The Weapon - Apocalypse - part 24
By Diana the Valkyrie
Wendy goes to Washington


Duncan:

Wendy seemed a bit scarce. After she dumped that carrier in Washington, she
scooted back to Freedonia, but after that, she seemed to be flitting here
there and everywhere. I didn't ask her for details about what she was doing,
but after she visited Fee in Bombay, she seemed to have a whole bunch of new
ideas when she returned, and I was quite worn out by some of them. Next time I
spoke to Fee on the phone, I asked her what was going on. "Oh, I've adopted
her", she said. "Uh. So you're, like, my mother in law, kind of?" She gave me
an evil laugh. "You can call me "Mommy".

I also noticed that the island cuisine seemed to have changed; curry was now
on the menu pretty much every day, and it wasn't the gunk you get in a tin,
either. There were some very interesting combinations appearing.

And then one day, she was sitting on the carpet playing some game involving
stacking cups and balls with the babies, when suddenly, she vanished. And my
phone rang. "Duncan, there's a flight of a couple of dozen airplanes, US
markings, heading straight for the island. I don't like the look of this, I'm
going to see what they're up to." "Be careful," I said, unnecessarily. "On my
way now," she replied. "Oh, they're firing missiles at me. That's not nice."
"Shoot the missiles down, love." "No need, I'll just mud the airplanes up, so
they can't see where they're shooting." "But then they won't be able to fly,
they'll crash." "No they won't, they'll go to night flying, they'll be able to
get back to base. They just won't be able to direct their missiles at me. Oh!"
"What is it?" "Oh! That's very not nice." "What, what?" "One of them has a
nuke. No, wait." "What's happening? Wendy, get out of there, quick." "My
mistake." "Oh, thank heavens" "It isn't one of them, it's three of them."
"Wendy, get the hell out of there, they aren't playing games." "No, but I am.
OK, buster, you're tagged." "Wendy." "Hush, Duncan, it's OK." "Wendy!!" "Oh!"
"What happened?" "Oh! That's stupid!" "What happened, what happened?"

It was so frustrating not being able to see what was happening, and Wendy
wasn't giving much priority to keeping me informed. Well, I suppose in a
combat situation like this, she has to move so fast, there isn't time to ask
me stuff.

"I was just about to mud Rammer, and he hit the detonate button. What an
idiot!" "He exploded the nuke?" "Yes!" "Wendy!!" "I mean, he tried to, I
already fried the wiring, so it wouldn't go off. But if he'd succeeded, he'd
have killed himself." "I don't care about him, what about you?" "Oh, I'd have
been OK, they aren't that hot, less than a million degrees. The sun's a lot
hotter in the middle. But he'd have vaporised himself. How stupid! What's he
trying to do, he knows damn well it wouldn't affect me?"

"Uh. Ask him?" "I plan to. First of all, let's confiscate these things, little
boys shouldn't play with matches, they might set fire to themselves."

Nothing much happened for a few hours, and then she called me again. "I took
Rammer back to his base, and broke it up a bit." I imagined a scene of utter
devastation, such as is left behind by a hurricane, an earthquake, or The
Weapon. "And now we're going to have a little chat with the Chief Bozo. He
wants to play Armageddon games with me, I'll see his Armageddon and raise to
an Apocalypse." "Where are you going, Wendy?" "Washington. Me and Rammer are
going to have a nice cosy little chat with the Chief Bozo, on the subject of
"Peace with Honour", and then he's going to kneel at my feet."

She meant that figuratively, I was sure.


Rammer:

We were headed for Washington, and she was not a happy bunny. I was pretty
sure she wasn't going to kill me, because that wasn't her style. But after
seeing what she'd done to the captain of the Constitution and his hopes of a
naval career, and what she'd done to the Colonel (or rather what the army
would do to someone who just lost fourteen nukes). So I kept thinking about
what she could take away from the President of the USA that he loved the most.
And I didn't much like the answers that I kept getting.

And there was worse to come. We were about 20,000 feet up, and cruising at
less than mach one, which was a slow walk for her, and she hit me with the
first punch. "Rammer, he ordered you to throw a nuke at me. He wanted you to
kill me. What do you think I should do to him?"

