The Justar Journal: An AOI Thriller

by Brandt Legg

  Chapter 61 - Book 3

  Deuce woke from a fitful sleep. He’d sealed his fate with his decision hours earlier in the night to shut down satellite access around the world, including the ones the AOI used to guide its weapons, and which provided the backbone of the mass surveillance systems. For him and his empire, the ramifications would be far-reaching and long-lasting, of that he was certain. What remained unclear was the effectiveness of the most difficult decision of his life.

  The Chief would know that Deuce had chosen sides. She would not be surprised. No one would be surprised. But the Chief would retaliate, swiftly, and with all the brutality she could muster. Now he would find out if his defenses were up to the test. However, it wasn’t the Lipton empire that mattered most to him. It was the future of humanity.

  “I did it to stop the slaughter,” Deuce told Munna, “or at least slow it.”

  The Moon Shadow was farther south, and a tropical breeze warmed the early morning air. They sipped juice and watched the horizon turn from pink to blue.

  “I know your intentions were good,” she said, “but good intentions are often a mistake in disguise.”

  “Will you let me see the Justar Journal?” he asked, afraid she might say yes. Seeing what would happen as a result of his decision worried him almost as much as watching what was now happening while he did nothing.

  Blame and guilt make a toxic potion that can transform a hero into a coward, he thought.

  Munna nodded. He turned to go down below deck, but suddenly, she opened four VMs. The first was Reflections of the Revolution in France, by Edmund Burke. It showed the war moving into orbit. The AOI had even destroyed Deuce’s moon base, and satellites exploded in mass numbers, causing an almost impenetrable debris field around the earth. Space travel would become very difficult, but as Deuce watched, he realized it wouldn’t matter.

  The earth was in ruins. The Imps and the AOI had battled so efficiently against each other and the rebels, that the result was complete devastation. At the same time, in the distraction of war, the new plague had ravished the surviving population as it tore around the globe unchecked.

  The Marcus Aurelius Meditations VM showed the details and the dying, while the John Milton Paradise Lost VM had a view of earth as a wasted, toxic mess. The forests had all burned, and the oceans were a brown and black stew of death. It was an unrecognizable place.

  Deuce shuddered. “I did this?” he asked. “Were my mistakes were too great?”

  Munna looked into the highest part of the sky, where the indigo still clung to a faint star. “It is more than a mistake for us to fight one another. That was never‒‒”

  “I thought I would be battling a normal AOI, not one led by some new version of Hitler.” Deuce was distraught. “And I never counted on the Imps trying to take over the world.”

  “Sometimes we see things one way, but something entirely different is occurring.”

  “I guess so,” Deuce said, dejected and unsure of what to do. “Can we fix it? Is there anything I can do?”

  She pointed to the still blank VM, Rights of Man, by Thomas Paine. “It shows nothing can be done.”

  Deuce let out a long sigh. He thought of his children and his wife. A lump formed in his throat. How could this be the end?

  “But it can change,” Munna said, so quietly that in his despair he didn’t hear her.

  “What?”

  “It can change,” she said, raising her voice. “The Justar Journal is always being written and rewritten. We must keep an eye on the Rights of Man, for how that goes will tell us if the future is to be livable.” Munna stared at him, her eyes filled with consequence, and then she repeated, “It can change.”

  Chapter 62 - Book 3

  Blaise Cortez yelled every obscenity he knew, including ones from three of the old, dead languages. He tried to reach Deuce, with no luck. The assassination attempt on the Chief had failed.

  The husband and wife team had just reported in. The level of their frustration could not be measured. “We had her!” the husband had yelled.

  Everything had gone perfectly. They would never know now if the Chief’s bunker could have withstood the Sonic-bomb, because four minutes before the bomber dropped its payload, the satellite guiding it went dark, and the bomber’s failsafe system immediately locked the weapons and automatically sent the large drone back to its base.

  Blaise sat contemplating the irony of Deuce’s move. If he’d waited, even five minutes, the Chief might be dead. The war could have been ended. It certainly would have become a more sensible war. Blaise almost smiled at his own oxymoron.

