by Lee Bond
Why? Unaware that his thoughts mirrored those of Griffin Jones, the Curator’s vast intellect could find no reasonable answer as to why Garth N’Chalez would willingly plunge himself into an uncertain future when it was blatantly obvious the War could’ve ended so very long ago.
A flood of data washed from Bravo. The Curator felt as much relief as he was capable of feeling.
The tests were at an end. The ancient and long-dead commanders of the Armies of Man –'living' still within the matrices of Bravo- were ‘done’ with their sole remaining asset; the Kin’kithal warrior Garth N’Chalez had lied, had misrepresented his skills and abilities, had potentially cost them the war against the M’Zahdi Hesh. –There was absolutely no way to tell without directly questioning Garth whether he’d wittingly or unwittingly set their victory back thirty thousand years.
No matter, though. With the technologies at their disposal, thirty thousand years was not so long a span to … undo. They could set things back, if they so chose. It was all just a matter of time.
Besides that, regardless of his duplicity, lies and manipulation, there was still the mission. Thirty thousand years hadn’t lessened the presence of the Heshii in any way. If anything, they were now so deeply entrenched into the strata of Human Civilization that rooting them out would require a great deal of patience, cunning, and yes, inevitable brutality. Bravo could sense arbiters of the Heshii out there in the broadness of the Universe, hiding in the furthest corners, still trying to prevent Humanity from accomplishing some thing that’d started the war thirty-five thousand years ago.
Their sole remaining asset would finish the task he’d sworn himself to so very long ago. Or he would die trying.
First, he needed teaching. He needed reminding. Reminding that whatever he was, whoever he was, however he was reaching directly into the extra-dimensionality to fuel whatever terrified plan he was forming in his mind right that second, they, the ancient Armies of Man, held the reins. Garth N’Chalez was sheathed, and he would be their lapdog.
“Resetting neural sheathing to zero percent. Bolstering ex-dee contact points to … three hundred percent.” Pushing the sheaths to such lengths would inevitably cause their destruction. For all the strengths they bestowed upon their host, the machines themselves were quite fragile; contracting the cellular connections Garth N’Chalez had with the extra-dimensionality to such a miniscule scope would see them fail sooner rather than later. No matter. N’Chalez would make it to Bravo before that failure, and then they would simply re-implant him.
The Curator began fading as his commands reached the sheathing controlling Garth N’Chalez. Considering the torrential power flooding the geography, the Curator prepared to expend himself to counteract the devastation that would follow. As it was, the restacking of order would be … volatile. All the Curator could hope for was a minimization of scale.
“Calculations indicate extra-dimensionality attenuation will result in a localized, short-term Bravo negation.” The ex-dee power suddenly redoubled. The Curator frowned, then resumed, reaching through the curious aspects of Bravo’s operational intelligence to draw on more fuel. It was necessary, and in light of how things were progressing, not at all a bad thing. “Revision: all planet-bound assets will be lost. Functional restoration estimated at three weeks. Long-term effects on Garth N’Chalez … permanent … until reset at Bravo.”
The Curator dissipated in a violent, invisible flowering of raw power, an explosion that rippled silently outwards, a perfect sphere of nullification that struck Garth smack dab in the middle of his being.
Boom Goes the Dynamite
Shrieking as the Curator’s unbinding severed the flow of power flooding the room, Garth blacked out. The two equal yet opposite surges met with a thunderclap, and all excess ex-dee energy got shoved abruptly and violently upward. As this invisible fountain spilled skyward, it sheared an extra three feet of concrete and duronium from the shattered Dome lip.
The natural order of the Universe restored itself with an almost impatient hurry, slamming downwards back in through the gaping Dome, flattening howling Goddies who clutched at burning, searing flesh, hammering civilians and terrorists into unconsciousness or death, striking Garth N’Chalez and Sa Gurant like a vengeful fist of a mercurial God.
