The Northern Star Trilogy: Omnibus Edition

by Mike Gullickson

  The train pulled into the terminal and its electric motors hummed down. His travel neighbor said goodbye and Antoine wished him a good time in Chicago. Antoine reached beneath his seat and pulled out a small plastic briefcase that had been attached underneath. Inside the case, like all the others, was an Uzi-Pro submachine gun. It was the size of a large handgun, but it fired nine millimeter at a rate of one thousand and fifty rounds per minute, and it had a fifty round magazine and three more spares.

  He stood up with his two packages and no one blinked. He and the others shuffled out of the train and each team of four splintered off to their assigned exits.

  It was 12:10. Perfect. At 12:30 the operation would begin.

  = = =

  “I was just about to call you,” Evan said. He was watching the news report. Eighty to one hundred terrorists had completely shut down O’Hare train station and they had five hundred hostages. They called themselves the Western Curse and a red headed Frenchman ranted to an IP camera about what they stood for, blah, blah, blah and then shot a hostage execution style.

  “This is the one,” General Boen said. “I hope Janis squishes the Frenchy’s head between his fingers. Can you believe this guy? He’s already shot five hostages.”

  “He’ll get his. I’ve cleared the rail from Virginia to O’Hare. The team is assembling and we should be outbound in thirty minutes,” Evan said.

  “Excellent. I’ll be there in twenty.” Boen had relocated outside the base to train the special forces unit attached to Janis. They settled on a team of six.

  Evan rubbed his eyes. They were killing a hostage every five minutes. Even at two hundred and fifty miles per hour it would take them three hours to get there. Over sixty people would be dead. Nothing I can do about it.

  They were shooting them in front of the camera. They put the hostage on their knees and told them to say their name, where they were from, and what they wanted to tell their loved ones. And then the French guy would say “the victims in the Middle East never had that courtesy,” and he would shoot them in the head.

  Evan decided he would extend that same courtesy to the Western Curse. Camera on, say what you want, until Janis crushes you down. And when he got to the Frenchmen, he’d do it slow, let him know that he was going to hell. That was the problem with countries facing these threats—they were too polite, too bound by the bizarre etiquette of war. Evan liked the Middle Eastern philosophy. An eye for an eye. Hell, double it up, do a twofer. Two eyes for one. I betcha crime would stop then. Evan walked out of his office and his security detail swept him toward the train.

  = = =

  Tank Major Janis had six assistants that worked in four-hour shifts due to the radioactive toxicity of his suit. They were all scientists and engineers. The assistants were needed because his movements were now an exponential equivalent to what they had been. He couldn’t scratch his face, each fingertip was as big as his cheek and he would fracture his skull. He couldn’t bathe, he couldn’t change the contents of his nutrient pump or waste canister. He couldn’t write or flip a page in a book. The assistants did this and after a while, the six of them melded into an extra pair of hands that worked around him, always keeping him comfortable.

  He was on the train. Sue, the assistant on shift, scaled over him like he was a climbing wall. She oiled the gears in between the armor, she checked the hydraulshock chamber for any obstruction or loose fitting components, she shaved his face. The relationship between him and his assistants was like an evolution of nature, an Egyptian plover cleaning the teeth of a crocodile.

  “How am I looking, Sue?” Janis asked. He saw her working on his left shoulder.

  “Good, big sexy,” she said. He dug Sue. She was a little Asian woman, mid-twenties, with brains and attitude.

  “Eric, put out your hands, por favor,” another technician, Jed, requested. He handled diagnostics of Janis’s implant. Sue jumped off him and he raised his thousand pound arms in front of him.

  “Wiggle’em,” Jed said.

  Each finger, the size of a man’s arm, moved up and down like he was playing a piano.

  Jed was checking for latency: Janis’s brain commands, the implant’s interpretation and conversion of these commands, and the battle chassis’ accuracy of the conversion. Finger movement was the easiest movement to measure and the most difficult for the implant to interpret. Everything looked ducky.

