The Northern Star Trilogy: Omnibus Edition

by Mike Gullickson

  Bright blue radiated the area. A cyclical blat filled the room. The team stacked up behind Raimey and followed him to a walkway that surrounded the Colossal Core.

  “Holy shit,” Johnson said. None of them had ever seen anything like this. The Core looked suspended in mid-air. Only when they squinted through the piercing blue light could they see the shadowed support lattice that connected it to the surrounding walls. Its base was two hundred feet below. The Core cast the cavernous space in deep shadow.

  Gunfire hit Raimey. Ahead, four Chinese soldiers retreated to another alcove built along the path. Ratny and the others returned suppressive fire while they moved forward. The Chinese rolled a flash bang out. It bleached Raimey’s vision momentarily, but the open space and the intense blue light from the Core minimized its effect. Raimey caught the tail end of their retreat as they used the metal buttresses along the walls for cover.

  “They retreated again,” Raimey said. The others grunted assent. The walkway curved around the Core, gently corkscrewing down. The thwap-thwap-thwap was deafening. The energy in the air, tangible. Little white electrical arcs jumped across Raimey’s armor.

  They whittled away at the Chinese soldiers. Finally, almost halfway down, Ratny found the thigh of the last one and, as he limped away, followed up with headshot.

  “That’s all of ‘em,” Hostettler said. They moved faster. Closer to the ground, they could now see a woman. She was reaching up for something above her. Their view was partially blocked by the massive blue tube and a metal structure that resembled a cross.

  “Stop!” Johnson yelled. The woman worked faster. He fired a warning shot past her. She flinched and pinned herself closer to the thick cross. As the team rotated around the Core they saw what she was working on: the King Sleeper.

  Johnson fired again, intentionally wide. She dropped to the ground and then quickly resumed.

  “Go!” Raimey yelled. The three soldiers sprinted ahead of Raimey. The walkway was too narrow for him to move fast and the platform vibrated from his weight.

  Twenty feet ahead was another large support buttress. Ratny, Hostettler, and Johnson reached it and suddenly they were thrown out toward the Core.

  They screamed as they fell one hundred feet. They crashed into tall server bays and pin wheeled into the ground, instantly dead.

  Raimey ran to see what had happened when a Tank Major stepped out from the shadow and tried to push him over the ledge.

  It sounded like two cars colliding. On instinct, Raimey ducked low like he was avoiding a tackle as Xan wrapped his arms around him. He had no room to hydraulshock and he was positioned sideways to the massive Chinese Tank Major, unable to turn under its incredible grip. Raimey dug his legs in and pushed back, but Xan was too powerful. The hydraulics hissed while they extended, wearing down the resistance of Raimey’s hip mounted electric motors.

  Raimey could hear the other man scream with rage. Raimey’s outside foot lost traction and suddenly he was at the ledge where the other soldiers had fallen to their deaths. He could see their sprawled bodies below.

  Without warning, Raimey let himself drop to the platform. The Chinese Tank Major’s power suddenly met no resistance and, for a second, Xan teetered over Raimey, unbalanced. Raimey exploded upward, flipping the giant off his back and over the side. Xan grabbed Raimey’s leg and pulled him down with him.

  They clawed at each other as they fell. At the bottom, they crashed into the sea of servers that exploded out in shards and sparks. The cooling system for the CPU’s ruptured and freezing air covered the floor in fog.

  Xinting worked frantically, Justin was almost out. She fumbled at the locking clips that held him in place. Two tries for each and she pulled him down. She worked on the interface that attached to his head, that allowed the data of the world access to his mind, and he, to its secrets.

  Raimey was punch drunk. He tasted blood. A warning in his head told him that a right leg suspension unit was broken. But he was alive. He heard a death rattle behind him. He was laying on the other giant. Suddenly, its arms came up and wrapped around his upper body in a hug. And then he heard what sounded like a trash compactor. The sound thickened and Raimey’s head cleared when he saw his chest armor buckle. He was being crushed.

