by E. R. Torre
Nox followed General Spradlin across the courtyard and up a ramp. Armed soldiers manned posts on walkways at the top of the ramp and along a ledge walkway on the inside of the perimeter wall. They carried sniper rifles and were on the lookout for any possible trouble.
A feeling of great unease settled over Nox.
“What happened in the city?” she asked the General.
They reached the top of the ramp and were on a walkway.
“See for yourself,” General Spradlin said.
Nox looked past the walls and toward the Big City. What she saw horrified her.
The heart of the city lay some five miles north and east of their position. It was black as the night and still as a cadaver. There wasn’t a single electric light to be seen in any of its massive structures. Several fires burned out of control and sent out thick black plumes of smoke. There were no aircraft in the sky or evidence of either trains or automobiles traveling the dark streets.
Movement came from the long line of people outside the military base. They were being processed and their belongings thrown aside before being allowed entry into the compound. In that line were women and children and the old and inform. Everyone –everyone– from the city appeared to be coming to this place of refuge.
“By the Gods,” Nox said.
She was shocked to realize the Big City was being evacuated.
“What…what happened?” Nox asked.
“The people who tried to take us out at the hospital infiltrated and corrupted every major computer operating system or appliance. Nothing was immune. Neither cars nor aircraft nor air conditioners nor toasters. Nothing. They then sabotaged the power grids and phone lines. They infiltrated the GCN. They took down everything.”
“This looks...familiar,” Nox said. “People fleeing their homes, herded into ‘safe zones’. All together in one place.”
“Makes it that much easier to wipe them out,” General Spradlin said.
Nox was alarmed.
“This is ground zero?” she said. “And we’re standing on it?”
“It is,” General Spradlin replied. “And we are.”
“You better hope our enemies aren’t carrying nukes like we did back in Arabia,” Nox said.
“The nukes are gone. Disarmed, stored away, and cemented over. It was the only good thing to come about from the Arabian War.”
“You don’t know how relived I am to hear that,” Nox replied. The sarcasm in her voice was evident.
The people on the walkway and by the entry fence felt a distant rumble. All eyes turned to the city. An explosion rocked the downtown area. Nox watched in horror as the Metrodove Tower, one of the largest buildings within the Big City, crumbled. More than half the structure fell to the ground.
A group of people waiting to get into the military base panicked at that sight. They rushed the fence and tried to push past the military guards. The guards would have none of it. From behind the lines, one of them raised an automatic and fired it into the air. A bullhorn clicked on.
“The next shots will be to kill.”
The crowd quieted down and order was re-established.
Nox faced General Spradlin.
“What are you doing about this?”
“All I can, General Spradlin said. He handed Nox the file he was carrying. “Go on, take a look. Don’t worry. Reading this information won’t soil your honor.”
Nox grabbed the file. It was considerably thicker than the one Spradlin had on her. She opened it. The first page within the folder was a photograph of a handsome young boy with very short dark hair and magnetic blue eyes. He had a blue tattoo on his forehead. It was identical to the one Nox sported.
“Does he look familiar?” Spradlin asked.
“No.”
“As you can see, he’s a member of the Blue Brigades,” General Spradlin said.
“Then he’s dead, just like all the rest of them.”
“So says a surviving member of that very same group. Turn to the next page.”
Nox did. The following page was another photograph. The man on the photograph was considerably older. Nox recognized him as the now grown boy. He sported the same tattoo, but the brilliant blue eyes were dull. The expression on his face was distant.
“When this photograph was taken a couple of years ago he just turned thirty three,” General Spradlin said.
“I’ve seen him,” she said. “Back in the hospital lobby, just before you arrived.”
“His name is Joshua Landon,” General Spradlin said. “For three months back in ’58 he fought at your side. Like you, Joshua Landon was one of our earlier subjects. Like all the rest, his actions were scrutinized by his handlers. Any deviation, however minor, was…worrisome. In time, Landon became a concern. He displayed heightened emotional responses whenever engaging with the enemy. The condition grew worse with each new mission. We feared he was cracking.”
“It’s a wonder there weren’t more of him.”
“He was ordered out of rotation and underwent a series of tests. Results confirmed what we feared. He was lost to us, mentally if not physically. Instead of a highly trained soldier, we had a remorseless killer.”
“In the Arabian war zone, was there a difference?”
“We flew him back into the Continent on a military transport. The flight was routine. There were no problems until the plane came in for a landing. Air traffic received a Mayday just as the transport’s wheels touched down. There were reports of violence on board, of weapons being discharged. The plane swerved and skidded off the tarmac. Soldiers rushed to the plane but were pinned down by sniper fire. Several were lost. It was Landon. By the time we got to him and had him under control, everyone on the aircraft was dead.”
A deep frown cut through General Spradlin’s forehead.