She seems to find the weakest places with unerring accuracy. She was forcing
me to choose between loyalty to my flag and country, and loyalty to her. So,
why should I feel any loyalty to her? She wasn't in my chain of command, she
wasn't an American. Hell, she wasn't even human. So why did I feel that the
most important thing I could do for humanity, was to help her any way I can?
But at the cost of betrayal of my country? What do you think I am, a traitor?

She turned me round, and I found myself falling into those big blue eyes.
"Rammer?" I don't even have the option not to answer, or rather, if I do keep
silent, then that's taking sides too. "Weapon," I said. She just looked at me.
"Wendy? Please?" She continued looking at me, I felt like maybe my skull is
transparent and she can see what's inside. A silly thought. "No, I can't see
inside," she said, "so anyhow, back to the question, what do you think I
should do?"

I thought some more. Actually, maybe this wasn't the dilemma I'd first
thought. The President isn't the USA, he's just another politician, and
sometimes we get politicians who are crooks, despite their "I am not a crook"
speeches. I'd been nervous about the legality of that order all along, and
knowing that a nuke wouldn't hurt her wasn't the point. The point was, I'd
obeyed an order that I felt, deep down, to be illegal. But if there was a
criminal in this drama, it wasn't my flag, it wasn't my country, it was one
man. And maybe my desire to help Wendy didn't conflict with my patriotism.
"Wendy, he's a politician, and he's got the plum job for politicians. Take
that away from him. Get him impeached by Congress, he'll never be able to run
for office again, he'd lose the election for dog-catcher in Flatbush. He'll be
finished, and it's the worst thing that could happen to him." She nodded.
"Thank you, Rammer. Pretty obvious, really. I don't know why I didn't think of
that for myself."

Which meant, of course, that she had already thought of it, and this whole
thing hadn't been about what she should do, it had been about me, and she was
finding out where I stood on this. And I think I'd made the right choice. For
the first time for the last couple of days, I felt a little bit cleaner.

We flew over Washington, and I had a good view of the USS Constitution and the
traffic gridlock that had brought the whole city to its knees while
politicians wrangled over who should take the blame for deciding to cut it up
for scrap, converting a five billion dollar warship into a few millions worth
of chopped-up steel.

She slowed as we approached the White House.

I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised as half a dozen missiles rose to
meet us. But firing off high explosives over Washington is something I
wouldn't have done. I prayed that they weren't so stupid as to have put nukes
in them.

She pretty much ignored them. And they pretty much ignored here. She wasn't
hot, she didn't reflect much radar, so the missiles just streaked past. They
were also firing off AA guns; shells and plain lead, aimed using the good old
Mark I human eyeball. She didn't bother to evade, she had some sort of
electromagnetic shield out in front of her. She explained to me as we landed
how it worked. "I induce a current in the metal of the projectiles, that
creates a magnetic field. Then I use my own magnetic field to repel that, so
the projectile just reverses direction. I hope those guys are in armoured
turrets, because everything they fire at me is coming straight back to them."

I thought of the brave but hopeless charges of the Polish cavalry against the
German tanks in the opening battles of World War Two. But it wasn't the same;
at least the lancers knew they were embarking on a brave and futile gesture.
"Of course, the shield is only there to protect you, Rammer." Oh, thanks, I
thought.

We descended to near ground level, and flew towards the White House, slowing
as we went. I thought she'd land and we'd walk up to the front door. Then I
thought, no, she's going to crash through a window.

Actually, she smashed in through a wall. I think she was trying to make a
point.

She seemed to know her way around inside. She didn't use the corridors,
though. Or the stairs. She wasn't even flying in a straight line, she was
wandering all over the place, upstairs and downstairs, smashing through walls,
floors and ceilings as she went. I think she was just trying to do maximum
damage to the property, to give them something to think about. After smashing
through dozens of internal walls, she finally landed in the office of the
President.

She dumped me on the floor and I tried to make myself invisible as she threw
his magnificent desk through the picture window, while the Presidential
bodyguard wasted a few dozen bullets.

Then she stopped, hovered in midair with her arms akimbo, hands on hips, and
glared at him. "Bozo," she said. He looked up at her. "Bozo," she repeated.
They stared at each other for a little while, then he looked away. "You tried
to kill me," she said, very quietly.

"You, you. It isn't ... You're not human, you're not even alive. It wasn't
killing, it was decommissioning a machine."

