by Lee
She could undo all that evil with a single gesture.
Jordan and his men stared silently at her. Naoko ignored the tears streaming down her face. “I want this drawn up as a contract, sa.”
Jordan gestured to a nearby Screen. “Already done, si. The paperwork merely awaits your agreement. Appropriate Ministries will be made aware of the transfer.”
“I …” Naoko sniffled, “I … I require an amendment.”
Jordan tilted his head. How intriguing. “Oh?”
“You … you will pay the equivalent of a standard decade’s worth of ‘employees’.”
“Or? You have nothing to force me into this, si. What can you possibly use to your advantage?”
Naoko smiled, at first haltingly, then with greater strength. “The journey from Latelyspace to Trinity Prime is a long one, sa. An unruly prisoner can cause a great deal of trouble. What,” she made a pointed effort to look at each of the men in the room with her, “what are you willing to wager I can engineer my death after you release my kinsmen?”
One life for thousands saved. It was math at the simplest level.
Sandlak muttered. “I’ve got movement outside.”
“Nickels.” Jordan hissed. His mercenaries would stand no chance. “Very well, si. You are correct. Two million credits, not a penny more. Into each bank account.”
“He’s coming in.” Sandlak whispered fiercely.
Alligorni hit the lights as Greuz stomped the Q-comm into broken pieces. Greuz pointed a thick finger at Naoko, and then gestured with that same finger that she be quiet. He grinned toothily, scar twisting the emotion into something ugly. The door opened and Garth Nickels limped into the room, staring worriedly at his hand.
Naoko couldn’t help it. She couldn’t; it was obvious that her love’s legendary strength and power was gone, somehow drained during the events at The Museum and he needed warning. She opened her mouth and let loose with a soul-piercing scream.
Garth looked up from his hand. A rifle butt was slammed brutally into the middle of his forehead.
Naoko reached desperately for Greuz’s rifle, fingers clutching compulsively around the trigger. A spray of bullets ripped out, tearing through the ceiling and filling the room with the smell of gunpowder. Greuz jabbed the rifle point into Naoko’s stomach. The heated tip and the pressure from the attack drove the stupid bitch to her knees. He looked at Alli and Sandlak, both of whom were gearing up to hurt the Offworlder from Trinity more.
“We don’t have time, idiots. The alarms are going to …” Security avatars, bypassed at the source thanks to a friend of a friend of a friend with a horrible gambling problem, erupted with a fury after finally detecting gunfire. “We go. Now.”
“Don’t look like much, do he?” Alligorni asked as he cuffed Naoko in the head hard enough to knock her out.
Sandlak looked over his shoulder as he kicked the patio doors out of his way. Broken glass splintered and fell over the side of the balcony. “Nope. Not at all. Some kind of hype, I bet.”
Greuz stood beside his men. This was living. “All right, bitches. Jump.”
All three men jumped at the same time, their jetpacks bursting into life a few seconds later.
Immediately After, Sort Of
Punching through the heavily encrypted layers of guest-controlled security and privacy of The Palazzo’s powerful netLINK system with immediate-access keys, avatars dispatched alerts, guards and medics to the Ultra Suite within seconds of the disturbance being detected. Programmed to assign a high threat level to anything happening in the Ultra Suite, the avatars then sent preliminary reports to the police and Bureaus tasked to monitor dangerous situations. All these alerts and more passed through Sa Ute’s prote as he slept. Barely awake, it was a full three seconds before the gargantuan Latelian fully processed what flashed so stridently across his prote-screen. Regardless, Ute was dressed and on his way to the Ultra Suite before he was even fully conscious.
By the time he hit the elevators, he’d already started demanding audio and visual files from every machine outside The Palazzo capable of recording so much as birdsong; anyone breaching the Palazzo would leave a trail a mile long as they fled what was tantamount to a full-scale military reprisal. As an afterthought, Ute sagely dashed off a quick request for additional information to the still-fresh Ministry of Examination, judiciously explaining as best he could that the man attacked was an apocalypse-level event waiting to happen.
