The Gordian Protocol Read online

  Table of Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  EPILOGUE

  The Gordian Protocol

  David Weber and Jacob Holo

  NEW STANDALONE NOVEL FROM NEW YORK TIMES BEST-SELLING AUTHOR OF THE HONOR HARRINGTON SERIES, DAVID WEBER

  A Man of Two Worlds

  Doctor Benjamin Schröder was far from a man of action. In fact, he was a history teacher—Chairman of the Castle Rock University history department—and if his life wasn't perfect, it was close. Until, that is the discussion of his star student Elzbietá Abramowski's dissertation on Operation Yellow Brick, the Pacific Allies' invasion of Vladivostok, staged through occupied Japan to meet their Imperial German allies, was brutally interrupted.

  The psychotic episode that turned his entire world upside down struck with absolutely no warning, and it was more terrifying than anything he should have been able to imagine, leaving him with a complete, incredibly detailed set of false, nightmare "memories." Not just of his own life, but of an entire, ghastly world in which Operation Yellow Brick had never happened. In which millions of helpless civilians had been systematically slaughtered in "extermination camps" that were horrific beyond belief. In which there was still a Soviet Union. In which the Chinese Communists had succeeded, the Korean Peninsula had been permanently divided, thousands of nuclear warheads had spread their deadly threat across the entire Earth, and the Middle East was a festering sore of bloodshed, fanaticism, and terrorism.

  The knowledge that those false memories had come from somewhere inside his own psyche was terrible, but with the help of Commander Abramowski, a highly decorated Navy fighter pilot who’d been forced to deal with her own PTSD after crippling combat wounds invalided her out of service, he’s put his life back together. With Elzbietá's support, he's learned to deal with the nightmares, to recognize that they are onlynightmares that can't—and won't—be permitted to rule his life.

  Until, that is, a lunatic named Raibert Kaminski knocks on his door one afternoon with an impossible and horrifying story about alternate realities, time travel, temporal knots, and more than a dozen doomed universes which must inevitably die if the temporal storm front rushing towards the distant future isn't stopped. He has to be lying, of course. Or completely insane. But what if he's not a madman after all? What if he's actually telling the truth?

  That possibility is the most terrifying thing of all. Because if he is, the false memories aren't false after all, and that other world is just as real as the one Schröder has always known. And if that's true, Benjamin Schröder is about to become the greatest mass murderer in human history, because he has to choose. Whether he acts or refuses to act, Benjamin Schröder is the one man who will decide which universe lives and which dies, along with every star system, every galaxy—and every single human being—in it.

  Including the woman he's discovered he loves more than life itself.

  BAEN BOOKS by DAVID WEBER

  HONOR HARRINGTON

  On Basilisk Station • The Honor of the Queen • The Short Victorious War • Field of Dishonor • Flag in Exile • Honor Among Enemies • In Enemy Hands • Echoes of Honor • Ashes of Victory • War of Honor • Crown of Slaves (with Eric Flint) • The Shadow of Saganami • At All Costs • Storm from the Shadows • Torch of Freedom (with Eric Flint) • Mission of Honor • A Rising Thunder • Shadow of Freedom • Cauldron of Ghosts (with Eric Flint) • Shadow of Victory • Uncompromising Honor

  EDITED BY DAVID WEBER: More than Honor • Worlds of Honor • Changer of Worlds • The Service of the Sword • In Fire Forged • Beginnings

  MANTICORE ASCENDANT: A Call to Duty (with Timothy Zahn) • A Call to Arms (with Timothy Zahn & Tom Pope) • A Call to Vengeance (with Timothy Zahn & Tom Pope)

  THE STAR KINGDOM: A Beautiful Friendship • Fire Season (with Jane Lindskold) • Treecat Wars (with Jane Lindskold)

  House of Steel: The Honorverse Companion (with BuNine)

  The Gordian Protocol (with Jacob Holo)

  The Sword of the South

  Empire from the Ashes • Mutineers’ Moon • The Armageddon Inheritance • Heirs of Empire

  Path of the Fury • In Fury Born

  The Apocalypse Troll • The Excalibur Alternative

  Oath of Swords • The War God’s Own • Wind Rider’s Oath • War Maid’s Choice

  Hell’s Gate (with Linda Evans) • Hell Hath No Fury (with Linda Evans) • The Road to Hell (with Joelle Presby)

  With Steve White: Insurrection • Crusade • In Death Ground • The Shiva Option

  With John Ringo: March Upcountry • March to the Sea • March to the Stars • We Few

  With Eric Flint: 1633 • 1634: The Baltic War

  To purchase any of these titles in e-book form, please go to www.baen.com.

  THE GORDIAN PROTOCOL

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by Words of Weber, Inc. & Jacob Holo.

