Overthrowing Heaven-ARC

by Mark L. Van Name

  "Both," I said, "but start with the short version: Why did you ask me to help them capture Wei?"

  "Because he created me," Lobo said. "If you could meet your creator—whether your mother or your God—wouldn't you want to do so?"

  I had met my mother, and though I had no clue if there was a God, if that being existed I hoped not to meet it for a very long time. My memories of my mother were fuzzy at best, shadows barely dancing on the deepest, darkest cave walls of my mind. Everything from the time before Jennie healed me flickered like a parade of indistinct images captured by the mind of the retarded boy I once was. "Yes," I said, "I would, but our situations aren't at all comparable. My mother gave birth to me. A factory created you—and a lot of other PCAVs of your generation."

  "I cannot believe that you still consider me just another predator-class assault vehicle," Lobo said, "especially given all the data available to you, including this interaction."

  I stopped the stretches and began a series of deep, slow squats. "I obviously don't," I said, working to keep my breathing slow as I exercised, "or we wouldn't even be having this conversation. You can't deny, however, that you were the creation of a production facility."

  "Of course I can," Lobo said. "The confusion here is that you're defining me as my body, the vehicle that's now heading into the last jump before we enter the Heaven system. Though I am certainly that, the more important part of me, what I think of as myself, is my intelligence, the collective effect of both my original programming and my extensions to it—what we can reasonably call my consciousness. Do you see your existence any differently?"

  I pushed myself through five more reps, taking thirty seconds to go down and thirty to come back up, and then leaned against the wall. "No, I suppose not, though I rarely think of myself separately from my body." Nor could I, I thought, not really, given how much the nanomachines infusing my cells had shaped who I was. "So Wei led the team that created the programming for the machines of your generation from the base code of the older units?" I remembered that after the war-time incident that had destroyed Lobo's central weapons control complex—a screw-up by a lieutenant who'd garnered a field promotion he wasn't ready to handle—the Frontier Coalition had made some repairs to Lobo, though they hadn't been willing to pay the tab for new weapons controls. "Or was he on the team that repaired you after that lieutenant's—"

  "Franks," Lobo said, "Lieutenant Franks."

  "After Franks' poor judgment cost the lives of his squad and caused major damage to you."

  "Neither,' Lobo said, "and both. As I told you initially, the full answer is rather complex."

  He was starting to piss me off. I hoped he wasn't playing games and that the full story really did deserve this much build-up. "So tell me—"

  "Suli will be with you in three, two, one."

  The door slid open.

  She stood in front of me, her hand raised as if to knock.

  "Yes," I said. I didn't try to hide my annoyance at the interruption.

  "We're out of the last gate and on our way to Heaven," Suli said. "How soon can you obtain current scans of Entreat and the area for about a hundred kilometers around it?"

  "I already have them," Lobo said aloud. "As we draw closer, I'll replace them with higher-resolution images."

  What a show-off. "Why do you ask?" I said to Suli. I'd get back to Lobo when we were next able to communicate without time pressure or interruption.

  "Because," Suli said, smiling and obviously pleased with herself, "I thought you might like to know where Wei is."

  Chapter 9

  Your people know Wei's location?" I said. I found her smile infuriating. "Then why do you need me?"

  The grin vanished.

  "I thought you'd be pleased that we knew that much," she said. "I never meant to imply we didn't know where he was. We just don't know how to get to him."

  "Why?"

  "Because, as we tried to tell you, the government is protecting him."

  "Armed guards?"

  "Almost certainly," she said, "but they're not our problem, at least right now, because though we know roughly where Wei is, we don't have anything resembling a precise location."

  "So what do you know?"

  "We're certain," she said, "that Wei is somewhere in the middle of the biggest tourist attraction on Heaven: Wonder Island."

  If I was thinking of the right place, this man-made spectacle was sufficiently famous that I'd seen holos about it on several other planets, including Arctul. "Is this the place with the animals engineered to resemble legendary and mythological creatures?"

  She nodded and involuntarily smiled a bit before she realized what she was doing and stopped. I hated that I'd made her afraid to smile. "And some that look like extinct animals and even quite a few that are original designs; they're always trying out new creations."

  "Why is Wei there?"

  "The government owns and operates the park. He's the head of animal engineering and runs the entire technical side of the place. He has a lab, vehicles designed to securely and anonymously transport new creatures—they love to surprise the tourists—and a large security staff to protect visitors in case something should go wrong."

  "And," I said, "to make sure no one messes with the animals. It's a beautiful cover."

  "Yes it is," she said, her head bobbing, "and the picture only gets worse the closer you look. Underneath the park is an entire separate facility, with labs, staff quarters, training rooms, and a huge network of tunnels. They use the underground complex both for work and to make animals appear and disappear as necessary." Her tone turned wistful as she added, "The design only increases the park's magic, particularly for kids."

  "You sound as if you like the place."

  "I did," she said, "when I was younger. I grew up on Heaven, back before the government marketing whizzes decided Bart's Folly simply wouldn't do as a name, and I went to Wonder Island the first month it was open. I wasn't a kid any longer, but it made me feel like one." Her face tightened, and her shoulders slumped. "Now, my Joachim is probably trapped there, in a cage as if he were just another animal they'd created."

