The Northern Star Trilogy: Omnibus Edition

by Mike Gullickson

  Because Xan had a fully articulated spine, the doctors used a Botox derivative to paralyze the muscles in Xan’s back so that he wouldn’t fight against the spinally fused suspension bracket in the heat of battle. Xan was both numb and tender, depending on the section of his truncated form. His limbs haunted him, even with the implant.

  “We’re troubleshooting the software, we’ll figure it out,” Xinting said.

  “It works, Xinting,” Xan said. “We built a Tank Major in two months. It took the Americans years of physical development and all of the resources that MindCorp could offer.”

  “But you’re in pain,” Xinting replied. “The American version doesn’t have this ghosting.”

  “Ramp up production. It can be fixed later.”

  The government’s trust in Xan had become so complete, that his orders were law. Once Xan had come to and they knew the software—however flawed—worked with the body, they had immediately culled four more soldiers. Two Chinese Tank Majors were now on base.

  Amidst all of this, Xan had reluctantly agreed to meet Mohammed. At this point, he wasn’t sure the benefit, but Xan believe in managing his resources. He no longer laid down to link-in. He sat in a throne built into his new quarters at the base of the Colossal Core. His hearing was back. He heard the whirl of server fans and the chunk-chunk-chunk of the King Sleeper dismantling the U.S.’s digital infrastructure.

  On Tank Major Xan’s back were two sheets of armor that connected to his metal spine like an insect’s wings. Underneath those were huge hydraulics that anchored to the three foot wide, depleted uranium spine. The black casement and nickel piston of the hydraulics looked like exposed ribs. They connected to jointed parts of his body that controlled his arms and legs and chest armor. Combined, they also allowed an intense constriction. A wedge, like a thick ax head, was built down the front of Tank Xan’s chest. If he grabbed another Tank Major and pulled it in, the compressing hydraulics would cleave it against the wedge, puncturing through it like the carapace of a crab. A grenade launcher was mounted on one shoulder, on the other was a cannon modified from their fighter jets.

  Unlike the American version, all of Xan’s movement was powered with hydraulics. Decompression pumps were paired with each hydraulic piston to allow him to move quickly, but the faster he moved, the less powerful he became because of torque bleed.

  Xan left his message in the Western Curse shareware and walked out to the floor. Two of the Tank Majors were based topside in false shops. The other two had been sent out for military demonstrations, not unlike what Xan had witnessed through Jan Hedgegard when he had probed his mind.

  Xinting lay next to Justin in a Sleeper chair. She was semi-conscious. Justin had requested her presence when he was online, it soothed him and he could multi-task: re-route supply chains in the U.S. to increase the chance of famine. Play cards. Stop freight rail and shut off their cooling systems. Go-kart race. Bring down a credit union and its backup servers. Watch old action movies. Time was layered in cyberspace, just like thoughts. Especially for him.

  “How is he holding up?” Xan asked Xinting.

  “He’s fine. But we should take him offline soon,” Xinting replied distantly. “He’s been on for five hours.”

  “Very good. Have him finish up. Thank you, Xinting,” Xan said.

  The U.S. had used the King Sleeper for subterfuge. They were looking at long-term political influence and gain. Xan was using Justin as a hammer. He wanted to force the truce. Everything Xan destroyed could be re-built. The systems and files smashed and erased could be restored quickly by the King Sleeper. Xan had Justin push the U.S. back to the Dark Ages to reveal the world’s perilous balance between order and chaos. This was a warning, a call for level heads and competent leaders, and no more of the men three rows back, including Xan. Xan watched as Xinting began to power down the Data Crusher to pull the little boy out of his crucified shackles. The white flag wavering across the battlefield should have already happened. But nothing from the U.S. This bothered Xan greatly. The air force was on high alert, Xan had warned the interim President of a possible military incursion. Silence wasn’t a sign of submission. It was a sign of planning, plotting. It was a sign of war.

  = = =

  “You’re lucky you’re made of metal,” Ratny said. “My body is stiff as hell.”

  “I’ll massage it if you like.” Raimey offered his massive crushing hand.

  “Funny.”

