its Red Flag exercises outside Nellis AFB. Since allied status was an inconstant and fluctuating matter of political vagary, the formation of these polyglot international teams occasionally yielded peculiar results, such as when the Israeli and Egyptian fighter pilots flew on joint missions into mock combat.

As America withdrew from the world, it looked likely that this remarkable confluence of usual enemies would come to a sad demise.

But Colin Wheeler had stepped in to offer a neutral place where such people could come together and get to know one another, all in the course of brutal shared combat.

The BrainTrust, of course, had no airfields. They could not duplicate the marvels of Nellis and Red Flag. But they did have the best simulators on the planet. It was enough. Generations of pilots from all over the world, including Egypt and Israel, learned strategy and tactics from one another in a place devoid of national politics.

In this fashion, just like their fathers before them, Captain Toni Shatzki and Captain Rabi el-Hasan had met.

Rabi watched Toni linger over her raspberry ice cream and lemon cake, then took a thick scoop of his lemon ice cream and combined it with his raspberry cake. “Mine’s better,” he asserted.

Toni chuckled. “After you mash them together, they’re probably the same.”

Rabi swallowed his spoonful of dessert. “We were great today.” They’d wiped the floor with their opponents, a team of American and British flyers. “Of course, we’ll be even better tomorrow when you’re the wingman and I’m the lead.”

Toni pointed her spoon at him. “Fat chance. Though I’ll still be able to compensate for your mistakes.”

Rabi sighed. “You know, someday we may meet in the air. For real.”

Toni twitched her nose. “I sure hope not. I’d hate to have to shoot you down.”

Rabi laughed. “Not a chance. I hear they’re sticking you in one of those slugs with a second cockpit. You won’t be able to shoot anybody except the grunts on the ground.”

A glint appeared in Toni’s eye. “Won’t matter what kind of plane I’ve got. If we meet in the sky, I’ll leave you kissing the flames from my afterburners.”

Rabi leaned forward. “I certainly hope so. How else am I going to get a missile shot straight up your tailpipe?” A moment of honesty made him blurt, “You know, it would really be interesting to find out which one of us is actually better.”

So here they were on the battlefield together for real at last.

Toni shook her head. “Jetstream, we’re just about out of here. I don’t suppose you could cut us a little slack and let us go?”

Jetstream chuckled. “Is there any Egyptian airspace you

didn’t

violate to get here? I’m thinking you’ve done a powerful lot of corkscrewing between one thing and another.”

Toni figured a little trash talk wouldn’t hurt. “So, you’re finally getting to look up my skirt. Like the view?”

Jetstream chuckled. “Love the view. You should eject now, or I’ll kill your sorry ass.”

Toni chuckled in reply. “Funny, I was going to say the same thing.” She asked, ever so casually, “By the by, how did you find this channel for talking with me, anyway?”

Rabi dropped the trash talk and answered with puzzlement, “Some girl called me on

my

private channel. Told me Colin Wheeler needed a favor.”

Toni smiled. “That would be Dash. Dr. Dash to you. Or perhaps just Dash; I’ll introduce you sometime. She’s taken over for Colin while he’s in a coma.”

“Ah. Well, that explains some of it.”

Toni took a deep breath. “Dare I ask what favor she requested of you?”

Toni could almost hear him shaking his head the way he used to do when she was flying as his wingman. “She told me to tell you to tell me the absolute truth. She told me that I should then believe you.”

At this, Toni shook her head the way she used to do when he was flying as her wingman. “Sounds like Dash. I’m going to tell you the truth.” She paused. “And Jetstream, for the sake of all of us, you better believe me.”

Silence filled the channel for a moment. “Stormfront, I have never known you to lie.”

So Stormfront told Jetstream the truth about the man named Khalid who had set out to destroy the world, and the plagues he had released, and the plagues he had planned, and how, if Rabi survived, he would regret it because he would have to bury everyone in his family. But there was no need to worry, because Stormfront was carrying a thermobaric bomb, a weapon specifically designed to pour hellfire through complex cavern and tunnel systems. That bomb had Khalid’s name on it.

More silence answered Toni’s explanations. At last, Rabi replied, “So I guess we’ll have to wait until another day to find out who’s really the best.”

The tension in Toni’s shoulders had started to leak away when a new set of threat alarms went off.

Rabi heard them over the comm. “What’s that?”

Toni groaned. “Libyans.”

Rabi responded, “Where?”

Toni gave him the heading and the distance.

Rabi swore using a language Toni did not understand and her translator could not translate. “How did you find them?”