Ute stared at his prote for a long, long second, trying desperately to make sense of the newest flash to hit his screen. Impossibly, the breach had nothing to with Nickels at all; whoever had risked the Palazzo’s powerful security system had kidnapped Nickels’ girlfriend.
Ute stared at his reflection in the highly polished mirror-like metal of the elevator, puzzling the events out slowly in the hopes that somehow everything would make more sense if he didn’t rush. Someone had broken into the Hotel Palazzo, and mysteriously rendered the world’s most unbeatable man unconscious to steal that same man’s girlfriend.
Friends and colleagues teased him. They said he had no emotion, that he showed no fear, that he had no doubt.
Well, today Ute wasn’t just afraid. He wasn’t just filled with doubt.
He was terrified.
Terrified that when Garth Nickels woke up, he’d crack the world like an egg to find Naoko Kamagana. If there was one man in the entire solar system with the capability, it was the ex-Specter. Ute hung his head for a moment, perking up when the elevator reached its destination. It wouldn’t do for underlings to see him worried when they were undoubtedly already frantic.
The elevator doors opened. Chaos in the form of Palazzo investigators and specialists greeted him. Every prote within a hundred feet automatically twinned with his and information began spilling onto the screen. Sophisticated holographic emitters flashed data onto discreet cybernetic enhancements; there were perhaps two people in the entire Hotel that might suspect Ute wasn’t one hundred percent flesh and blood, and the security chief would do whatever it took to remain that way until it was time –once again- to move on.
Ute grimaced at the preliminary data. The few men and women within visual range faltered in whatever they were doing, but only for a second; they’d never seen Sa Ute with anything other than a carefully neutral expression on his broad face.
“Is this data real?” Ute demanded of the room.
Every man and woman stopped working.
“Is this data real?” Ute reiterated, staring out the shattered windows, trying to guess the route the abductors had taken. “Is it verified?”
No one wanted to answer. They, too, were trying to deal with the news.
It was odd enough that the focus of the attack was not Garth Nickels. That in itself was so unlikely that it bordered on the apocryphal. Yet, since their illustrious guest was currently being treated in a medical bay and not being spirited away, it was fretfully obvious that Naoko Kamagana really had been the intended target.
The absolutely most confusing thing about the entire affair was that trace evidence left behind by the kidnappers indicated that the abductors weren’t even Latelian. Everything from energy signatures to trace levels of bacteria and airborne sweat said the men who’d stolen Naoko Kamagana were from Trinity.
“Contain this data.” Ute ordered. “No one outside these rooms knows this. If I find any Sheet carrying stories of Trinity kidnappers, the results for all of you will be less than pleasant.”
Ute spun on his heel and went to check on Nickels. He could easily look in on the man through prote feed, but some things were best done in person.
What possible reason could anyone from Trinity want with one unremarkable Latelian woman?
xxx
As Garth lay, surrounded by millions of dollars’ worth of fiendishly expensive medical equipment, he dreamed. He dreamed of the past, of the time before, of thirty thousand years ago, of the reasons.
But as he slept, as he dreamed, even as he was g
iven access to nearly every memory in his head, still, the utter depths, the absolute truths, still, these evaded him.
Garth dreamed of the truth of where they lived, of the truth behind where … where’d he’d been, and the revelation –that where they lived now was … was Unreal, was some kind of … template of what life should be- nearly broke him. He dreamed of a never-proven but deeply held conviction that there were vast and mighty engines somewhere in the depth of their massive, eternal Universe, Engines of Creation, and these mythical engines were responsible for … everything.
Garth dreamed of what he’d been shown, of six crystalline spheres that held within each a true and Real Universe, each a gem in the crown of Existence. He dreamed of their soul-aching perfection, of the purest music issuing forth from each, how all six tones merged and flowed together to make … The Harmony of the Spheres. He dreamed how the Hesh had taken that Harmony and twisted it to their cruel purpose, transforming the War into something grim, foul, and perverse.
