The Justar Journal: An AOI Thriller

by Brandt Legg

  “Did we recover a body?”

  “No. Location and conditions did not permit.”

  “How did you get this job!?” she blasted.

  “Chief, if he is still alive, we will find him.”

  “Your time is up,” she said, punching buttons in the air. A woman walked into the Pacyfik Head’s office a moment later. “The deputy head will relieve you of your duties,” the Chief said, glaring at the man. “You are being reassigned to combat duty.” She didn’t wait for a response before moving on to another screen.

  “Yes, ma’am?” the official in charge of AOI’s prisons answered upon seeing the Chief appear.

  “I see there are two uprisings still not contained,” the Chief said.

  “We expect to have them under control in the next few hours.”

  “Not good enough. You’ve got thirty minutes to evacuate your people before those facilities and all their inmates are turned to dust.”

  “But, Chief‒‒”

  “Twenty-nine minutes and forty-two seconds.”

  After dismissing the head of AOI prisons, the Chief reviewed all twenty-four regions and approved final attacks on cities in the countries formerly known as Australia, Czechoslovakia, India, Morocco, and Turkey. Everything was going well, although the outcome would be more assured if she knew Deuce Lipton’s location and what he was doing.

  She scanned a special VM devoted to him, but it contained nothing new. Still, it had all been easier than expected thanks to the last minute alliance with the Trapciers. Their talent for efficiently finding and utilizing essential data had made her look brilliant, with one success after another, and so far almost nothing from the stunned opposition.

  She noted the time, and checked back with Sidis, but after their brief conversation, for the first time since the war had begun, she didn’t feel invincible.

  Chapter 43 - Book 3

  Chelle wasn’t surprised that her zoom to Deuce was accepted in voice-only mode. When she’d spoken to Nelson, it had been the same. Infinite encryption meant their conversation was safe from eavesdropping, but her hologram or someone else’s might be able to see something that could reveal Deuce’s whereabouts. Deuce answered his INU in his private cabin aboard the Moon Shadow.

  “Thanks for taking the zoom,” she said. “I have two urgent matters; one personal, and one revolution-related. Although, they both‒‒”

  “Sorry to hear about your son,” Deuce said, not letting her finish. “I didn’t know you had one.” It was a lie. Deuce had discovered her dark secret in one of his overly thorough background checks several years earlier, when she had first surfaced as part of the team who got the books out of the Portland Library, but he had wanted to respect her privacy. “Nelson told me everything. Be assured, we’re doing everything we can to locate him. And Drast.”

  “Thank you Deuce. The two of them . . . I’m not sure how much more loss I can handle.”

  “Don’t worry. If they’re still alive, we’ll get them.” The fact that Osc was with Drast gave Deuce hope that her son might survive, and made him want to find them even more. Deuce also knew what it was like to have a son missing, and because Chelle’s brother had saved his, he was determined to return the favor. He had satellites tracking everything that had happened in and around Hilton Prison since the PAWN Flo-wing had gone in.

  “And the other matter . . . I feel so selfish talking about my loss when there are so many dying this very minute all around the world.”

  “PAWN needs to respond.”

  “We’re working on it. They’ve buried a lot of our operatives.”

  “I know, but there will be a window opening in the next few hours. You need to be ready. The AOI will pause.”

  “Hard to believe. The Chief is following a merciless war plan that might have been written by Attila the Hun.”

  “Believe it. Be ready. It may only be a few hours. If we’re lucky, we’ll get a whole day. The Chief may be an icy despot, but it’s the Trapciers driving this campaign, and they’re more ruthless than old Attila ever was. They’re ruled by cold, calculating, machines.”

  “But aren’t the Imps in charge? They’re much more human than machine,” Chelle said, watching a section of Sydney, in what used to be known as Australia, getting leveled.

  “The Imps have surrendered anything that blocks them from their objectives, which includes empathy, compassion, or the slightest regard for human – specifically Traditionals – life.”

  “What are their goals?”

