by Lee Bond
Around the feet of this megalithic man/machine of flesh and metal, half a dozen men in black laboratory coats ran back and forth shouting at one another while a single man in a black and red coat operated a very improbable looking remote control unit.
As impossible as it sounded, at least in his own head, Griffin decided Trinity didn’t know about the Gunboys. It wouldn’t have -couldn’t have- allowed something like this to be born, even in a ‘sovereign system’, even out of curiosity. This Gunboy was dangerous, a real, pertinent threat to Trinityspace, moreso because ninety percent of the tech going into it’s creation was Trinity-based.
There was nothing like this anywhere in the known worlds, and Griffin rather suspected that he’d be hard-pressed to find anything remotely similar across the Cordon.
The Enforcer shuddered inside his suit of armor. How could Trinity not know about these Gunboys? What in the hell were the reps doing out here, sleeping?
The Gunboy called to his attention by shuffling ‘his’ massive feet in a frighteningly human way.
Griffin shook his head, repulsed and amazed at what the Latelians had wrought. Ordinarily he was not one to care one way or the other who did what to whom or why –he was Kin’kithal, after all, and as such very disinterested in what humans did or thought-but the Gunboys were … too much. Dispatched by Trinity to destroy things It didn’t want littering It’s domain on a regular basis, Griffin would readily admit he’d never really seen the point in destroying any of what he’d been tasked with eradicating, but this …
Trinity’s orders were simple. He wasn’t supposed to do anything more than ensure Chadsik al-Taryin’s survival. Griffin nevertheless literally found himself praying that the order to destroy these abominations happened.
Confused by the rain, the Gunboy raised his/its head to the heavens, letting loose a howl of madness and remorse so intense Griffin felt sorry for whoever the person used to be. The uncontrolled scream to the heavens was all the proof anyone would need that whomever that man used to be, he was either someone who hadn’t volunteered or hadn’t been fully briefed on what he would become.
Enough was enough. For the first time in his life, Griffin found himself wholly embracing the onus Trinity had placed on him ten years ago. Caring little if anyone detected the data theft or not, Griffin directed his Suit to tear through the technical databases. His choice was made; with or without Trinity's authorization, this was gonna be dealt with.
Griffin went over the documents his suit tore out of the Proctor’s computer systems with a growing sense of … something. Gunboys were equal to an Enforcer in many ways. Their massive size made them less maneuverable and therefore more susceptible to egregious damage, though, which was ‘good’. That being said, the road to complete and utter destruction by any weapons system not capable of destroying a planet would be a long, rocky and oftentimes nearly impossible.
Griffin sent the data off to Trinity, hoping the machine mind responded quickly. When/if the monsters got moving, there would be very little time to react. If his primary mission –that of preventing Chadsik al-Taryin from dying- was to remain active, the Gunboys needed to be stopped before they got inside The Museum.
That gave him maybe … ten, fifteen seconds at the outside. Chadsik was insane enough to throw himself at the hundred-foot tall cybernetic nightmares for shits and giggles, a timeline too short for Griffin’s peace of mind. He had on-board weapons that could easily deal with…
Six pistol-loud cracks broke through Griffin’s reverie and he stopped trying alternately to figure out why in the hell Trinity wanted Chad alive when the freak’s sole purpose in life at the moment was to kill Garth Nickels and the point –if there was one- when the Gunboys creator had decided ‘enough was enough’.
In it’s staging area, the Gunboy was doing something very interesting and quite possibly the sickest thing Griffin had ever seen in his entire life; sometime in the last few seconds, the monolith had crouched low, bending its arms and legs at the second set of joints, exposing the edges at sharp right angles. Puffs of steam or other exhaust fumes were slowly leaking out of … out of … out of insertion joints. Big … tubes … spiraled up out of the arms, legs, neck and … and head, gallons of … fluid … splattering out of the joints.
Beneath his helmet, Griffin wrinkled his face in disgust. This was gross, even for him. He refused to barf in his Enforcer suit. It was undignified.
