The Nonrich commander: green blouse, tan slacks. Crewcut: Bruce Lee tee shirt (Be as water; it was Milo Jetstream’s shirt; he’d be pissed) and basic jeans. Three nondescript people in an increasingly nondescript city, but then, all cities were becoming nondescript cookie cutters of the same bistros, the same downtown condos, the same faux “authentic” rented art. Pockets of personality dwindled.
Thoom and Nonrich grew.
“You’re assuming we know,” said Sharon, scanning all the concrete before her.
“Oh, I know you know,” said Desiree.
“We’re just grunts,” said Sharon.
“Which is how I know you know. Nobody peeps, talks, or whispers more than a grunt. Particularly high-paid grunts. I can appreciate passive bids for self-preservation, but my guess,” said Desiree, indicating with a circling finger the hotel district catching blustery breezes off the Charles River, “is we’re likely within two blocks of one right now.”
The Nonrich nuts didn’t know Neon followed a block off.
Desiree’d been in Boston many times, had even dined with the Battle Ready Bastards and Carly Simon on the nearby Vineyard, but never on a mission. She wasn’t sure this was entirely a mission. She wasn’t even sure what a mission was anymore. Was it a constant unease to be acknowledged at a moment’s notice? Was it meant to knock on a door and be invited as needed? Did it provide safety? It didn’t feel possible to trust in that. Felt like these days, everything had to be protected.
There may never be a Water’s Edge Rest Home, part of her felt, but was smart enough not to articulate at just that moment. Desiree Quicho remained focused, she was frosty, she had things to do. Any one of those buildings could—and probably did—contain unspeakable evils: people addicted to profit; people unironically saying “synergy”; people clocking other people’s bathroom time.
The exact opposite of Babel. Towering people understood things in Babel.
The Commonwealth of Babble, not so much.
She knew Keita, despite repairing three things at once, had a tech pad strapped to her arm, tracking her captain’s progress. She knew Neon trailed her.
Desiree Sandrine Quicho marched into downtown Beantown like she hadn’t a worry in the world.
“Let’s do this,” she said.
The first building was a squat apartment complex. Very upscale, especially considering it was directly across the street from a major hotel-slash-conference center. It let people know it was upscale by the residents airing their dispirited dogs on the concrete sidewalk in front of it without once saying hi to anyone. Plus, an electronic fob was needed to enter, which Desiree easily overrode (not everything in every criminal lair was high-security). The complex kept high-end dog treats in a clean, clear cylinder atop a concrete side table inside the vestibule. Directly past the vestibule, the elevators to the right, a small sitting area to the left. Faux fireplace. Seagrass wallpaper. A piece of abstract wall art that looked very violent in its intentions.
Sharon identified the building by the tint of its glass. It wasn’t especially unique. Matter of fact, it matched that of the other two buildings flanking it, one a row of small shoppes, the other a large, upscale market.
“Seriously?” Desiree’d said when shown how the trick was performed.
“Not always,” said Sharon. “I happen to know this is particular to Boston. They like to fancy shit up. Middle-child protocols.”
More aggressively banal interior art confirmed it.
“Everybody in here is Nonrich?” said Desiree.
“Like they’re gonna let some generic hipster get this prime real estate?” scoffed Sharon. “Have a seat.”
Desiree sat. Truman sat. Sharon went to the elevator and waited. It dinged; a harried man with perfect hair exited, nearly chest-bumping her as she’d positioned herself for maximum inconvenience, an intense look of self-absorbed annoyance on her face.
“Oop, I’m sorry,” she said. “Fucking Thoom.”
“I feel you,” he said. “No problem.”
He left. With things triply confirmed, Sharon returned to Desiree. Desiree, sitting propped with her hands behind her, slid a wafer-thin disc she’d palmed well before entering the building deep into the couch cushions. The makeup she wore was specifically designed to trick facial recognition; even still, she avoided looking directly at the obvious cameras as well as the sightlines of the less-obvious ones.
