“Checkmate,” He announced.
“Stand by, Knight,” Control’s voice came through his earpiece, startling him. Jude relaxed all tension on the trigger. He took a moment to breathe and re-focus his aim to keep Diaz in his sights.
“The King is in check! Endgame ready to run!”
“Stand by, Knight,” Control reiterated, “We are receiving new orders.”
“In the middle of an operation?”
“Stand by…” Control called back, “Authentication’s coming through. Continue with endgame and fall back to the rendezvous. When Match One is complete, another team will take the board for Match Two.” The second phase of the operation was the most crucial. Jude and his troops were supposed to ensure the rebels scored victories against Diaz’s army that the rebels had no real chance in hell of winning. Another team moving in at this juncture would be dangerous; the rebels were already wary of Jude, who had more often than not been elsewhere than in their theatre of war. A new team would be completely mistrusted.
“Profile’s not nearly complete!” Jude protested, “Why the fuck are we being redeployed?”
“I relay the orders, Knight,” Control replied, “I don’t analyze them.” Jude was silent, waiting a few more moments as he calmed down. He put his eye to the scope of his rifle and found Diaz. It wasn’t long before the Argentinean gave Jude the money shot he wanted. He took aim at the back of Diaz’s head.
“King in check,” He hissed. Jude squeezed the trigger.
“Checkmate.” Diaz’s head blew apart and a few seconds later the roar of a powerful explosion was heard. Jude had already dismantled his rifle and was rushing through the darkness to the rendezvous when the first sirens wailed.
♦♦♦
Bloom sat in her office cradling her head in her hand. The voice message from Allison had said it all. Bloom listened to it over and over again before fully absorbing it. Their Grid spars were shut, overworked by the calls flooding in from hundreds of other people like her, trying to find out about wounded loved ones. She’d requested emergency leave. General Harrod had denied it due to the ongoing crisis. All Bloom could do was wait for word about her daughter, wait for the strike team to come for Ashe, and pretend her world wasn’t falling apart around her.
♦♦♦
Major Benedict watched the armoured transports roll up. Immediately, he knew something was wrong. The vehicles driving up were Rangers; none of the agencies assigned to this mission, the DHS, FBI or ATF, employed Rangers. The compact transport trucks were, in fact, almost exclusively used by the military. Benedict stood at the head of the barricade with Police Chief Sharon Raven, who had been coordinating on behalf of the Protectorate’s Peacekeepers.
“What the hell is this?” she asked.
“No idea,” Benedict replied. The lead Ranger halted and a passenger immediately debarked, heading over to Benedict. A Colonel’s rank was pinned to the man’s uniform. Benedict saluted sharply.
“Major James Benedict?” the Colonel asked, returning the salute.
“Yes Colonel.”
“Isaac Jude,” Colonel Jude said, “Major, you and your men are relieved.” Jude turned to the police chief, “You and yours as well, Ma’am. This is now a strictly military operation and it has been put under my exclusive command.”
♦♦♦
“Do I or do I not have command of this operation, General?” Bloom demanded angrily of the image on her screen, “Would you mind clarifying that for me?”
“Don’t think the new promotion gives you more clout with me, Colonel Bloom,” Harrod growled, “You watch how you address me.”
“I think you can explain to me why my Chief of Security’s been removed from the conflict,” She replied, “General, Sir.”
“The conflict is no longer within the bounds of his jurisdiction, Colonel. Nor is it within the bounds of yours.”
“What?”
“You are in command of Fort Arapaho and the project for which Fort Arapaho was commissioned: The Ship Survey Expedition. In conjunction with the South-western Protectorate and the Laguna District, the Department of the Army is in charge of security on the World Ship Preserve. The Village and Gabriel Ashe are outside your jurisdiction.”
“How can you log us out after what we were hit with here?”
“You and your personnel are not part of this operation, Colonel. Accept it and move on.” He terminated the linx then, leaving her staring at a blank screen. She turned to look at Benedict.
“Who the fuck is this son of a bitch, anyway?”
“Colonel Jude,” Benedict replied, sitting on the other side of Bloom’s desk, “He’s a Special Forces type, strictly black ops. I’ve actually dealt with him in the past, Colonel; before I was assigned to Concord Three.”
“You don’t say,” Bloom growled, “Please, Major. Tell me all about it.”
“I’m afraid that information is still classified, Colonel.”
“Really?” Bloom said, giving him scrutinous look, “One day we’re going to have to sit down and talk about all the things we’re not supposed to sit down and talk about.”
“One day, Colonel.” They sat for a long moment, in silence. Finally, Bloom spoke:
“They’re going to delete Ashe, aren’t they? And we’re not cleared to know about it. They don’t want me involved because of my position in the Ship Survey Expedition.”
“That would be my assessment,” Benedict replied. Bloom considered this a long moment. Considered Ashe and what one of his followers had done to Mark; what they had done to Laura. Considered the nightmare being faced by tens of thousands of people around the world as Ashe’s followers ran rampant wherever they could. Bloom took a long, hard moment and considered the black op that was going down and the reasons behind it.
