Chapter 12: Mary sees Direct Action

Mary Donovan:

Attacks on 12 separate planets across eight systems, in four different regional sectors. The medium estimation of all those killed? Three point one five million dead. And the worst thing is, it should have been so much worse. That’s what made it worse then it was.

The knowledge that this was deliberately done to LIMIT the number of casualties. Because that was a number that was only going to go up. The average detonation killed over a quarter million people. However, these were aimed at generally smaller, outlying planets along the Federation. I had mapped the same swath of detonations from one of the attacks on Kendrick, an agriculture world, to the nearby regional capital of Boone’s Throne. Instead of one hundred forty thousand dead, it would have been over TWO MILLION.

For physical damage purposes, the spatter of attacks made no sense at all. The pattern of planets attacked was seemingly random, with higher value targets ignored. But for maximum mental effect, it was perfect. Those in bigger cities on more populated planets would see that they were spared, wonder why, and then the fear would multiply, that whoever was behind these terror strikes would come back to finish the job. That fear would become like a poisonous worm, burrowing deep in the psyche of large populations, as they sought to blame SOMEBODY, hell ANYBODY for the deaths and the wreckage. Without a definite villain to focus one’s attention on, this allowed demagogues on many a planet to assign blame on their personal hatreds. And it was working, damnit. I had just finished reading a story where the Friedsland sector went up in flames because the Arened Armed Defenders of the Faith, a crackpot religion-based political movement had blamed the destruction of one of their primary strongholds on “the baneful existence of off-world travelers daring to profane the sacred glory we had established.”

It sounds funny, but when over a hundred thousand religious fanatics invaded the planet’s largest shipping hub and burned everything and every person they could get their hands on, it lost its humor fast.

The thing was, that while many political opposition groups vehemently denied being part of the attacks (and everything I had found made me agree that they knew nothing about it), all the prime whacko groups had claimed responsibility for one or more of the attacks. If you believed their claims, everyone from the Equality Now movement (who wanted to remove all Noble Houses, Merchant Houses and Governments with a modern day neo-Marxist polity with all decisions being made by popular vote.) to the “Defenders of the Heavens” (those who claimed Mankind had trespassed on God’s realm by forcing their way off God’s planet, i.e. Terra) were behind the attacks. Or at least some of the attacks.

In short, to use the parlance of one of my digital contacts, an option column writer for the Terran Politics Report: The five W’s (Who, What, Where, Why, When) were all out of any sense of a pattern to the point that itself became a pattern. Not that they knew how, either. They had suppositions that it was a kinetic based drop-kill weapon, using a ferro-tungsten alloy with a cobalt mixture to add a “dirty bomb” nature to the strikes. Apparently, whoever created the weapon wanted to make rescuing those who survived even more different. Terran science had advanced to the point where the cobalt-based radiation could be cleared easier then pre-spaceflight (where a cobalt bomb would still be supplying lethal radiation 50 years later). It still wasn’t easy, and we were talking about areas already devastated by kinetic impact. That meant most of those not killed by impact (those lucky enough to be in the blast shadow for example) would soon die anyway from radiation poisoning if not immediately attended to.

In short, it was the greatest threat to the Terran Federation since its creation. And because no one knew who was truly behind it, that allowed everyone else to point the finger at each other. So, instead of uniting mankind behind the horror of so many lives lost, it was like a giant prybar peeling groups away from the Federation. During my digital travails, I had seen everything proposed. A couple that went to extremes, for example - that any planet harboring technology capable of making such attacks should be put under direct Federation Rule. Since that was just about everywhere that had a metals industry, that would be ... slightly difficult to put in to action. But that didn’t stop it from polling very well with the public mind you.

It was like the attacks were purposefully designed to dissolve all logic and common boundaries into a fluid, for “Them” to swim through, like a Kastarian megashark. Whoever “Them” was changed from person to person. Merchant Houses and Noble Houses alike were quick to look towards accusing their enemies of the attacks. After all, if one Merchant House was attacked, and its rival was spared, it was prima facie evidence that the other house was involved in the attack, right? Or at least could have gone some way to condone it.

I had become used to being the one who could figure things out. Being a ghost in the machine, prior to my Neural Regeneration surgery meant that I had endless hours and endless curiosity to spend in investigating pet theories, and allowed me access into places I shouldn’t really be in to get information to confirm or deny them. However, as part of my rehab, I was spending more and more time deliberately locked into my own body. It was the only way that I could get better.

