Citizen Pariah (Unreal Universe Book 3)

by Lee

  Vasily squinted. Had he programmed the Screens to look at an incorrect chair? He double-checked the seat numbers. No, no, the man sitting there, funneling snack food into his mouth as though he hadn’t eaten for a long while, was sitting in one of the seats belonging to the Sigma Fives.

  Oh, how he wished he’d brought some military-grade spEyes. It was clear that the Sigma Fives had switched seats with regular Latelians.

  On-Screen, the Latelian munching food looked up suddenly. A frown creased his face. He locked eyes with Vasily, who suddenly felt his OverCommander testicles react in fear and abysmal dread. He grimaced. The Latelian held up a finger and switched it back and forth like a parent admonishing a child.

  Then the Screens went blank.

  Vasily thumped the console angrily and started typing away, redirecting the cameras in the hopes of finding an angle that would give him a view of this impossibly normal sized Sigma Five, but to no avail; every time one of the cameras came close to falling on one of the Fives, the feed blanked out. Vasily hammered on the controls again, dismayed at what he’d done.

  “Problems, my love?”

  Vasily whirled, face red, both from embarrassment and rage, both fading when he saw his ladylove. “Alyssa.” The name came out as a sigh. It felt like forever since they’d seen each other and he reveled in her presence.

  Then minute details of her appearance started trickling in to his ever-heightened awareness. Her clothes, normally immaculate, were rumpled. Her hair, disarrayed. Her demeanor … twitchy. Her eyes, glossy. This was a woman who had just recently lost her temper in a very spectacular way, and as Vasily knew from personal experience, when Alyssa Doans lost her temper, terrible things happened.

  Then his eyes fell on her prote. There, on one corner, was dried blood.

  Vasily tried to turn the start his damned body went through into some other thing and failed. Alyssa self-consciously adjusted her hair and grinned wryly.

  “I may have made a mistake, my love.” Alyssa admitted this readily enough, and it was amusing to see Vasily make no effort to deny any such thing, as he had always done before. They’d grown apart in the last few days, and small wonder; the changes that events had wrought in them were titanic. Alyssa doubted there was a couple in the world that could stay as they were under such pressures.

  “Oh?” Vasily asked, motioning to one of the couches set before the massive glass Screen. The two sat down. Then, because neither of them were fools, he asked, “To which mistake are you referring?”

  Alyssa laughed and put a hand on Vasily’s arm. “The most recent one would perhaps be offering to drive Garth Nickels here, to the Arena.”

  Vasily shut his eyes and held them closed for a long thirty seconds. “Are you serious?”

  He couldn’t imagine a more dangerous or suicidal … actually, no, he could. Had already done it.

  Alyssa sighed and made a moue of disgust as she saw the dried blood on her prote. She promptly dismissed it; it wasn’t the first time –nor would it be the last- that the Prometheus Device had blood on it. Why, more than a few Chairpeople had used the wonderful machine to beat their opponents to death. “Yes, Vasily, I am afraid so.”

  “Why would you do something as dangerous as that?” Vasily already knew the answer.

  “I couldn’t help myself.” Alyssa admitted reluctantly. “I wanted to see him squirm with the knowledge that he’s going to die, that I engineered something that no one else had managed to do. If, that is, his career in Special Services is to be believed.”

  “Oh, it is.” Vasily nodded. “His career is as true a thing as ever. How did your ‘meeting’ go?” The question was ridiculous. That had been no meeting. That had been a Chairwoman indulging revenge fantasies in the most irrational and endangering ways conceivable. She hadn’t even taken any guards or requisitioned God soldiers, else his proteus would’ve alerted him.

  “Not well.” A wry smile curled her lips. “Truthfully, I … tried to kill him.”

  “Jesus wept.” Vasily couldn’t help it. The ancient IndoRussian curse slipped out of his mouth before he could stop it. Then because it felt good to say it aloud in front another person, he repeated himself, only with considerably more force.

  “Why, Vasily, I would have never expected you to know such vile things.” Alyssa kissed the OverCommander on the cheek. “I could have you killed for uttering such disgusting words in my presence.”