  They all wore darting eyes and nervous smiles. Five minutes before, the small monitor inside their now-agreed-upon-prison lit up and General Boen wished them luck. There would be no comm. There would be no backup, just an evac point at the bay twenty miles east. A fishing vessel would take them to an Ohio-class submarine waiting quietly offshore. Capture the King Sleeper, get him to the sub, or neutralize him.

  “God bless you, and get home safe,” Earl had said. The picture froze.

  “Two minutes out, gentlemen,” the pilot said. Inside the drop container a red light blinked off and on and they heard the whine of the bomb bay doors opening beneath them. The three soldiers strapped themselves into harnesses connected to the sidewall. A minute later, they felt themselves tumble into space. Smart bomb technology guided them to their location.

  Their only window to the outside world was an altimeter. Ratny was closest to it and he called out their altitude as they descended.

  “Sixty-five thousand feet.”

  “Fifty thousand feet.”

  “Thirty-five thousand feet.”

  “How won’t they see us?” Johnson said. They were tumbling directly into Beijing.

  “They’ll get a visual, but no radar. It’s stealth,” Ratny said. “Twenty-five thousand feet.”

  Hostettler puked and wiped with his sleeve. “Hope the parachute works.”

  “It’s some NASA shit. It’s a late stage with boosters,” Johnson said. “It doesn’t open until three thousand feet.”

  “Fifteen thousand feet.”

  “I’ll bust us out of here. You guys have the GPS in your headpieces, right?” Raimey asked. They nodded. “Good. Tell me coordinates, I’ll launch the hover-rovers and send them ahead. Stay safe. I need eyes. Send me at’em, guide me like a missile.”

  “We’ll get you there,” Hostettler said. “I’m sorry about Eric, he was a good guy. No mercy today. These were the guys that did it.”

  “Oorah,” they said in unison.

  “We’ll keep behind you or to the alleys. Call out if you’re going to unload a hydraulshock,” Johnson said. “We’ll support you the best we can, but we need to make it to the Core.”

  “Five thousand feet.”

  A moment later the parachute slammed them into their seats. They rechecked their weapons. Raimey’s body began to vibrate as his waist chains spun up.

  = = =

  Tank Major Li saw the object drop from the sky. He thought it was a meteor until the parachute deployed. He called it in and ran to greet it. He wanted to try his new body. The crowd scattered away from him as he burst out of the false store. A dozen soldiers followed him in a truck.

  All market activity stopped. Customers and shopkeepers stepped out to watch the strange, wedge shaped object as, even with the parachute deployed, it came in too fast directly at the market. One hundred thousand people watched it descend. On its back were wings and they adjusted the descent, finally turning the wedge parallel to the ground. A thousand feet above the crowded, silenced market, rocket boosters erupted to slow it down and the crowd screamed in panic and ran in all directions. Li and the soldiers were less than a quarter mile away and the crowd felt trapped, a mechanized giant on one end and what could be a bomb or an alien spacecraft on the other. They were a school of fish avoiding predators, darting and surging to get out of the way.

  The stealth ship landed and the parachute—as big as a hot air balloon—lazily followed.

  “Do not approach the crate,” Xan said in Li’s ear. That order echoed to the soldier transport. “Reinf
orcements are behind you.”

  Li ignored the order. He felt invincible. They had run parallel assessments of the Tank Major the Americans had built to their own and, in almost all cases, the Chinese one was superior.

  The object looked too small to house a Tank Major. The truck drove to the opposite side and trained its .50 caliber machine gun on it. The soldiers got out and formed a wide perimeter. Against the orders barked over the truck’s megaphone, civilians filtered back into the alleys at what they perceived as a safe distance to see what was going on. They stared in awe at their mechanized soldier.

  The foreign object hummed with building energy. Li trudged forward to within ten yards. He aimed the grenade launcher and cannon on it. He mentally adjusted his hydraulic system for speed, sacrificing power. In this mode he was fast, and in training they would treat their arms like maces, carrying the energy, curving back, using the momentum as it built with rotation. He could adjust the power on the fly.

