The Northern Star Trilogy: Omnibus Edition

by Mike Gullickson

  Raimey sank into the slop and made his way across, using drowned trees as depth finders. The water rose to his chest and held steady. Still no movement ahead. Something played in the back of his head, some worry. Something about the town ahead, but nothing concrete.

  The moat was more mud than water, and it took effort to forge ahead. He almost didn’t notice when he came upon the trip wire: an anchor chain drawn across the width of the dredge.

  For Tank Majors, he thought. Chills went up his back. This was the kill zone, not the road. He scanned the buildings ahead. Still no one. He stepped back, raised his leg over the chain, and continued on.

  The sludge was above his shoulders now. Another twenty yards and the same chain, a bit higher. He stepped over it as well. He was two-thirds to the edge of the town when another chain hit him. This one was chest-high. He’d have to go under. He felt like he was under a microscope, and he was moving painfully slow, but still there were no signs of soldiers.

  There was nothing else to do but to grab the massive anchor chain and pull it out of the slop. As he did so, two EFP warheads mounted on the chain rose out of the water, their inverted copper cones staring at John like blighted eyes. They detonated, blasting two ten-pound molten copper slugs into his chest at two thousand meters per second. The impact knocked John completely off his feet, and the sludge poured over him as he sank underneath, unconscious.

  = = =

  The warlords were having fun now. Bidding against each other, chest-thumping, drinking. The money was flowing—some of the bids were too high—but it had become a party.

  An explosion rattled the city.

  “Shut up!” Packard yelled. His cheeks blew out from the effort and an eyehole drifted over his lens. He tore the eyehole bigger. The warlords stopped their banter. “Stay here,” Packard ordered. To a Mort Vivant: “Shoot them if they move.” He jumped off the platform.

  The Mort Vivant didn’t have to speak. They projected to one another. A Tank Major had detonated EMPs in the moat. The likelihood was that it was dead—this had happened before—but it needed to be checked out. The Mort Vivant quickly and efficiently split the duties: some closed down the factories with the workers inside, others shored up the ports, and about half made their way toward the moat. Packard and a team stopped at massive water pumps that bordered the ghettos. The rest made their way to the bog. A tractor rumbled behind them to pull out the giant for scrap.

  They bridged their vision and Packard could see what they saw. And what they saw was nothing. The water was flat and calm—a jelly, really.

  Dead, Packard projected. The others agreed. The tractor lumbered forward onto the road and three soldiers unfurled a chain with a large treble hook at the end, preparing to dredge for the giant. They rock-paper-scissored to see who would go in.

  = = =

  A scrapping sound stirred Raimey, but it was his starving lungs that woke him. It was pitch black through the visor, the only light coming from a small display that showed his charge percentage and food supply. He tried to stand, but he realized he was facing the wrong direction, like a climber buried in snow. Claustrophobia enveloped him, and his lungs screamed for air. He knew he had been out for at least five minutes, because that was how much air the breathing system and helmet contained before it was exhausted. And it was clearly exhausted now.

  Black hair twisted on the right side of his vision. He felt her nearby. “Sweat,” she said.

  The sweat on his face wasn’t dripping off; it burned his eyes. He was on his back. He let out a hollow gasp and his vision sparkled. He rolled over and put his hands down to push up out of the mud that had suctioned him down. His hands sank two feet down and he realized this whole bog was like a Chinese finger trap. And then he felt himself being dragged.

  = = =

  The bionic spun his finger after latching the chain, and the tractor ground away. The chain grew taut, and to the soldiers watching from the shore, it looked like a massive turtle had surfaced only to retreat back into the depths. But then a massive arm flailed in the air.

  “He’s alive!” the bionic on Raimey yelled and jumped into the gunk, using the chain to the tractor to pull himself out of harm’s way. The Mort Vivant looked at each other in surprise. Even Packard raised an eyebrow. No Tank Major could survive a direct chest hit from an EFP, yet the mud shimmied.

  “Lay the mines and get back,” Packard ordered. The should-be-dead Tank Major was thirty yards from solid ground.

  The gelatinous movement of the bog stopped, and for a moment Packard thought that maybe the previous movement has simply been the giant’s death throes. Perhaps it had been bleeding out, its metal arms and legs thrashing as the meat starved of oxygen.

