by Lee Bond
Lisa tipped an invisible hat. “And by the time Bravo became aware of you, it was already too late; you’d fallen, however ignorantly, under Trinity’s ulterior motives, had spent years blazing though the heavens, leaving an unmistakable mark on the very fabric of the Universe. Arriving here, on Hospitalis, enhanced to the point of nearly unlimited strength and speed and driven further onwards by your reasonable terror of the God soldiers, Bravo did the only thing it could do; it pushed. Pushed you further, farther, faster, made you reckless, heedless, willful, foolish. The mechanisms giving you your strength and speed are not your own, they were put there –with your permission - by them. Seeing you as you are, they had … have… no choice but to witness you in action, to determine just how dangerous you are to the Plan.”
“They?” Garth wrinkled his forehead. He was so far out of his depth. “The Plan?”
“Bravo is … occupied, in a sense. By … well, let us call them … programs. Codes designed to ensure the safety of Bravo, the continuity of The Plan, codes programmed to wait. For you.” Lisa paused, thinking on something. “But as I said, you arrived as you are. You mirror for them a … a … reflection of the past. And that they will not condone. Therefore, they pushed, to see if you are in fact a true nightmare reborn or something different. Making matters worse, by using you so efficiently for It’s own machinations, Trinity has inadvertently provided them with insights into your … you.”
“I don’t follow.”
Lisa smiled sadly, forlornly. So much of her commander was still lost. “Each of us underwent the same tests, commander, to see if a new technology developed by the Armies of Man could provide Humanity with a better chance at surviving without our help. They called it neural sheathing and it was a revolutionary breakthrough. The first hy-tech science developed by human minds, the sheaths were supposed to give normal soldiers strength to match the opposition. They reasoned, incorrectly, it turned out, that our … diversity … would provide them with an adequate baseline from which they could begin implementation in humans.”
The term ‘Armies of Man’ sent a thrill through Garth. It was a name he recognized, and those quiescent memories shivered further. “Incorrectly?”
“Yes. Oh yes, so very … incorrectly. Though we were different, stronger, faster, talented in ways that made the commanding officers for the Armies of Man frightened out of their wits, the sheaths worked in ways they couldn’t have anticipated.” Lisa shuddered at the memories of those tests. “As I said, neural sheathing had been designed to upgrade the speed and strength of baseline human soldiers and we were the test group. We were supposed to be able to withstand the rigors of the implantation, of the programmed threat response augmentations. We very nearly died after only a three percent increase in strength and speed. They considered the tech faulty, not only because no human could’ve withstood even a fraction of a percent increase but also because it dampened our inherent abilities. Scant hours before mission launch, you volunteered. For reasons that to do this day remain a complete mystery to me.” She flashed him a grin. “And these days I am no slouch when it comes to thinking outside the box.”
“What does this have to do with Trinity and with … with Bravo? With me?”
Lisa bit a lip, trying to find a way to answer without revealing things her commander could not know before it was … time to know them. “Unlike us, commander, you seemed to possess no abilities, no strengths or speeds or … other … that set you apart from Humanity. Naturally and for a prohibitively long time, they didn’t believe you, not with overwhelming evidence to the contrary. So they tested you. Repeatedly. Mercilessly. Cruelly. They thought that if the tests became hard enough, you’d relent, you’d ‘reveal’ yourself. But you didn’t and finally, they relented. They had no choice but to trust you and by the time the sheaths were developed, they couldn’t –wouldn’t- risk your life. You were dismissed from the sheathing tests. When the time came to suspend ourselves, you argued for the chance to be implanted with the neural sheaths, citing necessity. They were installed mere hours before we all submitted to Alpha’s temporally static embrace and that was that. Until Trinity woke us up and sent you through It’s damned gauntlet. A gauntlet you willingly ran, unwittingly proving the commanders for the Armies of Man right all along.”