  The panels of the crate shook violently. Static electricity danced across it and the curious crowd became less curious and retreated. Li walked forward just as the crate exploded outward and a giant unfurled from its cocoon. Its body was matte black, almost rubberized. It wasn’t as bulked down with armor. And unlike the Tank Major they had studied to emulate, it was nearly Li’s size and equally wide. It locked its eyes on him and charged. Li shelled it with his weapons.

  “Hit the deck,” Raimey yelled to his team. They sprawled.

  The Chinese Tank Major tried to veer out of the way. Raimey scissored his right fist down onto its shoulder and reared back his left to hydraulshock.

  WHA-WHAM!

  Li exploded across the marketplace, two hundred pound pieces blasting through shops and carts, clearing the area around them in rough swaths. Raimey didn’t wait; he felt the pecking of bullets against his back. He turned and charged the truck. He conserved the hydraulshocks and ran through it, collapsing its roof and tearing it in half.

  Prone, Hostettler, Ratny, and Johnson fired on the Chinese soldiers who stood like mannequins while the giant demolished what they had thought was invincible. They collapsed from headshots and chest shots before they even raised a rifle.

  PUNG! Two hover-rovers erupted off Raimey’s back and spun into the air. They arced forward, gaining elevation as they went. Raimey—and only Raimey—now had eyes. The Tank Major/hover-rover system was completely closed and unhackable. He had HD, UV, infrared, and night vision. They gave off no heat or radar signature. Already, they were dots in the air. They looked like a kid’s lost balloon.

  “GO! GO! GO!” Ratny screamed. The three soldiers jumped up and sprinted through the crowd to a nearby alley. They would use Raimey as a distraction while they worked their way to the Core using the corrugated alleyways as cover.

  The hover-rovers showed reinforcements vectoring in. Hundreds of troops and armored vehicles. Soldiers on roofs carrying long tubes. No more giants. A tornado siren erupted from his body, a courtesy to civilians, and equally, a warning of what was coming: a chance to retreat or surrender.

  “I’m coming,” Raimey said. His momentum built quickly as he charged as the crow flies toward the Colossal Core.

  “We’re a half mile away,” Ratny said, panting. They had two-way radios attached to their helmets. Raimey had a speaker version jury rigged to the inside of his. “Still no soldie—we’re taking fire! Fire ahead of you!”

  Raimey heard the sharp echo of assault rifles ahead and to the right of the main road. He flew a hover-rover toward that location and found the hostile group. He had adjusted quickly to the multiple sight lines. It had become as natural as breathing and it gave him a monumental advantage.

  “Hole up. I’m coming,” Raimey said and he veered toward the sound.

  Twenty Chinese soldiers were stationed on top of a roof camouflaged to look residential. Potted plants decorated the ledge, old dresses and shirts fluttered on a clothesline. Training rote in Johnson’s mind saved him from a bullet. He sensed movement above him and immediately took cover. Where he had just stood freckled and twanged with lead. Ratny and Hostettler took cover and called it in.

  They heard Raimey coming. It sounded like an industrial accident at a steel mill. Suddenly the bottom half of the building with the soldiers turned to smoke.

  WHA-WHAM!

  The hydraulshock report shot past the team and even with their earplugs, they cupped their ears in pain. Shacks around them toppled over and the five-story structure fell away like it was built with cards.

  “Clear,” Raimey said. They heard the deep impact of his feet and the metallic frenzy of the drive chains fading as he continued toward the Core. The team altered their course around the new rubble, ignoring the screams of the few soldiers that somehow survived, and sprinted to catch up.

  = = =

  Xan watched the small team and the new Tank Major approach on a surveillance monitor. This Tank Major was much different than the first. It was larger and it looked less encumbered with armor. It was much quicker. It had dismantled Li in less than a second and Xan watched through violently shaking surveillance cameras as the perimeter outpost evaporated in demolition.

  “What should we do?!” a technician asked. They saw what was coming. Xan watched as the Tank Major ran ahead of the team and bulldozed through buildings like they were paper. They were moving fast to avoid reinforcements. They knew where the Core was.

  A tank blocked the road and his other Tank Major flanked the American. Xan watched the tank recoil as it fired the 120mm cannon. He watched as the American sprinted away from Xan’s Tank Major through buildings. They crumbled behind him and his Tank Major followed.

