Geosynchron

by David Louis Edelman

  A song. Dangly electric guitars, a sinuous line of cello.

  Go! Now. To your right. Around the woman in green.

  Natch and Jorge scurry quickly around a rather large woman in a forest green caftan and into the doors-but not before they catch a glimpse of a muscular figure in a black robe, his attention momentarily snagged by an advertisement for Yarn Trip's third reunion tour. Natch recognizes one of the Thasselians from Old Chicago. And come to think it, someone was always playing Yarn Trip at eardrum-crushing levels in that hotel.

  They are in the door, the first guard passed. Natch gazes around at the impossibly long corridors and the slanted walls. He can already see three more figures in black robes with red trim down the next hallway.

  He thinks, This is going to be a long evening.

  "Robert Varless!" cried Benyamin.

  There was no mistaking the resemblance between the sylphlike man lounging twenty meters to Natch's right and the slim figure on Robert Varless's official Meme Cooperative profile. You just didn't see ears that long every day.

  Hang back about twenty seconds, Jara told Natch over the secure communications channel.

  Jara and Petrucio Patel were already staring down the list of possible distractions from the Council's oppo research, dangling under neath the man's photo like a shingle. Time was of the essence, so they had already learned to focus on the items that Merri had tagged during her evaluations last night. Avid fan of the Delhi Chakras soccer team ... former member of Creed Dao ... left behind a similarly elfin companion and small daughter to join Brone's Revolution of Selfishness ...

  Jara's and Petrucio's hands almost collided as they reached to point at the third item simultaneously.

  Back at the viewscreen on the other side of the room, Robby Robby flipped madly through the database of advertisements, collating and sorting with his fingertips through entries that he had already spent hours collating and sorting. Blonde ... female ... Caucasian ... six to eight years of age ... missing ...

  "Natch is waiting," said Jara in foreboding tone of voice. "Almost twenty seconds."

  "Got her!" cried the channeler, punching at the screen with two fingers.

  Four seconds later, Jara could see through Natch's battle suit cameras that Robby's automated bid for three times the going rate had been accepted, and the One-on-One Motivation Network had replaced the current advertisement on the viewscreen with the promo of Robby's choosing.

  It took three tries. Three heart-rendingly gorgeous little girls listed as missing in public service announcements by the Congress of L-PRACG's Center for Missing and Exploited Children before Robby struck on one with enough of a resemblance to Robert Varless's daughter to cause him to turn his head. And even then, Jorge Monck decided to add a secondary distraction by sending a shapely waif of a Council officer walking past in the opposite direction. Natch and Monck barely had time to jog by without being spotted.

  The whole room exhaled in collective relief.

  "Oh-h-h," moaned Benyamin, rubbing one hand across his sweaty forehead. "That was fucking close."

  "Aren't they all?" muttered Merri, who had decided her time was best spent proactively combing through the personnel files and tagging prospective advertisements.

  So far, Natch and Monck had made their way past five Thasselians. Two of the distractions had been relatively easy to conjure up and execute-including Robert Varless-but the other three had been decidedly more difficult. Jara was starting to suspect they should have just trusted to the Council's bio/logic disguise people. It had taken an entire five minutes to find a successful distraction for one woman. And that had only been possible by using a technique Jara thought of as a "one-two punch": use garish flash of color and/or light to start the head turn, then sock 'em with the advertisement that packed an emotional wallop. In every case, the process was taking longer than Jara had anticipated, leaving Natch and Monck to come up with a variety of excuses for loitering nonchalantly along half-empty hallways.

  Something about the entire enterprise left Jara feeling thoroughly depressed.

  Is that all we are? she thought. Puppets with strings to be pulled by marketers, advertisers, bureaucrats, and con artists? Of course, it was not every day that your typical marketer could afford to spend thousands of credits on research and surveillance into your personal life and habits. But the fact that everyone had some kind of irresistible switch of desire hardwired to their physiology seemed like a repudiation of everything Jara had learned about herself over the past few months.

