Geosynchron

by David Louis Edelman

  They emerge in a cavernous, echoing room of polished and laminated wood that might serve as a sparring chamber. Standing in the middle of the room on a mannequin of sorts is a flesh-colored bodysuit. Standing next to the bodysuit are Horvil, Serr Vigal, Quell, Frederic Patel, and Richard Taylor, along with a tall, lithe man with an immaculately clipped goatee and camouflage fatigues.

  He's holding a rather large dartgun in his right hand.

  Before Natch even has a chance to say hello, Papizon is exhorting him to strip down and climb into the bodysuit. It's made of some slick, rubbery substance that reminds Natch of scuba gear. As he dresses, the man in the fatigues introduces himself as Special Operative Jorge Monck. Natch would describe him as no-nonsense, except there appears to be quite a bit of nonsense in the man that's carefully compartmentalized away from work and duty.

  "I'll be accompanying you into the Thassel Complex along with eighteen of my team," says Monck. "Disguised, but armed. We'll be with you every step of the way. Well, every step, except ..

  "Except when you plug the motherfucker with black code," adds Papizon cheerily as he adjusts Natch's suit.

  "And here's what you'll be doing it with," says Monck, holding up the large dartgun. "You can use the selector on the pommel to switch between the upper and lower chambers of the gun. The lower chamber is armed with your standard offensive black code capabilities. Paralysis, blindness, unconsciousness. Horvil's got OCHREs to inoculate you against all of them."

  Horvil holds up a capped syringe and points to it with raised eyebrows.

  "As for the upper chamber," continues the operative, "I'll leave that to your friend Quell to explain."

  The Islander takes the gun and points to its upper chamber. Natch notices that he's still wearing the golden rings that enable him to use his idiosyncratic finger-weaving programming technique. "Horvil, Frederic, and I put together a little concoction for Brone," says Quell. "Vigal had some input too. It's kind of like a bio/logic loopback. It'll completely block any outgoing subaether transmissions from his OCHREs, so he shouldn't be able to send any signal to release Possibilities 2.0 on the Data Sea."

  Natch has finished donning the battle suit by this point, and Papizon immediately begins explaining its many features to him. The treads are designed to trek through virtually any type of terrain without leaving a footprint or admitting the slightest droplet of moisture. The suit itself will shift color in the blink of an eye to camouflage itself against the surrounding environment. ("Not that you'll need that," says Papizon, "because you'll be wearing a robe of one-way trans parency weave over this so you'll blend in with the crowd. Lets the cameras see out without anyone else being able to see in.") There's a utility belt filled with miniature versions of just about every stealth contraption in existence-magnetic cable, collapsible knife, pulse grenade, miniature flamethrower-all arranged in some arcane order that beggars logic. It's disguised with a retractable cover that makes the whole thing look like one of those stylish wide belts that Natch has seen Robby Robby wear. The gun fits snugly in a pocket and is somehow virtually undetectable from more than a meter away.

  When Natch is completely outfitted in the battle suit and holding the dartgun in his hand, he feels utterly ridiculous. He suddenly has a new appreciation for actors like Bill Rixx and Juan Nguyen who can look like they were born to wear such badass weaponry.

  "Am I going to need all this?" asks Natch apprehensively.

  Papizon shrugs. "Doubt it. But you know what they say-always be prepared!"

  "Speaking of prepared-you're going to show me to a bio/logic workbench soon, right? There's something I need to do."

  "Yep. In a little bit. Be patient."

  Horvil, Vigal, and Richard Taylor stand to the side during this entire production with polite smiles on their faces, saying nothing. Even Frederic Patel is staying out of the way. It's clear that there's more prep work to be done, and they don't want to impede the mission.

  Soon Papizon is leading Natch and Jorge Monck out of the room towards some other briefing. But Serr Vigal catches up to them before they've made it out the door and encloses Natch in a very uncharacteristic hug. "Good luck," he says in a hoarse voice that's little above a whisper.