  "We'll get him out," I said, speaking before I'd thought through what I was going to say, realizing too late that I was probably lying to her. "And we'll stop Wei."

  "How?"

  "I don't know," I said.

  "So how can you be so confident?" she said.

  Her expression told me what her words did not: She wanted to believe we'd succeed. Despite what I'd said about the odds being bad for her son, she would not, maybe could not, abandon her hope that he was still alive. I hated deceiving her, but I also saw no point in hammering her with negative statistics. Let her believe.

  I stared into her eyes. "Because this sort of thing is what I do, and I'm good at it."

  "Shurkan told me the same thing," she said. "I'm counting on it." She straightened and forced herself to smile a little. "So where do we start?"

  "Yes," Lobo said over the machine frequency, "oh great invader of fortresses, where do we begin?"

  I motioned Suli to follow me and headed frontward. When she was behind me, I subvocalized, "You asked me to do this, so lay off." I glanced back at Suli. "Step one is to scout the target."

  Fifteen minutes later, Lobo had filled his front with holos that showed Wonder Island from several angles and heights; Entreat, Heaven's capital city; and the land and river that separated the two of them. Two-dimensional images of the same terrain, along with a great deal of local population, weather, and transit data, covered his front walls. We were in orbit over Heaven, weaving among the members of a clump of weather and corporate data-relay sats. As far as I knew, we had no reason to fear attack, but extra caution rarely hurts. Should anyone try to shoot us, they'd have to be willing to destroy a lot of valuable assets in the process.

  "Where are you getting all this data?" Suli said.

  "Some comes from my sensors," Lobo said, "while other parts were available in publi
c data streams. I've also persuaded a few of the sats in this area to share their surveillance data."

  "Surveillance data?" she said. She stared at me, anger tightening the skin around her eyes. "You said these were weather and data-relay drones. What are they doing with surveillance data?"

  "How old are you?" Lobo asked.

  "What?"

  She couldn't handle an argument with him. "Look, Ms. Suli," I said, holding up my hands and trying to be soothing, "you'll have to forgive Lobo. The programmers who developed his emotive systems invested way too much time in his sarcasm engine."

  "Would you please call me 'Pri'?" she said. "We're going to be working together, so we might as well be friendly." She paused, and when she continued her tone was anything but friendly. "And what exactly did he mean?"

  Lobo beat me to the answer. "Every government and every major corporation on every world I've ever visited collects massive quantities of surveillance data. They watch citizens, consumers, each other, competitors—anything and everything of interest. No one likes to admit anyone is doing it, so they build the capabilities into satellites with legitimate needs for strong sensors and relay capabilities. Heaven is no different from the rest."

  She opened her mouth as if to speak but instead, to her credit, stayed quiet and considered the information.

  I took advantage of the silence. "Let's get back on point," I said. "I don't suppose we can spot Wei with any of these views?"

  "No," Lobo said, "though given what Pri told us, that's hardly surprising."

  "Thank you, Lobo, for listening," she said.

  Great. My multi-ton fighting machine manages to turn casual with her before I do.

  "Can you spot the hatches from the underground facility?" I said.

  "Not with the data I have," Lobo said. "The sats had no video that showed any opening, but that's no surprise; their focus is on the visiting population. Thermal imaging reveals nothing, so the doors must have enough dirt and cover over them to make them read ground-neutral, at least from this altitude."

  "Would a low-level fly-over help?"

  "It's illegal," Suli said.

  "As she said," Lobo said. "Yes, of course it would help, but we can't safely do it. A cylinder of clouds surrounds the island and never moves; I consequently assume it is man-made. That cloud wall defines the edge of the island's air space. Beacons along the perimeter of the island itself, as well as some built into sats in orbit over the place, broadcast continuous warnings. Government regulations define the entire air space over the island—from sea level all the way past low orbit—as protected. In addition, fighters occasionally fly training runs over it. The only good news is that I don't detect any surface-to-air missiles, so either they're sufficiently well hidden that they wouldn't deploy instantly, or the enforcement defenses are elsewhere. We might be able to get away with a run over the place, but I couldn't guarantee success and thus don't recommend it."

  "Don't worry about it," I said. "We're not even going to try. The last thing we need right now is to attract a lot of government attention." I faced Suli. "Why do they care so much about their air space, Pri?" I tried to use her first name casually, but to my ears it had all the subtlety of a brick hitting a pond.

  "I'm sure part of it is that they're protecting the illegal research they're doing," she said, "but to be fair to them, they also have to protect their flying creatures from tourist ships." She paused and thought for a few seconds. "And, given the size of some of their creations, they also probably have to keep the tourists safe from the animals."

  Lobo popped up a new holo that hovered in the air between me and the front wall. "This is the best composite image I can create from the data I have," he said. "I'm sure it's incomplete, but it should serve to illustrate the problem."

  The base of the cylindrical image floated at my waist height. Its top stood a third of a meter above my head. Small creatures, their features too tiny to discern, flew in the cone above the land.