“Good,” She said at last, “I hope they turn the bastard into stew. How are rescue operations coming?”
“They’re on schedule,” Benedict replied, as they made their way from the nearly silent command center, “But the people we’re pulling from the wreckage are in bad shape. We’ve pulled about two hundred and fifty people from the what’s left of the main barracks, and we’re still digging the rest out. There’s at least another five hundred trapped in the rubble. It looks like we have to expect a forty to fifty percent fatality rate among the casualties.”
“God dammit,” Bloom hissed, “We could have stopped this right after Mark died, if they’d have thrown this bastard out! What the fuck’s the death toll going to climb to, now?”
“Colonel, it was out of our hands.”
“And it’s been taken out of our hands, again.” Bloom retorted bitterly, as they left the Administration and Command bunker. They could see the barracks building from here: a ten-floor tower, though it was barely recognizable as such any more. The front half of the building was gone, the first five floors destroyed by the suicide bomb blast, the top half having caved in upon itself.
“What the hell did that bastard have strapped to his back?” Bloom asked.
“Our best guess is that the bomber had a backpack full of C-17 or a similar compound,” Benedict replied. “We’ll know more, I suppose, once the investigation is underway.” Benedict paused, the headset in his ear chiming.
“Colonel, we’ve just gotten word.” He said, “They’re storming the Church of the United Trinity Observants.”
TWELVE
HUNTER, KILLER
The Ship had been instructed to establish communication with whatever intelligence found it, by teaching them its common language. The Ship, however, had had millennia to consider the possibility that the beings who found it might not be able to grasp the complexities and subtleties of the language. Designed to be able to evolve beyond its initial programming, the Ship decided it might become necessary to learn the common language of whatever beings found it. After all, time and again history had proven the difficulty of communication between alien beings. The Ship spent centuries revising its tutorials and devising the means
to learn whatever language was used by its potential future discoverers.
And so when the Ship unearthed itself it began monitoring as much of this world’s communications as it could. It catalogued hundreds of different languages and dialects; spoken, written and gesticulated. The beings of this world used the radio spectrum to send audio, visual and data streams and the Ship was able to exploit this as it tried to learn the language used most often on this world. The Ship had not anticipated the insight it would glean into this world’s cultures. Like many primitive species, this world’s many divergent (and often opposing) cultures were seeped in violence. The Ship catalogued great lists of both simulated and actual violence in the recorded visual media. The Ship was able to discern what was real and what wasn’t only through careful study. In fictitious violence it was usually the same beings who suffered or inflicted suffering on others, throughout various recordings. The Ship witnessed one being die no less than seventy times in seventy different recordings. And in many cases that proved their evident fictional nature, creatures and technology that couldn’t possibly have existed were the ones inflicting and ultimately having violence inflicted upon them. The level of xenophobia that lay behind these creatures’ violent tendencies was troubling.
But the level of real violence, from their recreations to their public events to their interpersonal encounters was even more troubling. How had such a primitive, violent species attained such a level of technological advancement without self-destructing? There had recently been a sudden period of violent chaos: a series of murderous attacks by affiliated groups of beings against their parent civilizations as a whole. The representations the Ship gleaned from current events broadcasts seemed to indicate that this had been linked to the discovery of the Ship. This was not unusual among primitive cultures encountering an alien race for the first time. The level of violence that had occurred during the attacks wasn’t unheard of, either. But neither were such things signs of promise. The Ship would continue to watch and to wait. It had much to decide about the beings who had discovered it and none of it easy.
♦♦♦
TRANSCRIPT
INTERACTIVE NEWS NETWORK NEWSCAST
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PATH:INN <>BROADCAST >>HEADLINES >>NIGHT OF BLOOD >>UPDATE ><
ANCHOR
Good morning and welcome to the Interactive News Network. Around the world at this hour police and military forces are still fighting pitched battles against the heavily armed followers of the Church of the United Trinity Observants, after what is being called the Night of Blood. The call to arms for this cult seems to have been issued by their leader, Gabriel Ashe. Although the Observants have issued no statement concerning this violence, intelligence about the cult would suggest that it is part of a plan to stop what they see as the idolatrous worship of the Ship around the world. The source of the violence indeed came from the World Ship Preserve, where a series of late-night bombings by followers of Gabriel Ashe set the stage for the violence that has hit so many world capitals this morning.
INN<>HEADLINES >>REPORT FROM THE WORLD SHIP
PRESERVE >>UPDATE ><
WALTER QUINCY ROBERTSON
I am standing here this morning, broadcasting on the border between the Laguna District of the South-western Protectorate, New Mexico and the World Ship Preserve. Since one-fifteen AM local time this and every other highway, road and trail into the Preserve has been under blockade by both US Army and Protectorate Peacekeepers. we know that a small war is being waged within the Preserve. There have been numerous explosions, gunfire…We have been told nothing, but given similar incidents of mayhem around the world over the last nine hours we know that the cause of this madness is Gabriel Ashe and the United Trinity Observants.
