Subversive Elements (Unreal Universe Book 2)

by Lee Bond

  Naoko’s dismay was an intense thing. She deserved an explanation, so he gave her one. “This … this is an assassin’s needle, Naoko. Fired from a very tiny gun. It and the gun are made from ceramix. There isn’t a scanner in the Universe that can detect a weapon like this. Essentially, they are invisible to anything but the naked eye. They’re illegal throughout Trinityspace. Hell, the owner of this gun could sell it for any price and live like a king for the rest of his life.”

  Garth tried to imagine the sort of assassin who’d use a ceramix gun. The only thing that kept popping up was ‘someone who really liked killing and was really really good at it’.

  “Someone is trying to kill you?” Naoko’s voice raised a notch. “In here?”

  Garth grabbed Naoko’s hand in his, aching to feel her warm skin. Even though he didn’t particularly feel cheery, he flashed her a grin. “You get used to it.” he said with forced humor. He squinted, tilting his head to one side; his Spidey Sense was acting up again. “I think something’s about to happen. Be ready.”

  Naoko, utterly freaked out by the fact that someone would intentionally try to murder her boyfriend in a Museum full of terrorists and traitors, sat back into her chair, face full of woe.

  xxx

  The war-room wasn’t exactly a scene of chaos and disorder, but it was as close to those states as Vasily could allow without surrendering his wits to panic; Ashok’s admissions concerning the Trojans built into every x-DEC heralded an abrupt fifty-percent loss of efficacy in any attack they might currently choose to launch at either Vilmos or The Museum itself.

  Guillfoyle’s digital encryption chips operated everything from the protes the Goddies used, the vehicles they drove and the weapons they deployed.

  Even the tactiSheets they were using had been piggybacked. Vilmos’ shocking ability in curtailing the few sorties thus far had little to do with his skill and everything to do with his youngest brother’s evil ways. If the enemy knew what you were going to do as soon as you decided to do it, well … that was it. You might as well just head home.

  But all was not lost. Not yet. Vasily refused to lose, not just on home soil, but also in the city of his birth. He would sooner raze Central to the ground than lose here.

  Reports from military storerooms and depots across Hospitalis were encouraging. They had a battalion of armored tanks and a few functional dropships built with the old KamaZhen series micron-processors; they were dusting the ancient equipment off and shipping the lot over with all due haste.

  The same went for decommissioned military issue service protes; there were millions of the ancient things collecting dust in a storage facility in Southon. In terms of viability, they barely compared to protes the average Sa could buy a block from The Museum, but it was better than nothing.

  With tanks, dropships and proteii immune to Vilmos’ prying eyes –and a few ancient odds and ends coming from the furthest corners of Hospitalis- … Vasily felt a resurgence of confidence. They’d be able to handle Vilmos in true style. It would just take longer.

  Their entire military network, compromised by a single man and his feverish fear of being caught out in the greatest lie and the most ambitious con of all time. Vasily shook his head in a mixture of fear, disgust and relief. Luckily, Ashok Guillfoyle –for all his grand dreams- hadn’t been able to think beyond his own petty greed. If he’d bothered to look into co-opting God soldiers instead of merely killing them … forty million God soldiers, slaved to one man’s control.

  What a nightmare.

  Vasily offered silent thanks to Alyssa. Her deep, deep paranoia and nearly fanatical mistrust of virtually everyone in the system had probably saved them all: the Gunboys and their Proctors were built completely out of the darkest military hardware in the system, using methods and means that would horrify every man, woman and child. No one outside a few trusted souls –and Hollyoak, who was mad as a hatter and so trustworthy in his own way- knew everything that’d gone into bringing the Gunboys to life, and looking over the specs with half a mind, Vasily was sincerely glad for that.

  Trinity Itself would carpet bomb the system from the Quantum Tunnel, transforming Latelyspace into a charred cinder of solar gasses and burnt worlds if It heard but a single whisper of the atrocity that was the Gunboys. 'Happily', Hollyoak and his minions had constructed the monstrosities with customized components.

