by Lee Bond
U-Ito scratched at the skin around her prote. The longer the avatar ran interference against the DEC, the hotter it grew. Considering that duronium dissipated excess heat with relative ease, this was worrying, especially since she was barely using hers; the OverCommander and most of the Goddies at the scene were using theirs almost continually, so the pain had to be mounting quickly. “Sa OverCommandersa, I’m … I’m receiving another request to withdraw.”
OverCommander Vasily willed his twitching eye to stop and failed. He would replace that eye with a cyborg component if it didn’t fall in line soon. “How many dead?”
“Only … o… a thousand, sa, but …” U-Ito swallowed uneasily, “but with all the dead bodies clogging the entrance points, they… they’re having a hard time getting through to the chamber. Onesie chatter is growing increasingly despondent, sa. They’ve never had to deal with anything like this.”
The white elephant in the room tripled in size. No God soldier, no army anywhere, had ever had to deal with the insanity happening at The Museum. A thousand God soldiers … that was enough to conquer an entire solar system! A single one should’ve been able to subdue this terrorist plot with only a few cuts and bruises.
Harredad, frankly insane with worry that Garth Nickels and Naoko Kamagana were already dead, spoke with a confidence he didn’t feel. Unbeknownst to everyone in the room, he was monitoring News4You’s feeds zealously for signs of either person. “They could blow their way through the walls again.”
Salms shook his head. “With that maniac cyborg throwing those grenades around now, structural integrity is at massive risk. Our men would just be buried. Plus, that will make it difficult for us to ensure the cleansing is total…”
“How many original terrorists remain?” Vasily demanded angrily. His cold voice sliced clean through the slowly heating discussion, drawing his commanding officers up short.
“Estimates range from twenty to seventy.” U-Ito replied evenly. “Civilians are picking up the slack on both sides, either by shooting at soldiers trying to kill Bosch or by assisting Chadsik or by trying to kill both.”
“And how many ‘civilians’?”
“Around five thousand. But… avatars estimate the terrorist weapons should be running out of ammunition any time now.”
Vasily sniffed. Not good enough. Not by half. Onesie morale was finite, even while under the soothing blanket of bloodlust and rage. The ogres were aware of every death. Every time one of their own fell, their courage dwindled. If things weren’t over soon, they would simply stop where they were and start weeping. Vasily was so angry he could vomit white-hot rage. “Time of completion on the orbital plateau?”
“Half an hour or … or longer, sa.” Salms replied shakily. If they were going to launch an attack on The Museum with the Orbiter, everyone was going to need to fall back three miles. Even better, twenty miles. They hadn’t fired the Orbiter inside a crowded city in centuries. There was no telling what kind of damage Central would suffer.
“If we withdraw, do you think anyone in there will stop?” Vasily resisted the temptation to scratch the skin around his prote; unlike everyone else’s, his had been running the avatar for some time. The pain was rapidly approaching the moment when wearing it would become unbearable. He would not remove it in front of his staff.
Harredad shook his head. “Vilmos is still alive. Stats suggest he and any of the original core group that remain will start moving to the other floors, seeking some method of escape. If only those bloody rounds of theirs weren’t so deadly.”
Vasily flexed his jaw rhythmically. The entire escapade had been flawed from the start. Even though it’d been brief, Alyssa had monumentally screwed them all by giving in to Vilmos’ taunting.
Things would’ve been finished if she’d resisted the urge to pit her will against Gualf. If they’d attacked The Museum almost instantly, they would’ve discovered the flaws in their weapons within seconds instead of hours and simply carpet-bombed the area, or used VapoRaptors, or any of a million different scorched earth methods and no one would’ve been the wiser. Alyssa’s foolishness –that bloody ego that even the most stoic Chair eventually surrendered to- was costing the Army in ways too incalculable to consider.
“Send in two thousand of the remaining Goddies. This includes any Threesies and Foursies in the area. If any of those jumped up soldiers resist by citing their rarity, shoot them. Two minutes after they hit The Museum, get those Gunboys moving. Those motherhumping freaks need to be within range of The Museum properly by the time the Goddies are done dying.”