They left.
“I want a business center next,” said Desiree.
“What’d you just do?” asked Truman.
“Bounced every outgoing piece of data they’ve got to Anonymous,” said Desiree.
“That looked like Thoom tech,” he said.
“It is.”
When they returned to the ship, Desiree reported how remarkably well behaved her informants were, Neon let on that she’d only thought to shoot them once, and Keita asked could they please sail to a safe harbor and the comforts of ridiculously esoteric yet necessary tools.
“Also, I think some of that Boston water touched my labia. I need a deep cleanse.”
There wasn’t a captain alive that could deny that request.
Deep in the Sahara, it blinked again. Not so much blinked but blinked out. Not entirely. Po-Sib-Lay knew wavers, mirages, and several unnamed strains of illusions. This was no ordinary blink. This was the blink of something awakening to new things.
Po asked Tash-Bon-Nay’s counsel. It blinked on schedule. Both elves, long fingers poised over laptops to record any thoughts or impressions—and video—that might prove important, knew life when they sensed it. This thing, this “Bilomatic Entrance,” breathed in concert with the universal, not the terrestrial. It not only breathed, it watched, which was noteworthy in the extreme.
It had yet to speak. Once it made a request, they’d contact the captain and Keita.
The captain and Keita throttled the Ann into a safe port in Hockomock Swamp land. Of no commercial value to anyone, so no one poked around, and deep enough in the thick that not even fishermen or the area’s many cryptid hunters—an area that had gotten the name “Bridgewater Triangle” after Bigfoot had done some highly frowned-upon and slightly forbidden dimension jumping, spotted one moment by an intrepid explorer with a Polaroid, gone the next—bothered losing pints of blood to the large and hungry insect life patrolling in incessant, thick clouds.
Each crew member was outfitted in full breach gear, goggles and gloves included, making them look like bedecked scuba divers clueless that water was all around. They hadn’t donned breathing gear as yet, but fine mesh covered their mouths for speaking.
It was a given that Neon called them BDSM suits—and she did—but she and everyone else remained silently thankful not to be spitting out bugs or constantly slapping. The informants remained sealed belowdecks.
The Ann traveled a twisting course deeper and deeper, past areas that had once been land bars of growing trees, now looking like nothing so much as flood victims reaching for help, which they were. This area had flooded high nearly a decade ago. Its underwater topography had aided in the water receding but never truly leaving. It looked like every bog monster’s dream of dead trees, fetid water, inhospitable wildlife, and enough humidity to smother the infirm; after another few miles of unhurried turns, it became Aquabase Five Four, otherwise known as Parallel Park—Neon again—for the way Desiree had to maneuver into port between two huge floating garages, one fore, one aft.
The area was camouflaged physically via netting and reflective surfaces, a hologram or two, and enough shielding to confound even a dolphin’s echolocation.
The area also emitted a slight no-see-um field that bitey bugs dared not cross.
No one had love for calamine lotion.
Parallel Park wasn’t staffed, but there was no shortage of tools and bots to assist in quick, non-shoddy repairs, particularly with all hands on deck helping.
“Do we leave them below?” asked Keita.
Desiree grunted. “Bring ’em out
when it’s time for sweat work.”
“Aye aye.” Keita bounded off for whatever hyperspanner or other exceedingly technical bullshit she needed to make sweet repair love to the Ann’s deck, sides, and hull. She’d already told Desiree to give her no less than four days.
Four days in a swamp.
The joy did not stop.
7
What’s in A Name?
Not very many people strode anymore. You needed a certain authority, knack, and willingness to run mofos off the rails to get a proper “strode” on. Megu had all that. Open lanes of foot traffic automatically formed for her; the hallways at this late hour were sparsely populated anyway, but those whose life paths were so unfortunate as to cross hers at the exact juncture of a prime Hashira stride had reason to reflect on their karma.