  A Baen Books Original

  Baen Publishing Enterprises P.O. Box 1403

  Riverdale, NY 10471

  www.baen.com

  ISBN: 978-1-4814-8396-4

  Cover art by Dave Seeley

  First printing, May 2019

  Distributed by Simon & Schuster

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: t/k Printed in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Electronic Version by Baen Books www.baen.com

  PROLOGUE

  Alexandria

  30 BCE

  “You, my friend, have had too much cheap wine,” Homeros the Baker said slowly and with great precision, bracing himself upright—as unobtrusively as possible—against the statue of some no doubt once-important noble.

  “No,” Asklepiades, who owned the pastry shop next to Homeros’ bakery, replied after careful consideration. “I have not had too much cheap wine. I would say”—he paused to belch noisily—“that I have, in fact, had almost exactly the right amount. And it wasn’t all that cheap, now that I think about it,” he added owlishly.

  “Well, it was better than the swill Lysippos normally gives us,” Homeros pointed out. “And a man doesn’t celebrate the birth of his third son every day.”

  “And if you come home
stinking of wine and”—Asklepiades paused to sniff loudly—“puke and piss, if I’m not mistaken, Kleopha is going to turn her third son into a fatherless waif. Probably with the dullest knife she can find.” He considered that for a moment, then nodded gravely. “And probably as slowly as possible.”

  “It’s not my puke!” Homeros protested. “It was that stupid Cypriot. I should have broken his head for him. A sailor who can’t hold his drink shouldn’t drink.”

  “You didn’t break his head for him because he had six of his friends at the table with him. And do you really think Kleopha’s going to believe that?”

  “I rule my house with a rod of iron!” Homeros’ grand pronouncement was rather undermined by the sway—one would not have cared to call it a stagger—as he waved his right hand in punctuation.

  Asklepiades snorted.

  “The only rod of iron in your house is the rolling pin Kleopha’s about to apply to your skull. Repeatedly,” he informed his friend.

  “Ah!” Homeros grinned at him and laid one finger aside his nose. “But only if she sees me like this.”

  “Smells you, you mean!”

  “Same thing, same thing.” Homeros made a brushing away gesture. “And she won’t. I’m going to sneak in the back way and sleep in the shop tonight. The baby’ll keep me up all night if I don’t, anyway. Then, in the morning, I’ll make a quick trip to the baths.”

  “And she’ll cut off your balls with a paring knife if you stay out all night.”

  “Nonsense.” Homeros chuckled. “I slept in the shop because you kept me out so late I was certain she’d be sound asleep by the time I got home. And I know how little sleep the baby’s letting her get. So I didn’t want to disturb her. And,” he added triumphantly as Asklepiades looked at him skeptically, “I shall redeem myself by not only smelling fresh and clean but appearing armed with one of your meat pastries for her breakfast because I love her so.”

  “Ha! I’ll admit, that’s cleverer than you usually manage, especially when we’re both drunk. But it still won’t work, because—”

  “Jupiter Optimus!”

  Asklepiades jumped in astonishment, then whipped around to see what his friend was staring at. Whatever it was, it had turned Homeros pale as a ghost. Asklepiades had never seen Homeros look that way, but, as he spun about, he felt his own jaw drop in terror-tinged disbelief.

  The brilliant…shapes sweeping in across the harbor of Alexandria blazed against the night sky like Zeus’ own lightning bolts. The lantern atop the mighty lighthouse was scarcely an ember in comparison, and they moved with terrifying speed across the long mole connecting the island of Pharos to the city. Their brilliance reflected in the glassy waters of the Great Harbor east of the mole, and he fell to his knees in shock as they sped silently overhead.

  His head turned, tracking their passage, and his eyes widened as they swooped past the Serapeum and headed directly toward the Great Library. They were slowing, altering course, spreading out like the petals of some enormous flower. And then, they weren’t moving at all. Six of them simply…floated there in midair, spaced equidistantly in a ring around the library campus. But four more of them—the largest of the lot—didn’t float in the air. They settled downward, landing on the campus. From their apparent size, they must be crushing statuary, ornamental trees and gardens, and gods only knew what else under them as they came down.

  Alarms began to sound all across the sleeping city as it awakened to the celestial visitation, and Asklepiades felt his lips moving in silent prayer to every deity and demigod he could think of.

  And that was when he heard the first screams, the first shattering bursts of sound, and saw the terrible flashes of light bursting across the city streets and the grounds of the Royal Palace.

  Somehow, he doubted Kleopha would find the time to berate her wayward husband after all.