When he felt their distinct lack of motivation, Vasily turned to his command staff. “As much as I encourage logical discourse over plans, this one will not wither under your conscientiousness or your diligence. The Gunboys will finish the job or the Orbiter fires. It is that simple. We will turn this failure around. Doans will issue her Sigmas and this will be a dream we all had. I want a crater, people, a crater of smoke and charred metal. I want Chadsik al-Taryin and Harry Bosch vaporized. Begin evacuation of the surrounding area. We will fall back to the three mile minimum the moment the Gunboys are on the move. Send the VapoRaptors and the other heavy equipment back to their bases. Go.”
Harredad considered remaining behind, but he wisely concluded that Garth Nickels and Naoko Kamagana were no longer concerns of his, of the OverCommander, or of anyone at all.
Vasily turned back to his tactiSheets as his command staff departed to carry out his commands.
xxx
Since footage from N4U was actually better than what was coming through on the wEyes, Vasily simply … absorbed what he saw. If he asked what he was doing, he’d say he was formulating plans to prevent something like this from ever happening again. Factually, the debacle was spellbinding.
Harry Bosch was finishing a round of Goddies with savoir-faire. Chadsik was doing the same, only with a great deal more violence. If Bosch was an ex-God soldier, he was a part of a cabal that’d managed the impossible feat of staying hidden from both the Chairwoman and the OverCommander. No easy trick.
Furthermore, this ‘faction’ had somehow managed to plumb the depths of sciences allegedly impossible for anyone not working directly for the Chair. Vasily knew he couldn’t allow Bosch –if he wasn’t in fact Garth Nickels- to live, even though he was exemplifying the fundamental traits of a true Latelian. He was turning the God Army into a population of fools, and that was ... unacceptable.
Chadsik al-Taryin was rapidly on his way to becoming a footnote, even if his ship were outfitted with a hundred Hand of Glory missiles. If the FrancoBritish assassin died, there were countermeasures in place that should protect the planet from his Glory Missile deadman switch.
A quick check on Goddie locations within The Museum revealed that the soldiers who’d penetrated the inner chambers were now fortifying their positions on all levels save the central amphitheater. As expected, the subterranean routes leading into The Museum were mined with enough explosives to pull down a quarter of Central. Vilmos wasn’t entirely stupid.
The OverCommander listened to prote-chatter with half an ear; from the tone of those men not directly confronting Chadsik, Harry or the sole remaining terrorists, it was evident they were confused and very angry. Limited by Tomas’ protes from viewing precisely what was going on by telepresence, the Onesies at the scene knew only their brothers and sisters were dying by the handful. For warriors as essentially as invulnerable as they, notions of death and failure were … dreams.
The Twoesies on the scene were demanding more support or permission to start blasting through the walls and ceilings, thinking they could just bury their enemies. The Threesies and Foursies tasked with assembling themselves were wisely keeping their discourse to themselves. Doubtlessly the small numbers of heavily advanced God soldiers were in no way considering themselves likely to suffer the same sorts of failure.
Vasily wasn’t so certain of that. Chadsik alone was easily Enforcer-level enhanced and hadn’t shown any
concerns over killing. Bosch too, was proving nigh on unstoppable, though less inclined towards taking life. Many of his actions seemed designed to pull Goddies away from areas of heavy civilian occupation.
OverCommander Vasily supposed he couldn’t blame his men for their grousing: the situation was volatile in more ways than one. Not one of his men realized that by virtue of following orders, they too were exposing themselves to Trinity tech. Some of the Threesies and all the Foursies –naturally- owned an unshakeable sense of self and of their own proficiency, so they’d be safe enough. All those Onesies, though … weakness was insidious.
Vasily found his mind turning back –yet again- to Bosch.