She’d called Maurice twice. He hadn’t answered. This meant he was somewhere plotting and would invariably interrupt her work at some critical juncture—and in the scientific pursuits of Hashira Megu, a moment choosing the right-sized paper clip was a critical juncture.
Those who tolerated sundered junctures had way too much patience for their fellow Man.
One of Maurice’s functionaries, treated to the life-altering experience of a Hashira Megu interrogation, pointed Megu to Maurice’s location: her lab, of all places.
He was probably in there, touching things.
The stride: absolutely epic.
When she got to her lab, he was at her primary workstation—which contained a number of Megu-specific things—in her chair, his manicured fingers arrested midair over a saucer-sized disc surrounded by eight equidistant magnetic arrays.
“This doesn’t look like a teleporter,” he said.
“It isn’t. You wanted to feel what it feels like to ignore my calls? Out of my seat and out of my lab, husband.”
“I’ve reports that things are escalating,” said Maurice, not yet vacating the spot.
“Everything I do is connected. What you are looking at”—she came around to her chair, physical presence nudging him up and away—“is biomaterial that feeds off magnetic waves.”
“How do I use that?”
“I’ll let you know when I’ve determined it.”
He looked at her for a moment and remembered that he’d loved her for many reasons…but he now had several billions of dollars on this desk alone of immediate concerns. The money itself was a trifle. The connections it fostered were priceless. In that sense, he and the genius with grey temples before him remained an unbeatable team; both used connections to ferret out life’s deeper leanings. She, however, had decided on the universe; he focused his sights no farther than Mars.
“I will also remind you with no joy in my voice at all,” Megu continued, “that you allowed the Bilomatic Entrance to be stolen in the first place. You said the moon was secure.”
“I didn’t allow it.” The entire staff comprising the “lapsed security” floated in space as ungainly debris. “Any more than you allowed this device to be created with specifications only in your head or on ghost drives.”
“My methods were necessary,” she defended.
“So are mine,” said Maurice. “Megu, we move a step closer to collapsing nations.”
“And defeating Jetstreams?”
“That was that other fool’s plan. Fanciful vendettas are an idiot’s pastime.”
“Says a man ejecting ninjas into space,” said Megu.
“Why did you call me?”
“Why did you ignore my calls?”
“I was studying your office in need of a clue as to what’s going on in your mind.”
“You could always ask me, Maurice. Had you taken up that hobby, we might still be married.”
“I am not smart enough to contain the interests of Hashira Megu. No one is.”
“You were not smart enough,” she corrected, “to maintain your sense of play.”
“Play?” he scoffed. “When do you play?”
“All the time.” Sadness had entered her eyes.
She didn’t feel she needed her soul. But what if her soul needed her?
It was generally accepted among Thoom that an in-house precept of every day being a good day was benign enough to benefit all Thoom, from the top echelons to the lowliest on-call tech. Lately, it didn’t do to stick an echelon head out of a super secure underground bunker.
Cynthia (last name redacted everywhere since the age of thirty-one) regarded her bunker. Fully appointed, water wall in her study, pool boy’s quarters at the farthest wing from her bedroom (it did good to keep him in shape), on-staff chef with access to assorted artisanal cheeses—it was in all respects a superior bunker for a superior person. A far cry from the sterile box in which she’d, for a brief, fulfilling time, kept the false Prophet Buford imprisoned.
What she was not accustomed to were screens and readouts telling her the Thoom were under consistent, concerted all-out attack from every. damn. where. Madam Cynthia was frazzled, and Madam Cynthia’s magnificent coif of red hair had no reason anyone could ever convince her of to ever be frazzled. Denver, Grosse Pointe, Gstaad, Bibbleshire, Boston. Even Nairobi Thoom…and she didn’t think anybody even knew about Nairobi Thoom. Being accosted was nothing new. You didn’t get to be a clandestine organization without annoyances like Buford, Kosugi, Rand Paul, or populace swings against deregulation. You got hit. But you usually knew the why and what of each hit. They were, at most, meant to trip you up in the race, not take you out. With things quickly escalating, however, she had a strong feeling the Thoom were being…persecuted. Even Count Ricky had subtly distanced the support of the Vamphyr over the last several weeks. After Disney and its superhero films had taken over Hollywood—which had previously been Count Ricky’s purview—the Count had adopted a complete fuckboi attitude toward empire. The Vamphyr were fading like the lies they spread about themselves, soon but dust, and not poetic dust, just account executives and marketers.
