The Northern Star Trilogy: Omnibus Edition

by Mike Gullickson

  “Can you get it to work?”

  “I don’t know, probably.” Razal pursed his lip and regarded it like a dinosaur bone. “It’s really beat up.”

  “The girl just told me that Stafford killed Lepai.”

  “What? I thought she couldn’t speak English.”

  “It took a bit, but that’s what she said.”

  Razal tapped his fingers on the desk while he processed the information. “If that’s true, why?”

  “That would explain why all the supplies are gone from this room. Stafford took ’em.”

  “And he took Lepai’s body, too?” Razal gestured to the terminal. “Maybe something’s on this.”

  “The hard drive?”

  “No hard drive, but it has a cache. It might take a few hours. No rest for the wicked, huh?”

  Just then the CB crackled. Whiny feedback rose up and down. “Deo. Packard. Where are the children?” a slurry voice asked. “I need them.”

  Razal and Raimey stared at the CB.

  “Should you—” Raimey started. Razal shook his head “no.”

  “Deo?” The man sounded like he was sucking on cotton balls. The CB went dead.

  “We need to get out of here,” Razal said.

  “I’ll get the children.”

  Razal tore the computer down as fast as he could.

  = = =

  General Boen was woken by the on-base intercom in his suite. He hit “speaker.”

  “Yeah?” he said, still waking up.

  “It’s Charles Rivas in Communications. We’ve received a message from Sergeant Razal.”

  Boen blinked and looked at the clock: four a.m.

  “Okay.” He quickly dressed.

  The base was north of Chicago and the “softy” barracks—where he and other non-bionic soldiers stayed—was across the landing strip from Communications, Maintenance, and Arms. This was the deployment base for all new bionics—trucked from the Derik building, debriefed and trained on their new abilities, and sent around the globe to protect Coalition and MindCorp interests. At any one time, there were thousands of Minors and Majors on base.

  Earl had been in command for nearly a decade and had witnessed firsthand the evolution of the bionic platform. It scared him more than anything. The ability of these soldiers was staggering, from the giants that could knock down buildings, to the infantry who could chase down a horse and snap its neck. The military used to be a cohesive unit, but now there was a very distinct divide: bionics and “softies.” Earl was eighty-two, hell, he was soft, but that delineation between soldiers bothered him. He had loved comics as a kid. X-Men was one of his favorites, and it reminded him of that. Mutants versus humans. Bigotry by ability.

  Rivas and three other operators were tracking communications with all barracks and bases around the globe. Charles was the only one awake. The other three were Sleepers. Charles stood to salute.

  “Stop. What have they sent?”

  “It’s from the shortwave.”

  Rivas brought up the message:

  10-11-2069. 0334. TRANSMISSION. Report for General Boen. Mine is secure. Everyone dead but the children. SatCom is down. Shortwave terminal can only transmit. Read command log. TM Stafford compromised. TM Lepai believed dead. Intercepted a call by ‘Packard’ requesting the children. Area unsafe. Heading to Matadi. —SFC Razal

  “I printed the command log.” Charles handed it over.

  Boen rifled through it. Stafford was the commanding officer at this mine. There were two communication transmissions. An encrypted shortwave radio transmission to a Coalition base in Morocco run by the EU, and a local IP to a J. Packard. The shortwave radio transmission to the EU was a smokescreen.

  IP: 41.189.192.36. 9-29-2069. 0620. TRANSMISSION. Packard. Lepai is dead. Send soldiers. —Stafford

  15420 KHZ. 9-29-2069. 0820. TRANSMISSION. We are being attacked by long-range mortar fire. There are five dead. No attempts to overtake. Action? —Stafford

  15420 KHZ. 9-29-2069. 0850. COMMAND. Defend how you see fit. Keep one Tank Major on site at all times. Is there a mortal threat to you and Lepai? Report progress. —Coalition Morocco

  15420 KHZ. 9-29-2069. 0920. TRANSMISSION. Roger. Defend mine. We see no immediate mortal threat. Lepai will head out to confront. I will stay onsite. —Stafford

  15420 KHZ. 9-29-2069. 1650. TRANSMISSION. Lepai has not returned. Hostiles attack and retreat. Still using mortar fire. The mine and factory are shut down. I am going out to confront. —Stafford

  There was a year of logs, hundreds of pages. One to the Coalition. One to J. Packard. To the Coalition, lying about the productivity of the mine. To Packard, setting up shipments. Odd questions about the children . . . Boen absently slapped the pages against his open palm.