  Xan had him. The Chinese design didn’t have the suspension system like the American Tank Major, and the fall had ruptured his organs. But while the blood filled his lungs, he still had time. He wrapped his arms around the American and initiated the constriction.

  Raimey’s arms were pinned to his sides. He tried to struggle free, but he couldn’t move. He watched as the ceramic coat of his chest armor shed under the increasing hydraulic vise. He heard a loud pop from his back. Again he tried to struggle, but the Chinese Tank Major was too big. Raimey’s momentum, kicking and rocking couldn’t overcome the eight-ton anchor that held him tight.

  “No one should have the boy,” he heard the man behind him wheeze. He sounded terminal. Raimey didn’t know what he was talking about. “No one should have the boy,” the man killing him said again.

  Like a submarine that hit crush depth, Raimey’s chest armor suddenly caved and he felt intense pain as if his lungs were too full of air. It was the opposite. His human body was being crushed.

  Raimey quit struggling. He was glad he had gotten to see Tiffany and speak to his daughter. The goodbye was warranted; this was the end. And maybe that was a blessing. Every second without them, he felt pain. It was one thing to have lost a loved one, but Raimey had forced a false imprisonment. He had taken their combined life and pulled the thread. It was he and them now. When he died today, he would be remembered fondly, hopefully. If he lived, no matter the reason why he did what he did, there would always be an empty place at the table. He would always be the dad that didn’t come back home.

  The hydraulshock slides.

  Raimey didn’t understand, the suggestion came out of nowhere. The voice was distant, but familiar, echoed down a long hallway. He didn’t take investigate further. He leaned his head against the back of his helmet and started to close his eyes.

  THE HYDRAULSHOCK SLIDES!

  It was his daughter, Vanessa’s, voice screaming for him to fight. For him to think his way out.

  John was aimed the wrong way. But the slides on each shoulder that reduced the felt recoil and reloaded the hydraulshock rounds, were not. Because of the Chinese Tank Major’s width they were aimed right at his shoulders.

  John fired two rounds at once. His arms boomed and rattled, his legs kicked from the incredible force of the hydraulic fluid shooting through his body. The depleted uranium-osmium alloy slides, the strongest armor ever devised, crunched into Xan’s shoulder joints. Raimey fired again. And again. The slides bit through deeper and deeper until the shoulder joints cracked like clay. Raimey felt Xan’s bear hug give and he struggled up to his feet.

  He faced his enemy. The man was going toward the light.

  “We need to reset,” Xan gasped. “No one can have the boy. We have to save the new world. We have to be united.” He smiled. It was filled with blood. “We’ll kill ourselves. No more shadows. We’ll kill ourselves.”

  The man died.

  Raimey walked through the fog and found the woman kneeling over the King Sleeper. A strange mask covered his face. His body was gaunt and thin. She looked up at him, pleading. One of her ears bled from the hydraulshock blasts.

  “Do not do this!” she said.

  “Shut up,” Raimey said. “Give him to me.”

  She unlatched the Mindlink interface and pulled it off the King Sleeper’s head. It was Vanessa. She was unconscious, almost completely naked. Quarter sized electrodes wrapped around her shaved head.

  And then it was a boy. A young, skinny child. A past memory flickered in his head. He had seen this boy. He had met him. The attack on MindCorp. He had gotten his father and the boy a car ride home.

  “What is this?” Raimey asked. “Where is the King Sleeper?”

  “You don’t k
now?” she said, her eyes narrow. “You came all this way and they didn’t tell you?”

  “He can’t be a boy,” Raimey said. Boen hadn’t said a word. Why? Was he afraid he wouldn’t go? Did the other soldiers know? Or did they think it didn’t matter, that he would do his duty regardless?

  “His name is Justin McWilliams and he’s twelve years old. He was raised in DeKalb, Illinois by Frank and Charlene McWilliams, and they were murdered in cold blood by your military because of his gift.”

