The Northern Star Trilogy: Omnibus Edition

by Mike Gullickson

  Raimey cleared his throat. “She said she never wanted to talk to me again.”

  “Things change, John,” Boen said. “Should I schedule the conference call?”

  “It’d be video?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know if,” he gestured at his body. “This gets in the way.”

  “Then audio.”

  John nodded at the speaker. “That’d be . . . best.” He cleared his throat again.

  “We’re twenty seconds out,” a soldier said.

  “I’ll set it up when you get back,” Boen said. “Be safe.”

  A red light flashed, accompanied by an alarm, and the soldiers attached lifelines to the hull. The back of the plane slowly opened. Whipping wind filled the compartment as the earth opened up before them in brown and green tiles. A gray snake slashed through it: the Congo River.

  Razal was first. He swan-dived into the open air.

  “Ready?” the technicians asked.

  “Ready,” John replied.

  They pushed the pack sheet out into space and got the hell out of the way. The block of fabric expanded out violently into a massive parachute, got grip, and yanked Raimey from the plane.

  As he drifted down, the topographical map became more defined: breaks of forest, grassy plains, and retreating herds. He could see a haze of pollution north of them, but he couldn’t tell how far. To the southeast were columns of black smoke. That was most likely their destination.

  Raimey landed twenty miles from the mine. He turned in a circle until he got ahold of the parachute tethers and tore them off. Nature filled his nostrils, along with the overpowering smells of grease, metal, and the mercury burn of his electric motors.

  Razal was ahead up in a dead tree with the rifle scope to his eye. Monkeys huffed and puffed beneath it, temporarily relocated. Razal heard Raimey approach.

  “It’s like a nature preserve here,” Razal said, not taking his eyes off the horizon.

  “Pretty,” Raimey replied. Zebras moved off in the distance.

  Razal made a face. Pretty? He hadn’t expected to hear that word from the giant’s mouth.

  “What do you see?” Raimey asked. That was more like it.

  “Lots of black smoke, and behind that a bunch of grey. Boen sent me the info. The mine’s big. Almost a mile and a half across.” Razal jumped down to his hard case, which was perched against the tree. He quickly assembled his rifle and put extra magazines in a backpack, then left the hard case behind. “Mind if I ride?”

  Raimey turned up his palm and Razal climbed onto his shoulder. They set off.

  Africa, on the whole, had changed little after the oil depletion. Apart from South Africa, the continent had never gotten the traction that the industrialized nations had. Unlike late twentieth-century China and early twenty-first-century India, it didn’t even get the knick-knack, bottom-feeder manufacturing that could evolve into more. It was still full of warlords, tribes, genital mutilations, and genocides.

  But it also held vast natural resources that the new world needed even more than the old. The microprocessor was the modern world’s salvation, and Africa had inherited the new policy that the starving superpowers had instituted at the end of oil: infiltrate and take. It was cheaper than trade. It was more effective than bartering. And, as it did in every occupied country, it had turned the region into a war zone.

  Near a group of trees, a herd of giraffes stared at Raimey as he stomped by. A baby giraffe retreated behind its mother. He was in high bush, but at thirteen feet tall, Raimey could see just fine.

  “Doesn’t make much sense, does it?” Razal said.

  “What?”

  “The locals attacking the mines, the caravans.”

  “They’re poor.”

  “Yeah, but who’s buying gallium on the black market?” Gallium and the other rare earth metals were used to maintain the digital infrastructure of MindCorp and the Coalition.

  John didn’t reply. Razal looked down to his left and he saw the giant’s mouth chewing on imaginary gum. The brief respite from insanity was apparently over.

  Razal looked through his scope. “Buzzards ahead. Lots of them.”

  “Hmm.”

  It was rainy season and they hit a bog. Raimey sank to mid-thigh, but his powerful electric motors had no problem moving him forward. A herd of wildebeest drank from the pool. Monkeys moved from a twisted dry tree down to the bank, sipping and watching, shrieking alerts to each other, eyes scanning the tall grass. Halfway through the bog, a hippo tried to display dominance, and Raimey pushed it aside.