  “Indeed you could, my love.” Vasily replied stiffly, trying to pretend that his skin wasn’t trying to crawl away from Alyssa’s touch. “But then you would no longer be able to explain –to anyone you also wouldn’t have to execute- why you tried to kill the world’s most dangerous man.”

  Alyssa snuggled in closer to Vasily, basking in the man’s warmth. “Ah. Yes. I … originally intended to just crow at him. Foolish pride and a smattering of hubris. But then … I … must admit I got carried away. I told him that, after he died, I was going to strip his assets and use the money to fund my campaign of domination. That he was helping the Latelian Regime conquer the Universe.”

  Vasily hung his head. “There are so many things wrong in doing that that I literally cannot even think, Alyssa, about the repercussions should the man open his mouth before going into the Arena.”

  “That is not even the worst part of the conversation, Vasily.”

  “What in the fuck,” Vasily demanded ardently, his voice rising, “is worse than telling a man who used to be in Trinity’s Special Services that we –you- plan on conquering the Universe the very moment a Dark Age descends? God help me, Alyssa, I cannot even imagine what that might be!”

  “As the Prometheus Device is my witness, Vasily Tizhen, you curse like that in my presence again and one of your woefully underprepared colonels will find themselves in charge of the God Army and they will question your disappearance until the end of their days.” Alyssa snapped vehemently. It was obvious the OverCommander had … lost his mind. Her ‘empty’ threat was going to have to come true. Just as soon as Nickels was dealt with.

  “I apologize, Alyssa. I am sorry, I truly am, but what is worse than Garth knowing of our plans?”

  “They are for naught, my love. For naught and a waste.” Alyssa tittered, almost drunkenly. She could use a stiff drink, actually. She caught Vasily’s bewildered look and burst out laughing. “It’s the man’s invention, my love. Those gravnetic shield generators. We, the both of us, you and I, failed to consider the application of such a powerful device, or to fully appreciate the source of the man’s wealth. It was right there in the documents we received, right at the very beginning of this … this debacle. They are being used to protect entire planets under Trinity’s dominion, Vasily. Whole galaxies of worlds. Nickels attests –and I see no possible reason to disbelieve him- that the science underlying their construction will operate even under a Dark Age. Trinity wouldn’t go to such expense otherwise.”

  Vasily opened his mouth. “But … decades. We’ve been so cautious, so careful. We … we bankrupted this system to finance scientific exploration into weapons and engines … this is not possible.”

  Alyssa gestured with her prote-arm. “It is, my love. I’ve reexamined the files we received, and it’s right there. Planetary Reclamation and Safety. A vast governmental entity responsible for, in addition to re-terraforming old human worlds destroyed by calamity and Dark Ages, protecting those already inhabited. Different from Trinity’s military ventures because the methods are entirely defensive. None of the usual flags were triggered.”

  Vasily stared out the smart glass Screens for a long while, listening to and watching his carousing brothers and sisters of the Regime; there was a feral enjoyment out there in the crowd. Any small thing –from a spilled drink to the wrong person winning- could turn them into a pack of ravening monsters. The latest Game polls had the crowd at an even split between wanting to see Nickels torn apart and eaten like a sandwich and wanting to see him pull heads off God soldiers.

  It was sickeni
ng, to be truthful, and as he thought about the upcoming fights, Vasily’s mind wheeled back to the carnage wrought by Gurant during his ‘training’. A tiny sigh escaped his lips. The moment Hollyoak had pointed out that something was different with the Foursie was the moment he should’ve acted decisively, should’ve authorized the man to use whatever means necessary to kill Gurant, to prevent him from becoming something … more. No other soldier in Gurant’s class was closer to a Five, and they had no reliable models on what kind of evolutionary adaptations were ‘natural’.

