by Lee Bond
The doctor’s eyes flickered and stuttered in the bright light as he began running visual filters to scan Garth N’Chalez. He did not like what he saw and feared that the preliminary testing had pushed the man too far. They could only hope that the recovery process would restore the buffers. If not, well, there were contingencies for such a thing, further tests and gauntlets that would clearly define the level of Garth N’Chalez’ ancient lies. The planet itself might not survive. It wasn’t entirely necessary that Hospitalis come out ahead, but … the loss of a planet was the loss of a planet.
“Neural sheathing: 85% intact. Memory block: 95% intact. Theoretical Kin’kithal Armamentarium: 2% access. Definitive signs of extra-dimensional manipulation, though the manner and form are unknown. Suggest resetting sheaths.”
Commands filtered into him from Bravo. He was to leave the sheaths as they were.
Sullivan nodded. It seemed they were going to test him again.
Read ahead for an excerpt from
SUBVERSIVE ELEMENTS
THE LATELIAN CYCLE VOLUME #2:
Subversive Elements
The Latelian Cycle Volume #2
By Lee Bond
Advice and Threats from an Old Friend
“It was the most goddamn fun I’ve had in thirty thousand years.”
The words echoed around him, scornful and mocking. Garth shook his head. As soon as they’d come out of his mouth, he’d regretted thinking them, let alone uttering them. What a fool.
“Then why say them?” A disembodied voice demanded archly, a voice Garth knew well.
It was one of the reasons he didn’t like sleeping. Lisa Laughlin, Turuin’s ‘Starlight Lady’, had a tendency to show up in his dreams when he least expected it. There were other reasons he didn’t like sleeping, but, like Lisa, they didn’t bear thinking about until they cropped up in his nightmares.
Easier to avoid sleep.
Garth looked up into the dreamworld, a ‘scape that Lisa never seemed to have a problem penetrating. As always, she’d twisted it to her own whim. Eyes turned skyward, a vast, glittering concentration of galaxies confronted him. They stretched as far as his dream eyes could see and since this was a dream, he could see very far indeed.
Garth assumed –as always- that, aided by Lisa’s inhumanly powerful telepathy, he was seeing to the very edge of existence, a belief she’d never once dissuaded him from having. There was so much life out there.
Universes swirling above him, Garth looked to his feet, chagrined. The earth beneath his feet was translucent, showing him more of the same endless star fields. “I … I don’t know.” He shrugged helplessly. “I … it’s this place.”
“It’s not where you are, commander, it’s who you are.” Lisa said, not unkindly.
Commander. Every time Lisa came to him in dreams, she called him that. If she was feeling particularly nostalgic, she saluted a simple fist over her heart, a slight dip in the head. She refused to explain that, as she refused to explain so many things.
Still, it was the game they’d come to play over the last ten years, and he’d play it out of respect; Lisa was on the run, would always be on the run, from Trinity, from Enforcers, from the mutation that left her with the ability to read the mind of every sentient being who drew breath.
Garth looked back up to the glittering space scape, eyes picking out the stars that would eventually coalesce into the illuminated-from-within sapphire blue body of Lisa Laughlin. They were spread throughout the infinite wheel of stars, pulsing blue balls of light. “Why do you call me commander?”
“Because,” a voice directly behind him said sadly, “because you once earned that right. But now … now…”
Garth whirled. Lisa Laughlin, as live and in the flesh as she’d ever been. They’d met, once, at incredible risk to both their lives on the eve of the final sortie at Tannhauser’s Gate; she’d imperiled her own life to beg him to stay out of that last, prolonged attack, hoping the fact that she’d exposed herself to innumerable dangers would’ve been enough. She’d been wrong, and now, well after the fact, Garth wished he’d listened. Tannhauser had been rough. Shoemacher, three months later, the end product of his involvement with the Gate, had broken him, sent him fleeing deeper into the Cordon, deeper into darkness.
“And Trinity reforged you.” Lisa replied softly, tucking an errant wisp of blond hair behind an ear.