  The boy woke. His eyes fluttered open and he saw a bionic, like Xan, standing over him. It opened and closed its hands as if it wasn’t sure what to do.

  “What happened?” The boy looked around. The Core had flickered black; the room was filled with a bone chilling fog. He didn’t see Xan sprawled out in the decimated server bay.

  “There was an explosion. This man is helping us get out of here,” Xinting said. “We’re leaving so you’ll never have to do this again.”

  “Really?!” Relief washed over the boy’s face. He hugged Xinting. “I’m so tired of doing bad things. I just want to rest.”

  She looked to Raimey as she stood up, cradling the boy. “No country should have him,” Xinting said. The same as the Chinese Tank Major. “Why are we so cruel to one another?”

  Raimey said nothing, but he knew why. Because without the weak, how would we know we’re strong?

  The boy was buried in the woman’s arms, sobbing. Just a young, scared boy. How dare we.

  “Go,” Raimey said. “Before I change my mind, go.”

  Raimey walked toward one of the giant buttresses against the wall.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  “I’m going to tear this down,” he said. “He’s dead, you understand? He died here, today.”

  “I understand.” Xinting hesitated and then bowed. She and Justin ran out of the room.

  By his count, he had three hydraulshocks left. There were four support buttresses that surrounded the open Core. Evaporating three should do. To reinforce a lie worth telling, he reared back on the first, and while the world fell around him, he felt at peace for what he had done for that little boy. He fired again.

  He pictured Vanessa, lying there in Justin’s place, and he shuddered at the thought of what he would do if his little girl had been taken from him.

  I would go to the ends of the earth for you, my dear. I would hunt down everyone involved and everyone that knew, and I would tear them apart far after they confessed and pled for mercy. Because what mercy did they give you? I would never stop until you were avenged, because you are more important than my heart and my life. In you is my soul.

  He reared back and fired. The earth trembled in the wake of his will.

  Epilogue

  John Raimey was exchanged back to the U.S. quietly. China apologized for the rogue actions of Xan Shin, a military advisor who, in the wake of the sequential deaths of their Presidents, had grossly abused the lack of oversight for his own personal vendetta against the United States. The U.S. graciously accepted their apology and in a separate conversation, agreed to share their data on the Tank Major, if China in turn would share theirs. Both countries would work together in the face of the true threat: Mohammed Jawal and the Western Curse. The two new Presidents even shook hands for a photo shoot.

  In joint statements broadcast around the world, China and the U.S. outlined in fine detail how the Western Curse—the same organization that terrorized and killed over one hundred hostages in the O’Hare Hijacking—had executed advanced cyber terrorism on both the Chinese and U.S. government’s economic systems. Both countries would stop at nothing to apprehend these cyber terrorists. After a week of turmoil in the financial markets, things settled down. Especially when MindCorp jumped in. Some stocks even went up.

  “She’s a cunt,” Evan said. General Boen was in his office. “She thinks she owns the world. She thinks that SHE’S the government. It’s getting out of control, Earl. Do you know that MindCorp bailed out the credit companies? They had enough cash on hand to provide five hundred billion dollars. Half of that, they gave away. The other half is for whenever they can get paid back, dollar for dollar. Said it was half her fault, she had gotten lax on security.” Evan shook his head, frustrated, unbelieving; don’t people see? “I feel like I’m the only sane person in the world.”

  The King Sleeper is dead. Evan had been furious at General Boen when he had finally got news of the mission. Boen had explained that Cynthia Revo would have it no other way. Earl stressed that while he trusted him, Cynthia did not. She felt betrayed by Evan for keeping the anomaly—that had hurt her business and that she had sought him to find—a secret.

  Earl kept silent and let Evan vent. He and Cynthia had come to an understanding. They had formed a common bond. Earl listened to the man, who was backed by the President, backed by the Senate, backed by the House, and loved by the military, as he expunged on the way things ought to be. Finally Evan ran out of breath. The room was quiet.