  He’d chosen to allow Gurant to live for no discernible reason. Oh, perhaps it had something to do with the fact that he’d fought so bravely in the Museum, or maybe it was four thousand years of willing service, or maybe even that, when you got right down to it, ‘sane’ Foursies were such a rare commodity that losing one was unbearable thing. And, of course, while Vasily firmly believed that Nickels wasn’t truly a threat to the system –was, in fact, almost as pro-Latelian as Tomas Kamagana, just in different ways- he also believed that man needed to go away; his mere presence was almost certainly entirely responsible for Alyssa succumbing to Chair Crazies overnight. Since it was obvious Nickels wasn’t going to leave…

  But now, with the revelation that the vast majority of worlds under Trinity’s umbrella were protected by shields developed by him, everything was different.

  “We must stop the Final Games.” Vasily said into the silence, wondering if it sounded as insane an idea as he imagined it was.

  Now it was her turn. “Are you serious?” Alyssa jeered. “Too much effort has gone into ensuring that Nickels dies in the arena.”

  Vasily used his prote, overriding all the standard security avatars in the room with his own heavily encrypted codes and brought just a fraction of what they’d been working towards over the last forty, fifty years, onto the Screens. Hundreds of millions of appropriated funds spread across a vast array of experiments and undertakings rippled and flickered, a damning indictment of their duplicitous maneuvering. Vasily looked through the list and highlighted the last thing, the very last thing that needed funding and proper execution to ensure that their plans for pan-systemic control had a chance to succeed.

  “Project Darklight.” Vasily hit a button. Hollyoak’s latest prototype engine appeared in an exploded diagram. “Three hundred million in funds, needing, at best estimates by the man himself, two hundred million more. The last prototype tore itself apart and irradiated a volume of space about the size of our moon, but not before yielding some interesting results about the nature of the energy required to generate either a faster-than-light drive or something he started calling ‘sub-dimension field focus’. This is it, Alyssa. That’s all we need. Project estimate is five years. Five years. Not far beyond that, the Dark Age. But it’s all pointless if we can’t get there!”

  Vasily wiped the Screens and let the arena’s avatars put the default display on. He pointed to the crowds, at the arena, at the concept of the Final Game. “In less than an hour, the only man who can help us defeat those allegedly impregnable shields is going to have his limbs pulled from his body in the most televised assassination known to mankind. We must stop it from happening. We cannot allow petty hatred to get in the way of doing as we have planned from the moment we rose to power.”

  “Petty?” Alyssa hissed. “Petty? I am the Chair, you … peon. I am the living, breathing will of the Regime made manifest. No other being lives in this system without my permission. It is within my power to take the life of anyone I choose, Vasily, including yours. Nothing is more important than my well-being, my state of mind, my whims. If I wish Garth Nickels to die, then die he will. Nothing will stop this from happening. Even if he should manage to defeat your giants, there are snipers throughout the Arena, awaiting my commands. He will never lay his hands on the false Box and he most certainly will not walk out of this Arena alive. Leave me.”

  Vasily counseled himself valiantly, steeled his will to keep from lashing out at Alyssa. It was a desperate struggle; the woman in front of him was no longer the woman he’d fallen in love with. She was the Chair, pure and simple. The Crazies had gripped her tightly in the smothering embrace of infallibility and nothing he could say or do would dissuade her.

  He wanted to tell her about the Sigma Fives and Foursies, but kept quiet; their enigmatic purpose –that of ‘attending to- Garth Nickels- would only inspire her to further acts of lunacy, and the last thing he as OverCommander wanted was Alyssa Doans in contact with those fabled soldiers.

  Vasily grunted in disgust. He left Alyssa to her own devices. Anyone willing to forego a plan necessary to the continued survival of her own civilization was a person so far out of their head that you’d need a Q-Comm to have a decent conversation.

  Besides, he had to go and do something … foolish.

  Totally Legit

  “Well,” one of the Game personnel said, eyeing the weapons, “I don’t like it. I just don’t like this at all.”

  “What’s the hassle?” Garth demanded laconically, knowing full well why the guy, who looked like a stretched out version of George Costanza, didn’t like the weapons on the table. They were decidedly more violent-looking than any other weapon used in the Games over the last two thousand years.

  Ute and Huey stood on the other side of a painted line, both men dancing back and forth on their feet, each one anticipating a moment where their friend and nominal employer decided to lose his temper and bonk the Game employee on the head with a quadronium-powered super punch.

