The Justar Journal: An AOI Thriller

by Brandt Legg

  The noise grew louder. The machine had cut to within a meter of him. He swirled the neuro-cap in his mouth, ready to bite.

  His eyes were filled with dust as he squeezed the skin on his neck around the chip. They were programmed, in case of emergency or death, to provide name, government number, and emergency contact information. He pressed his. The name Grandyn Happerman, 18346-083 appeared on a tiny virtual monitor, or “VM,” projected out through his skin. The contact had been blank, but in the final seconds before death, he decided to send one last attack against the AOI.

  He touched the VM and filled in the contact line with a series of numbers and letters that only a TreeRunner could decode. His final efforts might or might not prove useful to the revolution, depending on whether the right person ever received the information.

  He found a rock twice the size of his fist and readied it. The AOI’s attacking machine would be armored, but there was usually a weak spot; a lens, electronics, sensors, something. Even if he were killed before biting the neuro-cap, it would dissolve the instant his body temperature dropped. He clenched the rock and wiped the grainy dust from his eyes.

  The menacing, gray-metal-wrapped machine was almost through. He could see the red lights clearly now, like animal eyes. Its cutting blades resembling a shark’s jaws, and the hovering heat emitting jets could have been legs. The mechanical monster hummed like ten thousand mosquitoes as it cut through the huge roots.

  Will the blades kill me? Or will the on-board laser weapons do it? he wondered. Either way, this is going to be ugly.

  Two thousand miles away, at an air-conditioned AOI command center, a top official monitored the situation. While they still couldn’t control equipment inside the forest or manage long-range communications, new technology allowed satellites to monitor movements of the “mechanical monster” over a direct link. The screen showed the exact location of the Collins-HG3, its blade deployed, a target in sight. They might even get an image. But it didn’t matter. Based on the information received, a platoon of grunges would be there in less than six minutes.

  “Looks like we got lucky,” a technician said to the commander.

  “Luck? We have thousands of agents deployed in that hellish jungle. I’ve been increasing the numbers weekly for months.” He glared at his subordinate. “I made this torgon luck.” His frustration came from not being able to see the action, and because his superiors had threatened his career rested with Grandyn Happerman. He was the fifth AOI official to head the search in three years. The other four were now “retired.”

  “Do we have any idea what it’s cutting through?” he asked.

  “No,” the technician answered dryly. “At the risk of stating the obvious, based on his location, it’s probably a tree or trees . . . wait, it just stopped.”

  “Stopped? What the hell is it doing?”

  “Defending itself.”

  Chapter 7 - Book 2

  After the Chief’s speech, Terik skipped a summary presentation and took a detour before going back on official duty. The Flo-wing, a super-fast combination helicopter/plane, had Terik to the AOI prison off the coast of Vancouver in twenty minutes.

  Hilton Prison seemed a throwback to Alcatraz, a pre-Banoff penitentiary he’d once read about. The cold stone buildings were built from the same rock that the waves pounded against the inhospitable shores of the six-point-thirty-square-kilometer island. Five guard towers climbed from a crisscross of walls, and tangle of razor-wire left over from the days when automated electro-pulse weapons and sonic-sensors made escape impossible. No inmate had successfully broken out of an AOI prison in more than five decades.

  Instead of taking a LEV, he walked the short distance from the landing pad, trying to decide how far he was willing to bend the rules to get what he needed. An old friend greeted him at the first gate. “Good to see you, Osc,” Terik said, shaking hands while grabbing his friend’s upper arm with his other.

  Osc had always looked like a Swedish ski champion to Terik, and had, in fact, skied on the Pacyfik amateur team in the Aylantik Games. The two had met in the AOI training academy and hit it off as if they’d known each other forever. Osc had originally been assigned, along with Terik, to hunt Grandyn, but at the last minute he’d been switched to the very boring Hilton Prison with the promise of a transfer after a year.

  It had been almost eighteen months.

  “Is he here?” Terik asked, absently rotating his APO pin.

