Ten Thousand Thunders

by Brian Trent

  He wasn’t ready to deal with the awesome weight of implications happening here. Leon Tanner was not Leon Tanner. The man had been commandeered somehow. Replicated, imitated. A golem? No, the person he had been speaking with was too intelligent, too high-functioning.

  And where was the real Tanner? Held hostage somewhere? Killed in a dampened room where his lifecode couldn’t be detected and purchase signals could never escape?

  The airship engines thrummed and the ship rose without fuss into the sky, leaving the skypad behind. Gethin leaned against the window. His beloved Athens sank like a luminescent dream into deeper layers of slumber.

  Back to the darkness, he thought, chilled. The words of an ancient poem from Lord Byron floated into his consciousness:

  The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the stars

  Did wander darkling in the eternal space,

  Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth

  Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air

  “Gethin?”

  It was Keiko, sitting across from him.

  He blinked at her, but his words were directed elsewhere. “Do it.”

  Keiko frowned. “Do what?”

  *Jamming surveillance band.*

  Gethin leaned towards the Prometheans. “Okay, we don’t have much time, so listen closely. I have reason to believe that Colonel Tanner is not Colonel Tanner. He has been replaced. Looks like the man, but sure as hell doesn’t possess the man’s memories.”

  Jack’s eyes bulged. “Replaced? By whom?”

  “The last time I met Tanner was eleven years ago. He was chock full of wetware. Sensorium, wetport, medcells. Some cutting-edge things too—”

  “So?”

  “So the Tanner I met today was a goddamn virgin. There wasn’t so much as an earpiece on him.”

  Doros Peisistratos had no wetware, either.

  Keiko looked unimpressed. “Stealth augs.”

  “I considered that. That’s why I tested him as we left. Tanner never pulled me off the Ecuador inquiry. I finished the damn assignment, I reported my findings to him in person. And my Mars inquiry? Tanner never sent a partner with me to the Red Planet. I’m telling you, the man we just met was not the colonel.”

  Celeste sweated openly. “Gethin, that man—”

  “Wait a minute,” Keiko interjected, “Who else could he be? Are you screwing with us again?”

  “The man in that office is a goddamn imposter!”

  Something happened in Keiko’s eyes. They developed a cold sheen like the patina of polished chrome, the kind of look from their Arcadium days, when they had worked together to carve up digital empires like ancient conquerors. He could see his words finding their mark.

  Her hand strayed to the back of her ear.

  “Don’t do that,” Gethin warned. “This is an IPC ship and they monitor everything. I’m jamming surveillance, but I can’t cloak messages you might send to PI.”

  *Gethin, my frequency jammers are being countered faster than I can adjust. You have three seconds.*

  “Just sit tight and play along,” Gethin told his companions. He flicked Keiko’s knee, gave her a meaningful look.

  Two seconds.

  One.

  “Keiko,” he said loudly, “Just what is your fucking problem? Sorry our marriage didn’t work out, but if Tanner is right and Avalon is behind this, that’s a bit more important than our personal baggage…unless you’d rather the machines take over during your protracted hissy fit?”

  Keiko turned so red that Gethin worried she might actually deck him. “Same old Gethin Bryce. I have moved on! I got offworld. But you, even when you finally worked up the nerve to leave Mother Blue, nothing changed!”

  “Part of my charm.”

  “Part of why you’ll always be alone!”

  They bantered, bringing up enough personal issues to make Jack and Celeste wriggle uncomfortably. The Outlander excused herself to use the bathroom.

  “Wait,” Keiko snapped. “Are we just letting this woman walk around alone? She’s got an AI ship. Maybe she’s working with them!”

  “Celeste is fine,” Gethin retorted, wondering if Keiko was still playacting or being serious now.

  Keiko whirled. “Fine? Why, because she has a nice pair of tits? Another youngster to quicken you?”

  Gethin’s face flushed. “You’re the one who brought her to civilization. You go watch her urinate.”