  “The hassle,” Enric said sharply, picking up the ‘ax’ and brandishing it under Garth’s nose, “is this. And … and … and that … what did you call it? A hip?”

  “Whip.” Garth replied merrily. He motioned for Huey and Ute to calm down. “With a ‘w’. Could you see me trying to brain someone with a hip? That doesn’t make any sense, dude.”

  Enric hefted the wickedly toothed ax thoughtfully. He could do it. He could chop the man’s head off right now and probably get away with saying he’d panicked at the thought of being in the same room as an Offworlder. Probably he’d get nothing more than a fine. If anything, he’d get a commendation from the Chairwoman. He put the ax down when his supervisor finally arrived. “Thank goodness you are here, Sa Forst.”

  “What is the problem, Enric?” Forst looked at the meager range of weapons on the table and at first assumed that Enric was concerned that Sa Nickels wasn’t bringing enough melee tools to the Final Game; by contrast, each of the Eight had somewhere in the neighborhood of ten each. Granted, many were just variations on a theme, but still, there would be a positive glut of death-dealing weapons in the arena, and that was even assuming the soldiers even brought theirs along!

  Then he took a closer look, specifically at the coiled duronium snake on the table. It sat there next to quite probably the most violent looking ax he had ever personally seen. He was afraid to bring his hands anywhere near the sharp-edged teeth.

  “The problem is this guy doesn’t like my weapons.” Garth said this as politely as he could, wondering all the while how these two men –indeed, every single Game employee he’d come across since having to be scanned and checked and rechecked- could’ve missed the fact that, if it came down to it, the Chairwoman herself would let him in the ring with a fucking tank.

  There was nothing in the Universe that was going to keep him from fighting.

  Forst picked up the cool metal snake and shook the kinks loose. “It’s no wonder, sa. This is a violation of the rules. No moving parts.”

  “I … uh,” Garth reached out and gently disengaged the supervisor’s hand from the whip-handle, “I wouldn’t, uh, wiggle that around. Take someone’s eye out. And no, it ain’t. It’s totally legit. The actual phrasing of the regulation prohibiting moving parts is ‘complex machinery or other components providing mechanically-assisted thrusting or actual energy dispersal blah blah blah something’. So, like, no chainsaws or laser cannons or actual tanks.”

  Fo
rst found the pertinent paragraph and read it, though he really didn’t need to do so. It was a tactic to buy much needed thinking time. Blast. The rules were quite specific. Forst raised his hands in defeat. “As you wish, sa, as you wish, though I must say, these will do no good against the Eight.”

  Garth grinned, smug as hell. They were going to shit bricks when he actually used the whip, but their minds were going to turn off the moment he swung that ax at someone’s head and the edges caught on fire. Quantum state tech. It was a real drag about the darts. Those would’ve caused chaos in the stands, for sure.

  “Meh. I’m sure I’ll do just fine.” Garth coiled the whip up, clipped it to his waist, and reached out for his ax. Sa Forst intercepted. “What’s up now?”

  “Preliminary scans, sa. Before the fight. It’s a regulation.”

  “Say what now?” Garth frowned. “I got scanned all the way up and down before the first fight I ever fought. Had a big argument about it. Why do I need to be scanned again?”

  “Rules.” Forst said, mimicking Garth’s smug attitude perfectly. He tapped his prote, went to flash the various sections of Game Law, and shook his head irritably. Of course, an Offworlder –no matter he was a ‘citizen’ now- wouldn’t be wearing a proteus. The man could probably barely even work a car. “It is not unheard of for contestants to undergo black market surgeries before their big showing in an attempt to gain the upper hand. If you have, you will be automatically disqualified.”

  Garth wanted to punch the big grin off Forst’s face and actually took an angry step towards the Costanza clone. “I need to talk to my guys over there.”

  Forst waved a hand. “By all means.” He turned to Enric the moment the Offworlder was out of earshot. “I wager ten dollars he’s been augmented since that fight.”

  “Deal.” They shook hands. “He didn’t have any augments for that fight, though, Sa Forst, so why would he need them now?”