  “Yeah, his name’s changed to Lex Evren,” Osc said. A flock of seagulls flew low and the two men looked at each other, wondering if they were monitoring-mimic-drones, or just birds. “You really don’t want to go through channels?”

  “No. As I said in my message, my supervisor has made it clear that Drast was killed. The AOI’s veil of secrecy on this one is hung from the top. I think only a handful know he’s alive.”

  “And you really think it’s worth risking your career to talk to him?”

  “He was there at the start, working both sides, and he knew where Grandyn was. If he’s ready to talk, I want to hear it first. Imagine my career if he tells me all that he knows.”

  “And why would he? The top brass has been in here at least forty times since I got here and he hasn’t told them a torgon thing. And he’s somehow beating brain scans. It’s got them terrified.”

  “I’m going to play it differently. I’ve lived and breathed this case since the training academy. I know stuff most of the agents don’t.” Terik smiled. “I’m going to offer Mr. Evren something no one else has before.”

  “What?”

  “Can you get me in?”

  “I think I can get you and him in the same room for about eight minutes. Will that be enough?”

  Terik nodded. “It’ll have to be. Thanks.”

  “The visit will be monitored, but humans won’t review it for weeks.”

  “I’m not worried about that,” he said, flashing a silver button.

  “Is that . . . ?”

  “Yeah, a Whistler XTC. It’ll block any monitoring.”

  Osc looked at him with raised eyebrows.

  “Sometimes I need to interrogate someone without worrying about what my superiors are going to think.”

  Osc nodded. “So what are you going to offer Evren?”

  “That I can save who he cares most about.”

  “Grandyn?”

  “No, he doesn’t care about Grandyn. He cares about Chelle Andreas.”

  “That’s dangerous stuff.”

  “He loves her.”

  “And you can save her?”

  “No, but that doesn’t make a difference. All that matters is that he thinks I can.”

  “Why would he believe that?”

  “Because I know what to say, and because he’s locked up in here and I’m an AOI agent with high clearances, assigned to one of the most important cases, only a step away from Chelle Andreas, and I’m free to roam the world in pursuit of Grandyn Happerman.”

  “You’re a gutsy guy, Ander. Hope you can pull it off without getting sent here yourself.”

  Chapter 8 - Book 2

  The roots collapsed down on him amidst a shower of dirt and sawdust. Somehow, while being buried alive, he managed to hurl the rock against the mechanical monster. It hit the reinforced side with a scraping clang. His last chance missed sensors, lenses, and anything else that might have been sensitive enough to slow the killing machine. The rock came back down amidst the continuing falling storm and hit him like a forceful kick in to his stomach. He didn’t need his health sensors to tell him another rib had cracked.

  It’s over, he thought, positioning the neuro-cap between his teeth. Just as he was about to bite down on the deadly pill, Zaverly’s voice cut through the noise and grit.

  “Grandyn! We’re here,” Zaverly screamed, her voice desperate. “Grandyn!?”

  The AOI attacker spun and fired lasers, and a battle played out in a fog of debris. The metal monster flew a couple of meters above the root
hole, engaging his would-be rescuers. He watched as it raged synthetic artillery and lasers against them for almost two minutes. Shots volleyed back and forth. Wood was exploding everywhere, dirt and rubble pouring in, jagged like a rain of daggers.

  “Get out Grandyn!” Zaverly shouted above the din of trouble. “Can you move?”

  “I think so,” he moaned, totally unsure as he began shifting inside his would-be grave, feeling drugged and stuck in a steamy sludge.

  The machine exploded above, showering more lethal debris. One long metal piece gashed his leg while another, glowing hot, burned his arm. Zaverly swooped in on a Airslider, a jet-propelled scooter equipped with laser munitions. “Come on Grandyn, you’re not dead yet!” she said, clawing through the dirt and splintered roots, then pulling him roughly on board.

  “Torgon!” he cried out.