Garth couldn’t believe how young the woman was. She couldn’t’ve been any more than twenty when she’d volunteered to climb into the stasis ship with the rest of them. It was frightening, this loyalty he’d commanded. She’d been conscious throughout the thirty thousand year suspension, her small talent for telepathy –that which had made her their Intel gatherer- metamorphosing into something … astonishing, to say the least. Either through a natural penchant to keep secrets close to her or because ever since Tannhauser she’d not trusted his motives, Lisa had been evasive during their dream-talks.
This time was … different. She was being unusually forthright. Her last visit, the one he believed had precipitated the dream about the ship’s coordinates, had been smoke and mirrors, flash and bang. She’d warned him about accepting Trinity’s request to join the Heavy Elites for the Deep Strike missions that took place far, far inside The Cordon, but he’d –again- ignored her; partially out of mistrust, partially out of a desperate desire to be free of SpecSer and seeing those spectacularly foolhardy missions as the only way. Either through death or through massive payouts, he’d turned a deaf ear and a blind eye to her pleas.
“It was the most goddamn fun I’ve had in thirty thousand years.”
His cocky words -uttered to Commander Vasily in a moment of weakness and intended to put him in a position of strength- made the shining Universe of universes above his head shiver until they turned partially transparent. Garth squinted. He wasn’t certain, but it looked as though there were things turning mightily behind the stars.
He turned back to Lisa, who stood there, blond haired, blue eyed, in jeans and a sweater, her delicate British skin nearly translucent with anger. Here and there, the luminous blue that’d earned her the vaguely deific nickname ‘Starlight Lady’ burned through the pale white flesh.
“I warned you, time and again, commander, that Trinity was changing you, willfully leading you down a path that you did not want to take.” Lisa’s countenance grew paler still, sapphire flaring raggedly through the eyes, flashing into the heavens as burning tears of light. As each drop hit the stars, universes rippled, and the vague shapes behind them grew more solid. “It is a master manipulator. It has always been! Each step you took in Special Services was designed to bring you closer to It’s ideal. Every mission, every encounter, every … every thing in your life was put in your way, to change you, to make you into what It wanted and you went along so blindly, so … willingly! Look at you! Hardened flesh, hardened heart.”
Lisa paused for a moment, looking long at Garth, eyes burning. “What manner of man are you now, commander?” she finally demanded, weary.
“I’m a man who gets things done.” Garth replied hotly, bluntly, again, regretting the choice of words as soon as they left his fool mouth. In the back of his mind, he felt something stirring, memories of the man he’d been before all this fucking mess. He knew in his heart of hearts that he wasn’t the man he wanted to be, but there’d be no other way. His service in SpecSer had been a life sentence. He’d needed to get free, to … to … what? He shook his head angrily.
Lisa narrowed her incandescent eyes. “You were never a fool, commander. Never. Out of all of us, you were always able to look ahead, to see what was on the horizon, to plan accordingly.” She flashed him a quick, empty smile. “I can only assume that this … this monster you very nearly are is part of some greater scheme.”
Garth tapped a temple with a thick forefinger. “Why don’t you look inside?”
Lisa’s anger faltered for a brief moment. “I can’t, commander. I never could. Else I would have removed your
amnesia so you yourself could see whatever plan you follow in it’s entirety, so I could spare you the pain of this endless confusion.”
The revelation rocked Garth to his core. Ever since figuring out that Lisa was the one responsible for ensuring Kant Ingrams never gained insights into the world they’d come from, he’d automatically assumed that she was responsible for his amnesia. “You can read the mind of every sentient being.” Garth struggled to get the words out.
“Indeed, commander, I can.” The ex-Intel Officer replied enigmatically. She closed her mouth and the blue light burning through her dampened.
Garth knew that look, that tone of voice all too well. No explanations there. Every time he poked and prodded Lisa on the nature of his being, she turned to stone, but she was ‘kind’ enough to let things slip every now and then, tiny morsels that let him rest a bit when the pressure to find out who and what he was grew too strong.
