by Brian Trent
Taku felt the grave silence. “I humbly beg to be allowed to—”
“Enough!” Hanmura3 looked to the wolves. “Command Alpha. Attack.”
Taku’s eyes bulged. “Sir! No!”
The wolves blinked where they sat gnawing bones. The game’s local environment had changed Taku’s IFF from friend to foe.
They were still rending Taku’s avatar to messy scraps when Hanmura3 left the room and logged off.
Aboard the airship, he called his Singapore office and ordered Taku terminated from Hanmura Enterprises. Then he leaned back in his chair, pleasantly exhausted. His stomach bubbled, stricken with a surging irrational desire for steak tartare and raspberry pie.
Chapter Fifteen
Reunion
Celeste plucked an apple from a potted tree as she exited the hospital into an airy food court. She bit into the crisp fruit, unconcerned with the juices running down her chin, and leaned over the balcony rail to consider her new universe.
It was impressive work, really. As best she could tell, arky engineers had managed to fuse elements of classical Mesopotamia with old Manhattan. The real Manhattan had been lost to the sea centuries ago, its subways flooded, Times Square and Central Park now just curiosities for tourists to visit via submersible. Babylon Arcology had recaptured its famous look, though. Celeste peered interestedly at the recreated streets, shop windows, and faux fire hydrants amid carven visages of weird monsters, lions, and bird-headed demons.
And there was a black marble statue in the square too. An immensely muscular, scowling, bearded figure glaring at the pedestrians who passed.
Warlord Enyalios, Celeste thought in awe. She knew the stories – every Wastelander did. Nonetheless, she was surprised to see that the arkies had erected a goddamn statue to the maniac…even if he had established New Babylon as the capitol of his empire.
The Warlord Century had produced many would-be conquerors. Eventually the world’s city-states were unified into the Pax Apollonia. Asia and Australia first, Europe and Africa next…woven through a dazzling series of military and diplomatic successes that laid the foundation of Earth Republic. America, hopelessly Balkanized by warfare and rogue miltias, had been the last region to join a unified world.
And they had only joined at all because of Enyalios.
He had unified the Americas, sure, though his approach had been different from his overseas counterparts. Emerging from the ruins of New York, the man had shot to prominence on a career of murder unlike anything history had ever seen. His armies swept from Alaska to Argentina, killing one hundred and fifty million people as he went. His rules were simple: join him or die. No diplomacy, no negotiations. If a city resisted, he burned it from the Earth.
Once the Americas were firmly under his control, everyone expected him to continue his crusade. Instead, he shocked the world when he signed the non-aggression treaty with Warlords Apollo and Lady Wen Ying. Enyalios spent his final years of life laying plans for great cities like New Babylon. He died in his sleep.
For Celeste, it was Enyalios who had been her first crush. It was Enyalios who would have saved her mother…or at the very least, would have wreaked such maniacal vengeance that no other little girl would have to endure something like that again. Historians of the time reported that the American Warlord’s wildly insane temper was especially directed against those who victimized the innocent.
Celeste devoured the rest of her apple and chucked the core into a compost bin. She smeared the juices off her chin and considered her situation.
Jeff! Look where the fuck I am!
She fought her anguish, channeled it into cold rage. Out in the Wastes there were families dying of starvation, and here in just this little corner of Babylon Arcology was an obscene surplus of food: recreations of mythic Chinatown, Little Italy, Nathan’s hotdog stands, gyros, pizzas, calzones, and shish kabobs in the shade of ziggurats and Akkadian bas reliefs. How much of this food went to waste…instead of to the Wastes?
StrikeDown needs to succeed, she thought bitterly. Needs to teach these spoiled assholes what it’s like to hunt and scavenge.
In the meantime, she needed to succeed…and therefore, needed to eat. Celeste scanned the marketplace until she decided on a calamari gyro. Grabbing it from the rack, she fumbled for her arcology pass. A black-haired man suddenly cut her off in line.
“Allow me,” he said, and purchased the sandwich for her with a tap of his fingertip on the payment pad.
Celeste regarded his green gaze. Handsome and audacious. “Are you the local do-gooder? Or just anxious to get laid?”
“No to the first question, yes to the second, but neither are relevant to you,” Gethin said.
Celeste bit noisily into her gyro and studied him. “Too bad. I was looking forward to breaking in an arky. You wouldn’t have cried too much.”
“I’m an investigator with the IPC.”
She stopped, mid-chew. Then she swallowed the bite, licking the crumbs off her lips. “Why the hell is the IPC interested in…” She swallowed the lump again. “In the missiles? I thought that was Republic jurisdiction.”
“It can involve both,” Gethin said, noting the flicker of her eyes. Jack had said people died in the Stillness raid. Gethin hadn’t appreciated that ‘died’ in this case must have meant permadeath, brother to insensible rock and all that. “And there may be a connection to other attacks.”
“What other attacks?”
“The shuttle explosion.”
“Oh.”
Gethin heard the disinterest. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“About what?”
“Your loss. I understand you lost people out there.”
Celeste took another bite of the gyro, saying nothing.