That memory drove home the truth of where he was, forced him to confront it head on.
Everything he loved, everything he hated, everything in between …
Unreal.
The argument that wanted to rise in him, even while unconscious, was crushed by the proof of his own damned life; the evidence of his own experiences, revealed to him at last, proved everything.
He’d been to Reality, he’d experienced true life.
That … accidental journey in his youth was what made him special, had transformed him from a merely exceptional Kin’kithal Warrior into ‘N’Chalez’.
That journey was the reason behind coming thirty thousand years into the future. The nature of the Reality he’d witnessed firsthand and rescuing the whole of their Unreality from destruction by the Heshii were intimately connected. It was like any opposite. Life. Death. Good. Bad. Light. Dark.
Real.
Unreal.
The irony was, even as he lay there, surrounded by machines waiting for the smallest signs of wakefulness, even as he was confronted with a Universal misconception, Garth knew that he still didn’t know everything.
What secret was greater than the revelation that the lives everyone was living weren’t Real? That if his assumptions were true, the Unreal eventually became Real somehow.
Or would’ve, could’ve, were it not for the M’Zahdi Hesh.
It was best not to ruminate on the shattering news. Real or Unreal, truth or lie, there was still the goal. Still the need to destroy the Heshii before they destroyed the Universe. Again.
That was best. Rise up to destroy the M’Zahdi Hesh. Worry about everything else later.
It would have to be enough.
Garth N’Chalez opened his eyes.
Kant Ingrams Hates Interstellar Travel
Kant had been a Historical Adjutant for as long as he could remember. He could barely remember what he’d done before walking up the long steps that led into the main Adjutancy Building on Trinity Prime to accept his role as a protector of Humanity’s darkest secrets. There were times when he felt that he hadn’t been anything before the leader of his organization and the Trinity AI representative had given him the authority to save Man from His own mistakes.
In that time, such a long and arduous span of decades, during which time he’d unearthed ancient horrors both mechanical and flesh and all manner of twisted grotesquerie between the two, Kant had had access to some of the finest starships authority such as his could demand.
As a top-tier Adjutant, any vessel he required to reach any point in known space was his to commandeer; there was the time, for instance, when he’d needed the power of a full-blown Army battlecruiser to face down an impending threat of self-replicating robots on Corian 17. Admiral Shanks had taken one look at the imposing virtual documentation following a Historical Adjutant around and had given in with hardly any qualms at all.
And yet, Kant found it rarely necessary to be ostentatious. Most of what needed doing during any Historical Emergency could be handled with minimal fuss and muss so long as you took the time to be prepared. And Kant was a man who believed in being prepared, yes he most certainly was. Most days he took whatever ship was available and went on his way.
Networked with a much more powerful and portable AI, any ship he took became capable of doing whatever was needed in the course of a regular undertaking. If you needed more than a basic ship, the Emergency was already out of control.
Some days were easy, some were hard, all were rewarding.
It was the life he’d chosen. Trinity would issue a warning, the Senior Adjutant would –if the situation were dire enough- pick him, he’d prepare for possible contingencies, travel to the nearest Spaceport, consider the specifications of the docked ships, use his Adjutancy authority to override security locks, use his portable AI to virtually upgrade the onboard systems to something more appropriate, and off he’d go, saving the Universe, usually from epic stupidity. The things people did in the name of ‘science’ was most often best described as ‘criminally insane’.
He’d battled nightmares made flesh and steel, boiling up from the cracked corners of shattered worlds, using nothing more than his wits, his AI, and of course, an on-call Enforcer. He’d barely break a sweat some days.
But this … this was beyond endurable. Trinity’s latest ‘mission’ was an affront to everything Kant Ingrams believed in. Worse still, it was no true Historical Emergency at all.