  A sensible war, he thought. Blaise had recently acquired several large construction equipment manufacturers and other companies that would profit immensely from the rebuilding which would inevitably follow war. He believed that to be sensible, but that was before the Chief had destroyed a substantial portion of civilization in a matter of days.

  The assassination wasn’t the only loss when the satellites went down. Blaise had closed in on Grandyn. It had been the artificial rainstorm that had been the final variable in his search. He finally had the TreeRunner, and was going to be able to follow him straight to the List Keepers. But now Grandyn would slip through his fingers again. If Blaise could reach Deuce, right after he chewed him out, he’d ask him if he had any BLAXERs close enough to get in there and track Grandyn the rest of the way. But if he couldn’t contact Deuce soon, that option would evaporate like the steam from the fires.

  Out of desperation, Blaise had authorized the backup plan, although he didn’t think it had much chance of success. They had two operatives inside the bunker. If they could get word to them, and there was an opportunity, they would move on the Chief. But as Blaise told his team, “The bunker is very large, with multiple levels. It’s not exactly a big open party inside.”

  Unbeknownst to Blaise, Nolan, one of Deuce’s top BLAXER, also had an agent inside. But he was different. He was willing to die. He’d been given the green light.

  “Kill the Chief, by any means necessary.”

  The Imps, now fully operational again, took the satellite shutdown as a gift and seized the opportunity to attack the AOI. Imps had never meant the Trapciers-AOI alliances to be permanent, at least as far as Sidis was concerned. The AOI was just another piece of the human mess that the Traditionals needed to surrender.

  The Imps’ plan had been to go after the AOI in a few more days, but without satellites, the AOI was a much easier target. They used androids to bomb AOI targets, and used digital viruses to corrupt AOI weapons so they could be used against Aylantik assets.

  There were many systems of communication and monitoring that were not completely reliant on satellites. KEL and the Field being the two largest systems that would survive, albeit with some loss of functionality, could still be used. The Trapciers had established other methods, and would have the advantage. Or, at least until the AOI could open up space again.

  The Trapciers had a three-phase plan to take control of the world. Phase One had been to use the AOI to radically reduce the human population and decimate the rebel opposition. Phase Two was to use the BLAXERS, P-Force, and PAWN to weaken each other further. And Phase Three was to turn on the Chief and attack the AOI. It was all meant to cause chaos and put the Trapciers in control.

  “Conducting Phases Two and Three simultaneously will be taxing,” Galahad said. “We have only so many androids running our programs.”

  “The AOI is weak without satellites,” Sidis countered. “The BLAXERS and P-Force are not prepared for what this war has brought, and PAWN is overwhelmed. The world will be on its knees in less than two days.”

  “The world appears to be past its knees,” Charlemagne added. “I think the world is lying on the ground grasping its chest.”

  “Just wait,” Sidis smirked. “Even while we were down, our factories were churning out androids. I’ve also just received a bit of encouraging news from the Einstein group. We may have figured o
ut a way to use the satellites without the AOI, StarFly, or even Deuce Lipton knowing about it.”

  While all sides worked on trying to control, restore, or keep the satellites dark, the Trapciers suddenly seemed to have the advantage. Through their vast network of machines, in a world run by machines, they were quickly able to multiply the bedlam. By hacking and corrupting, they were able to trick and manipulate PAWN into battles with P-Force and the BLAXERs, and likewise with the BLAXERs and P-Force. The Trapciers had them all blindly fighting each other.

  Sidis watched it unfold on dozens of VMs and smiled. Many monitors showed the fires and the new plague spreading even faster. Others were filled with “accidental” battles as they erupted among all the players. Even for the cold Imps, it was almost too much devastation to bear. But Sidis, unwavering in his mission, summed it up poetically.

  “It is a just cause in which we march. Destiny assures that the Trapciers will see this through to its rightful conclusion. In a mere forty-eight hours, this final war will terminate. Watch with me comrades, until the crisis and confusion, death and destruction, greed and guilt, lead where they will. To the end. The end of everything.”

