by Brandt Legg
“Fye!” he shouted, as he flew over her head. Positioning above the water twelve meters ahead of her, Grandyn scanned the area for more grunges. All clear, but then he spotted something more terrifying than the AOI.
The river disappeared twenty meters beyond him. The raging waters were about to be sucked underground. Grandyn then remembered where they were.
The entire Rogue entered a maze of ancient subterranean lava tubes and didn’t emerge for more than eighty meters. No one had ever lived through the underground flow. It was impossible to survive. If he missed her this time, there would not be another chance.
He wrapped his legs tight, flexed his fingers, and took a deep breath. “Focus TreeRunner,” he told himself. “Focus.”
The river was at its wildest now. Fye spun and fought to keep pointed toward him. At the same time, the suction of the lava tubes threatened to pull her under. She had to kick fast to remain buoyant.
“I’m going to get you!” he yelled as water spit all around him. With the booming, thrashing fury of the river funneling down, she could not hear him, but she was ready.
At the last second, he had to move the AirSlider as the current took her a meter to his left, but he did it, and they managed to lock their hands around each other’s wrists in a split second of triumph.
“It’s pulling me!” she yelled, but he could hardly hear. As she went under the AirSlider, it rolled him over, and suddenly he was in the river.
“Torg!”
Miraculously, they still had each other. Grandyn saw a final hope and pulled his right hand away from her to grab an overhanging branch, part of a long-dead tree which had wedged itself between two massive stone slabs. As the lava tubes pulled at them, his hand slipped from the branch, but he caught another.
It broke.
His arm crashed through another before squeezing hard around one almost too thick to grip. The branch was so smooth and slick that he didn’t think he could hold on much longer. Fye was still on his left arm, but the pressure of the current and suction of the lava tubes were tremendous.
“Arrrrgh,” he gritted. The roar of the water was explosive.
“Grandyn, let me go!” she screamed, but it sounded thin, buried by the rushing water.
“Never!”
“If you don’t, we’ll both go in! Please, Grandyn, save yourself!”
“Not. Letting. Go!”
“Help!” a voice suddenly shouted. The AOI grunge Grandyn had knocked in sailed quickly past, kicking and yelling for help. Seconds later he was sucked under and vanished into the lava tubes.
The thundering surge had numbed his hearing, pummeled his thoughts. Grandyn’s arms burned, but he couldn’t think of anything other than holding on.
“Let me go.”
“No!”
“Hey! Hey!” someone shouted.
It took Grandyn a second to realize it wasn’t Fye. The noise made it difficult to tell where it was coming from – the equivalent of a baby crying on a battlefield – but then he spotted the source.
Two hikers were yelling from the shore. “Hey! Grab this,” one shouted, as they stood on a solid, level spot of prehistoric lava flow just ahead of the river’s sink into the tubes. They held a long pole, actually a fallen sapling. “Can you get it?” They pushed it as close to Fye as they could without falling into the water themselves. Grandyn strained to hear above the pounding rapids.
Fye, barely cognizant, looked around, confused.
“Grab it!” Grandyn yelled. “Behind you!”
Another couple ran toward the two men with the pole. One of them held onto an oak tree while his female companion locked arms with the first two so they could stretch the pole farther out.
Fye turned and saw the pole. She might be able to get it. She looked back at Grandyn, terrified. He knew she was scared. If she didn’t catch their pole, letting go meant instant death. But he was about to lose his grip. Not much strength remained in his muscles.
“On three,” he yelled, “grab that pole!”
She nodded, unsure.
“One. Two. Three!”
He let go.
She grasped wildly at the pole with both hands as the river pulled her away. The hikers painfully stretched and leaned an extra two centimeters, pushing the pole at her. Miraculously, she caught it. The four hikers leveraged their legs and pulled with their combined power, that was almost not enough, against the force of the suction, but as they got her closer to shore she was able to get a foot onto a rock and push toward them. She landed in a pile with the first two hikers, crashing onto the rocky ground.
Grandyn hadn’t seen her make it. The instant they separated, he used the momentum to propel himself around onto the wedged tree. It was so slimy and wet that he slipped back into the river, but slowly, he again made his way up the huge log until he was able to climb onto one of the rocks and make his way to the top of the cliff. From there, it took another several minutes before he could get down to Fye.
He fell breathlessly into her trembling arms. Cold, soaked, and shivering, but alive, they savored the embrace until he realized Fye was shaking too much. That’s when he discovered their four rescuers were not just hikers.
Chapter 38 - Book 3
Drast and Osc drove the LEV as far as they could. There were almost no other vehicles on the road, but more drones than usual in the air. They’d taken the INU, and were concerned about how hard hit the area they were trying to get to had been. But there was nowhere else to go.
The few routes that existed toward the east led to thousands of kilometers of open country. To the north was the long route to Alaska, with good places to hide up there, but they weren’t interested in hiding. To the west was the ocean, a great way to travel, but without a good, fast boat, or anything that floated, it was not an option. South was the only choice, and the way to Chelle and Drast’s revolution strategies, as they had long prepared for rebel attacks in dozens of western cities in the Pacyfik region.