Gethin studied her for a moment. “There were two explosions on Luna. A research lab went first, and then a shuttle. It appears the shuttle wasn’t the target, it was just in the way. But a mysterious energy burst fell to Earth and we have no idea what it was. Some think you might fill in the blanks.”
Celeste watched him over her gyro. “These Lunars who were killed. They were all citizens, right? So they’ve been revived?”
“I was one of them.”
She looked him over, from black tunic to sandals. “So if I broke your neck right now, in a few hours you’d be coming back down here to have your second lunch of the day?”
“It’d be my first lunch, as far as that goes. But yeah.”
For a moment Celeste was tempted to ask how far regen technology had come. It was one of those angelic technologies guarded by arkies. One of the great prizes King D. was after, mentioned several times in his ‘Give us Life’ speech at the Philadelphius rally. It was also a polarizing technology among the Wastes. Stillness decried it as devilry, stealing people’s souls and all that nonsense. StrikeDown wanted universal distribution, wanted to storm the diamond towers of Babylon and Memphis and Hartford, haul out the tech, and give Outlanders an equal chance at life and health.
Could it bring back her dead team members? They’d only been dead…what…ten hours? Wasn’t there something of them that could be saved?
Before she realized it, her lips were moving. “Can you bring back my friends?”
“The ones who were killed?”
“Yes.”
“It’s been twelve hours. Brain structures break down within minutes. I would say no. Again, I’m sorry.”
She nodded.
Gethin hesitated. “I’d like permission to see your memories of the attack.”
“Officer Yamanaka didn’t ask permission. I have no rights to refuse you.”
“True. I’m just being courteous.”
Celeste belched noisily. “Of course you can see what happened.”
“It’ll help catch the ones who did it.”
“They’re dead.”
“The ones who hired them.”
“Like that matters,” she snapped. She peered around the market, spotting a few aug kiosks. “Do you sell wetware here?”
“Nothing you could buy with your credit line.”
Celeste stuffed the last bit of gyro into her mouth. “Then buy it for me. Consider it a courteous payment for me allowing you to see inside my skull.”
“What do you want?”
“An S-jack.”
For a moment he was quiet. “Prometheus deactivated your sensorium?”
“Yes.”
“Wasn’t very nice of them. Sure, I’ll get you an S-jack.” Gethin started to say more when an incoming message flared in his eye.
Id spoke rapidly: *Your hydra just located a phone record matching the revised search parameters.*
“Let me hear.”
It was a sound file, snagged from the Vector Nanonics/Bell commgrid. An Athens-to-NoCal call lasting one minute, twelve seconds.
The audio played, and Gethin heard a man’s voice speaking in a cool, measured cadence.
“We agreed you’d listen to me,” the man said.
“Did I indicate I was changing my mind?” replied a second speaker.
“So what happened up there?”
“I got what I needed.”
“You weren’t subtle.”
“Subtlety is your style, not mine. They’re active again. I wanted to send a message.”
“Things have changed, damnitall!” It was the first voice. The rise of emotion made Gethin think he knew it from somewhere. He thought of Greece. Gethin paused the recording, instructed Ego to run a patmatch, and then resumed the exchange.
The executive voice was still talking: “There was an attack on the Hudson. People are watching things very closely. In this kind of environment, you have to exercise more caution. Do you understand?”
Silence. But it was ghastly silence, like something under high pressure.
“Whatever you say.”
“Please.”
“Whatever you say,” repeated the second voice, and the call ended.
Then came the real surprise. Ego flashed its success.
Gethin’s jaw dropped. “What?”
Celeste raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t say anything.”
Professor Peisistratos? Stunned by the revelation, Gethin asked for a patmatch on the NoCal voice. His heart beat anxiously, palms sweaty.
The Wastelander was staring at him with caution. “You okay?”
“Yes.”
“Because you don’t look okay.”
Gethin sighed. “I think I just made a major break in the case.” He grew pensive for a moment. Then he snapped his fingers. “Right. An S-jack. Tell you what, we’ll go to the wetware shop together.”
Celeste nodded, bewildered, when she saw Keiko Yamanaka’s head rising up from the escalator behind him.
* * *
Keiko came over the crest of the escalator just as Gethin turned in her direction and saw her.
She recovered, but not swiftly and not all at once. Still trying to process what she was seeing – the Wastelander girl sitting with Gethin Bryce of all goddamn people! Her carefully ordered thoughts flew apart.
Stay. In. Control.
She pronounced the words inwardly, with such jagged elocution it was probably audible on the subvocal band. Which made her angry at the merest possibility that Gethin might hear it.
“Ms. Segarra,” she called to the Wastelander. “We’ve completed our review of the Hudson attack. You have been cleared.”
Celeste nodded. “Thanks.”
“Hello, Keiko,” Gethin said.
She met his gaze with calculated equanimity. “Gethin Bryce. You’re the very last person I expected to see today. Are you acquainted with Ms. Segarra?”
“We are now.”
Keiko’s eyes were hard. “You expect me to believe that you just coincidentally showed up here—”
Jack came up behind her, interrupting gently. “He’s been assigned to work with us.”