♦♦♦
“And by morning, the Son of the Lamb will become the Scapegoat,” He muttered, freezing the image on the portable console. Those who had stolen the souls of people of this world, those who sought to use the Ship for their ends were now calling Him a criminal. But He knew He would be remembered forever as the Saviour. But they had to try and make the world hate Him. Otherwise Prophecy would not come true. The House of God on Earth itself would reject Him. The Catholic Church, which so blasphemously spoke of itself as that same House of God, had already fulfilled that part of the divinations. Now, the House of Man would oblige Him by fulfilling the next part. His Ascension was imminent. All was proceeding exactly as the Angel foretold. He looked out at the Ship and revelled in the sound of its seductive song. There was only a short distance to go before He was standing on its golden surface: the slow climb down to the Ship, itself. The Angel had shown Him in the Dream how the canyon wall had collapsed where the Salado Falls had until recently flowed. Now with the Rio Salado diverted the Falls had become a rock climber’s challenge. But the Angel had shown Him how to get down. And so down towards the Ship, the Chariot of God, He would go, all the while knowing His enemy was above, hunting Him, coming for Him as he had from the beginning of these last events, before His Ascension.
♦♦♦
“Rook One, do we have intel?” Jude never faced away from the building. A double barricade of mobile shield walling stood between him and the macadam road dividing them from the Church of the United Trinity. Rook One worked behind him, while Rooks Three and Four did a final weapons check. Control and Rooks Two and Five were skyside in the helicopter. Rook One linked the data to the headset Jude wore. The information was transmitted directly onto his eye from the micro scanner boom. He read the information using a series of eye movements and blinks to scroll through. Hardware twenty years from being low-tech enough to go public was at his command. Jude swivelled the viewer boom up and turned to Rook Three.
“Let me have the McAllister.30 calibre,”
“We going to pick them off one by one, Knight?” Rook Four asked, jokingly.
“Stow that, soldier; we’re just giving them a sign that their End Times have come.” As they spoke, Rook Three retrieved the specified rifle from its case, snapped its components together and produced the ammunition magazine for Jude. The Colonel took the gun and leaned over the side of a low section of plating. A flip of a switch on the bulky scope and he had a brilliant blue and yellow CG image of the interior of the Church of the United Trinity Observants.
“Knight to Control,” He said into his mic, “Target in check, using TMI scanning.” Jude had selected a target at the far end of the church itself, a stoned mad faithful member of Ashe’s congregation, who seemed to be gently caressing an assault rifle cradled like a newborn in his lap. The shot was set up perfectly so that the front of the man’s head would blow off, sending bone, blood and grey matter flying right at Ashe’s altar – and hopefully right into his face.
Jude wanted them to know they were being hunted. He wanted Ashe to know. He wanted Ashe to die last. He contemplated this, while waiting for Control to make whatever command verifications were formally required for the slaughter to begin.
“Confirm target acquisition Knight,” Control said.
“Pawn in check,” Jude said, leaning into the gun, staring into the scope. He watched his oblivious target, knowing what his prey did not: that they would be dead in seconds. Jude felt no remorse, no sympathy for his target, or for the rest of Ashe’s armed, murderous followers. They would all die believing they were somewhere safe, somewhere secure. They would die knowing no mercy, only retribution for the horrors they’d visited on the world tonight.
“Knight, Control.”
“Go ahead Control,”
“Move for checkmate; move for checkmate; move for checkmate.”
“Pawn in checkmate,” Jude replied. He squeezed the trigger ever so slowly, ever so gently. There was a hollow sound as the gun fired and in the next instant the stoned Apostle’s head exploded.
“Checkmate.” Jude said, dryly, a grimly satisfied smile on his cold features.
♦♦♦
He opened His eyes with a start as something hot and wet sp
rayed Him. Ashe heard His disciples scream in alarm and watched as one of His flock fell, headless to the floor. Ashe stood up, trying to understand where the shot had come from. His Apostles moved to make a human shield around Him. Such was their love of Him that where His Father’s Apostles had betrayed and denied Him, His Apostles were ready to die in His Name. A moment later the back wall of His Church rattled with gunshots and His followers in the back rows convulsed as they were sprayed with bullets. As the doors into His Church were blown inwards by His enemies’ weapons, Ashe was ushered by His loving Apostles back into the Sacristy and the Sanctuary they hoped was beyond.
Ashe’s flock were stoned sitting ducks for Jude and his troops. He and his men wore full body armour and they moved in quickly and ruthlessly on their targets. Rooks Three and Four were the vanguard, equipped with short-barrelled “house-cleaner” automatic shotguns, hosing down the opposition inside. Rook One and Two covered them from behind, taking out anyone they hadn’t with assault rifles. Jude took up the rear, compact machine gun at the ready. He was after only one target. His men could handle the rest, but Gabriel Ashe was his. As his guard fanned out into the church Jude shut out the screams for help and surrender coming from the panicked followers of this doomed cult. Some tried to organize themselves enough to return fire, but had no chance to respond. None of it mattered. Jude had spotted his prey heading out the back of the church.
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