So, I had been spending the last few weeks ramping up my attempts to get used to my own body. They started with exercises where the HI-AI interface was doing the vast majority of the work. It was good for building muscles that hadn’t been used in years, but still very fatiguing. Since my body had gone dormant with these “channels” while I was playing at being the Ghost in the Machine, being disconnected from the HI-AI interface meant that not only was my movements weak and flailing, it lacked fine motor control. I remember being so embarrassed the first time I spilled a cup of water on myself while trying to sip from it. Not to mention that I was used to the various machines I had been attached to, taking care of various bodily needs. Talk about EMBARASSING. I felt like I was an infant when I wasn’t connected. Every time we lowered the percentage of the signal that the AI-HI boosted in rehabilitation, it was the same thing all over again.

In most cases of someone recovering from my injuries, it would be a much longer rehabilitation schedule, where they would work on building stamina at one level before reducing the signal boost. That way, it would be just a smaller step then what I was taking, but my insistence on spending as little time as possible in rehab meant that once that I could make it down the walk corridor with no missteps, it was time to go to the next level.

However, it had to be done if I was going to be able to control my own body any time soon. Sure, I could rely on the HI-AI interface for everything, but unlike normal use, using the interface for an artificial movement long term meant that my natural systems would never recover, and it was very taxing on the system as well. There were times when I would prefer to be doing other things, but the interface needed to be recharged and some of the components replaced. It was a viable option, but one that a normal person could not even come close to affording. Besides, it required a lot of high-level medical attention to keep running optimally, not something I could really rely on if I was travelling with Alex ... and HER. No, that was so very not fair to her. I was still jealous of her, but I had developed a liking for Melissa as well. It kinda made things weird, because my fantasies, which still focused on Alex, now had Melissa in them as well.

I hadn’t really known I was bisexual (not that I really had time to explore anything on that side before my injuries), but the last couple times I had sexual dreams, it wasn’t the usual “Alex piledrives me into the bed” unrealistic scenario that so many cheap tri-vid porn claims are “every girl’s fantasy”. It was laying back against Melissa, who was kissing my ear, and stroking my body as Alex made LOVE to me. Sometimes I could almost even make out her whispering to me sweet nothings while Alex was ravishing me I wondered what it would be like to make love with Alex. I also wondered what it would be like to make love with Alex AND Melissa. And yes, I wondered if I could make love with Melissa. What would it be like? What would it feel like? I guess I had years and years of pent up fantasies running through my head. Making up for all the things I’ve missed out on, I guess.

However, I wasn’t up for “petting the kitty” or any of the other euphemisms. I was exhausted after a rehabilitation session and was curled up under a nice warm blanket. While my body recovered, my brain was still busy, so I was continuing to try to follow up on the Katain household and what was going on there.

While I was not clued in to any high-level talks between houses, I knew that House Katain diplomats had been seeking “clarification” on Alex and Melissa’s status. Though they didn’t say so in so many words, it was heavily insinuating that the pirate attack and Alex’s rescue was a House Donovan plot to gather information from House Katain and to unfairly prejudice the heir of House Katain against her family. Not that this was connected anything close to reality, but they insinuated that such a situation was so unlikely that it HAD to be pre-ordained, and the fact that Alex and Melissa continued to travel, rather than waiting for “loyal” House Katain folks to come and get her proved that House Donovan was maliciously directing the two of them to be out of contact so they could not speak with Melissa.

I sighed softly, lowered the data slate that I was holding and looked out the window. I had turned off the security screen to let some “natural” sunlight into my suite at House Donovan Tower, (although it still filtered out any of the harmful stuff from getting in) If it was just one problem, my rehab OR Alex and Melissa OR the attacks on the Federation, I would have had enough time to work and to be satisfied with it. All of it, however? It was too much. Way too much. I was not only physically tired but trying to juggle everything mentally was mentally exhausting as well. Sarge had to come close a couple times to literally shutting down the HI-AI interface to get me to stop working on something. The way she put it (in her own, unique way) “Even on board a ship heading into combat, they tell the new shit-for-brained second louies (newly assigned 2^nd Lieutenants) that they are not going to be able to be aware of everything that’s happening with the platoon. Instead, they need to trust that their Sergeant knows what’s going on with the Corporals, the Corporals would know what’s going on with the PFC (Private First Class), and the PFC would figure out what the hell the privates had screwed up THIS time. So do your eight hours, but you’re not going to be combat-ready if you try to do too much.”