by Lee Bond
Ahead of him, Hell was earning a new name.
Systems errors perpetrated by the first cluster of explosions had been compounded by the forcible landing by the God soldiers. Even more of the spaceport’s protean netLINK systems were going offline or were malfunctioning in seriously bad ways. The majority of the local generators had gone critical minutes after the initial spate of shutdowns, and the rest of the defensive systems were at last going haywire, forcing the God soldiers to fracture into eight groups of two in order to minimize their own losses.
Fires raged everywhere, filling the air with a thick, noxious smoke as everything consumable burned. Portions of dock plating hundreds of feet long glowed bright cherry red, whole sections melting into slag and falling below, adding fuel to the fires.
As he stood there, breathing shallowly thanks to broken or fractured ribs, Garth counted a dozen more of the nasty insertion pods making landfall just outside the perimeter of the port. He needed to get back into the shit of things before much longer; he was still too close to his car.
A shrill sound pierced the air, and for a preciously long second, Garth couldn’t figure out where the awful noise was coming from. He moved around the column, trying to find a hidden God soldier. As he did so, the noise followed.
“Oh, fuck me sideways.” It was his proteus. Collateral damage from the explosions and poorly executed landing maneuvers must have triggered the explosive packs. A big nasty red line of numbers was counting ridiculously quickly backwards to zero.
Garth tried to remove his beloved proteus. It wouldn’t budge. Maybe the heat from the explosions or the crash to the ground or motherfucking OverSec Terrance had set it that way, but the metal clasps were totally unresponsive. The red numbers got closer to zero. “Fuck me sideways.”
xxx
“Detecting another explosion, this one smaller and much more localized.” Julius announced. He’d finally managed to cobble together an audio program capable of partially constructing a visual image based on the sound bites captured by the listening stations arrayed around the port. He’d tried sending out a fleet of spEyes for support, but heat and the raging storms of netLINK dross from broken systems destroyed the links as quickly as he could make them.
Paulson nodded and updated the visual files manually. By now, God soldiers on the scene had realized that their own systems were being corrupted or shut down the closer they got to the center of the devastation, and were going to need all the support they could get. Not even flEyes were capable of rendering any assistance in a situation like this; their onboard control avatars weren’t smart enough to filter out unnecessary footage and they didn’t have time to rewrite those protocols. The half-dozen analytical satellites high in orbit above the port were barely able to discern distinct features through the thick haze of poisonous smoke and ultra-hot fires, so it was Julius’s hastily built filters or nothing.
Garth opened his eyes, wondering why it was that he was able to open his eyes in the first place. As far as he was concerned, he should be nothing more than a randomly scattered mishmash of blown up and cooked bits. He was definitely not supposed to be opening his eyes and wondering anything.
Slowly, just in case he was being held together by prayers and dreams, Garth did a visual check. Amazingly, everything was where it was supposed to be, more or less. Granted, he had a lot more holes in places than he’d had before the proteus had gone BANG, but given the choice, Garth would take barely alive than not at all alive. His arm was a shredded hot mess of blood and bone, but, miraculously, it was still connected. His adaptive morphology, driven insanely wild by the never-ending presence of danger and mayhem, had worked wonders with his flesh and bone. He doubted anyone had ever survived one of Terrance’s little going away presents before.
He grinned a bloody grin and started crawling with his one good arm, pulling himself ever forward. Garth couldn’t see much, but it didn’t matter. All he needed to do was get closer to the mayhem. Just a few feet, that was all.
He kept crawling, barely mindful.
Just a few more feet.
One inch at a time.
Momentary Respite from the People Trying to Kill Him
It was a week and a few days before Garth regained consciousness. When he did, it was to the vast amazement and shock of the entire medical crew hired by Sa Herrig to ensure his number one client’s safety; every man and woman in the port at the time of the explosions was either dead or dying, usually in the most explicitly painful ways possible.
An Offworlder, even one as fit as Garth Nickels, had no right returning to the land of the living when so many Latelians had perished… were perishing. Add to that the fact that the man, assumed guilty from the start, had received no medical treatment for three solid days had brought some Latelians perilously close to using words like ‘miracle’.