“Landon was sent to Segmore maximum security prison and buried deep in its lowest levels. He was never to be released again. At least that was the plan. Seven days ago, during a routine transfer of prisoners at that prison, Joshua Landon’s name somehow got added to the transfer order. The warden, a fucking pencil pusher, went ahead with the transfer without a full verification.”
“How many of us are left?”
“From the Blue Brigade only you two. From the other brigades, more.”
“Were you…were you one of us?”
“No. But I oversaw every one of the Brigades in Arabia. I was the voice. I was your command.”
Nox’s face flushed.
Whether it was the messages bombarding her from without or the anger within, she now understood the fury she felt upon seeing General Spradlin at the Hospital. Even without those electronic impulses, she remembered the bloody work the voice of command instructed her to do. The voice was so calm and clinical as it ordered one revulsive act after the other.
Even without the electronic wails, she would be more than willing to rip the man’s throat out, here and now.
“You sent brainwashed children incapable of independent thought to fight your war. Why?”
The lines on General Spradlin’s face became more pronounced.
“We needed fighters small…and innocent…enough to infiltrate almost any enemy area, yet big enough to handle weaponry. We needed stripped down, unemotional soldiers capable of following orders. Any orders.”
“We were children.”
“Most of the Generals argued against sending you in,” Spradlin said.
“But not you.”
The General didn’t reply.
“We were fucking kids.”
“You won the war,” General Spradlin said. “That’s all that matters.”
Nox felt her anger peak, then dissipate. She handed him back the file.
“Exactly how many of us are left?”
“There were a little over ten thousand child soldiers spread out in the Blue, Orange, and Black brigades. Almost all died when the nukes were delivered to the Arabian Cities. Of those, thirty five were on the sidelines. They were, for the mos
t part, screw ups who couldn’t handle the training or the fighting or had compatibility problems with their…hard wiring. They were shipped back home at various times well before the nukes were delivered. They were relocated to places where they could live out a quiet life.”
“The suburbs? A house with a garage and a pool?”
General Spradlin stared deep into Nox’s eyes.
“I have neither the time nor the interest to argue the past. Not now. Not when the world is being torn apart.”
“What do you want?”
“An answer to a question.”
“What?”
“How did you override the order to take your nuke into Sada-bir?”
“What does it matter now?”
“You were in the theater, Nox. You had a nuke strapped to your back and you were given a direct order to take it into Sada-bir. Somehow, you refused. You overrode programming that was supposed to be infallible. If I could find out how you broke free, I might be able to do the same with Joshua Landon. So tell me: How did you do it?”
“I never was very good at taking orders.”
“How?”
“I don’t know,” she yelled.
“What do you mean?”
Nox took a deep breath and calmed herself down.
“If you’re looking for a magic pill or moment of clarity, there wasn’t any. I just…I just questioned orders. Little things at first. In time, the small questions became bigger ones. I wondered why I wasn’t talking with others, laughing, playing. It took months, maybe even a year, before the veil lifted.” Nox pressed her lips together. “I wish there was something I could tell you. There isn’t.”
Nox and General Spradlin were silent for a few seconds.
“That’s too bad,” General Spradlin said. He looked away from Nox and at the Big City. “What are they telling you now?”
“The same as before,” Nox said. “They want me to join them. They want…they want you dead. Who’s behind this? If you guys aren’t sending the orders anymore, who is?”
General Spradlin took a deep breath. He exhaled.
“Have you heard of David Lemner?”
An electric jolt shot through Nox’s body.
“By your silence, I’m assuming you have,” General Spradlin said. “For years there was a rumor that David Lemner created a backdoor program, something that allowed him access to each and every GCN linked computer operating system.”
“Lemner's passkey,” Nox said.
“All high level security programs have codes that are modified on an hourly, sometimes even minute-by-minute basis. The purpose of this is to ward off the possibility of outside agents gaining access to classified information. Lemner's passkey would theoretically be capable of not only breaking those updated codes, but somehow keeping its presence in those computers invisible. For such a program to exist, it would have to contain a form of intuition.”
“Intuition?”
“Artificial intelligence,” General Spradlin said. “Such a program did exist, Nox. It ran the Child Brigades back in the Arabian War.”
Nox stiffened.
“It was a very early version of this mythical Lemner’s passkey,” General Spradlin continued. “The program initially began as the next generation of military command, something that would work in conjunction with the nano-probes in your bodies. In all wars, communication with the troops is vital, and that program was meant to communicate directly with our troops even if home command was compromised. We had high hopes, but after Joshua Landon’s rampage, I knew the program had to be shut down. I did so. Permanently. Or so I thought.”
General Spradlin paused for a moment and gazed at the Big City.
“The war ended and David Lemner died. But there were rumors of a passkey –a new, improved version of the Brigade command system– being developed. I understand your last employer devoted considerable time and money trying to find this program. A fruitless pursuit, right?”