The revelations of the last few minutes though … they threatened to shatter the central foundation of who he was. Which, he supposed ruefully, was the whole point. To hear Lisa claim he was working towards a goal he’d mapped out thirty thousand years ago in and of itself was as bewildering as it was aggravating.
To hear her say she couldn’t read his mind, when she’d proven several times before that she could, in fact, read the minds of anything capable of thought … what did that make him?
He was sick to death of games, but it seemed everyone wanted to play them. Lisa wasn’t here to answer questions kicked up by her cryptic revelations.
He wondered if their visit was going to be a pre-Heavy Elite type discourse, where she’d rage and batter at him or a pre-Tannhauser conversation, where she begged and pleaded. Looking at Lisa’s slender form, flickering fitfully with sapphire radiance, he suspected neither. In fact, he suspected he was going to like this chat less than the others combined.
“Why are you here?” he finally asked wearily.
Lisa sighed, wiping absentmindedly at a vibrant blue tear as it fell from an eye. She watched it arc into the heavens, where it joined the others. “Because … because. I see the man I once loved as a brother, a father, fallen so far from himself that I must again risk my own life in truth to save him. Because here, on Hospitalis, you are a child amidst elders, driven reckless and rash by motives not entirely your own. Every step a misstep, every deed double-edged, every impulse impetuous. Because if you wish to succeed and survive, you must know what you should’ve realized on your own. I failed you, commander, so long ago. I failed to consider the absolute mastery Trinity would have over your life, of how pernicious Bravo would become when it located you.”
Garth kept his eyes on the massive … things churning beyond the veil of universes. They felt familiar. “What are you talking about?”
“You’ve always wanted answers, commander, so here are a few.” Lisa pursed her lips for a moment. “Consider Trinity, consider It’s claims of being as old as Humanity. They are the truth. The machine mind is thirty thousand years old. Originally, a collection of programs and machines designed by us to aid in a war, It has become the proctor of all Humanity.”
Garth shifted his gaze from the stars and the … machines … behind them back to Lisa. Her smile said she knew that would get his attention and he hated himself for it. “War?”
“Not the topic, I’m afraid. Knowledge of that beyond the absolutely ephemeral will skew your actions.” Lisa resumed, her cool British tones well suited to educating the fool Garth N’Chalez. “It was some time before Trinity ascended to true sentience, true self-awareness, but it never forgot us. It had files on us, on our mission, on the reasons we were launched.”
“You’re saying Trinity knew where we were all along, aren’t you?”
A quicksilver smile flashed. “Am I?”
“You am.”
Lisa laughed then, a pure burst of joy. “I am. Trinity has been in control of Humanity for thirty thousand years, commander, and is in possession of technologies that make entire universes tremble. It uses those powers to subdue, subjugate and crush the alien, the foreign, and the unwanted. Whole solar systems bow to It’s demands when your Special Services teams roll in, yet none of what It has in It’s arsenal compares to Alpha. Ask yourself. If It knew where we were all this time, if It knew what we were capable of, why not use us to It’s advantage? The fifteen of us were more ably suited to It’s tasks than entire SpecSer legions and infinitely less susceptible to the horrors in the furthest reaches of the Cordon. If, for whatever reason, It assumed we ourselves were a danger to It’s rule, why not simply adapt the science behind Alpha to It’s own purposes? You’ve seen It’s Enforcers, you’ve witnessed firsthand the weapons those soldiers bear. There should be little doubt in you that Trinity would use quadronium and whatever else It could that is aboard Alpha to The Cordon even further.”
Garth licked his lips thoughtfully. Lisa was making a hell of a lot of sense. “So why now?”