Toni laughed. “Oh, Jetstream, do you really expect me to answer that?” She paused. “So, decide. Get off my tail, or I’ll have to take you out before I take on those idiots.”

Jetstream’s laugh came from deep in his gut. “You go deal with Khalid. I’ve got the Libyans.”

They set up a comm channel shared by all the Israeli and Egyptian fighter pilots. The Egyptians peeled off as Rabi explained to his people that they were under new orders, and, unbelievable as it might seem, they were working with the Israelis. There was a modicum of grumbling, but the chance to shoot down some Libyans seemed to mollify most of them.

The battle was as short as it was ferocious. At one point an Israeli pilot with his far superior integrated sensor network told an Egyptian pilot how to maneuver to avoid getting a missile in his engine flare. The Egyptian followed the recommendation and survived.

Rabi came back on the line. “OK, Stormfront, that’s it. We’re all bingo fuel here. Furthermore, I have to hurry to help set up my own court-martial for helping you. Clear skies.”

As the Egyptians departed, all the Israeli fighter pilots broadcast compliments for the Egyptians on their skill and bravery. Almost half of those compliments were even sincere.

While Ping planted the fourth and final metal rod, Dash pulled a pair of boxes out of her backpack and fiddled with a phone app that controlled them. Both devices whirred so softly they could barely be heard in the night that was silent save the sound of the digging tip of the rod.

Ping looked up from her labors. “Dare I ask what your boxes are?”

Dash answered without taking her eyes from her work. “These are miniaturized, simplified CRISPIERs. We’re using these to manufacture the vaccines at our pharmaceutical factories.”

One of the boxes went silent, and Dash attached a glass sphere encased in metal lacework to the box. A fine dust, a powder of particles so microscopic they danced even in the still air of the sphere, poured across.

Having finished with the rod, Ping leaned over and peered at the powder. “Pink? It’s hard to tell with just moonlight.”

Dash confirmed. “Pink it is.” The other box finished, and Dash attached a second glass sphere.

Ping watched this one as well. “Black.”

Dash’s voice fell. “Oh, yes.”

Ping stood up suddenly. “So, this little box can produce the cure, but it can also produce the virus.”

Dash disconnected the boxes and returned them to her backpack. She hefted the spheres, one in each hand. “A classic double-edged sword, is it not?”

Ping had a thought. “So, could you, like, cure the common cold with these things?”

Dash looked at her with startled eyes. “Why, of course.”

Ping pushed. “So you could make like, a trillion dollars with this?”

Dash frowned. “I suppose. But would it be as important as rejuvenation?”

Ping shrugged. “If it only took you a few days…”

Dash sighed. “I could get another intern and set her to work on it.” She grumbled, “I really do have to learn to delegate more.”

Ping looked around. “What next?”

Dash waved a hand with a sphere in it. “The entrance to Khalid’s cavern system is over there.”

They started to run again. Ping asked, “You want me to carry your spheres?”

Dash answered with surprising abruptness, “These are mine.”

Sabaah stared in amazement at the feeds from outside. “How could she possibly know where our main entrance is?” He scowled, and pointed at Jam. “How did you tell her?”

Jam chuckled. “You’ve been watching me like a hawk since we left Timbuktu. How did you miss it, whatever I did?” A bemused expression came to her. “As for how she figured it out…”

At this point, both Khalid and Jam shrugged their shoulders and in unison said, “It’s Dash.”

They watched as Dash and Ping paused for a moment, deciphering the doorway. It hardly slowed them down. Uwais offered, “I presume you want her to come in. Otherwise, you’d have locked it from the inside.”

Khalid nodded. “And she knew I’d leave it unlocked, which is why she didn’t bring explosives. She thinks she can defeat us here in our home.”

Sabaah asked the obvious question. “Can she? Defeat us here?”

Dash answered Ping, “Not a chance. We cannot defeat them here. But I hope they can be persuaded.”

Ping asked the obvious question. “Can they? Be persuaded?”

Khalid answered Sabaah, “Not a chance. I will fail to persuade her, but…”

Dash answered Ping, “The world’s future would be so much brighter. I have to try.”

Khalid answered Sabaah, “The world’s future would be so much brighter. I have to try.”

Ping pressed the issue. “That’s all very well, but what will we do if you can’t persuade them?”

Dash slowed to a stop in the long tunnel which, as she’d already explained to Ping, was long enough and deep enough so bombs could not reach the heart of Khalid’s bunker. She reiterated the question. “What if we can’t persuade them?”

