Citizen Pariah (Unreal Universe Book 3)

by Lee

  “Deployment errors, Si Chairwoman.” Hamilton bowed apologetically. “The technicians replacing the Guillfoyle Trojan afflicted hardware must have missed something. I was most careful.” He flashed her heavily altered attack pattern plus the system logs. There would be no way to pierce the lie. Hollyoak had wrought something wondrous in his new body, something never before seen, Hamilton suspected, in the entire system.

  “My plate is destroyed.” She moaned petulantly. “It took so very long to get here.”

  “Apologies, Si Chairwoman. I myself will replace the affected systems here.”

  “Still,” Alyssa said, brightening, “some good comes from your error, Hamilton. It is certifiable–if it was indeed him on the truck- that Harry Bosch is dead and burned to ash. If it was Nickels, well, that would be even better.”

  “And there is the matter of those criminally minded citizens, Chairwoman. They, too, are gone.”

  “Yes, there is that.” Alyssa flicked a hand. “Complete the repairs and return home, Hamilton. Resume your search for Nickels and al-Taryin.”

  “By your command, Chairwoman Doans.” Hamilton Barnes bowed again and the Screen returned to satellite coverage of the new blaze eating Port City.

  Poor, poor Port City.

  xxx

  “Robots. Here, now. Please.” Garth didn’t want to look at Oscar, and Ute wasn’t even trying to be discreet in his avoidance of the younger Latelian; the kid was heavily corrupted by hard light poisoning and every time he sneezed or did something even remotely … vigorous … tiny shards of brilliant light popped out of his skin. “Have ‘em bring the rest of the gravny-gens. How many do we got?”

  Oscar didn’t even look up from his prote. “Fifty. Took a lot of doing.”

  “Good. You got a Sheet?” Garth accepted the Sheet Oscar handed him and continued. “Ute and I are going to survey something. I am going to send you a diagram and explanation of what I need for you to do with the robots and the gravny-gens. You’ll need to set this up while we’re over at the … at the other site.”

  “Where the music is coming from?”

  “Uh, yeah. Hey, uh, what does it sound like?” Garth asked casually.

  “Like the end of days.” The truth came out like it was no big thing. Oscar smiled at the thought of that. The end of days.

  Ute went solid as stone, blinked repetitively a few times, then started walking towards the pile. He went back to the truck and grabbed the sniper cannon.

  “Hey, that’s, uh, that’s really awesome.” Garth clapped Oscar on the shoulder and watched light-dandruff pop off the kid’s clothes. He couldn’t believe the nerd hadn’t evaporated yet. “Listen. There’s some stuff on the truck that needs to be moved safely away. There’s a main in there that I’d like to be hustled over to head office. Spare one of the ‘bots for that, okay? Ute and I shouldn’t be gone more than ten, fifteen minutes.”

  “Okay, Sa N’Chalez.” Oscar aimed himself towards the huge truck, craning his head up to stare at the bottom of the massive armored plate as he did so; it was so … so big.

  “Don’t … don’t say my name, please.” Garth sighed weakly and hustled to catch up with Ute, who didn’t look pleased by anything that was going on.

  xxx

  “What is the matter with him, Garth?” Ute asked of his … employer … when the other man caught up. “And why is he saying your name like that? It sounds very close to Nickels but it is not.”

  “My name isn’t Nickels.” Garth replied as he started plugging information into the Sheet. Using supremely dense waves of gravity, they’d be able to dice the Conquistador plate into a nice even number of cubes. Plotting that on the Sheet took only a few seconds. “It’s N’Chalez, and he shouldn’t be able to pronounce it properly. I used to pretend that I was all pissed off that no one could get it right because it gave me something to do and helped me not lose my sanity.”

  Ute considered Garth’s time on Hospitalis and snorted. “Did it help?”

  “Most of the time.” The ex-Specter’s fingers flew across the Sheet. He’d give his left nut and part of the right one to have Odin on his arm, especially post-ex-dee exposure Odin. With that beast under his control, this would be so much easier.

  “And why shouldn’t he be able to pronounce it?” Ute’s eyes fell upon the area where the pile was and grimaced. They were still about four hundred feet away but the blue glow –a glow similar in every way to the flare-ups that came and went in Garth’s eyes- was everywhere. “Are we in danger? From radiation?”

