Overthrowing Heaven-ARC

by Mark L. Van Name

  "Exactly your goal," I said.

  He spread his hands and nodded once. "Yes," he said. "So we're the one group you can trust."

  "What about after you're in power?" I said. "Wouldn't you then be as tempted as any other organization to continue to fund Wei's research?"

  The man shrugged. "I'm not the right person to speak to future policy," he said, "but as I'm sure you've seen from Pri, we represent a change that all of Heaven will ultimately embrace. You must trust that it'll be in our best interest as the new government to handle this man appropriately. Regardless of how you feel about us, you have to know how the CC operates, so I think you'll agree that accepting our offer of assistance, capturing Wei, and helping us, not the CC, expose the man's awful work is the safest way to go."

  The only thing I now knew for sure was that I would have to consider very carefully what to do with Wei once I had him. No matter what option I chose, there was no way I'd cross the CC as openly as this guy suggested; doing so would amount to a commitment to live on the run for a very long time. He might think he was safe because he had EC protection and would soon be in power here on Heaven, but I had to leave this world sometime, and when I did, the CC would be waiting. Besides, I'd made a deal with the CC, and I wouldn't break it unless I knew they were planning not to hold up their end.

  "No," I said, shaking my head, "I still don't want your help. I made a deal, and I'm sticking to it. I'll get Wei for the CC—and for you, you are partners with them, after all—and then if you want to work out some other arrangement with them, that's your issue. I'll continue to let Suli tag along, as I agreed, but that's it."

  "I'm sorry to hear that," the man said. He glanced at the woman, then continued. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to insist."

  The woman pulled a pistol from the small of her back and trained it on me.

  She was quick; I had to give her points for that.

  The pilot and the co-pilot followed suit a second later.

  The speaker was the last to draw his gun.

  "Now," he said, "let's go. From here on, you'll do it our way."

  Chapter 27

  No," I said. I kept my arms at my side and didn't move. As long as I didn't provoke them, they probably wouldn't shoot me. They needed me to snatch Wei, or they wouldn't have partnered with the CC and involved me. On the other hand, if they were as confident in their own staff as this guy seemed to be, they might have chosen me to play the role of an off-planet fall-guy, but that motivation would still stand.

  "Are you blind?" the man yelled at me. "We have the guns, so we give the orders."

  "Unless you say something to the contrary," Lobo said over the comm, "I'm going to take them out in one minute."

  I looked down for a moment as if afraid of the man and subvocalized, "Trank."

  Lobo's theatrical sigh registered in my ears like a blast of wind. "Fine. I'll only trank them."

  "Wait!" Pri yelled. She ran in front of me. "This wasn't our deal with Jon or the CC."

  "Hold," I subvocalized to Lobo. They were unlikely to shoot me before Lobo could get them, and even if they did I should be fine with anything short of a head shot, but Pri wouldn't fare as well.

  "Holding," he said.

  The man walked slowly toward us, his gun now aimed at Pri. The other three members of his team also advanced on us. Everyone moved carefully and quietly. The wind played gently off the river. Sweat dampened my back. The hostiles were still a long way off, but if they kept coming I'd have to decide very soon whether to involve Lobo.

  Pri stood her ground, her arms out to her sides as if somehow that would help.

  Though I was surprised by the gesture and appreciated the show of support, I wished she'd remained where she was.

  "Pri," the man said, his voice calm and low and gentle, "you have to see that this is the best option available to us. You and Moore work with our team, we get Wei, we expose him, and we oust this corrupt regime."

  "And then what?" she said. "We fund Wei's research instead? We were supposed to be punishing him for what he's done to all those children."

  The man stopped. The others kept coming.

  "Ready," I subvocalized to Lobo.

  "And so we will," the man said, "when the time is right. In the short term, though, either we or the CC is going to control Wei, so I'm sure you'll agree it might as well be us."

  "No!" Pri said. "He has to pay for what he's done!"