Ping watched as Dash’s eyes lost focus—as she turned inward and looked at all the horror around the world, the horrors that Khalid had already unleashed and would repeat if given the chance. Ping shivered as she realized that Dash, of all the people of Earth, could visualize that vast sweep of calamity more clearly than any person could bear.

The little girl ran her fingers over the cold gray tombstone.

Her new mother looked at her tablet. “This is your great-aunt, Louise Hall Goldstein, just where you told us she’d be.” She watched as Willa shifted her hands to run them over the next tombstone. “And this is where your mom is.”

Willa’s new father added, “And your dad is right next to her.”

In a little while, Willa finished touching the markers. “Can I run some in the park?”

Willa’s new mom and dad looked at each other forlornly. As the Black Rubola epidemic ended, the number of dead parents and dead children had grown to the point where a new online matchmaking service had arisen.

Willa’s parents were gone, and her new parents had themselves lost their little girl, so the service had brought them together. Technically the match was illegal; no long, costly vetting process by the government had endorsed the new family, but at least for the moment, no one was paying much attention.

The father figured out how to answer Willa’s request to run in the park. He turned to his wife. “You stand here. Willa, you’ll start from Mom, then, when I shout, you’ll run to me, OK?”

Willa smiled brightly. “OK!”

They started with a short distance, then the parents moved farther and farther apart, shouting for her. Willa laughed as she ran between them. “I think the park is even bigger than it used to be.”

Neither parent answered.

Eventually Willa stumbled. The mom called a halt. “That’s enough.”

Each parent grabbed one of Willa’s hands and swung her into the air. “Whee!”

Before they walked back to the car, her mom caressed Willa’s cheek, rough with thick scars from the rubola rash.

Most little girls would have been upset if they had suffered such severe damage to their faces. Willa didn’t care for the same reason she thought the cemetery still had wide open spaces even though the land was actually packed end to end with graves and tombstones.

She was blind.

Dash’s eyes refocused with grim intent. “If we cannot persuade him, if we must instead stop him, then…” Her breathing became irregular, and she whispered, “Then I will kill him.”

Her voice acquired a core of steel. “You must leave him to me. I shall decide his fate. He is mine.”

They came to the inner door. A blast door, for all intents and purposes.

Dash stepped close to the barrier and inspected it. She handed one of the spheres to Ping so she could run a finger across the door and tap it ever so gently. “Titanium, microscopic honeycomb. Like the Titan but much thicker.” Her finger ran down a perfectly smooth section in a straight line. “Manufactured in pieces, each of which is small enough to be carried by two people. See the seam?”

Ping blinked. As far as she could tell, the surface was perfect.

Dash breathed a last comment. “Just as I would have done it.”

She reached down and pulled a tab on her sphere. A thin sheet of plastic slid out from between the metal lattice and the inner glass sphere. Ping could see tiny metal spikes in contact with the glass: throwing the sphere, or dropping the sphere, or even just closing your hand convulsively on the sphere, would shatter it and propel the contents to every point of the compass.

Dash gingerly removed the tab from the sphere Ping held, then took the sphere very gingerly back.

Ping took a deep breath. “This is it, then. Ready?”

Dash stood calmly, waiting.

Ping pressed the button to slide the thick titanium barrier out of the way.

Khalid watched them slow down as they reached the blast door. “This is it, then.” He pulled out his phone and broadcast a final message to all of his people all over the world, then looked at his compatriots. “Ready.”

All over the world, the believers in the Herald of the Mahdi received The Word.

They had finished their work with their leased 3D printers long before, then waited. Finally, the last part they needed had arrived: large translucent cylinders labeled Grape CoolAde. They handled the cylinders ever so carefully, for if the extremely fine purple powder ever got out, the surprise would be ruined and the end times would not come.

CoolAde loaded, they had waited some more, knowing that patience would be rewarded.

Then Khalid’s final broadcast reached them, and they embarked on their final mission.

Around the world, medium-range missiles built to Uwais’ specs took to the air. They flew from boats, from ghettos, and from isolated mountains and forests. These missiles were not as elegant or refined or reliable as the rockets of SpaceR, but they didn’t have to be. Like the rockets of the Palestinians in the 90s, they were barely good enough to do a job, and that was good enough.

Not all the missiles were launched by followers of the Herald. Diverse groups of radicals, disaffected or disenfranchised, participated with varying levels of understanding of the consequences.

