Subversive Elements (Unreal Universe Book 2)

by Lee Bond

  “Soldier…” OverCommander Vasily growled deep in his chest. Unlike Alyssa, Vasily was willing to treat this Bosch as a soldier until evidence proved otherwise. Alyssa was many things, but compassionate was not one of them. She had no idea what life was like for their heavily augmented soldiers and even less understanding of what it would be like to wake up one morning to the news you no longer existed. “You may no longer be Army, but you will show your betters the respect they deserve.”

  “Sorrysa!” Harry fired off a sardonic salute. “Sorrysi!”

  “And how did you come by my personal prote access signature?” Alyssa demanded frostily. It seemed like everyone in the world had her number.

  Harry shrugged. “I found it in the bottom of a garbage can.”

  Alyssa clenched her jaw briefly. That particular line of conversation would head nowhere quickly, so she went back to issues that were more important; if the man survived the God soldier incursion, he’d find himself in the Peak for violating Chair mandates, primarily those of failing to inform local governments of his presence.

  She knew Vasily believed the man to be Sigma-dead, but the Chairwoman wasn’t buying the theory. After being forcibly ejected from the ‘LINKS, there wasn’t a man or woman in the system capable of living beyond a year. If possible, Alyssa would use this Bosch to deal with Gualf and his merry band of idiots before she sent him to the depths of The Peak. “You maintain you are inside The Museum. Where are you at this very moment?”

  “In the washroom near the north side gift shop. See?” The prote-view swam briefly, giving Alyssa and Vasily a panoramic shot of the inside of a urinal once it stabilized. Harry’s homely face flashed back into view.

  Alyssa cast a glance at the bank of monitors displaying a multitude of feeds from her prote. Synced with the First Main, her prote could, when needed, locate any prote-clad person in the world in less than five minutes. To find someone not wearing one of the personalized computers… well, she was Chairwoman, so the hunt would take around an hour.

  Harry Bosch was using a prote, but wasn’t showing up. There was supposed to be only a single proteus in the entire system capable of doing that. To make sure she wasn’t losing her mind, Alyssa looked to her arm. Yes, it was still there.

  “How is it that I cannot find you, sa?” Chairwoman Doans asked casually.

  “Magic prote, si.” Harry replied enigmatically. “Fell from the sky. Or ... no, wait, I stole it from Guillfoyle. Yes. Ashok Guillfoyle gave me this proteus. That makes more sense.” he chuckled, shaking his head. “Protes falling from the sky. That was a stupid thing to say.”

  Doans and Vasily leaned forward, demanding in unison, “You know Ashok Guillfoyle?”

  “I paid him a visit the night you removed his tongue for treason, Si Chairwoman.” Bosch grinned, revealing a veritable forest of bad dentistry. “I’m confident he mentioned me somewhere in between screams. You probably thought he was making stuff up, but you and I both know Ashok used up all his ingenuity lying about duronium. I’m surprised. I should think you’d be willing to show a little trust to the old soldier who revealed his evil.”

  “And now you’re at The Museum. Which just so happens to be the spot for a terrorist plot?” Vasily shook his head. As a soldier, he believed in coincidences as far as he could throw them.

  “Old soldiers are allowed to reminisce for the glory days, Sa OverCommander, it’s in the training manual. Would you like my information or not?” Harry demanded. “I gotta take a wicked piss and then I was thinking about kicking some terrorist ass.”

  “Soldier, you aren’t permitted to engage the enemy. Support is on the way. You are to remain where you are and do nothing.” Vasily drew himself up to his full height. He knew they were talking via prote and that it meant little beyond the gesture of authority, but Bosch –if he was any kind of man at all- would respond to the action as a soldier.

  Harry ignored Vasily’s posturing with a snort. He spoke very slowly. “Do. You. Want. To. Know. What. I. Know?”

  “We do not bargain with terrorists and we do not take information from a man who does not exist and cannot offer reasonable explanations as to his presence.” Alyssa replied harshly. “Perhaps if you were more forthcoming about who you really are.”

  “No skin off my nose.” Harry picked his nose and examined the contents. “Ew.” He said, yawning loudly. “Well. It’s been real fun and all, but I gotta go. And when you gotta go, you gotta go.”