  The woman and the two pilots had closed to within five meters of us. All four hostiles were pointing pistols at us. The man and the woman looked calm and in control, either professionals or at least amateurs suffering no doubt about their power in this situation, but the two pilots were jumpy.

  "Go," I whispered to Lobo. "Pilots first."

  "Wait!" I yelled.

  Lobo burst from under the surface of the river. His camo exterior had turned the light blue of the surface of the water, so for a split second it was as if an angry god had emerged from the deep. Drops and streams poured off him like herds of tiny animals fleeing a burning forest. Four guns protruded from his snout, all pointed in our direction, each aimed, I knew, at a slightly different target.

  "Put down your weapons," I yelled.

  "Waste of time," Lobo said over the comm.

  The man and the two pilots turned to look at him. The woman, clearly the best of them, kept her gun trained on Pri.

  Lobo shot her first, the only evidence of the trank dart a slight disturbance in the air.

  She fell immediately.

  One of the pilots managed to squeeze off a shot at Lobo. It pinged off his armor as he shot both of them and then the man.

  All four lay on the grass.

  Only a few seconds had passed.

  "Don't worry," Lobo said, "they're alive. I did as you asked."

  I moved Pri gently to the side, stepped forward, and stretched.

  "Thanks," I said to him.

  "My pleasure," Lobo said.

  I knew he wasn't being sarcastic, but I didn't mind; enjoying conflict was part of who he was. These idiots had been jerks, and I'd been nicer to them than they deserved.

  "Are they dead?" Pri said.

  "No. Lobo tranked them. They'll wake up in—how long?"

  "About two hours," Lobo said aloud, "give or take."

  "What happened?" Pri said.

  I stared at her and waited. If you're not used to violence, its suddenness can disorient you.

  She ran her hands through her hair, closed her eyes, shook her head, and opened her eyes to stare again at the bodies in front of her. "Sorry," she said. "Dumb question. You just caught me off-guard."

  "That was the idea," I said.

  "So you were testing my loyalty?" she said.

  "No. It wasn't a test. I assumed you'd be loyal to them."

  "Great," she said. "Now, I've pissed off my own people, who are unlikely to ever trust me again after this, and you still don't believe I'm on your side."

  "I didn't say that. I said that I had assumed before this meeting that you'd be loyal to them. You surprised me by jumping in front of me and trying to protect me." I almost added that it was a dumb move that really didn't help, but I stopped myself; I was already in unexpectedly complex territory with her, so there was no point in making matters worse.

  "So do you trust me now?"

  It's so easy to answer questions like that with the words the person wants to hear, but unless I'm conning someone, I hate doing it. I'd rather tell the truth. I was probably making the wrong choice each time I did, but so it goes; at least I would know I'd been honest.

  "I trust you more now than I did before," I said, speaking slowly as I tried to make sure I expressed myself as accurately as possible. "Trust as an absolute is something I'm not good at."

  "You trust Lobo," she said.

  Did I? Then why hadn't I told him all of the truth about me. "I trust him more than I trust anyone else," I finally said, hoping she'd not pursue the implication of what I didn't say.<
br />
  "Why is trust so hard for you?"

  I stared at her, and before I even realized I was moving I had stepped so close to her that we were almost touching. Her question was innocent and fair and something others had asked me, but it also left me furious—at her and everyone else who couldn't understand what trusting always brought me, and at myself for what at some level I knew was a broken bit I had no clue how to fix. I pointed at the bodies. "This is how it works in my life," I said. "People are trustworthy until it's in their best interest not to be, and then they betray you. They make deals, and then when it suits them, they break those agreements as if they'd never existed. You stay alive by being ready for betrayal all the time. When you let down your guard, you pay."

  Lobo had moved off the river and was hovering a few meters above the shore to my right. "What about their shuttle?" he said.

  Pri stared at me, and in her look I saw the fear I'd expected, had grown accustomed to seeing from time to time on the faces of everyone I worked with, but she also looked sad, almost pitying.