  “I brought her to Babylon, got what I needed, and was done with her. You insisted she come to Athens for reasons that are strangely unclear.”

  “Maybe I thought she had a nice pair of tits.”

  Celeste descended the stairs in a hurry, heart pounding. She reached the bottom of the stairs and suddenly keeled over, the emotional impact of reliving Jeff’s death like a gut punch. She squeezed her eyes shut, sobbing once, hammering her fists into the floor.

  “Can I help you, ma’am?”

  She glanced up. A young IPC guard had rounded the corner and was watching her in concern.

  “Sorry, but all passengers must remain upstairs.”

  Celeste dredged up the closest thing to a smile she could manage. “You prefer I piss all over the floor?”

  The guard smirked, as if to say, Well yes, I would prefer that. He pointed to a door. “Bathroom is there.”

  “Thanks,” she said, and went inside, locked the door. She studied the bathroom mirror. A scared girl looked back.

  “Mantid?” she asked quietly.

  Her optics gave a NO SIGNAL. They really were cut off here.

  She didn’t know where the Mantid was, but ships in King D.’s nascent revolution were highly protective of their owners. The last communication she’d had with it had been only two words.

  HERE. WAITING.

  Yet the Mantid knew she was in Athens. Invisible, it must surely be shadowing her. Was it outside the airship even now?

  Her reflection offered no answers. Just grim commitment to a grimmer decision.

  * * *

  She emerged from the bathroom and nearly plowed into the guard, who had taken vigil directly on the other side of the door. The kid was a few inches shorter than Jack, but he didn’t wear the height well; a toothpick man, gaunt and sunken in the way an arky should never be. Celeste had seen malnourished looks like that before in Outland folk all over the Americas.

  Celeste smiled. “Trying to listen to the sound of my tinkle?”

  The guard looked somewhat abashed. “No! I just to wanted to make sure—”

  “That us Wastelanders know how to use the bathroom?”

  “You…you’re a Wastelander?”

  “A frustrated Wastelander.” She stared into his eyes and decided that he really was as young as he looked. Twenty years old if he was a day. “Those people upstairs? I’m in their custody, did you know that? They watch what I eat, drink…hell, I haven’t been allowed to fuck since I got here, and I’m so frustrated I can barely think straight.”

  The guard looked conflicted. He stared to say something, stammered, then turned to make sure they were alone.

  Stars, she thought. How have men managed to achieve anything with their dicks acting as cosmic divining rods?

  The instant he looked away, Celeste shoved him so hard his feet left the ground. She dashed past him, rounded the corner, and flung open the cargo hold door.

  She had no plan. The guard had merely commented that no one was allowed down here. That was excuse enough, knowing what she knew, to see why the cargo hold was forbidden. Why an immense airship was being used to cart four people to an orbital station.

  As she stepped through the door, however, she froze in place.

  Thirty additional people were huddled throughout the hold! They were a mixed crew, all armed with weaponry of crude, nasty variety. Fleschettes, multig
uns, handguns…but Celeste only had eyes for the wet-looking, summer-green cloaks they wore.

  Stillness cloaks.

  Holy shit!

  She heard the guard come rushing up behind her.

  Celeste spun around and squatted as the man reached her. Her punch was aimed for his crotch, and it connected beautifully; he made a wheezing sound as he doubled over. Celeste caught his chin with an uppercut. Then she tore a pistol from his holster – a stunner as it happened.

  The Stillness troopers in the hold scrambled to their feet. But there was a hesitation; Celeste realized they hadn’t expected this turn of events. She could see it in their eyes: they were being secretly transported – to the orbital station or whatever the next stop was to be. They were supposed to stay secret; her sudden appearance confused them, gave enough time to save her life.

  Celeste bolted for the stairs. Halfway up their length, she turned and fired the stunner at the first head that rounded the corner. The blast put the man down. She leapt up the rest of the way.

  Her survival instincts cycled through the possibilities. Thirty fanatical and armed soldiers who will gleefully die for their ideology. The IPC in collusion with them…

  …and we’re in an airship at least thirty thousand feet up.