  The Chairwoman and the OverCommander stared thoughtfully at the blank Screens, each of them wondering the same things but from different angles.

  Alyssa looked wearily at Vasily, who nodded. “Did I do something wrong, Vasily, to deserve all this?” She gestured to a bank of Screens, which was displaying the identities of every man, woman and child inside The Museum and their relations ‘outside’; if things went terribly, terribly awry, it was important to know who would kick up a fuss and deal with them before they started.

  Another monitor was busy compiling the names of those working directly with Gualf, a fact that the political insurgent-turned-terrorist had to know. If anyone knew the powers of the Prometheus Device, it was Vilmos Gualf. As cunning as he was, Vilmos was also insane enough to believe that one day –presumably after he was successful- the entire system would know his name, would shout ‘Vilmos Gualf’ from the rooftops and across the netLINKs.

  The arrogance!

  “I believe it is safe to say,” Vasily pulled Alyssa close, “that you knew this was coming. Perhaps it is here sooner, and worse…” he continued after his love stopped laughing, “but you knew. You were just hoping The Game would distract people for a little while longer.”

  Alyssa held Vasily’s hand. “How long until the Goddies arrive?”

  Vasily consulted his prote. “Ten minutes till landfall, five minutes to coordinate, five to prepare. This will be all over by lunchtime. Then you can start prosecuting Nickels for safety violations.”

  “Oh yes.” The Chairwoman felt a smile cross her lips. “I’d forgotten all about that.” She pecked Vasily on the cheek and resumed working through the data.

  xxx

  The God Army believed in timetables. They’d destroyed entire systems of heathens on timetables. It was what they did. When OverCommander Vasily gave Chairwoman Doans the schedule for the initial phase of their sortie against The Museum, he wasn’t off by a nanosecond.

  Colonel Grayson looked at the sky, pinching his face in dismay. “Looks like rain, Major.”

  Major Eddison checked his prote for a weather update. “Heavy squalls coming in from the east, sa. Gale force winds will hit Easson. By the time it gets here, nothing but some heavy rain, maybe a few lightning strikes. Nothing to concern ourselves with, sa.”

  Grayson pointed to the tactical screens. Since The Museum was a perfectly circular building, the boys at Intelligence were suggesting a deployment scheme to match. Five level one God soldiers per main entrance gate stood ready to cut their way through the duronium shields. A dozen more were gearing up with jet-assist packs to take them up to the roof so they could drop down into the primary occupied area. Another eight hundred God soldiers were deploying along all major arteries leading to and from The Museum, preventing lookee-lous from getting in the way.

  Reporters were no longer interested in trying to break into the monument. They were spending much of their time now trying either to convince the Military Police of their innocence or to look the other way as they fled for the hills.

  “What d‘you think, Eddison?” Grayson wished they could bring in a tank or six. It’d been a good long while since he’d had a chance to let loose those particular dogs of war. A VapoRaptor would go through The Museum in about thirty seconds, chewing through rock and people without distinction. A glorious wave of havoc and then they could all bugger off to back to barracks and wait for the next time.

  “I think it’s time to see some dying, sa!” Eddison snapped a salute.

  Grayson looked at the cl
ock. “It is indeed.” He began issuing commands to the Twoesies, who barked to the Onesies, who started rolling. They were going to start ‘small’, go in through one door first to see what kind of surprises Vilmos Gualf had left behind. They were no fools. Vilmos had planned this, and if it was easier to go through the front door, they would. There was no sense in losing men, even if they were only Onesies.

  Working with the kind of coordinated precision you find only in people who’ve worked together for ages, the waiting soldiers neatly dismantled the regular doors and gates leading into the sanctum proper –and roughly fifteen feet of the outermost stone structure on either side of each entrance- with a flurry of snap grenades. The explosion sent a fair bit of broken stone and shattered metal flying. Colonel Grayson held on stoically to his hat, nodding at the display.

  There was a slight delay in moving on to the next phase of the op to allow medics with pliers to remove chunks of shrapnel from over half the men in each squad. Grayson pursed his lips. If they’d had Threesies on hand, this sort of thing wouldn’t happen. Leaving a Onesie under Twoesie command was just begging for trouble. Still, the OverCommander wanted the Threes and Fours to stay where they were.