  That pissed me off further.

  I looked away from her and at the shuttle. "As soon as we're on our way," I said. "Destroy it. Their people will eventually come for them. Maybe a pile of slag will remind them to leave us alone and let us do our job."

  I stared again at Pri. "Any objections?"

  "No," she said, surprising me. "The monetary loss will force Repkin," she nodded at the man, "to have to explain what happened here. That exercise will keep them busy for a while with meetings and reviews. Maybe by then we'll have Wei, and we can make sure he stands trial." She stepped closer to me, and this time she was the angry one. "That is what this is about, right? We're going to make him pay for what he's done to Joachim and all those other kids, right? No matter how you feel about me or the CC or my party, you are going to make sure Wei pays, aren't you? Promise me."

  I might not properly interpret her other feelings, but this one I understood, this one I understood all too well. I'd watch Benny die to ensure my escape from Aggro and the scientists who had tortured us and treated us like lab animals. Benny's last act was to unleash his own nanomachines on them. Nothing had survived as explosions and possibly uncontrolled nanomachines had utterly destroyed Aggro. Though I was sad the disaster had closed off my home world, though I hated that I might never go back there, would probably never know what had happened to Jennie, whether my sister had survived or was even still alive, I had never regretted for one second what Benny had done to our torturers. Maybe a better person would, maybe someday I'd even be that person, but as far as I was concerned, they deserved to die, and the universe was better for their deaths.

  I focused on Pri, then nodded slowly. "We'll make him pay," I said.

  Lobo settled to the ground and opened a hatch in the side nearest us.

  I walked into him.

  Pri followed.

  "Leave it open," I said, "but take us up."

  Lobo rose slowly.

  The wind rushed across my face. I wished it would take away the memories that were now coursing as powerfully through me as the water over the rocks in the river below, but they held me tight and fanned the flames of anger that burned in me. Almost a hundred and forty years ago, and still I remembered, still the fury seized me, still I knew that I wouldn't ever let that happen again, not to me, not anywhere I could stop it, not here, not from this man Wei I'd never even met but who, like my torturers on Aggro, was willing to sacrifice the innocence, the hearts, the minds, and ultimately the lives of children to achieve their own goals.

  "Slag it," I said.

  The beam from a particle weapon cut the sky, tied Lobo to the shuttle for a few seconds with a link of coherent light so strong it looked like you could walk on it, and then the shuttle exploded and vanished.

  I stayed in the open doorway and watched as the smoke cleared to reveal small scraps and a flattened and rapidly drying pool of molten metal.

  I stepped out of the way, and Lobo closed the hatch.

  "Run some counter-surveillance routes," I said, "and then take us to orbit."

  "I might be able to get ahead of this," Pri said, "if I talk to my people before Repkin can present his case. If I tell my version of what happened, they might still be willing to give me data we can use. They don't have a lot of options for capturing Wei, so though they'll be angry, maybe I can focus most of their emotion and attention on Repkin."

  When I didn't say anything, she added, "We can use any help we can get."

  I didn't know what to say. In a different time and in a different mood, I'd admire her attempt to work the situation, even though I saw little chance she'd succeed, but right now I needed to free myself of the grip of the past.

  "You're right," I said. I had to force myself to agree, because all I wanted was to be alone and calm down, but she was right, her party might still be useful to us, and I should let her pursue that option.

  She obviously wanted to keep talking, but that was more than I could manage.

  I walked away from her and toward my quarters. "Call 'em."

  The door to my room snicked open, and I stepped inside.

  Chapter 28

  I paced back and forth in the small room, memories feeding anger causing energy. I dropped to the floor and did push-ups, changing my hand positions every twenty, until my upper body burned with the effort and I was dripping sweat. I kept at it, the pain a clarifying force, a noise in my head that blocked out the world.