Kant Ingrams was en route to Latelyspace to essentially beg the formidable Garth Nickels to join a league of highly powerful, incredibly influential, terribly self-centered men and women seeking a way to stave off the coming Darkness. It was the greatest of goals, the highest of pursuits, and in many ways, it was the pinnacle of Kant’s job; there was no worse thing in all of Mankind than The Dark Ages and Adjutants throughout the millennia had sought ways to save Humanity from the continued, seemingly endless terror rising up out of the night to consume their very souls.
Obviously, they’d failed in their pursuits. Continued to fail. Would always, Kant feared in the middle of the night when normal men slept, fail.
Trinity’s ‘request’ rankled but Kant had come -more or less- to terms with the demand to coerce Garth –either through wiles or guile- to join the group, triply so after reading the man’s impressively secure documents.
He doubted there was another being in all of Trinityspace who knew as much about Garth ‘Nickels’ N’Chalez, and as loathe as Ingrams was to admit it, the man seemed perfectly Suited to the task of defeating something as … nebulous as a Dark Age.
Oh, he still raged at night before going to sleep about everyone’s short-sightedness when it came Nickels and the others, but the mistake had been made and there was no going back. He still asked himself the same questions over and over again; how could they be so blind, how could they be so ignorant, how could they willfully dismiss painfully obvious facts? It seemed as though everyone was intentionally going out of their way to turn a blind eye to what Garth Nickels represented.
Garth Nickels and the others, Griffin Jones, Lisa Laughlin, Harold Weiss … all of them were -had been- physical incarnations of purest evil. That all of them but one was dead was no balm to a ragged mind; Garth was the worst by far, a veritable toxin pulsing through the weak veins of Humanity.
All anyone had to do was look at the man’s … checkered … career. Not only had Nickels survived Special Services, he’d engineered a way to be free of a massive, soul-crushing Debt to Tynedale/Fujihara in a span that verged on the impossible. He’d invented a wholly new form of shield tech he’d taken to calling ‘gravnetic generators’, a tech Trinity Itself had seized within seconds, transforming the already impressive machinery into something new and frighteningly daunting. Entire worlds were now permanently shielded from all imaginable onslaughts because of that man.
Even more unlikely, yet another reason to eradicate Nickels, Garth had migrated from traditional SpecSer missions into the terrifying w
orld of Heavy Elites, an area of technological perversion and Offworld infection that made Kant grit his teeth in rage and disgust every time he thought about what went on there; nowhere else, nowhen else anything so disgusting and vile as those Elites had been allowed to exist, yet Trinity turned a blind eye to the wholesale modifications running rampant through SpecSer.
Why? Because they demolished entire solar systems in the deepest parts of space beyond The Cordon, that’s why, and that was precisely what Trinity demanded. And at the center of the most successful, bloodiest conquests? Garth Nickels. Unaugmented in any discernible way yet more powerful than Zurich Geist, the most dangerous cyborg ever recorded, Garth Nickels had been allowed to rampage across the breadth of the Universe, perpetrating horrors that even Trinity –soulless entity that It was- should be ashamed of.
True to Trinity’s word, Garth Nickels’ nearly endless files had remained accessible to him for the duration of his journey through Trinityspace, and Ingrams had found himself absorbing the minutiae of the man’s life, fretfully and frightfully … coerced … into burying himself in what Garth had done and where. Oh, and such doings they were!
Garth Nickels was at the epicenter of no less than three systemically destructive incidences. Most of the particulars concerning each occasion weren’t in the files, but Ingrams was no slouch when it came to finding things out.
Cross-referencing and data-mining revealed a disturbing trend; wherever Garth Nickels went, planets, solar systems, Galaxies … they all died. Kant didn’t concern himself with worries over any trouble that might arise over abusing his security clearances to ‘steal’ information concerning problems outside his purview. The Trinity AI had asked him to convince the ancient man to join the Dark Age Cabal for wholly idealistic purposes, and that Kant would do, but he couldn’t do that efficiently without knowing everything there was to know about the man, especially the things that Trinity wanted kept secret. It was the secret things, the hidden things, that were the most important.
