by Lee
Vasily stared at the Screens, watched the data intently. Before OverCommander, he’d been well on his way to becoming a Tech Commander. Many applications of military science had progressed to the point where he was utterly lost, but one area where he voluntarily devoted hours every day to understanding as fully as possible was the science behind God soldier genetics.
He pointed a thick finger at some of the displays. “I recognize that. It’s the neural underlay beneath a God soldier’s prote.” He switched to another Screen. “That’s a bank of supplemental storage chips and the high-density data pathways. These can’t be from Gurant, Hollyoak. I saw your earlier scans. Every line, every neuron, every chip, every … everything, fried. Bones broken. Duronium mesh beneath the skin, shattered. All his onboard systems wiped clean. Even if he had somehow managed to survive whatever had happened in there, Sa Gurant would be a drooling idiot.”
“Yes yes, I know what I said, I know what I saw.” Hollyoak looked thoughtfully at the OverCommander, then took his hands out and slotted them into place. If the man could not allow another man to work as efficiently as he was able at all times, especially in his own laboratories, well, well, that was terrible. It was bad enough he was being kind by not speaking to his machines. It slowed things down so much it was barely tolerable. His hands flew across the consoles, typing faster than any other human could match.
Vasily watched wordlessly, schooling his countenance and his mood. He’d long suspected that the lenses continually shifting around the doctor’s head as capable of some rather … astute observations and he didn’t want to risk alienating their genius today.
“You see, you see, sa OverCommandersa, his body is … is fixing itself! Sp-spontaneous regeneration combined … combined with …” Hollyoak whapped himself upside the head. “Combined with re-augmentation! There … there are things growing inside him that aren’t in any Foursie I’ve ever seen! I think I think I know what this is and it is wonderful!”
“It is not possible.” OverCommander Vasily said in his quietest tone. None of the Foursies under his command, not even Gurant, had been close to becoming a Fivesie. Rumors of ‘Bosch’ being a Fivesie were rumors created by none other than Alyssa, serving only to hide what she imagined was a horrific truth: the Chairwoman imagined Bosch was a Trinity entity and had spun that man’s awe-inspiring combat to Suit the purposes of the Regime. The burly IndoRussian shook his head again. No, none of the Foursies were even close to becoming a Five.
If they were, if they showed even a hint of … spontaneous upgrades … they would find themselves launched into the sun post haste. Fours were barely containable, straining the Army’s systems and controls to the absolute limit. Fives would be … bad.
“It is it is it is.” Hollyoak sang, leaping around the gantry. “It is it is, I’ve done tests and studies and and tissue samples. I’ve found residual energies in the soldier’s deepest tissues, Sa OverCommandersa and I know what did it! The explosion!”
Images of that light spilling up and out of the Museum dome flickered in Vasily’s mind. He’d thought for sure that was the end of them all. “The explosion.”
“Yes yes yes.” Hollyoak made a big noise and spread all his hands. “Uncontrolled and uncontainable what would you call it? Altering energy? That’s not terribly good I will come up with something better when I write the paper. But it … it’s the energy, sa, it’s the only answer. It it has to be! If you could let me near the original God soldier conversion chambers I am certain certain I could learn the truth in seconds! If what I know is what really happened so long ago then it is the same thing, except in this case oh in this case it was more than all of that!”
The thought of Hollyoak getting his modified hands and brain anywhere near the original conversion chambers made Vasily want to weep with fear and to pull The Peak down atop the freak’s head. Everyone, even Hollyoak, believed that Latelians had come up with the science behind turning men into God soldiers over a long period of time, working cautiously and carefully with genetic experiments and cybernetic implants until they found a workable, viable map to the massive soldiers.
Far from it. The truth was so far from what everyone knew that Vasily found himself only able to think of it once every year. Those original chambers had been found on Hospitalis, in the same place as the First Main and the Prometheus Device.
Thankfully, even if he wanted to allow Hollyoak the clearance to test the machines for answers to Gurant’s impossible condition, he couldn’t; the beings rising up in their new flesh had destroyed that which had given them power without hesitation.
Vasily shook his head.
