Citizen Pariah (Unreal Universe Book 3)

by Lee

  “Perhaps there is.” Fenris admitted that easily enough. Huey wasn’t wrong in his estimation of the Universe; things were very much ‘off the rails’. It was endemic of the plan. It was vital things be as chaotic and as unruly as imaginable. Huey –bound to honor and devoted to his maker in all ways- simply refused to see past his own fearful demands. “But my brothers and I have only a short time left, Huey who would Rule, and we are crucial now. As you say, many things today are beyond Garth’s comprehension, many things threaten to topple the balance out of our favor. We exist now only for a single purpose, a single, concrete moment in time and space that must positively occur or –even if Garth is successful without us- what happens next will be … imperfect in ways that are unacceptable.”

  Huey was quick to seize on Fenris’ brief statement. “What do you mean, you only have a short time left?”

  “The Harmony burns so bright, Huey the AI.” Fenris sighed again. “It is a poorly documented fact. The flesh contains the brilliance of the Song only for a time, but during that time, those who hear it, those who wield it, are … angelic. As with anything so bright, so pure –or, in the case of the Heshii Paradigm, so poisoned, so virulent- it cannot last. The flesh withers, the soul dies, and the Harmony fades. We are the oldest Harmony Soldiers ever to have been, King Huey, and we achieved that status by sleeping for centuries, dozens of them. Alas, the Harmony doesn’t distinguish awake from asleep, not truly. The burn slows, true enough, but the events of the last day have hastened things. We have a handful of years left. We are eager to spend them wisely. We will have our day. Nothing will stop that. Not N’Chalez, not his love of a woman. Not you, not for your idolatry of your maker. Our time will come, we will perform our duty, we will fade.”

  Huey’s sorrowful whisper echoed like the wind. “You are mad.”

  “Isn’t everyone, Lord High Huey, would-be Ruler of the True Reality? Isn’t that the defining truth of this Unreality?” Fenris watched as OverCommander Vasily Tizhen barged at Garth, a pack of medics trailing after the obviously in-pain Latelian, shouting worriedly. “We are all mad, so that when the Real is born, no one else will need to be. I must go, Huey. Don’t try to warn N’Chalez about the trap. Being frozen in amber is critical. Things are not quite ready.”

  “Bastard.”

  “Born,” Fenris replied earnestly before ending the communication, “as I was in the metallic embrace of a machine that hears the Harmony better than Man, I am naturally a bastard. And I will see this travesty of a Universe demolished one way or the other, AI who would be God.”

  Fenris turned to the OverCommander.

  The End of Days … Sort Of

  Bravo, Garth, Bravo!

  The difference was immediate, noticeable and nearly overwhelming.

  Looking at the real ‘Box’, staring thoughtfully at Bravo, it was the literally the most inconceivable thing in Garth’s life that anyone had ever mistaken any of the other iterations of the machine for anything other than utter fakes.

  “Just think of all the shit it’s seen.” Garth said into the utter vacuum of silence permeating the observation room. Fenris and his brothers were present, naturally, barely capable of hiding their nihilistic glee. Garth knew that both Ute and Huey questioned his decision to trust them, but … there was no other choice. They represented a facet of the War that he couldn’t figure out.

  Worse, they’d been touched by The Harmony. That made them dangerous. Dangerous enough to keep close, no matter what.

  OverCommander Vasily was present with a smattering of guards. The poor man was clearly overwrought, and with his head wrapped in bandages, it was obvious he’d done himself some damage getting here ahead of the pack. He kept ordering the God soldiers who stood with him to kill someone, anyone, and the soldiers kept saying it wasn’t time. The only Onesie in the room kept humming loudly, hands jammed into his big pockets.

  “Twenty-five thousand years.” Garth ran a hand across the cool, impenetrable surface of Bravo. Skin prickled from the point of contact up and down his entire body, but not because the ship was cold; on the contrary; quadronium held no heat, held no cold. It was … temperatureless. “It traveled through the Universe for eons. Imagine that.”