Angular, thin men in black –who, up until this point had been standing off to one side, obviously shunned by the on-site technicians- were undoubtedly the oft-referred to ‘Proctors’. When the technician with the remote-box nodded, all six men scampered up the nearly prone Gunboy with hair-raising ease.
Everyone waited patiently for the two who needed to scale their way up to the top of the machine and, in eerie unison, all six men climbed into the pods. They began hooking themselves directly to the operating system by means of an array of cables, cords and spikes that slotted into various … equipment ports. Sickening clicks reached Griffin’s augmented hearing and he shuddered violently. Once the Proctors finished the task of connecting themselves to the Gunboy, the pods sealed themselves before spiraling smoothly into the flesh.
As soon as the ’skull pod’ lowered back into place, the Gunboy moved, rising with far more grace than before. The red and black Technical Specialist waited calmly for the red lights on his remote control to go green; when the last one turned, he shut the unit down and went back inside the carrier, visibly relieved.
Griffin shook. This was just … wrong. He understood immediately why six men were required to operate the gross machinery that comprised a Gunboy and was revolted. Latelians possessed no artificial intelligence, and there had to be thousands of complex operations running every millisecond to keep the bastard device functional during a wartime operation. The Proctors weren’t using the Gunboy ... they were additional computers. It was as offensive as it was ingenious.
According to the files he’d stolen, the first Gunboy had been dubbed Polyphemus. Griffin rolled his eyes. Someone somewhere in Latelyspace knew an awful lot about ancient myths and legends and couldn’t resist putting their mark on damn near everything he or she came in contact with. Pauly howled once more at the twilit, storm-burdened sky.
No wonder Vasily disliked the beasts and their ‘Proctors’. Anyone who’d willingly look at a hundred foot tall metal-and-flesh monstrosity and think it’d be fun to climb inside and take the fucking thing for a drive wasn’t right in the head. Making matters worse, by now, communicating like a hive mind, they were undoubtedly completely alien to the rest of Latelyspace.
The second transpo vehicle opened its humungous bay doors.
Griffin moved around the first Gunboy so he could get a better look. Trinity expected nothing less than full disclosure on anything unique and/or potentially dangerous to Its rule, and the Gunboys definitely fell into that category. It hadn’t gotten back to him yet, but that didn’t matter. He had a job to do, one that superseded Chadsik fucking al-Taryin.
Griffin steeled himself for the grotesquerie.
xxx
Chadsik al-Taryin admitted quite freely to himself–and quite loudly- that he was having an awful lot of fun. Then he abruptly announced to anyone who’d listen that it was getting time for him to quit; he was running out of ammunition and, really, he had no desire to go hand-to-hand with the cranked up cybernetic soldiers. The assassin wasn’t worried about the swarming greencoated soldiers overtaking him, not by a long shot.
No, it was time to leave because he was getting bored.
The idle fascination in using different weapons and methods to fell the mighty behemoths was finally losing its charm and now all he was doing was looking for a way to get away without leaving a bloody trail for the Chairwoman’s drones to follow.
The only thing keeping him in the amphitheater longer than he wanted was The Job.
It was evident the fella was worn out. Swings from his amazing mace were less and l
ess forceful with each blow, the Goddies weren’t falling back as far as they had and the solid hologram that’d transformed Garth into a soldier was flickering fitfully.
Glances around the room showed that no one else had noticed the bizarre lightshow taking place every time Garth’s mace connected with a God soldier’s head and the thusly bonked were far too concerned about their immediate health to dwell on what had to be a hallucination.
That weariness, so evident in tortured grunts and exhalations of air every time the mace swung, had Chad concerned down to his very toes. He would be very unhappy if his Job got himself killed. The assassin hated rescuing people he’d been hired to kill. It made him feel weird in his own head and that usually required a great truckload of drugs and wanton killing to shake loose.
He’d do it, though, if it came right down to the wire. There was simply no letting amateurs kill such a wonderful being as Garth Nickels.