  As they moved onward, the buzzards grew thick like mosquitos. They rode the thermals like kites, calling out to each other in a language that brought chills. They were just west of the mine now.

  “Can you transmit this?” Raimey asked.

  “I haven’t gotten anything on my comm since we’ve landed. We’re on our own right now.”

  After another hour, the wind shifted and the smell of butchery, red and raw, filled their nostrils. They heard the bark of hyenas and the low grumble of lions up ahead. The buzzards pirouetted above them. As they crested a hill, they saw the slashed earth of the mine, the makeshift factory town nearby. It was still a mile off. But the villagers were all right here: still and piled, hacked and shot. Hundreds, if not more.

  Long black hair blotted the corner of John’s right eye, but he blinked it away. Razal heard him say, “Not yet.”

  Razal hopped off and they made their way down.

  Flies swirled like pollen above the disjointed piles of bodies. On the far side, lions lay on the ground with meals pinned under their paws as they tugged and pulled on flesh. A pack of hyenas stood their ground, hackles raised, growling. One attacked Razal and he punched it so hard its skull collapsed. The others scattered.

  “No children,” Razal said.

  “They recruit them,” Raimey replied, but not to Razal. He was looking to his right.

  A burst of gunfire echoed toward them, still distant. Razal slunk back toward John.

  “I’ll scout ahead and call you forward. Check your comm.”

  The two-way radio built into Raimey’s helmet crackled to life.

  “You got me?” Razal’s lips didn’t move with the question. He was transmitting to the radio like a team of Minors would to each other: by digital telepathy.

  “Yeah.”

  “Got you, too.” Razal vanished into the bush. Raimey waited among the dead and predators that had been pushed off the apex by his arrival.

  A moment later, Razal: “A group of rebels are raping a girl.”

  Raimey’s vision blurred. He blinked, but the strands of black hair would not go away. “You must kill them,” his wife said in his ear. He could feel her sickness, the cancer that had eaten her through. It was always like this before the blood. And only the blood would make her well. “You must kill them all,” she said. She never stood for injustice.

  For you, anything.

  = = =

  Vanessa huffed out the front entrance of the Derik Building. So far her birthday had been shit. She didn’t know why she had agreed to talk to her dad. She didn’t want to hear his excuses or his apology. She didn’t want to “start over” or rebuild. And when General Boen had said he was mentally unstable, her first thought had been “good.” She could never forgive him for what he had done.

  Two Tank Minor guards nodded to her as she turned down the street and speed-walked to the L station. It was October, chilly, but that wasn’t why she was hurrying. Her mind spun from Chao’s last words, and she felt a weight in her heart that something was very wrong. She made it to the train. A few people were on board, but she had it mostly to herself. Dinner had come and gone and everyone was back online.

  When she reached the floor of her apartment, her mood changed and a smile appeared on her lips. She could smell something foreign cooking. He was here. It had become a ritual: he traveled all around the world, and when he came back, he would bring foods and spi
ces from the regions he’d visited. He couldn’t talk about his missions, but she could tell, by what he cooked for her, where he had been. It was his way of sharing something he was not allowed to share.

  When she entered the apartment, the lights were off. She could hear something sizzling in a pan. She caught a shadow moving around the kitchen. He always forgot to turn on the lights.

  “I thought I’d be done in time,” Glass said. She dropped her keys and they met. He wrapped his arms around her, as strong as girders. “Happy birthday.” They kissed. His lips were cold and he had no tongue, but she welcomed it anyway.

  He put her at arm’s distance. “What’s wrong?”

  “Probably nothing. I don’t know. I need a beer.”

  Glass was already at the fridge. “It’s your birthday.” It was in her hand. She took a swig. It tasted amazing.

  “That smells great,” she said. “What is it?”

  “Peking duck and stir-fry.”

  She went over to the light switch. “Do you mind?”

  “No.”

  She slowly turned up the lights. Glass was manning the cutting block, dicing vegetables and tossing them into a wok.