“I still don’t follow.” The notion that he was seeded with machines that were solely responsible for his speed and strength didn’t necessarily bother him; it was, in fact, one of the only truly reasonable possibilities. If the ship they’d been found in had defied all current states of scientific discovery, why should he not be augmented in the same way?
“Commander, what percentage increase do you imagine you’ve experienced with the neural sheaths? What level would you say your strength, speed and agility have been upgraded to?” Lisa tilted her head to one side.
Garth shrugged. Intuition and Lisa’s tone told him all he needed to know; whatever he thought to be true would so far from reality it was pointless to make a guess.
“Four hundred percent, commander.” Lisa stopped, letting the knowledge sink deep into the man’s stubborn brain. When she saw the familiar squint in the eyes, she knew he’d processed the impossible data. “Four hundred percent. A three percent increase in the strongest of us had him weeping hysterically. 3.1 percent and he went into cardiac arrest. Every model designed with the data provided by our tests indicated a five percent upgrade would’ve killed every one of us stone dead the moment the threshold was crossed. But you…”
“And as I am now, I remind them of … of the enemy? What enemy? Why don’t I know any of this?” Garth’s shouts echoed into the space of Lisa’s dreamscape, and the universes swirling above and below were buffeted and battered by his anger. His hands curled involuntarily into fists.
Lisa jerked her chin at Garth’s aggressive stance. “What do you intend to do, commander? Beat the truth out of me? I promised to keep my involvement in your life to a minimum. Your suffering isn’t my fault.”
“Who did you promise?” Garth relaxed his fists. His hands throbbed.
“Why,” She said with a curious smile, “you, of course. I promised you that when the time came, I wouldn’t tell you anything you didn’t already know. At the time, it was a curious promise, but I see now why you phrased it as you did. I can only tell you things you already know but have not yet confronted or realized. It is … frustrating.”
She didn’t know the meaning of the word ‘frustrating’. “So I’ll remind Bravo of some enemy. So what? What can ‘they’ do?”
“Well, that is … tricky. Certainly they will not like it and will almost definitely seek to undo what Trinity has done.” Lisa nodded at Garth’s quirked eyebrow. “Oh yes. They aren’t limited to their … base, commander, not by any means. They won’t kill you because they need you, but they will ensure that when you come to Bravo, it will be in a position of weakness, as a … a supplicant. Armed with the historical data of the enhancement levels the neural sheaths achieved without killing you, they will probably force you into revealing your hidden strengths. If they conclude you won’t break, they may go the other route; force you to beg for the strengths they gave. The mission ahead of you dictates that necessity. Either way, commander, they will try to control you as you’ve never been controlled before.”
Garth didn’t like the sound of that, hated it as much as he hated the fact that he’d been played so thoroughly by Trinity. Had it been that way from the very beginning? Had Trinity somehow caused the cruiser accident that’d left him on 9-Nova-12, directly under the noses of his eventual jailors? What a fool he’d been.
That he hadn’t known –couldn’t have known, really- what was going on didn’t make things better. He’d blindly followed Trinity’s Map to Success and now he was on the planet where he was meant to be. In the grand scheme of things, he supposed that was all that mattered. He knew there was more to both Trinity and Bravo’s story than Lisa Laughlin was letting on; able as she was to read the minds of any thi
nking thing, she obviously knew –or could find out with some effort- precisely what they were planning.
Unfortunately, there was nothing he could do. The woman wasn’t really here, this was all a dream and besides which, she’d evolved into a being of light. There was nothing in the Universe he could do to force her to do anything.
“Is there anything I can do to stop this?” He needed the strength and the speed the neural sheathes gave him. Hating himself for thinking it, Garth hoped to hell and back that Bravo decided to wait until after The Final Game to revoke their ‘privileges’. There was simply no other way he was going to able to win the right to gain access to The Box. And if The Box in the arena wasn’t the real one, then he’d need his ‘gifts’ even more; tracking down Bravo’s true location and then getting to it was going to be one of the most demanding things he’d ever done.
Lisa shook her head. “No. None whatsoever. Bravo is in control in this system. When it has decided it is time to remove the threat you represent, it will.”