It was hard not to cast the finger at an Offworlder, especially one like Garth Nickels, who had access to his own spaceship and was in direct possession of an Artificial Intelligence. A man like that … Suspicion ran rampant, wild, burning through the layers of those ‘in the know’ as surely as the fires that’d raged through the port.
Suspicion lasted for but a short while, though. Around the time that the spaceport had been blowing up around Garth’s ears, Ashok Guillfoyle’s entire research and development library uploaded itself onto public netLINKs. Amidst some rather hair-raising files and documents, a few extremely incriminating discoveries had been made; to whit, the ‘theoretical’ AI-baffle chamber obviously intended to escort such a mind around Hospitalis without being caught, Guillfoyle’s complicit behavior with the Portsiders, his abuse of a Q-Array, and so on.
Ashok Guillfoyle’s guilt was clear, Garth’s innocence regrettably undeniable. Once this was proven to the satisfaction of human judges pulled into hasty conference by the mighty sledgehammer of Garth’s money, Sa Herrig was able to procure the absolute best medical team that same money could acquire.
Alas, it proved a waste of both time and resources; no medical treatment yielded any noticeable improvement whatsoever. Looking at the Offworlder’s charts, it was easy to see that the man was broken, his body … disinterested … in healing itself. In the end, all they’d found possible to do was ensure the man was fed a continuous –and voluminous- amount of nutrients and other vital liquids.
Therefore, when Garth woke loudly demanding ‘hamburgers’, ‘French fries’ and a ‘milkshake’, word passed out of the private suites and through the rest of the hospital in a matter of seconds. Their famous guest was alive and … weird.
Sa Herrig, never very far away, hastened back to the room as quickly as he could, impatiently going through the strict security measures the firm he’d hired to protect the man during his convalescence had instituted. Though slated to suffer the Traitor’s Tongue, Ashok Guillfoyle had had friends in high places. Some few may feel compelled to dish out a bit of misplaced justice. An agonizing two minutes later, Herrig was at Garth’s bedside.
“How do you feel, sa?” Herrig asked politely, wondering if the man was even going to be able to understand. By all rights, a head wound suffered during the explosions should’ve left him in a permanent coma. Doctors were concerned about brain damage.
“I want a hamburger.” Garth sighed. “A hamburger. From Slappy Joe’s on Fifth and Howling.” The hospital bed, barely more than a thin mattress covered by a viciously rough fabric, was the most comfortable thing he’d slept on in a million years. The events of the last few days were little more than a blur, the highlights of which were marked with a noticeable amount of violence and mayhem. “But since you guys don’t know what the hell a hamburger is, I’ll make do with some hospital food. Lots and lots. When you think you’ve put too much on the plate, add another plate. I’m starving.”
“I’ll, er, I’ll see what I can do.” Sa Herrig flashed a request off to the hospital avatar monitoring Garth’s room. “Say, do you, er, remember what happened?”
It was all very hazy. He r
ecalled the reasons for going to the ship, and that he’d succeeded in getting Huey away without being caught, but much of the actual moments were covered by a thick, sluggish feeling. He remembered a great deal of fire, a torturous amount of pain, and, of course, God soldiers. Other than that, nothing. Garth told as much to Herrig, omitting everything that might incriminate him. It was a very short story. “Why d’you ask?”
“The devastation to the space port is comprehensive, sa.” Herrig went to flash some of the highlights to Garth, then cursed himself; he’d forgotten that Garth was without a proteus. Would be for some time, unless his arm magically healed itself or he was ambidextrous. Knowing Garth Nickels, the man would undoubtedly be comfortable using a proteus strapped around his ankle. “The general consensus for some time was that you had willfully engineered the destruction.”
“Why in the hell would I do that?” Garth demanded quizzically, hoping he wasn’t laying it on too thick. For all of his seeming bumpishness, Herrig had a first rate analytical mind.