  “Oddly enough, it appears to be human enlightenment.”

  “Unbelievable,” Chelle said. “They’re just a bunch of demented freaks, and they’re on the top of our target list.”

  “They are very difficult to find.”

  “I was hoping you could help with that.”

  “Is that the second thing you needed my help with?”

  “Not exactly, but as you know, it all kind of blurs together,” Chelle said, her voice deepening. “Lance Miner has asked me a favor.”

  “Really? Are you two old chums?” He looked into the Eysen INU as if he could see deception in her eyes. Or was it concern?

  “He wants PAWN to assassinate the Chief,” she said, ignoring Deuce’s comment.

  “Interesting. She has gotten under his skin. And of course, he can’t do it himself. Hmm.”

  “Can you help?” Chelle pressed.

  “That’s a tricky one.”

  “Why? She’s on the verge of destroying the world,” Chelle said. “She should be put down like a rabid dog.”

  “Of course she should, but there’s only one chance to get this right. It’s why I want Munna to allow us to use the prophecies.”

  “She’s a stubborn old woman. I wouldn’t count on her changing at all. But you have the power, an army, technology, money,weapons, connections‒‒”

  “Yes, but if I misstep and the AOI turns on me, the results would be catastrophic. Not just for me, but for the world.”

  “Why?”

  “Because when this war ends, there will be a vacuum, and something has to fill it, or there will be anarchy.”

  “Now I get it. You want to sit back and watch everyone else die and sacrifice and then step in at the end and rule what’s left? Well torg that! The joke’s on you, Deuce. There’s probably not going to be anything left to rule!”

  Deuce looked at the INU as if trying to see how it could have allowed such a ridiculous statement to be made. “I know you’re exhausted and distraught over your son and Drast, so I’ll ignore what you just said. But please, think about it later, and when you do, ask yourself how you could let such idiotic words slip from your lips.” He paused for a minute, daring her to respond. When she did not, he added, “I’ll consider your request and be in touch.” He paused. “But you get PAWN ready to enter this thing in the next sixty minutes. You’ll see the pause when it happens, and when it does, don’t hold back. We may not get another chance.”

  The conversation between Munna and Nelson, which Deuce had left in order to talk to Chelle, was still going on when he returned to the main room of the Moon Shadow.

  “The Aylantik has indeed done many good things,” Munna was saying as he walked in. “They’ve eliminated those silly lines on the map that people used to define themselves like stick-on nametags. ‘I’m American,’ or ‘I’m Chinese,’ or ‘I’m Nigerian.’ None of it matters. We are people. They’ve eliminated religion, no more tags. ‘I’m Jewish,’ or ‘I’m Muslim,’ ‘I’m Christian,’ whatever . . . we are all people. They’ve encouraged the blending of cultures and races. There isn’t anymore ‘I’m black,’ ‘I’m white,’ ‘I’m Asian,’ or ‘Arab,’ - nothing, because we’re all people. One language, one color, one home . . . Earth. And they have let us feel a long sense of peace.”

  “Peace!” Deuce blasted. “There has been no peace.”

  “Of course not,” Munna said. “But they allowed us to feel as if there was. They let us breathe it in and walk as if i
t were there, so it gave us something to look at.”

  “They killed any dissenters!” Deuce pointed at the VMs. “They are killing anyone who has even breathed the same air as anyone who even dreamed of something different from what they had to offer. Is that what you mean by breathing their peace?”

  “They are wrong,” Munna said, smiling. “The Aylantik has always been wrong. But something good can come from something bad, and many very good things have come from their very bad.”

  “One day I’ll understand this?” Deuce asked with disdain.

  “Yes.” She smiled. “I just hope you’re alive when you do.”

  Deuce left them to their philosophical pursuits, confident that Nelson would be pushing for the release of her hold on the Justar Journal’s promise of the prophecies. He had tried every conceivable way to break into them using the codes left in the books, but she possessed a magic key. He went on to pursue the course of action he would have followed if there had never been a Justar Journal.

