The Apocalypse Troll

"Well, now, Gu

"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 i

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."

"So all it really does is make a spark?" Morris asked incredulously.

"In a crude sense. Actually, it produces what you might think of as a pocket of plasma."

"Inside the blaster?" It was Jayne's turn to look dubious. "That must be one hell of a container, Milla."

"Not really. Oh, it's tough, but it never really 'contains' the energy at all. Most of this-" she tapped the blaster lying on the table "-is ranging circuits and a tiny multi-dee." She saw the confusion on her listeners' faces. "Basically, when I press the stud the blaster computes the exact range to the nearest solid object in its line of fire. I can tinker with it to redefine 'solid' a bit, which can be handy in, say, aquatic conditions, but that's not a big problem here." Hastings's eyes bulged slightly as she considered the effects of firing that mini-nuke underwater, but she said nothing.

"Anyway, once it's measured the range, it produces an energy pulse to the exact power and ... dimensions I've set up. I can focus down to a cross section of two millimeters or up to a decameter, and about twice that for the linear dimension. But it doesn't 'contain' the pulse, and it doesn't really 'shoot' it at the target. Instead, at the instant the plasma is generated, the multi-dee blips it up into the alpha bands until the target coordinate is on top of the blaster, then brings it back down into normal-space." She shrugged. "For all practical purposes, the pulse first manifests on the target, which is why there's none of the ionization or thermal bloom associated with lasers or beamed energy."

"Good Lord," Hastings murmured. "What's the range on that thing?"

"Only five kilometers. You can't pick out a small arms target visually much above that range, even in space. The shoulder-fired versions have electro-optic sights and more range, but this is intended for close combat. Besides, in a planetary environment, you won't have many clear fire lanes even that long."

"'Only five kilometers,' she says!" Morris snorted. "Lady, with that little toy, you could-"

A knock on the door cut him off, and he quickly switched off the VCR while Ludmilla tucked the blaster out of sight inside her jacket.

"Enter," Morris called, and the three of them rose as a uniformed Richard Aston opened the door and stepped into the office. He wasn't alone, and Ludmilla felt a pang as she saw the muscular black major beside him. He looked so much like Steve Onslow it hurt. There was another man with them-a sergeant, only a few inches shorter than Dick, with calm, alert gray eyes that seemed to miss absolutely nothing.

She saw a flicker of surprise in the major's eyes as she came to attention with the automatic response she'd been cultivating ever since she became a junior officer again. The fact that these people had never heard of Thuselahs made them refreshingly unprejudiced, but it also meant every damned one of them judged her age by her appearance. Thank God President Armbruster hadn't decided to give her her own rank!

"People," Aston said, waving them back down, "let me introduce the newest members of our team: Major Daniel Abernathy and Sergeant Major Alvin Horton. Major, Sergeant Major: Commander Mordecai Morris, Lieutenant Commander Jayne Hastings, and Captain Elizabeth Ross." Ludmilla smothered a smile as he used her new name.

"Find a chair, and we'll bring you up to speed, gentlemen. And I warn you," he went on, "whatever you've been thinking, the truth is weirder." He smiled. "Believe it, people."

Ambassador Nekrasov was puzzled. President Armbruster seemed perfectly at ease, yet Nekrasov knew he was not. He couldn't have said how he knew, but he'd learned to trust his feelings, and he frowned as he sipped at his excellent cup of coffee.