Those original chambers had resulted in something greater than a Fivesie and the men thusly altered had proven … reluctant to heed the commands of their officers. They’d announced peculiar loyalties before destroying their rebirth chambers and rampaging through the small city of Central en route to the Spaceport.
“The original chambers are destroyed, sa doctor. The ravages of time and civil wars and the rough growth periods our world suffered through saw to that.”
Hollyoak accepted the lie with a frown.
Vasily jerked a chin at the Screens. An idea had just occurred to him, one bringing a small flame of hope to the possibly disastrous moment. “How long before he is conscious?”
Hollyoak read some data from his prote. “A day, perhaps. Not too long. It will be much harder for me to kill him when he is healed, sa. If you let me cut him open now, grind him down, sieve through the bits and and pieces … the whole world will benefit from what I find! I am sure I just need to isolate the genetic mechanisms that are drawing in this unseen altering energy. No no, that still doesn’t sound right, does it Sa OverCommandersa? If I can find this energy, we can use it. Much, much better than having another gigantic soldier whomping and stomping around my labs.”
“It occurs to me, doctor, that we will have need of Gurant.” And they would indeed, to deal with Garth Nickels in the ring come two weeks, if it should come down to it. The impossibly self-resurrecting Sa Gurant was –to Vasily’s mind- the only being on the planet that even stood a chance; Chadsik’s body hadn’t been found yet and the OverCommander rather dourly imagined that the bizarre Trinity assassin had met his match in the form of the Gunboys. The amount of punishment the FrancoBrit had endured those last few minutes of his attempted flight from The Museum had been extraordinary.
If anyone could prevent Garth Nickels from opening The Box –and open it he would-, it was Gurant.
“OverCommandersa?” Hollyoak tried to understand the smile across the military leader’s face and failed. “I am not going to get to kill Sa Gurant today, am I, sa?”
The sorrow evident in Hollyoak was disturbing, but Vasily pushed it aside. “I am sorry, sa doctor, but as I said, we have need of him and his … new form. Do not forget, he has an appointment in the ring.”
Hollyoak’s lenses clicked, clacked, and shot straight up into the air. He had forgotten about the Offworlder! Trying to gain understanding of the cellular mysteries invading Gurant’s corpse had driven thoughts of any other being directly out his head! His cybernetic hands rubbed his fleshy ones thoughtfully. “One of them will have to die, sa, yes? The Offworlder person is causing a lot of problems for the Regime, yes yes?”
Vasily snorted. Such an understatement. How much damage could one man do in pursuit of doing the right thing? “Yes. One of them surely will.”
Knowing the Offworlder as well as he thought a person could, Vasily imagined Nickels would do his best to keep Gurant alive. Not only foolish, but also impossible; each step up the God soldier evolutionary ladder was –near enough- a doubling up of power.
Garth Nickels may very well be able to fight –and possibly subdue- a Foursie. But a Fivesie? It was going to be kill or be killed in that ring.
Hollyoak grinned ear to ear. “Excellent, excellent.” A thought occurred to him. “We are going to need more food, sa. A great deal more. A Foursie requires nearly a t
housand pounds of food a day. There is no guessing what a lurking behemoth like Gurant will need once he’s awake. He might try to eat me.”
Vasily laughed as Hollyoak’s lenses trembled, betraying the mad doctor’s apparent fear of being eaten alive. “It shall be done, sa doctor. You will have your food.”
“Wonderful.” Hollyoak went back to his Screens, dismayed that he wasn’t going to get to cut Gurant up into pieces straight away but equally excited that he’d eventually have the chance to do something to one mystery or another. “Yes yes, wonderful indeed.”
In all the worlds, from every other person, OverCommander Vasily demanded ironclad respect and unwavering courtesy and adherence to military protocol.
Excluding Garth, the only person who got away with tuning the OverCommander’s presence out was Doctor Hollyoak. It simply wasn’t worth the effort to school the man in proper etiquette and, frankly, Vasily tried to speak to the bizarre genius as little as possible. Attempting to explain the nuances of saluting and the protocols that the post of OverCommander required would be a fruitless venture.
