Stryker #5, At the End of Eternity – Chapter 10

“I know for a fact that Miles has developed a way to launch satellites into orbit. Apparently he’s been able to do that for a long time. I don’t know how he does it, though, and unfortunately he just laughs when I ask him about it. In fact, he won’t even give me access to his satellites. At this point I’d be content if he would just launch satellites for us, but he won’t do that either. Every time I bring it up he just tells me that I need to invent that technology myself – which is fair enough, I suppose. If he did hand me his designs it would be all-too-easy to simply copy them without understanding how they worked or why those particular design choices were made.”
–Noel Lawson
June 24, 7243
 

The following two days were relatively quiet. Nothing new or unusual happened in Adrasta, and no one reported seeing a young girl with long black hair and dark skin. Monroe was slightly disappointed at this, as he had hoped that Amy would take some immediate and drastic action, but there was nothing he could do about it. On the bright side, the lack of significant events did give him some extra time. Since there was nothing else going on he spent those two days in his office, studying every book he could find that so much as mentioned the Spanish Empire’s war with the Rangers. He was hoping to find some new bit of information that would explain where the Legend of the Sparrow came from. He knew that no one had ever been able to pin it down, but as far as he knew no one had really studied it either. So while he waited on Amy to do something he read old books and took copious notes.

On the morning of the third day, after hours of reading, he decided that he needed to take a break to clear his mind. Monroe strolled out of his office, wandered through the chambers of the Order, and eventually found himself standing outside on a stone patio. To his surprise Elwood was there. He was standing by the railing, looking out into the distance. When he heard Monroe close the door behind him he turned around and glared. “Monroe! I should have known. You always seem to show up where you’re not wanted. And just what do you think you’re doing, coming out here?”

“I work here,” Monroe replied. “My office is right down the hall, as it has been for the past few decades.”

“Just because you somehow still have an office doesn’t mean that you’re welcome here. As a matter of fact, you are universally despised. Everyone in the Order hates you and can’t wait to see you leave. That office isn’t going to belong to you for much longer. If you don’t drop dead soon I will do my very best to have your status as head scribe taken from you. You’re an embarrassment to us all.”

“You will fail,” Monroe said calmly. “The last head scribe to be forcibly removed from office by the council was Douglas Benson, who attempted to assassinate the council during their annual charity gala. That happened way back in 5320. Since then not a single head scribe has been fired, regardless of the unpopularity of their positions. Even outrageously incompetent scribes have managed to hold onto their jobs. Your continued insults only serve to make you look petty.”

“You’re just a poor loser,” Elwood shot back. “But your days are numbered. Do you see those dots down there?”

Monroe walked over to the railing and glanced down. Below them he could see the mountainside, and beyond the mountain he could see a vast prairie that stretched out to the horizon. A slender road snaked through the grassland and up the mountainside. In the distance, moving along the road at a good clip, was a line of six small dots.

“Yes, I see them. I hadn’t noticed them until you pointed them out. They’re still pretty far away. If I had to guess I’d say that they were trucks of some kind.”

“That’s exactly what they are! That is a fleet of six top-of-the-line, automated, robotic tankers. They left the Y12 mine late last night and are just now arriving at Adrasta. Twenty minutes from now they will have climbed up the mountain pass and will be in the city’s unloading bay.”

“The Y12 mine?” Monroe asked. “Isn’t that Evan’s lithium mine? Do you mean that those are the lithium trucks?”

“That’s exactly what they are,” Elwood said proudly. “General Maldonado has obtained the lithium he needs ahead of schedule! Those tankers are carrying it this way as we speak.”

“But wait a minute. Did you say they were tankers? As in oil takers? Lithium isn’t a liquid! What are they doing transporting it in tankers?”

“The general had to use what he had available,” Elwood explained. “The only robotic fleet Adrasta has are the oil tankers, so he retrofitted them to carry the crushed lithium powder. It actually wasn’t that difficult.”

“But I still don’t understand why he would bother. Adrasta has lots of other trucks. Why use oil tankers to transport crushed rocks?”

“Well, as I said, the oil tankers are the only fully automated ones in the entire city. They were designed to be driverless so they could make the quarterly run to the Dakota refinery. All of the other trucks require drivers.”

“So?”

“Think about it! It’s only been a week since the neutron bomb was dropped. There’s still lots of deadly radiation all over that road that would kill any driver. Plus there are all the other toxins that are out there as well. In order to transport anything over that road you have to use automated vehicles. This isn’t neurosurgery, Monroe. Use your head.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Monroe said thoughtfully. “I hadn’t considered the radiation. Still, I only see six dots. Was all of the lithium able to fit into those six tankers, or will the general be making multiple runs?”

“No, one run will be sufficient. In fact, it will leave quite a bit left over for future use!”

“What do you mean, for future use? The general is going to destroy the entire planet! What else is there?”

“Well, there’s Mars, for one thing. There’s obviously some sort of civilization there. We’ll need some pretty big weapons to ensure that our rights aren’t trampled upon, and to make sure that whoever is out there sees things our way.”

“Sees things our way?” Monroe said incredulously. “Are you telling me that Evan wants to conquer Mars?”

“In time I think it’s inevitable. We’ll need to rebuild Earth first, of course, but at some point this planet will simply not be enough. Possessing the stars is our destiny! Removing the savages is simply the first step. In all likelihood Mars will be the second step. It will be a good day when the men of Earth once again rule over her sister planet.”

Monroe watched as the tankers left the grassland and began the winding climb up the mountainside. He felt a chill run down his spine. He desperately hoped that Amy was not listening in on this conversation. If she overheard that then Elwood just signed our death sentence. She will never let anyone put her homeworld in danger. “You – you surely can’t be serious! Surely you’re joking. Don’t you realize that people live on Mars – and out among the stars as well? Have you learned nothing from history?”

“What has history got to do with it?”

“It has everything to do with it! Have you forgotten that this star system was imprisoned for five thousand years because our ancestors went to war against the Rangers? And now you want to go and do it all over again! Only this time you want to do it after the Rangers have had five millennia to advance beyond our wildest dreams. Do you realize that when they find out you intend on bombing their allies on Mars, they may decide to just go ahead and destroy us all now? Why are you trying to make them regret the decision to spare us?”

Elwood laughed. “And you wonder why the council rejects your proposals! You’re a senile old man who is long past his prime. You need to retire and let people who know what they’re doing run things. Why, if you had your way those tankers wouldn’t even be out there right now! We’d still be cowering in the dark, waiting for–”

At that moment the ground began rumbling. A loud crack split the air and echoed among the mountains. Monroe gasped as he saw the entire mountainside give way. With a thunderous noise a huge granite slab fell off the side of the mountain and slid down below, stirring up behind it a giant cloud of dust and rocks. The landslide swept away the convoy of trucks and crushed them into the ground. In a matter of moments the entire road was completely obliterated.

As Elwood looked down at the ruins in horror, Monroe saw a movement out of the corner of his eye. At the top of the mountain, just above where the landslide happened, he saw a tiny figure. It appeared to be a young girl with dark skin and long black hair. She looked in his direction and then vanished.