"You tried to kill me," she repeated, almost whispering now.

There was a long silence.

"And now you're going to pay," she said in that same quiet voice, "get your
stupid Cabinet together, you've got a tough job coming up, and you'll want to
share the responsibility. I'll be back in one hour, be ready. Here."

She almost flew out of the shattered window, up into the sky, and I couldn't
see her any more. I say almost; she missed the window by a few yards, and
smashed another wall down. I didn't think it was an accident.

The President shuddered, shook himself, and yelled for his Chief of Staff.
"Robert, get your ass in here." There was a flurry of activity; senior Cabinet
members started to filter in, sitting in folding chairs as the President
brought them up to date. "What does she want?" asked one of them. "I don't
know yet," he said, "but it won't be something we'll like." I knew what she
would be demanding, and it certainly wasn't. I kept my mouth shut, though.
They shoot the bearers of bad news. And anyway, I really couldn't imagine what
she'd offer as the worse alternative.

I didn't have to wait long. She flew back in through the window, and stood in
the middle of the room. She was holding a baby in one arm; her other hand held
something that I was very unhappy to recognise. "I have confiscated seventeen
nuclear warheads. You boys are too irresponsible to be allowed to play with
matches. Here's one of them back," and she tossed it casually to the floor.

Everyone flinched, including me. It's one thing to know intellectually that
she isn't going to kill you, it's another thing to see a 25,000 kiloton bomb
tossed onto a Persian carpet. I glanced round the room, and it looked like
everyone was holding their breath. "That's the one you tried to kill me with,"
she continued. She was stroking the baby's head now with her free hand. The
baby was crying, she was trying to soothe it. "Teething," she explained. I
don't think anyone was interested, they were all staring at the bomb. "I'm
giving you this one back, because I've taken the guts out of it, you won't be
able to light it off." The sound of breathing became audible around the room.
Someone blew his nose.

She pulled a piece of paper out of her cape, and put it in front of the
President. "You're all going to sign this, and you," pointing her finger at
the President, "will sign it first."

He looked down at it. "But, but. But this is a surrender document." "Right,
bozo. It's the same words that the Japanese signed on the USS Missouri. I
reckon if it was good enough then, it's good enough now. Just put your name to
this, and we can all go home and play with our children." He looked up at her.
"I can't sign this." "Sure you can, bozo, just write your name on the dotted
line, I'll help you spell it if you have a problem." "But I can't, it would
be, be." "Treasonous," suggested one of the men in the room. He nodded.

"Look, honey," she explained, "I don't want anything from you, I just want you
to leave me alone. Me and my babies, just back off and leave us be. We aren't
doing anything out in our island that causes you a problem, but you come
crashing in with ships and bombs, you expect me to just roll over and let you
tickle my tummy? Now you sign that surrender like a good baby, or else."

"Or else what?" asked the Secretary of Defence. I shut my eyes. "Don't ask,
don't ask, just do what she wants," I thought. She turned to look at him.
"Well, I could confiscate the rest of your nukes. I count 13,267 altogether.
You'd be a bit defenceless without them." His face went pale. "Um, and I
suppose I'd have to confiscate all the nuclear powered carriers and subs." He
went a whiter shade of pale. "Trouble is, a year or two from now you'll have
built a whole bunch more, so that it's not really that effective."

There was a long pause. She stood in the middle of the room, hovering several
inches off the ground, and started to feed the baby. "Sign the damn thing," I
thought, "don't mess with her." But I didn't dare say it aloud.

She looked up. "I know," she said. "Sign it, or I'll switch off the sun." A
couple of them laughed. I didn't find it funny in the slightest. The President
frowned. "You can't do that," he said. She stared at him, her basilisk stare,
her face impassive, poker-straight. "Watch this," she said, and flew out of
the window again.

I couldn't keep silent any longer. "Mr President," I said, and everyone looked
at me. My throat dried up, I couldn't continue. "Who are you," he asked. "I'm
the pilot who delivered the nuclear weapon that was intended to kill her."
"What have you got to say, son?" he asked.

"Uh, um. Just that, if she says she can do something, then she can, don't
think about how impossible it is, just assume she can do whatever she says she
can do. And it might not be too good an idea to challenge her on this."

And then it went dark.