  Garth chose to answer the last question first. “Not really. Not yet. Well, uh. Maybe. I suspect you are more resilient than your average Latelian. Probably more than that, even. And me? Well. I got nothing to worry about. I, um, can’t hurt myself like that. And poor Oscar there shouldn’t be able to say my name because it is a name not of this Universe.”

  “And so we come back to the things you were going to tell me.” Ute flashed Garth a quick smile that turned into a scowl; the man’s face was a glowering death mask. The occasional flicker of blue lightning cascading out of his already deeply sapphire eyes only served to make him more intimidating. Ute wasn’t one for flights of fancy, but this grim visage of a man before him seemed like a heathen demon.

  “Yeah.” Fifty-two construction robots hustled up. A few seconds later, hundreds more trooped by, following Oscar’s commands to assist with the clean-up happening just beyond their borders.

  They moved as close as they dared, which was closer than was sane. Ute’s discomfort was plainly visible on his normally quite austere face and Garth understood the worry; with random, exotic particles sleeting off the hard angles of the duronium rods like bullets fired from a gun, standing anywhere within four hundred feet was to put themselves in harm’s way.

  “A lot of what I’m going to say,” Garth tucked the Sheet between his legs and motioned for the sniper cannon, which Ute handed over, “is going to sound like a fairy tale, Ute.” He put the cannon’s scope to his eye to get a better look at what they were dealing with.

  As soon as his eye refocused, Garth cursed. It was as he’d feared; the rock jumbled in with the duronium had already dissipated and the chunks and bent beams of metal were losing cohesion. Exposure to the energy pouring out of him inside The Museum had pushed the tuning of the metal to near-completion, but without being finished, and with the state of the space/time continuum in their volume of space being what it was, everything was going much too quickly.

  About the only saving grace to the whole shebang was that near-completion, but only just; there were less exotic particles being fired, which was of short-term benefit if for no other reason that they wouldn’t be continually pissing their pants in fear of one being blasted through the planet’s core.

  Of monumental and considerable pants-pissing concern was that the whole fucking thing was about a berjillion times more unstable and likely to go boom at the wrong moment, especially in light of the fact that everything over there was already so goddamn fuzzy.

  “Fairy tales, sa? I would say that I cannot be shocked any longer.” Ute subconsciously shuffled his feet and stepped backwards. The light pouring off the pile was hypnotic.

  “Hah.” Garth muttered bitterly as he handed the sniper cannon back to his new friend. He grabbed his Sheet and started working. “Hah. You asked for it. About … oh, thirty-five thousand years ago, a man named Antal … no. That part … no.”

  “You mentioned something about people called the … M’Z…”

  “The M’Zahdi Hesh. Yeah. Okay.” Garth flashed a thank you smile. “The Heshii aren’t from around here. Like I said, they live inside the extra-dimensionality that … that I draw power from. They … don’t like life, Ute. They’ve been waging a particular and specific war against us all for pretty much ever. I don’t remember all of the details yet –don’t ask me why, I know only that I have intentionally blocked memories of them and my involvement and what the fuck I’m doing here until I need them- but that
’s the bare bones. The M’Zahdi Hesh have been trying to destroy this … this existence for that whole time.

  Round about thirty thousand years ago, Humanity became aware of this War. Mostly because of me. We set about trying to fight them. An interdimensional war, Ute, is unlike anything you can possibly imagine. I suspect you’ve seen and done an awful lot of fighting and killing in your life, but … the Heshii are … demonic. For thousands of years prior to me pointing out their existence, they’d been quietly, methodically, patiently attempting to exterminate all life on Earth. Er, Trinity Prime. By finding and corrupting human agents with a seedling of power from their ‘home’, the Heshii created perfect saboteurs. Long-term exposure to a microscopic shard of physical ex-dee energy transformed the men and women working for them into beings known as the Kith and Kin. Through these agents, the Heshii dominated whole countries, manipulated governments, toppled civilizations.”

  Ute opened his mouth to say something but shut it. Fairy tales? Nightmares.