Lisa beamed. “Just so, commander. Why now? What has changed in It’s Universe of control, what thing has happened that needs you?” She held a finger in the air. “More importantly, what reason could It have for you to be the man you are now? For surely, if It is patient enough to wait thirty thousand years for some occurrence, It is manipulative enough to transform you in tiny increments into the warrior, the conqueror, the demon you are now, without you even noticing.” Lisa’s eyes flashed as she reached out with her mind. “They whisper, you know, out there across The Cordon, of Specter. That’s all the call you. They know of your name in systems where you will never go. Some wait for the SpecSer sigils to start appearing on ships, and they will do as they are told. With no hesitation, out of terror that you will come knocking, flashing your sideways grin and telling your silly jokes. They talk about your eyes that flash like pulsars in the night, commander, and you are, for some, a thing of nightmares and legends. And that is precisely what It wanted of you. It knew about your adaptive morphology and wanted to see how far you could go, how strong, how fast, how … malleable. Each mission It sent you on was but a step on the road, a journey transforming you into the mighty mighty Garth Nickels.”
The scorn in Lisa’s tone was so abrasive Garth took a step back. He knew he’d become a monster across The Cordon, but it’d been to a purpose! There’d been no other way to get free of Special Services, not in any reasonable amount of time.
“Goren, Tannhauser, Shoemacher, the others… Designed to kick your adaptive morphology up to the next state, commander. Missions built for you specifically. Why would that be? Why would Trinity need you in possession of such limitless strength, imbued with such a sense of reckless domination? What changed?”
“Bravo.” Garth whispered, shaken to his core at the code word tripping so easily, so lightly, off his lips. Not ‘The Box’. Bravo. How could he have forgotten something like that? Memories uncoiled a bit more, loosened by Lisa’s scathing hostility. “The Latelians discovered Bravo.”
Lisa clapped her hands sardonically, the popping sound echoing through the heavens, each Universe vibrating to the sound, the vast machines behind them shuddering. “Just so, commander, just so. In all the universes, Bravo was one thing it knew nothing about. And by the time It did learn about the sister-ship, it was too late. Latelyspace is unique, is … protected … from Trinity’s manipulations. It could no more grab hold of Bravo than you could comprehend It’s furious will, It’s terror in realizing that there was a ship from the past It had no control over. It reasoned - correctly, I might add- that only one person aboard Alpha could know anything at all about Bravo, and that person …”
“Is me.” Garth murmured matter-of-factly.
Lisa tipped an invisible hat. “And by the time Bravo became aware of you, it was already too late; you’d fallen, however ignorantly, under Trinity’s ulterior motives, had spent years blazing though the heavens, leaving an unmistakable mark on the very fabric of the Universe. Arriving here, on Hospitalis, enhanced to the point of nearly unli
mited strength and speed and driven further onwards by your reasonable terror of the God soldiers, Bravo did the only thing it could do; it pushed. Pushed you further, farther, faster, made you reckless, heedless, willful, foolish. The mechanisms giving you your strength and speed are not your own, they were put there –with your permission - by them. Seeing you as you are, they had … have… no choice but to witness you in action, to determine just how dangerous you are to the Plan.”
“They?” Garth wrinkled his forehead. He was so far out of his depth. “The Plan?”
“Bravo is … occupied, in a sense. By … well, let us call them … programs. Codes designed to ensure the safety of Bravo, the continuity of The Plan, codes programmed to wait. For you.” Lisa paused, thinking on something. “But as I said, you arrived as you are. You mirror for them a … a … reflection of the past. And that they will not condone. Therefore, they pushed, to see if you are in fact a true nightmare reborn or something different. Making matters worse, by using you so efficiently for It’s own machinations, Trinity has inadvertently provided them with insights into your … you.”
“I don’t follow.”
Lisa smiled sadly, forlornly. So much of her commander was still lost. “Each of us underwent the same tests, commander, to see if a new technology developed by the Armies of Man could provide Humanity with a better chance at surviving without our help. They called it neural sheathing and it was a revolutionary breakthrough. The first hy-tech science developed by human minds, the sheaths were supposed to give normal soldiers strength to match the opposition. They reasoned, incorrectly, it turned out, that our … diversity … would provide them with an adequate baseline from which they could begin implementation in humans.”
The term ‘Armies of Man’ sent a thrill through Garth. It was a name he recognized, and those quiescent memories shivered further. “Incorrectly?”