“All right, my son, if you is not getting yourself safe in the next few minutes, I is going to save your arse.” Chad sniffed unhappily, adding in a slightly different Voice, “I am not happy about this, though. Oh no, not at all. There might even be words, Master Nickels.”
xxx
Elsewhere in the amphitheater, the last of the gun turrets gave a clicking whine as it tried to locate the next cartridge box. Finding none, it sent out a request for more ammo and shut itself down in a flurry of whirring articulated gunports.
Five seconds after the final gun locked itself down, Onesies who’d been hiding around the corner –occasionally pushing one of their number down the hall to ‘check for bullets’- charged the turret, breaking it into pieces and stomping as many of those pieces as they could flat before running in to smash terrorist heads. Half the group –nearly fifty strong- split to deal with the cyborg and the other half headed off to pound the traitor into the ground. This fresh infusion of God soldier blood would surely spell doom for the remaining terrorists and the two … men killing their brothers and sisters with such reckless abandon.
Naoko heard the final turret stop firing and stuck her head up long enough to see it ‘dismantled’ by the Goddies. She frowned, shocked at what she saw.
The devastation was appalling; occupied in keeping the News4You ‘LINKs open and trying desperately to find where the Prometheus Device had gotten itself to –it and Chairwoman Doans had seemingly vanished off the face of Hospitalis-, she hadn’t seen or heard much beyond the occasional grunt or curse, and even then, most of that had been through the earbud.
The Kamagana Focus … Naoko shook her head, aghast at her own utter lack of self-protection. Being lost in the depths of her prote like that … it was amazing she hadn’t been killed!
The Viewing Room was … was gone. Virtually obliterated. Almost every chair in the amphitheater-style seating arrangement was in splinters, either flattened by the pale cyborg’s strange grenades or smashed clean out by Garth and his force mace. Dead and unconscious greenskins littered the changed geography. It looked like there was at least five hundred dead God soldiers spread throughout the vast chamber, a hair-raising death toll given her knowledge of Latelian war.
OverCommander Vasily wasn’t going to like that. Naoko could only guess at his response to such a failure.
The walls, pockmarked with shrapnel or with poorly aimed shots from the terrorists and their deadly ammunition, looked ready to fall to pieces with the next crack of thunder from the storm raging just outside.
Torrents of rainwater streamed heavily through the demolished Dome, pools forming beneath the feet of Vilmos and the remainder of his terrorist crew: the ‘organization’ had fallen back to that central spot and was concentrating their efforts on trying to kill the Goddies storming Garth and the psychotic Trinity cyborg. It was evident from the fear and determination on their faces that they knew they would become the focus once the soldiers dealt with Garth and his unwelcome assistant.
Those civilians once foolish enough to swallow Vilmos’ smooth line had come to their senses very quickly; realizing soon on that the terrorist leader’s plans for them required them to be nothing more than cannon fodder, they’d dispatched themselves to one of the furthest corners of the demolished Viewing Room to await either capture or death. They cowered there, angling their protes to record what they presumed to be their last will and testament, never knowing that everything they said was live and known by billions. Naturally –and sadly- many had died, for the conflict had raged everywhere across the Viewing Room. Thankfully, more than half the original hostages remained.
A faint flicker of a smile crossed Naoko’s weary face. The televised accounting of the conflict was working; the non-combative civilians were easily identifiable by the God soldiers, reducing the difficulty of differentiating between enemies and friends easy, even for the simplistic Onesies.
That clustering offered Chairwoman Doans a way out, though, one Naoko prayed their illustrious leader ignored.
If Chairwoman Doans wanted them dead, now would be the perfect time to kill them, perhaps going so far as to publicly chasten the OverCommander and any Goddies responsible for what would be classed as ‘friendly fire’. In light of the devastating loss of life and the unimaginable toll on greenskin morale, there was every chance that public opinion would swing away from condemnation altogether. What loyal Latelian would want to castigate angry God soldiers after the thrashing they’d taken?
Naoko took a deep, calming breath. If it were to happen, it would happen soon. The Chairwoman simply couldn’t afford to wait much longer.