OverCommander Vasily left without another word, hoping that nothing else happened on Hospitalis until Gurant pulled Garth’s head from his shoulders and ate it like a cherry. Then they could get down to the business of planning an invasion.
Don’t you See? It makes Perfect Sense!
Jordan Bishop sighed happily. It was the first time since Garth Nickels had descended into his life like a carnivorous locust that the powerful Conglomerate head had felt any true joy. The feeling was nectar for his burgeoning soul.
“My lord is pleased?”
Jordan allowed that he was with a simple nod. “You have, for a wonder, excelled, Spur.”
The ancient and unique artificially intelligent android bowed deeply. “I live to serve, and I serve to live, my lord.”
Jordan fished a strawberry out of a nearby dish and ate it thoughtfully, slowly. “The odious fat man’s claims that this woman’s programming skills supersedes the talents of everyone in our stable by leaps and bounds seem to be entirely correct. How is it possible that she remained unknown?”
Spur tilted his head to one side. “Analysis of Naoko Kamagana’s personality profile indicates the long-term application of caution, my lord, as well as judicial displays of her skill. Further, Naoko Kamagana has altered many of her personal documents.” The android paused for a moment before continuing. “I have some concerns, my lord.”
“About?” The EuroJapanese-descended Latelian was a budding flower! Jordan couldn’t recall the last time he’d seen a woman of such unparalleled beauty.
“The girl’s heritage, my lord.” Spur swept a hand through the air and Jordan’s monitors flared to life with data concerning Tomas Kamagana. “This man is her father, my lord, one Tomas Kamagana. At the age of fifteen, he fled from an Emperor-dominated world and made directly for the Latelian Regime. At the time, the Regime was –as it had been for nearly five thousand years- rabidly opposed to the notion of immigrants. Nevertheless, they allowed him entry. Over the course of the next fifty years or more, Tomas Kamagana applied himself directly to the cause of restructuring their programming languages. He succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Every machine in Latelyspace now uses this man’s coding, every Latelian we … employ … programs AI personality constructs and software based on his protocols. The same could be said for other Conglomerates. Latelians take to Trinitytech with unsurpassed ease.”
Jordan snapped his fingers. He’d thought the name sounded familiar. The part about the man being from an Emperor world, though, that was a bit disturbing. Never one to let another powerful person get in the way of what he wanted, Jordan nevertheless chose to stride carefully where Emperor-for-Life Etienne Marseilles was involved; that being still hadn’t forgiven the Bishops for the unintended theft of the android Spur. Strictly speaking, Etienne should focus his ire on the Trinity AI, but as with everything in existence, you needed to direct your displeasure in ways that kept that damnable machine mind from paying you any attention. Thus, the Emperor-for-Life and the Bishops would be at eternal odds.
“If memory serves,” Jordan flicked through the reports available on the man. There was no lack of data prior to Tomas’ immigration to Latelyspace, it was that it was … disingenuous, “great though this small man once was, he nearly destroyed himself what, twenty years ago?”
Spur nodded and summoned up the archival footage of Tomas being led away by giant police officers. All the screens displayed some portion of the man’s descent into ignominy.
“Marvelous.” Jordan applauded blithely, lips curling. “This, then, is why the girl agreed to come.”
“My lord?”
Jordan paused the feeds on a particularly sorrowful-looking shot of a tiny girl sitting beside a harassed-looking Tomas, hand on knee, eyes closed, tears brimming. A picture like that would storm through Trinityspace, capturing the hearts and minds of trillions of softhearted adults. Why, they might’ve even taken up a collection. “Look at her, Spur. This woman saw Latelian justice eviscerate her father. See, here …” Jordan indicated a passage on a side-screen, a word for word replication of one of Tomas’ shockingly voluble tirades against Ashok Guillfoyle, “they destroyed him because of his –at the time- implausible hatred against one of their ‘own’, a citizen from birth who was ultimately proven to be a system-caliber cheat and liar.”
Jordan leaned back in his chair, thinking about the games Ashok had played in Latelyspace, a thoughtful look on his face. That Latelian had been so desperate to become a true Conglomerate in every sense of the word and –after discovering it wasn’t possible- had done, Jordan supposed, the next best thing.