Herrig tutted. “Nothing to worry about, sa. Preliminary investigations have analyzed the pattern of explosions using the finest protean systems on the planet. Details are still forthcoming, but a large amount of highly explosive material was placed directly beneath your ship.”
“Bombs? Under Meadowlark Lemon?” That neatly explained how in the hell his relatively ‘small’ detonation had transformed the port into a firestorm of Biblical proportions.
Herrig nodded, his double chin wobbling. “Just so, sa. An investigation into the exact route those bombs took to get beneath the ship is being conducted as we speak, although the actual culprit was apprehended later that evening in a very spectacular manner.”
“Oh?” Garth raised an eyebrow. This was what he wanted to hear.
“Yes. You couldn’t know the man, but someone named Ashok Guillfoyle apparently tried to steal your artificial intelligence off the ship and smuggle it out of the spaceport. Somehow, he was in direct control of a gang of vicious thugs calling themselves the Port Side Boys, and he tried to use them. The belief is that he tried to kill you and destroy the ship to hide his crime. It would have worked, too, but obviously, you are made of stern stuff. Of course, he claims you masterminded the theft as well as the destruction of the spaceport. Oh yes, and a gang war between these so-called Portsiders and the unfortunately named Devil’s Left Testicle.” Herrig scratched at his neck. “To hear this man speak is to ascribe you with legendary abilities, sa. He also blames you for … let me see …” Herrig consulted his prote. “Ah, yes, he credits you with breaking into his facility in Central, corralling his highly trained security teams in a number of locations, breaking into and decrypting all of his sensitive data, setting it up so that data would leak onto the netLINKs … the list of imaginary crimes is quite comprehensive. You would think you’d come here specifically to destroy this man’s life.”
“You’d think that, wouldn’t you?” Garth asked dryly. “But I couldn’t have, right?”
“Oh my, no.” Herrig shook his head firmly. “On the spaceport front, it is most telling that Guillfoyle’s teams constructed the entire netLINK from the ground up. Forensic teams are going through things now, but it seems most likely that he constructed the systems to allow … well, to allow whoever or whatever he wanted to disappear at will.”
“You don’t say.” Garth said sarcastically. “Doesn’t that beat all.”
“Shocking, I know. This man, up until a week ago, was well-respected, highly regarded. Credited with the potential to save the God soldiers and to improve upon duronium.” Herrig couldn’t believe a man like Sa Ashok could be so … evil. “We’ll never know how or why all his data leaked onto the ‘Links, but the going theory is disgruntled employees. It fits.”
“You’re confident of that?”
Herrig nodded assiduously. “I am. Ashok contracted the Port Side Boys to steal your AI with a machine built by him, these Devil’s Left Testicle fellows sought to either do the deed for themselves or were there just to wreak havoc, something went wrong with the timers for the explosives beneath your ship… It’s relatively clear cut at this point.”
“Did they find my AI?” Garth asked slowly.
“No... I’m very sorry, but your ship … well, it was … it’s been completely destroyed. Vaporized.”
Garth lay there, wondering why in the hell Herrig seemed genuinely upset. He remembered a split second later that he was supposed to be mourning the loss of his AI, so he gave the best frown he could. Herrig seemed to respond well to the display of emotion, so Garth flailed around a bit as though he was actually physically uncomfortable at Huey’s death. “Dammit all.” He wailed. “That really sucks ass. I paid a ton of cash for that ugly ass ship. You know the previous owner was a sex fiend?”
Herrig made to admit that he had not, in fact, known that when his prote flashed a message. Reading it over, he looked over at Garth and then back at the words blazing on his small screen. He felt sickly. “Oh. Oh my. Oh … my.”
“What’s up, Herrig?”
“The, er, ah, the … the Chairwoman, the OverCommander and the OverSecretary are, ah, coming. To … to see you, sa.” Herrig straightened, suddenly very self-conscious about his appearance; he hadn’t been home since Garth’s arrival in the hospital. He looked terrible. “I’m not fit to see these people in this condition, sa. If you will excuse me?”
Garth, who thought Herrig looked just fine considering the mess he was in, waved a hand, dismissing his good friend and ‘employee’. Herrig smiled his thanks and hurried out of the room.