  He’s luring you. No.

  The tank tried to maneuver, but the surrounding buildings crowded it in. Suddenly the giant was on top of it, hammering down with huge fists.

  It moves too fast.

  It jumped off and the cameras shook violently again. When they settled, the tank was engulfed in flame and twisted out. Hydraulshock. The Chinese Tank Major fled. Xan wasn’t sure he wouldn’t have done the same.

  “Leave,” Xan said. He turned to the entire team. “There’s nothing for you to do here now.”

  On his order, the technicians scrambled away, afraid for their lives.

  The boy was still in the crucifix. It took an hour for the Data Crusher to spin down and when it did, the boy could safely regain consciousness. For a moment, Xan thought Xinting had abandoned Justin, but then she appeared from the hallway that led to Justin’s room. She had two bags in her hand.

  “Xinting,” he raised his voice to be heard over the thwap-thwap-thwap of the Core.

  The base rattled from an explosion above them. The hydraulshock. They were already here.

  She ran to Justin. The Data Crusher wound down. It would still be dangerous to unhook him. Xan looked at the bags. They had to have been pre-packed. One was for her, the other for the boy.

  “You need to slow them down, Xan. I need at least ten more minutes.” She looked up at the noise. A distant chatter of gunfire found its way down.

  “You knew,” he said, unaccusing.

  “In my training, at one point Cynthia Revo had tried to recruit me,” she replied. Cynthia had found her again, ten hours before and told her what was going to happen.

  Xan stepped forward. “She can’t have him.” Xinting moved in front of Justin with her hands up. Gunfire rattled overhead.

  “She doesn’t want anyone to have him. She said she never wants him to connect in again. She sent me money to take him away. It’s enough to live on forever. She doesn’t care where I go, her only condition was that he can never go online.”

  “We can’t rebuild what we’ve taken away without him,” Xan said. Xan didn’t want to leave the world wounded. Without the King Sleeper, the seeds of economic collapse he had planted would continue to grow. The banks and credit unions would be castrated bulls unable to proliferate.

  Another burst of gunfire came from above as t
he infiltration team pushed forward. Twenty stories up, Raimey was working his way to the Data Core with his team playing peek-a-boo behind him with firearms.

  “It’ll have to sort out on its own,” Xinting said. “Cynthia told me that the U.S. mission is to either retrieve the King Sleeper or kill him.”

  “You’re not defecting?” Xan asked.

  Xinting shook her head violently. “No. I love China. I don’t want to leave, but I think I have no choice. No Xan, I just want this poor boy to live.”

  Xan looked down at Justin. His little frame rustled around in the rack, beginning to awake.

  “I want that too,” Xan said. The U.S. couldn’t have him and he wouldn’t let the boy die. It was settled. “Please tell Justin I said goodbye.”

  “I will. Thank you, Xan.”

  Xan and Xinting looked at each other for a moment. They could have been more.

  “I’ll get you ten minutes,” he said and ascended up the walkway to meet his guests.

  = = =

  Raimey hydraulshocked the entrance and they quickly infiltrated, using Raimey as the battering ram. For a normal team, the resistance from the Chinese soldiers would have been overwhelming, but with John, they may as well have been firing blanks. Ratny and the others hid behind Raimey as he progressed through the base. The quarters were tight, the top three floors—only one of which was actually on the surface, just like a MindCorp Node—were office space.

  They finally found a bank vault-like door with a hand scanner.

  “Get back,” Raimey said.

  WHA-WHAM!

  The vault door didn’t have time for its metal molecules to bend. It shattered inward like a sheet of ice. The team stacked up, went through, and was met with a torrent of gunfire from all sides. From behind John, the team heard the metallic thoomp of underbarrel grenades exploding against him. They felt the flecks of bullet fragments redirected off Raimey’s impenetrable shell.

  “We got to get back!” Johnson yelled. Raimey walked backwards slowly, keeping them shielded. When they had retreated past the vault door, Raimey charged back in. They heard the effortless destruction as Raimey tore through the defenses, the gurgled screams cut short, the grenades detonated to no effect. Two minutes later, “clear.” They came in guns up, but they could have run in with toy windmills, there was nothing to shoot.