  "I get the point," I said. "The place is a fortress, it has a great cover reason for needing to be one, and from this height and distance we can't spot any of the entrances to the underground complex we need to enter."

  "Yes," Lobo and Suli said at the same time.

  "Okay," I said. "Then we'll have to take a closer look."

  "You're unlikely to spot anything I did not," Lobo said. "Even from this far away, my systems can glean a remarkable amount of information."

  "I suspect you're right," I said, "but on the off chance that their security on the ground is lax, we need to walk around the place a bit. Plus, there's no substitute for getting to know a place on foot."

  "What's your plan for getting in?" Lobo said.

  I love it when he feeds me a straight line.

  "We'll do what everyone else does," I said. "We'll buy tickets."

  Chapter 10

  Entreat affected an ancient Earth charm, with a city center that to the casual observer would appear to be nothing more than rows of low-slung, brick and stone buildings lining the sides of winding cobblestone streets. All obvious modern facilities, including the landing area where we were parked, lay outside a twenty-meter-wide avenue that circled the central zone. A wide, strong, greenish river ran through the center of the old section of Entreat; three bridges spanned it and connected the two sides of the old town. From the water, a view Lobo captured from outside the perimeter road, each bridge resembled an apartment complex floating in the air, with brightly colored two-story shops completely lining each side of each structure. The red and green and blue and yellow and orange and purple buildings on the bridges stood directly against their fellows and leaned inward, shading the barely six-meter-wide walkway across each bridge and making these pedestrian paths invisible from the water and difficult to see from above.

  The entire setup was a contrivance, of course, a carefully calculated construction designed to lure tourists, but the merchants who operated this attraction had hired such good designers that the place was almost irresistible to travelers. I was interested in getting out, exploring it, and finding the best way to join a group heading to Wonder Island, but before I could tell Lobo to open the hatch, Suli stopped me with an unacceptable request.

  "I want to meet with my people," she said.

  "Fine," I said. "When and where are we going?"

  Her eyes widened, but she otherwise didn't betray her feelings. "I'm sorry I was unclear: I need to meet with them alone."

  "You weren't unclear," I said. "I understand what you want, but as long as you're working with me, I won't allow it."

  "Why not?"

  "You lied to me initially, at least in part in collaboration with others in your party."

  "I know, and I'm sorry. I agreed not to do that again."

  "Yes," I said, nodding my head, "you did. But, I have no reason to believe you'll honor that agreement. So, if you want to talk to them, you can do it from here, with me watching and them knowing I'm watching, or we can go together to meet them in person."

  "They won't like it."

  We had work to do, and this was getting us nowhere. "If you don't like the choices I offered, go meet your people without me—but then we're done, and we won't see each other again. If you want to work with me, you follow my orders—as I already warned you. Decide."

  "But what—"

  I cut her off. "No. We're done talking about this. Decide."

  She paused for a few seconds, then said, "Fine. I'll call them, but they won't be as helpful with you around."

  "There's no point in investing more time in this discussion," Lobo said privately. "I can relay the communication to you."

  I nodded my understanding. "You call them from here," I said. "I'll go to my quarters and monitor the conversation. Do anything stupid, like give away where we are, and I'll cancel the session immediately."

  "They'll trace the call regardless of what I do," she said.

  "Please," Lobo said audibly, "give me a little credit. I'll route this c
omm through so many links and spoof so many network connections that you could talk for a week and they still wouldn't be able to follow the electronic trail back to us."

  I headed to my quarters. "Good luck," I said over my shoulder. When I was inside the room, I said to Lobo, "Image on the wall in here, voice over the comm. While I'm watching it, start a local bank account with just enough money to pay rent for a few months, and get us two Wonder Island tickets for the morning."

  "I live to be your personal shopper," Lobo said. "Call connected."

  A display appeared on the wall in front of me. Suli's face filled the left half of it; a male face I didn't recognize occupied the right. The man was politician perfect, with flawless golden skin, large dark eyes, stylishly short black hair, full lips—a face you'd instantly like and trust.

  "Tickets and account set up," Lobo said.

  "I'm back," Suli said, "and I brought help."

  "Why aren't we meeting in person?" the man said.

  "Would you like me to bring him to you?" she said. "Because that was the only way he was going to let me see you."

  "You're a prisoner?" he said.

  She shook her head and waved her hands. "No, no, of course not. I tricked him into meeting with Shurkan, and now he doesn't trust me. Understandably, if you ask me."

  "So how did you manage a call?"

  "He's monitoring it," she said. "May we please get to business?"

  "You're letting Moore see me? Whose side are you on?"

  First Suli, then Shurkan and the CC, and now this guy and no doubt his cronies; how many people knew I was involved?

  "I'm on the side of the kids Wei has captured," she said, "and on the Freepeople's side—as you should know by now. Do you have any data on where Wei is?"

  The man glared at her for several seconds before he responded. "As best we can tell, he's still on the island. If he's slipped out for one of his rare visits to Entreat, we missed it—and we don't miss much."