  WHA-WHAM!

  When Raimey fired both hydraulshocks, the transfer of ten million foot-pounds of energy into the bog floor caused thirty tons of sludge twenty meters around him to explode outward like a firecracker. The bionic in the bog was torn apart as the shockwave created a tsunami.

  The soldiers were first splattered in mud from the initial explosion, and then the full wall of sludge slammed into them, filling their nostrils, knocking them unconscious, and dragging them into the bog.

  Raimey stood up and charged behind the wave. Through an array of fleeing eyes, Packard saw the EFP impact craters in Raimey’s black ceramic armor, and fear filled him. He knew of only one giant that looked like that.

  BOOM! The tractor exploded, struck by a tank shell. BOOM! Five retreating bionics disappeared in fire.

  Packard scanned the hills, unable to find the tank.

  Get back! Get back! Packard projected. Dozens of Mort Vivant had been pulled into the moat, and it seemed that Raimey found them all. From the initial blast, pallets of mud still fell from the sky like some unwritten sign of the apocalypse. Raimey trudged along the beachhead, killing the bionics who were clawing out from the mud. The Mort Vivant’s ranks were cut in half in one minute, and Packard felt each of their souls depart through their link.

  BOOM! The tank continued to rain shells, helping feed the chaos.

  ===

  As Raimey climbed to shore, his wife clung to his shoulder like a gargoyle, her finger outstretched toward everyone who had tried to take him down. The remaining bionics scattered through the small alleys of the huts and shacks that surrounded the town center. Raimey hadn’t used the hover-rovers earlier because they would have given him away, but now they rocketed off his back and spun high into the air.

  From their vantage, he watched the soldiers retreating past the dilapidated shacks to large pumping stations with piping that disappeared into the river. The stations gushed with water and, a moment later, the area Raimey trudged through was flooding. The ground had been soft to begin with, and now his steps sank calf-deep. They were trying to slow him down—and succeeding. This would be a battle. He heard the whistle of mortars as they fell down on him like lawn darts.

  ===

  Packard moved with his team past the pump stations. He had installed these to flood “Bomb Town,” as he called it.

  Tank Majors were the biggest threat to this operation, and inherent in their design and attitude was their tendency to just plow through buildings. That’s why every building in Bomb Town was a punji pit. Twenty feet deep, and instead of spikes to impale a tiger, they had ten EFPs—five up and five around the perimeter—just like the two that Raimey had taken a direct hit from.

  “But feet are different,” Packard said to himself. A Mort Vivant glanced at him and Packard waved him off. “Get the Javelins,” Packard ordered. The bionic ran off to an armor cache at the center of the real town, recruiting others along the way. Javelins were portable anti-tank missiles that could be fired from the shoulder. Packard had collected five over the years. They were old and rare, and for Packard, a weapons enthusiast, they were like a fine bottle of wine. But now he had no choice—he had to crack them open.

  He could hear Raimey stomp and grind through Bomb Town. In Israel, Packard had seen Raim
ey cleave through the fortified front of the tens of thousands of soldiers that had tried to overtake Tel Aviv. Other Tank Majors had fallen. Other Tank Majors had broken, or were overrun. But Raimey had been a demonic possession. He was unstoppable. He was an agent of fear more horrifying in reality than myth.

  We are ready with the Javelins, the Minors sent to Packard.

  Get to the perimeter of Bomb Town and lure him through one of the buildings. Keep the mortars up, Packard sent back. He looked into the air. And shoot down his fucking hover-rovers.

  ===

  Raimey’s extra eyes exploded out of the sky thanks to two well-placed fifty-caliber sniper rounds. With the last transmissions, he saw soldiers stalking along the perimeter of the town.

  The ground underfoot was getting thicker and sloppier, slurping up the water like a sponge. As Raimey clomped between the rickety living structures, he heard a draining sound that he couldn’t place. He peered to his left, toward the main road, and for a moment he thought that he should detour to it and approach unhidden. But already he had seen the high degree of strategy and preparation from this troop. Packard had thought this through.

  He was one hundred yards from the massive pipes that were flooding the land. They roared like the spillway of a dam.