  “What does it mean, sir?” Rivas asked.

  “It means something’s gone sideways,” Boen said. “I need to deploy a task force to Matadi. Send this to Evan and if you get anything else, get me.”

  Boen jogged back to his barracks. He put on the Mindlink, and as he did, his room washed away, top to bottom, to the military interface. He sent a message to Evan and it was quickly accepted. The GUI interface transitioned over to Evan’s office.

  Earl was always amazed by how real cyberspace felt. He ran his hands along the old leather couch—he had been to the actual office—and there was no sensory deprivation, no strangeness that might suggest that his feet and mind weren’t in the real thing.

  He could sense a presence, but no one was in the office. He heard whispers.

  —Nehru found—Glass uncommunicative—Multiplier online—Coercion test ready—Twins operational—Do you love us?—

  “Evan?”

  The whispers came from everywhere, as if the room was infested with secrets. Earl walked around the office. In one corner, where Earl knew a desk was supposed to be, the space was black and open. It was as if the room had been punctured. Earl peeked into it and fear immediately caused him to pull back. He could feel something powerful, just beyond.

  “Evan?”

  Milky white tails attached to the border of the hole. The tentacles writhed as if they were in a stream, and then they grew taut as they pulled the rest of the body in. The sperm-like shape quickly formed into Evan Lindo. As it did, the room grew over the deep pit like new skin. Evan didn’t notice Earl’s shock. He “jumped” from one side of the room to the kitchen. Coffee was brewing.

  “Quite the mess in the Congo,” Evan said.

  Another whisper crept into the room. Can we play? Boen looked for the source.

  “It’s the MIMEs, Earl. Coffee?”

  “No thanks. I drink the real stuff. Aren’t those distracting?”

  “They become a part of you.”

  Evan seemed in no hurry to discuss the possible corruption. He sipped at his coffee gingerly and, satisfied, drank more.

  While a person could look like anyone online, Evan, almost defiantly, always looked exactly the same. He was fat, flat-footed, with a receding chin, hidden poorly behind a goatee, and square-rimmed glasses perched over a narrow nose. And the interesting part wasn’t that he looked exactly as he had a decade before, when Earl had first met him after WarDon—the Secretary of Defense—had put a bullet in his own brain. He hadn’t modified his avatar since, even though Evan was no longer fat. Earl had seen him six months before. But he still kept this reflection of who he once was. Maybe it was a reminder to himself. Maybe it was fuel.

  “What do you make of it?”

  “It sounds like the EU can’t keep their soldiers in line.”

  “We need to get them out of there. I’ll put together a QRF.”

  “No.”

  “No? Five hours, we’re there.”

  “And how would you get them out? There isn’t an airstrip in Matadi that can support a plane to ferry Raimey home. I’ve spoken to Morocco. There’s a large contingent of EU soldiers in Boma, guarding the city. It’s seventy miles away. They can get there.”

  Boen wasn’t
convinced.

  “This is John Raimey we’re talking about,” Evan said. “Stafford’s a standard issue, no match.”

  “What about ‘J. Packard’?”

  “That was an easy find. He’s one of ours. His first name’s Jane. He’s a Level 2 Tank Minor that was presumed dead during the Israeli War.”

  “AWOL?”

  “I guess. Gun for hire. Who knows? A nobody. Now that we know what they’re up to, we can root them out. Good?”

  Evan lifted the mug to his face and Earl saw that it was shaking. Some of the coffee spilled over.

  “Are you okay?” Earl asked.

  “I’m fine.” For a split second, the room behind Evan began to bend. “I have a lot of things to do.”

  “If I hear anything, I’ll let you know.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  Boen vanished, and when he did, Evan dropped the cup and fell to his knees. A cyclone of requests filled the air, and they were all for love, or light, or acceptance. He put his hands to his ears.

  “STOP! STOP!” And then the room tore open and he was sucked out into the black.