  “A ‘thank you’ might be more appropriate,” she said, cracking her knuckles, a habit that always annoyed him. “Sorry there wasn’t time for a stretcher and painkillers Grandyn. The grunges are minutes behind.” As if to punctuate her point, flames shot above their heads. “Damn, they’re scorching us!”

  With nowhere else to go, she steered the Airslider up through the fire. The dangerous maneuver into the burning heat took their breath. The flames grabbed at them, and with no protection on their upper bodies their skin melted and burned, but they were clear for the moment. Zaverly banked the Airslider unhesitatingly into narrow openings between thick and twisting trees. It was one of the reasons she’d drawn the Grandyn assignment. She had no fear.

  The other TreeRunners who had helped locate him and fight the machine were now fiercely battling with an AOI platoon, six rebels on Airsliders against thirty heavily armed agents. The AOI weapons were the latest tech, and the only hope the rebels had was that their opponents were on foot. Zaverly knew what would happen, and she desperately wanted to go back and help. In her opinion, saving Grandyn was not worth the loss, but she believed in the revolution enough to follow orders even when it made her sick.

  Forty minutes later they were in an underground bunker receiving medical attention along with water and rations. “Grandyn, you’re inhaling that stuff. Slow down,” she said.

  “I was dead. What am I doing here?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  Another TreeRunner came in and reported that all six they’d left battling the AOI platoon had been killed.

  “Torgon!” Zaverly looked at him. “Will you be able to sleep tonight Grandyn?” she asked, shaking her head. “What are you doing here?”

  “The only good news,” the other TreeRunner said, ignoring the tension. “Two AOI agents survived, and our snipers picked them off from twenty meters up in a tree as they tried to evacuate.”

  “Damn it Grandyn, why do they let you out of the bunker?” Zaverly said as if she hadn’t heard the “good” news. “You’re a torgon death magnet.”

  He looked down, unable to tell her that his guilt and outrage exceeded hers. But as much as he liked Zaverly and was grateful for what she’d done on this and many other days, he could not tell her his secret.

  When the technician told the AOI commander that the Collins-HG3 had been destroyed, he began to prepare his resignation. An hour later, before he’d been able to submit it, word came of the full loss of life and his INU lit up with a zoom from the AOI Chief.

  “Terrible day for the families of our fallen,” she said bitterly.

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  “But I’m convinced this was him. The rebels responded too fast. They fought too hard and had too many assets in place to protect him. Congratulations, Commander. I know you’re fighting blind, but you’ve done the impossible: you found Grandyn in spite of our handicaps in the jungle. You now have my full authorization of redeployment and resource pull. Finish what you started. Bring me Grandyn dead or alive, but I must have his body.”

  Chapter 9 - Book 2

  Nelson Wright looked at his beautiful sister as a concerned older brother. Chelle, the rebel leader, looked thin, and much older than when he had seen her two years ago.

  “I look that bad?” she asked, catching his worried stare.

  “Yeah. You’re looking more like our grandmother than my sister.” Nelson, a simple, eccentric novelist, had been one of those most responsible for the current state of the world.

  Three years earlier, he’d been the mastermind behind stealing the last physical books before the AOI destroyed them. Ever since, and unbeknownst to most of its citizens, the utopian Aylantik society where everyone had a job, food, free and comprehensive healthcare and access to the Field with its unlimited entertainment options, had teetered on the brink of a worldwide rebellion that would end seventy years of peace and shake the accepted view of history. Nelson, believing one should be suspicious of perfection created by anything other than nature, actually wore eyeglasses to protest the Aylantik Health Circle’s policies providing perfect teeth, skin, and vision.

  “I’m sure I don’t look good either,” he said.

  “You never do,” Chelle said with a quick smile and a tone that sounded as if she wanted to laugh but couldn’t. Dappled light came through high branches as they walked the narrow trail in a safe section of the forest in the central California Area mountains.