  Vasily was warming up to the idea of field-testing them in the limited arena, but only because steps had been taken to prevent word from getting out. A flash report from Alyssa indicated she’d decided to send her Watergate Men out; she’d win no Chairwoman of the Year Awards for unleashing them before a calamity, but this way, no one within a fifteen mile radius would be able to record, broadcast, or store images of the megalithic soldiers. The polite men and women would go door to door, building to building, office to office, all the while calmly and gently explaining the necessity of silence and solidarity in these trying times. They would illuminate the levels of corrective measures available to them if citizens failed in their duties to keep quiet. They would ensure silence and would –if there was any luck left to The Regime at all- prevent Sigmas from rolling out and smashing everything into oblivion.

  So. The engagement thus far was hardly ‘textbook’. In all fairness to the military might of the Latelian God Army, though, Ashok and Vilmos had infiltrated their systems to the highest possible levels. No one could’ve anticipated that. Now they knew what was going on and were taking necessary steps to ensure that Vilmos would die in that Museum. Those steps would forever cement the unlimited power of the God Army in the minds of citizens everywhere. Very few people would suggest for some time to come that Alyssa was anything but a Regimist leader.

  It was time they could all use, time they all needed. Desperately so.

  For now, all they needed to do was sit and wait for the materials to arrive, and work on passing the new strategies to the standing army over unsecure lines. Set on using the Gunboys as Vasily was, it was unlikely that the equipment would really be needed. Besides, if Vilmos could withstand the might of the monsters, the OverCommander was going to have to deal with the fact that the bloody terrorist might deserve to live. Alas, the fraying lines of military command needed something to focus on, so many of them were overseeing transportation.

  In the meantime, working up solutions to keep Vilmos befuddled was occupying the focus of the OverCommander’s staff.

  Harredad and U-Ito had toyed with the notion of referencing the endless legion of war stories and historical battles into code phrases. While it was a good idea, Vasily doubted that more than a single percent of the commanders were encyclopedic war buffs; telling such and such a commander to ‘Argenine Bluff Pass’ would only going to work if the commander knew –and had permission to access- the Argenine Combat Files.

  The two were currently locked into a heated discussion as they tried to come up with another answer.

  The one true downside in having to wait for the ‘new’ equipment –and the Gunboys- to arrive was the boredom.

  Goddies were physically immune to the ravages of weather, but, for all their vicious brutality and utterly amoral attitudes, they were moronically sensitive. Leaving them to shuffle their enormous feet and twiddle massive thumbs in the rain would likely have them feeling pathetically despondent. The Twoesies on the ground would have a hard time keeping the Onesies in line when they got permission to proceed.

  Moreover, the weather was only going to get worse before they geared up to roll out. Previous announcements that the storm would be small by the time it hit Central had been hastily revised; WeatherWatch was upgrading the squall to something closer to an all-out storm. With the Dome missing, there was every chance that the terrorists –and their prisoners- were going to get just as drenched, just as quickly. That thought brought a small smile to Vasily’s lips; for the time being, Vilmos might have the upper hand in the technological arena but when it came to fortitude, nothing beat a Goddie.

 
“Sa OverCommander General Vasilysa!”

  Vasily turned from his thoughts. A female Twoesie was in their midst, ordinarily a rarity anywhere but on an actual military base. Female soldiers ranked Two and up were cherished resources; they were much faster, smarter, and infinitely more cunning than their male counterparts, more often than not making them perfect candidates for deep reconnaissance. Also -and this was the more important reason behind their different deployment categories- their augments typically allowed them to retain their more female attributes, making them a constant source of distraction for the simple and single-minded Onesies.

  With Vilmos squatting over lines of communication, they’d fallen on ancient tactics, utilizing their few female Twoesies as runners between ‘camps’. Slightly more time-consuming than the blindingly quick transfer of information they preferred, but soldiers were nothing if not adaptable. “Yes?”

  The runner saluted, chest heaving from the exertion of running flat-out. “There is a civilian in the deployment zone, sa!” The Twoesie saluted again.