  "Luck is for the unprepared," Natch quips.

  The neural programmer manages a slight smile. "Then let's hope you're prepared."

  True to its name, the warehouse district was a vast segment of Manila largely given over to rambling open storage facilities and pits of leftover construction debris. But it contained at least one building with something close to modern amenities. Magan guessed that this had once been the overseer's office for some kind of industrial operation, and appropriated it as his headquarters. The top floor jutted out over the rest of the building, with a flexible glass window overlooking a large open courtyard. Today the space was serving as training grounds for a legion of men and women in white robes and yellow stars. Magan stood at the window and watched the drill instructor lead his troops through the basics of their unfamiliar weapons. On the other side of the room, Magan's commanders were standing in a cluster poring over tactical diagrams on viewscreens.

  "Do you trust him?" said Rey Gonerev from a chair in the corner nearest the window.

  "Who?" replied Magan. "Cheronna? Josiah?"

  "Natch."

  The lieutenant executive shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. "Trust is a multifaceted concept," he replied after some consideration.

  "So you don't trust him," said the Blade.

  "I trust that he despises Brone and will conduct the mission as directed. I trust that he'll do his best to sneak into the Kordez Thassel Complex and take out the bodhisattva. But after that?" Magan exhaled sharply. "After that, no, I don't really trust him."

  "We could end up with Natch on the loose again. We could end up facing the same situation as before-searching through tube trains, following his friends and colleagues, trying to figure out where he could have disappeared to."

  "We could," agreed Magan. "But somehow I don't think so. That whole experience on the run changed him, Rey. The operation against the cartels in 49th Heaven changed him. After we've got Brone safely contained, I don't know if he'll just hand MultiReal over to Jara. I'd be rather surprised if he did. But now that he knows where I'm coming from, I think the disagreements we have in the future will be more ... civilized."

  Rey Gonerev was evidently not placated by his words. "Civilized," she said doubtfully. "Don't we have any other options than trusting him?"

  "Perhaps you'd like to see the alternative?"

  Magan called over one of his senior commanders from the group of Council officers huddled on the other side of the room. A short, pale man with closely cropped hair stepped over and gave the lieutenant executive a quick bow. "Ferris, show Chief Solicitor Gonerev the video of the alternate plan for the Kordez Thassel Complex."

  Without a word in response, the man waved his hand at the window in front of Magan. A horizontal chunk of glass instantly turned opaque. On the black display appeared a tactical representation of the Thassel Complex drawn in crisp yellow vectors. Two seconds later, a small spherical object came streaking down from the top right of the display.

  The missile slammed into the center of the Complex and reduced it to cinders between one breath and the next.

  "You know we can't do that!" shouted Gonerev, leaping to her feet and leveling an angry stare at the commander. "The Thasselians have that place open for business twenty-four hours a day. There could be thousands of civilians in that building! Businesspeople, drudges, L-PRACG people, who knows who else. And what if Brone's got the program rigged to automatically launch onto the Data Sea if he dies, like Natch said?"

  Ferris took a step back and folded his arms across his chest defensively. "The lieutenant executive asked for options. This is an option."

  Magan wiped the display with a sweep of his hand, and they were once again looking at the figures in white robes, awkwardly shouldering their
dartrifles in something approximating unison. A few rifles went clattering to the ground as he watched. "Relax," said the lieutenant executive. "I have no intention of leveling the Thassel Complex unless as a very last resort."

  The Blade frowned with suspicion. "Then why prepare for it in so much detail? Why diagram the whole thing out?"

  "Because Len Borda might not be so merciful."

  33

  Politicians never die, went the old Islander aphorism. They just curdle.

  Representative Triggendala had been serving the south side of Manila for nearly as long as Len Borda had been heading the Defense and Wellness Council. Unverified rumor said that the two of them had actually been lovers in some bygone era, and the high executive's spurning had sparked the unyielding hatred she had borne for him ever since. Such was her hatred of the Council in all its forms that she had refused to vote on the resolution authorizing Magan Kai Lee to establish a military base in the Islands, preferring to abstain.