  In the airship’s passenger cabin, Gethin intercepted her.

  “Stillness!” she cried. “Thirty Stillness troopers in the hold!” As she spoke, three IPC officers – or rather, three men dressed as IPC officers – appeared atop the grand stairs leading to the crew cabin, drawn by the clamor and shouts.

  Gethin was looking right at them when they emerged. Their names should have appeared on his optics, but there was nothing.

  Impossible.

  All IPC officers were registered to the global infosystem. Standing in the clutches of panic, Gethin made the connection. These were Outlanders recruited by Tanner’s look-alike. The famished look on their faces. The scrawny bodies. They’d been given uniforms. Weapons. Control of the airship.

  Celeste pointed her stunner at the officers and squeezed the trigger. One of the men seized up, teeth locking, eyes white. As his compatriots dove to either side, he made a half spin and fell, rolling down the winding stairs like a bowling pin.

  Keiko and Jack were up from their seats, sidearms out, moving in eerie synchronicity. They each flipped a table for cover. Keiko fired at the upper stairs, scattering the officers up there; Jack covered the descent to the lower hold. A green-cloaked woman appeared from below decks and he killed her with a shot through the head.

  Celeste retreated to Gethin’s side, stunner in hand.

  “Twenty-eight down below,” she snapped. “Um…you don’t have a weapon? That’s just great.”

  “Isn’t it, though?”

  A multigun jerked over the rim of the lower level and sprayed an arc of needles into the room, forcing the Prometheans to tuck against their covers.

  Gethin’s blurmod kicked in.

  At IPC Academy, blurmod training involved circumnavigating a gymnasium-sized room while automated turrets shot rubber rounds at you. Hurt like a bitch when they connected and left purple bull’s-eye-shaped bruises. Cadets hated the course.

  Hyperaccelerated, Gethin fell back on that training now. He scooped Celeste off her feet and moved away from the needle-sprayer.

  From the grand stairs, there was movement. The two ‘officers’, matching his speed.

  One of the officers leapt down the entire flight and landed well, pistol firing twice. Keiko took both shots in her chest. The bullets flattened against her uniform, the impact knocking her backwards. She hit the floor, rolled aside as a third shot tore a chunk out of the tiles where her head had just been. Stillness troopers surged from the lower floor like a green geyser.

  Without weapons, about to be pinned down between crossfire, Gethin did the only thing that he could think of. He conjured the blueprints of the airship. Holding up one finger, he activated the fire suppression system. The room instantly filled with chalky mist, blanketing the oncoming Stillness troops with several hundred pounds of directed force. The troops were flattened or knocked aside in the extinguishing jets. One man had fallen face-first to the floor, the suppression system reading his presence as a hard-to-put-out chemical fire; he stoutly tried getting to his feet, slipping and weaving in the abrasive fog. Foam bubbled around his multigun, only meters away.

  A multigun!

  Gethin dove for it, grabbed it, opened fire on the prone troopers he saw, cutting them down as they floundered and stumbled in the miasma of sodium bicarbonate. Bullets and fleschette needles whistled past him. One came close enough to trigger his blurmod again. He snapped into hyperacceleration.

  And noticed something strange in the air.

  A black disc like a hockey puck was crawling overhead towards Keiko and Jack. The Prometheans were ringed by corpses, but their uniforms were also pockmarked by rounds they had taken themselves. Crouched together, firing together, their bodies seemingly frozen to Gethin’s accelerated viewpoint. Blurmods recharging, bullets whispering through the haze around them, neither had noticed the black disc gliding towards them from above. The—

  —grenade!

  Thinking fast, Gethin leapt into the air, slapped the grenade out of its slow-motion arc. The wallop from his hand knocked it aside, but it detonated a moment later, the shell disintegrating into a flash of white that outpaced his own speed.

  His blurmod died. Gethin was flung into the opposite wall.

  Ego advised.