  “Excellent, Eric. We’re running at less than a tenth of a second delay,” Jed said. He turned to two soldiers nearby. “Load’em up.”

  Janis opened the chamber of each hydraulshock. The two men unlocked the armory on the opposite side of the train car. On the ground were two loaded hydraulshock magazines. Each housed six artillery rounds that, when Janis punched, generated over three and a half million foot-pounds of energy. The total weight of a loaded magazine was three hundred pounds. Together they grabbed the handles of one and lifted with their legs. They crab walked one to Eric’s right side and the other to his left, breathing heavy from the exercise.

  They climbed up Janis and knelt near his neck. Janis effortlessly lifted each artillery magazine to his shoulders. The men guided each onto rails mounted into his shoulders and locked them into place. Done, they jumped down and cleared away. With a CLACK! the hydraulshock chamber slammed shut and loaded one round into each arm.

  “What’s our ETA?” Janis asked. They had quarantined him from his six-soldier team due to the health risk. Thirty minutes before the train was to dock at O’Hare, they would meet up with General Boen for a final run through.

  “We’re forty-five out,” Boen said over the comm.

  Janis listened to music before missions. It calmed him. Sue cranked Amnesiac, a classic album by Radiohead. Janis closed his eyes and meditated, thinking about the upcoming battle, his movements, ways he could protect the team.

  The train stopped one mile short. From the live video the Western Curse broadcasted on the web and the schematics of the building, the terrorists were on the gate-level floor at the center of Terminal 3.

  General Boen routed their train to Terminal 1. This allowed them to arrive on the terrorists’ blind side. The Western Curse had taken over Terminal 3 at 12:30 p.m. It was now 3:30 p.m and the sun was still out. For one mile, the Tank Major and the soldiers would be completely exposed either to sniper fire or the tell of their strategy.

  “Good luck,” Boen said.

  Janis and his team ran through a tall field, cutting across unused tarmac that time and weather had broken up into a million-piece jigsaw puzzle.

  Janis had trained with these soldiers for three months under the watchful eye of General Boen. The addition of a Tank Major to a small team posed both benefits and problems. The biggest problems were noise and weight. At its quietest, the Tank Major sounded like a gas-powered car at idle. At its loudest, when the engines were spun up for battle, the room would shake from the energy.

  Tank Major Janis weighed four tons. This allowed him to cut through vehicles and walls like they were made out of paper, but it also reduced his applications. Not all floors could handle four tons spread out over two feet.

  In tests, Janis would fall right through some floors when he tried to walk, let alone run. So it was quite possible that in battle, he would be left behind as his team went up stairs to face a combatant that had high offensive capabilities. Modern industrial buildings, like skyscrapers, could support his weight, but the elevators in them could not.

  However, under the right circumstances, the benefits were astounding. Tank Major Janis was an active, intelligent, and offensive human shield. The soldiers were trained to ‘stack up’ behind Janis and allow him to take the brunt of the enemy’s offense. This reduced the human infantry to a two hundred and seventy degree window of danger and it also allowed them to peel off discreetly at doors or behind other structures, completely hidden from the enemy’s view.

  The benefits outweighed the negatives a hundred fold. But just like all weapons, there was a time and a
place to use it.

  When they got within rifle range, the six soldiers got behind Janis. He became their shield. When they got underneath Terminal 1, two of the soldiers branched out ahead. They were fast and quiet, the scouts.

  They got to a garage entrance of Terminal 1. This would get them into the service level of the building where luggage was sorted and the equipment was stored. Janis easily forced the gate open.

  Once again, the six soldiers stacked behind him as they entered. Inside, the scouts moved ahead, calling clear through their closed circuit comm as they weaved between the conveyor belts and through the compressed air powered service vehicles.

  “We’re in Terminal 1,” Janis said in his comm.

  “Looking at the schematic,” General Boen said. “You are at a service elevator. Past that are stairs that lead up to the main floor. Ignore those. Past that is a service tunnel that connects all of the terminals. It’s used for VIPs. We have word that it hasn’t been used since the conversion to rail. Sending the schematic.”