  “Tough day?” he asked.

  “Weird day. Commander Boen wants me to talk to my dad.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s losing it, I guess. I don’t care.” She huffed. “He deserves it.”

  Glass didn’t respond. His hands were a blur as the blade fired through the vegetables, ch-ch-ch-ch. Vanessa had learned that Glass’s quiet had different tones. He was keeping something to himself.

  “What?” Vanessa asked.

  “I don’t understand why you hate him.”

  “You know why.”

  “I know you blame him.”

  “He left us!”

  “To support you and your mom.”

  Vanessa slammed down her beer, splashing it on the table. “What is this?”

  Glass looked at her for a moment, eternally expressionless. “My mom left me with a dad who drank and who was always gone. And when he was around, he beat me.”

  “And you should be furious at her.”

  “I don’t get angry.”

  “Well that’s your problem.”

  Glass watched her for a moment. “He didn’t kill your mother.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” Vanessa said.

  “I don’t see any other choice he had.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it!” Vanessa said. She pressed the cool bottle against her temple. “I don’t want to think about him. It makes me think about mom when she was sick and it makes me sad.” Her jaw trembled. “I want to remember her when she was healthy. She was beautiful. And she was so patient. That’s what I remember, how patient she was. She played with me, she answered my questions.” Vanessa paused. “Dad wasn’t around even before. It was always her and me. She loved him. I’d catch her staring out the window, and I’d think she’d be thinking about her death, but she wasn’t. She was thinking about him. Wondering where he was. Wondering how he was doing. All while she withered away, wondering where he could be.”

  She looked up at Glass. Tears rolled down her cheeks. “It wasn’t that he left. It was that he never came back.”

  Glass handed her another beer. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I was just trying to understand.”

  Vanessa took the olive branch and gulped it down. Glass checked on the Peking duck in the oven.

  Vanessa laughed a heartless laugh. “This whole day’s been upsetting. Chao’s a real piece of work.”

  “How so?”

  “He said something shitty. He knows about us.”

  Glass froze, oblivious to the intense heat washing over his face. “What did he say?”

  “I basically called him an asshole and he said”—she roughened her voice—“‘I didn’t know I was your type.’”

  “I don’t get it,” he said. “How does that make him your type?”

  “I actually said ‘psycho,’ I think.”

  Glass was quiet for a moment. “And then he said what he said?”

  “Yeah.” She grabbed another beer from the fridge.

  “And you knew he was talking about me?”

  Vanessa cocked her head and turned to Mike. “What’s up?”

  Glass’s lidless eyes rolled green silt. “Nothing.” He pulled out the duck and finished the stir-fry. Then he watched her eat. This was part of the ritual, too. He asked her how it tasted and she described it. Sometimes she would embellish: not all dishes turned out good.

  = = =

  She had met Mike during her internship at the Derik Building the summer between her undergrad and Masters studies. Dr. Lindo had insisted, and she remembered feeling special—a state of being she hadn’t felt in years—when she had walked through the door and Evan had been there to greet her. She knew he was an important man, and he had taken time out of his day for her.

  “The study of psychology is useful for understanding concepts and learning the language, but unless you’re willing to see a human at their most fragile, it is merely academia, and that’s useless,” he had said to her on that first day. He was showing her the surgery wing and explaining the protocols. “You wouldn’t trust a carpenter with soft hands. A shrink in an ivory tower is no different. We are not complex. Our motivations are not ethereal, inexplicable equations. Quite the opposite.”

  “What are the equations?” Vanessa had asked. A look of satisfaction came across Evan’s face. He counted them off on his fingers.

  “We want to be loved. We want to matter. And above all else, we are driven by fear. If you remember those three things and apply them, you know humanity. Everything else, the niche of study, whatever, it’s just a reason to write a book.”

  Ten days later, while working a short-staffed graveyard shift, the doors of the surgery wing blew open and Glass was wheeled in by Dr. Ewing—the head surgeon at the time—and two soldiers who were vacant-eyed and bloody. The Terror War was in full swing and the Western Curse bombed markets and attacked data nodes weekly.