The Foursie found himself in a battle to keep internal systems functional. Cascading machine failures addled an already pain-wracked consciousness, a great terror for any God soldier as heavily modified as Gurant. Left unchecked by autonomous avatars controlling everything from breathing to weapons status, the machines giving him his great strength and intellect could very well run riot, transforming him into a hideous something or –just as likely- simply consuming him on the spot. All too aware that -as a Foursie- this kind of disruption was supposed to be impossible, Gurant struggled against the impending darkness. He instinctively began shutting down as many systems as he could without killing himself, sacrificing hundreds of imperative avatars in an effort to keep conscious, to retain memory of this great conflict, to remember the enemy who straddled him like a flaring nova, his face wracked with pain and rage.
Above him, the glimmering, glittering shell of Harry Bosch howled again, this time a shout that curdled the Foursie’s blood in his armored veins. It seemed for a moment that Sa Gurant saw an endless glittering space behind Harry Bosch and then another colorless, silent thunderclap struck them both, this last assault slamming them into the ground with brutal efficiency
Central found itself smothered in a crushing wave of darkness.
xxx
Griffin stared thoughtfully at what he’d just witnessed, suddenly … concerned for … well, it sure as shit wasn’t his safety. He was an Enforcer. He never worried about anything. Still, though …
That had been a lot of power. More than made any kind of sense at all, even if you knew what Garth could do. More than he’d been able to see had happened inside that Museum in the last few seconds, and that was … troubling. Griffin demanded answers from his armor.
Griffin frowned at the ‘response’, narrowing his eyes thoughtfully as he considered the great game Trinity seemed to be playing with the entire Universe. There were two possibilities; either his suit couldn’t determine the power output of the ex-dee detonation or the answer fell into a category of secrets that Trinity felt he shouldn’t know. That honked him off more than he could rightly say.
The Kin’kithal Enforcer dimly registered that the lights of Central were coming back online in fits and starts. The amount of power required to blow out the lights across an entire planet, all of it coming from Garth. What in the hell was the man?
His mind was on other things. Firstly, he was preoccupied with Chad; failing to obey that particular directive would bring him nothing but trouble and after that goddamn explosion, even the weird thing that was Chad might be suffering.
Secondly?
The Enforcer settled back on his haunches and watched.
Secondly, he planned on doing something that should’ve been done thousands of years ago.
xxx
The FrancoBritish assassin surveyed the room. He couldn’t rightly say what had just happened, but he didn’t care much; between all the shouting and yelling and screaming, he’d been getting really sick and tired of being stuck in The Museum. If he cared to tell anyone the truth, he’d been a smidgeon close to killing everyone just so he could sneak out the back for a cigarette. Whatever it was that’d smashed everyone and damned near everything –including him, hadn’t that been a shock- into the ground had been something of a Godsend, really.
Chad wrinkled his nose. The computers on the wrists of many of the great galumphing God soldiers were cooking their flesh. Chad disliked the smell of cooked people-meat. It took forever to get out clothes. Still, he had a self-assigned task to perform and then it was time to find a place for nice, quiet nap.
Chad hoisted Garth over one shoulder and started moving towards the lovely young woman he’d come in with. The FrancoBritish assassin placed t
he Job as delicately as he could beside Naoko, chewing at his lip as he did so; now that everything was calm and quiet, Chad realized there was a great deal about Garth Nickels that defied explanation.
The insanity of the last few hours needed consideration. Massive amounts of consideration coupled with a great deal of time spent watching over Garth Nickels; it was obvious to Chad as he stood there looking over the man that he was going to need some serious recuperative time. You didn’t do as the man had just done and walk away bright and cheery as a fresh daisy. Well, Chad reflected, he could probably get away with it, but he was Chadsik al-Taryin. He was … amazing.
It was all the same to Chad. Assassinating Garth Nickels before he was back to one hundred percent just didn’t seem fair and besides, he was a bit knackered as well.
Turning from Garth and Naoko, Chad surveyed the room. All around him, unconscious God soldiers were still twitching and moaning and in some cases, howling –a frightful thing, indeed, oh yes- as their proteii burned and sizzled against rapidly cooking flesh.