  = = =

  Earl placed the Mindlink on his desk. He couldn’t think of a time when Evan had been so . . . agreeable. He flipped through the log sheets, one by one. He had heard something in the room before Evan had come in, and it was a word he had just become aware of. He found it toward the end:

  IP: 41.189.192.36. 8-28-2069. 1930. TRANSMISSION. Ten kilograms of gallium needed for Multiplier circuitry, asap. —Packard

  IP: 41.189.192.36. 8-28-2069. 1945. TRANSMISSION. Ten kilograms = week’s yield. Difficult. —Stafford

  IP: 41.189.192.36. 8-28-2069. 2005. TRANSMISSION. Boss demands. Final prep. Then harvest. —Packard

  IP: 41.189.192.36. 8-28-2069. 2020. TRANSMISSION. Give me two days. —Stafford

  Multiplier. Whispered in Evan’s office just moments ago. Printed on the page of a coup. Earl didn’t believe in coincidences. And he didn’t trust Evan. And he didn’t know anyone more dangerous than Evan, or more conniving. And he had been so nice—when he was normally a little shit.

  Earl thought of an old friend. It had been a long time since they had spoken. He checked the clock: four-thirty a.m. He had to get off base. He spent ten minutes trying to be clever, then went simple instead. He changed into workout clothes and running shoes, strapped on a fanny pack, and walked out the front.

  “Early run, hey sir?” a guard asked.

  “I got a lot on my mind,” Boen replied and settled into a light jog. Hormone therapy paid dividends.

  = = =

  Sabot was called down. In the lobby of MindCorp headquarters was a man he had known for decades, and whom he’d always associated with pressed greens and a lapel of medals.

  Sabot looked at General Boen’s bright blue running shorts and bleached-white legs.

  “Don’t,” Boen said. “I’m having a bad day.”

  Sabot sent the guard away, and they walked to the elevator. Earl didn’t know if they’d be going up or down. It turned out, down. MindCorp headquarters rose one hundred and fifty stories in the air, but it was two hundred stories tall. They descended to the Colossal Core.

  “Is Cynthia up? I know it’s early.”

  “She’s always up. What’s going on?”

  Boen pulled the log sheets from his waist pack. Sabot took them and fanned through the hundreds of pages. “What’s this? Cynthia’s listening.”

  “This came to me two hours ago. The EU Coalition lost communication with one of its outposts managing a mine.”

  “One we use.”

  “Yes. We sent John Raimey and a Minor. All of the adults were murdered, but the kids are alive, and it looks like one of the Tank Majors that was posted there is involved. He was stealing the metals for an old soldier named Jane Packard. Comms are down for no explainable reason. They sent that to us by shortwave.”

  The elevator passed through five stories of concrete and opened into a cavernous room as tall as a skyscraper. At its center was an immense blue Colossal Core. It was so bright that the techs on the ground floor wore tinted glasses. It hummed and chattered. Data Crushers—massive hard drives the size of a semi truck—whirled like the water turbines of a dam.

  On the ground floor, Sabot walked Earl through rows and rows of Sleepers. There were hundreds, laid out like flower petals, all connected in to the Core, monitoring the data, repairing software, strings behind the scenes making sure the user experience was flawless.

  “Where’s Cynthia?”

  “She doesn’t live upstairs anymore,” Sabot answered in an unhappy tone.

  The landing was nearly a block wide; it took minutes to get to the room on the other side. Insect-like cameras were mounted above a door that slid open as they approached.

  They had walked into a computer. Servers—black serious things—made up the walls. Server racks filled the room. Thick fiber lines daisy-chained everything together. It wasn’t hundreds of servers. It was thousands. Sabot was barely able to squeeze through.

  “She’s upstairs,” he said. They went up two sets and into the loft. Boen’s jaw dropped.

  “Hello, Earl,” the screen said. It was Cynthia, vibrant and young. On the screen, she was in her penthouse on the one-hundred-and-fiftieth floor. But Earl saw her true form. She was mounted onto a device that looked like a giant spider. Eight legs attached to her arms and legs and kept her body in constant motion. Her small frame was wrapped in a tight suit covered in electrodes. Wires ran off her wrists and feet, shunting back along the spider legs, and her head was covered in a fiber-optic mask.