  “You!” the doctor said. Vanessa looked over her shoulder. “Yes, you! Help.”

  She ran over and helped push the gurney. She remembered how heavy it was. Nurses took the two soft soldiers away and another doctor helped with the gurney, calling for nurses to stop rounds and assist. When they got into the room, Vanessa was pushed aside, and she finally realized what was going on: Glass’s right arm was missing and his ribcage was exposed. Vanessa couldn’t quit looking at his eyes. They spun like galaxies.

  “I’m seeing blood, Mike,” Dr. Ewing said. He was on his knees, looking into the wound. The black casing that covered Glass’s body was bubbled, and the open gash was burnt around the edges like melted nylon. Ewing put both hands into the body like he was adjusting a breached birth. Vanessa’s stomach turned.

  “His threshold software is offline,” the implant tech said. He had connected a tablet computer to Glass. Unlike Tank Majors—which had limited sensory inputs in their limbs—Tank Minors had fiber-optic nerves that ran throughout their entire body. During battle they could toggle back the pain sensors, so they could register a bullet impact, but not collapse from it.

  “Can you get it back up?” Dr. Ewing asked the tech.

  “I’d have to link in to reboot the code,” the tech said.

  Dr. Rafayko looked at the small pool of blood forming beneath Glass.

  “You’re feeling this?” he asked Glass.

  “Yes,” Glass said. His arm was shorn from his body, and the moon crest of meat missing from his side felt like it would for a normal person.

  A normal person would be dead.

  “Mike, we have to do the surgery now.”

  Dr. Ewing inserted a camera probe into the wound and assessed the damage.

  “Shrapnel,” he said. His voice was calm, but sweat checkered his forehead. On a monitor, Vanessa saw rock fragments and shards of bent steel as the camera pushed through the mi
lky white electrostatic tissue chasing the red stream. The slimy white parted to a black box. Someone in the room hissed. A shard of steel the size of a bowie knife stuck out of its matte, armored side. Blood dribbled from it.

  “What?” Glass asked. He lay quietly as they worked.

  “The organ capsule’s breached,” Dr. Ewing said. To his team: “Let’s get prepped, we’re opening him up for the black box.”

  The doctors and nurses became organized frenzy. Nurses pulled out large stainless steel calipers used for open-heart surgery. A bone saw was placed on a counter along with various other blades. “We need blood.”

  “I’m AB-negative,” Glass said quietly.

  “AB-negative!” Ewing parroted. A nurse ran out of the room.

  “I’m AB-negative,” Vanessa said. It was a rare blood type.

  “Stay,” Ewing said. He assembled a cage around Glass that pinned him down. “Mike, we’re turning you over on your side.”

  “I can do it.”

  “Don’t do anything,” Ewing said. He glanced back to the camera monitor. “Don’t move.”

  The entire staff muscled him over, and he faced Vanessa fully. The right side of his face twitched.

  “Doctor,” Vanessa said. She had moved from the wall, but just barely. Ewing saw the symptom. Blood wasn’t getting to his brain.

  “Shit, shit. We need the blood. Where’s Tammy?”

  “The bank’s on third.” It was a huge building, not meant to be used as an ER.

  “Get over here,” Ewing said to Vanessa. A nurse pulled over a stool. “You’re sure you’re AB-negative? This is important.”

  “Yes.”

  “Hook her up,” he said. A nurse came over and quickly swabbed and inserted an IV. The device had a long cord with a valve-like adapter at its end. Glass’s body began to heave. A leg kick glanced off a doctor and he crumpled.

  “We have to turn him off,” Ewing said. “Jim, are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” the collapsed man gurgled, clutching his stomach. “Give me a second.”

  “We can’t shut him down, the terminal’s destroyed,” the implant tech said. A port mounted into the ribcage underneath a Tank Minor’s right armpit gave access to both the Mindlink implant and the organ capsule for blood transfusions and testing. The bomb blast had destroyed it.