Nox eyed the General and he stared right back at her.
“Turns out the rumors were true. There was a new version of the military command program out there,” Spradlin finally said. “It was stronger, sleeker and far, far more aggressive. Someone reactivated it.”
Nox bit her upper lip. Hard.
There were consequences.
There always are.
“This new version of our military command program –let’s go ahead and call it Lemner’s passkey– not only reactivated Joshua Landon, it was also behind the assault on the GCN and every computer operating system in the Big City. It didn’t stop there. What you see here before you is happening in all the Big Cities in every one of the Continents of the entire world.”
“By the Gods,” Nox muttered.
General Spradlin’s hands settled on the railing before him.
“On the day Landon escaped, twenty of the remaining child soldiers vanished from their individual care facilities. Unlike Landon, those facilities had far less security and those one-time child soldiers weren't considered dangerous. We were wrong about that.”
“And the other fifteen?”
“They committed suicide.”
“Why?”
“Perhaps they were too…compromised,” Spradlin said. “Some had physical limitations. They were wheelchair bound or bedridden. The others…maybe they just didn’t want to join this new war. Like you.”
“Why didn’t the program find me sooner?”
“GCN records list you as a casualty in the Arabian war. Until Lemner’s passkey sensed your nano-probes, it didn’t even know you were still out there.”
“Could there be others like me?”
“No. All were accounted for.”
“So was I.”
“You’re the only one, Nox.”
“What about the children taken from the Hospital?”
“They were in the Hospital’s Elite Wing.”
“Elite?”
“It shouldn’t surprise you the rich have a desire and, more importantly, the means, to be separated from everyone else.”
“So Joshua Landon draws you and me to the hospital while taking twenty four kids. Why did they take these particular ones?”
“For a while we feared the program might be seeking revenge. Most of the kidnapped children have relatives who were in power during the Arabian War. However, there were another fifty five babies in that ward that could have been taken but were left alone. Several of them also had relatives involved in the Arabian Wars, some even more intimately than those actually taken.”
“If it isn’t revenge?”
“The children that were taken scored the highest in their genetic profiling tests. Lemner’s passkey took the best and the brightest.”
“Only the best for their new platoon,” Nox said. “Makes sense. But those infants won’t be battle ready for at least a decade and a half, if you go by us.”
“The program’s plan is long term,” General Spradlin said. “It will keep the world’s electronic grid and all access to it screwed up and use the adult soldiers for protection should we somehow get our act together and launch a counterattack. Meanwhile, the infants grow.”
“The program is content to wait that long?”
“Why not?”
Nox looked away from the General and at the refugees outside the compound.
“When the Big City’s population finishes massing around here, those twenty remaining soldiers will make their move,” Nox said. “They’ll have everyone in one nice small spot. They’ll finish what they started. All under your watch.”
“I have no intention of sitting around and waiting for trouble to come to me. We’re going out, Nox.”
“If I can’t tell you how I cracked the commands program back in Arabia, what good am I to you?”
“You hear them. In a combat situation, what could be better than listening in on your enemy’s transmissions?”
“I do more than just listen,” Nox said. “I almost gave in to them. What’s to say
I won’t in the future?”
“I’ll take that risk.”
“Sounds like you’re already assuming I’ll join you, General,” Nox said. “Do I have any choice in the matter?”
“Unless you can figure out how you disobeyed your orders during the war, none at all,” General Spradlin said.
Nox detected an edge to the General’s voice.
“What aren’t you telling me?” she asked.
His answer came quick. Too quick.
“Nothing.”
“If you want me to work with you, you have to be honest with me. I will not tolerate lies.”
“Fair enough,” the General said.
Nox lifted her file.
“This is my reward for helping you?”
“The file is already yours.”
Nox scratched her head.
“I don’t work for free,” she said.
“Mechanics rarely do.”
“I’ll help you, General, and I’ll even consider this file final payment for my work. But I want something from you.”
“You’re in no position to—”
“Let me see Catherine.”
General Spradlin closed his mouth.
“Please.”
The General thought about the request. He nodded.
“Make it brief,” he said. “We leave on the hour.”
General Spradlin left Nox with Sgt. Delmont. He walked down the ramp and back to the garage.
Nox faced the remains of the Big City. She wanted desperately to go see Catherine Holland but couldn’t help but look at the destruction before her. Even now, after staring at it for the past few minutes, the reality of this new world and the blame she had in its creation was difficult to accept. She wanted to see Catherine Holland, but she knew she couldn’t let this world descend into further chaos.
This was a nightmare. It had to be.
She wished she could wake up.
28
Sergeant Delmont delivered Nox to her friend’s room.
During the walk to the room, neither of them talked. The seriousness of the situation weighted very heavily on the Mechanic as well as everyone within the military installation. They were fighting a crisis the civilized world had never seen before. How would they react if they knew the person who created this crisis walked among them?