In southern America, most of the neo-Nazis were happy with the policies of the President for Life. However, one group of Neo-Nazi survivalists, impatient for the Apocalypse, took part. They were unaware that a few of their compatriots farther north were Muslims who had been isolated and ghettoized by the very policies the Neo-Nazis had championed.

In Europe, a small band of maniacal Basque separatists unknowingly had a common cause with a splinter group descended from the defunct Irish Republican Army. And the Russia Union had the Chechens, the Chinese had the Uighurs, and so on and so forth, around the world.

All these insanely angry pockets of fury fired their missiles at the major cities of their enemies.

Primary targets in Western Europe included the German cities of Berlin and Bonn, the French capital of Paris, and of course the European Union’s premier financial powerhouse, Edinburgh, the capital of the Republic of Scotland.

In America, they reached for all the same cities that had once served as dispensing points for Blue Rubola, with the addition of others, including Atlanta and Miami and Houston.

In the Russian Union, they launched from Chechnya for Moscow as the number one target, with as many other major cities as they could reach.

All told, as the plan unfolded across every continent, it became clear to anyone with a surveillance satellite that almost a billion people would be infected within the hour.

Matt paced back and forth in the deathly quiet of the orbital systems control room. All the operators from all three shifts were there at their stations; they had been there for a while, and would continue to be there for as long as Matt deemed appropriate.

Brandy, who this time was there for no good reason at all, snapped her gum at him. “Relax, Boss. Either it’ll happen or it won’t.”

Matt answered himself as much as he answered her. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if after all this preparation, it turned out to be unnecessary?” He stopped pacing for a moment to contemplate this marvelous future. “Of course, if it turns out to be unnecessary, the profits we’ve thrown away will compel the board to toss me out on my ass.” He took a deep breath. “But I’d make that trade in a heartbeat.”

Soft warning tones filled the silence.

Brandy summarized the good news. “Cheer up, Boss. Looks like you’re gonna keep your job after all.”

Matt stopped in his tracks. “Deploy,” he commanded.

Buttons were pressed, toggles were thrown, and they could see the results from the vidcams in orbit.

All around the Earth, satellites rotated, and spindly legs, miles in length, unfolded. The Mylar sails attached to the legs snapped majestically open.

Raw, undiluted solar power bounced from those sails to focus unparalleled energy upon Stirling engines that trailed miles of graphene radiators to offer a heat sink that would drive the engines to unparalleled efficiency.

The power poured into graphene supercapacitors, to wait eagerly to surge forth into bank after bank of free-electron lasers.

Matt spoke again. “All interceptor pods free. Fire at will.”

His people had been training for this ever since the programmers had completed the simulators for the new equipment, so everyone knew what to do. They performed with the smooth coordination that comes of doing once more the things they had done a hundred times before.

As each of Khalid’s rockets heeled over to fall gracefully toward its designated city and the altitude of optimal dispersion, a precision-guided pod from one of the custom cargo capsules overhead detached and headed for the same point in space.

There was no attempt to intercept the missile before it exploded to disperse the fine powder of its payload, no attempt to catch a bullet with one’s teeth. Rather, the pods arrived in the same general area within a minute of the missile’s explosion. The pod then exploded to release its own fine aerosol spray.

Each droplet of the spray contained, in its purest form, a brew of those molecular components of human blood that dissolved the outermost protein coat of the virus, the coat that made the virus immune to all frequencies of ultraviolet radiation.

Then the power in the supercapacitors of the satellites surged into the lasers, flooding the area with UV-A, B, and C.

Trillions of viral particles, stripped of their defenses, were torn apart by the blasts of radiation.

Not all the viral particles were touched by the plasma droplets, and not all the particles touched by the droplets were blasted by the UV. But a cloud of death that should have infected ninety percent or more of the city achieved a mere fraction of that.

Until a vaccine was developed people would still die, but because the initial infection rate was low, if the city engaged in a sufficiently militant enforcement of quarantines, the great majority of its citizens would live.

Matt watched tensely as Khalid’s missile assault reached its peak, then fell away to its end.

Brandy snapped her gum. “That’s it, then.”

Matt frowned. “Is it? Are we sure?”

One of the cargo-capsule operators made an observation. “You know, we had to bring the capsules down into the fringe of the atmosphere to reduce our pod interception times. The capsules’ orbits are starting to degrade, and we don’t have enough fuel to re-orbit them. If we don’t retrieve them now, they’ll all burn up.”

Matt sighed. “Bring them home. At least most of them. But leave a few.” Anticipating the objection, he continued, “Yes, the ones we leave will burn up. I’ll live with the loss.”