Prison had given him something that had been rare in his life as AOI Regional head; time to think and plan, and Drast had a list of ideas about how to win this war.
They cruised along as fast as the LEV was capable of going, which in that area was one hundred-thirty kilometers per hour. Osc knew there was a way to override the controls and force it to exceed the safe speed limit, but he would need a code breaker program, which he didn’t have. There hadn’t been any checkpoints, nor even low flyovers. They were feeling optimistic about their chances until, just outside Vancouver, the road became pitted with too many craters to proceed.
“Look at that,” Osc said.
Drast looked out Osc’s window and saw the very clear footprint of a Sonic-bomb, or probably several. He’d never seen the aftermath in person. The weapon had never been used on populated areas. Weapons manufacturers, in partnership with the AOI, developed the city-leveling ordnance sometime during the prior twenty years, but the images he’d seen yesterday and that morning on the Field did not prepare him for the stark reality: miles of rubble, most pieces no bigger than a small refrigerator.
Total lifelessness.
“Why on earth would a peaceful government, with no external enemies, create such a weapon?” Osc asked.
Drast had seen the plans during his time in the AOI. As the fourth most senior official in the agency, after the Chief and the heads of the Aylantik and Chiantik regions, he’d sat in on many meetings devoted to reviewing strategies that would be used to beat back any uprisings.
“The world is large,” Drast explained. “The Aylantik had held together a fragile peace for long enough to know that there were many diverse factions remaining in the world. And with each year, farther removed from the Banoff, it became more likely that one of those factions would revolt.” He looked across at the massive damage to a once great city. “They did a good job of squashing every potential threat they saw, but as the Banoff faded beyond any living person’s memory, the numbers grew too great. They needed weapons capabl
e of . . . shock and awe.”
He got out of the LEV and stared at the moonscape of destruction, wondering how many had died. How many of those that did had no idea that something like a revolutionary plot even existed?
Osc climbed out of the LEV. “What now?”
“We walk.” He checked his lasershod. “The AOI has already done their best here. We shouldn’t have any trouble.”
Twenty-five minutes later, after walking along the shoulder of the damaged interstate highway, they reached the bombed-out zone of the city. A warm breeze made the sun’s glare even more intense as they picked their way through the wasteland. Much of it felt like walking on dark gray, gritty talcum powder. There were hundreds of bodies, but he knew that tens of thousands more lay buried under the rubble. There were no rescue efforts. Sonic-bombs left no survivors, and even if someone had miraculously lived, the people in parts of Vancouver that had been spared were too terrified to venture into what they were already calling a “dead zone.”
But Drast and Osc saw no evidence that anyone had been issued a miracle.
As they stumbled through, mostly in silence, dusty and hot, Drast asked Osc about Chelle.
“Your mother is beautiful. Why didn’t she find someone to marry who had bearing rights?”
“She didn’t know anyone, and you know the Aylantik takes any child born within the first six months of marriage.”
Drast nodded. He felt bad about pressing Osc. It had to be painful not to have been raised by his mother, especially one as dynamic as Chelle. He thought of Grandyn losing his mother, another strong woman, to the revolution. Drast knew Chelle didn’t believe in abortion, especially the PharmaForce ones, as the only legal abortions were done with drugs. He wanted to ask who the father was and who had raised Osc, but he’d pried enough into the private and painful affairs of the man who had saved his life.
“What if we can’t get through?” Osc asked, worried they would both be dead by the end of the day. There was no fear of going to an AOI prison anymore. He could see what the AOI was doing with their problems. They were at the edge of the dead zone. Aside from a few crumbling buildings on the outlying section, a near perfect line delineated the safe area from the end of the world.
“Efficient, aren’t they?” Drast mumbled. “We’ll get through.”
No explanation, no contingency plan, no plan at all. Osc wished they’d stayed back in the safe house. He didn’t feel any better once they entered the “standing” city. The streets were deserted, and he half expected to see zombies crawling out of the storm drains. All day, he’d felt like he was in one of the end-of-the-world movies, and that was when they were in places where people weren’t supposed to be, but Vancouver had a population of nearly nine hundred thousand. If even a third of them were killed in the Sonic-bombs, there should be more than half a million people wandering around, working, shopping, whatever.
But they were all hiding. He could feel their eyes upon him as they moved briskly through empty streets, past vacant shops and restaurants. Drast, on a mission, pushed ahead at nearly a jog, knowing exactly where he was headed.
After ten or twelve blocks, without seeing an AOI patrol, even in the air, Osc thought they might make it. Drast had stopped once to check the map on the INU, and after that they began to cut through alleys and narrower streets.
“We’re getting closer,” Drast said as he sped up.
Osc was amazed at how much stamina Drast possessed. He’d always been a top performer with AOI fitness regimens, and he’d kept up his exercise in prison. Drast always knew he’d have to survive in the rough during the revolution.
They passed another abandoned LEV just as its windshield exploded. Drast dove into a doorway. Osc hit the pavement behind another LEV. More shots came, one only millimeters from Osc’s head.
“There they are!” someone shouted.
Osc heard footsteps and knew he was about to be captured.