  Janis received the schematics wirelessly. He behaved as the team’s data center. Within one hundred yards of his position, his team could download information into their comm sent to him by Command. The soldiers paused and reviewed the data in their viewfinder before moving on.

  They passed the service elevator and stairs and found locked double doors. Janis pulled them open and the men stacked behind him. Below were stairs that disappeared into black.

  “Activating night vision,” Janis said. The inside of his helmet went from clear to a light green. A few visible steps into an abyss turned into a stairway that went down one hundred feet.

  “We’re going down. Expect a communication drop out, this thing is deep,” Janis said.

  “Roger,” Boen replied.

  Janis barely fit in the stairway. He squatted and hunched over, using his arms as braces against the wall. His feet were articulated, but even then, the stairs were tough. Under his weight the cement crumbled and the metal supports shuddered like a taut guitar string. The team stayed back until he had reached the bottom.

  “I made it,” Janis said.

  The soldiers hurried down.

  “The gate floor can hold you?” a scout named Estevan asked skeptically. Behind her it looked like a truck had tried to scratch its way through.

  “So they say,” Janis said. Estevan nodded. Good enough for her.

  The hallway was long and straight, easily a half mile. There were no obvious ambush points, so they moved quickly. At midpoint, a hallway turned to their right and a sign said “Terminal 2.” They continued on. At the end of the hallway was a set of stairs that led up to Terminal 3.

  “Command, can you hear me?” Janis asked. He got nothing.

  “I’ll go up first,” Janis said. He used all four limbs like a gorilla and crunched up the stairs. When he got to the top, Estevan came up with a camera wand. She put it under the door and looked around.

  “We got three hostiles in front of us,” she whispered. “I can’t see behind. They know about this door and their guns are raised. They heard.”

  “Let’s say hello,” Janis replied. Estevan slipped back to the bottom of the stairs and got ready with the rest of the team.

  = = =

  David Hannah wasn’t from the Middle East. He was from Berkeley, California. His parents were professors there. David grew up in a beautiful cottage overlooking the ocean that his mom had inherited from her father who had inherited it from his father, who had breached the shores of Normandy in World War II. While they ate dinner, as the sun sunk behind the endless sea, his parents would rant about the evils of their country. How corporations ran it. How the middle class was drying up. How we imposed our will on other nations. The irony was lost on them.

  “The President is a puppet,” his mother used to say over dinner. Tonight it was soy burgers and kale salad. “Corporations run the show, David. You might as well not even vote.”

  His father chortled at a comic in The New Yorker.

  He legacied into Berkeley and there he was introduced to the Western Curse by his roommate and fellow political activist/anarchist.

  “Who are they?” David asked while they ate a panini made with free-range chicken, gluten and pesticide free bread, and a slice of locally grown tomato.

  “They’re an organization that is against the Coalition’s abuse of power. And they are funded, bro.”

  “Terrorist?” David asked. It sounded like an Islamic thing and those were everywhere. Nowadays if you closed your eyes and threw a rock, you’d hit some Islamic fundamentalist group.

  “They don’t care about your religion, where you’re from, nothing like that. They just care that you believe in the message and want to do something about it.” His roommate passed him the information he had printed out. David pushed the last of the sando into his mouth and licked his fingers clean of organic mayo. He flipped through the pages. “Huh. Looks like something worth checking out.”

  Now, he really wished he had skipped that meeting.

  “Uh, Antoine?” David said into his walkie-talkie. Behind two large doors he heard a grindstone move up the stairs. The other soldiers looked at each other nervously and retreated. David didn’t notice.

  “Yes?” Antoine crackled over the radio.

  “Something’s down here,” David said. The noise had stopped.

  “Soldiers?” Antoine asked. David could hear the excitement in the man’s voice. He wanted a battle.

  “I don’t know,” David replied.

  “Report back when you do.” Antoine got off the channel.