  Chapter 63 - Book 3

  Drast and Osc looked out the window from the top floor of the Seattle AOI building and saw a ruined city. Large swaths had been erased, as if a child had pushed a toy dump truck through a village of block towers.

  “The Chief is insane,” Osc said, shaking his head in dismay.

  “The Aylantik is built on insanity. They killed almost two-thirds of the Earth’s population in the Banoff, and this time they seem to be trying to finish us off,” Drast said. “But the Chief is not actually insane. She is something worse. The Chief is an ambitious leader, at once calculating, yet reckless. She is one of the most focused people I’ve ever known, nerves of steel, the type of person who will not hesitate to risk it all and take us to the brink of extinction to try to eradicate what she sees as a threat to the peace which has prevailed for more than seventy years.”

  “Peace prevails, always,” Osc said ironically, gesturing out at the destruction.

  Drast nodded. “The Chief believes the Aylantik system is a true utopia, that we can do no better. And that is the problem. When the liars start believing their own lies. When searching for the truth, you may find it never even existed.”

  The Ally who’d brought them from Vancouver burst into the room. “Drast, we’ve got the Scram up!”

  Drast smiled. “Excellent.” He and Osc followed the Ally down the corridor to a control room. “Who have you raised so far?”

  “We’re in touch with San Francisco, Phoenix, Denver, Salt Lake City, San Diego, Guadalajara, and Lima,” the Ally answered.

  “Are they all in our hands?” Osc asked.

  “No,” the Ally replied. “The wolves still control them, but the Allies are awaiting orders.”

  “Do it,” Drast said.

  The command center communications officer relayed the command to the other seven Key AOI headquarters that had responded.

  “It’s going to be a tense thirty minutes or so,” Drast told Osc. “If even one of them fails, the Chief will be alerted and come down on us in a magnitude of that.” He pointed to a monitor displaying a sea of rubble that was once a recognizable city. Wherever it was, it didn’t exist anymore. There were no survivors, nothing left to show the horror but a concrete scar.

  “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” Osc said.

  Drast nodded solemnly.

  “Shouldn’t we try to contact my mother?” Osc asked.

  “Not while we’re here. Not until we secure more of the Keys.”

  During the next twenty-five minutes, they reviewed a list of their recently acquired assets: a good stash of weapons, a fleet of AOI LEV vans, jet packs, and even light range drones.

  “We’ve just added substantially to the rebels’ capabilities,” Osc said.

  “And this is only the beginning,” Drast added, staring at the VMs, tensely waiting for word from the other Keys. “But we need to move as much of this as we can. Even if we are successful, this stuff needs to be in a place where the Chief can’t find it.”

  “Does such a place exist?” Osc asked, glancing across a long row of VMs and their images of devastation.

  “Sheep in wolves’ clothing,” the communication officer suddenly announced. “Denver is ours.”

  Drast raised his fist in the air. “Yes!”

  “And San Francisco, Salt Lake,” the officer continued. “Here comes San Diego.”

  “Like clockwork,” Drast said, both proud and relieved that his plans, dormant for so long, had now come to fruition. “The torgon wolves are at the door but we’re not letting them in!”

  “Phoenix just reported.”

  Allies in the room started clapping. Drast manipulated a VM and zoomed in on the two remaining Keys, Guadalajara and Lima.

  “Vamos, salvanos,” Drast whispered in the forbidden dead language of Spanish. It had once been spoken in both Peru and Mexico, where those last Keys were located. There were other keys, but so far Seattle had not been able to raise a friendly voice at those centers. Seven keys would at least be enough to slow the steam rolling. More would surely come if they could reach Allies at those locations, however, if Lima and Guadalajara didn’t crossover, then the celebration would be over before it began.

  “We’ve got confirmation that the satellites are down,” another Ally said, running in from another room. “The Chief issued a command to seize all Deuce Lipton’s assets . . . Eysen, Inc., StarFly, everything. That means Deuce Lipton is with us!”