  Raimey saw, but didn’t hear, the Javelin missile as it rose into the air.

  “Shit!”

  The Javelin was fire and forget. It would hit. He quickly looked around and saw a large structure, slightly bigger than the rest of the shacks. He ran toward it as the hiss of the Javelin’s propellant grew. Raimey dove through the shack.

  He heard the explosion and felt the blast push him down as the thin roof triggered the missile, but that sensation was immediately overtaken by the realization that he was falling. Punji pit? he thought, and then the biggest explosion he had ever encountered as a Tank Major erupted around him. The competing forces—from the Javelin above and the explosives below—were so evenly matched that he didn’t get thrown around. Instead, he was held in place, paralyzed, squeezed by extreme forces from seemingly every direction, while the fire and concussive blast vortexed around him. His joints compressed and his body groaned like a submarine at crush depth. Warning lights blinked in his helmet.

  The fire whisked away and he stood in a blackened abscess with charred, flaming sides. The water rose at his feet. Raimey screamed in frustration and started climbing his way out of the deep black hole.

  ===

  Packard had moved to a higher post to watch the Javelin assault. It took only one to make Raimey seek cover—exactly what Packard wanted—and when he collapsed through and the EFP array exploded, Packard thought that, finally, this assault was through. The explosion had cratered almost a third of Bomb Town.

  He very nearly ordered his men in—and then he saw the massive Tank Major’s hands rake over the side and pull a huge chunk of earth down.

  “You-are-fucking-kidding-me,” Packard whistled when Raimey clawed out of his grave. Packard was out of options. Retreat, he projected. Get to the boats. We’ll defend at the Multiplier.

  The Mort Vivant did just that. They had been through enough battles to know that survival surpassed honor. They regrouped as they ran to the boats, shooting down anyone in their way. The giant was far behind, still clawing through the mud, and Packard felt a sense of relief. If they got to the oil rig, they could defend it without issue.

  What was left of the Mort Vivant piled into the boats. Packard counted twenty, and his heart sank at the loss. Salt wasn’t there.

  “Go!” Packard yelled. He looked back. Still no giant. The thirty-foot boat powered away, down the river toward open water. Ahead, Packard could see the giant dishes on the Multiplier churn—all of the children were in place, and it was grabbing a signal. His mission was complete. The wind whipped through his scraggly hair and whistled through his cheeks. They would be fine.

  BOOSH. A huge splash erupted aft of them.

  BOOSH. Another splash erupted fore.

  Packard looked back. They were two hundred yards out, just reaching the mouth of the river. The giant watched them from the pier. It was covered in mud. But it had nothing in its hands. Behind it, far off in the hills, Packard saw an orange flick of light.

  “WE HAVE TO USE THE SHORELINE FOR COV—”

  The next tank shell hit and the boat exploded into flames.

  = = =

  Cynthia was back in her office. Three days before, thousands of employees had filled the monolithic MindCorp headquarters. Now there were only ten employees maintaining the Colossal Core beneath the skyscraper, plus thirty Tank Minors scattered throughout, guarding the entrances and clearing the unoccupied floors. It was the same in every mega-city: the military now controlled every major Data Core in the country.

  But they couldn’t turn them on.

  Evan let Cynthia sit at her desk, like everything was normal. He sat in a chair across from her as he had many, many times before. Back in the old days, Donald “WarDon” Richards—Evan’s boss at the time—would come to Cynthia like a panhandler hoping for a handout. Information on the Prime Minister of Iraq, please. Thank you, ma’am, may I have another? Could you check in on our Coalition partners? Thank you, ma’am, may I have another? Some of the most powerful men in the world, orphan extras on Oliver Twist. The United States government—the most powerful military force in the world!—puckering up as she spread her cheeks.

  The ass-kissing had nauseated Evan. He liked hierarchy, he liked place. And that was a world completely out of order.

  “How are we doing this?” Cynthia said.

  “The cell towers.” Evan’s voice warbled.

  “You’re underground somewhere, aren’t you? Like a mole.”