  Garth stood there, hand on Bravo, musing. Civilizations had risen and fallen while his creation had flown the stars. Maybe it’d seen dinosaur people plying the inky depths in spaceships made out of bone. Maybe it’d encountered a civilization with vast ship-worlds made from glittering glass, or trees the size of solar systems or … anything at all. The Unreality could be home to all of that, and more, and wilder and weirder.

  A faint smile crossed his lips. Garth could sense Fenris’ displeasure. He was woolgathering, putting off the inevitable, and his time wasting was visibly bothering the titan. Suddenly … it was a lot to take on.

  When he’d first dreamed of Bravo, well hell, he hadn’t even known its name. It’d just been a ship similar to the one they’d woken up in. From that dream, all he’d known was that it would hold answers. Answers to who he was, why he could do the things he could do, how he could do them, what he was doing them for. It’d become a burning passion, an all-consuming need, to find and enter the ship in front of him, a thing to accomplish to the exclusion of all other things.

  Truly, he’d started that way, no doubt about it. He’d entered Latelyspace and it’d been a fucking gong show from the very beginning. Escalating violence, irrational behavior, an unconscionable intent to destroy everything and everyone around him until he got his way. It’d seemed natural right up until the moment Lisa had come to him, telling him exactly the opposite, and that had been terrifying.

  That was how subtle and pernicious Bravo was. He hadn’t even known or noticed that the imperatives driving him to find the ship weren’t his own. Yes, some –maybe half, maybe not- of what’d happened could be laid at Trinity’s feet, and some he held on to as his own foolish pride, arrogance and conceit, but … but they –the governing intellects within- had driven him to the brink to see what he was made of, because they had never trusted him.

  Which, Garth grinned ruefully as he traced a finger across some of the M’Tai carvings on Bravo’s outer skin, had been the correct response. He had lied to them all, deceived not just the Armies of Man, not just the entire Human race, but his ‘own’ people as well. It’d been an important lie, a necessary lie, but … a lie was a lie, no matter how it was spun, or for what reason.

  Bravo did hold an answer. The final piece of the puzzle, and that was it. There was no way of knowing if he’d planned on coming so close to the whole truth prior to entering Bravo or if events had fallen so far out of sync that the microscopic portion of his subconscious that knew what was going on had seen an immediate and overwhelming need for him to be enlightened sooner rather than later.

  Either way –intentional design or last minute freak-out- Garth really-but-not-really didn’t want to enter Bravo. Not anymore. A hand went to his throat. Not so long ago, Fenris had gripped him there like a true Titan, squeezing so relentlessly that even the quadronium had buckled, literally forcing an answer out of his mouth like he was some kind of truth-dispensing Pez dispenser.

  His plan couldn’t be destruction. It didn’t make sense. That was what the Heshii wanted. The Heshii were destroyers. He was a builder, an engineer. Yes, fair enough, he’d become something of a wanton destroyer during his tenure in Special Services, but … all that had been necessary. Somehow. For some reason.

  Garth ran a hand across a sigil that meant ‘beware’ in M’Tai…

  xxx

  “What … what is he doing?” Vasily asked, resisting the urge to poke at his bandages. He was still discomfited by Hollyoak’s insistence that he needed to have his eardrums punctured to release the pressure caused by his high-velocity approach to The Peak. He’d had to batter the freakish homunculus around the head to get him to listen to reason. The bandages were a communal decision; Vasily had needed to get his ass in gear and prepare for an invasio
n –preparations that had gone horribly, almost comically wrong instantly and Hollyoak had agreed that all of his other solutions seemed to rely on increasingly more inappropriate surgical procedures.

  “He is afraid.” Fenris said into the quiet.

  Vasily almost laughed. Almost. He held his tongue, though, at the last second; the Sigma Fives were emanating a deep reverence that the OverCommander had felt only a few times before, during his time on Trinity Prime, and only then inside an ancient IndoRussian mosque. It was an experience he’d never shared with anyone, not even Alyssa.

  It was the same, though, those moments then and the moment now. The ancient men, standing arrayed through the room, ready to rip, rend, and destroy at a moment’s notice, at the hint of something not right, were seconds away from dropping to their knees and praying.