If, as he claimed, he really was a cashiered God soldier, Harry Bosch’s motives were understandable. Virtually every Goddie who left the ranks suffered indescribable pangs of loss, and turned to anyone who could offer them the same kind of support and community you found in the close-knit ranks of their unit.
Many joined gangs or tried to form their own, using their training as a template for a more cohesive structure than you’d normally see; their lives were invariably quick and dirty because -without the stabilizing drugs- using their implants and augments hastened their deaths with alarming rapidity. Vasily couldn’t think of a single soldier turned gangster who’d lasted more than five years, a fact he was glad for: a successful ex-God soldier in charge of street level gangs would be a terrible sight to see.
Ex-soldiers who found a way to exist without the use of their irremovable implants generally lasted longer, but still succumbed because not using them wasn’t enough. Sooner or later, the implants and online systems began to fail, and when that happened, it was a cascading effect. When they were lucky enough to score, the price was exorbitant enough to make even wealthy men weep.
Some few -possibly like Harry- fell in with rich men or women with the means, methods and -most importantly- reasons to provide the drug. Men like Ashok Guillfoyle. In all probability, though Ashok denied it even under torture of the Tongue, Harry Bosch had almost certainly provided bodyguard work to the great Traitor. Possessed of the internally programmed loyalty and drive to protect Latelyspace’s best interests, it was an inescapable conclusion that Harry was indeed the most likely source for Guillfoyle’s recent downfall, and went a long ways to explaining why he now –however erroneously- fought his own brothers. Harry had displaced his urges to ‘protect and serve’ onto the people he’d been cooped up with all day. His only redeeming quality was his continual efforts in using non-lethal means to subdue his targets.
Understanding Harry’s motives didn’t explain his survival under these impossibly extreme conditions, though, and that was maddening!
Tricia Takanawa kept asking the ex-greenskin how he was able to shrug off laser blasts to the head and the vicious beatings he took every step of the way, but Harry kept deflecting, pushing his discussion back to his reasons for doing what he was doing. Every word out of the man’s mouth was altruistic, every motive earnest, every desire pure. Vasily turned his eyes to the N4U report, lips pursed tightly together as he considered what he saw. What the world was seeing.
Drawing a considerable level of discussion, the still shot of Harry’s back that hung on the Screen was … Vasily couldn’t find the right word. Impossible? Insane? He grunted as he stared. The whole of the man’s backside, from legs to head, was riddled with pieces of shrapnel from the various weapons and methods used by Goddies to deter him, but there was no blood.
What kind of man was Harry Bosch? Was he even a man at all? Through Alyssa’s understanding of the Trinity reps, Vasily believed –had believed- them not just disinterested but wholly disinclined to involve themselves in the affairs of the system. By association, Trinity Itself surely shared that same lack of interest. Bargaining as they were from a terribly tenuous position of strength, it was better for the machine mind if their system failed entirely before It moved in. For surely when their empire imploded, whatever kept Trinity to It’s ancient promises would fail, giving It free reign to conquer as It saw fit. Trinity wouldn’t risk that by sending in an Enforcer, nor would It use one of It’s Omega-level deterrents so … flagrantly.
Harry Bosch could not be an Enforcer.
He could not be an Offworld assailant. Trinity saw to that simply by choosing to maintain The Cordon.
Vasily couldn’t shake the feeling that Bosch was Garth Nickels. He could understand the motivation behind the man’s decision to dress himself as a Latelian readily enough. Nickels loathed the spotlight he’d fallen into with every fiber of his being, and the man’s technical puissance was theoretically masterful enough to accomplish essentially anything he set his mind to. What, then –if Bosch was some sort of camouflage- was the 'Latelian'?
The OverCommander considered the crimes Nickels was guilty of against what he was seeing on the Screens. The reports were limited as of yet, indicating nothing more than recklessly foolish tampering. Clenching his teeth rhythmically, still wishing for a toothbrush, Vasily sighed. Thus far, none of the men investigating the modifications made to the Guillfoyle Building's protean machines had been able to comprehend what they were seeing. They weren’t even entirely certain it’d worked, or if it had, what’d come out the other end. Hastily pulled out to assist with the current crisis, the investigation was and most definitely would be on hold for days to come, leaving Vasily to wonder if the man who’d created gravnetic generators could somehow manipulate protean technology to his own ends.