  After all, it was not so long ago that Natch had been using these types of emotional tricks against her. The fact that she was now employing them made her feel like she had come full circle, and not in a good way. Jara tried to imagine what her own Defense and Wellness Council-prepared dossier would look like: weakness for nitro with strong bitters ... seduced by proctor at a young age ... strong attraction to powerful men who treat her like refuse....

  "Mohammed Victor Kohl!" shouted Benyamin, shattering her brief reverie. "Forty meters down the corridor to the left!"

  "Here they come," said Cheng. "Ready multi disruptors."

  The mass of soldiers in white had gotten quite close to the Melbourne base by now. It was a vast force of multi projections, surely ten thousand strong. They were dashing at top speed across the large open field north of the base. Rosz knew that an advance multi force of ten thousand must presage an invading force of close to forty thousand in the flesh. Which meant two things:

  Magan Kai Lee was sending the bulk of his force here to the north of Melbourne.

  And the decisive battle in the Council civil war of 360 would occur here, with General Rosz as the presiding officer for Len Borda's army.

  Rosz gaped at the advancing multi projections. Magan must have concluded that his position was quite desperate to resort to this bold surprise attack. It virtually eliminated the advantage he had gained by arranging the base behind the unconnectible curtain. Could it be that the political situation in the Islands was so precarious for the lieutenant executive that the base would not be available for much longer?

  Lee must have decided that his best hope in overthrowing Borda lay in catching this, the main Melbourne force, unprepared. He must have decided that he could not afford to wait for Borda's inevitable offensive action against Manila. It might have stood a chance of working if Rosz hadn't suspected he would resort to something like this. The general glanced at the row of viewscreens on the left-hand wall and was satisfied to see his soldiers scrambling into position in their bunkers, some bedraggled, some with dartgun belts in hand and unloaded-but there. The main banks of multi disruptors were mostly charged up, and substantial numbers of shoulder-mounted disruptors were already in play as well. The base itself, with its castle-like fortifications and multiple levels stacked like a ziggurat, was as good a place as any to defend against assault.

  Cheng gave all this a glance of satisfaction. "Fire when ready."

  The command zipped its way through the ranks of the defending force. Within seconds, the horizon lit up with the ghostly glare of multi disruptor fire. Beams of energy streaked northwards into the midst of the invading force.

  "Where is the Fourteenth?" asked Rosz. The 14th Melbourne Division: Len Borda's multi projection corps.

  "A little late suiting up and getting to the red tiles," replied Cheng. "But they're already pouring out of the gateways and making progress towards the enemy camp."

  Rosz stood and walked up and down the row of viewscreens, watching the targeted multi disruptor fire disappearing into the mass of white robes. Borda's forces gunning with gritted teeth.

  Suddenly the field erupted with the dull thump of smoke grenades. A dark mist rose from the ground, obscuring the advancing force. "Shit," cursed Cheng, though Rosz had expected this too. It was more than just smoke camouflaging the advancing multi disruptions; no, this was modern warfare. The mist was threaded thick with lightrepelling nanobots, designed to multiply when exposed to oxygen
. The defending Council officers were now firing into a dense black mass, unable to target individual advancing projections.

  "Patience," cautioned Rosz. "The mist only lasts a few minutes."

  Cheng grunted something in the affirmative; of course, he knew that as well as Rosz.

  The advancing mass of Magan Kai Lee's multi projections had now reached the periphery of the base, an unfortunate but also inevitable development. Rosz knew that the goal of the multi projection corps was not stealth or finesse, but rather speed. With no offensive capabilities of their own and few defensive tactics besides obfuscating dark mist, all you could really expect from the multi projection corps was to get inside the enemy compound and scope out their defenses before getting zapped with disruptor fire and sent back blinking to red tiles on base.

  Rosz narrowed his eyes. The advancing mass was within dartgun range of the base, and some had withdrawn weapons of their own. But the disruptor fire had not thinned their ranks.

  And Magan's troops were now firing.