  Down the centuries, clusters of Latelians had worshipped their Box. On a rational level, the idolatry made sense; the Box, with its gift of duronium, had saved their civilization. Without it, they wouldn’t have –or so they’d been led to believe through countless centuries of lies, deceit and propaganda- survived Trinity’s attentions or intentions. Without it, they wouldn’t have found something to draw them all together. Without it, they would’ve faded into the background of the Universe, another footnote of another colony of Men who’d failed.

  Those worshippers had gone the way of all such men.

  “Afraid of what?” Vasily scoffed. Garth Nickels had nothing to be afraid of; ignoring for the moment the existence of the Sigma Fives –who were completely enthralled by the ex-Specter-, Garth Nickels had survived more hellacious punishment than any other man Vasily had ever heard or dreamed of in his hundred plus years of service to the Army.

  He’d been blown up, beaten on, attacked by Chadsik al-Taryin, and most recently destroyed a God soldier who’d been on his way to transforming into some kind of … actual God. Interspersed evenly through all that there’d been all sorts of mayhem, including an actual missile strike incinerating ten square miles of Port City property.

  The man who could survive that and still crack jokes was a man who needed to be afraid of nothing.

  Fenris watched as certain words and phrases on Bravo started glowing an unearthly shade of light. The lights welling up out of the carved metal were reflections of paradox and soon filled the cavern with fitful flickering. Some of the God soldiers started panicking, but low words from Lokken calmed them. Soon N’Chalez would be inside and they could start preparing for war. “You know the man, OverCommander, you’ve seen firsthand what he can do if he puts his mind to it. Everything you’ve seen so far has been in preparation for a much larger confrontation. You witnessed Garth N’Chalez battle Sa Gurant to a standstill and, when that wasn’t going to work, you watched on as he commanded the monster to pull his own head off.”

  “And that is why I am wondering what in this Universe he could be afraid of.” Vasily did his best to ignore the scientists in the room, who were shrieking and gibbering in terror at what their beloved Box was doing. Whispers here and there had always indicated those educated fools found cause to worship the blasted thing, but their … adulation … had always been couched in the most scientific of terms, in the most oblique of ways.

  “As he is, right now, Garth N’Chalez holds innumerable destinies in his hands. He is capable of anything. He truly stands at his defining moment, OverCommander. With what he knows, with the resources available to him, he can do things no man has ever dreamed, achieve a pinnacle of greatness never imagined.” A thrumming filled the air, a low frequency sound so jarring that everyone’s bones began to throb. Garth was lost in reverie, his rugged face aggressively neutral. “The moment he walks through the aperture, all those destinies dwindle to one. The one he wrote for himself thirty thousand years ago, the one he deemed the only viable end to the madness that we laughingly, erroneously, imprudently call life.”

  The scientists were openly crying now. The only one of them to maintain any type of respectability was Hollyoak, but the man was ruining the moment by hopping from foot to foot, his freakish additional hands clapping loudly. The homunculus’ rotational lenses were spinning like mad as well, matching the pulsing frequency of the glowing words from The Box.

  “What destiny?” Vasily found he was trying to shout over the throbbing light and pulsing noise.

  “War, OverCommander.” Fenris allowed a true smile to cross his weary face. So close to the end of their lives, and finally war had come. The last of the code sequences engraved into the impenetrable skin of Bravo burned carmine red before all the engravings turned the brilliant sapphire color that was the Hue of the Sphere to Come. Fenris’ voice rose, a doomsday prophet shouting a glorious prediction, “He chose war. A war across the heavens. A war that will consume the whole of the Universe and everything in it. We, his foot soldiers, will fight for him. Gloriously, the whole of this Sphere-that-isn’t will tremble. A war, OverCommander,” Fenris smiled again when the front portion of Bravo split wide, revealing a shaft of light, “for Reality’s Sake. And God willing, we will die for it.”

  OverCommander Vasily Tizhen had always been and ever would be a military man. Raised in a family of soldiers, weaned on tales of conquest and destruction, reared on hard truths and harder lies, Vasily understood the concept of death-for-life with pristine clarity. “Ah.” He nodded, his abused ego grasping hold of what Fenris was saying. A curious peace settled into his bones. “Good. War. It’s about time.”