It didn’t seem likely. Garth Nickels was many, many things. Vaunted, hated, and feared Specter, definitely. Arrogant, cocksure, disagreeable ... beyond doubt.
Able to achieve something that five thousand years of scientific exploration and endeavors could not? It wasn’t even foolish Latelian pride that made Vasily’s mind up for him, but cold-hearted logical fact. When it came to discovery, Latelians were the best. He had to look no further than their greatest export to date: the programmers who built flawless AI operating systems for Trinity were unparalleled in what they did. The horrors that were the Gunboys. Duronium. A thousand other things. Latelians and no one else had created all these things.
Garth Nickels couldn’t have done it. He just couldn’t have. For if he had done the ... the unthinkable, then everything everyone everywhere knew to be true simply … wasn’t.
With that dilemma more or less resolved, one question remained.
Who had Bosch fallen in with since toppling the mighty Guillfoyle empire? It wasn’t unreasonable to imagine another Hollyoak out there somewhere, working for some ruthless billionaire. Scary, certainly, but not unreasonable, especially in light of Ashok Guillfoyle’s life of crime. The Regime was not omnipotent. It was easy enough to hide, especially if you stayed out of sight and didn’t do anything criminally stupid.
A quiet doubt whispered in him. Vasily tried to push it aside and failed. The lithe hulk on the Screens who efficiently and effortlessly routed God soldiers with every graceful sweep of that powered mace had to be Garth Nickels.
There was just no proof, and until there was, Vasily had no choice but to consider the being was who he claimed.
The only thing the OverCommander knew was that Chadsik al-Taryin and Harry Bosch were not coordinating their efforts. It was obvious through N4U footage that the two men radiated such murderous rage towards one another whenever they got within ten feet it was amazing they weren’t already at each other’s throats. Vasily half-feared that when the God soldier ranks departed, they’d finally go at it and all of Central would suffer.
Vasily was as gloomily certain of that as he was of this whole thing going sideways even more than it already had.
Wondering if the Gunboys were even going to be effective against Harry and Chadsik, Vasily broke down and placed a call to Alyssa. Intel indicated that neither man nor the terrorists showed any signs of stopping. The OverCommander found it ridiculous –not to mention politically criminal- that Alyssa was letting the coverage continue.
&n
bsp; Something else had to be happening, something he knew nothing of; leaving a Sigma to so late in the day, and with so many people witnessing the events … it was lunacy. It’d take weeks -if not longer- to contain the story, even with the Watergate Men already out in force. Whatever it was that kept Alyssa from issuing the Sigma only added to the cost.
Vasily hoped the reason was a good one. Avatars estimating the calculated toll of the expanded cleansing were going to start running out of people.
xxx
Alyssa Doans didn’t much care for taking the trip down to the ancient computer that –amongst other things- ran the Sigma protocols. Secreted away in a bunker beneath Central’s main seat of power, the trip through priority elevators and endless security measures took forever.
Today, when time was at an unbelievable premium, it was an endless eternity.
That was one reason why Alyssa hated making the trip. As far as Vasily knew, it was the only reason.
It wasn’t, though. Not at all.
The real reason, the true reason Alyssa didn’t like visiting the First Main was because -like so many of her predecessors- she feared it was intelligent.
Not artificially intelligent, at least not in the way people tended to imagine non-organic based life followed, but intelligent in some indefinable way. Every time new tests to categorize and quantify non-organic intelligence were developed, she applied them here, in the underground heart of Hospitalis, against the First Machine.
It had ever been that way and would always be thus. Chairmen and Chairwomen had tested the Engine relentlessly down the centuries. They didn’t know why they did, save that there was something … unsettling about the computer. Maybe it was because it was ancient and not of their making.