  “And that went on for five thousand years until I was born.” Garth wanted to break the Sheet in half. It wasn’t powerful enough to handle what he was trying to use it for and it kept bogging down on the math being shoveled in. “I was born to the first Kith ever made and his … well, wife. The Heshii frowned on fraternization between the male and female elements of their Earth-based invasion forces, but Antal was … old. Hard to stop.” He shook his head. He was getting off-topic and he still hadn’t decided how much of his own story he wanted to tell. “Anyways. We thought the Heshii just hated Humanity, but, uh, it turned out to be way lots worse. The Heshii have been in the destruction business for a long, long time, Ute. Longer than you can possibly imagine. When I have time to explain more about the Engines of Creation, I will, but take this on faith; their ultimate goal was not and never had been about the genocide of the Human race. Their dream is to destroy everything. Every galaxy, every solar system, ever star. Every man and woman and child and … thing that has ever walked, crawled, hopped, flown, or … or wiggled since the dawn of time. I learned this quite by accident. And from that discovery, I created a plan.”

  Ute tried to imagine a war where everything was destroyed. It was easier than expected, but also pointless. The purpose of war fell to one of two things; eradication of enemies or accumulation of things you wanted more –or less- of. Ideology, religion, greed … in the end, none of that mattered. Ideas like that were window dressing to make the people involved in the war feel better about themselves, or to spin it for the population.

  But to destroy everything? To annihilate all life? All matter? That was mind-boggling. He allowed as how –especially if you lived in another dimension- seeking to destroy an ‘enemy’ dimension was … was an option, but the scope of it! Ute admitted to himself he knew very little about the state of their Universe, but he knew from personal experience that it was nearly –if not completely- infinite.

  If you had the power to destroy something infinite, surely you had the power to occupy it. These Heshii, they made no sense to Ute, unless there was something else; Garth held things back until the very last minute of necessity, doling out truths like a miser with pennies.

  The phrase ‘Engines of Creation’ was something that needed an awful lot of clarification. It was far too mystical, but now was not the time. Garth was preoccupied with trying to work something out on the Sheet. Ute hoped it was something that would save the planet and keep them all from leaking light out of their skin before turning into sparkles on the pavement. More than that, though; the conversation had already turned dark and gloomy.

  “Continue.”

  Garth looked up from the Sheet. “We don’t have time for a full thing, here. The Heshii want to destroy everything, I’m trying to stop them. That should be enough.”

  “Make time.” Ute grabbed Garth’s hand. Well aware that though Garth wasn’t nearly as strong as he’d once been, he now possessed other frankly mystifying talents that could kill quite efficiently, Ute pleaded with as much emotion as he was ever going to manage. “And explain how that pile has your life inside.”

  Garth watched two robots zip past them carting Huey’s Main between them. He prayed to Jesus and the Flying Spaghetti Monster and even uttered a few choice words to C’thulu for good measure that they didn’t get whammied with a solid dose of hard light en route to UltraMegaDynamaTron HQ. He couldn’t even pretend to imagine what’d happen to Huey then.

  He spat in frustration, and then scrubbed angrily at the dried blood on his face. The whole world was living on borrowed time. He was the only man in existence capable of stopping the destruction and of rooting out the Heshii wherever they were holed up and he needed to get the pile covered before every last shred of his paradoxical nature was ripped from the other Universe and Ute wanted transparency at the absolute worst time. Moreso, in the back of his mind, there was a gaping wound of sorrow, rage, frustration –everything, really, a human could feel over the loss of loved one- that threatened to shove him over the edge into full-blown Specter.

  Then he looked at Ute. Saw that while he was going mad with a million different pressures, Ute had only one concern; that he hadn’t allied himself with a madman.

  “Okay. Fine. Whatever.” Garth closed his eyes. “When the Kith and Kin were approached by the Heshii –don’t ask how, I never found out- and manipulated into becoming juggernauts, they were rendered sterile. No children. They –the Heshii- couldn’t have expected any one of their soldiers to last as long as Kith Antal. Five thousand years of ongoing war and domination is something I expect you understand better than most. The, uh, ‘energistic modifications’ made to each Kith and Kin were, like I said, based on exposure to ex-dee. Over time, they developed abilities. I won’t go into what they could do because, for the most part, it doesn’t matter.