  “No, I don’t,” he said, sipping from a flask. Nelson, a gifted and bestselling author, had scripted much of the struggle, the search for truth, and had even left a veiled revolutionary trail to follow in his published works. But more than that, the often drunk and always pastry-eating, scruffy, teddy bear of a man, had influenced the participants, on all sides.

  Aside from Chelle, he personally knew Deuce Lipton and Blaise Cortez, and counted all three Happermans as family. He’d also become a confidant of Munna, the hundred and thirty-three year-old symbol of the revolution. He may not have yet met Lance Miner and the AOI Chief, but they had both read all of his books, even some unpublished ones. For all his importance, everything he’d seen and done, it was the recent year he’d spent with the late Cope Lipton living among the redwoods that had shaped him the most. Nelson Wright now stood as a changed man from the one who fanned the flames in the early days of the struggle.

  “But after my year in the wilderness with Cope, I look better on the inside.”

  “Your year in the wilderness, that always strikes me as funny. We all live in the woods most of the time. It’s our best chance for staying alive.”

  “I know, but it was different, very different, with Cope. I wish you understood the magic.”

  “Do you?”

  “No, but I accept it. More than that, I rejoice in it.”

  “What about Twain?” Deuce’s son had also lived with Cope during his final year.

  “He was impacted differently, and he’s still out there following Cope’s path.”

  “I wonder what Deuce thinks of that.”

  “The Liptons are a special lot,” Nelson said. “I expect he knew Twain would follow Cope, even before he was born.”

  But Nelson, while documenting the wisdom and magic of the man they called UC, was still trying to figure it all out. He’d poured much of it into new writings, many of which had been snuck onto the Field, hoping to influence a new legion of thinkers and to document the hidden history buried by those who feared it. And to that end, Nelson had taken to starting esoteric debates and long, meandering, intellectual, spiritual-infused conversations with everyone he encountered. It was a vain effort to recapture his talks with Cope, for after his passing, the void cut large within Nelson’s world.

  “Why did you come Nelson?” Chelle asked. “You know it’s not safe.”

  Nelson lit a bac and sat on a fallen tree. “You know why.”

  “AOI killed two more TreeRunners today,” Chelle said.

  “Grandyn?” Nelson asked, filled with panic.

  “No, but we still can’t find him.” She fanned the smoke away. “Like I’ve said a hundred times, if we can’t find him and we’re his friends,
then the AOI isn’t going to find him.”

  “I want the books.”

  “They have hundreds hunting him,” Chelle said, ignoring her brother’s request. “Grandyn needs to come in and let us protect him.”

  “Like we protected his parents?” Nelson asked, knowing that mentioning Harper and Runit Happerman would disturb Chelle.

  “Cheap shot, big brother,” Chelle said angrily. “Those were different days! A-And you know damn well Harper wasn’t under our protection and Runit was,” she stuttered, “a casualty of the Doneharvest.”

  Nelson knew Chelle had loved Grandyn’s father, and she knew he’d loved Grandyn’s mother. “We both have a lot of regrets from those times,” he said. “Especially at the end with the library. Runit and I never put things right. I owe him the protection of his son and those books.”

  “We owe him,” Chelle said. Her voice reflected the strain of trying to keep those promises when Grandyn didn’t want their protection. In the course and confusion of the early days of the Doneharvest, the books had been scattered. “But you know how complicated it all became after Runit . . .”

  Her thoughts lingered back three years as if it had been a thousand. So much had happened since then, but that burning, bloody gash in her heart, still noisy and toxic, made it seem like yesterday.

  In the months following Runit’s death, the AOI’s Doneharvest crackdown resulted in thousands of arrests and executions. Chelle and Grandyn had been first among them, winding up in AOI custody, but Polis Drast, then head of the Pacyfik region, had released them. As one of the most powerful people in the Aylantik government, he’d been playing a dangerous game. Hand-chosen and backed by Lance Miner to be the next World Premier, Drast was only months away from achieving that goal when the AOI figured out his plot. Drast had been planning to use his position as World Premier to disassemble the AOI and undo the restrictive policies of the Aylantik.