  “I don’t like where this is going,” Evan said, shaking his fat head. “I don’t like this one bit.”

  You and me both, brother.

  The Northern Star

  –Civil War–

  Part I

  “I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.”

  —Mahatma Gandhi

  Prologue

  -Chicago. 2065-

  Commander Earl Boen waited on the runway at the base north of Chicago. It was four a.m., and while he couldn’t see the massive cargo plane that had flown directly from South Africa, he could hear it and see the blinking lights on its nose and wings as it approached.

  Boen was seventy-seven years old, but looked younger. Hormone therapy had progressed by leaps and bounds, and he was on it. He had been offered the opportunity to become a bionic, but he had refused. Boen may have controlled the bionics’ operations around the world, but he still didn’t trust the technology. He’d observed how, in today’s military, there was a caste system that didn’t exist before: the bionic and the soft soldier. It had created an unspoken rift between soldiers, one that superseded even rank. The Tank Majors—goliath bionics—and the Tank Minors—infantry bionics—had made flesh-and-blood men into children.

  The giant on the plane was the first deployable Tank Major ever built, and at one time had been Boen’s close friend. Tank Majors were more refined now, even if they shared the same armored and angular shape, but John Raimey was a walking earthquake and still the most effective. He was larger and his unique armor made him—not invincible, nothing’s invincible—but . . .

  “Resilient,” Boen said. Raimey’s resilience was why he was stationed in Africa, where the Coalition armies were spread thin and reinforcements were non-existent.

  The radio on Boen’s hip crackled. “The girl is here.”

  Boen watched as a car pulled up and three silhouettes made their way to a nearby hangar. One was much smaller than the others, but still taller than Boen had imagined. Vanessa Raimey was sixteen now. Boen’s heart tightened. Even when life grows deep, regrets have a tendency to bob up and down on the surface. And to this day, every day, Earl felt guilt for what he had done. He had known Raimey since he was a recruit, and he had been integral in persuading Raimey to become a Tank Major.

  But seven years ago, it had been a strange and frightening time. Boen had just come out of retirement during the crisis with China, after the active Secretary of Defense had put a bullet through his own head. The oil was almost gone, the U.S. had united with the EU and China as the Coalition to take what was left, and MindCorp’s mind-freeing virtual technology had created a new online universe that was more important than the real one.

  It had also been the dawn of the bionic age. Dr. Evan Lindo, a U.S. military advisor and genius, had adapted Mindlink technology to create the first bionic battle chassis: the Tank Major. Months before, John Raimey and Eric Janis—another soldier—had
been crippled in a blast, and they became the first two candidates in the program. In the end, it was Eric who was chosen for the prototype. But the Chinese planted a virus in Eric’s implant, and he went insane, destroying a base that housed the King Sleeper, an incredibly powerful online hacker, a nuclear bomb in the digital age, and an asset a million times more important then a man made of gears and steel.

  So the U.S. government had needed John Raimey to become a Tank Major overnight. And to convince him, they’d had to play a trump card that even now made Earl grimace: Raimey’s wife, Tiffany, had just been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer.

  When Raimey was wheeled before Earl, Dr. Lindo, and Cynthia Revo—the chief founder of MindCorp—what followed was nothing short of coercion. If Raimey agreed to the procedure, the U.S. would take care of his family. His wife would get the best medical treatment available, regardless of cost. His daughter’s education would be paid in full. Both would have pensions that would make his existing one look like a child’s allowance.

  The only caveat: as a top-secret weapon, John could never see them again.

  And if he didn’t agree . . . well, the most effective treatments weren’t covered under standard medical. And it was tough to find work as a quad amputee.

  The request may have been phrased as a question, but everyone in the room knew it was a demand. John had no choice.

  Tiffany died anyway. She put up a fight, but those little no-purpose cells ran amok and couldn’t be stopped. And John’s orphaned daughter had been tucked under the wing of an unlikely bird: Dr. Lindo, who was now the current Secretary of Defense—and Boen’s boss.