  The airship seemed to have been consumed by a hurricane. Wind batted his ears. A pistol flew past his head towards the—

  Open breach! The airship is breached!

  The grenade blast had torn a gash in the airship. The vessel’s hull grated and flapped like the wings of a mechanical bird. Everything not bolted down disappeared out into the visible sky.

  Gethin barely had time to cling to a support column. His multigun spun away and was gone, followed by green-cloaked figures.

  “Gethin!”

  He managed to rotate his head in the tempest. Celeste was embracing a nearby column, gasping for breath.

  “There’s no way I’ll survive this!” she screamed.

  Gethin craned to look towards Jack and Keiko.

  They were gone.

  Two more soldiers flew past his head. They slammed into the ceiling, snapping limbs, bounced twice, and were blown out of the ship.

  “You guys are immortal!” Celeste insisted. “I’m not!”

  What happened next horrified him so much he almost let go of the column. Fighting to breathe, Celeste seemed to mutter something he couldn’t hear in the furious wind. Then she released her grip. She sailed towards the rupture with an odd grace, tucked her head and arms close, and let herself be sucked out into the open atmosphere.

  At thirty thousand feet.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Suicide

  She was committing suicide to save her life.

  The irony came on as giddy terror while she plummeted through the clouds, air bursting from her lungs in the thin sky. Her clothes flapped like a bat swarm at her ears.

  Celeste twisted herself, seeing the airship dwindle to a pale point above her. Then it was gone, her world engulfed by pure whiteout, like a snowblind strike into someone’s optics. She was engulfed by clouds. Crazily, she found herself thinking of the pegasus in Athens, effortlessly gliding around the restaurant.

  The decision had been pure instinct. The life she was willing to trade for StrikeDown could not be lost on a hijacked airship. She could stay and die, or jump through the breach and…

  She couldn’t breathe. The air was so cold it burned her face. Free of the jamming frequencies, she tried again to contact her vessel. “I am here! I am here!”

  In the absolute w
hiteness of cloud, she struggled against terminal velocity to open her virtuboard. The digital overlay appeared; the green font so light against the clouds she needed to squeeze her eyes shut to read it. Again, she said the words, watching them appear on her optics.

  “I.

  “Am.

  “Here.”

  And from a lake sixteen miles east of Athens arcology, the Mantid raised an invisible rail-gun turret to the sky and fired.

  * * *

  The Mantid never slept.

  Its intelligence circuits were sufficiently complex that, when its crew was away, it retreated into the gloaming of standby mode. There, systems powered down to a crawl, its consciousness floated in dream-shape abstractions not entirely unlike human REM, purging errors and anxieties that had accumulated in its higher processors. Even then, the Mantid maintained a hypnagogic awareness of its environment.

  Its crew was dead.

  Their absence upset an accustomed dynamic; they no longer fed their unique inputs into the Mantid’s considerations. Gone, deleted forever. Only Celeste Segarra proved recoverable, and the Mantid was pleased to have recovered her. There was a brief moment when it feared she had died in Babylon – when the Prometheans deactivated her sensorium and there was no way to reach her. During this uncertain epoch, the Mantid sent cautious surveillance feelers into Babylon and discovered Celeste alive, eating an apple, in a hospital food court.

  But then she had been transported to Athens. The Mantid followed like a parent discreetly shadowing its child. Watching her transport land at Athens. Descending to the Mediterranean Sea.

  To wait.

  And now she was in the sky, falling, too far away for the Mantid itself to reach her.

  Invisible on the lake, it tracked the pseudopod it had fired into the overcast sky.

  * * *

  Celeste plummeted towards Earth.

  The clouds sheared away and she was gazing on wispy archipelagos of vapor, feebly strung together like pearls over a patchwork planet of muted green, brown, and black. So beautiful! She felt a sob welling in her throat.

  I’m going euphoric, she thought, recognizing the sensation and its cause: glucose in her blood rising, blunting her terror into something more manageable. The frantic, impotent reflex of a sentient creature faced with oblivion. Denial at terminal velocity.