  When the medics pronounced the monolithic Onesies capable of continuing, the next phase of the operation began. A single squad of Onesies under Twoesie supervision began assembling their sonic cutter. Very large and unintentionally resembling a Flash Gordon-era laser pistol, the cutter was fitted together and aimed at the nearest blast doors in under a minute. The Twoesie in command of those men nearest the Colonel and the Major looked over in askance.

  Grayson and Eddison fitted earplugs into their ears, with Grayson firmly screwing his hat of office onto his head. The Twoesie nodded and started barking orders in that awful pidgin that the soldiers had developed over thousands of years.

  The only indication that the sonic cutter was activate was a terribly loud growling. It was as if a pack of high-strung animals had overtaken the courtyard to The Museum. By looking hard, you could see a faint depression of airwaves as a beam of modulated sound bounced back and forth between the thick duronium door and the device. A whine filled the air, a piercing sound doubling in ferocity every few seconds.

  “Seems to be a bit noisier than in my youth, Major Eddison.” Grayson commented loudly, pointing at the massive sonic cutter.

  “We’ve moved to Hiegel Fours, sa. They’re smaller than the Threes, which are the ones you probably remember.” Eddison replied faithfully, voice straining to be heard over the noise and the earplugs.

  “Ah.” Grayson nodded. “Yes, I thought they looked smaller. Still awfully noisy, though.”

  “No one can figure out how to make them quieter, sa. Smaller, yes. Quieter, no. Takes a fair amount of power to break duronium down, as I understand.” Eddison cleared his throat. “The doors, sa.”

  The door seemed to sag inwards on itself for a brief moment, almost as if was melting. The Onesies, waiting for this moment, shut their cutter off and started running away as fast as they could. Molecular cohesion distorted to the point of collapse, duronium reacted ‘poorly’ to being treated thusly, and in a brilliant –if terrifying display- the ‘melted’ slab buckled, then erupted in a blizzard-like fury of duronium slivers.

  Everyone stood around for a minute or two, waiting patiently for the metallic dust to drift gently to the ground. Medics on hand told some of the sniffling Onesies that they weren’t hurt and went back to gossiping about the possibility that there was a man on the planet who –instead of blood- had some kind of mysterious liquid providing him with life.

  Colonel Grayson pursed his lips as he read slowly through the avatar reports pulled from the Onesies protes. No sign of explosives, no sign of danger. He authorized the rapid destruction of the other duronium blast doors and settled in to wait. This would be over soon.

  Twoesies issued orders to have the rest of the Hiegels assembled and used. In rapid succession, each door shuddered then blossomed outward, a glittery, razor-sharp sandstorm. Everyone filed reports concerning their stunning success in the face of true adversity and requested commendations for valor and heroism. Then they asked for permission to continue into the main building with all force and due haste. After all, everyone was missing some decent post-Game parties.

  Grayson sent a flash to OverCommander Vasily, informing him of the current state of affairs. He suggested they meet in the Officer’s Club for drinks afterwards these bloody damned terrorists were dealt with properly. It’d been awhile since the two old war dogs had traded stories, and by gosh, the days’ events were invigorating. Vasily replied quickly.

  Grayson nodded. “Eddison. Tell the men to proceed. Caution ‘em that they’re not to shoot anyone not carrying a gun or something equally deadly, hey? Bad for press and all that. I gather the Chairwoman is a bit keen on keeping this quiet as can be.”

  “Sa! There is some indication that these terrorists may be dressed as civilians.” Eddison saluted.

  “Ah, well.” Grayson plucked at his lower lip thoughtfully. He shrugged. “Tell them to try not to kill everyone then, Major. Now that I think on it, suggest they not eat anything whilst inside, if you please? Can’t have survivors gossiping.”

  “Sa, yessa!” Eddison flashed the ‘go’ command to the Twoesies. Grayson and Eddison made to sit in the command chairs so they could watch the operation on monitors displaying prote-feeds and helmet cams.