  “Oh my God,” Earl said. “Is that some virtual thing?”

  Sabot shook his head. “It’s so her body won’t break down. She’s been linked in like this for over two years.”

  “Sabot despises it. Sometimes I think he despises me,” the avatar said. The real Cynthia moved in a jogging motion.

  “That’s not true,” came a voice from the virtual penthouse suite. It was Sabot, thinking his words. Earl’s head started to hurt.

  “Haven’t we seen each other in person recently?” Earl asked. He couldn’t recall. The virtual world and the real world blended.

  On-screen Cynthia shook her head. “It’s been years, and seeing you here, as much as I like you, troubles me. And I’m already troubled. It has to do with Evan, doesn’t it?”

  Earl hesitated. “I’m not sure if I’m making the right call, but you’re the expert on this kind of thing, and we’ve been in it before.” He told her about Africa and the apparent subversion that was taking place. He told her about the term Multiplier, and how he had never heard of it except in two instances, back to back, by corrupted entities separated by an ocean.

  As he related all this, Earl wasn’t sure where to direct his eyes. The avatar on the screen was too young, too intense, like staring at the sun. But the real Cynthia, dressed in a form-fitted suit, stretching and bending in front of him to keep atrophy at bay, was uncomfortably intimate. The floor seemed safest.

  Sabot digitized the log sheets after Earl spoke. Cynthia’s on-screen avatar stood perfectly still.

  “What’s going on?” Earl asked Sabot.

  “She’s sharing the information with the MIMEs—computers that think like her but with more processing power.”

  “Is this normal?” Boen asked.

  “Nothing anymore is normal,” Sabot said, shaking his head. “She, and I’m sure Evan, and maybe a handful of others have this. It all came from Justin.”

  Cynthia’s avatar was still frozen, but her voice came over the loudspeaker. “Sabot, get a Mindlink.” Sabot pulled one off a hook. “Earl, I need to hear and see the meeting. I won’t pry.”

  “Okay,” Earl said. Sabot put the Mindlink on Earl’s head.

  “Just remember the meeting,” Cynthia said. Earl did. The room, the whispers, the sweat on Evan’s brow. “Good. Thank you.”

  Sabot took back the Mindlink.

  Her avatar
reanimated. “Evan was in pain as he spoke to you. And those whispers you heard weren’t just MIMEs . . . they were people.”

  She stepped back, building logic.

  “There are one hundred and seventy-three mines around the world whose minerals and elements are used to build and maintain Data Cores. Forty-three percent of them are redundant. Twenty percent of them—all overseas—produce a plus or minus deviation of one percent, attributed to inaccurate scales, data entry, and shrinkage.”

  “That doesn’t sound like much,” Boen said.

  “Percentage-wise, it’s not,” she replied. “But by tonnage it’s an undocumented two hundred thousand tons of unrefined ore. And unlike a finished good, it’s unaccountable. We wouldn’t even know enough to know if we should be looking for it. India and Africa are the manufacturing centers for our infrastructure, easily corruptible, and as long as we received what we ordered, there would be no reason to wonder if the factories were producing excess.”

  The room was quiet again as Cynthia processed.

  “The Data Core could be eight to twelve times as large as the Colossal Core. Combined with the UNITY, it could process twelve percent of all cyberspace per second. But not without help.”

  Again, quiet. The MIMEs hummed.

  “In the last three days Igor Emelianko, Heinrich Gloss, Alexandra Kravetz, Cong Lee and . . . God . . . Brad Zienkiewicz, one of our founders, have gone missing. Francesco Berin was abducted by force in the middle of the night.”

  Boen recognized the name Francesco Berin. The Italian Prime Minister.

  “They’re geniuses. Prodigies in their field. The Data Sumps, Sabot. Mechanically sound, yet torn from their posts in cyberspace. Unexplained data spikes that maxed out our Cores.

  “His patience,” she continued. “The years he took to realize his vision. The hundreds of people he must have blackmailed to see this through. And now it’s close, too close to wait. Too close to be patient any longer. What he thought it would be, it isn’t, but it’s close enough, and it’s a means to his end.”