  "Pri's talking to some new people in her group," Lobo said. "Do you want to observe the conversation?"

  "No," I said. "Leave me alone."

  I hated that I couldn't control my reactions better. To lose control is to give it to someone else, and to trust someone else with control over you is to take an unacceptable risk. Even as I thought it I realized how unhealthy my thinking probably was, and I had to wonder: Had I ever trusted anyone?

  Jennie, certainly, when I was young and before she fixed my brain and Pinkelponker's government took her away from me. She was my sister, so I suppose that was natural, but it was also ultimately painful, because she left. The government made her go, but still, she left.

  The men and women in my units in the Saw—I'd trusted them, at least during missions. They were good at their jobs, just as I was, and any of us would have died for any of the others. Many did. Take away the fights, though, and the trust would fade as well, as if we were only a unit when we had an enemy or were training for battle.

  I'd also trusted some of the people who'd worked with me on other jobs, but never completely and, again, only when on the job.

  Lobo might be the exception, but perhaps only because we were together almost all the time.

  No, he wasn't: I hadn't yet trusted him enough to tell him the truth about my past.

  I stopped the push-ups and lay on the floor, my breathing ragged and my arms shaky, as I remembered that he also hadn't trusted me, either. He'd told me some of what Wei had done, but he'd waited a long time to do so, and there was still more to the story. Come to think of it, how was he able to ignore some orders, and why was he being so slow in telling me about his creation? He'd said I wouldn't like what I learned, and he'd claimed to be sad, angry, and even embarrassed at what had happened to him. That he would even claim those emotions made no sense.

  I rolled onto my back. "Lobo, what's the rest of your story with Wei?"

  "As I told you," Lobo said, "the algorithms he inserted in me were useless. What I hadn't yet gotten to is the reason they didn't work."

  "Which was?"

  "They required more raw processing ability than my computing complex could deliver," he said, "a great deal more."

  "You said he then tried a new computing substrate. I take it that was his way to increase your computing power."

  "Yes, but it was also more than that," Lobo said. "Wei believed he had found a technique that could yield vastly more computing power and at the same time improve my durability." He paused, and a
holo of his frame floated above me. Several sections deep inside it glowed red. "Here's a typical PCAV," Lobo said, "which is what I was before Wei began his experiments on me. The red sections are the main and backup computing complexes. Wei had created encapsulated, self-repairing, auto-linking nanomachines that he thought had the potential to be both far tougher than conventional armor and also able to provide massively linked nanoscale cloud computing." A lighter red spread through the armor on the bottom of the holo. "Wei started here, injecting the nanomachines into several of my bottom armor plates and programming them to replace the armor with a network of themselves."

  "And that worked?" I said. "That's amazing."

  "No," Lobo said, "it didn't. Wei tried many variations of the nanomachine networks, but all of them failed. If any of the computing capability survived, the armor was so weak it was effectively useless. If he changed the composition and programming of the nanomachines so they looked like they might provide stronger armor, they failed to compute and communicate properly. No mix met both of his goals. Nothing even came close. All the programming was in place, fully ready to run and able to improve itself with built-in evolutionary capabilities, but I had neither the computing capacity nor the memory to use it effectively."

  If it didn't work, I wondered, then why was he telling me about it? I forced myself to stay quiet.

  "What happened next," Lobo said, "may be useful in helping you comprehend Wei's current work. More importantly, it's vital to me that you understand."

  When he didn't continue, I said, "Why?"

  "Because," Lobo said, and then paused for several more seconds, "you're my friend, and I want only one of us hating me."

  I waited, but again he remained silent. Finally, I said, "I don't understand. Please explain why you even think that's possible."

  "I will," Lobo said, "but not now. Pri's new contact just called and said they believe but are not sure that Wei is on the way into town again. She's almost here. Should I let her in?"

  I shook my head. "We will eventually finish this conversation," I said, "but it can wait for a chance at Wei." Before he could reply, I added, "Yes, please open the door."