  All Hail Latelyspace!

  xxx

  Realistically, the only goal for those initial charges had been terror. Knowing God soldiers as well as he did, Vilmos had had no doubt in his mind that each bomb –powerful enough to kill at least a single Goddie- would’ve driven the Onesies into a fury once they’d recovered from the shock of seeing one of their own dead. The rubble thrown down by the explosions would’ve forced the soldiers to come in through the dome, allowing the snipers and everyone else to take care of the invading forces with relative ease.

  After a double-handful more Goddie deaths, the Army would’ve pulled back a bit to consider their options, giving Vilmos what he wanted most in the world; a long, protracted and bloody war of attrition. The longer the day dragged on, the harder it would be for the Chairwoman to control and contain the news. He’d calculated things out very precisely and was certain, certain, there was a point where issuing a Sigma could essentially destroy the planet. That was his final goal, his last move.

  That was old news, the old plan, and no one was going to be following Vilmos Gualf’s meticulously planned, long-worked-on plan to the letter. Not by a long shot.

  xxx

  Chad’s ‘Kiv-crackers’ –properly known by the Kivalians as ‘force mines’- were not, technically speaking, explosives. Truthfully, they were devices built to release an astonishing amount of physically destructive energy and were normally used to blow holes in the sides of star cruisers. The Kivalians -blacklisted by Trinity and living in their own small cluster of solar systems- lacked the technical skill to develop anything remotely approaching the metallurgical skills of either Trinityspace or Latelyspace technicians, so their force mines were terrible weapons within the confines of their own world. Outside the Kivalian Systems, they were efficient to a certain degree.

  Never one to leave well enough alone, Chad had fiddled with the Kiv-crackers, adjusting the shape of the explosion. Originally designed to rupture hulls up to a hundred feet thick, the ‘crackers’ had been ‘fixed’ to explode outward and upward to a radius of a few hundred feet; disinterested in spending too much time fiddling with the mods and worried about Garth’s eventual involvement, Chad had hurried himself along like a busy bee, depositing his gifts quickly.

  Thus, it was that when the God soldiers tasked with taking The Museum proper stampeded their way into the second ring of arches, the resulting explosion chewed through them with ghastly ease, blasting flesh from bone and sending body parts for miles in all directions. The fortifications -designed to withstand ludicrous amounts of dam
age- deposited several hundred thousand tons of rock in a staggered pile around the outside of The Museum, sealing everyone inside as effectively as if they’d been buried under a mountain. Everything within else within three hundred feet of The Museum itself was battered and barraged by a visible bloom of fearsome red energy.

  The shockwaves picked the command station, Colonel Grayson, Major Eddison, all the support vehicles, the loitering medics, the panicking Twoesies and essentially everything larger than a breadbasket up and deposited them past the furthest embankment of patrolling God soldiers nearly a mile away. By this point, even the dimmest of the Onesies realized what was happening and adjusted their stance to stay upright.

  Colonel Grayson picked himself up off the ground and looked around for his hat. Finding it stuck beneath a large piece of what appeared to have once been a park bench, the Colonel barked at several nearby –severely concussed and stunned- Twoesies until they hustled up and rescued it.

  Damaged hat firmly on head, Grayson went in search of Major Eddison. They eventually found him on the fifth floor of a nearby office building. Atop him was part of the command station and three-quarters of a troop transport.

  Colonel Grayson cleared his throat speculatively and began formulating a report to OverCommander Vasily, one that didn’t sound so … off-putting.

  xxx

  Chad couldn’t contain himself. Waiting for the distinctive ‘whine-charge-kaboom’ that was Kiv-crackers trademark sound since he’d obligingly walked into The Museum, he leaped from his chair excitedly to give the bloke that’d chosen to ignore his presence a big bow. When he realized that his behavior would at the very least draw unwanted attention to himself, he blithely sat down in his chair and threatened everyone in a ten foot radius to keep their gobs shut about his excitement.

  Still shuddering and shaking under the terrific synchronous explosions, two of the four Sheets cracked down the middle. People clustered in the audience held on to one another and moaned piteously while the terrorists –especially the lead man- looked disconcerted. Served them right, choosing to engage in their foolish political posturing while his Job was wandering around. It was wildly irresponsible, it was.