  Drast almost smiled, but he worried Deuce might have played his hand too soon, and he didn’t understand what was taking so long in the last two Keys.

  “Come on, save us,” he said quietly, repeating his earlier Spanish plea in English.

  Osc could feel Drast’s tension. He’d been through enough with the rebel mastermind to know this was a do-or-die moment. With all that had happened, more than just the outcome of the revolution rested with Lima and Guadalajara, but the survival of the human race depended upon them.

  Osc silently repeated the prayer, Vamos, salvanos.

  Chapter 64 - Book 3

  In the rolling struggle between Grandyn and Zaverly, the lasershod discharged, but missed them both. Somehow, Zaverly wound up with the weapon and scrambled to her feet. She stood just a meter away from Grandyn, pointing the lasershod. Even if Fye were still standing, the encroaching smoky fog would have blocked her view of them.

  “Now!” Zaverly yelled, backing up a step. “Now we’re going to finish this. And I’ve changed my mind,” she said, panting. “I’m going to shoot Fye first so you’ll know just how it feels . . . how I felt.”

  “I do know how it feels!” Grandyn shouted at her. “Damn you, I know. The AOI stole my mother when I was eight years old. Then they killed my first love, Vida. Sweet and beautiful Vida . . . she was just nineteen years old.” His voice cracked as tears fell from his eyes. “Then the AOI bombs came and my father died in front of me. They’ve taken everything from me. Ev-ver-ree-thing! You and I are the same, Zaverly.”

  “We are not,” she said weakly, seemingly touched by his speech.

  “But we are. The AOI has tried to destroy our lives, but we’re TreeRunners. We know how to survive, and we know how to fight back. It’s them, damn it! It’s them.” The fog closed around them as muddy water ran everywhere.

  Zaverly thought of the AOI agents who had raped her and her friends. She and the other girls had been so young, so innocent. Her mind recalled the images. She could see the agents’ empty, greedy faces. Feel their disgusting, sweaty flesh. All the anonymous grunges who’d killed so many of the people she loved now invading her, as they always did when she was weak. They all looked the same, they all looked like monsters.

  Grandyn’s words echoed in her head, numb with bitterness.

  “But it’s your fault Beckett’s dead,” she said, grasping at her
vengeance, but sounding less like the raging warrior and more like a little girl.

  “Beckett volunteered for the Grandyn mission,” Grandyn said loudly. “He did it because he was a hero. He had to know that we need to do anything and everything to defeat the AOI. They must be defeated. They. Must. Be. Destroyed.” He paused and tried to find her eyes. “Would Beckett have wanted you to kill me?”

  Zaverly stared into his eyes and slowly shook her head. It was almost imperceptible at first, but she was saying no.

  “Will you help us wipe the torgon AOI off the planet?”

  She lowered her gun and stared at him, as if seeing him for the first time, or seeing Beckett, or maybe just not seeing him as another one of the monsters.

  He fought his training, which told him to lunge at her and get the weapon while she was distracted and confused. But his instincts told him to wait.

  “You are one of the AOI’s greatest enemies,” she said, as if it was news to him. Certainly the idea seemed to have never occurred to her before.

  “My whole life is dedicated to ending them,” he said defiantly, but with pleading eyes.

  Zaverly stared another second, and then finally said, “We need to cross the river.”

  Chapter 65 - Book 3

  “We have Lima and Guadalajara!” the communications officer announced. “We got them all!” The roar could be heard down the corridor, and the mood inside the Seattle Key command center became raucous. It turned out that the delay had been a glitch in the Scram network.

  Drast’s sigh of relief was followed by a barrage of orders. He wanted more Keys on board. “There are eleven more Keys in the Pacyfik. Find our people. Let’s kick the wolves out of our house!”

  Allies were put in charge of transporting weapons and provisions, including food and water, to other secure locations. The establishment of a secure link to PAWN Command was made a priority, but it needed to be mobile because Drast planned on heading south.