“But…” Surely, Bravo wouldn’t be that … that … puckish. He … he didn’t have any special powers or abilities, not like the others he’d traveled through time with. He was just Garth N’Chalez, a man with some respectable fighting skills, an unreasonable mental data bank of all things useless and host to the occasional bout of supreme technological savant-ism.
“It is the way it is.” Lisa stated firmly. “It will happen. If you manage to enter Bravo, you will find out why we slept for thirty thousand years instead of two hundred and then you can do what you came here to do.”
Garth couldn’t resist. Lisa knew everything, he knew nothing. “Tell me what you know.”
“I will say no more on this, commander.” Lisa Laughlin lost control of her image and for a brief, terrifying moment, she swelled to fill the voids between the universes, a swirling blue flame of light that threw harsh shadows everywhere. The machines or tools -or whatever they were- hidden behind the stars shivered and buckled under the stress.
The light grew brighter and brighter … suddenly, Lisa Laughlin in her jeans stood there, embarrassed, out of breath. “Do not … do not push me. Ever. I alone –out of all your brothers and sisters- knew precisely what was going to happen when we entered Alpha. I, alone out of everyone, was awake the entire time. Do you have any concept of what that means? My Kith’kineen heritage continually evolved, commander and I knew it would happen before I entered. And yet I still did. I did it for you. I did it for what you plan. So do not push me. I have known suffering more than any billion minds can comprehend. I feel the life and death of every sentient being in this dimension every moment of my tortured life and it is an agony that I can barely contain. I float on the edge of existence, hundreds of trillions of trillions of light years away from the last living thing, hoping that the distance will give me solace, but there is none. There can be none until you are successful and successful you must be. Else I have suffered for nothing.”
“What … what can I do?” Garth demanded weakly, aghast at the woman’s loyalty. It was heart-wrenching to imagine this young slip of a girl lying awake for an eternity, her mind growing ever more powerful until, upon being free, she’d transformed into a … whatever she was. He … what a fool.
“Remember who you are, commander. Become the man that evoked such loyalty in me that I endured millennia of madness, of rage, of anger, of sorrow. Become the man you are once more. Deny Bravo it’s petty parlor tricks, determine for yourself Trinity’s ulterior motives, follow your instincts. And above all, remember one thing.”
“What’s that?” Garth asked, eyes on the heavens. The engines still churned behind the universes, still diaphanous, still hardly there. He knew they meant something, knew it down in the deepest parts of him where his true memories lay, but they wouldn’t come. This ‘chat’ with Lisa had kicked something loose in him, but it’d be a long time before they spiraled up and out. The machines behind the stars in Lisa’s dreams meant something.
But what?
He turned to Lisa, who was glimmering. The dream was coming to an end.
“Taking a life is easy. Saving a life is hard.” Lisa tipped her invisible hat. “Be seeing you.”
Her parting gesture was cruel; his words echoed around him even as the stars began to fade.
“It was the most goddamn fun I’ve had in thirty thousand years.”
He was kicked out of the dreamscape.
xxx
Garth woke, sick to his stomach, mind burdened by revelations too awesome to handle. He was being driven to be reckless by the very thing he sought out, was he? The Box, no, Bravo was pushing him, was it?
Lisa’s exposure of the ancient ship’s trickery wasn’t enough to soothe his conscience. No, no matter how badly he wanted to let the blame fall squarely on Bravo, he’d been aware of his actions every step of the way, from the very moment he’d walked out of the Spaceport right up until he’d woken up in this bed, surrounded by the three most powerful people in the solar system. It’d just been easier. To kill and to let destruction shiver around him.
And his stupid fucking mouth. That off-the-cuff quip was going to haunt him for days, if not years. He was surprised OverCommander Vasily hadn’t killed him on the spot. It’s what he would’ve done. Hundreds of deaths, billions of dollars in damages, a great systemic tragedy, and he’d called it fun.
What an asshole.