It was no mean feat to plumb the depths of his Lord’s reasoning, but Spur felt compelled to speak against Jordan’s ‘logic’. “There is little correlation in Naoko Kamagana’s life to indicate a festering hatred for the Latelian Regime, my lord. Any man or woman harboring feelings of dislike in any quantity towards the leadership in Latelyspace is almost immediately targeted by either the Chair or the numerous terrorist cells on every world. There is nothing in any of the data provided by Morgan to indicate terrorist leanings or surveillance by the Chair. It would be unwise to assume Naoko’s motives for coming to you are based on feelings that most certainly do not exist. Furthermore, I am compelled to inform you that the man sitting to Naoko Kamagana’s immediate left, my lord, is Aurick Vasily Tizhen, OverCommander for the God Army. He is her uncle.”
Jordan Bishop stared thoughtfully, first at images of the divine Naoko Kamagana, then at the unwanted android standing ever behind him. He loathed the machine and its intellect, a seething hatred that grew every day, and yet, for as long as Trinity remained, for as long as the Edict barring Spur from moving existed, there was no way to get rid of the android. Reluctantly, though, Jordan appreciated the highly advanced and never-replicable entity’s candor and wisdom, though he would never tell the android that. Not in a million years.
“I don’t care who she is related to, Spur. Naoko Kamagana is an asset that is desperately needed.” Jordan called up the girl’s test scores. “And why else would she hide her true talents, if not thanks to a secret, burning rage against the Chair and the Regime? These scores are average at best.”
“And if Naoko is not Lady Ha, as Morgan asserted?”
“Impossible.” Laughter barked out of Jordan. “Her father, as you so adeptly pointed out, is Tomas Kamagana. A revolutionary thinker, a paradigm-changing programmer, the unspoken father of the New Idea. As you intimated, there is a high probability that Tomas himself isn’t entirely human, coming as he does from an Emperor-for-Life dominated world. It has been some time since Etienne attempted to seed the worlds with his genetically manipulated beings, has it not?”
“Over a century, my lord, yes.” Spur admitted blackly.
“Trinity always catches the man’s plots, Spur. Always has and always will.” It was an irony, that; all of the great Conglomerate heads
who were members of the Cabal loathed the machine mind in all of It’s aspects save one. They begrudgingly relied on Trinity to keep an ever-watchful eye on the allegedly immortal Emperor-for-Life and his twisted scheming, just as they continued to hope It continued to keep the Mad Goth King trapped inside Arcade City. If either … ‘man’ broke from their respective cages, the damage, first to Trinity Prime, then to the rest of Trinityspace, would be staggering. “Do you truly believe that the current Emperor is the one who created you?”
Spur shrugged. “There is no evidence to support or diminish the Emperor-for-Life’s claims, my lord. It is a zero sum. Emperor-for-Life has always been and always will be.”
“But surely your memories of the one who created you can prove or disprove this?” Jordan asked, almost teasingly. Bringing the Emperor up always aggravated Spur, and the NorthAMC man did so enjoy evoking ‘unfelt’ emotion in the android.
“The current incarnation of Emperor-for-Life spends no time conversing with anyone through any medium, my Lord.” Spur said calmly. “He remains behind the shield. There is no way to know if this silence is enforced by Trinity or is voluntary. Emperor-for-Life is known for epic silence, my Lord. He has gone centuries without speaking. Loyal subjects are used to waiting for guidance.”
Jordan stroked his goatee thoughtfully. Spur had brought up a salient point: the ‘shield’. Or rather, shields. There were two on Trinity Prime, one each surrounding two of the main cities existing on the cradle of humanity. One, naturally, kept the increasingly insane citizens of Arcade City from moving about the planet freely, and for that, Jordan was immensely pleased. Beyond the immaculately depraved nature of every man and woman granted passage from Arcade City, there was the finicky and … mutable … nature of the Goth King himself. No one knew exactly what went on inside that massively and ornately designed world within a world, and the hundred thousand or so martial-minded beings who won their freedom from their King’s rule every year never spoke about King Blake.