Chad -who knew a thing or three about overheated metallic alloys and cybernetic bones- felt a bit sorry for the lads. With no one about to take the cooking proteii from their arms, the heat from their burning machines was transferring into their armored mesh and possibly even their coated bones.
If any of them survived, they’d probably find countless reasons to go without a proteus. For all his commiseration, Chad saw no reason to help any of the blighters out. They’d seemed all too willing to kill his Job and anyone else who got in the way and that, quite frankly, was deplorable.
The amphitheater reeked of death, blood, accelerants and a thousand other chemical stinks. All the innocent men, women and children were far off to the other side, panting, it seemed, in unison; luckily, it seemed more than ninety percent had been out of range of whatever explosion had driven everyone near Garth and the Goddie into immediate unconsciousness. Their faces were a mix of terror, confusion, acceptance and futility. More than half were talking a mile a minute into their protes, delivering what they imagined to be their last words to a watching system. Chad tossed them all a nod, though of course, collectively, they missed the gesture.
Then he strode down the stairs, angling himself towards the demolished Screens in the middle of the room. As he did so, he smiled at Vilmos Gualf, architect of the day’s fun and games.
The terrorist leader had seen better days.
The original group of men and women he’d started the day with were all dead. He didn’t know the name of a single person standing around him now. He couldn’t be sure of their true political agendas. With the greenskins all dead or whatever, they could very well decide to turn on him.
He … he couldn’t believe the smell. It was everywhere. It was on his skin, in his hair. He was breathing in the air of dead people. Vilmos reached for his gun. If he could kill all these ‘new’ terrorists, there was a chance he could hide somewhere until the Goddies went away. Then he could make it into the tunnels where he‘d detonate the explosives they’d laid at the beginning of the debacle, effectively hiding his escape. In a year or two years or however long it took to recover, he’d rise from the ashes of this terrible, embarrassing defeat and try again.
He would keep trying until the Chairwoman failed or succeeded.
“Hallo my sonny Jim, ‘ow are you doin?” Chad asked cordially of Vilmos, whose hand scrabbled towards the gun he’d just dropped. Chad indicated the fancy armor Vilmos wore. “Bet the guy as wot sold you that din’t say nuffink about lasers, hey?”
Vilmos’ hand froze. He looked deep into the whirling spirals of the cyborg’s eyes and saw a form of madness he couldn’t believe existed. “N…no. He didn’t.” Lasers? What could lasers do against something that’d protected him from a superluminal bullet? “What do lasers have to do with anything?”
Chad tapped the hardened breastplate and sniffed deprecatingly. “Wouldn’t wear one of those to a fuckin’ dance party, me. Works like the dickens against projectile weapons, right? Even bombs and stuff like that. All those kinetic distribution nodes and what-not are the tits at saving a bloke’s life against bullets and all, but a simple fucking laser gun?” Chad pulled a laser gun from his belt. “Now, ordinarily, I is not up for killing random fellas,” he charitably ignored Vilmos’ choked burst of laughter, “but you is done pissin’ me off. Oy, wot’s got you all worked up, son? You is knowin’ this is the right fing to do. I cannot ‘ave you traipsin’ around the background whilst I is doin’ my duty.”
Vilmos pointed to the indistinct object coming down through the large hole where the dome used to be; it was so big it blotted out the twilight sky.
Chadsik abruptly changed his mind; he’d been through enough shit for one day and really didn’t feel like killing a coward anyhow. He fired his boot-boosters and, disdaining Vilmos’ transparent attempts to scare him, jumped straight into the palm of the Gunboy.
The Brotherhood of Philosophy … Cancelled
At first, Green’s suggestion that they meet for the final stages of the terrorist incursion at The Museum had seemed like a good one, if for no other reason than to free themselves from guilt. After all, they had essentially consigned forty of their faithful penitents to death, either at the hands of the terrorists, this damnable Harry Bosch or even the God soldiers themselves. That sort of thing required penitence, no matter that those forty had been useless chaff to fill the ranks.