  General Rosz leapt to the closest viewscreen, zoomed in as close as he could get to the invading force through the dissipating mist. He watched a burly man in the white robe and yellow star bellowing, charging forward-and completely ignoring the disruptor beam that struck him in the chest.

  "It's a trick!" cried Rosz. "This isn't the multi corps. Draw dartguns!"

  "Draw dartguns!" echoed Commander Cheng grimly. "Draw dartguns!"

  It was too late for the troops on the periphery of the base, gathered in their bunkers with disruptors still in hand. A good half of Magan's troops were busy plugging the unprepared disruptor corps soldiers with dart fire, mowing down entire bunkers full of Borda's troops. The rest of the invading force was pressing forward into the base, leaping over sandbags, firing wildly on anything they encountered.

  Clever, thought General Rosz, stopping at the side table to pour himself more wine. But there's a reason Council armies don't use this tactic every time.

  And sure enough, the surprise technique was already proving to be of limited use to Magan Kai Lee's army. After the initial burst of casualties among the disruptor corps, the enemy was now finding a force armed and prepared for their incursion. Darts began hailing through the ranks of Lee's troops, and they began going down into the dust.

  The trend only continued as platoons of Borda's soldiers ran onto the field of battle to flank the invading forces. It was part of the defense plan of the base, in fact-the outer courtyards were relatively easy to breach, so that an invading force might be pressed between the hardened inner fortifications and defenders who had moved around to a flanking position. Magan Kai Lee's troops were now engaged in close combat with Len Borda's better-armed, better-prepared defenders.

  It was a massacre.

  "Another wave incoming!" cried Cheng.

  Rosz snapped his head to the viewscreen Cheng was pointing at. He saw the enormous wave of white robes and yellow stars far down the field advancing on their position. Perhaps thirty or forty thousand strong. Reports were starting to come back from Borda's multi corps confirming that the bulk of Magan's force had moved south from Shepperton.

  Cheng left a small force in the base to mop up the surviving false multi projections, and sent the bulk of the army, already afield, to take on the invaders.

  Natch had moved into a more heavily occupied part of the Thassel Complex now. Jara thought he must be getting close to the bodhisattva, because the density of the devotees in black robes had increased dramatically.

  "The woman with the red hair-Paranella!" cried Benyamin.

  Merri had abandoned her attempts to get ahead of the game and was now working in one team with Robby Robby and Benyamin while Petrucio and Jara worked together in another. "Her daughter's part of a fan club for Juan Nguyen," said Merri hurriedly. "Run the ChaiQuoke promo!"

  "Juan Nguyen?" protested Robby, shaking his head. "It'll never work, Merri. He's the most popular actor on the planet right now. Totally overexposed."

  "Too late!" said Ben through gritted teeth. "She's looking this direction. Run it, run it!"

  Robby Robby was correct. The ad, which featured Juan Nguyen comically quaffing bottle after bottle of ChaiQuoke in rapid succession long past the point where his bladder would rupture, completely failed to distract the Thasselian named Paranella.

  "Nothing seems to be working on her," said Merri, wiping sweat off her brow. "Can't Natch just use MultiReal to get past this one?"

  Jara asked him.

  No, answered Natch flatly in encrypted battle language. I told you, I can't walk into a room with Brone if I'm exhausted from going through too many choice cycles.

  Jara couldn't argue with that. She felt guilty enough even asking; it seemed like she had drastically overestimated what this One-on-One Motivation Network advertising scheme could accomplish. Natch had made it two-thirds of the way to the room where Brone had parleyed with Merri and Petrucio, and avoided all of the Thasselian devotees they had come across. But Jara couldn't help but feel like he had gotten this far because of serendipity and the professionalism of Monck's team more than anything else.

  Regardless, Jara felt like this was still a bit too easy. Was the lure of clever advertising enough to distract all of the Thasselians? Or was this all just a feint to get Natch feeling overconfident?