  Fenris and the others watched Garth like pensive falcons, ready to shove the man through the doorway should he falter.

  He did not. The Sigma Fives and every God soldier present to witness Garth N’Chalez entering Bravo dropped to one knee, shouted something no normal human understood, and waited for the door to close.

  The assembled Latelians watched on in awe as the flaring, ghostly words returned to normal. The thudding sound radiating outward from the ancient machine dissipated. The God soldiers stopped singing. The Sigma Fives rose.

  “Well.” Fenris clapped a hand on Vasily’s shoulder. “Shall we begin the War?”

  “What?” Vasily pointed at The Box. “What … what about Garth? Isn’t he … isn’t he your … what … your commander?”

  “Oh, he is at that. But he is going to be in there for a while and even then, when he returns to us, there are things he will need to take care of before he can join the fray.” Fenris guided the stunned OverCommander out of the room. “Come. Let us seek proper medical attention, OverCommander.”

  “Things?” Vasily kept going back to Garth standing, silhouetted by the miraculous light pouring out of The Box. He hadn’t even turned back to look at the men holding vigil.

  “Garth N’Chalez is many things, but prophet does not number amongst them.” Fenris explained. “Events leading up to the moment just passed could not have possibly happened without the tremendous sacrifices of Lisa Laughlin, Our Lady of Sapphire Tears. Your acquisition of The Box alone transformed the field of play in ways that N’Chalez could not have comprehended. That factor in itself very nearly made the entire enterprise impossible. Now that he has acquitted himself, now that he has been attended to, there are forces in the Universe aware of, and capable of, preventing or subverting the Reality War. He must attend to those before he can do as he promised. We, we shall sow the fields for him in the meantime.”

  Again, this was territory that Vasily was familiar with, so he merely nodded, perversely glad that someone else was about to have a difficult time.

  Ever Forward

  Naoko watched the empty Screens, quietly going out of her mind. What was happening on Hospitalis? One moment they’d been watching Garth defeat an almost ludicrously powerful Gurant by uttering what –even after deep, deep consideration- seemed to be actual magic words of unknown origin, the next they were watching as her love battered and hammered himself senseless on a false Box, delivering a world-weary speech to an enraptured audience.

  And then … something had hap
pened. The false Box, carved from duronium nevertheless, had shattered. And then … nothing.

  Greuz switched his lips back and forth. There was no denying that they had been immensely and ridiculously lucky. It was almost enough to make the man believe in a higher power. Almost. He didn’t know why Nickels hadn’t gutted them on the spot, but he could tell from Alli’s sour face and Sandlak’s silent, brooding consideration that they were thinking the same things.

  Seta reached out to put a hand on Naoko’s shoulder. “I’m certain everything is fine. They … your Chairwoman probably just deactivated all the cameras. What happened in there is something that she wouldn’t want anyone to see, right?”

  It was true. Seta’s suggestion was exactly the sort of thing the Chairwoman would do, especially in light of Garth’s triumph.

  Chairwoman Doans and the Ministries responsible for controlling the flow of information would be working overtime to discredit Garth, to tarnish his accomplishments, possibly even to arrange his execution.

  “I …” Naoko wanted to give the order to turn the Zhivago around.

  Images of the people that Jordan Bishop held swam up to greet her selfish needs. The … mission … she’d set for herself was daunting, to say the least; it took considerable effort to pretend it was no big thing, that the cost of her own freedom for the lives of so many indentured Latelians was wholly acceptable, but what about after? What was it that Bishop wanted from her? What could be worth so many men and women, and the payout she’d forced him into delivering for their time and efforts?

  Greuz, twisting his hands around, spoke up. “Begging your pardon, si, but we could always turn around.”

  Alli, still sensitive about his broken nose, reared up, ready to hotly deny that they would be doing any such thing. At the last second he remembered that their ship was a death trap ready to turn any one of them into a corpse should they so much as look oddly at their victim. Alligorni snorted. He sat back down without saying a word.