Two of the three high governmental officials looked very imposing -in the OverCommander’s case, downright threatening- in their finery; Chairwoman Doans was a graying older woman in a severely cut black and blue business suit that made her nothing but sharp angles. If clothes could make a statement, Doans’ dress style howled authority. This was a woman who commanded entire worlds and was used to getting respect without even thinking about it.
OverCommander Vasily -whom Garth had only seen on news channels- was every bit as intimidating in real life. Imposing to the point of terrifying in his military black floor length leather overcoat -complete with high, stiff collar and giant shiny buttons- he loomed protectively behind Doans, exuding power from every pore. The logical other half of Doans, Vasily was also a man of immense power, capable of calling forth millions of loyal God soldiers to his heel within seconds. The two of them were perfectly suited for one another, and Garth was willing to bet the Latelian people didn’t care a single good goddamn who they were sleeping with, so long as shit got taken care of.
By contrast, OverSecretary Terrance looked like he’d been running short on sleep the last millennia or two. His normally sharp eyes were watery and the man was slouching unhappily in his clothes. This was a far different man than the one who’d invited Garth into his den just a short while ago; he looked beaten, and badly. Garth caught the distinctive tang of animal fear above the sharp scent of disinfectant.
Garth didn’t need to read the script to know his part. He was the finger man, the stoolie, the pigeon and the rat. Somewhere down the line, the people investigating Guillfoyle must’ve made the right connections. It was nice to know that just because he was a foreign devil Offworlder who worshipped false idols and gave the power of gods to machines that he wasn’t automatically labeled a troublemaker. He made himself more comfortable and smiled pleasantly at OverSecretary Terrance, who paled considerably.
“Well,” he said pleasantly, “this is a surprise. Not awake more than three minutes and the three most powerful people in the entire system visit me. Who’s running things while you three are here? Forget I asked. To what can I attribute this honor?”
Vasily pulled a wand out of his pocket and waved it back and forth through the air, checking his proteus every few seconds. He grunted at Doans before putting the machine back in his pocket.
Up until that moment, Doans had only ever seen footage of Garth Nickels.
Both the stills and the live action video feeds of him in the ring and around town gave the man no justice. She could scarcely credit this slender -though well-muscled- Offworlder as the same man who’d not only defeated a heavyweight augmented soldier in hand to hand combat but had managed to survive the worst calamity to strike the Latelian people since the very earliest days of their colonies. She had seen the exhaustive footage of his career in Special Services. Footage she’d been forced to request directly from an odious Trinity representative after it’d developed the original files were missing and/or corrupted, presumably by the power-hungry jackass standing beside her. The data, though undeniably edited, outed the man as a consummate warrior. Watching him wade through jungles, hack through people, and infiltrate societies more xenophobic and distrustful than her own had been an eye-opener of the worst sort. He should’ve been turned away at the door.
No. Scratch that. He should’ve been vaporized immediately.
There was little doubt that Garth Nickels was somehow personally and intimately involved with the destruction of the spaceport, the eradication of two opposing gangs and the ‘outing’ of the treasonous Ashok Guillfoyle. A string of murders –and one bloody, violent torture- were also associated with the Offworlder, but only tenuously. There was also every indication he’d stolen data right out of Ashok Guillfoyle’s voluminous library of research. There was just no proof. Of anything. The prote given to the Offworlder by Terrance –who was only OverSecretary for a few more minutes - had exploded around Sa Nickels’ arm, giving them zero opportunity to reconstruct the man’s actual activity since meeting with the OverSecretary. The team originally assigned to monitor his movements had gone dark shortly thereafter, and was not responding to any overtures, the data recovered from relay stations were at complete odds with everything they knew to be true… A prime example of that was a data node specialist’s insistence that Sa Garth Nickels had not been in the spaceport at the time of the explosions, which they could easily prove since they’d found him three-quarters dead next to a pylon. In the spaceport. According to every relay station they examined, the sa hadn’t left the hotel for several days, hadn’t accessed so much as the hotel kitchens.