  The war escalated every few minutes to new levels of horror, and when he saw a shelter filled with hundreds of children leveled in a Sonic-bomb attack outside Cairo, he knew they had officially lost their status as a utopian society, and were now living in the worst dystopian world he could imagine. A place where truth had been manipulated so many times, there was no longer a point of reference for what it was when you heard it.

  The school wasn’t on the Aylantik news feeds. Only those desperate parents in the Egypt area would know of that atrocity, and even then, most of them were either already dead as well, or would be in the next wave.

  Even without Miner’s request to Chelle and hers to him, Deuce knew the Chief had to die, and it had to be soon. He contacted Nolan and gave the order, but it had to come only after PAWN had come to life. It had to look like a PAWN mission. That might not be until tomorrow.

  How many more will dead by then?

  But even if PAWN were up and running right now, they still needed the time to track the Chief and find a way in to whatever bunker she’d barricaded herself.

  Meanwhile, Blaise was supposed to have the Trapciers down. It might be the only opening PAWN would get, unless it went well and the AOI showed some vulnerability. If that happened, Deuce had another move to make in the apocalyptic chess match, one that could mean either victory for the rebels, or death for Deuce.

  Chapter 44 - Book 3

  Another laser pierced the side of the building where Osc was lying, but before he could be grateful of a second near-miss, six men descended on him. They searched and shoved him back to the ground. He felt the heat of the laser sight guide on his forehead. He closed his eyes and pictured his mother, thankful at least that Drast had gotten away. Knowing they were about to kill him, he was surprised that he almost felt relief. Life had been an exhausting obstacle course of disappointment and disillusionment. The stress and pressure had built and grown to where he almost welcomed death, as a fugitive sometimes wants to get caught, tired of running, hiding, fighting. A good long nap sounded so peaceful.

  Then he heard Drast yelling.

  The doorway Drast had dived into had actually been an archway that led to a courtyard with another exit. He called back to Osc and waited on the other side of the far wall, but there had been no response.

  “Damn it,” he’d said, knowing he’d have to go back. Even if Osc wasn’t Chelle’s son, he’d saved his life, and Drast never forgot a small favor, let alone something larger like his life. He’d counted to five, knowing that if Osc were not right behind him, something was wrong. Then he ran back into the courtyard.

  He reached the archway, breathing heavily, knowing this was a suicide move. Anything could be out there, and none of it friendly. He peered out the archway, toward the alley he’d just made it through, and saw the crowd. There were now eight of them. From his vantage point, he could just see Osc’s head lying on the road. He took the lasershod and aimed carefully. Drast, a champion marksman from his years growing up in the Wyoming Area wilderness, believed he could get three of them, but one of the survivors would surely kill Osc and come after him. No, he needed another strategy.

  One of them pointed a weapon at Osc’s forehead. Without really thinking, Drast ran into the alley with his hands up. “Wait, don’t shoot!”

  It had been a foolish thing to do, probably the worst lapse in judgment he’d ever made, but Drast couldn’t abandon Osc. Even if he made it, Drast knew he’d never be able to look Chelle in the eyes knowing he’d run away and left Osc to die, and if he couldn’t look into those beautiful eyes, he didn’t need to live.

  As he stepped out into the alley and saw the full view of the scene, he realized what was happening. The mob were rebels, or at least rebel sympathizers. They had attacked Osc because of his AOI uniform.

  “We’re not AOI!” Drast yelled, suddenly feeling the heat of several lasers on him. He knew plain old civilians would not have those advanced weapons. They had to be with PAWN. “We’re PAWN.”

  “How do we know that?” one of them yelled.

  “Look at me! I’m in a prison uniform, and he’s not in a regular grunge uniform. Look closely. He’s a prison guard. He helped me escape yesterday.”

  Several of them examined Osc. One of them lowered his weapon. Drast inched closer, all the time holding his weapon, by the barrel, high above his head.

  “Please, I am a high-ranking PAWN leader,” Drast said. “If you’ve got communications, call in. Check us out. Tell them you have Osc.”