Had Grey possessed even the tiniest shudder of worry, the merest hint of a suspicion that the day would turned out so abominably … he regretted casting his vote to send those forty out. Seated with others who shared in his silent woe, a surge of vindication suffused Grey; this was why religion and faith were important, this was what they needed to show Latelians everywhere. The connection, the beauty, the rightness of four men from wildly disparate backgrounds with absolutely no reason to talk to one another, sharing in a horrific event, lightening the burden of so much loss … it was perfect.
“We can turn this to our benefit.” Grey said, surprised at the words coming out of his mouth.
Three sets of eyes turned to him.
Grey gestured to the Screens. “This, the Spaceport, all of it … it’s a cleaving of the soul… so much devastation. Our people will need … counseling. They’ll need to hear that everything is okay, that we can survive this.”
Black nodded shrewdly. The beginnings of a plan filled him. “I like it. We can use this to our advantage.”
Blue worked at a tooth. He had a damned seed from his sandwich lodged firmly in there and it was frankly driving him mad. Realizing they were waiting for his response, he cleared his throat and nodded. “Yes, of course. Indirectly, though. Quietly. And … not everyone. Only the most soul-ravaged, the … the …”
“Weakest?” Green supplied helpfully. “The weakest. It is so very easy to manipulate the minds of the weak when you offer them something intangible, something they can only attain after the fact. Strong-willed individuals find the notion of religion, of faith, of theology relatively pointless, even if they harbor feelings of spiritualism. They will fight and struggle against foolish notions. It is why I chose you three. Four, counting Ashok Guillfoyle. The weakest yet most influential minds I could find… for a plan that is no longer even necessary. We erred, so long ago, in not trusting to our deeply held suspicions. We were ill prepared for N’Chalez coming to us this way. Now we must … wait.”
“Now see here!” Black bellowed angrily, throwing his cowl back. He couldn’t believe his ears. He could tell Blue and Grey were shocked by this sudden … demeaning statement. And who was this person Green mentioned? No matter. The insult was unforgiveable. Weak-minded! “How dare you!”
Muttering, Grey and Blue were too shocked to be of much help. However, they did remove their hoods as a sign of solidarity.
Amused, Green threw back his hood as well. Eyes burning with brilliant static, he considered the three men as a scientist would lab animals. He smiled at
the reflexive starts of terror from the three men.
Then the tsunami-like ex-dee shockwave ripping through Central reached Green. As The Curator had done, he did.
As did all the extensions of Bravo.
When the bodies were discovered days later, forensic investigators would simply add the inexplicably damaged corpses to a roster of over three hundred others bearing similar wounds. When all was said and done, files would highlight the most likely explanation for the deaths and trauma as a response to either Vilmos Gualf’s failure or Ashok Guillfoyle’s roundabout involvement in his brother’s aborted attempts at history-making.
When Gunboys Attack
Everyone huddled in the stands screeched in confused fright as an indescribably huge and ugly paw reached in to scoop up a handful of terrorists, hauling part of the floor beneath them away in the process. Another hand grabbed hold of a part of the roof, ripping it roughly free to reveal more of the nightmare to come.
Standing beside this unimaginable man-shaped beast was another. It roared loudly and reached towards The Museum roof with freakishly jointed arms. The first monster howled in response, dropping its recently fished-out ‘cargo’ and together, the two of them began systematically tearing the Museum apart, tossing stone fragments ten feet tall and thousands of pounds each around like pebbles.
The snipers, more or less forgotten after everything had gone so horribly tits up, took desperate aim with their powerful rifles and started firing for everything they were worth; highly trained sharpshooters, each one of them knew their weapons were useless against whatever kind of ‘soldier’ the monsters were, but there was nothing else to do. Animal instinct had taken over.
The four men truly started to panic when the beasts succeeded in pulling away almost the entire upper roof of The Museum and so, operating purely in survival mode, they dropped their rifles in unison and turned to flee. One of the last things they saw before being ignobly scooped up in a hand was Chad, clinging desperately to a finger, frantically slapping explosive charges to the hand.