  Vasily squinted. “I believe I misheard you, Twoesie. You indicated that there is a civilian here? Where? How can that be-”

  An elderly man kicked the Twoesie in the back of the foot and stepped out from behind her. He gazed speculatively at Vasily’s command staff and sniffed deprecatingly. For good measure, he tried to take a puff from a very old, very expensive pipe. Nothing issue forth. He produced a wooden match, lit the embers for a brief moment, and took another puff, clearly enjoying himself.

  The old man waved the match out and dropped it to the ground, commenting, “Some of these ones are so wet behind the ears I could blame them for the weather, Vasily. No wonder this terrorist is taking you for a dance around The Box.”

  Vasily swallowed the lengthy curse that tried to worm its way out of his mouth. Tomas Kamagana. He could not believe the day he was having. Without looking at his command staff, the OverCommander ordered everyone out, barely managing to keep his ire in check.

  Bewildered, Harredad, Salms and U-Ito hastily obeyed; as they left, to a one they stared curiously at the five foot two inch tall citizen who would dare speak to their OverCommander with such familiarity and amusement. At the man who wasn’t being killed.

  As U-Ito pushed out, Vasily spoke, “U-Ito. Erase any indications that this man was here.”

  U-Ito looked to the runner, who stood facing her OverCommander.

  “All indications.” Vasily snapped. U-Ito saluted, the tremble in her arm easily explained as fatigue and not regret. He motioned for the runner to depart, and the Twoesie was gone.

  Alone, Tomas took another puff on his pipe. He walked over to a window and picked up Vasily’s pair of field glasses. Since they were for someone almost twice as tall as he was, Tomas peered through a single lens. The Museum swam into focus. “I never would have thought it possible that I would live to see The Museum destroyed a second time.”

  Vasily dropped into a chair. “You shouldn’t be here, Tomas. If ‘lyssa hears of this…”

  Tomas dropped the field glasses and turned to confront the OverCommander. “And yet, here I am, in the flesh. It’s been some time, old friend. How is your oldest?”

  Vasily ran a hand across his scalp, grumbling. “He insists he is an actor. I do not care what he does so long as he is successful. Right now, he isn’t doing anything more than sitting at home ‘waiting for the call’. It is upsetting.”

  The two men had known each other for close to forty years. Vasily remembered being introduced to Tomas Kamagana in a very special classroom, remembered the scorn and mockery in him at being told that an Offworlder was going to train him and others in how to understand and control the newest levels of non-AI based lateral programming languages. Gratefully, he also remembered being astonished by the diminutive EuroJapanese man’s wicked sense of humor, his undying passion to be accepted as a true Latelian and, most importantly, his utter, utter genius.

  Later –when UnderCommander Vasily had become OverCommander Vasily- they’d collaborated on a number of military ventures, primarily amongst them being the creation of the KamaZhen integrated encryption chips.

  In point of fact, the two of them had collaborated on a great many things, which was the only reason Tomas Kamagana still lived; the secrets and the potential for great progress still in his head were too precious to risk angering or alienating the man. At all. Though Tomas was a calm, industriously intelligent Latelian, he was all EuroJapanese when it came to hidden passions. Like many of his kind, he was prone to extreme fits of quiet rage when pushed and they’d pushed him too, too far in the heyday of his brilliance. His reactions –while justified- had forced everyone involved into engineering the man’s descent into ignominy. He was the only man in the entire solar system that Alyssa Doans didn’t –couldn’t- erase without fear of instant reprisals. Tomas was … cunning. His death or electronic disappearance could herald the end of all their plans, and so they’d left him alone.

  “I suppose,” Tomas said as he struggled into one of the big chairs, loathing that he always felt so small when his heart was so big, “you wonder why I am here, now, during this.”

  “The thought had crossed my mind, yes.” Vasily admired Tomas still, but his old friend’s presence on a military battlefield was a fact that wouldn’t go away quietly. Even if they followed his orders to remove Tomas’ entrance from the tapes and to kill the runner, his commanding officers had seen the man. They were still capable of gossip.

  Vasily was uncertain how Alyssa would react to Tomas Kamagana being present at The Museum; the diminutive Latelian had caused so many problems he’d been a hairs’ breadth away from being Sigma’d and dropped into The Peak. She would in no way suspect him of dealing with Vilmos Gualf, but she might very well order his death out of spite.