  David held an AK-47. Holstered was the Uzi-Pro. The other soldiers were gone. He looked around and saw them hiding behind the various machines and pillars in the room. He slowly walked up to the door.

  “What are you doing?” a soldier hissed from behind a conveyor belt. David put his finger up to his mouth, telling him to shush.

  Ten feet from the door, he learned what was behind it. The clatter of an accelerating rollercoaster vibrated through the room. A buzz filled the air. David didn’t know it, but his hair stood on end.

  WHAM! The doors flew off their hinges and for a second, David thought he was staring at a giant mechanical bull. It came out on all fours and then rose onto two legs. David could see a man, impossibly, looking at him from inside. It hissed and groaned, the whine originating from gigantic drive chains that spun in random orbit around its waist. They crackled with electricity.

  David raised his gun to fire but it was too late. Janis grabbed him and pulled him into the spinning chains, eviscerating the Berkeley graduate like he had been dropped into a Cuisinart. The majority of David splattered against the wall to Janis’s left. A thick, red, tapenade of skin, bone, and guts.

  The terrorists opened fire on Janis. The bullets harmlessly flicked off his armor. Janis charged through the conveyor belt and stepped on one, smearing him across the linoleum.

  Another terrorist launched a forty millimeter grenade from the underbarrel of his rifle but he was too close for it to arm. The grenade ricocheted off Janis with a twang and exploded against a wall, showering the room with shards of cement and dust. The terrorist switched over and opened fire with the AK, but it was pointless. Janis hammered him down, bursting him open like a ripe tomato.

  Janis’s squad rolled through the entrance and chased down the remaining terrorists. Most had fled when the mechanized god had risen before them. It was covered in Berkeley’s blood. It looked born from it. A pagan sacrifice made in vain.

  “We’re a go. I repeat we are a go!” Janis said over the comm.

  “Roger. You are a go,” General Boen repeated.

  “Go! Go!” he heard the other soldiers say. They were stacked behind him again. A set of stairs led up to the main floor. Janis spun up again and his body shook from the horsepower and torque that it took to give him strength and speed. He charged up the stairs.

  = = =

  Antoine heard the volley of gunshots ov
er the radio and the wet gurgle of death. The giant was here. Antoine quickly hit the key command on the laptop. It began hunting for wireless protocols to hack. Three hundred yards down the hall he watched the giant rise from a stairwell.

  It was big. Even far away, he could see the distinct armor: the solid chest plate, the carved armor that wrapped around the joints. The way slats in its thighs undulated with each foot impact, absorbing the weight. It was astounding. Pairs of little boots scampered behind it like a centipede. The infantry.

  “One hundred yards,” Antoine reminded his second lieutenant. He held the detonator. They had planted the charges. They wanted the soldiers close. They wanted the giant.

  Antoine glanced at the computer. It had found a military wireless protocol. Antoine smiled as they approached. They expected him to be scared, but he knew what they didn’t: the moves had already been made. The checkmate was just a formality.

  = = =

  They were using the hostages as human shields.

  We should have predicted this, Janis thought. The soldiers behind him couldn’t open fire. Even from here, Janis couldn’t tell a terrorist from a hostage. In front of the crowd were sixty bodies piled like dirty laundry. One shot every five minutes with no demands, just as promised.

  They wanted this, Janis thought. They want to die.

  Janis stopped.

  “Let the hostages go,” Janis said. He voice was amplified.

  No one answered. Janis could see that some of the people were crying and scared out of their minds. They were clearly held against their will. But others were drawn in, a sign of shock, but also calculation. They were at a stalemate.

  “What do you want?” Janis asked. Some whimpered cries filled the air, but no demands. He turned off the loudspeaker.

  “What should we do?” Janis asked Boen over the comm. General Boen watched the situation with a camera mounted inside Janis’s helmet.

  “At your eleven o’clock, one row back is a man with red hair and a beard. That man is Antoine. He’s the one shooting the hostages. He is the only terrorist who we have a clear picture of. Hold . . .”