  But when Josiah Surina and Bali Chandler called for the forces of the Free Republic to march alongside those of Magan Kai Lee, Triggendala would not be satisfied with a vote of "present."

  She took to the floor of the Islander parliament the next day with General Cheronna at her side and began a lengthy excoriation of Josiah and his manifesto. She proclaimed Lieutenant Executive Lee to be little more than a puppet of Len Borda, and called his rebellion "bad theater." "This fight is between the Free Republic and the high executive," she proclaimed, adding that if the high executive wanted bloodshed, "he knows where to find us."

  General Rosz watched the hearing on the Data Sea along with the rest of Borda's senior commanders in the barracks north of Melbourne. Triggendala's speech-and Josiah Surina's sour-faced reaction-made for pretty good theater itself. Within two hours of mounting the rostrum, the xenophobic group known as the insulars had mounted a rebellion of their own. Arguments broke out on the floor. General Cheronna could be seen yelling his anger at a visibly livid Bali Chandler until the two almost came to blows. When Surina and Chandler's resolution failed by a resounding 28-20 vote, the drudges focused their cameras on Margaret Surina's son, slumped in his chair looking dour and defeated.

  "How can the Islanders press for `Grand Reunification,"' said Commander Cheng across the table from Rosz, putting a tangible sneer on the catchphrase, "when they can't even unify themselves?"

  Rosz nodded. A forty-year veteran in Borda's military, he had a son in his midtwenties; Josiah Surina reminded him a lot of his son. "I almost feel sorry for Surina," he said. "Seemed to have such a promising career ahead of him. Now he's just another backwater representative."

  Cheng was younger, less hardened by time and career. "Shame." He shrugged.

  Rosz and the other commanders sat around the table deep into the night discussing what this would mean to the impending battle with Magan Kai Lee. Consensus was that this would draw the lieutenant executive onto the battlefield sooner rather than later. The longer he stayed in Manila amidst the poisonous atmosphere Triggendala had stirred up, the greater the risk of him losing his military base, and therefore his main advantage over Borda's forces. As for the loss of the sizable unconnectible army led by General Cheronna-

  "Not as big a loss for Lee as it seems," stated Rosz.

  Cheng shook his head. "I disagree. The Islanders are good warriors. They would have been a good asset."

  "No doubt they're good warriors. A fierce people. But there's no precedent for a joint connectible-unconnectible force. You'd have all kinds of logistical issues to consider that would make it a nightmare. How do you communicate with them through battle language? Will all your weapons work with an unconnectible force?" The general downed the remainder of his wine. "Give me the simplicity of an allCouncil army any day over a joint force twice the size."

  "Suppose you've got a point," replied Cheng with a shrug of indifference.

  "You're still monitoring Cheronna?"

  "Of course. They were camped just east of the warehouse district next to Magan's army, but after the vote in parliament they moved off south."

  "Think we should tell the old man?" asked Rosz, stroking a trim beard of stark white.

  Cheng gave an ironic glance over his shoulder, up in the sky towards where he imagined DWCR to lie. "And interrupt the Battle of Waterloo?" he scowled. The high executive's propensity for playing his virtual games of ancient warfare was well known, among the higher echelons at least.

  General Rosz retreated to his quarters soon afterward. He had no sooner taken off the golden smock of his office when he had a sudden premonition: Magan's attack would come soon. Very soon. And it was likely to come here, to Melbourne, to his base in fact. Rosz called for his aide-de-camp and had her put the perimeter guard on high alert.

  Which turned out to be a prescient move.

  Rosz was awakened at three a.m. by a priority signal blasting through his brain, along with a stimulating release of adrenaline. Within a minute's time, he was up and dressed and striding through the hallways to his command center. All around, he could see men and women scrambling from their bunks to don uniforms and load weapons. Crisp, orderly, efficient.