“What?”
Gethin smiled broadly. “I’m not the Arcadium junkie you knew. I’m now the very best agent with the IPC.”
The muscles in Keiko’s jaw clenched. A charged curtain of silence fell between the group.
Celeste decided to break the silence. “You know, I’ve been remembering little details of the attack. The guy who suicided said something to me, right before the explosion.”
Keiko forced herself to turn back to the Wastelander. “Yes. He said ‘Plaga.’”
“Yeah. What does that mean?”
“It’s Latin,” Keiko said, losing her severity in the face of this most peculiar oddity. “An entirely dead language that originated with the ancient Romans.”
“What does it mean?”
“‘Plague.’ He was calling you a plague, right before he killed himself.”
Chapter Sixteen
Progress Report
FROM: Yamanaka, Keiko ID 432-0667-B
TO: Corporate Security Division
CC: Fincher, Drake (Babylon;) Zhang, Wei (Beijing;) Patel, Padideh (Alexandria)
Illustrious Brothers and Sisters,
I submit this information for your review and study. I am boarding IPC Shuttle 997 bound for Athens to continue my investigation.
Per your instructions, Jack Saylor and I are cooperating with IPC investigator Gethin Bryce. His interview with Kenneth Cavor has stirred up startling discoveries (see attached files). Following his interview with Marco and Judith Merril, however, Bryce expressed concern that there is a correlation between the exotic matter cathode and the explosion. Saylor has provided him with Infosheet 12.
Regarding the Outlander Celeste Segarra: the possible correlation between the Hudson suicider and the Lunar explosion has intrigued Bryce, who deputized her as material witness to his investigation. He asked that we expand the parameters of her pass to include the Apollonian Ring; we complied with this request. He has also reactivated her sensorium despite our expressed objections.
(Sidebar note: The Wastelander’s ship is still missing. We are coordinating a global search for the craft; it is my firm belief that even should it prove unconnected with these events, its AI is of a singularly unique, and most probably illegal, nature. Every effort should be made to acquire it. Click here for ship specs.)
The investigation has shifted to Athens per Bryce’s direction. He is a former employee of the University and claims he needs to confer with its experts on the Base 59 footage. We will be monitoring him very closely.
The shuttle is launching now. My next report will come in four hours.
(Sidebar note: As you must know, Gethin Bryce is my ex-husband. My understanding of his abilities will greatly benefit Prometheus as I continue with my inquiry.)
In trust,
Keiko Yamanaka
Part Two
Athens
We call it the Fall, and that’s good enough.
It wasn’t the first time in history that a great civilization had collapsed, though this time the tumbling blocks were radioactive, and billions died in crimson halos beneath phosphorescent sunsets. Nameless poets of those years recall the ‘death-skies of a thousand colors’, but the rain that fell was always black.
Everyone has a theory on which of the old nations precipitated the Fall. The womb-world of humanity shivered, thundered, and sent the Warlord Century down its slimy birth canal.
The Warlord Century! Such a neat name for an era which by all accounts lasted so much longer than a mere hundred years.
When the Three Warlords began their various campaigns, there was little to indicate that history was about to change forever. There is l
ittle evidence that they even knew each other prior to the foundation of the Republic. There is nothing in the records to suggest what their true names were, or why they chose the monikers that they did: Apollo, and Lady Wen Ying, and Enyalios the Mad.
Three conquerors. While their tactics differed, the result was the same: the adoption of a global treaty and a global constitution and a global government. After years of democratic experimentation from Pericles to the Plebian Revolt, the planet Earth finally had a single ruling body…
– Three Kingdoms, One World: The Foundation of Hope
Chapter Seventeen
Jonas
There was an eleven-year-old corpse blinking at him from the mirror, blue eyes set in a ghoulishly pale face.
“Jonas!”
His mother Bahara’s voice came from the hallway. Later in the day when she called his name, her voice would be soft and loving, but not in the morning. There was anxiety in her morning cry. She wanted to make sure he was awake. Alive. One day he wouldn’t answer that morning checkup; hers would be the lone voice in the house, followed up by frantic footsteps, his bedroom door flying open, her scream as she discovered him dead.
Jonas Polat nodded to his reflection. The walking skeleton nodded back.
“Good morning, Mother,” he squeaked into his breathing mask. His high-pitched voice didn’t carry far, but his mask transmitted sound to the kitchen speakers. It was an unsightly contraption, black plastic attached like a mutant hagfish to his mouth, hanging down in a crocodilian snout from where a tube snaked to the spindly robot beside him.
The Polats lived in the forgotten caves of Derinkuyu, in Cappadocia, Turkey. There was a city above them but it was just for show: a town of empty buildings, deserted streets, and high walls patrolled by the Derinkuyu military, where the only other sign of life was in the open-air markets of organically grown fruits and vegetables. Even this aspect was as much for show as for nostalgia; the underdark dwellers had faced the challenge of food production centuries earlier, had applied themselves to the problem, and had solved it in a most ingenious way.