  They looked at each other. One of them made some moves in the air and opened a small VM. The others began looking nervously toward both ends of the alley, as if unsure who might be after these two important fugitives. The one who’d been working his INU shook his head.

  The apparent leader, the only one who had spoken so far, said, “We can’t get out.” He stared at Drast, and then walked toward him. In one motion, the rebel pushed Drast hard enough to knock him down and took away his lasershod. With Drast recovering on the ground, the man inspected the weapon. “It’s not AOI issue,” he shouted back to the others, who still had lasers trained on Osc and Drast. “So maybe I believe you. It’s a good story. What are you doing here? Why aren’t you hiding somewhere instead?”

  “We’re on a mission. I broke out of prison in order to carry it out. Critical to the revolution.”

  “What is it?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Torg man,” the rebel said, surprised, pointing Drast’s own weapon back at him. “You think you’re in a position to decide what you can or cannot tell me?”

  “Sorry, man. I don’t know you. It is so classified that only three people in PAWN know about it, and I can’t risk it getting out.”

  The man shook his head, appalled.

  “If that means you have to kill me, then do it,” Drast said, locked into a stare. “But know that you’ll be killing more than just me. You’ll be killing millions of innocent people.”

  The man licked his lips and his finger twitched lightly over the trigger. “How do I know?”

  “You don’t,” Drast said, never releasing his gaze. “But millions of lives . . . is it worth the risk?”

  The man stood there a moment, still staring, then turned. “Let him go.”

  One of them pulled Osc to his feet and pushed him toward Drast and the leader. Osc scrambled over to Drast and helped him up.

  The rebel handed Drast back his lasershod, with one last look, then said, “Risk? What the torg does that word even mean anymore?”

  “It means we stop the tyrants. It means we never stop fighting back,” Drast said, making eye contact. “You did the right thing. Thank you.”

  The rebel barely smiled. “I don’t know where you’re heading, but I hope it’s west. This quadrant, and the entire east side, is crawling with grunge patrols. So get out fast.”

  Drast nodded, and was about to ask if the rebels wanted to come with them, when the leader’s head split open. Blood and flesh e
xploding, and he dropped to the road, dead.

  Drast, only half a meter away, was hit with enough blood that for a moment he thought he’d also been shot. Osc shoved him down and they rolled toward the archway while trying to see where the shot had come from. By the time they got their bearings, all the rebels who had just released them were dead, and they were surrounded by ten AOI grunges.

  Chapter 45 - Book 3

  Grandyn went into TreeRunner mode as dirt and leaves suddenly exploded around him. He focused through the blinding barrage of lasers and heavier blasts and found a low area at the base of large trees, well fed from the nearby river. Still soaking wet, he smeared black earth into his clothes, skin, and hair. Without a weapon, other than the knife strapped to his leg, he looked for anything else that might help.

  In those precious moments concealed in the trees, he was also able to determine that it wasn’t the “rebels” shooting him. It was AOI agents attacking both him and the rebels.

  He found a large rock just as a grunge spotted his movements. Grandyn rolled and kicked and in an acrobatic move not used since his TreeRunner days before the war, he went up and came crashing down so fast that he crushed the unprepared grunge’s skull.

  He spun, and in less than two seconds had taken the man’s weapons. He shot another grunge just as two of the rebels went down simultaneously. More lasers sliced through the air, cutting trees, tearing branches, and a minute later it was over. Five grunges were dead and two of the rebels. Only he and one other survived.

  “Which way?” Grandyn demanded as the man was still checking the bodies of his comrades.

  “I’m not sure,” the shaken rebel said.

  Grandyn grabbed his shirt and shook him. “Damn it. We’ve got to move and you need to tell me where we’re going.”

  “Okay, I just wanted to make sure‒‒”

  “No one survives lasers to the head or torso,” Grandyn said. “I’m sorry, but war doesn’t allow for proper mourning. The only way to avenge their deaths is to win. Now come on.”