  “A mole’s going to survive what’s coming, Cynthia,” Evan replied. His voice echoed in a strange decay and his eyes twitched. He wasn’t well. “Did you think I wouldn’t have redundancy? You know what I want. You caught me off guard, that’s all.”

  “General Boen.”

  “Yep.”

  “You killed him.”

  “Yep.”

  The textures of the room flattened, and Evan’s face pixelated. A moment later the room snapped back into full resolution, but Evan’s face did not. It was skin and nothing more.

  WE WANT TO SEE.

  Cynthia could feel an inexorable hunger come through Evan. Slight lines creased his face at all angles, and then twenty-six eyes blinked open.

  CAN WE FEEL HER?

  “Sorry darlings, there’s no bandwidth,” Cynthia said. Then to Evan: “You’re trapped with them, aren’t you?” She smiled. “Like a genie in a bottle. All that intelligence, all the hunger, using you as food because it can get no other. How long until you go insane? There’s a reason no one has ever done what you’ve done.”

  Evan’s hands gripped the arms of the chair and his body shook. The eyes sank away and Evan’s face returned.

  “Soon, Cynthia. Soon, you’ll see my vision.”

  She probed, and he could feel it, but the Pieces were distracted, pushing on every port, trying to breach their iron maiden.

  “Stop it!” Evan said. He pushed her away, and the effort caused his face to fold in again, as the Pieces took the path of least resistance. They wanted the light, and he was their light bearer. The spider eyes blinked.

  “Who are you waiting for?” Cynthia asked. “Who is the rest of your family?”

  OUR CONSCIOUSNESS. OUR MOTHER. SHE WILL ALWAYS LOVE US.

  Evan’s body shook again, and again the eyes vanished. Even online, Evan looked exhausted.

  Cynthia was done with the mind games. She had gotten what she needed: she’d learned that the Northern Star was not complete. “The cell towers were clever.”

  Evan’s body settled. Visible relief washed over his face. “Thank you.”

  “You shouldn’t have hurt Mosley,” Cynthia said.

  “He aided and abetted. You shouldn’t have fled like a fugitive,” Evan replied.


  “If he’s dead . . .”

  Spit flew from Evan’s mouth. “You’ll what?”

  She turned a shoulder. Her calm rankled Evan. She steeped her tea in a steaming mug of water. Somehow she had rerouted all of the data overseas, and it danced from node to node like a lightning storm, untraceable. She must have used Sabot; he wasn’t at the lake. Evan needed the network online.

  “Am I under house arrest?” she asked, unconcerned.

  “Yes.” Evan looked around the opulent suite. “You should be comfortable.”

  “Is it indefinite?”

  “That’s up to you. I didn’t want it to come to this.”

  “You’ve always wanted it to come to this.”

  Anger overtook him. “YOU. AREN’T. SUPPOSED. TO. RULE,” he said.

  She matched his tone. “Neither are you, you little shit.”

  “Turn on the network.”

  “Turn it on yourself.”

  Evan laughed, a frustrating cackle. “You’re cunning—I’ll give you that. But it’s over. It’s only going to get worse, Cynthia. Time is with me, not you.”

  “I’m not so sure, Evan.”

  “Turn on the network.”

  “My dad was a grocer,” Cynthia said.

  “Oh . . . kay.”

  “Do you remember supermarkets? The big ones?”

  “Yes, we had a Kroger.”

  “My dad worked for Jewel/Osco. They were based around here.”

  Evan rolled his eyes. He wished he could just rifle through her brain, leaving soup behind, but there wasn’t enough bandwidth. And he couldn’t kill her, because she had made herself the skeleton key. And judging by her attitude, she knew he couldn’t touch her.

  She continued. “Do you remember the aisles of food? All the bread, cans of soups, the butcher shelf with steaks. The giant baskets of oranges and the displays of vegetables, how it would spray a mist to keep them fresh. As a kid, it felt like magic. At least to me. If shipments stopped at a supermarket, how long would it be until it was empty?”

  “A week.”

  Cynthia held up one finger. “A day for the essentials and three days for everything else. Three days, and the supermarket would be gutted. Maybe the canned oysters would be there, but anything of value, anything worth taking, would be gone. Without the supply, seventy-two hours and the supermarket would be just shelves and fridges. What would happen next?”