David Weber - The Apocalypse Troll

"Cut the crap, Gunny. If anyone knows, you do."

"Major, I don't know anything. Honest."

Abernathy's eyebrows tried to rise again. Sergeant Major Horton was the fourth ranking noncom in the United States Marine Corps. He had to know what was going on. But if he said he didn't, he didn't.

"Excuse me, Sir," Horton broke into his thoughts, "but where's your baggage?"

"You're looking at it, Gunny." Abernathy waved his single small bag. "They didn't give me much time to pack."

"I see, Sir. If the Major would follow me, then?"

Abernathy fell in beside the sergeant major, and a path opened before them, though neither consciously noticed it. Abernathy was a powerfully built man, his mahogany skin bulging over hard-trained muscles, and he made an imposing figure in uniform. He wasn't especially tall, but he moved with catlike grace and a sense of leashed power, and the ribbons below his parachutist's wings were impressive.

For all that, and despite the gold leaf on his collar, Horton was even more impressive. He was four inches taller, the sandy hair under his cap cut so short it was all but invisible, and tanned almost as dark the major. He, too, wore jump wings, but the five rows of ribbons under his were headed by the white-barred blue one of the Navy Cross, followed by the red-white-and-blue one of the Silver Star with two clusters-each with the tiny "V" which indicated they'd been won the hard way: for valor.

He guided the major across the baking hot asphalt to a staff car, and Abernathy got a fresh surprise when Horton opened the door for him, closed it behind him, and then slid behind the wheel. Sergeant majors are not normally chauffeurs, and Abernathy's sense of the extraordinary grew stronger as Horton started the engine and pulled away.

"Tell me, Gunny," he said finally, "what do you know?"

"Nothing positive, Sir." Horton never took his eyes from the road.

"Last I heard, you were division command sergeant major at Pendleton," Abernathy mused aloud.

"Yes, Sir. I've been reassigned."

Abernathy digested that. Whoever had put the arm on him had also grabbed the senior noncom of the Third Marine Division. He didn't want to think about how General Watson had reacted to that.

"All right, Gunny, what is it we've both been reassigned to?"

"I understand the major and I will find out this afternoon, Sir."

"From Rear Admiral R. K. Aston, I presume?"

"Yes, Sir." Horton's tone caught Abernathy's attention, and his eyes narrowed. Aston ... Aston... . Now that he thought about it, the name did have a familiar ring.

"Just who is Admiral Aston, Gunny?" he asked finally.

"He's good people, Sir," Horton said, and he wasn't a man who awarded accolades easily. "He started out with the Swift boats right at the end in Nam, then switched over to the SEALs, Sir."

"D'you mean Captain Dick Aston?"

"Yes, Sir," Horton said with a slight smile. "He's an admiral now."

"Well I will be dipped in shit," Abernathy said softly. Horton didn't respond, and Abernathy leaned back. That put a different slant on things. A very different slant. No wonder the name sounded familiar. No man had a higher reputation among the elite forces of the United States, and very few had one as good. It was Aston who'd pulled out the Lebanese hostages, he remembered, and then-Commander Aston's SEAL teams had fought their own short, victorious, and extremely nasty personal little war in Iraq, both before and during the Gulf War. It had been his SEAL teams that retook the Exxon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico, too-without, as Abernathy recalled, a single civilian fatality or a single terrorist survivor. If he was involved, things might prove very interesting indeed, and he suddenly realized why Horton seemed so cheerful. The sergeant major had an instinct for these things.

"Well, now, Gunny," he said after a long, thoughtful moment, "I do believe this may not be such a waste of time as I thought."

"As the Major says," Horton said cheerfully.

"But you can't do it that way-sir," Blake Taggart said. He sat in an oddly proportioned chair facing a featureless metal bulkhead and felt no desire to smile at the absurdity of talking to a-what? A machine? A disembodied voice? A ... presence? Not after tasting its driving, limitless hatred in his own mind. The experience had not been pleasant. No indeed. Not pleasant at all.

"Indeed?" The voice was still cold and mechanical, but it was picking up human-sounding emphasis patterns at almost frightening speed.

"No, sir." Taggart licked his lips. Whatever this thing was, it wasn't human-and not all that tightly wrapped, either. It scared the shit out of him, actually, but he'd already accepted that. He'd been a bit surprised by how readily he did accept it, and he wondered if this ... thing ... had done something to make him. There was no way of knowing, and it didn't matter. Taggart had seen too much of this incredible ship. Sane or not, the voice could do what it promised.

He smiled-a cold, amused smile-as he remembered his Bible. He had been taken up on a mountain and offered all the powers of the world. Only as a viceroy and not a ruler in his own right, to be sure, but offered nonetheless. Yet powerful as the voice was, it lacked any instinctive knowledge of people.

"Why not, Blake Taggart?" the voice demanded coldly.

"Assume for a moment that you can control the President," Taggart said. "Or, hell, assume you control the Vice President and knock Armbruster off. Either way, you control the White House, but it won't do you any good."

"He is the head of state," the Troll said flatly.

"But he doesn't work in a vacuum ... sir. There's Congress and the Supreme Court, just for starters. If he suddenly starts acting strangely, there are plenty of people in positions to get in your way. No. If you want to take over, you have to start at the bottom. Build an organization and move in gradually." Taggart smiled nastily. "Do it right, and in a few years you can elect your own President-with a Congress that'll do anything you want."

"Wait," the Troll said, and considered the human's words. The Taggart human was unaware that he could hear its inner thoughts, that he knew it was already considering how to displace him, but that was all right. The Troll had selected it for its ambition, after all, and the human was unaware of the controls he had already set deep within it. A flick of thought could activate them, shutting down its fragile heart and lungs instantly. Not that those controls would be required; judiciously applied pain would provide all the effectiveness the Troll was likely to need.

But in addition to its ambition, the Troll had chosen it for its knowledge and the instincts he lacked. Unlike its master, it knew the workings of this world from the inside, and the Troll studied the fuzz of half-coherent concepts leaking from its thoughts. He already saw the basic workings of its plan, and what he saw pleased him.

"Very well, Blake Taggart," the Troll said. "Explain this to me."

"Yes, Sir," Taggart said eagerly. "First-"

"What I don't understand," Morris said, watching the taped destruction of the tanks, "is how that peashooter works, Milla. Where's the laser-tinted death? Where's the glowing ray of mass destruction? In short, where's the action?"

"Forgive him, Milla," Jayne Hastings said disgustedly. "Remember he's only a crude, unlettered savage."

"That's all right." Ludmilla smiled. "But I'm afraid I can't really answer your question, Mordecai. I mean, how well could you describe quantum mechanics-or, better yet, a printed circuit-to Copernicus?"

"I see your point," Morris conceded, "but I really am curious."

"Well," she brushed a strand of chestnut hair from her face and held up one of her blaster's featureless plastic magazines, "I'll try. This thing is a capacitor-a very powerful one, perhaps, but that's all it really is-and the energy pulse is a surge discharge. Theoretically, I could drain it in a single pulse, but the self-destruction would be pretty drastic."