  She turned her attention back to Natch's attempts to get past Paranella. Four separate advertisements in a row failed miserably, and only Jorge Monck's quick thinking prevented her from getting a closer look at Natch as he sidled past. The Council operative made a comic slip of his own, falling onto his face and yelling out in surprise and pain. The loud noise caused a quick turn of the head, which was enough for Natch to slip around her unnoticed.

  Jara decided to check in on how Magan's confrontation with Len Borda was going. She fired off a quick scrambled message to the Blade. "How's the battle going in Melbourne?" she asked.

  Rey Gonerev's voice came back confident and clear. "Good news," she said. "Everything's going exactly as planned."

  34

  "They won't fool us again," said General Rosz, teeth gritted with determination. "Slow up the advance, double-check the ammunition mix."

  Cheng nodded. "Affirmative."

  Rosz stood and watched with approval as his legions held up and took a moment to examine the dart canisters loaded on their dartguns and the placement of their multi disruptors. Not for the first time, Rosz wished that he lived in a simpler time, when ammunition was ammunition and ordnance was ordnance, when conventional gunpowder could incapacitate any enemy if you used enough of it.

  Nowadays, you could target the enemy with devastating accuracy and still watch him walk away unscathed, because the enemy had been inoculated against the black code in your dartguns-or because you were firing at a ghostly multi projection instead of a human beingor because the soldier you were targeting was an unconnectible with missing or deactivated OCHREs. Standard military strategy called for an amalgam of firepower to be used in tandem. Stun programs, paralysis programs, multi disruptor fire, even old-fashioned beam weapon blasts, all at the same time. Bombard the enemy position with enough different types of ammunition, and chances were that something would succeed in disabling or killing your foe.

  "Mix is good," replied Cheng after several minutes that saw Magan Kai Lee's main force marching farther down the plain. "Should be sufficient to knock out flesh and multi targets, if there are any hiding in there."

  Rosz nodded. Then waited, and watched.

  The viewscreens told the tale of an intense battle taking place on the plain outside the Melbourne base. Thousands of soldiers staking out positions on a broad field of grass, mounting weaponry and firing broadly into the opposing mass of troops. The air was hazy with a blanket of black code needles and multicolored beams of disruptor fire.

  Cheng could not help but stare open-mouthed, never having witnessed such a spectacle. As for General Rosz, he had not seen a connectible-on-connectible battle of
this magnitude since the Melbourne riots when he was a young man. He had not remembered how eerily quiet the battlefield was compared to the wars enacted on the dramas. Thousands of dartguns firing simultaneously sounded strangely like a chorus of clicking insects, while the noise of the disruptors crackling seemed to merge into one muted drone. As for the soldiers themselves-what sounds would they make when communication took place on silent encrypted channels, when paralysis and death from black code struck before they had a chance to scream?

  The soft susurration of boots rustling through grass. The masses of men and women in white and yellow rising and falling in mesmerizing patterns. The accumulation of spent darts on the ground like charcoalcolored snow.

  Rosz wondered if he was an abomination for finding the modern field of war to be strangely beautiful.

  "Tell the front line to advance," he commanded Cheng.

  Lieutenant Executive Magan Kai Lee surveyed the battlefield from the safety of his private hoverbird kilometers away in Shepperton. Bodies in the white robe and yellow star piled up all around the entrance to the base. The bulk of Borda's troops advancing towards Magan's much smaller force. "What do you think?" he said. "Now?"

  "Now," agreed General Cheronna.

  Cheng was flabbergasted. Their ammunition seemed to be having far less of an effect on the enemy than the enemy's was having on them. The line of Borda's troops had noticeably thinned from the hail of dart fire, but Magan's forces seemed hardly diminished at all.

  And then suddenly they began to take severe casualties-from behind.

  Rosz quickly found a vantage point where he could see what was happening in the rear lines of the advancing force. He actually rubbed his eyes to make sure that he was not hallucinating, something he thought only happened in the dramas. The mass of troops that had stormed the base-the ones Rosz had initially believed to be multi projections-these troops were now spontaneously rising up en masse and returning to the fight.