Damned Drast, he thought, we never should have left the safe house. Then he remembered everything they had seen. No one is going to “capture” me . . . I’m a dead man.
Chapter 39 - Book 3
Blaise struggled for hours developing the system needed to listen to, and ultimately control, the Trapciers. There were constant interruptions and complications. The biggest was the continuous escalation of the war. He worked with two trusted assistants, a brilliant husband and wife team who had been with him for more than twenty years. Normally, their main objective was digging into corporate reporting and personnel to find useful and saleable information, but their real talent came after the acquisition of that data. They had a way of fitting it with other material and making it into a strategic package that buyers could not resist.
“I am amazed that the Chief is pushing this much,” Blaise said to them.
“According to the war models we just ran through DesTIn, she has already surpassed a controllable level,” the woman said.
“The Chief is taking a big chance. If PAWN begins to fight back, we could be looking at an extinction event,” the man added.
“PAWN is going to fight back,” Blaise said. “They are well hidden, and the Chief’s ‘carpet bombing’ technique isn’t getting to their core. She can’t find them, and instead of helping, the Imps are advising her under their own agenda.”
“Mis-advising her is more accurate,” the woman mused.
“Yes,” Blaise replied. “I need you two to develop a plan.” He looked at them as he did when he was about to say something extremely important and equally confidential. “We need to assassinate the AOI Chief, and we need to do it in the next thirty-six hours.”
They nodded, thinking it was an impossible task, but knowing Blaise knew even better than they that it was impossible. But they’d learned that there were ways, even if it was only a single obscure and very difficult path through to an insurmountable problem. Blaise had taught them that many times, and they had proven it back to themselves and him many more.
Instead of protesting or listing the obstacles, the two of them began imagining what they would need to achieve it. “Her schedule, her whereabouts?” the man asked.
“Lance Miner has promised that information.”
The man’s eyes widened. He knew Miner to be a staunch AOI alley, but war does funny things to alliances. The woman had followed the news more closely, and knew that the Chief was using P-Force as a scapegoat.
“The Chief isn’t just trying to restore peace,” the woman said. “She’s trying to exterminate all future opposition to the Aylantik, as well as consolidating her power within the government. She wants to be World Premier.”
“She wants to be dictator,” Blaise corrected.
“We’ll have a plan by the morning,” the man said hopefully.
“I need it in six hours,” Blaise pressed. “At least a preliminary draft. Our time window will be limited. I’ll forward the information from Miner as soon as it comes in.”
They weren’t surprised.
It had been more difficult than he thought, but Blaise finally got the Trapciers monitoring set up through a filter program. The first problem had been that there were now close to fifty-five thousand Imps, far more than he’d thought. Blaise had overseen the making of a few dozen CHRUDEs, but the Imps had been secretly manufacturing CHRUDEs at an alarming rate. There were almost a thousand now, and they were able to crank out more than one hundred new ones each day. In another week they would run out of the DuPont chemical necessary for the skin, they’d still be able to use either what they were using for cyborg patches, or even the android coverings. The Imps didn’t seem to care.
There was another scenario that troubled Blaise. The Imps might just get their buddies at the AOI to seize his DuPont factories. There wasn’t much he could do to stop that. Blaise had to write a program to process all the information coming in from the more than fifty-six thousand Imp and CHRUDE sources. It made him crazy at first, but it all seemed to be working now.
One of the fir
st important pieces of information he gleaned was that the Imps, with the help of the AOI, had taken over the four main Cyborg creation facilities. Cyborgs, like Imps, were humans with “mechanical” parts, processors, and INU interfaces. They were far less sophisticated than Imps, or even CHRUDEs, mostly because they did not use the DesTIn program, but rather an outdated artificial intelligence program developed by a mega pre-Banoff internet search company.
Even more alarming were the Trapciers. Again, with AOI backing, they had also taken over the company that manufactured eighty-one percent of the world’s androids. They, like CHRUDEs, were entirely machines made to look human, but standard androids didn’t fool anyone. Anyone could tell they were not human, and they didn’t have the benefit of DesTIn. There was already a large android population doing menial factory jobs, acting as servers in bars and restaurants, and as sales clerks in low-end shops.
But, nonetheless, androids, cyborgs, and CHRUDEs could be dangerous. With some programming tweaks of the androids, the Imps wouldn’t even need the AOI. They’d have their own army. They were essentially replaceable soldiers.
The Aylantik estimated that android numbers had swelled to at least three hundred million, and according to what Blaise had picked up from his monitoring, the Trapciers planned to triple that number in the next three years. Stunning. Blaise had to do the calculations to see if it was even possible, and found that, even figuring the time needed to build two more factories, it could be done using a fully-automated round-the-clock manufacturing plan.
What if they equipped them with DesTIn? he wondered. There would be almost one billion androids on the planet in less than three years. What will they all be doing? he asked himself.
But he knew the answer. He knew it because he had heard Galahad.
“It doesn’t matter how many Traditionals we lose, we can make more,” he had said, pointing to a CHRUDE. “The future of the human race isn’t necessarily dependent on humans. Not when machines can think better and faster.”