Communications were being disrupted. Assets assaulted. Sleeper agents, once activated, swiftly and permanently deactivated at unprecedented rates. There were even credible suits filed against a number of Thoom shell entities. Too much happening to pinpoint a single source.
Which somehow definitely meant Jetstreams and their fucking Agents of Change.
Except—and on the screen directly in front of her, an image of a cloning facility being eaten by plasma fire—it didn’t exactly feel like Jetstreams.
“The fuck,” she said, pulling Pool Boy Dooley’s face to stare at the screen, “is happening? What have I missed?”
“Ma’am?”
“Never speak when I’m thinking.”
“I just wanna go back to New York…” He’d had a good job stripping there.
She ignored him, suddenly in no mood for command-center sex.
On another screen: news of several key Thoom stocks plummeting after highly aggressive junk buyouts.
Another: gunfire. Lots of it. Thoom Awe Troops. TAT Squad. TAT Troopers? Moniker seemed to change every week. Apparently helped their morale. She didn’t bother keeping track. Truth be told, there were days she thought True Humans Over Ordinary Man was a bit much, but not on days when she was under all-out attack.
The recording commander threw herself under cover of a metal shipping container raised a foot off the ground by a hi-lo. Nondescript gunfire pocked the ground where her feet had been, throwing debris over her body where it ricocheted to ping off her helmet cam. Cynthia knew that mission. They’d planned to take a Nonrich facility manufacturing orbital satellites as a show of Thoom strength, a quiet, precise, organized to the teeth mission. Nonrich’s dominance in space presented clear threats to Thoom continuance; no way was Cynthia going to give such a danger easy continuance.
They’d been two years planning that mission. Cynthia had even attended some of the meetings herself.
And now? The commander chosen to lead it tucked her muscular frame under a shipping container while Nonrich idiots shot at her.
Correction: shot her.
Cynthia took a deep breath and closed her eyes. When she opened them (this was her willing the world), the screens would show victories, triumphs, and successful mergers, not what was amounting to Jeff Bezos and the False Prophet Buford both sending dick pics, and for the love of God, who hadn’t seen Jeff’s?
But she opened them and saw the world as it was. That concerned her. Her forehead couldn’t properly crinkle because of the injections, but if it could, it would be deep and contemplative right now. It’d be troubled. Concerted efforts came together under a conductor. Buford was out of the picture. Buford’s second-in-command was bold as hell but pinpoint-frugal with that boldness. Disney had the Vamphyr on the run. Kosugi out of Japan tended to ignore world conquest for spurious advances and frikking moon bases, and she had it on very good—albeit currently silenced—authority that Milo and Ramses Jetstream were out of the solar system, which pissed her off no end because the Thoom had yet to develop interstellar travel.
So, who in the unholy hell had a sudden and unexpected ant up their butt about the Thoom?
With defeats and setbacks whirling in front of her, a decision was made. She hadn’t unleashed unholy hell in a while.
She made a secure call in which three words that gave a measure of solace in this maelstrom were spoken.
“Activate the Hellbilly.”
“Florida Man Tries To Use Drone To Stream Aerial Dick Shots,” read Keita from the morning’s internet offerings. “If nothing else, I bless these modern times for their headlines. Imagine Walter Cronkite having to read that with a straight face.”
“Who?” said Neon.
“Seriously, I’m not that much older than you,” said Keita.
“Yes, but you’re smart enough to rearrange my genome while you’re brushing your teeth so I turn into an alpacadile.”
“This is true,” said Keita.
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