And his refusal –Bravo-inspired or otherwise- to recognize the very real proof that Latelyspace was five thousand years old and therefore, technically speaking, the oldest civilization since the 20th century had been monumentally … catastrophically … stupid. That was going to have to change.
The people -especially their politicians- were smarter and infinitely cagier than anything or anyone he’d dealt with on either side of The Cordon. Terrance had played him like a fiddle, letting him dig himself deeper and deeper. Guillfoyle had remained invisible right up until the moment Jamal’s sister Vernita had been threatened with painful torture when by rights -if he’d only fucking slowed down a minute to take stock- he’d’ve realized there was more going on.
But no, he’d done nothing of the sort.
He’d treated Hospitalis like every other dirt water craphole he’d ever been on across The Cordon, and in the end, it’d cost hundreds of lives and an entire goddamn Spaceport. He’d blamed his recklessness on lack of proper Intel, on not having an AI to run the show behind the scenes, and sure, maybe that’d influenced him a bit, but lying there, he realized that in the grand scheme of things, he’d had all the time in the world.
In retrospect, the Offworld portion of the Game hadn’t been too demanding of his time. If he’d laid low, played the game better, fought his way through a bunch of underpowered mercs and murderers instead of cramming himself down Hospitalis’ throat …
Well, he wasn’t entirely certain if anything would’ve gone that much differently, not really, not with Guillfoyle and Terrance both working behind the scenes to make his life miserable for different reasons, but it might’ve. Maybe he’d’ve noticed Guillfoyle’s ulterior motives sooner, maybe he’d’ve realized a Latelian desperate enough to steal an AI would do whatever it took to hide that theft. Maybe he’d’ve figured Terrance’s nefarious schemes to use him as a pawn to oust the Chairwoman that much quicker. Maybe he could’ve gone to the Chairwoman with the truth about the OverSec’s treachery…
Too many maybes. Too many doubts.
Too much recklessness.
There would never be a way to know how things could’ve gone, not now. The only thing he could do was struggle against the urges coming to him from Bravo. He needed to learn which impulses were his, which Bravo was beaming into his head. Garth shook his head in disgust.
He needed to fix things. He could make reparations to Hospitalis. He could also learn about Latelyspace, see if there was some other way to make what needed to happen happen without the body count rising every time he made a move.
Garth reac
hed for the Sheet Herrig had provided and began.
First, he authorized his number two to make massive donations to every charitable organization the man could find. Then he insisted that each and every family member related to any man, woman, child or God soldier who died as a result of the Spaceport’s destruction receive compensation for their loss. It probably wasn’t enough, it certainly wouldn’t bring back the dead or ease their pain, but it was the only thing he could do by way of apology.
It would never be enough but he needed to do something.
Then he started hunting for historical records. If he was going to go head-to-head with Latelyspace properly, he needed to start at the beginning. The powers-that-be might choose to discount his venerable age as nothing but a Trinity ploy, but he wasn’t going to be caught with his pants down ever again. Five thousand years of history was going to take some slogging through, but by the end of his hospital stay, he had every intention of knowing more about Latelyspace than any other human being.
Waiting for access permission, Garth looked at his bandaged, still-ruined arm. Even with his speedy –and presumably Bravo-gifted- healing factor, there was at least a week or two more of disgusting hospital food and verbal sparring with his doctor.
More than enough time to start over.
Lisa’s words rang in his mind as the Sheet beeped approval.
“Taking a life is easy. Saving a life is hard.”
He could do it. He could be the man she’d followed thirty thousand years into the future.
He’d do it or die trying.
Chadsik Freaks the Hell out of the Locals
“Is there summink wrong wiv your brain, mate, or is you just tired of living?” Chad demanded calmly, quite impressed with himself. “If it’s the latter, I suggest you ‘ave a little chinwag wiv the rest of the people aboard your charming space station, my son, to see if they is able to breath a vacuum. I is most definitely in the mood to assist you in discoverin’ if you lot is capable of spontaneous evolution, hey?”