  What does matter is that, one day, the impossible happened. Kith Antal met Kin Elisa and they fell in love. Supposed to be impossible because the Heshii had programmed their servants to hate each other on sight. But again, Antal was five thousand years old by this point and quite, quite inhuman. Even more impossible; they had a child. Me. Garth N’Chalez.” He spat bitterly, angrily. “The alterations made to my parents by the Heshii were passed along, only where theirs had been implanted, mine were genetic. They –mom and dad- feared the Heshii would find me and … and … that wouldn’t have been good. But as it turned out, I was … invisible. The Heshii could not see me. Couldn’t sense me. Didn’t know anything about me. Never would know anything about me unless I chose to reveal myself. And my Father reveled in that realization.

  In short, Ute, I was the perfect weapon. Y’see, by this time, oh, round about 1900, Antal had begun to doubt the Heshii. Humans continued to strive and thrive, against all odds and innumerable close calls with planetary genocide. He’d begun to think that perhaps the M’Zahdi Hesh feared Humanity because they were simply … better adapted at survival. Remember that at this time, no one, not even the Kith and Kin knew what the endgame was.”

  “Why would they agree to fight against their own people?”

  “Absolute power corrupts absolutely, Ute.” Garth didn’t have the energy to sound angry. It came out laden with defeat. “And you give a man who –five thousand years before mankind was capable of anything remotely impressive- speed and strength and guile and a massive boost to intelligence and he will do anything you ask of him. Mankind is … was … a breed of conquerors, Ute. We –you- all have inside you a genetic heritage of violence, rage and destruction, but it’s tempered by compassion, love. So when I came along and Dad was doubting the whole thing, it just made sense to assume the Heshii were afraid of us, worried that we would one day discover the extra-dimensionality on our own and go to war with them. Pre-emptive strike. Make sense?”

  “Grim sense, sa.”

  Garth eyed the pile. No exotic particles yet. Maybe the gravity shield surrounding the whole area was slowing the passage of the harder elemental atoms. He picked a few thick flake
s of blood from his face and watched them fall to the ground. “So when Dad discovered I was invisible to the all-seeing eye of the Heshii and that I inherently possessed the powers of a full-blown Kith, he began to train me.”

  “Where was your mother during all of this?”

  Garth felt tears prick his eyes. He shook his head. “The lure of power is great, Ute, and the will of the Heshii implacable. She fell back to them, retaining only enough will of her own to say nothing of who I was.”

  “I am sorry.” Ute bowed his head, rested a hand on Garth’s shoulder.

  “Me too, pal, me too.” Sniffling back a tear and grimacing at the taste of blood on his tongue, he resumed. “One of the primary things the Kith and Kin can do is temporarily translate themselves into ex-dee.”

  “That is how you seem to move so quickly.”

  “Yep. Since ex-dee is kind of like an endless ocean and just out of phase with this dimension, it can be manipulated like that.” It was nice to talk to someone who was smart enough to get it, even though they were burning incomprehensibly important seconds into ash. “My problem, even as a kid, hah, especially as a kid was that I had all this power and absolutely no fucking control. Like throwing rocks in a pond, they could track the ripples. Every time that happened, my Dad had to intervene, pretend like he was trying something new. They allowed it to continue, only after punishing him each time. Heshii punishments are … were … vicious.”

  Memories of his father, nearly immortal, invulnerable to all manner of harm wrought by Mankind and their myriad weapons of destruction, hobbling out of ex-dee, beaten, battered and bloody filled Garth’s senses. Fucking Heshii.

  “Dad kept pushing, kept telling me I could enter ex-dee like a whisper, that I could draw unlimited power from that plane without the bastards ever figuring it out. I could be a weapon, an avenging angel, the savior of Humanity. All I had to do was do it right. Then, one day, I did. I slipped into ex-dee without a sign of passage. It was amazing, Ute. I did it at eighteen, and it was miraculous. It was as if a key had been turned. Unfettered access to the powers of creation. Yeah, I know how that sounds, but it’s the truth. Ex-dee isn’t merely another dimension. It’s … energy from previous iterations of … here.” He hated dancing around a core truth, but no one could handle the true state of where they were, not yet. Possibly not ever. Hopefully Ute was taking the pauses as emotional stress and not hasty mental paraphrasing. “And then I did something … really goddamn impossible.”