  “I warned you.” Tomas announced suddenly, boldly. “I warned you twenty years ago when Ashok Guillfoyle showed up in my classes, spouting radical concepts that weren’t at all in alignment with the system’s needs. His ideas of removing the conscious thought patterns from God soldiers and replacing them with autonomous avatars was hideously inappropriate. This, though! This!”

  “Not again, Tomas. Not after all this time.” Vasily checked his prote, a purely Latelian gesture that told whoever was in the room that the topic was disinteresting.

  Tomas ignored the motion, gesturing wildly with his pipe, dribbling smoke around his head. “We are lucky I managed to dissuade the interested parties, Vasily. Imagine an army of brain-dead soldiers following this man’s orders. I warned you again fifteen years ago, when he stole some of my assembly codes and opened up his own research and development firm. No one would listen to this ‘citizen’.”

  “You didn’t warn anyone so much as make yourself an insufferable nuisance, Sa Tomas. Look what happened.” Vasily deeply regretted his old friend’s actions the last year of his employment with Army Sciences; at the time, his behavior had seemed to be the last, desperate gasp of a failing genius’ jealousy of the newest star in the heavens. The lengths Tomas had gone to in an effort to discredit Ashok Guillfoyle had been … embarrassing. Shocking. Oftentimes downright destructive. In the end, a combination of Tomas’ outrageous behavior, Ashok’s lineage and Alyssa’s then-prevalent distrust of anything Trinity had spelled the man’s doom large enough for everyone to see clearly.

  A shame, Tomas’ plummet from the heavens; there was no one in the entire system better suited for or more willing to work towards the betterment and expansion of the Latelian Regime than Tomas Kamagana. Regardless of his heritage, he was a true citizen, a man who exemplified the mores and values of their society. “You very nearly got yourself Sigma’d, old friend.”

  “Was I wrong?” Tomas Kamagana stuck his pipe in his mouth and puffed away, triumphant. “Fifteen years later, tell me I am wrong.”

  “No, sa. You weren’t. Aren’t.” Vasily admitted readily, if heavily. “And for that, I …we… are truly sorry. But again, the methods you under
took, the abuses of your military clearance … inexcusable, irrespective of ‘rightness’. You understand this, don’t you? The military tribunal that adjudicated your case found you guilty of espionage, Tomas. Espionage. It was all ‘lyssa could do to keep you from being shot right there. Alyssa burned many bridges keeping you alive, an action that almost gave the OverSecretary enough power to oust her…”

  “I know!” Tomas shouted angrily. “I know.” he admitted more calmly. “And for that, I am eternally thankful to you both. With Maurna dead and ‘ko just a little child … I’m grateful.” The old man sat there, fiddling with his pipe, shaking his head sadly.

  Vasily knew how much it cost for Tomas –who typified both extreme Latelian pride and EuroJapanese honorability in a single, frail body- to admit that, and appreciated the gesture. The OverCommander cleared his throat. “I wish there was more that I can do, but as you know, I have a small situation here.”

  Vasily was certain Tomas Kamagana would not have come all this way to reopen old wounds and to make apologies, not at the risk of his life, so the burly Latelian made no effort to excuse his guest. There was something going on here and Tomas would get there in his time.

  Tomas chuckled craftily. “Yes, the x-DEC. Also, if you don’t know, the c-DEC, as well.”

  “We know about the orbital plateau’s condition already, thank you.” Vasily watched Tomas for a moment; the ninety year old was fidgeting in place like a four year old. Whatever the man knew, it was monumental. “But the question is: how do you know?”

  “The moment Guillfoyle’s guilt was announced, his data leaked to the ‘LINKS, I began examining all of his work over the last ten years.” Tomas announced this matter-of-factly, though retention of the blueprints for Ashok’s military work was illegal; how he’d managed to keep all that data after the various agencies had sent their avatars prowling through Hospitalis’ netLINKs was something he’d never tell Vasily. His few remaining friends in high places would lose their lives, and his hotheadedness had cost him much –too much- once before. “The work is insidious, Vasily. There is no wonder why none of your Technical Specialists ever detected the traps.”