  *

  “How tall is that thing?” Kai-shwun McGuire asked, tipping back in his command chair and looking at the magnified image of the great three-tiered tower on the island in the harbor. The lowest section was square, the next was octagonal, and the uppermost was circular. A fire burned before the polished mirror at its apex, and it was visible at a surprising distance, given the primitive nature of the illumination.

  “Really have to ask one of the docs if you want a hard number,” Lydia Robles, his copilot and weaponeer told him. “I’m sure one of them’ll be just delighted to give you all the details. From here”—she checked one of her displays—“looks like it’s close to a hundred and forty meters or so, give or take.” She shrugged. “It’s impressive looking, I suppose, under the circumstances. Hate to build the bastard without counter-grav, myself.”

  “Yeah.” McGuire nodded, then brought his chair back upright. “Got some movement. Looks like some kind of city guard headed toward the target.”

  “On it,” Robles replied, and her brown eyes had gone slightly unfocused as she communed with the TTV’s onboard systems through her wetware implants.

  Unlike most of the Antiquities Rescue Trust’s security teams, neither she nor McGuire had acquired abstract companions. It wasn’t that she had anything against connectomes, whether they’d once been flesh and blood or were completely artificial constructs. She’d just never felt the need for one, and she was only fifty-six. There was plenty of time for her to find one among the abstract citizens she’d met…if she decided she needed one. At the moment, though, Kai-shwun made about as satisfying a companion as she could imagine. She’d tried the virtual sex route a couple of times, and they were right: it was almost impossible to tell the difference. Except that she knew it was artificial even while her nerves were being convinced it wasn’t, and she supposed she was some kind of throwback, because she vastly preferred the real thing.

  She snorted, amused by the way her mind wandered—and to where—at moments like this.

  “Got any idea who sent them?” she murmured as the tracking systems came online and the TTV’s weapons slewed obediently to follow the armed and armored men marching purposefully, bravely, and incredibly stupidly toward the Library from the Royal Palace proper.

  “God only knows, and He ain’t talking.” McGuire shrugged. “Probably whoever’s in charge of the palace. Whoever the hell that is!”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Robles said a bit more loudly. “Damn, wish I’d paid more attention to the briefing. I can’t quite remember . . .” She snapped her fingers suddenly. “Cleopatra! That’s who they said it was.”

  “And who was Cleopatra?” McGuire demanded.

  “Damned if I know. I just hate forgetting names. Seems, I don’t know…unprofessional I guess.”

  “Well you better get your professional on,” he told her. “Those guys are going to cross the zone in about another five seconds.”

  “No they aren’t,” she told him with a chuckle, and activated the fire command.

  The revolving cannon was only one of the TTV’s weapons, and it was certainly the most conceptually ancient. It was also the noisiest, which was the main reason she’d selected it. Personally, she didn’t care how many indigenes got blown away on one of these missions, but some of the academics were a little more squeamish than she was. She didn’t understand why, exactly. She’d seen VRs which were a lot bloodier than anything the academics ever saw. Well, out here on the perimeter, anyway. It could get…messy with the smash-and-grab teams closer in, she supposed. Still, that wasn’t her problem and she was perfectly willing to defer to the tender sensibilities of the hothouse flowers who paid the freight. From her perspective, dead was dead, but if they wanted deterrence rather than destruction, she’d give it to them, as long as her own rosy posterior wasn’t in the line of fire if she didn’t, and very few things in life had as much deterrence as the cannon. It made a lot of noise when it fired, every tenth round was a tracer, and the kinetic impacts when four thousand rounds per minute hit the target were pretty impressive. Even the stupidest local figured out real quick that he didn’t want to tangle
with that!

  Of course, before they can figure it out, you have to give them an illustration, she reminded herself.

  *

  Perikles Petrakis watched from the palace window as Captain Hermagoros led the royal guard detachment toward the Library. Hermagoros was a braver man than Perikles. More to the point, he had the duty tonight, thank all the gods! Although exactly what he and his men were going to accomplish—

  A night already turned to chaos and terror by the glaring lights floating in Alexandria’s skies splintered suddenly into even greater terror as Jupiter Toton’s own lightnings erupted from the nearest light. It was a single, glaring, brilliant line, stretched down from the floating thing like a bar of fire, and where it touched, the earth itself exploded in threshed, shredded ruin.

  And so did Captain Hermagoros and his entire guard detachment. They simply…disintegrated into bits and pieces in a concentrated tornado of inconceivable violence.

  *

  “Think they got the message?” Robles asked, opening her eyes again to grin at her partner.

  “Question is if anyone was watching,” McGuire replied a bit sourly.

  “Oh, they were watching!” she assured him. “Reason I like that gun so much. Can’t miss it the way you might a laser. More efficient in atmosphere, for that matter. And it sure is spectacular.”