  Rosz was pleased to note that he reached the command center a good ten seconds before Commander Cheng. It was an austere room, the command center, buried deep underneath the base proper; one could almost describe it as a bunker, except bunkers usually didn't have such luxurious armchairs. General Rosz had never been one for excessive instrumentation. To him, war was an intellectual exercise that required little more than viewscreens, encrypted communications, and the occasional glass of port. The two men took their seats and secured the door behind them.

  "Get me eyes on the ground," barked Cheng to one of the tactical systems experts two dozen meters up.

  Seconds later, the wall of viewscreens across from them was filled with a wide array of vantage points on the battlefield. Grunt's-eye views of the grassy plains between Melbourne and Shepperton; aerial surveillance from hoverbirds; terrain maps and schematics.

  "They're coming up fast," muttered Rosz. "For process' preservation, does Lee really think a full-scale ground assault is going to work against Melbourne?"

  Rosz squinted at the bank of viewscreens. There was an enormous white mass there of troops in the white robe and yellow star, not far south of Shepperton. And they weren't marching-they were running.

  Towards Melbourne, city of the centralized government.

  Jorge Monck looks him in the eye from a distance of no more than a meter. He says, "An interesting culmination of fast facts can be attributed to a certain malady of disproportionate usage." Natch can see his lips forming the words; he can sense the corresponding vibrations escaping from his larynx.

  But what he hears is, If you're decrypting battle language correctly, raise your right hand.

  Natch does so. He opens his mouth to ask Monck how he activates the voice encryption on his end-is there some sort of mental activation node? But what escapes his mouth is, "Do you find that birds often contribute to population density, or is that a delusion of scale?"

  Now tell Jara to raise her left hand, instructs Monck.

  "Alphabetical sorting in a traditional medium!" says Natch.

  He feels his communication channel with the fiefcorp master opening up. "Vertical and horizontal, that's a definite obstacle."

  Monck claps Natch on the shoulder and offers him a humorless smile. We're good. Then he heads back to his seat.

  Natch knows that he should be strategizing with Monck during their long hoverbird flight from Manila to the Kordez Thassel Complex, but his mind feels like it's caught in a funnel spiraling downward. The world around him seems to be dwindling, becoming more difficult to focus on, less comprehensible by the second. The mission is all there is. All there is is the mission. Monck and his four fellow Council spooks either understand Natch's reticence or simply don't care; they leave him to his solitude.

  It's a longer flight than Natch anticipated.
Monck and the others sleep. Natch remains rigid and awake from takeoff to landing.

  And before he realizes it, the hoverbird is making its final approach to a crooked and many-legged building on the outskirts of the Twin Cities. He sees bogs, sulking trees, and as they get close to the ground, fireflies. Natch feels like he should have more questions for Monck about what he should do, how he should react, what their contingencies are. But he can't seem to formulate the words.

  The hoverbird comes to a stop. Ready? says Jorge Monck laconically.

  The four Council officers reply in the affirmative, as does Natch.

  Then they're off the hoverbird and walking down the pathway from the hoverbird pad to the Kordez Thassel Complex.

  Monck's four companions have already split off before they even make it through the front door. Other nearby hoverbird pads have also disgorged their passengers, and the Council officers have now camouflaged themselves in the crowd. It's a typical sparse late-night business center crowd: mostly fiefcorpers on their way to meetings with superiors in a different time zone, but with a smattering of artists and tourists and idlers as well. Natch and Jorge Monck are dressed in tight-fitting, cream-colored robes over their battle suits, the stock outfit of the memecorp sales representative. They approach the front double doors, over which stretches a wide viewscreen filled with dancing animated bottles of ChaiQuoke.

  "Holistic approaches make the most sense," snaps Jara through the secure communications channel. Freeze. Don't look up.

  Not two seconds later, someone jostles Jorge Monck's elbow, causing him to spill the container of promotional buttons Natch didn't realize he was carrying. The plastic trinkets go clanking noisily on the concrete. Natch and Monck kneel down and take their time picking them up.