For the time being –steeling herself for the possibility that these might be her last few minutes alive-, Naoko was pleased. Garth had saved innocent lives, had shown Latelians everywhere a side of themselves that they most certainly didn’t know they possessed, not even in their wildest dreams. If they survived, if Doans decided not to kill them all, he would become the man she knew he yearned to be, the man he could be. She would make sure that the rough, unruly and carelessly brutal Specter Garth had become in those last few years of his time in Special Services was erased. It would happen.
Taking in the man she loved, concern immediately overwhelmed Naoko. He’d been fighting for an eternity and he was tired. Trapped as he was in the Harry Bosch hologram, the EuroJapanese hacker queen doubted any of the Goddies currently rushing him would pause to consider his non-lethal methods. Their eyes were red with anger and bloodlust.
Tears began to fall. Garth had to find a way out. He had to.
xxx
Garth couldn’t believe how tired he was. He couldn’t believe he was still going. He couldn’t believe that during the whole fight, he’d been stuck with an internal soundtrack full of songs like ‘ABC-123’ and that one by the Brady Bunch. But he was, and he had, and the bastards kept coming in ever-increasing droves. The mace grew heavier with each swing and the vicious gleams he saw in the eyes of his opponents told him they knew he was weakening, too.
Making matters worse was the holofield itself. The butterfly-quick sensations he’d felt from Naoko touching him were gone, replaced with thunderous, titanic thuds and thumps that were just as fatiguing –and nerve-wracking - as anything was.
He grimly suspected that the Harry Bosch suit wasn’t doing anything to prevent the damage he sustained. There was a high chance that his flesh and bloody body was being pulped to death inside the solid hologram.
With his powers failing and his strength diminishing with every breath, it was only a matter of time before he was overrun.
Even the unbeatable solidity of the Harry Bosch solid hologram was wearing down beneath the constant blitzkrieg of laser fire and physical punishment delivered by the ravening hordes of Goddies. Every time someone hit him hard enough to drive him backwards a few steps, his ‘skin’ flickered with parti-colored pixels of snow. The Onesies and occasional Twoesie risking his mace thus far hadn’t been smart enough to suss the meaning of what they saw, but Garth was tiring of the calculating look in the eyes of the Foursie ho
vering in the background barking tactical commands.
The thoughtfulness of their gaze and the tactics they were beginning to deploy implied that the Foursie had more than a suspicion about what he was seeing. Sooner or later the massive cyborg would fall on a coordinated plan that would have the entire holofield fail.
If –when- that happened, Garth was screwed. The ex-Specter prayed the berserker rage boiling the blood of his foes as they crossed the threshold into the Viewing Room kept the Foursie’s brilliant solution from taking hold. Otherwise, he was as good as dead. He prepared himself for another onslaught.
After an especially difficult scrabble backwards over broken chair backs and dead civilians, the Onesies and Twoesies rushing at him blinked in perfect harmony and resumed their advance, their expressions blank.
Following the high-priority demands from the on-scene Foursie, tactical avatars had finally completed their calculations and estimates to derive a single, brutally effective course of action. That strategy had been loaded into the Foursie’s advanced cybernetic mind for assimilation. That Foursie was now in direct control of every Onesie, Twoesie and Threesie. They would corner the mutinous ‘ex-God soldier’ Harry Bosch, then crush him.
All too aware that the shambling giant coming at him was willingly proffering himself for the clobbering of a lifetime, Garth took a deep breath and swung the mace uppercut style at the soldier’s head. There was nothing else to do but hope his enemies weren’t as harmonized as they appeared to be.
The mace, working at less than fifteen percent of its original power, nevertheless whacked the Goddie in the jaw hard enough to drive him up into the air, past his awaiting comrades, and into possibly the only row of unbroken chairs left in the entire auditorium.
While Allyn Devince’s mace –the sheen surrounding its head flickering fitfully now- was still in the upward curve of Garth’s thunderous swing, four Goddies immediately rushed into the temporary vacuum of space surrounding their target. They grabbed their dastardly enemy in a warmly claustrophobic and rank embrace, locking him down in in a murderous rugby scrum. They started kicking at his shins and feet with massively armored boots.